Kim’s man in Europe says North Korea’s nukes ready to blow within 10 minutes … North Korea is deadly serious about nuking its enemies – and can do so with just 10 minutes’ notice … Kim has intercontinental ballistic missiles loaded with nuclear warheads capable of reaching “any objective.” –UK DailyStar

The Daily Star is a big British newspaper but it is publishing incendiary information about North Korea’s nuclear program without bothering to check the facts.

At the very least shouldn’t The Daily Star warn readers that the information it is presenting may or may not be accurate?

We’ve alluded to this issue before, especially as it concerns nuclear weapons.

How does the Star know that North Korea has weapons it says it has?

The article doesn’t directly claim to endorse North Korean statements about its nuclear weapons but it treats them in a sensational and alarmist ways, granting the claims implicit credibility.

More:

Mr Cao de Benos, a special representative of the secretive state’s Foreign Ministry, told Daily Star Online Kim Jong-un was simply defending himself.

He insisted that the nukes were just for deterrence, but said they would be deployed in mere minutes if America tried to do in North Korea what it did in Iraq.

“Our army and government does not use empty words,” he said. “North Korea has ICBMs with nuclear warheads capable of reaching any objective

According to Wikipedia, the Star “is published by Express Newspapers, which also publishes the Daily Express and Sunday Express. The group is now owned by Richard Desmond’s Northern and Shell company.”

From the Northern and Shell website HERE:

Northern & Shell Media Group has experienced almost four decades of expansion, becoming a significant force in British and worldwide media, with a portfolio of newspapers and magazines.

The Northern & Shell Media Group owns four national newspaper titles and celebrity magazines OK!, new! and Star. In 2011 the company opened a state-of-the-art print plant in Luton, producing our portfolio of newspapers and magazines as well as providing third-party printing services.

This is a big and sophisticated publishing group.

But the article on North Korea is presented in a most provocative way.

How does the newspaper or the US know that North Korea has the weapons it says it has?

The US makes its claims based on satellite imagery and by monitoring vibrations from nuclear tests. But we’ve found out that the US has a history of lying about nuclear weapons.

The Pentagon lied about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – at least exaggerating them apparently.

The Pentagon apparently lied about the tests at Bikini Island, as we have reported HERE.

The Pentagon was also responsible for shaping the initial nuclear narrative. And it communicated to only one reporter – just one! – from the New York Times who was allowed to view an initial nuclear test and also to fly on an airplane that witnessed the bombing of Nagasaki.

The Pentagon and other military facilities continue to shape the nuclear narrative today.

Reporters get their information about nuclear news from military facilities.

But who checks the military facilities to confirm the truth?

Military facilities thrive on military tensions. The bigger the threat, the bigger the budget.

They Star article reports, for instance, that a “standoff” between North Korea and Washington is reaching “a crisis point.”

Washington has now “personally targeted” Kim Jong-un assets, freezing them overseas. The US has also deployed its “Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system in South Korea.”

We’ve never heard of THAAD before, so we checked into it.

HERE, from a 1998 article:

Pentagon stands behind THAAD … The US Department of Defense expects to have a plan in place by the end of this month to save the troubled $15 billion Lockheed Martin Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile programme.

The plan will address the technical problems that have caused the hit-to-kill weapon to miss target ballistic missiles in five out of five flight tests. The Pentagon has spent $3.2 billion on the THAAD programme to date.

US Air Force Lt Gen Lester Lyles, director of the Pentagon’s Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO), believes the latest test failure on 12 May was caused by a short-circuit in the missile’s thrust vector control mechanism, built by United Technologies’ Chemical Systems unit.

“We expect to be able to identify the root causes and define the areas for corrective action within the next few weeks,” Lyles says. “I expect to receive the final report later this month.”  Lyles says termination of the project is not being considered.

We can see this costly program had a good deal of trouble in the 1990s. Presumably now that it is being deployed in Korea those problems are fixed.

But do we really know? Do we even know if the program does what it claims to do? From what we can tell, these programs are monitored by the Pentagon and its vendors.

Politicians are supposed to supervise these programs but most of the political monitoring seems to involve the receipt of reports from the Pentagon.

There is no real, third-party evaluation.

Additionally, as we have pointed out previously, the economics of nuclear weapons make no sense.

In any normal environment, prices would drop over time as technology improves. This doesn’t seem to be the case with nuclear weapons, a clear indication that something other than normal industry factors are influencing price points.

The article quotes Mr Cao de Benos went on: “Many citizens of the USA are good people and are not guilty for having a government ruled by war maniacs and weapon manufacturers.”

Is it possible that the Pentagon in concert with its massive industrial suppliers is not telling the truth? It doesn’t seem to have told the truth about Hiroshima, Nagasaki HERE or Bikini Island.

And subsequent videos of nuclear tests also seem to have been faked, HERE and HERE. When exactly were nuclear weapons perfected?

And exactly how powerful are they?

The Russians, too, seem to have faked photos of their tests – just as they may have faked some of their space missions.

The Russian agencies report on their own progress in much the same manner as the Pentagon.

Conclusion:  How is there any real way of knowing what is true?