South Korea Braces For Terrorism At The 2018 Winter Games

It’s difficult not to empathize with South Korea right now: The country is preparing to host the Pyeongchang winter games in February – a moment of immense national pride – as the risks of a terrorist attack (not to mention nuclear annihilation) have intensified.

To wit, Reuters reports that the South Korean government is taking precautions to assuage the international community’s fears. Police conducted a series of security drills on Tuesday to prepare against terror attacks ranging from a hostage situation, a vehicle ramming a stadium and a bomb-attached to a drone.

South Korea Police and firemen were among around 420 personnel participating in the exercise, held in front of the Olympic Stadium at Pyeongchang, just 80 km (50 miles) from the heavily fortified border with North Korea as SWAT team members rehearsed a scenario where they shot down a drone with a bomb attached that was flying toward a bus carrying athletes.

In another situation, a terrorist takes a bus full of tourists hostage and tries to ram the vehicle into the stadium before being gunned down by police. Officers in gas masks also practiced removing a chemical bomb.

Anxiety on the Korean Peninsula has been rising in recent months due to a series of missile tests by North Korea as it continues its pursuit of nuclear weapons in defiance of UN sanctions and warnings from the US.

“Please keep in mind that accidents always happen where no one has expected,” South Korean Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon said.

 

“Please check until the last minute whether there are any security loopholes."

Lee did not mention North Korea, but South Korea’s Defense Ministry on Friday flagged risks that North Korea could resort to terrorist or cyber attacks to spoil international events.

Some 5,000 armed forces personnel will be deployed at the Winter Games, according to South Korean government officials and documents reviewed by Reuters.

Hacking is also a risk that the South Korean government is preparing for.

Pyeongchang’s organizing committee for the 2018 Games (POCOG) has also hired a private cyber security company to guard against a hacking attack from the North, tender documents show.

To minimize the risk of provoking an aggressive North Korean reaction during the games, South Korea has asked Washington to delay regular joint military exercises until after the Olympics, the Financial Times reported. The latest headlines suggest this request has been accepted and joint drills have been delayed until April.

In "Largest-Ever" Military Drill, US Orders 16,000 Troops, 230 Jets To Simulate War With North Korea

Just days after Pyongyang launched its most advanced ICBM, one which experts warned has the potential to hit a target anywhere on the territory of the United States, North Korea said the U.S. is “begging” for a nuclear war by planning the “largest-ever” joint aerial drill with South Korea just after concluding an exercise with nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, Bloomberg reported.

“Should the Korean peninsula and the world be embroiled in the crucible of nuclear war because of the reckless nuclear war mania of the U.S., the U.S. will have to accept full responsibility for it,” North Korea’s state-run KCNA said Saturday, citing a statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The statement came after Yonhap News reported that six U.S. Raptor stealth fighters planes arrived in South Korea on Saturday for a joint air drill named "Vigilant Ace 18" scheduled for Dec. 4 to 8. The F-22s flew into South Korea together in a show of force. The stealth fighters, however, were just a small part of the upcoming show of force: according to local media, some 230 aircraft and up to 16,000 soldiers and airmen are taking part in the drill, which is one of the biggest ever of its kind.

As part of "Vigilant Ace", US and South Korean forces will be rehearsing for a full-scale war with North Korea, with Yonhap noting that "allies plan to stage simulated attacks on mock North Korean nuclear and missile targets."

Despite Pyongyang"s harsh rhetoric, US commanders have downplayed the drill – claiming it is “regular” and not a direct response to North Korea.

According to the WSJ, at least 230 US and Southg Korean warplanes will take part, alongside 12,000 US troops from the Air Force, Marines and Navy and airmen with another 4,000 expected to represent Seoul." The drill, which lasts from December 4 until December 8, will see aircraft flying over eight airbases in across the Korean Peninsula.

US warplanes including fighters and bombers often blast over the Korean Peninsula

The stars of the drill will be the state-of-the-art F-35 Lightning IIs and F-22 Raptors leading the US’s wing. Both fighter jets outmatch anything in North Korea’s arsenal and could win most of the war against Kim by themselves.

F-35s can fly at speeds of 1,200mph and are capable of carrying nuclear bombs and bunker busters.

 

Meanwhile, the F-22 can hit speeds of up to 1,500 mph and are armed with Vulcan miniguns and Sidewinder missiles.

Commenting on the historic exercise, the US military said that "Vigilant Ace 18 highlights the longstanding military partnership, commitment and enduring friendship between two nations. It is designed to ensure peace and security on the Korean Peninsula, and reaffirms the U.S. commitment to stability in the Northeast Asia region."

F-22s will be dispatched to take part in Vigilant Ace

In reality, it will likely provoke North Korea into yet another ICBM launch.  To be sure, while the Kim regime traditionally rages over the drills on its border, claiming they are rehearsals for invasion, although it may well be right: US forces have been flooding into the Pacific this year with warships, warplanes, missiles and the army all on standby.

Vigilant Ace comes after Donald Trump warned he would “take care” of North Korea following the missile test.

Meanwhile, showing no signs of de-escalation, North Korea has tested dozens of missiles this year, and claimed its nukes can now hit the US. Kim is also feared to be readying the dreaded Juche Bird missile – a live nuke fired out into the heart of the Pacific.

Saudi Coalition Crumbles In Yemen: Sudanese Mercenaries On Front Lines, Foreign Officers, Proxies In Revolt

Most Americans might be forgiven for having no clue what the war in Yemen actually looks like, especially as Western media has spent at least the first two years of the conflict completely ignoring the mass atrocities taking place while white-washing the Saudi coalition"s crimes. Unlike wars in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, which received near daily coverage as they were at their most intense, and in which many Americans could at least visualize the battlefield and the actors involved through endless photographs and video from on the ground, Yemen"s war has largely been a faceless and nameless conflict as far as major media is concerned.

Aside from mainstream media endlessly demonstrating its collective ignorance of Middle East dynamics, it is also no secret that the oil and gas monarchies allied to the West are rarely subject to media scrutiny or criticism, something lately demonstrated on an obscene and frighteningly absurd level with Thomas Friedman"s fawning and hagiographic interview with Saudi crown prince MBS published in the New York Times.

Saudi Arabia"s hired help in Yemen: Sudanese fighters headed to the front lines. Image souce: al-Arabiya

But any level of meticulous review of how the Saudi coalition (which heavily involves US assistance) is executing the war in Yemen would reveal a military and strategic disaster in the making. As Middle East Eye editor-in-chief David Hearst puts it, "All in all, the first military venture to be launched by the 32-year-old Saudi prince as defense minister is a tactical and strategic shambles."  

And if current battlefield trends continue, the likely outcome will be a protracted and humiliating Saudi coalition withdrawal with the spoils divided among Houthi and Saudi allied warlords, as well as others vying for power in Yemen"s tenuous political future. But what unsurprisingly unites most Yemenis at this point is shared hatred for the Saudi coalition bombs which rain down on civilian centers below. For this reason, Hearst concludes further of MBS" war: "The prince, praised in Western circles as a young reformer who will spearhead the push back against Iran, has succeeded in uniting Yemenis against him, a rare feat in a polarized world. He has indeed shot himself, repeatedly, in the foot."

So how has this come about, and how is the war going from a military and strategic perspective?

