The Thursday report, which is the first version of an annual Pentagon assessment required by law, pointed out to the launch of a satellite in December and the third nuclear test in February as the signs that North Korea’s progress towards a fully-fledged intercontinental nuclear missile.”These advances in ballistic-missile delivery systems, coupled with developments in nuclear technology… are in line with North Korea’s stated objective of being able to strike the US homeland,” the report said.The document said North Korea was one of the biggest US security challenges in the region, mentioning its record of selling weapons technology to other countries and its willingness to “undertake provocative and destabilizing behavior.”Earlier a study by Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency prepared in March was leaked to the media. It assessed “with moderate confidence the North currently has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles, however the reliability will be low.”The Korean Peninsula saw a period of escalated tension lately as North Korea and its adversaries traded threats and accusations.Pyongyang, which was subjected to a new round of UN sanctions in response to its third nuclear test, demanded that the US and South Korea abort their massive joint exercise. The North threatened to use its nuclear arsenals against target on its neighbor’s territory and American soil, if the drills escalate into an attack.Washington and Seoul proceeded with their drill plans, with the US deploying some of its most powerful hardware, including nuclear-capable bombers and missile destroyers. South also threatened to carry out a pre-emptive strike, if it saw preparation for a nuclear launch on North’s part.The escalation of tension happened as other regional countries, including Russia and China, called on all parties involved to refrain from provocations or any moves that could be regarded as such by the opponent.“What we need is not pumping the military muscle and using the current situation as a pretext for serving some geopolitical goals, but focusing the effort on renewing the six-party talks,” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.The bellicose rhetoric has so far resulted in the shutdown of the Kaesong industrial zone, a rare example of cooperation between the warring neighbors, which was the legacy of the so-called sunshine policy and the period of rapprochement between Seoul and Pyongyang it allowed for. … Read More
‘Growing hatred of US’: Yemeni testifies to Senate on drone program fallout
Yemeni writer Farea Al-Muslimi has revealed the shock and hatred felt towards the US after a drone bombed his home, the village of Wessab: “The attack terrified thousands of simple, poor farmers,” Muslimi told the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights in its hearing titled ‘Drone Wars: The Constitutional and Counterterrorism Implications of Targeted Killing.’”The drone strike and its impact tore my heart, much as the tragic bombings in Boston last week tore your hearts and also mine,” he added. “What radicals had previously failed to achieve in my village… one drone strike accomplished in an instant: There is now an intense anger and growing hatred of America.”Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is using US drone strikes to “promote its agenda and try to recruit more terrorists,” Muslimi explained.The drone attack on Muslimi’s village killed an Al-Qaeda leader and four militants, according to Reuters. But Muslimi argued that the target was already known to many in Wessab, and Yemeni officials could have easily arrested him if the US had made the request.US assistance to Yemen often goes unnoticed by most of the local population, as they are completely preoccupied by the drones flying overhead. “The drone strikes are the face of America to many Yemenis,” Muslimi said.Peter Bergen, director of the National Security Studies Program at the New America Foundation, testified that in 2012, Obama authorized at least 46 drone strikes in Yemen, while former President George W. Bush had launched only one.Lawmakers have demanded that the Obama administration provide more transparency in the increasingly secret US drone war. The public hearing was previously postponed, as the panel was hoping that the administration would send an official to testify, but it did not.US drone strikes have proven controversial: A UN team investigating casualties in Pakistan said that US drone strikes violated the country’s sovereignty. The Pakistani government claimed that at least 400 civilians have been killed by US drones.Also, leaked classified reports have confirmed that US drone attacks in Pakistan are not always precision strikes against top-level Al-Qaeda terrorists, as claimed by the Obama administration. Rather, many of these attacks are aimed at suspected low-level tribal militants, who may not pose a direct danger to the US.The Obama administration’s drone war undermines the rule of law, Rosa Brooks, professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center argued in her testimony: “When a government claims for itself the unreviewable power to kill anyone, anywhere on earth, at any time, based on secret criteria and secret information discussed in a secret process by largely unnamed individuals, it undermines the rule of law.”Brooks also recalled the Justice Department’s leaked memo on targeted killings, and how the Obama administration’s novel conception of an ‘imminent’ threat of attack – a requirement for the use of force abroad – “seems, in itself, like a substantial departure from accepted international law definitions of imminence.”“That concept of imminence has been called Orwellian, and although that is an overused epithet, in this context it seems fairly appropriate,” Brooks added.After the 9/11 terror attack, the US began to launch drones from bases in Pakistan and Uzbekistan for combat missions inside Afghanistan. More than a decade later, after killing almost 5,000 people – many of whom are believed to civilians, including women and children – Washington has expanded the use of the remotely controlled aircraft into Yemen, Somalia and especially Pakistan.Northern and western Africa have rapidly become new frontiers in the drone war. The US has set up a drone base in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, and flies unarmed Reaper drones out of Ethiopia. Washington has also carried out surveillance flights over East Africa from the island nation of the Seychelles.In the US, protest has raged over the use of the robotic killing machines to assassinate thousands around the world. Recently, hundreds gathered in front of the White House to demonstrate against drone strikes on foreign soil. … Read More
