Day: October 18, 2016

North Korea is prepared to launch the big one

By Joshua Rhett Miller October 17, 2016 | 11:02am
A top North Korean official is warning that the isolated nation is ready to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the US if necessary, NBC News reported Monday.
“The US has nuclear weapons off our coast, targeting our country, our capital and our dear leader, Kim Jong Un,” Lee Yong Pil, director of the Foreign Ministry’s Institute for American Studies, told NBC News. “We will not step back as long as there’s a nuclear threat to us from the United States.”
Lee said the US does not have a “monopoly” on pre-emptive nuclear strikes.
“If we see that the US would do it to us, we would do it first,” Lee said. “We have the technology.”
North Korea may also conduct more nuclear tests, including a “sixth, a seventh or an eighth” trial, Lee said, adding that the hardened stance comes amid “increasingly aggressive” drills by the US and South Korea.
Lee’s comment comes as North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test month last month. In all, the nation has launched more than 20 ballistic missiles this year in an attempt to improve the delivery system for nuclear weapons, CBS News reported.
Lee said sanctions from the United Nations or pressure from the US would not stop North Korea’s effort to build a nuclear arsenal.
“We have to have nuclear weapons to protect our country, and it’s our policy to go nuclear,” Lee told NBC News.
Hwang Yongnam, who is authorized to speak about North Korea’s missile program, said Pentagon officials are lying when they say North Korea can’t reach the continental US with a weapon.
But going nuclear isn’t the only lofty ambition for the hermit kingdom. Another North Korean official said Pyongyang is also launching rockets to send satellites into space.
“In the future, our goal is not just going to the moon, but to other planets,” Ri Won Hyok, a senior official for North Korea’s space program, told NBC News.
Ri denied claims that North Korea’s rocket program had been helped by the Russians or Iranians, saying “it’s 100 percent our own.”
US officials believe that North Korea’s launches thus far have not included any fully functioning satellites.
North Korea’s ballistic program took a step backward Saturday, when a ballistic missile fired from an airfield in the western city of Kusong immediately exploded after launch. Bloomberg.com reports the projectile was believed to be a mid-range weapon capable of hitting US military bases in Guam or Japan, likely a Musudan missile.
“The failed launch shows North Korea’s launch capability isn’t perfect, so Kim Jong Un might fire a Musudan again or any other missile soon given his temper,” Yoo Dong Ryul, president of Korea Institute of Liberal Democracy in Seoul, told Bloomberg.
The “illegal provocation,” an apparent violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions, was strongly condemned by South Korea, according to a statement from its Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The US and its allies are looking for stronger measures to counteract North Korea’s nuclear ambitions after sanctions imposed by the Security Council in March failed to slow Pyongyang’s pace.
Saturday’s failed launch has thrust the situation into a “new phase,” Japan’s Defense Minister Tomoni Inada said on a television program in Fuji on Sunday. Tokyo is seeking a new response to the threat, Bloomberg reported.

Cuomo’s Nuclear Disaster Comes At The Sixth Seal (Rev 6:12)

