US Intelligence Reveals North Korea’s ‘Kryptonite’: Can The US Win A War Without Firing A Shot?

David Blair, a former director of US Intelligence, revealed Tuesday what he believes is North Korea’s “Kryptonite.” Blair says this one small thing could topple Kim Jong-Un’s regime without even firing a shot.

While US officials contemplate military action to prevent the reclusive regime from obtaining nuclear weapons, Blair, who is a former US Navy admiral, has suggested another method of attack. He says the US should deploy tactics that wield information, not weapons.

North Korea is largely cut off from the outside world and they have no idea how bad and oppressive things are in their country, Blair said, because they’re subject to an “unrelenting barrage of government propaganda.”  According to Business Insider, North Korean citizens caught with South Korean media can be sentenced to death or sent to horrific prison camps, as control of the media and intolerance for different narratives are pillars of North Korea’s government.

The US could use the recent cellphone trend spreading through North Korea to their advantage, says Blair.  Basically, while having North Korean state-run propaganda blaring through their devices, the United States could also input their own propaganda through text messages on civilians phones.  About one in five North Koreans own a cellphone, many of which can connect to Chinese cell towers across the Yalu River along the countries’ border, he said.

“Texts to these cell phones can provide subversive truth,” Blair said. “Cell towers can be extended; CDs and thumb drives can be smuggled in; radio and TV stations can be beamed there. The objective is to separate the Kim family from its primary support — the secret police, the army, and the propaganda ministry,” Blair said.

Yun Sun, a North Korea expert at the Stimson Center, told Business Insider last year that a similar idea floated by a former US Navy SEAL warranted looking into.  “Kim Jong Un understands that as soon as society is open and North Korean people realize what they’re missing, Kim’s regime is unsustainable, and it’s going to be overthrown,” Sun said. Sun said that in the past when South Korea flew balloons that dropped pamphlets and DVDs over North Korea, Kim’s government responded with the military, unaccepting of outside information.

Blair pointed to other totalitarian states where popular uprisings have become informed and sought to take down a media-controlling dictator, concluding his testimony by saying that “once that process starts, it is hard to stop.”

It’s also important to remember too, that North Koreans are starving and unarmed.  Any attempt to overthrow a dictatorial regime by the people of North Korea could be squashed immediately.

 

Venezuelan Escalates “War on Bread” As Food Shortages Continue to Plague a Hungry Population

 

This article was written by Tyler Durden and originally published at Zero Hedge.

Editor’s Comment: In the great logic of governments, the Venezuelan dictator has essentially ordered an end to hunger by making a rule against food shortage. But no rule, no matter how strictly enforced, will work if there is no supply for the food. The shortages of imported food staples is the source problem here with the bread, not the conduct of the bakers, and yet they are facing new, and somewhat bizarre, implements as Maduro takes on the “economic war” against his country – paid for with the price of his people’s hunger.

This remains a desperate situation that is only getting worse, and remains a textbook reminder of why socialism, once the wealth has been stripped or used up, is ultimately doomed to fail.

As Venezuelan “Bread War” Escalates, Maduro Warns Bakers “You Will Pay, I Swear”

by Tyler Durden

With its people resorting to eating flamingoes, the Venezuelan government has decided to find yet another thing to blame for the collapse of the socialist utopia – the bakers!

As The BBC reports, the Venezuelan government says it will expropriate bakeries which fail to abide by new government regulations aimed at tackling bread shortages.

In a growing row between the government and bakers, officials said that bakeries could face fines if people had to queue to get their bread. Severe shortages of basic goods mean that Venezuelans often have to queue for hours to buy essential items.

The government says the shortages are caused by an “economic war”.

Venezuela does not produce wheat and relies on imports bought in by the government which it then sends to mills where it is ground and then distributed.

The government blames bakers for the bread shortages, accusing them of using the flour allocated to them to bake pastries rather than simple baguette-style bread in order to maximise their profits.

Croissants and other sweet baked goods are more expensive than baguettes and French-style breads, as the prices for the latter are controlled by the socialist government.

So the government has decided that more price controls will fix the problem and has unveiled new rules for bakers…

• Use 90% of flour to bake savoury bread and only 10% for pastries and cakes


• Provide a constant supply of bread throughout the day from 07:00 to 19:00


• Ensure next day’s supply by holding over bread from the previous day

And the rules will be strictly enforced…

On Sunday, President Nicolas Maduro announced that inspectors would be sent to 709 bakeries in the capital, Caracas, to ensure they were complying with the new rules.

He said that those “speculators who hide the bread from the people will face the weight of the law”.

“They’re going to pay, I swear. Those responsible for the bread war are going to pay and they better not complain that it was a political persecution,” he added.

Vice-President Tareck El Aissami warned that “bakeries which do not follow [the rules] will be occupied by the government”.

As The Miami Herald notes, two bakeries were already seized for 90 days for breaking a number of rules, including selling overpriced bread.

Juan Crespo, the president of the Industrial Flour Union called Sintra-Harina, which represents 9,000 bakeries nationwide, said the government’s heavy hand isn’t going to solve the problem. “The government isn’t importing enough wheat,” he said. “If you don’t have wheat, you don’t have flour, and if you don’t have flour, you don’t have bread.” He said the country needs four, 30-ton boats of wheat every month to cover basic demand.

The notion that bread could become an issue in Venezuela is yet another indictment of a socialist economic system gone bust.

This article was written by Tyler Durden and originally published at Zero Hedge.

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