US: North Korean Missile Launch a 'Catastrophic' Failure (washingtonpost.com) 192
An anonymous reader writes: North Korea failed to launch an intermediate-range missile on Friday, multiple news outlets, citing American and South Korean military officials, are reporting. The failure, The Washington Post reports, caused the regime an embarrassing blow on the most important day of the year on the North Korean calendar. For those unaware, North Korea had planned -- and tried -- to launch a missile to mark the 104th anniversary of the birthday of the country's 'eternal president,' Kim Il Sung.ABC further reports: "It was a fiery, catastrophic attempt at a launch that was unsuccessful," Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said Friday. U.S. officials are still assessing, but it was likely a road-mobile missile, given that it was launched from a location not usually used for ballistic missile launches, on the country's east coast, he said. The UN Security Council issued a statement saying its members "strongly condemned" the North's firing of a ballistic missile, which it said constituted a clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions although the launch was a failure. "We strongly condemn North Korea's missile test in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolutions, which explicitly prohibit North Korea's use of ballistic missile technology," the official said.
space-based lasers (Score:2)
In North Korean Headlines (Score:5, Funny)
Spectacular Fireworks To Celebrate Anniversary Of Glorious Leader Kim il Sung Birthday Huge Success!
Re: (Score:3)
In other news, NK' chief engineer Wernher Jeong -Ban will be visiting Hoeryong concentration camp very soon.
Bluffing (Score:2)
Re:Bluffing (Score:5, Interesting)
They don't have real nukes or ballistic missiles, yes, as that needs tech. They do have, though, an enormous number of 1950-era pieces of conventional artillery that would kill millions in northern parts of South Korea. This includes Seoul which is close to the border and whose metro area makes up roughly half of South Korea's population.
And that artillery is well dug-in in mountainous terrain so even nuking them wouldn't stop the carnage.
Re:Bluffing (Score:4, Interesting)
And that artillery is well dug-in in mountainous terrain so even nuking them wouldn't stop the carnage.
Nuking within 50 miles of Seoul would be counterproductive if your goal were to avoid deaths in South Korea, but I wouldn't be too sure about the above claim. 1950s-era artillery typically requires manual operation - killing the soldiers near it will prevent it from firing. Even if it's dug in, fuel-air bombs that either burn them out or make the air unbreathable would likely remove the threat, though it may not be politically feasible to kill that many people.
Re:Bluffing (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Even if it's dug in, fuel-air bombs that either burn them out or make the air unbreathable would likely remove the threat, though it may not be politically feasible to kill that many people.
Unless they're protected well enough that isn't going to get them all. I'm of the view that the North Korean artillery position is based on use of nukes by their foes. That means they're hardened against worse than fuel-air bombs.
Re: (Score:2)
Artillery emplacements generally require a hole to shoot out of.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
As it happens, the effect on personnel of a FAE [wikipedia.org] in foxholes, tunnels and bunkers is considerably more drastic than it is to people in the open because the pressure wave is far more concentrated in confined spaces. Unless the NK positions are completely airtight at the time of the blast (which would render them temporarily unusable) you could easily end up with undamaged artillery that's out of action because all of the gun crews are dead. An
Re: (Score:2)
It's well dug in and been there for 50 years. That means the locations are zeroed. It would be carnage, but wouldn't last nearly as long as the north Koreans hope. The south would have the air from second 1 of the 'war'.
Fuel air is a nasty new thing against fortifications. Hardened against nukes is not enough. Shockwave reflecting berms do nothing. Also cluster bombs.
A friend stationed on the DMZ in the early 90s was of the opinion that they were there to keep the south from going north as much as anyt
Re: (Score:2)
"N Korean military is huge"
Mainly because it's the only way of ensuring you and your family get fed.
It's been said that most of the battalions facing SK have no bullets for their weapons because in the event of hostilities commencing the first shots fired would be through the head of the local commanding officers.
Remember what happened in Iraq in 1991. At least 1/4 of the army simply dropped their weapons and tried to surrender as soon as the americans showed up. The Republican Guard was a different matter
Somebody's gonna get dead... (Score:4, Interesting)
I feel bad for the rocket scientists who are gonna be executed in some horrible way...