Andrew Cuomo’s coming nuclear disaster

December 7, 2015 | 8:41pm  indian_point_earthquake
While negotiators in Paris were hammering out a new agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, New York state announced a plan to reduce its carbon emissions 40 percent by 2030. And yet the state is, at the same time, making it virtually impossible to do so.
Any energy plan that clearly recognizes the role nuclear energy has in reducing dangerous emissions should be welcomed by all New Yorkers — and would be if it wasn’t clear that the state is picking and choosing which nuclear-power facilities should stay open at the expense of taxpayers, especially those in New York City.
The new plan to transition the state to a lower-carbon-energy portfolio includes developing a process to prevent the premature closure of nuclear plants upstate.
While it comes too late to save Entergy Corp.’s FitzPatrick plant in Oswego — slated to close within two years — the plan appears to be designed to throw a lifeline to another upstate facility: the Ginna nuclear power plant in the upstate town of Ontario.
This fall, owner Exelon and grid operator Rochester Gas & Electric worked out an agreement that will keep Ginna operating through March 2017. Beyond that, the plant’s fate remains uncertain due to economic pressures caused by an electricity market flooded with low-cost natural gas.
The troubling contradiction is that the state is also taking action to shut down Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, the single best tool New York City has to help meet carbon-reduction goals.
As the state has recognized, nuclear energy not only supports the state’s emission goals, but also keeps electricity bills low and stable for citizens. However, on Nov. 16, the state asked the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to deny the relicensing of Indian Point.
For decades, nuclear energy has safely served as the backbone of the Northeast’s carbon-free energy supply. In fact, Indian Point alone generates 25 percent of New York City’s electricity and 10 percent of the electricity for all New Yorkers. Moreover, the two reactors at Indian Point produce about one-quarter of the state’s carbon-free electricity.
The entire debate around extending the operation of Indian Point becomes even more important when you consider its role in meeting the EPA’s Clean Power Plan.
Under these climate rules, New York must reduce 3.3 million short tons of carbon dioxide by 2030. Removing Indian Point, which prevents the release of 9.3 million short tons of carbon dioxide a year, would make this requirement significantly harder to meet.
To put these numbers in perspective, the amount of carbon dioxide the state would need to reduce, to make up for Indian Point’s closure, is the equivalent of the annual greenhouse-gas emissions of more than 2.4 million passenger cars.
Clean, affordable and reliable — these are the necessary elements for sound energy plans as states like New York look to meet their emissions-reductions requirements under the Clean Power Plan. The one large-scale source of energy that meets these requirements is nuclear energy.
Albany’s plan to mandate renewable-energy sources even recognizes the value of nuclear energy — although the state only seems to see a place for the low rates and reliable power for upstate residents.
New York shouldn’t be picking when and where nuclear energy should be allowed to operate. The state should be supporting all of its clean-energy industry, not standing against it.
Christine Todd Whitman, former NJ governor and former Environmental Protection Agency administrator, is president of The Whitman Strategy Group and co-chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition.

Korea Sends Clear Threat To America

Image: NKOREA-MILITARY-MISSILES 

North Korea: We’re Prepared to Use Nukes First

NBC News  
Bill Neely 

“The U.S. has nuclear weapons off our coast, targeting our country, our capital and our Dear Leader, Kim Jong Un,” a top North Korean official, Lee Yong Pil, said in an exclusive interview with NBC News.
“We will not step back as long as there’s a nuclear threat to us from the United States,” added Lee, who is director of the Foreign Ministry’s Institute for American Studies.
“A preemptive nuclear strike is not something the U.S. has a monopoly on,” he said. “If we see that the U.S. would do it to us, we would do it first. … We have the t  echnology.”
Such threats have been a staple of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un since he took power after his father’s death in 2011. U.S. officials do not believe Pyongyang possesses weapons able to reach the continental United States.
Lee also warned that North Korea may carry out “a sixth, a seventh or an eighth” nuclear test.
Lee said his government’s stance was being driven by “the increasingly aggressive” drills by the United States and the South.  
The comments came as Washington and Seoul conducted joint naval exercises off the Korean peninsula. The South Korean military told the country’s Yonhap news agency that one of the drills scheduled to end later this month involved targeting the North’s nuclear facilities.
Putting the world on notice of another nuclear test would anger the international community, most of which is already considering further sanctions against the reclusive nation for its activity so far.
Lee said neither sanctions from the United Nations nor U.S. pressure would stop North Korea’s building its arsenal.
“We have to have nuclear weapons to protect our country, and it’s our policy to go nuclear,” he added.
Another North Korean official told NBC News that the reclusive nation already has the capability to reach the U.S. mainland with a rocket. Hwang Yongnam, who is authorized to speak about the country’s missile program, said the Pentagon is lying when it says the North cannot yet reach the continental United States with a weapon.
But it’s not just weapons the country’s interested in, according to Ri Won Hyok, a senior official involved in North Korea’s fledgling space program.
Ri said that Pyongyang is also launching rockets to carry satellites into space and that “in the future our goal is not just going to the moon, but to the other planets.”
He denied that the country’s rocket program has had help from Russia or Iran, claiming “it’s 100 percent our own.”
U.S. scientists believe that none of North Korea’s launches so far have included any fully functioning satellites.

