Free Republic

Emily Thornberry has insisted that the UK can talk to the US without working with Donald Trump. In a shocking attack on the elected leader of the US, the shadow foreign secretary said that Mr Trump's rhetoric on North Korea was intemperate, inappropriate and dangerous. This comes as the US leader tweeted last night that "only one thing will work with North Korea" in response to failed diplomatic efforts. Tensions between the Trump administration and Kim Jong-Un has dramatically escalated in recent weeks. Speaking to Sky News, Mrs Thornberry said: "I wouldn’t ever change my tone with Trump. "I would...

When President Trump gave a fiery campaign speech in Huntsville, Ala., on Friday evening, he drew a rapturous roar by ridiculing Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, as “Little Rocket Man.” Among diplomats and national security specialists, the reaction was decidedly different. After Mr. Trump repeated his taunt in a tweet late Saturday and threatened that Mr. Kim and his foreign minister “won’t be around much longer” if they continue their invective against the United States, reactions ranged from nervous disbelief to sheer terror. Mr. Trump’s willingness to casually threaten to annihilate a nuclear-armed foe was yet another reminder of...

French President Emmanuel Macron said at the United Nations this week that renouncing the Iran nuclear deal would be “a grave error.” “Not respecting it would be irresponsible, because it is a good agreement that is essential to peace at a time where the risk of an infernal conflagration cannot be excluded,” he told the General Assembly in New York on Tuesday. The remarks were an indirect riposte to President Trump, who earlier the same day called the deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has...

Germany would lend its weight to a diplomatic push to end North Korean nuclear weapons and missile development along the lines of a past deal with Iran, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday. “I would say yes immediately if we were asked to join talks,” Merkel told weekly newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.Talks between Iran and six world powers, sealed with a 2015 deal for Tehran to roll back its nuclear program and submit to inspections in exchange for some sanctions being rolled back, were “a long but important period of diplomacy” that had achieved a “good end,” she added. […]...

France’s foreign minister warned Friday that North Korea could have the capacity to deliver a nuclear strike on the United States and even Europe “within months”. Jean-Yves Le Drian called the situation following a string of missile tests by Pyongyang “extremely serious” and urged the reclusive state to turn to dialogue to ease spiralling tensions. “We see a North Korea whose objective is to have missiles capable of transporting a nuclear weapon tomorrow,” Le Drian told RTL radio. “In a few months, that will be a reality. At that moment, when it has the capability to hit the US, even...

Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday that she opposed any use of force to resolve the conflict with North Korea, after President Donald Trump said the US military was “locked and loaded”. “I don’t envision a military solution to this conflict, but rather consistent work as we’ve observed at the United Nations Security Council,” Merkel told reporters. “Germany will very intensively take part in the options for resolution that are not military, but I consider a verbal escalation to be the wrong response,” she said when asked about Trump’s latest tweets on North Korea. Merkel called for “very close cooperation”...

Former President Barack Obama’s National Security adviser, Susan Rice, wants President Donald Trump to accept North Korea as a nuclear power. “History shows that we can, if we must, tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea — the same way we tolerated the far greater threat of thousands of Soviet nuclear weapons during the Cold War,” she wrote in a New York Times op-ed, criticizing the president’s “fire and fury” rhetoric in response to the escalating tensions between the two countries. Rice urged Gen. John Kelly, White House chief of staff, to stop Trump, and she pointedly attacked Dr. Sebastian Gorka,...

RUSH: Let’s dissect some of this North Korea stuff, because the main thing here is it isn’t new. The North Koreans and their nuclear desires is an old story. For those of you who are Gen X, you might remember the nineties. For those of you who are Millennials, you won’t, and you’re just gonna have to trust me that throughout the nineties, the Clinton administration — 1993 all the way to 2000 — North Korea was, off and on, a top-tier story and precisely about their nuclear ambitions and desires. Throughout that period, throughout two terms of the Clinton...

President Bush will nominate Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, to become the next overall commander of American forces in the Middle East as part of a personnel shuffle to take place by early fall, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced today.

I don’t really follow North Korea (mostly, I try to stay up-to-date on a few countries that begin with the letter “I”), but it seems to me that we are looking at recent events in the wrong context. North Korea is a charter member of the Axis of Evil, and works hand in glove with the other surviving regime of that infamous trinity, Iran. I’ve been writing for years about the intimate relationship between the two, ranging from North Korean assistance in digging tunnels in Iranian mountains and in the Tehran subway system, to Iranian cooperation with North Korean missile...

