Well, the Russians figure another North Korean missile test is imminent.
“They are preparing to launch a new high range missile,” Russian lawmaker Anton Morozov tells RIA Novosti, adding that “they even gave us calculations, showing that the missile was capable of reaching the western coast of the US.”
Morozov was part of a Russian delegation making an “official” visit to Pyongyang this week.
Morozov is a member of State Duma’s international affairs committee from the pro-Kremlin Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, and visited North Korea with 2 other legislators from October 2-6.
This is moving USDJPY.
- JPY RISES ON SPECULATION ABOUT WEEKEND N. KOREA MISSILE TEST
And futs (first drop you see in ES was on payrolls, what you’re looking at is the 10:30 timestamp give or take):
European shares got hit as well:
And look at gold:
“I thought it had gone a bit quiet on the North Korea front. All of a sudden Twitter lights up with some loose Friday-afternoon (in London at least) talk and markets swing back and forth,” Bloomberg’s Paul Dobson writes, before lamenting that “it’s hard to base a trading strategy around this sort of thing though.”
This comes just days after reports that Russia is stepping up its economic support for everyone’s favorite hermit kingdom. “Russia is quietly boosting support for North Korea to try to stymie any U.S.-led push to oust Kim Jong Un as Moscow fears his fall would sap its regional clout and allow U.S. troops to deploy on Russia’s eastern border,” Reuters wrote earlier this week.
Basically, Russia is concerned that Trump is attempting to implement the same foreign policy that Washington has pursued for decades: a policy that includes regime change in places deemed a threat to America’s national interests or, perhaps more accurately, in places where installing puppet governments offers some kind of strategic advantage either to the U.S. or its allies.
“The Kremlin really believes the North Korean leadership should get additional assurances and confidence that the United States is not in the regime change business,” Andrey Kortunov, head of the Russian International Affairs Council, a think-tank close to the Russian Foreign Ministry, told Reuters.
Of course all of that is ironic, because what exactly would you call rigging another country’s election to in an effort to install a leader that was thought to be a friend of the Kremlin (if only because the Russians have compromising information about said leader)?
Amusingly, Moscow’s efforts to implement “regime” change in the U.S. have gone exactly like Washington’s regime change efforts in other parts of the world: horribly awry. And the spat between Trump and Kim proves it.
Here we go again.
Trump will get red and swollen in the face, his orange hair will turn reddish, he will puff up his chest, fold his arms, hold in his belly and go off the deep end and call Kim “Rocket man.” He’ll raise his voice and make a bunch of really really deep throated John Wayneish type threats to appease those who think eliminating Kim is the answer (by, you know, sending in black clad Ninjas or Special Ops guys dressed in waiters outfits), and he’ll threaten to commit National Economic Suicide by cutting off all trade with China if they don’t do something, anything to take away Kim’s nuclear weapons.
Then Kim and his generals will be seen in a photo smiling and laughing as they applaud as they look at a monitor or are seen laughing into a camera, which Trump will take to be Kim “laughing at me,” sending Trump into a Tillerson Rage!!
“Of course all of that is ironic, because what exactly would you call rigging another country’s election to in an effort to install a leader that was thought to be a friend of the Kremlin (if only because the Russians have compromising information about said leader)?’
KJU plays the same threatening innuendo game as Trump (releasing missile capability info sure to get back to the US leadership) – just as in Trump’s recent military dinner mystery comment “the calm before the storm.” Of course, Trump sounded mentally imbalanced in making his comment. Threat/innuendo diplomacy – is like the current knee jerk gun regulation debate. Focusing on symptoms rather causes. The gun debate is equally not about the cause of violence. Similarly, the real issue with the above quote – is it is equally symptomatic of a much greater problem and one that it doesn’t address the cause of that problem.
The 2016 Presidential election was the most obviously influenced and compromised election in US history by a foreign aggressor nation. In most countries with some form of democracy – news that a presidential election had been compromised – even the hint of a compromised election – would have forced the immediate call (by the nations voters, its other elected officials and even international election monitoring agencies) for a re-election and one with far greater scrutiny for foreign corrupting influences. In such democratic nations with questionable elections – you can be certain that those elected in a questionable election would not be allowed to take office until election irregularities were cleared up or corrected. No such call(s) have been – most notably lacking by US voters or by their political leadership in Congress. The only possible conclusion is that the US does not have a functional democracy in any form.
For the doubtful, these are defining and decisive points in the argument that the US no longer has any form of real democracy, but rather a system where many sources of influence – domestic and foreign – have far greater impact on election results than the will of the people. Of course the will of the people is no greater than their level of critical thinking skills, their averaged intellect, their accurate sources of information regarding candidates and an uncompromised system of elections that accurately reflect their will. Clearly, the US no longer has this circumstance – if it ever did. Consequently, whatever system of government we have – it is not a real democracy, at this point not even a token one.
Perhaps real question is whether any form of democracy that reflects the will of a questionably informed and averaged intellect voting public – can ever practically serve that public’s best interest? Perhaps a benevolent and enlightened dictatorship is more efficient and caring for its people, than a fake “democracy” made up of career politicians focused primarily on maintaining their jobs and expanding their power?
Unfortunately, even benevolent dictatorships are temporary and limited by the dictators life span, and therein lies the advantage of a representative process that only needs to evolve effectively, but remain an uncompromised process regarding the best interest of the people – fake democracy or not. The US governance by its fake democracy is a process that has not evolved necessarily and or sufficiently to maintain its own integrity.