The Aggression Of The Scarlet Woman (Revelation 17)

BY NOMAAN MERCHANT
OCT. 14, 2016 1:50 AM EDT
BEIJING (AP) — Hillary Clinton privately said the U.S. would “ring China with missile defense” if the Chinese government failed to curb North Korea’s nuclear program, a potential hint at how the former secretary of state would act if elected president.
Clinton’s remarks were revealed by WikiLeaks in a hack of the Clinton campaign chairman’s personal account. The emails include a document excerpting Clinton’s private speech transcripts, which she has refused to release.
A section on China features several issues in which Clinton said she confronted the Chinese while leading the U.S. State Department.
China has harshly criticized the U.S. and South Korea’s planned deployment of a missile-defense system against North Korea, which conducted its fifth nuclear test this year. But Clinton said she told Chinese officials that the U.S. might deploy additional ships to the region to contain the North Korean missile threat.
If North Korea successfully obtains a ballistic missile, it could threaten not just American allies in the Pacific, “but they could actually reach Hawaii and the west coast theoretically,” Clinton said.
“We’re going to ring China with missile defense. We’re going to put more of our fleet in the area,” Clinton said in a 2013 speech. “So China, come on. You either control them or we’re going to have to defend against them.”
China is North Korea’s economic lifeline and the closest thing it has to a diplomatic ally, and has been criticized by the U.S. and others for not doing enough to rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions. Chinese officials and state media have responded by saying North Korea is not solely China’s responsibility and say Beijing’s has limited influence with secretive leader Kim Jong Un’s hardline communist regime
Clinton also privately criticized China’s position on another sensitive issue, the South China Sea. China claims almost the entirety of the strategically vital waterbody has lashed out at an international tribunal’s rejection of its claims in a July ruling.
“My counterpart sat up very straight and goes, ‘Well, you can’t do that,'” she said. “And I said, ‘Well, we have as much right to claim that as you do. I mean, you claim (the South China Sea) based on pottery shards from, you know, some fishing vessel that ran aground in an atoll somewhere.”
In another remark revealed in the Wikileaks hack, Clinton called Xi “a more sophisticated, more effective public leader” than his predecessor, Hu Jintao. She noted Xi’s plans for economic and social reforms, but blamed what she called “a resurgence of nationalism” on the Chinese government.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond Friday to faxed questions about Clinton’s remarks.
As secretary of state, Clinton visited China seven times and engineered Washington’s “pivot” to Asia, which has long been viewed with suspicion by Beijing. The policy shift has seen a tighter focus on the region along with an increased military presence and fortified alliances with allies such as Australia and the Philippines, although the latter has been cast in doubt with the election of China-friendly President Rodrigo Duterte.
She also drew condemnation from Chinese state media last year after describing Xi as “shameless” as he prepared to speak on women’s rights at the United Nations, shortly after China detained five young feminists who’d campaigned against domestic violence.
___

Scarlet Woman Extends Her Lead Against Trump (Revelation 17)