Re: (Score:3)
Not even 'Lil Kim is that stupid. After all, this is rocket science. And rapid unscheduled disassembly [planetary.org] is part and parcel of rocket science.
"If it doesn't blow, it doesn't go'.
Re:Somebody's gonna get dead... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh yes he is :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Somebody's gonna get dead... (Score:2)
Some rocket scientists are getting tossed into Kim Jon Un's Sarlacc pit as we write.
They're going to be required to pleasure their Leader by fisting him??
Re:Somebody's gonna get dead... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm guessing that they will be the guest passengers of honor on the next missile launch . . .
An interesting side note . . . I watched a documentary about the early years of the Soviet Union's space program. After a launch test exploded, the general in charge asked one of the chief designers, I believe it was Sergey Korolev, "Who was responsible for this failure!" In other words, who should be sent to Siberia. Korolev stood behind his engineers, and answered, "I am responsible."
We could use a few more engineering executive like that these days.
Re:Somebody's gonna get dead... (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt that. The rocket scientists are probably some of the only people in NK who are able to feel reasonably safe, as long as they stay out of politics.
Even in the Kim dynasty ends in a coup by some other faction, the next dictator is still going to want to have those rockets.
Hardly (Score:3)
Unless you have an endless supply of rocket scientists this is a bad idea.
Re:Hardly (Score:4, Interesting)
He might just have a near endless supply of rocket scientists. The problem being that they're not particularly *good* rocket scientists.
It was not a failure! (Score:2)
Dear leader just decided that the people of North Korea should see first hand what kind of punishment he has in store for the imperialist pigs, so they know why they do not want to live there.
Kim Jong Un (Score:2)
Kim Jong Un, using his Cartman voice: "I meant to do that!"
Re: (Score:2)
It wouldn't surprise me if he did. An "unsuccessful" test achieves the ideal balance between creating anxiety that will lead to concessions and hand-outs, without actually being dangerous and sparking an unpleasant intervention.
Re: (Score:2)
Stop watching TV, it is bad for you.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, the SG-1 approach. The 'dud' rocket that will take years to get working. Very nice.
DUH (Score:2)
Real Consequences For Their Actions! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
As soon as NK actually manages to launch a missile that might hit something other than the ocean or the launch site, the members of the UNSC will get arsed to actually care. Stern words are sufficient protection from these rockets.
Re: (Score:2)
It is worse than that, the U.S. might send John Kerry to talk at them....a very low blow.
Mocking someone on the ground? (Score:2)
I don't "favour" NK because its a fascist regime where human rights have no significance at all.
But, why should we pay attentition to the failures of the NK rocket program, when we should focus more on the successes of this program, and the nuclear program. Because the successes tend to be much more dangerous than the failures.
Citation: "It was a fiery, catastrophic attempt at a launch that was unsuccessful,"
Should we now call every exploded - and most importantly unmanned - U.S. military or commercial laun
Re:Mocking someone on the ground? (Score:5, Insightful)
why should we pay attentition to the failures of the NK rocket program
Because the rocket program has far more significance than the nuclear program. All the nukes in the world don't mean a thing if you can't deliver them. NK may be trying to fuck up Japan and China (the South has kinda learned to live with this shit) so they might ease up on the sanctions and/or take them seriously as a regional power.
But NK's rockets and nukes are more posturing than tactical. To mean anything, they would have to have the capability to mass-produce these devices (turn them out like sausages, to paraphrase Kruschev back in the day), which NK will never be able to do with their economy. That leaves them with a capacity to, at worst, blow their wad one time, then sit defenseless and receive a crushing retaliation from whatever country their wayward missile fell upon (be a real thing if a missile flew by to mistake China).
OTOH, the regime needs regularly-scheduled holidays and ceremonies to keep all but its hungriest citizens busy and engaged in non-subversive activities. I offer this [youtube.com] as an amusing, admittedly biased, but actual footage of a visit to NK and their weird cultish every-day required devotion to the founder and the great leader, particularly on their birthdays. They also need to maintain the narrative that they have the strongest army in the world, and that foreign invasion will happen at any time. Indeed, they have a million-man standing army to maintain each day from falling apart under its own weight. Thus, the dog-and-pony show of missiles and parades and nuke tests and two TV channels showing documentaries of how great their country is, until the power gets cut at nightfall.