First, to quickly review, Saudi airstrikes on already impoverished Yemen, which have killed and maimed tens of thousands of civilians (thousands among those are children according to the UN) and displaced hundreds of thousands, have been enabled by both US intelligence and military hardware. Cholera has recently exploded amidst the appalling war-time conditions, and civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and schools have been bombed by the Saudis. After Shia Houthi rebels overran Yemen’s north in 2014, embattled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi vowed to “extract Yemen from the claws of Iran” something which he"s repeatedly affirmed, having been given international backing from allies in the West, and a major bombing campaign began on March 2015 under the name "Operation Decisive Storm" (in a cheap mirroring of prior US wars in Iraq, the first of which was "Desert Storm").

Saudi Arabia and its backers fear what they perceive as growing Iranian influence in the region, something grossly exaggerated, and seek to defend at all costs Yemeni forces loyal to President Hadi. The coalition includes Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE, Egypt, Sudan, and the US and UK, and the Saudi initiated war has also lately received behind the scenes political support from Israel, something recently confirmed by Israeli officials. Concerning the supposed Iran threat in Yemen, an emergency session of the Arab League recently doubled down on its shared commitment to wage war against Iranian interests after it blamed Tehran for a November 4 ballistic missile attack from Shia Houthi rebels against the Saudi capital, which Iran denies playing a role in.

But the Saudi coalition is now in shambles according to a new Middle East Eye investigation. The report highlights some surprising facts long ignored in mainstream media and which give insight into how the Saudi military campaign is likely to end in total failure as "more than two years into a disastrous war, the coalition of ground forces assembled by the Saudis is showing signs of crumbling."

The multi-national Saudi coalition is "showing signs of crumbling" while increasingly relying on mercenaries fighting on the ground in Yemen.

* * * * *

Below are 5 key takeaways from the full report.

1) Saudi coalition ground forces have a huge contingent of foreign fighters, namely Sudanese troops with UAE officers, suffering the brunt of the battle on the front lines.

Sudanese forces, which constitute the bulk of the 10,000 foreign fighters in the Saudi-led coalition, are suffering high casualty rates. A senior source close to the presidency in Khartoum told Middle East Eye that over 500 of their troops had now been killed in Yemen.

 

Only two months ago, the commander of the Sudanese Army"s rapid support force, Lieutenant General Mohammed Hamdan Hamidati, quoted a figure of 412 troops killed, including 14 officers to  the Sudanese newspaper Al Akhbar. "There is huge pressure to withdraw from this on-going fight," the Sudanese source told MEE. A force of up to 8,000 Sudanese troops are partly led by Emirati officers. They are deployed in southern Yemen as well as to the south and west of Taiz in al Makha.

2) Sudan"s President Omar al-Bashir has been dubbed "president of the mercenaries" for accepting over $2.2 billion from Saudi Arabia and Qatar in order to provide canon fodder for the Saudi ground war in Yemen in the form of thousands of young Sudanese troops, but he"s threatening revolt. To escape his untenable position, he is reportedly seeking help from Putin.

At home, Sudan"s President Omar al-Bashir is also having second thoughts. He remembers the lifeline he got when Riyadh deposited $1bn in Sudan"s Central Bank two years ago, followed by Qatar"s $1.22bn. But he hardly enjoys being known as "president of the mercenaries," and he has other relationships to consider.

 

On Thursday, Bashir became the latest of a procession of Arab leaders to beat a path to Vladimir Putin"s door. He told the Russian president he needed protection from the US, was against confrontation with Iran, and supported the policy of keeping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power. This follows an incident at home, which was variously described as espionage and a coup attempt. Taha Osman Ahmed al-Hussein was dismissed as the director of the Office of the Sudanese President after he was discovered carrying a Saudi passport and a residency permit for the UAE. He was caught maintaining secret contact with both.

3) Saudi-backed Yemeni fighters are increasingly mutinying and fear local mass push back from Yemen"s civilian population due to the unpopular bombing campaign.

Mutiny is also stirring in the ranks of Yemenis who two and a half years ago cheered the Saudi pushback against the Houthis who were trying to take over the entire country.

 

The Saudi relationship with Islah, the largest group of Yemeni fighters in the ground force employed by the coalition, has at best been ambivalent. The Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman"s closest partner in Yemen, Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, is openly hostile to the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Yemeni party... They [Islahi leadership] are feeling the political price they are paying for supporting a campaign that turned in Yemeni eyes from liberation to occupation... Enough is enough. The regional Islahi leadership are now talking of starting direct negotiations with the Houthis, a senior Islah source told MEE.

4) Saudi proxy fighters are at war with each other: an Emirati-backed militia fighting under the Saudi coalition is assassinating other members of the Saudi coalition in what"s increasingly an internal coalition civil war. 

They are also paying a physical price. A number of Islahi sheikhs and scholars as well as Salafis who rejected Emirati leadership have been killed or targeted by assassination attempts. The list is growing: there have been assassinations of Khaled Ali al-Armani, a leader in the Islah Party, on 7 December 2016; Sheikh Abdullah Bin Amir Bin Ali Bin Abdaat al-Kathri, on 23 November 2017 in Hadhramaut; Abdelmajeed Batees (related to Saleh Batees) a leader in the Islah Party on 5 January 2017 in Hadhramaut; Mohammed Bin Lashgam, Deputy Director of Civil Status, on 17 January 2017; Khaled Ali al-Armani, a leader in the Islah Party, on 7 December 2016...

 

"The Emiratis do not conceal their hostility to Islah. Islahi sheikhs and scholars are being assassinated, and this is being co-ordinated by the pro-Emirati militia. In addition, the UAE is clearly enforcing the blockade of Taiz, and withholding support for our fighters in the city," the source said.

5) Oman is entering the fray, which will further fragment the Saudi coalition as rivalries for territorial control develop.

As if the balance of competing outside forces  in Yemen is not complicated enough, enter Oman. Oman, too, regards southern Yemen as its backyard. It is particularly worried about the takeover of a series of strategic ports and islands off Yemen by the Emiratis. A Qatari diplomatic source described this as the Emiratis" "seaborn empire," but the Omanis are upset by this too.

 

The Omanis are understood to be quietly contacting local Yemeni tribal leaders in south Yemen, some of them separatist forces, to organize a more "orchestrated response" to the militias paid for and controlled by Abu Dhabi.

Like the proxy war in Syria, it appears that Gulf/US plans have backfired, and we are perhaps in for a long Saudi coalition death spiral fueled by delusion and denial. Sadly, it is primarily Yemeni civilians and common people in the region that will continue to bear the brunt of suffering wrought by such evil and delusional stupidity.

New Footage From Inside Riyadh Ritz-Carlton Reveals Princes Swapping Assets For Freedom

A BBC reporter and film crew has gained rare access inside Riyadh"s "gilded cage" - the Ritz-Carlton which became a luxury prison after a dozen or more princes were detained during the shocking events which began with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman"s (MbS) internal purge on November 4th.

BBC"s tour was "facilitated" under highly controlled and coordinated conditions, as initial photographs and short cell phone videos produced during the first few days of the crackdown revealed harsher and more restricted conditions as princes and/or their staff were forced to sleep on the floor camp-style in the middle of the luxury hotel"s lobby.