When Mr. Tillerson convened the U.N. Security Council to ask it to act against North Korea (which, of course, it won’t), the Norks answered with another missile launch. That one failed, as did a similar launch earlier in April. President Trump told Reuters in an interview on Thursday that a “major, major conflict” with North Korea was possible over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Mr. Tillerson’s U.N. initiative included a signal that we might negotiate directly with North Korea but only under conditions that we would set. Such negotiations, Tillerson must know, can never occur for two reasons. The...

A North Korean missile “blew up almost immediately” on its test launch on Sunday, the U.S. Pacific Command said, hours before U.S. Vice President Mike Pence was due in South Korea for talks on the North’s increasingly defiant arms program. The failed launch from North Korea’s east coast, ignoring admonitions from major ally China, came a day after North Korea held a military parade in its capital, marking the birth anniversary of the state founder, in which what appeared to be new long-range ballistic missiles were on display. South Korea said the combined show of force “threatened the whole world”....

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has invited the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, to Moscow next year to mark the 70th anniversary of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany in the second world war, the Kremlin’s spokesman said on Friday. It would be Kim’s first foreign visit since taking the helm of the reclusive east Asian state in 2011. His personal envoy travelled to Moscow last month as part of efforts by the two Cold War-era allies to improve relations. “Yes, such an invitation was sent,” a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told the state news agency, Tass. Russia marks the...

He never made it to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban, but Kwon -- a Northern Virginia engineer who fled the United States nine days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks said it wasn't for lack of effort. Kwon, 29, a South Korea-born graduate of Virginia Tech who is serving an 11-year prison sentence as a result of his guilty plea last year on federal conspiracy and weapons charges. He has emerged as the prosecution's star witness in the case against Ali Al-Timimi, an American Islamic scholar charged with recruiting soldiers for the Taliban just five days after Sept....

The Obama administration claimed that it negotiated with Syria and Russia to eliminate "100 percent" of Syria's chemical weapons. After President Barack Obama's 2012 "red line" warning to Syria about using chemical weapons, Syria launched a chemical attack in August 2013. But U.S. military action was avoided by the alleged Russian/American/Syrian diplomatic accomplishment, achieved without "firing a shot." Here's what we were told: President Obama, on April 28, 2014: "We're getting chemical weapons out of Syria without having initiated a strike." Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., crowed on June 1, 2014: "We're getting the chemical weapons out of Syria." And Sen....

“I do not fear Trump. We must thank the new American president because he showed the real face of America and because he exposed what we have been saying for decades about the political, moral and economic corruption in it.” This is the recent statement made by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei against the newly-elected US administration. Yes, we’re passing through a new phase. There has been a major transformation following the reactive years of isolationism which show the depth of the roots that America has returned to in terms of engaging with world crises and contributing to managing...

A pledge by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to advance efforts this year to test-fire an intercontinental ballistic missile received a blunt Twitter slap down Monday from President-elect Donald Trump: “It won’t happen!” “North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S.,” Trump tweeted. “It won’t happen!” In a subsequent post, the president-elect criticized China — North Korea’s closest ally and biggest trading partner — for not doing enough to rein in its unstable neighbor. “China has been taking out massive amounts of money & wealth...

Satellite Pics Suggest Iran, North Korea Cooperating on Nuclear Research by TheTower.org Staff | 12.29.16 4:28 pm The discovery of a working North Korean missile site that was previously thought to be inactive may suggest that the country is cooperating with Iran on ballistic missile and nuclear technology, Voice of America reported Wednesday. PRESS RELEASE: Strategic Sentinel Finds Previously Unknown North Korean Site Read more here: https://t.co/NJk9a9LBgd#NorthKorea #VOA @W7VOA pic.twitter.com/f3S24izQOn — Strategic Sentinel (@StratSentinel) December 28, 2016 Satellite images taken and analyzed by the intelligence firm Strategic Sentinel discovered a missile silo in Geumchang-ri, a mountainous area in North Pyongan...

The Treasury Department and Justice Department took actions Monday against four Chinese individuals and one Chinese company for conspiring to aid North Korea’s nuclear weapons program in violation of U.S. economic sanctions. The unsealing of criminal charges and the imposition of new sanctions are aimed at shutting down a major Chinese node supporting North Korea’s weapons proliferation, officials said. The Justice Department charged the individuals and the trading company with conspiring to launder money and with evading sanctions. The four individuals and the company are all located in China. …

The professors interviewed on Press TV include Alex Vitale of Brooklyn College, Heather Gautney of Fordham University, and John Hammond of City University of New York. video at link