Re: (Score:2)
Citation: "It was a fiery, catastrophic attempt at a launch that was unsuccessful,"
Should we now call every exploded - and most importantly unmanned - U.S. military or commercial launch failiure also a fiery catastrophic attempt?
You must be new at this. Even the people who LAUNCHED the failed Antares that blew up at Wallops recently referred to it as a "castrophic" failure. It's a word people actually use to describe things like giant exploding rockets.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/... [usatoday.com]
Re: (Score:2)
In aerospace, a catastrophic failure is one that destroys the test article. Perhaps you're confusing it with "calamitous" or "apocalyptic".
How many will get shot? (Score:3)
I wonder if we are helping those missile fail (Score:2)
Do we have anything that could take out a missile in the boost phase? Especially if we know when and where the launch is happening?
Re:Nork Watch (Score:5, Funny)
I was pretty much thinking this. Why does it matter what Li'l Kim does? Did he change his last name to Kadashian or why does anyone care?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Nork Watch (Score:3)
they are capable of bombing the crap out of South Korea
As they've been for over half a century; tell me, what objectives would be fulfilled by doing this?? (Yeah, I didn't think so; nice try though.)
...and/or Japan.
What, with all their stealth bombers?! Shut the fuck up, already.
Re: Nork Watch (Score:4, Interesting)
North Korea doesn't need an objective. They are better armed than alqueda, and their leadership goes through child like hissy fits if they are not given enough attention. Seriously go through news history. If you are paying attention nothing will get said about North Korea for months and then they do something like this.
Actually now that I think about maybe Kim is related to Kim(kardshian)
So you give them a little attention, pretend they are adults and let them screw it up. Unlike a child you can't displine a country, especially one that has a parent that forgives everything(China).
Though even China is starting to get tired of it they have to save face and so the charade goes on for another generation
Re: (Score:3)
The Italian ice cream company?
Re: (Score:2)
We are deeply honoured by the knowledge that the DPRK's propaganda ministry deem Slashdot worthy of attention.
Re:Nork Watch (Score:5, Interesting)
Nobody who even remotely counts is starving in North Korea. Did you take a look at that fatso Kim lately? Yes, the peasants are starving, but who gives a shit about them?
The very last thing Kim and his cronies are going to do is upset someone who could end their comfortable rule. They know exactly if they as much as sneezed into the direction of SKor or Japan the reply would be devastating, so they keep it at pretending to be big boys. The whole show is mostly directed at their own population to show just how mighty they are and how much they have to spend on defending against the imperialists who would immediately end their Juche paradise if they didn't.
Read your 1984, it's well described therein.
Re: (Score:2)
Sneezing maybe, but they've fired shells into SK and kidnapped Japanese in the past :(
Re: (Score:2)
"Did you take a look at that fatso Kim lately?"
Of course. He eats peasants and their babies.
Re: (Score:2)
I doubt that he could get that fat from peasants alone, there's very little meat in them.
Re: (Score:2)
"North Korea's posturing helps both South Korea and Japan cover up their own embarassing internal mistakes"
Of course, having a bogeyman to scare people with is highly effective at being able to keep them docile and not noticing their rights have been stripped away.
Iran was the bogeyman for a long time, which suited Iran's leaders just fine as they could use the west as their own bogeyman to scare their locals.
The best response to hysterical ranting isn't to up the military ante, but to point and laugh, whil
Re: Nork Watch (Score:3)
Re:Nork Watch (Score:4, Insightful)
Dammit! They can't tell other countries what laws they may or may not pass! That's our job!
Re: (Score:2)
Check out the size of the door that she's climbing out of. That's some very heavily armored material.
Re: (Score:2)
Not really surprising that a head of state would ride around in a car with armored windows.
Re: (Score:2)
That is actually worse than it looks at face value. At face value, she merely didn't intervene when someone sued someone else. That would be fine. Actually, if she did intervene it would be grounds to complain because she is the head of the legislative, and as such she should not meddle with the justice system. Simply because of the separation of power. That would have been a GOOD thing.
Things aren't that easy, though.
The law concerned here is paragraph 103 of the German criminal code, which explicitly disa
Re: (Score:3)
Oh come on, Hillary Clinton isn't that bad.