According to the new BBC broadcast from inside the Ritz-Carlton, the princes are desperately scrambling to cut deals through their lawyers in order to secure release, this as new unconfirmed reports of torture have emerged:

When people were brought here around midnight on November 4th they were understandably angry. Some of them thought it would just be a show and it wouldn"t last. And then when they realized they were here to stay they were furious. Almost everyone here - 95% I was told - are willing to make a deal, to give back what are said to be substantial sums of money in order to get out of here.

The torture allegations began with an explosive Daily Mail report, which said mercenaries purportedly employed by Academi, a successor to infamous US security contractor Blackwater, have been stringing up some of MBS’s “guests” at the Riyadh Ritz Carlton by their feet and savagely beating them during interrogations. The claims have spread rapidly on Arabic-language social media, and even Lebanon’s president Michel Aoun has accused MbS of using mercenaries. Still, the Daily Mail isn"t the most reputable news organization, so these early torture reports should be taken with a grain of salt.

But what is certain is that the list of detained princes and businessmen, which has reportedly grown to multiple dozes, and which includes billionaires such as Alwaleed bin Talal and Mohammed Hussein al-Amoudi - the first and second wealthiest men in the country, respectively - constitutes the kingdom"s elite and internationally well-connected. As we"ve consistently reported this is not a "corruption purge" as its being sold to international media, but in reality a massive cash grab and shakedown.

As multiple reports confirm, the princes are frantic to swap assets for freedom, and royal accountants and lawyers are no doubt busy pouring through records while "separating cash from assets like property and shares, and looking at bank accounts to assess cash values."

Reuters further detailed specific arrangements based on victims" testimonies:

One businessman had tens of millions of Saudi riyals withdrawn from his account after he signed. In another case, a former senior official consented to hand over ownership of four billion riyals worth of shares, the source said.

 

The Saudi government earlier this week moved from freezing accounts to issuing instructions for “expropriation of unencumbered assets” or seizure of assets, said a second source familiar with the situation.

Though Western governments and media by and large continue towing the line of a healthy and necessary anti-graft crackdown underway, recent geopolitical tensions involving Lebanese PM Saad Hariri"s release and return to Lebanon, as well as the Saudi war on Yemen and threatening rhetoric directed at Iran clearly demonstrate the glaring falsehood of the official narrative which is limited to fairy tale notions of "the visionary reformer prince". 

And no less than the US Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, is aggressively promoting this line, who when asked last week about agreements to hand over wealth for detainees’ freedom, told CNBC: “I think that the Crown Prince (Mohammed bin Salman) is doing a great job at transforming the country.”

Meanwhile the Saudi internal arrests have caused economic turmoil in some unlikely places. Middle East Eye this week reported that the largely under-reported arrest of billionaire businessman "Sheikh" Mohammed Hussein al-Amoudi threatens to "disrupt the economy of an entire country" - Ethiopia, which lies over 1000 km away. Amoudi is an Ethiopian-Saudi dual citizen with an estimated net worth of about $11 billion according to a 2016 Forbes profile. 

Mohammed Hussein al-Amoudi, an Ethiopian-Saudi dual citizen and the kingdom"s second richest man. Image source: Twitter/@amggebre via Middle East Eye

According to Middle East Eye which bases its analysis on WikiLeaks diplomatic cables and other internal economic data:

"The Sheikh"s influence in the Ethiopian economy cannot be underestimated," according to a diplomatic cable from 2008 released by Wikileaks.

 

Nearly 10 years later, it"s hard to put a dollar figure on Amoudi"s total investments in Ethiopia, one of the world"s poorest countries, yet one of the fastest growing in Africa.

 

His PR team does not comment on external figures and cautions against third party figures. One analyst put a $3.4bn value on his investments – or 4.7 percent of Ethiopia"s current GDP.

The report characterizes the general atmosphere among Ethiopia"s media and political punditry as hysterical and in "freak out" mode over Amoudi"s detention and the potential seizure of the bulk of his assets:

Another said his companies employ about 100,000 people which would account for 14 percent of Ethiopia"s small private sector, according to country"s latest Labor Force Survey conducted in 2013. However, World Bank analysts cautioned that these figures will have increased significantly over the past four years as the sector has grown... 

 

"They are just freaking out left and right," said Henok Gabisa, a visiting academic fellow at Washington and Lee University in Virginia who researches Ethiopia.

It will be interesting to see if any level of similar negative economic fallout resulting from the seizure of royal investments and assets could have lasting impact on American and other Western companies or allies. Perhaps only at that point would officials like Mnuchin change their tunes.

The Split Personality Of The Russian Soul: Moscow And Kiev

Via GEFIRA,

All nations can be made to suffer from disturbed or split personality, becoming "unhappy after their own fashion"... toys in the hands of the powers that be.

All healthy nations are alike, but an unhealthy nation is unhealthy after its own fashion. This paraphrase of the opening sentence from Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina neatly serves the purpose of analyzing the Ukrainian soul, a soul that has dissociative identity disorder. A transgender man has an identity disturbance in that he thinks or feels he was born a woman and other females are not his sexual partners. The same is true of peoples. A Ukrainian thinks or feels he is not Russian and, consequently, that Russians are not his brothers. A transgender man physically looks like a man and still thinks he is not a male; a Ukrainian speaks Russian, professes Orthodox Christianity, writes Cyrillic and still says he is anything but.

We from such European countries as Poland, France or Germany may ask ourselves, what is the origin of the Ukrainian state? What is the origin of the Russian state?

Ukrainian and Russian children learn about the same beginnings of their respective countries, read stories about Rurik, Oleg and Olga, Vladimir the Great and Yaroslav the Wise. Polish and Czech, French and Spanish, British and Norwegian children do not learn that their respective nations share the same origin whereas Ukrainian and Russian children do. Kiev is regarded as the mother of Russian cities. True, there was a time when the Russian vast lands were split into a number of principalities, but then Italian, Polish, and German were too.

The land east of the Bug River and west of the Urals is historically, ethnographically, culturally and emotionally referred to russkiy mir (Russian world, Russian civilization). In the Middle Ages it was known as Rus’ or Ruthenia and was comprised of Great Russia with its centre in Moscow, Little Russia with its centre in Kiev and White Russia with its present-day centre in Minsk. They all three share one and the same founding legend.

Parts of Rus’ (or Ruthenia) were once conquered and held by the Tartars (Mongols), Lithuania and Poland, which might have contributed to the split in the collective psyche of the people inhabiting these areas. Yet, Poland too, was partitioned by three foreign powers and kept in subjugation for more than a hundred years. The occupying forces made various attempts to either Germanize or Russify its population, and still Poland emerged as one nation.

True, some Ukrainians, especially in the western parts of the country speak a variety of Russian, which they call a separate language. Yet the Ukrainian language is not more different from Russian than the Bavarian or Liverpudlian dialects are different from German or English. Surely, nobody says we have the Bavarian or Liverpudlian languages? In the 19th century the Ukrainian dialect of the Russian tongue was forcibly turned into a language by deleting some of the Russian and taking on some of the Polish vocabulary and affirming the local west-Ukrainian pronunciation. The Russian Cyrillic alphabet used for Ukrainian has as many as… three ‘new’ characters. Well, the American variety of English, too, has some spelling and pronunciation peculiarities that make it a tiny bit different from its British counterpart, yet American children are taught English at school, not American.

