US Geological Survey records 5.3 seismic event at ground level near nuclear test site
Friday 9 September 2016
Martin Farrer and agencies
WN: The grand irony is ever there: the US and the Western world accuse North Korea of “maniacal recklessness” (indeed, absolutely accurately), and we read in the article linked below that “the United States blacklisted Kim [Jong-un, leader of North Korea] on 6 July for human rights abuses.”: a kind of ultimate instance of the pot calling the kettle black, and of course further instance of monstrous hypocrisy.
For the US, leader of the Western “free” world, is the only power (then or since) that in 1945 detonated not one, but two atomic bombs, on civilian populations with consequent deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents who just happened to live in the targeted cities, targets with negligible military or infrastructure value to Japan’s war effort against the US; and possibly done to experiment on real live victims (like the Nazis on the Jews in death camps), and to send a clear message to the Soviet Union of who is “boss”, first shot of the Cold War. (And of course, and as ever, with rare exceptions: with no subsequent apology.)
Then, the US not only carried out numerous further blasts, with its own soldiers at times used as further guinea pigs for radiation tests, but is now under Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning president, committed to re-building from the ground up its entire nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years, to the tune of one trillion dollars. This further to the US’ singular place in the world as leading abuser of human rights many times more than any other state or terrorist group, possibly than all other human rights abusers in the world combined!
Hence the illustration above.
“Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World is a book[1] by Noam Chomsky, titled after an observation by St. Augustine in City of God, proposing that what governments coin as “terrorism” in the small simply reflects what governments utilize as “warfare” in the large. Yet, governments coerce their populations to denounce the former while embracing the latter. In the City of God, St. Augustine[2] writes:
Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What do you mean by seizing the whole earth?; because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you who does it with a great fleet are styled emperor”.
“This story also appears in John Gower‘s Confessio Amantis[3] III.2363-2438 and in a poem by François Villon.[4]” Wikipedia
And so it goes with all Empires known to human history, of which the United States is the unmatched, unparalleled Grand Empire (with all its brutality and horror) of them all.
an excerpt:
Two months ago, U.S.-based 38 North, a North Korea monitoring project, said satellite images showed a high level of activity at North Korea’s nuclear test site, called Punggye-ri.
Speculation had intensified that North Korea may conduct a fifth nuclear test after the United States blacklisted Kim [Jong-un, leader of North Korea] on 6 July for human rights abuses.
North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January, resulting in tough new UN sanctions. It has conducted a series of missile tests this year, including a submarine-launched missile.
More follows.
Please click on: Pirates and Emperors/US Presidents
