STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
North Korea Has Missiles, but Does It Have Nuclear Weapons?
By Daily Bell Staff - August 03, 2016

North Korean Missile Lands Close to Japan … North Korea fired a ballistic missile early Wednesday that landed unusually close to Japan, drawing a strong protest from Tokyo a day after it warned of Pyongyang’s advancing missile threat.  …  Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the latest missile had fallen into Tokyo’s territorial waters and called it an “unforgivable act of aggression that represents a grave threat to the security of Japan.”  – Wall Street Journal

Western mainstream media is doing its best to convince us of North Korea’s nuclear threat.

North Korea’s citizens sometimes have to eat grass. But, nonetheless, North Korea is blasting missiles right and left.

Japan is certainly concerned.

Shinzo Abe just “lodged a protest with North Korea and would coordinate with the U.S. and South Korea over ‘resolute measures’ in response.”

Thank goodness for politicians. They may be crooks and thieves, but once they reach high office, they hold the fate of  the world in their hands.

Nothing gives a dysfunctional man or woman more power than facing a full political  assemblage of grafters and cheaters in a great marbled hall and intoning, “Under no circumstances will we begin a nuclear war that will end the world as we know it – unless we are attacked first.”

If nuclear weapons hadn’t been invented, some politically affiliated person would have had to make them up.

Nuclear weapons are a perfect propaganda for the state.

-Their tests cannot be ascertained at close range because they are too powerful.

-Their inner workings cannot be disseminated because they are “top secret.”

-Their programmatic elements cannot be observed by the normal media because too much information available to the public can stimulate adversarial or even terrorist activity.

But they are terrible weapons. Just a few of them can “end the world as we know it.”

We’re not quite sure how we “know it” of course, since early tests of nukes seem to have been faked.

We have considerable doubts even about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear narratives. You can see a list of about 25 anomalies we compiled HERE. Subsequent videos of nuclear tests also seem to have been faked, HERE and HERE.

And we recently reported HERE on the Bikini Island nuclear detonations, which seem to have been faked.

Of course nuclear weapons, as we have observed HERE, are tremendously expensive.

And unlike most items, technological advances don’t seem to bring the prices down.

But from what we can tell, most people don’t know the prices of these weapons anyway. In some cases, the prices, too, may be “top secret.” Certainly that was the case in the past.

North Korea isn’t giving out any information about the price of its nuclear program. It is as tight-lipped as any other “nuclear power.”

Nonetheless, we learn this from WSJ:

North Korea has accelerated its missile and nuclear-bomb testing under leader Kim Jong Un, launching over 30 ballistic missiles since Mr. Kim took power at the end of 2011.

And this gives rise to a Reuters story that confirms the existential elements of North Korea’s threat:

Commentary: How long before North Korea can nuke a U.S. city? … It’s the near future, and North Korea’s regime is on the brink of collapse.

As rumors swirl of palace coups, forces on both sides of the world’s most militarized border are on heightened alert. The U.S. military faces a much bigger problem. Somewhere in the Pacific, a North Korean submarine is believed to be carrying nuclear warheads and the missiles to deliver them. And nobody knows where it is.

It sounds like the plot of a “Hunt for Red October”-style technothriller …

Yes, it certainly does. Are you terrified yet?

Amidst the terror, of course, we are exposed to more logical voices.

Here, from CNN in 2013:

Five things we still don’t know about North Korea’s nukes … Disclosure of U.S. intelligence hints Pyongyang may be closer to nuclear weapon than previously thought … But senior U.S. intelligence leaders quickly refute the intelligence assessment …

At a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday, Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado, read from a declassified version of a document in which the Defense Intelligence Agency expresses “moderate confidence the North currently has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles, however, the reliability will be low.”

Thanks goodness for the CIA, which apparently imports heroin around the world but is still trusted by the US Congress to provide unimpeachable information about “national security threats.”

Congress needs such threats of course. Without international threats, questions would surely arise about the necessity for such a large and powerful US government.

Fortunately, the nuclear threat makes such questions moot.

Nonetheless, fulfilling its role as part of the skeptical media, CNN in 2013 had some questions about North Korean nukes:

Does North Korea have nuclear weapons?

Has the nuclear device been miniaturized enough to fit atop a missile?

Do they have missiles sophisticated enough to deliver a nuclear warhead?

If North Korea launches a missile, how will we know if it is carrying a nuclear warhead?

Why is it so hard to know full details of North Korea’s nuclear program?

In 2013, the answer to all of these questions was unclear. No doubt the answers in 2016 are similarly unclear.

But nonetheless, most reporting of North Korea’s “nuclear program” seem to assume it has nuclear weapons and thus has joined the club of nations who can “destroy the world with the push of a button.”

Of course, two cities were said to be destroyed in Japan in 1945 after just such a button was pushed. In a few days time, in fact, the anniversary of the atomic destruction of these cities will be noted around the world.

The barrage of propaganda and grief will be thick indeed,

We will continue to harbor questions about the reality of what occurred.

Conclusion: When it comes to nuclear weapons generally, we have plenty of questions but few definitive answers. That goes for North Korea too.

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