Of course, such differences are skilfully exploited by the powers that be just as it was done in the case of Yugoslavia, where Westerners could be easily duped into believing that Croats and Serbs speak two entirely different languages because… the former use the Latin whereas the latter the Cyrillic script, while in point of fact they speak the same language. The Turkish language has not changed simply because Kemal Atatürk had the Arabic script done away with and decreed the use of Latin characters, or did it?

What’s the matter with Ukrainian identity disturbance? The whole can be traced back to the times of Peter the Great and then again to 19th century when among the Russian intelligentsia the movement of Westernizers (?????????????) came into being, which reflected the split Russian soul. Part of it wants to stay Russian, Slavophile, the other part is ashamed of being Russian. A split personality syndrome. Ukrainians for the most part represent the pro-Western inclination of the Russian soul. In a similar case of the Southern Slavs, Croats have been westernized since the dawn of their history as they accepted Christianity from Rome; Serbs became easterners as they accepted Christianity from Byzantium. A Ukrainian is a Russian desperately in need of westernizing himself and his country. The tighter is the leash on which Moscow holds him, the more disruptive tendencies a Ukrainian will show. This pro-Western strand in the Russian soul is being skilfully exploited by the West for its own purposes. Nations, as we know, can be created when it suits someone’s purposes. At present Germans in Austria are Austrians, not Germans, but there was a time when they were Germans; Catalans are Spaniards or they are not Spaniards, as the case may be; not long ago citizens of the German Democratic Republic would have fought against their historical compatriots from the Federal German Republic. Did we have two German nations?

Ukrainians cutting themselves off from Moscow are like the British colonists across the Atlantic cutting themselves off from the British crown. The difference is, however, that the thirteen colonies at least comprised a significant number of nations other than English, Welsh or Scottish and they were mostly religious rebels from the Church of England. Ukrainians, on the other hand, are like their Russian compatriots Orthodox Christians and have no significant national or religious minorities. Furthermore, throughout history Ukrainians have hardly ever rebelled against Moscow. They willingly declared their allegiance to the Great Russian capital in 1654 (Treaty of Pereyaslav) at the climax of the largest revolt against the Polish Crown. Prior to that event Kiev was part of the the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Thus Little Russians broke away from a culturally western country to happily let themselves be embraced by their eastern brothers. The Russian soul subconsciously knew where it belonged. In Poland Ukrainians were called Cossacks and later Rusini (which in Polish is as close to the word denoting Russians as in English Germanic is to German).

Ukraine’s territory after World War One and the Russian Civil War was carved out of Russia by the Bolsheviks, who happily joined to Ukraine vast eastern areas, without the Crimea, though. The Bolsheviks themselves were mostly of non-Russian nationality or indifferent to national questions, so they didn’t care about such things as delineating territories. In 1956 Nikita Khrushchev, Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (for all practical purposes the Soviet Union’s president), himself a Ukrainian, carved the Crimea out of Russia (then a Soviet Socialist Republic) and had it joined to Ukraine (then, too, a Soviet Socialist Republic). Thus the peninsula was not Russian only for a few decades (1956-2014) and only formally because it was and is inhabited by Russians. When it was incorporated back into Russia, not a shot was fired on the Ukrainian side.

Now the West-prone Russians (centred around Kiev) are being played off against the West-averse Russians (centered around Moscow) and both are presented to the world as two separate nations. Were the Americans two separate nations when they fought the Civil War of 1861-1865? The resentment in the southern states against the North has persisted ever since. If Russia were the world’s superpower rather than the United States, she might as well choose to play the southern American states off against Washington. Then, conversely, rather than having Ukrainians jumping in the city squares and shouting “??? ?? ??????, ??? ???????!” (Who is not jumping [with us] is Moscow’s [lackey (useful idiot)]), we would have Southerners jump and shout “Who’s not jumping with us, is Washington’s lackey”. And surely, in due time we would learn that Southerners speak a language other than the Northerners and have every right to be recognized as a separate nation.

Iran Slams Saudi, US Claims It Ordered Ballistic Missile Attack From Yemen

On Tuesday Iran slammed Saudi and US claims that it was supplying Yemen"s Houthi rebels with advanced ballistic missiles that Saudi Arabia says targeted Riyadh international airport on Saturday - which would be a violation of a UN resolution which ensures conformity to the Iran nuclear deal.

Iran"s state-run IRNA news cited a letter sent to the UN Security Council signed by Iranian ambassador Gholamali Khoshroo, saying that Iran “categorically” rejects Saudi Arabia’s “baseless and unfounded accusations and considers it as destructive, provocative and a ‘threat to use of force”’ against a UN member state in defiance of the UN charter. Iran"s foreign minister further called the Saudi claims "contrary to reality and dangerous".

Iran"s state-run PressTV file photo purporting to show a missile being fired from the direction of Yemen toward Saudi Arabia earlier during the conflict. 

Though Saudi Arabia has mounted an aggressive aerial bombing campaign of deeply impoverished and disease-ridden Yemen for over the past two years, killing and wounding tens of thousands of civilians, it is Iran that is coming under intense pressure this week. Yesterday Saudi Arabia charged its regional rival Iran with "an act of war" while stating through its military coalition executing Yemen operations that, “Iran’s role and its direct command of its Houthi proxy in this matter constitutes a clear act of aggression that targets neighboring countries, and threatens peace and security in the region and globally.”

However, the Iranian ambassador"s letter to the UN responded directly to the charges with, “Such provocative statements by the Saudis are nothing but an attempt to shift the blame and to distract attention from its war of aggression against Yemen.” Other Iranian officials, according to various reports, called the Saudi claims "fake news". 

Saudi Arabia has cast itself as the victim of external Iranian and pro-Shia plotting after its internal weekend of chaos which included a missile attack from Yemen, the deaths of two princes and other high officials within a mere 24 hours, and an aggressive crackdown against dissent in the royal family which saw close to a dozen princes placed under house arrest. While lashing out at Iran"s supposed campaign of destabilization in Yemen and in the region, it appears that the Saudis are set to step up proxy skirmishes with Iran across the Middle East, possibly with the support of regional allies. 

Predictably, the US immediately backed Saudi claims of direct Iranian involvement in the Yemeni conflict while citing no specific evidence. US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley pointed to a prior missile fired in July which she said was an Iranian Qiam, and likened the previous attack with Saturday"s missile launch, saying it "may also be of Iranian origin," and added that the ballistic missiles were not "a type of weapon that had not been present in Yemen before the conflict."

Haley further claimed that Iran"s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp‎s had violated UN resolutions on Yemen and Iran, and said, "We encourage the United Nations and international partners to take necessary action to hold the Iranian regime accountable for these violations."

Why don"t these congresspeople want to talk about the war in Yemen? pic.twitter.com/ghp82AtnMS

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) November 4, 2017

Above: Why is Yemen ignored in US politics? The US itself has been an integral part of the coalition (also including Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE, Egypt, Sudan, and with the UK as a huge supplier of weapons) fighting Shia Houthi rebels, which overran Yemen’s north in 2014. Saudi airstrikes on the impoverished country, which have killed many thousands of civilians and displaced tens of thousands, have involved the assistance of US intelligence and use of American military hardware.

