KW: This is how WW111 could start. Already an escalation of threats and counter threats is resulting in the potential confrontation of two super powers, both with the capacity to annihilate the world in which we live. What is worse is the gross misunderstanding of the vast majority of people in the West about what is actually happening because our media has only regurgitated American propaganda about North Korea, China and of course Russia (it will always be Russia’s fault, particularly Putin’s individually). Just last evening at my ‘local’ meeting with friends for a quiet ale one of my closets friends got on his high horse about going out and sorting out that North Korean madman. My interjections that he was not the only madman lead onto an all out confrontation of ideas and who was the worse party. My points about ‘North Korea has not attacked anyone, has not invaded anyone and only has nuclear weapons as a deterrent to the U.S. already repeating what it did in 1953 at the end of the Korean War’ when the North was already in defeat and that was when the U.S. invaded and slaughter tens of thousands of innocent civilians in cold hearted blood plus set fire and destroyed with incendiary bombs any building left standing in any of the Norths previous cities in a fire storm equal to Dresden in Germany during the Second World War. My point about Trump being an un-yielding psychopath the very equal at least of Kim Jong-Un who is (at this stage ) merely making threats was not greeted with any balanced thought. Quickly the arguments spiraled out of control to include failing to stand up to Hitler and who is going to defend us here if North Korea attacks New Zealand and logic disappeared over the horizon. Also of course out came the old ‘communist’ power/threat  talk.

We have attempted to put up many articles on North Korea to explain the situation, one of the most pertinent is this link from this website: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/04/the-reason-behind-north-koreas-nuclear-program-and-its-offer-to-end-it.html

The most salient parts repeated here: “Imperial Japan occupied Korea from 1905 to 1945 and tried to assimilate it. A nominal communist resistance under Kim Il-sung and others fought against the Japanese occupation. After the Japanese WWII surrender in 1945 the U.S. controlled and occupied the mostly agricultural parts of Korea below the arbitrarily chosen 38th parallel line. The allied Soviet Union controlled the industrialized part above the line. They had agreed on a short trusteeship of a united and independent country. In the upcoming cold war the U.S. retracted on the agreement and in 1948 installed a South Korean proxy dictatorship under Syngman Rhee. This manifested an artificial border the Koreans had not asked for and did not want. The communists still commanded a strong and seasoned resistance movement in the south and hoped to reunite the country. The Korea War ensued. It utterly destroyed the country. All of Korea was severely effected but especially the industrialized north which lost about a third of its population and all of its reasonably well developed infrastructure – roads, factories and nearly all of its cities.

Every Korean family was effected. Ancestor worship is deeply embedded in the Korean psyche and its collectivist culture. No one has forgotten the near genocide and no one in Korea, north or south, wants to repeat the experience.

Once you realise that China now will not stand for an American invasion of the North and that the South Koreans also won’t want this it become much more important that Trump is forced to back down but then he will only be replaced by another equally stupid American psychopath seeking war for the military /industrial complex that rules U.S. thinking.

To the new article:

“If the U.S. and South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean Peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so”

Source: China Warns Trump: “We Will Prevent A North Korea Regime Change” | Zero Hedge