Drumbeats of War - Korean War II Preps
South Korea has suspended trade with North Korea. Along with investment and everything else except ‘humanitarian aid’. They will not even allow North Korean merchant shipping to pass through South Korean territorial waters.
The US has ordered the 28,000 or so troops we still have there to coordinate efforts with the South Korean military to ‘defend against aggression’, after statements that North Korea must pay some unspecified price for torpedoing a South Korean ship, which everyone now agrees they did do.
North Korean has ordered all ‘defensive forces’ to prepare for total war with South Korea, and by extension, the United States. Unverified sources report North Korea may test fire, or is at least capable of test firing, a ‘nuclear warhead’ for the first time. I’m not sure anyone believes they will actually do that at this point in time, but rationality has not been North Korea’s strong suit.
So much defense on both sides mirrors the situation in the Middle East, where it is said Syrian President Assad is watching developments on the Korean Peninsula very closely, to see how much North Korean strongman Kim Jong-il can get away with in baiting the West.
Speaking of the Middle East, Lebanese Hizballah’s leader, 49-year old Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah promises to sink any ship traveling to or from Israel, if Israel blockades Lebanon as it has done with the Gaza Strip. He is, in my estimation, the Middle East leader most likely to do exactly what he says he will do.
The difference between the blockade of the Gaza Strip, which an international group of humanitarians and others intend to run as early as Thursday, is that Lebanon is said to have land-to-ship missiles similar to the Chinese Silkworm missile, which can get through the defenses of an aircraft carrier and sink it.
Gaza is happy when they can manage to keep raw sewage from non-functioning waste facilities from flowing through their olive groves… which they have not managed to do recently. The depth of their problems is one noble reason for the attempt to break the blockade. Of course there are less noble agendas at work as well. And in the end it may just serve as a trigger for the upcoming war.
If you watched the Stock Market do an early swan dive of almost 300 points this morning, you know why I had the warning about that last night. It stabilized during the day, and continues to inch up after hours. However, the Hong Kong stock market is tanking again, down about 3.5 percent on the day, as I write this. Whether the Dow will continue to recoup losses tomorrow or step off the precipice is anyone’s guess. But the technical analysts remark on the similarities of the current graphs to the ones in 1929.
Is that enough news for now? I think so.