Regardless of the degree to which Iran may or may not be involved in advising and assisting Houthi rebels, it is astounding that in the rare moments that US officials actually make reference to the humanitarian disaster in Yemen, it is nebulous "Iranian agents" that are blamed even while American and British bombs are dropped from Saudi-piloted jets on a civilian population. 

Saudi Arabia has in recent years managed to use the UN to protect and enhance its image when it comes to questions of both domestic human rights abuses and rampant war crimes in Yemen. Absurdly, the autocratic country which has Wahhabi Islam for its official state religion continues to serve its 3-year term on the UN Human Rights Council.

But it appears that for now that the Saudi "but Iran did it" line is enough to satisfy Nikki Haley and the US administration. 

NATO General Threatens "Consequences" For Turkey Buying Russian Air Defense System

Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

In looking to upgrade their air defense system, Turkey had a choice: buying the advanced Russian S-400 systems, or more expensive, US-made alternatives. Turkey chose to buy Russian, and NATO isn’t happy.

While NATO was initially just complaining the S-400 was incompatible with their own systems, top NATO General Petr Pavel told reporters this week that Turkey is likely to be punished by the alliance for not buying American.

“The principal of sovereignty obviously exists in acquisition of defense equipment, but the same way that nations are sovereign in making their decision, they are also sovereign in facing the consequences of that decision,” Pavel insisted.

Pavel dismissed reporter questions about the Turkish government’s recent anti-democracy moves, insisting nobody is perfect.

“When it comes to democratic deficits, show me one single nation that is perfect. No one is perfect,” Pavel said.

 

“No one challenges the role of Turkey as an important ally at the very difficult crossroads of challenges to the alliance.”

Apparently the same leeway does not apply for the question of buying American weapons.

The missile deal with Russia “is a clear sign that Turkey is disappointed in the U.S. and Europe,” said Konstantin Makienko, an analyst at the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a Moscow think-tank.

 

“But until the advance is paid and the assembly begins, we can’t be sure of anything.”

Russia’s S-400, and its predecessor the S-300, have been praised as advanced, cost-effective alternatives to American anti-aircraft systems.

The US is used to having a virtual monopoly on this market, by ensuring that no one buys Russian without facing some very public criticism.

Road To World War 3 Unveiled: Is China Planning To Deploy Its Army Against North Korea?

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

New photos of a recent highway construction in China could be part of a contingency plan to invade North Korea or amass a huge army on their shared border.

Experts fear this newly uncovered plot could stoke the fires of World War 3, inevitably involving the United States.

According to The Express UK, communist China has traditionally been North Korea’s closest ally, but Kim Jong-un’s continued nuclear and ballistic missile tests have tested Beijing’s patience on the rising tensions worldwide. These new revelations also come as North Korea was spotted transporting 30 Scud missiles from Hwangju, south of the capital Pyongyang, to Nampo, on the Korea Bay coast opposite China.

New photos have emerged and they reveal that the Communist superpower is building a six-lane highway in its desolately populated northeast on route to North Korea.

With most Chinese peasants not able to afford the luxury of a car, the construction of the G1112 Ji’an–Shuangliao Expressway, has led experts to believe it will be used for quick deployment of tanks and troops to its North Korean border.

The photos obtained by Daily Star Online show Chinese construction workers digging tunnels through the mountains and massive cranes constructing bridges over rivers.

Chinese workers construct a six lane highway to North Korea’s border.

Scott Snyder, senior fellow for Korea studies and director of the program on US-Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Daily Star Online:

“China’s Jilin province has even budgeted and paid for improvements in road infrastructure inside some parts of North Korea in recent years in order to improve logistical access to the Rason port inside North Korea.”

Dean Cheng, an Asia security expert at the Heritage Foundation, a think tank in Washington, said Beijing would have a ”vast array” of contingency plans involving military options to seize Kim Jong-un’s nuclear weapons. And just last week, a highly respected security think tank warned that the threat of war between China and the US was now real. In the bombshell report, the Rand Corporation said any conflict between North Korea and South Korea and the US would quickly spiral into World War 3.

If it’s decided upon by a nation to “take out” the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-Un, American and Chinese troops would then rush across the border in a race to take control of the tyrant’s nuclear weapons and missile facilities colliding in a clash between China and the US, effectively spawning WW3. A whopping 85% of North Korea’s nuclear facilities are believed to be located within 62 miles of the Chinese border.

China actually threatened the US with a “real war” last month. The communist nation said that Donald Trump had made a “serious miscalculation” over North Korea. Photos uncovered by a North Korean monitoring site suggested China was secretly helping Kim’s nuclear missile program. But there were other confusing and conflicting signs that North Korea may be preparing to fire missiles towards China next week.

It looks like the world is steamrolling its way to a third world war.

North Korea Hackers Steal War Plans, Kim Jong-Un Assassination Details

While tensions with North Korea have receded in recent weeks, and especially following the latest uneventful weekend, when markets were on edge that Kim could try another missile test launch to celebrate the country"s national holiday, this could reverse following news from the BBC that North Korea hackers have reportedly stolen a large cache of military documents from South Korea, including a plan to assassinate North Korea"s leader Kim Jong-un.

According to South Korean lawmaker Rhee Cheol-hee - a member of South Korea"s ruling party who sits on its parliament"s defence committee - the compromised documents, which were stolen from the country"s defense ministry, include wartime contingency plans created by the US and South Korea, and also include reports to the allies" senior commanders. Plans for the South"s special forces are also said to have been accessed, along with information on significant power plants and military facilities in the South.

Rhee also said some 235 gigabytes of military documents had been stolen from the Defence Integrated Data Centre, and that 80% of them have yet to be identified.

Just like in the case of Equifax, the breach itself took place long ago, with South Korea waiting over a year to disclose the full details of the the hack which took place in September last year. In May, South Korea said a large amount of data had been stolen and that North Korea may have instigated the cyber attack - but gave no details of what was taken. The South Korean defence ministry has so far refused to comment about the allegation, while North Korea denied the claim.

According to South Korea"s Yonhap news agency reports that Seoul has been subject to a barrage of cyber attacks by its communist neighbour in recent years, with many targeting government websites and facilities. According to long-running media reports, which have yet to be confirmed with hard evidence however, the isolated, backward state is believed to have specially-trained hackers based overseas, including in China.

One thing that"s certain, is that tews that Pyongyang is "likely to have accessed the Seoul-Washington plans for all-out war" in the Koreas will do nothing to soothe tensions between the US and North Korea. The two nations have been at verbal loggerheads over the North"s nuclear activities, with the US pressing for a halt to missile tests and Pyongyang vowing to continue them.

Meanwhile, away from cyber war, Pyongyang has been far more aggressive in the realm of unconventional warfare, and the North recently claimed to have successfully tested a miniaturised hydrogen bomb, which could be loaded onto a long-range missile. In a speech at the UN in September, US President Donald Trump threatened to destroy North Korea if it menaced the US or its allies, and said its leader "is on a suicide mission".

Kim responded with a rare televized statement, vowing to "tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire". Trump"s latest comment took the form of a cryptic tweet at the weekend, where he warned that "only one thing will work" in dealing with North Korea, after years of talks had proved fruitless. He did not elaborate further.

