Suicide is Theft in DPRK

A warning from The Only Obese Man in North Korea:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has issued a secret order for local authorities to prevent suicides after data showed an increase in people taking their own lives this year, government officials told Radio Free Asia.
...
Kim officially defined suicide as an “act of treason against socialism,” and ordered local governments to take preventative measures.

Entire families are offing themselves and leaving suicide notes that blast the state for starving its people. The officials aren't bothered by people quietly dying of starvation in large numbers, but leaving suicide notes that get passed around undermines the regime, or so they think.

Treason in North Korea is, no doubt, an offense punishable by a gruesome execution, so it's unclear what the State Cheese Scarfer thinks he can accomplish.

(Thanks to Oko)

Like They're Going to Give a Shit

China has put US arms companies Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman on its sanctions list for selling weapons to Taiwan, the Foreign Ministry in Beijing said on Friday.

I doubt if either company sells anything to the PRC, so what do they care if they're on the PRC's sanctions list? To them, it's probably no more significant than being sanctioned by North Korea.

Speaking of North Korea, following the visit to Russia by the Only Obese Man in North Korea, my guess is that they are going to send the Russians a lot of artillery shells that are decades past their "good if used by" dates.

Is the Only Obese Man in North Korea Near Death? (Plus, Nice Move, Taiwan)

Reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is seriously ill after heart surgery are not true, officials in South Korea have said.

Headlines that Kim Jong-un was "gravely ill", "brain-dead" or "recovering from an operation" were always going to be impossible to verify.

But the presidential office in Seoul has said there have been no particular signs from the North to indicate the 36-year-old is "gravely ill".

Guess we'lk see if Trump'rs received his last "beautiful letter" from the Fat Rocketman.

Meanwhile...

Some 2 million face masks donated by Taiwan arrived in Japan on Tuesday for delivery to public hospitals and special schools across the country in its fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

Taiwan got a two-fer, in that they helped out a neighboring country and they stuck a very public finger in the eye of the Communists.

Nicely played.

Fuck North Korea

North Korea fired three short-range projectiles off its east coast on Monday, South Korea’s military said, two days after the North threatened to take “momentous” action to protest outside condemnation over its earlier live-fire exercises.

We don't need Little Rocketman's brand of shit right now.

Time to dust off the "bounce the radioactive rubble" war plans.

But, But, He Sent Trump Such Wonderful Letters!

North Korea has fired two short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast, according to South Korea's military, the second such launch in a week.

The two missiles were launched from the Wonsan area early on Wednesday.

Last week's launch was the first such action since US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un met in June.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to brag about his bromance with one of the most brutal dictators on the globe.

Trump has completely taken over the GOP, which is why none of them question why Trump only gets along with authoritarians and dictators.

What Trump Has Wrought

Iran has breached a 300kg (660lb) limit on its stockpile of low-enriched uranium set under a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, sources say.

One told Iran's Fars news agency that the International Atomic Energy Agency had measured the stockpile on Monday.

Make no mistake, this is on Trump. He recklessly pulled out of the Iranian nuclear deal, hoping that he could bully Iran into giving into a deal more to Trump's liking.

It hasn't happened.

There was a chance to bring Iran back into the world community, which Trump threw away because anything negotiated by Obama has to be bad. That is his motivation, "Obama bad, Trump good". Trump would impose a ban on AR-15s if Obama had had range time on one.

More broadly, the US government bleats about Iran being a state supporter of terrorism, but they continue give a free pass to the Saudis, which have aggressively spread a hate-based version of Islam around the world. It's been well-documented that the Saudis have provided aid and comfort to all manner of terrorist groups, including al Qaeda and ISIS, if they agreed not to bother the Saudis.

To shift gears a little, color me "unimpressed" over Trump's latest stunt with one of the more murderous dictators on the globe. Trump is a showman, or, less charitably, a circus act. While they say that lower-level negotiations will begin again soon, those will be farcical. North Korea has nuclear weapons and they are not about to give them up. Trump may promise that there will be a better life for North Koreans, but Kim Jong Un doesn't care. His family runs the country, they have for generations. In a country beset by repeated famines, Kim appears to be morbidly obese. The Kim dynasty well know that a people obsessed with filling their bellies every day aren't going to ask for higher things, such as freedom. In short, there is likely nothing that Trump can offer Kim to get an agreement.

Any lower-level negotiation involving the United States is farcical, nowadays. There is no American team anymore. What we have, instead, is an impressionable toddler with no impulse control at the top. So no matter what deal is reached, Trump can, and has, whimsically throw the whole thing away. Other nations are slowly realizing that any negotiation that doesn't directly involve Trump will be risky and, quite possibly, a huge waste of time.