Hillary Clinton is ahead of Donald Trump by double digits with just over three weeks until Election Day, according to a new national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted entirely after the second presidential debate.
In a four-way race, Democrat Clinton holds an 11-point lead over Republican Trump among likely voters, 48 percent to 37 percent, with Libertarian Gary Johnson at 7 percent and the Green Party’s Jill Stein at 2 percent.
An earlier NBC/WSJ poll — conducted two days after 2005 video surfaced of Trump making vulgar comments to describe kissing and groping women — found Clinton leading by double digits among likely voters. But after another day of polling taken immediately after the Oct. 9 debate, the entire Oct. 8-10 poll showed Clinton’s lead at nine points in the four-way contest (46 percent to 37 percent) and 10 points in a head-to-head race (50 percent to 40 percent).
To put Clinton’s current 11-point lead into perspective, Barack Obama beat John McCain by seven points nationally in 2008. And Obama’s margin of victory over Mitt Romney in 2012 was four points.
“Donald Trump’s chances of winning this election have faded,” says Democratic pollster Fred Yang of Hart Research Associates, which conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff and his firm Public Opinion Strategies.
“This poll is showing the writing on the wall,” Yang adds.
And the Republican McInturff observes that Trump “is in a weaker position than in September,” and that his numbers in the poll don’t align with anyone who has gone on to win a presidential election.
Clinton Up By 20 Pts Among Women
Looking inside the numbers of the two-way horse race, Clinton holds a 20-point lead among female voters (55 percent to 35 percent), while Trump is ahead among men by just three points (48 percent to 45 percent).
Clinton also has the advantage among African Americans (86 percent to 9 percent), non-white voters (76 percent to 16 percent) and those ages 18-34 (54 percent to 36 percent).
Trump, meanwhile, holds the edge among independents (41 percent to 36 percent) and white voters (51 percent to 40 percent). But there is a difference among whites: Those without college degrees prefer Trump by a 56 percent-to-36 percent margin, while those with college degrees break evenly between Trump and Clinton, 45 percent to 45 percent.
Access Hollywood video of Trump is the 4th-most recognized story in history of NBC/WSJ poll
As for the 2005 video of Trump talking about women in vulgar and crude terms, 95 percent of voters say they saw, read or heard about that news story – which is the fourth-most recognized story in the history of the NBC/WSJ poll (behind the Orlando terrorist attack, the spread of Ebola in West Africa and the Ebola patient in Dallas).
But just 32 percent say that the video disqualifies Trump from being president and believe that he should with withdraw from the race, versus 53 percent who disagree.
Did the debates make a difference?
Additionally in the NBC/WSJ poll, 31 percent of voters said the presidential debates made them more likely to back Hillary Clinton, versus 14 percent who said they made them more likely to support Trump.
Fifty-two percent said the debates made no difference.
The final presidential debate takes place on Wednesday, Oct. 19.
Trump leads (narrowly) on trade, economy; Clinton ahead on being a commander-in-chief and women’s issues
On the issues, more voters say Trump would do a better job protecting America’s interests on trade issues (by 46 percent to 43 percent). And he holds a one-point advantage on dealing with the economy (44 percent say Trump would do a better job, compared with 43 percent who say Clinton would).
But Clinton has the advantage on the other issues – making appointments to the Supreme Court (48 percent to 38 percent), changing the country for the better (44 percent to 36 percent), being a good commander-in-chief (52 percent to 32 percent) and dealing with issues of concern to women (67 percent to 17 percent).
When it comes to personal characteristics, Clinton leads on having the right temperament to be president (59 percent to 23 percent), while Trump narrowly leads on being honest and straightforward (38 percent to 34 percent).
Democrats don’t look as strong down the ballot
Despite Clinton’s double-digit lead over Trump in the presidential race, the NBC/WSJ poll finds a closer contest down the ballot. Forty-six percent of registered voters prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress, while 44 percent want a Republican-controlled Congress.
That two-point advantage for Democrats is down from six points in the earlier NBC/WSJ poll (48 percent to 42 percent).
Among likely voters in new poll, 47 percent want a Democratic-controlled Congress and 44 percent want a GOP-controlled one.
By a 53 percent-to-40 percent margin, the poll also finds registered voters saying they’d be more likely to support a Republican candidate who will be a check and balance to Hillary Clinton and congressional Democrats, versus a Democratic candidate who will help Clinton and Democrats pass their agenda.
53 percent approve of Obama’s job as president
Finally, the NBC/WSJ poll finds President Obama’s job-approval rating at 53 percent among registered voters, which is up one point from last month.
It’s the six-straight month where the president’s rating has been above 50 percent in the poll, and it’s his highest rating since Dec. 2012, after he won re-election four years ago.
The NBC/WSJ poll was conducted Oct. 10-13 of 1,000 registered voters – via both cell phones and landline phones – and it has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points. Among the poll’s 905 likely voters, the margin of error is plus-minus 3.3 percentage points.