Anna Bono: "There's No Future For Africans In Europe"

Via GEFIRA,

An exclusive interview with Anna Bono.

Prof. Anna Bono has been a researcher in African history and institutions at the University of Turin until 2015 after living many years in Africa. She has collaborated as an expert on Africa with a number of Universities and Institutions, including the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and written over 1600 articles, essays and books on topics such as international relations and cooperation with Africa, as well as demographics and migrations.

GEFIRA asked in an exclusive interview the opinion of an expert on Africa about the current situation in Italy, about the “asylum seekers” coming mostly from sub-Saharan countries. Professor Anna Bono recently made headlines in Italy with a book that completely debunks the ongoing narrative of “poor Africans” running away from starvation and knocking on wealthy Europe’s doors through Sicily or other ports of southern Italy.

*  *  *

GEFIRA: Can we identify one of the more specific events as the beginning of the ongoing biblical numbers arriving in Italy?
ANNA BONO: It all started with the removal of Qaddafi. Qaddafi, bound by the 2008 treaty of cooperation with Italy, implemented an effective control of Libyan coasts, thus preventing the departure of migrants from other African countries. The numbers of arrivals of Africans to Italy prior to Qaddafi’s overthrow were manageable; moreover, they were not organized as they are today. It is important to remind Europeans that Libya prior to 2011 was a relatively wealthy and stable country, hosting approximately 1 million foreign workers mostly from sub-Saharan Africa. When the civil war broke out, some of these foreign workers went home, but the majority started to look for ways of crossing over to Italy.

G: Could we define the current demographic growth of Africa as “unsustainable”?
AB: Not necessarily. Africa, remains, after all, the least populated of all continents. The bottom line is all about Africa’s resources. The way these huge natural resources continue to be mismanaged – to say the least – is at the core of every possible discussion about the continent. The economic policies of most African governments fall short of any real accomplishment, with the result that only a fraction of the population receives any benefit, with corruption, deeply ingrained in most African countries, remaining as the chief obstacle to a serious and harmonized growth. Thanks to institutionalized corruption, Africans are literally squandering away their resources. One example: Africa exports oil in huge quantities, but then lacks refineries, and therefore imports refined fuel.

G: Most corrupted countries?
AB: Nigeria certainly stands out. Nigeria is a classic example of corruption as a way of life. Being Africa’s number one country for oil exports and the second African economy (after South Africa), it has huge amounts of wealth that is up for grabs.

G: Can you describe the average African “migrant” arriving in Libya from sub-Saharan countries? We all know all-too well the ongoing narrative: if they go through so much effort and dangers to get to Italy, they must be desperate, running away from war and starvation. But sheer data show us quite a different story.
AB: There is no war in these countries. There is no war in almost any of these countries, such as Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leon, Mali, etc. Yet, these are the countries with the highest numbers of arrivals. The real refugees, the ones running away from wars, are not coming to Italy and the numbers are out there to prove it. The other complete fake narrative is that these young males, aged 18 to 35, are, by African standards, anything but poor.

G: How can you say that?
AB: How can you define an African “poor” when he has paid between 5.000 to 8.000 USD or EUR to make it to Italy? What these young males are doing in reality is an investment, usually with money from their families, to start a better life in Western Europe. The whole story is just as simple as that.

The problem is that they chose the wrong country, although the easiest to get to. Italy has a serious youth unemployment problem that is not going away anytime soon. Official numbers estimate that well over 100.000 Italians in the 18-35 age group leave Italy every year because they simply can’t find a decent job, and then you have well over that number of young African males coming to Italy every year to find what kind of employment?

G: Which leads to another, all-too obvious question. What will all these Africans do, from now on?
AB: Considering that the whole process of being granted – or denied – the status of “refugee” in Italy takes years, they will be an onerous burden on Italy, costing Italian taxpayers billions of euros.

G: Why does this process take years? Is Italian bureaucracy this slow?
AB: When you are granting to any self claiming “asylum seeker” 3 (three) different levels of justice like to any ordinary Italian citizen, (1st degree court, Court of Appeal, and Supreme Court), is it that difficult to realize that he will spend in Italy, pending these different appeals, a number of years at taxpayers’ expenses?

In the meantime these people have to be fed, clothed, sheltered, and given free medical and legal assistance for years to come. This translates into billions of euros that the Italian welfare system has to spend, taking these resources away from the welfare of Italian citizens and legal residents.

G: What is the percentage of those who eventually get refugee status?
AB: The magnitude is one percentage digit. The numbers just tell us that the overwhelming majority do not qualify for any refugee status. In 2015 out of 153.000 arrivals only 3.555 were granted the status. In 2016 out of 181.000 arrivals fewer than 5.000 were recognized as refugees. Numbers are out to tell us there is a complete fake narrative being served on us.

G: And the others? Those who don’t qualify for the refugee status?
AB: They will be served a foglio di via, an official warning that orders the alien, who is at that point illegal, to leave Italy within a certain number of days. To go where? That is quite ineffective, and it does not make any sense, to say the least. It’s like saying to these people: we have come to the conclusion – after years of keeping you here at our own expense – that you should have not been here in the first place, so could you please now go home? Where will these people go? Is it so hard to imagine that they will remain in Italy regardless of this ridiculous warning and they will find ways – legal, or most likely, illegal – to continue living here or to move around Europe trying to survive somehow?

G: But some Italians seem to like or at least tolerate all this scam (because at this point plain evidence shows all this to be nothing but a huge scam). And, as in every scam, there is someone out there reaping a profit.
AB: Of course, the numbers of those involved of what we can now call a well-established industry are not so small. It’s a growing industry which now commands huge numbers, in the billions of euros. And not just in Italy, where the government (read: Italian taxpayers) this year (2017) will spend well over 4.5 billion euros for this industry. I will just give one example outside Italy: Agadez, Niger. This town is practically living off the migrants’ main route to Libya. All these sub-Saharan Africans need all sorts of services en route to Europe, and they are providing this town with a livelihood that otherwise would not come from other sources.

G: Do you see any light at the end of this tunnel? Any hope that a future government of Italy will turn the tide? We all know too well that forced deportation of masses like these would be next to impossible in terms of financial efforts, not to mention that Italy has already a huge debt that shows no signs of improving.
AB: The only way to reduce the arrivals of these masses is for European governments to intervene effectively in Africa, with extensive information that explains in simple terms to young Africans that Europe is not the land of unlimited wealth for all. Until this myth persists in the minds of young Africans, there is simply no hope of preventing them from arriving here only to find themselves without a job, without their families, without knowing anything about our way of life. In short, without a future.

This Is What $100 Buys You In Venezuela

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

The gunfire on the streets near my hotel started around 9pm last night.

The sound is unmistakable, especially at night on an otherwise quiet city street.

I had recently returned to the hotel after a few evening meetings. And coming back after dark it was as if they had rolled the sidewalks up — restaurants with no patrons, bars and clubs that were totally empty.

There was an incredibly striking woman I remember, standing in front of her restaurant playing hostess to absolutely nobody.

And with few people on the streets, it felt like some sort of zombie apocalypse.

Amazingly enough this country used to be THE wealthiest in the region. And not too long ago.

Throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, Venezuela enjoyed robust growth. Low inflation. Substantial foreign investment. High wages. It was the envy of Latin America.