US rejects N. Korea’s demands to be recognized as a nuclear arms state
“North Korea’s demand to be recognized as a nuclear weapons state is neither realistic nor acceptable,” US Assistant Secretary for International Security and Nonproliferation Thomas Countryman told Reuters in Geneva. One of the main conditions laid out by the US for lifting sanctions is Pyongyang’s renouncement of its nuclear ambitions. This follows demands by Washington for Pyongyang to show “clear signs” that it is taking steps to end nuclear weapons development; only then will the US consider easing the crippling sanctions against the isolated state. The conditions were decried as unacceptable by North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper on Tuesday.“If the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [DPRK] sits at a table with the US, it has to be a dialogue between nuclear weapons states, not one side forcing the other to dismantle nuclear weapons,” the newspaper said. On Thursday, Pyongyang issued conditions to the US and its southern opponents, hinting that the conflict may be coming to an end. They asked for the withdrawal of US troops from the South an end to military drills on the Korean Peninsula. Over the past few weeks, tensions having been steadily building on the peninsula amid heightening bellicose rhetoric from Pyongyang, which threatened strikes on the South and the US. The US sent two F-22 jets to the Korean Peninsula at the beginning of April, drawing Pyongyang’s ire and further exacerbating tensions. The crisis began when North Korea carried out its third nuclear bomb test in February, provoking condemnation from the international community and heavy sanctions imposed by the US. Washington had already cut off food aid it had been providing to the Asian nation as part of a denuclearization-for-aid agreement reached in 2005.‘Ultimately it’s the Americans’ fault’Author and Asia specialist Tim Beal told RT that Washington’s policy towards Pyongyang was the root of the crisis.“If they had stuck to all their agreements in the past it never would have come to this,” he said in an interview. “If they’d stuck to the agreed framework that Clinton signed back in 1994, then the Yongbyon nuclear reactor would have been dismantled and taken out of the country.” He noted that every time the nations had come close to sealing a deal, Washington has “shied away,” inciting Pyongyang to further aggression. Beal described Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions as their only bargaining chip with the US, and that their ultimate goal was to make peace with the US and deliver much-needed food aid to a starving population. However, “the Americans upped the ante with this current range of military exercises, in order to stop the new South Korean government engaging with the North as Park Geun-hye had promised in her election campaign,” he told RT.History repeatsHe concluded the Americans would eventually end up recognizing North Korea as a nuclear-armed state. Citing US policy towards India under the Bush Administration, Beal described how history was repeating itself.“The Americans under George Bush did the same thing with India. They had told off India for developing nuclear weapons and for being outside of the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” he said, adding that Washington eventually compromised on India, leaving the Non-Proliferation Treaty by the wayside because they decided it made a “good counterbalance” to China in the region. Washington signed the US-India Civil Nuclear Agreement with Delhi in 2005, effectively exempting India from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. … Read More
North Korea moves two more missile launchers: report
North Korea has moved two more missile launchers to its east coast, where preparations are apparently under way for a missile test as tensions simmer on the peninsula, a report said. Expectations had been high that Pyongyang would carry out a test to coincide with celebrations marking the birth of…
North Korea demands lifting of sanctions as condition for US dialogue
North Korea said the Thursday demands will have to be fulfilled if Washington truly seeks any meaningful dialogue with Pyongyang.”If the United States and the puppet South have the slightest desire to avoid the sledge-hammer blow of our army and the people… and truly wish dialogue and negotiations, they must make the resolute decision,” the North’s National Defense Commission said in a statement.”Firstly, the sanctions resolutions by the U.N. Security Council that were fabricated with unjust reasons must be withdrawn,” the North’s top military body said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency. The latest standoff between North Korea and the US – backed by South Korea – has been going on since Pyongyang’s third missile test in February of this year. A third round of UN sanctions adopted in response was then followed by joint US-South Korean war games in the waters of the Korean Peninsula. An exchange of threats has been taking place, including Pyongyang’s promise to wage nuclear war on the US and its bases in the Pacific and South Korea. The US for its part deployed its F-22 fighter jets and the ‘USS Fitzgerald’ destroyer into Korean waters, further escalating tensions. … Read More
S Korean island residents unfazed by N Korean threats
http://www.youtube.com/v/LbU35MmSRqk?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata See the original article here: S Korean island residents unfazed by N Korean threats
Kerry visits Japan to discuss Korean crisis
http://www.youtube.com/v/-rYbjUh1gWA?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata Taken from: Kerry visits Japan to discuss Korean crisis
