Where should I start? Well, I guess the best place to begin is with the news in America. Apparently, for once, the Republicans have come up with something as a useful alternative to constant overtime payments by businesses (especially for small business). I'll wait to cast some judgment until I know the details, but it doesn't seem like a far-fetched idea to give paid time off, instead of overtime, but still it should be known that overtime is still a necessity in the private sector until it becomes more unionized. Anyway, there's that and Republicans looking for other ways to show that they're in fact reasonable problem-solvers. This is only a ruse in my eyes, but I'll go along with it for the time being.
My main concern, is not the Republicans at the moment. It's actually events abroad and here in the Bay Area. Let's start locally first. Over the weekend, there was apparently a bad fire that killed 5 people going to a bachellorette party in a limo. Well, as tragic as it is, I think there needs to be more details as to what happened.
As for events abroad, well let's take what's going on with the situations in both the Mideast and North Korea. The Mideast is no surprise in my eyes, as Iran's doing everything to distract world attention away from its ilicit nuclear program (I say this in the sense that Iran's senior governing officials still refuse to make the mandatory disclosures to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the international watchdog for all national atomic programs as per the Non-Proliferation Treaty). Additionally, it feels that its chief ally in Syria (Bashar al-Assad) needs a distraction from the rebellion back home; and what better way than to build up tensions with Assad's neighbor, Israel? Well, that's fairly self-explanatory.
As for North Korea, apparently there was a father-son duo charged with conspiring to illegally sell the Kim regime components to further help them construct their illegal nuclear weapons program, even doing so through the nose of America's sanctions. Well, let's see how else this plays out, because this is very serious. My major concern with North Korea, is that it won't be long until Kim Jong Un decides to unleash the 1,000,000 man Korean People's Army against South Korea, as well launch a nuclear strike against it. This is because Kim feels he has less to lose by picking a fight with the numerically weaker Military forces in the South, than by picking a fight with America, who could easily bring to bear both Russia and China in this sense. I know off-hand that both the Russians and the Chinese will join the Americans in defending the South Koreans and Japanese in this scenario, because of the fact that both the Russian and Chinese leaderships' patience with the North has worn exceedingly thin, and both, I'm quite sure, have warned the Kim regime that more provocative behavior will result in more dire consequences as well as making it harder for them to justify their continued resistance to additional action in the United Nations.
In addition, both America and Russia have a long standing partnership in counter-proliferation, and both see the North Korean nuclear program as a massive destabilizing factor in East Asia. Additionally, China's come to see that the Kim regime does not provide a good enough buffer to deter any American military presence. I think America's Foreign Secretary, John Kerry, made this quite clear to the Chinese leadership, in saying that unless they do more to reign in their ally's provocative actions and threats of pre-emptive nuclear war, they can expect to see a much larger American military presence in the region, and a much more aggressive stance to defend itself.
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