It was all based on one industry: oil. Venezuela has effectively been a one-trick pony for decades.

And when oil prices were strong, the government was swimming in cash. Even as recently as 2007, the Venezuelan government’s oil revenue was so high that they PAID OFF ALL FOREIGN DEBT.

Think about that: only ten years ago Venezuela had ZERO foreign debt.

But at the same time the government here had a long history of excessive spending. Social programs. Military. Fuel and electricity subsidies. Whatever it took to remain in power.

The government spent so much money that, even when oil prices exceeded $100 per barrel between 2011 and 2013, they STILL couldn’t break even.

Then oil prices collapsed. By early 2016, a barrel of oil was fetching less than $30.

Venezuela’s public finances were in shambles… so the government resorted to the same old tactics that nearly every bankrupt government has relied on throughout history.

For one, they started spending their foreign reserves– essentially burning through the public savings account.

Today Venezuela has its lowest level of foreign reserves in decades, less than $10 billion, compared to $42 billion in December 2008.

They’ve also sold off a huge portion of their gold reserves.

In late 2015 Venezuela held 373 metric tons of gold. Today that’s down to 188 metric tons, a nearly 50% drop in less than two years.

More importantly, though, the government has resorted to printing incomprehensible quantities of paper currency and vastly expanding the central bank balance sheet.

This chart is really amazing to see– the Venezuelan central bank’s balance sheet literally TRIPLED in a SINGLE MONTH between April and May of this year.

They keep printing more and more money, to the point that the currency has become totally worthless.

I remember coming here a few years ago when the black-market rate was around 8 bolivars per US dollar.

On my next trip, it took 100 bolivars to buy a dollar in the black market. And the rate kept dropping with each trip.

This time I exchanged dollars at around 27,000 per US dollar. Meanwhile the ‘official’ rate is a laughable 10:1. It’s a nearly 3000x difference.

So, depending on which exchange rate you use, Venezuela is either absurdly expensive or absurdly cheap.

A ride from the airport was about 80,000 bolivars. At official rates that’s EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS. For a taxi ride.

But at black market rates it’s less than three bucks. Quite a difference.

Last night I exchanged $100 and received this brick of cash in exchange.

Needless to say this monetary insanity makes life extremely difficult.

Anything imported is prohibitively expensive. And with the economy collapsing, domestic production is also grinding to a halt.

There’s very little economic activity. People are sitting in their homes trying to survive. Medicine is scarce. And even staples like food are running out… which is totally nuts.

Venezuela is a vast country with rich, fertile soil and abundant sources of water. There is absolutely no reason why there should be food shortages here.

Chalk up another victory for socialism and central planning.

In their desperation, people are turning to crime, prostitution… anything they have to do to make ends meet. I routinely see people picking through garbage cans eating scraps, anything they can find.

Incredibly there is still a hint of normalcy in the city, at least during the daytime.

People are out on the streets going about their lives… heading to work, taking their kids to school, playing sports, chatting with their friends.

I find it remarkable how well this place has held itself together. Venezuelans constantly display ingenuity and resilience in their ability to deal with such an epic crisis.

And the good news is that this will one day get better.

The government has nearly run out of money and is dangerously close to defaulting on its debts. At some point they’ll no longer be able to pay the armed thugs who keep the population in line.

It’s inevitable. Totalitarian governments almost invariably fall when they run out of resources to sustain themselves.

It may get worse before it gets better. But eventually this madness and oppression WILL come to an end, whether through war, revolution, peaceful means.

What I find so strange is how little optimism there is for Venezuela.

By comparison, investors are perennially excited about Cuba. People have been saying for decades that Cuba will be an investment paradise once the authoritarian regime comes to an end.

Sure, great. I’ve been to Cuba. I like it. And there will certainly be great opportunities there.

But few people apply this same logic to Venezuela. And I find that strange.

This place is huge. There is SO MUCH opportunity here. 30+ million people. Enormous reserves of natural resources. Plenty of coastline. Ports. Infrastructure. Manufacturing capacity. Strategic geography. Renewable energy.

Whether it’s next year or ten years from now, this country has the potential to some day become one of the most exciting places in the world. 

Do you have a Plan B?

Expats Don't Want To Live In The US & UK Anymore

Few anticipated that the UK would vote to leave the UK. Even fewer expected that President Donald Trump would defeat Hillary Clinton in November’s US presidential election.

So unsurprisingly, members of the internationalist class of workers who populate urban centers like New York City and London – and who have the most to lose from nationalist economic and immigration policies - now perceive the US and Britain as less friendly to foreigners, not to mention less politically stable, according to a survey of 13,000 expatriates of 166 nationalities that was cited by Bloomberg.

The respondents said that quality of life in both countries is declining by other measures, including the affordability of child care and health care. However, we don’t think one can easily blame that on the election.

The UK ranks 54, down 21 places from last year’s survey, after its June 2016 vote to leave the European Union. Before the referendum, 77 percent of expats had a favorable opinion of the nation’s political stability. That’s down to 47 percent this year.  The survey was conducted in February and March, before the most recent British election. Just half of expats say the UK has a good attitude toward foreign residents, compared to 67 percent worldwide.

Expats in Britain have also soured on its economy. The weak pound and higher inflation put the UK 59th for personal finance. Almost two-thirds of its expats have an unfavorable opinion of its cost of living, with 69 percent unhappy with the affordability of housing. Three out of five expats also don’t appreciate the weather in the UK.

The US has seen a commensurate decline in public opinion. Just 36 percent of expats have a positive view of America’s political stability, down from 68 percent in last year’s survey. Overall, it ranks 43 of 65, down 17 places from last year.

Overall, the U.S. is ranked 43rd of 65 contenders, 17 places lower than last year. But its reputation was already falling before the election results came in. As recently as 2014’s survey, the US was No. 5. One bright spot is that 69 percent of expats have a favorable view of the American economy.

Some 72 percent of expats in the US say health care is unaffordable; the world’s largest economy ranks 50 by measures of health and well-being. Its transportation infrastructure was rated “very good” by just 15 percent of the expats, less than half of the global average. Meanwhile, the US ranks last for affordability of child care and 39 out of 45 countries ranked for education affordability.

Despite all the talk about President Donald Trump stoking resentment against immigrants, expats still view the US as a welcoming country. Though that perception is beginning to shift...

“Three years ago, 84 percent of expats rated the U.S. positively on “friendly attitude to foreign residents,” and just 5 percent negatively. By 2017, the negative ratings had tripled, and the positive ratings had dropped 16 points.”

Many smaller economies outranked larger developed countries. Ironically, the top-ranked country in 2017 was Bahrain. We wonder: Would Bahrain’s sizable population of Asian “foreign workers” feel the same?

“The top-ranked country in 2017 is Bahrain, given high marks by its expats as a place to work and raise a family and for making foreigners feel welcome. It vastly outranks Persian Gulf neighbors such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which ranked in the bottom 10 of the 65 countries in the survey.”

While the US and UK have both experienced a reputational hit, surprisingly it was Australia that saw the largest drop of any national present in the rankings, sliding from tenth most expat-friendly country to 34th. Meanwhile, Greece ranked dead last, despite its warm climate and beautiful beaches.

“Greece was at the very bottom of the list, weighed down by the country’s economic problems. Australia, which ranked in the top 10 last year, dropped more than any other country, to 34th place. Expats’ ratings of jobs, career prospects, work hours and work-life balance all dropped.”

In another twist, China ranked as one of the expats’ favorite places, despite the severe pollution and the quality and cost of health care and education. Two-thirds of respondents said they were happy with their careers, though the country ranked 55 out of 65 for overall quality of life. Elsewhere in Asia, Taiwan, which topped last year"s list, slipped to fourth place, while Singapore climbed into the top 10. Hong Kong languished at 39, up from 44 last year.

The survey was conducted by InterNations, a Munich-based network of 2.8 million expats. The survey includes interviews with executives, skilled workers, students and retirees who live outside the country where they grew up. There are about 50 million expats worldwide, according to market research by Finaccord, and the number is expected to hit 60 million over the next five years.

If Korean War Breaks Out, Seoul Will Send Special Forces To Assassinate Kim Jong-Un

Confirming reports that first floated several months ago, the Telegraph reports that South Korea is preparing to send special forces units into Pyongyang to conduct a "clinical strike" - searching for, and taking out Kim Jong-un and his closest advisers, in the event that North Korea should start a conventional war. The plan is among the revisions being made to South Korea"s latest strategy for dealing with an attack from the North.

Senior officials briefed South Korea"s president, Moon Jae-in, about revisions to the present defence of the nation on Monday, one day before North Korea launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan. Moon told the ministry to implement reforms to the military to meet the challenges that are increasingly being posed by North Korea. He added that the military should be ready to "quickly switch to an offensive posture in case North Korea stages a provocation that crosses the line or attacks the capital region", the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported. The prime minister also requested that the military "increase its mobility as well as its ability to carry out airborne and sea landings" and upgrade air defences.

South Korean army soldiers during the annual Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise

Meanwhile, this is what a "hot" war attack by Pyongyang could look like from the South Korean perspective:

• In the event of a conventional conflict breaking out on the Korean Peninsula, North Korean artillery is expected to bombard the South"s defences along the Demilitarised Zone as well as shelling Seoul, which is less than 50 miles south of the border.


• Massed tanks and infantry units, assisted by saboteurs and agents already in the South, would attempt to swiftly seize Seoul and other key cities and facilities in South Korea before the United States and, potentially, other allied nations could land reinforcements.

In retaliation, under the existing US-South Korean plan for the defence of the South, known as OPLAN 5015, the two nations would aim to bring their overwhelming air and naval superiority to bear from bases in South Korea and Japan, as well as aircraft carriers in the western Pacific, although it would take weeks before large-scale reinforcements, including heavy tanks and other equipment, could be landed.

Furthermore,as the following naval map as of August 24 shows, in practical terms there is no carrier support around the Korea penninsula, so at least one aspect of the theoretical plan is currently impossible.

The new South Korean plan will identify more than 1,000 primary targets in North Korea to be eliminated by missiles and laser-guided munitions - including nuclear weapons and missile launch facilities - at the same time as the conventional attack is halted.

South Korea"s F-15K jets drop bombs during training at Taebaek Pilsung Range

Additionally, the military has been tasked with training special forces units that could be infiltrated into Pyongyang in order to target key members of the regime, including Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, in order to bring about a more rapid conclusion to the fighting. While on paper such a "decapitation" move appears enticing, in reality the retaliation by the crippled NKorean regime against its southern neighbor, especially once it has lost its leader, would likely result in countless casualties and serve as the start of a gruesome regional, if not world, war.

Beware A Second Korean War

Authored by Donald Manzullo via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

There is no way we could be sure that preventive actions would not set off a second Korean War

These are difficult times on the Korean Peninsula. With North Korea’s second test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and newfound ability to produce a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside an ICBM, Kim Jong-un and the North Korean regime continue to demonstrate their persistent and determined effort to become a nuclear threat, in spite of coordinated international efforts to stop them. These actions have raised tensions on the peninsula to a high and dangerous level, potentially leaving the United States and its allies with few options. To forestall this possibility, there are increasing considerations of turning to a military option with some suggesting that the United States engage in a preventive strike to thwart North Korea from succeeding.

At times like these it is the duty of any commander and chief to ensure the safety and security of his citizens which is why over the years neither Republican nor Democratic administrations have taken the military option off the table when it comes to North Korea. However, the United States also has a duty to work with its allies to ensure that its actions do not sacrifice their safety and security unless there are truly no other options available. North Korea’s actions may at some point leave the United States no choice, but those suggesting preventive action should understand the very real costs.

A conflict on the Korean Peninsula as a result of preventive military efforts by the United States to preclude North Korea from completing the development of an ICBM, rather than preemptive actions in a crisis, would have grave consequences for the United States and our allies in the region. If the United States were to take preventive military action to eliminate the North Korean threat without the express support of South Korea and Japan, we would run the risk of willingly endangering two allies that the United States is treaty bound to protect. There is no way we could be sure that preventive actions would not set off a second Korean War. Doing so without allied cooperation would undermine U.S. credibility abroad because our friends would no longer have reason to trust us to live up to our commitments.

Just as troublingly, such an attack might not preclude North Korea from utilizing a nuclear weapon. While North Korean missiles may not be able to reliably reach the continental United States at the moment, the same cannot be said for South Korea and Japan (perhaps even as far as Guam, Hawaii, and Alaska), which might find themselves at risk of a nuclear strike, as some analysts suggest.

A preventive attack would also put significant U.S. lives at risk even if North Korea was unable to deploy its nuclear weapons. There are more than seventy-five thousand U.S. troops stationed in South Korea and Japan, to say nothing of the more than 136,000 U.S. civilians that reside in South Korea. All of these are in the current range of North Korean missiles, while its major population center—Seoul—is within range of North Korean conventional artillery. During a crisis, there would be no good way to protect U.S. citizens, particularly in a densely populated urban area. Trying to evacuate U.S. citizens in advance would send a clear signal to North Korea that an attack was imminent, something that President Trump has said he does not want to telegraph to our enemies.  The casualty counts in any conflict would, of course, be higher among South Korean and Japanese citizens. Should China enter the conflict, U.S. losses could grow.

Beyond the human costs of a conflict, there would be significant economic consequences for the United States as well if a new Korean war were to break out. China, South Korea and Japan are three of America’s top six trading partners as well as three critical players in the global economy. Much of the world’s high-technology industry and the assembly of goods takes place in those three economies. A war encompassing all three nations would likely bring about a catastrophic global recession and have severe economic impacts on the United States, particularly for the nearly four hundred thousand Americans whose jobs are dependent upon the Korean economy.

Despite our best efforts, we might be unable to keep the war in northeast Asia rather than here. North Korea has worked just as diligently at developing its cyber capabilities as its nuclear capabilities. Should a conflict break out, we should assume that North Korea would target businesses and infrastructure in the United States with cyberattacks, causing economic and possibly physical destruction to the United States.

Someday, Kim Jong-un may be on the verge of launching a nuclear armed ICBM and the United States and its allies will have no choice but to defend themselves. However, in the absence of that scenario, we should be cognizant that a conflict with North Korea would not only be devastating for our allies South Korea and Japan, but it would also have consequences for the United States as well. Until that moment comes, we should try every tool available short of conflict, but be prepared, as a last resort, to take military action in concert with our allies.