Re:threatened to nuke America (Score:5, Informative)
Now that's cute.
Ok, allow me to clue you in on North Korea's biggest problem when it comes to ICBMs: They have nowhere to test them.
ICBMs aren't easy to do. You not only have to get them up, you also have to get them down. Actually, the getting them up part is the easy one. Getting ICBMs, or rather, their payload, back down, preferably where it should go, and let that warhead go off the way it should, that's a feat and a half. There is a good reason why old ICBMs had insane yields, culminating the the Tsar Bomba with a hundred MTon: Until not so long ago, we couldn't really make sure that they reach their goal with pinpoint accuracy. So the idea was that with bigger yield, we have more leeway if it goes astray a few 100 miles.
And that's just targeting. You also need to shield it against heat during reentry, you need to take precautions for the g forces acting on it during reentry (hint: WAY higher than anything any human could survive), and with all this every instrument in your warhead has to stay operational and accurate.
I hope we can agree that this takes lots of testing, yes? It certainly did for the US, the USSR, China, France, India... but you might notice something all those countries have in common: Either unrestricted access to the sea or lots and lots of land mass.
North Korea has neither.
And that is a big problem when testing ICBMs. Your enemy can easily watch you test and see exactly just how far you got it nailed. And, bluntly, if they have troubles with the "up" part, we can go back to bed.
Wake me when they get to the point where they could possibly start getting that "down" part right. Then we can talk about turning NKor into a glass wasteland.
Re:threatened to nuke America (Score:4, Informative)
The Tsar Bomba was not an ICBM weapon, and was never intended to be delivered by an ICBM - it was always intended to be a bomber delivered weapon.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The Tsar Bomba was never a weapon, it was a spectacle, a device made to intimidate imagination but not to be a weapon against any enemy (except if the enemy is common sense). It could not be put onto an ICBM but also it could not be put into a normal aircraft. The Tu95 bomber used to drop it had to be modified, parts of fuselage removed and mid section fuel tanks removed. With the device weighing abo8ut 27 tons and with more than half of the fuel tanks gone the airplane could never make it from Russia to
Re: (Score:2)
You realise that the US was not the only target during the cold war, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Even so, the modified bomber was so lumbering it wouldn't have made it very far across the Soviet border before being shot down.
Re: (Score:2)
It was never intended to be delivered anywhere except the island they obliterated with it. It was the USSR doing a major dick wagging effort at a time that the United States was building smaller weapons, because they make more strategic sense.
There's a reason why the US never made a weapon capable of more than 10Mt, and then started working smaller - the launchers and maintenance of such a thing are stupendously costly, and the inverse-cube law shows that you get far less bang than you would if you put 3 4
Re: (Score:2)
And he is right, the Tsar Bomba was a bad example. Though we could build rocket-deliverable 100MT yield payload by now. Today we're just much better at aiming and the surplus weight is rather used for chaff and other technology aimed to counter defense systems.
Re: (Score:2)
NK would be completely and utterly destroyed if they started launching missiles towards the US. And how accurate do they really need to be with a nuclear missile? All they need to do is point it in the general direction of the US and push the red button. What is surprising is that China has not taken care of the NK problem all by themselves. China is being surrounded by missile defense batteries capable of degrading their own nuclear deterrent. NK threats are causing every country in SE Asia to upgrade thei
Re: (Score:2)
The reason the U.S. is becoming more popular in East Asia is China, not the Norks. Those countries have always assumed the U.S. would protect them from the Norks. China is a different story since they are so integrated into the world's economy.
China doesn't give a flying rats ass about the Norks or their refugees which are likely to head south, not north to China. What has the dirty little squits running China getting their panties in a knot is a vibrant reunited Korea showing the Chinese how to run a moder
Re: (Score:3)
There are already a lot of NK refugees in China and they have been going there for many years. I've spoken to one. There's an entire "state" of people who speak Korean next to Russia and NK. When 1970's China is the promised land of plenty you know that the place they came from is well and truly horrible.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually you need to be pretty accurate. There is a lot of pretty empty countryside on the west coast of the US. NK have only demonstrated an ability to build very small scale nukes. Nukes so small there has been questions about whether they actually went off properly. That results in relatively small blast areas.
IF they managed to get it right into the middle of LA they might kill 50k with say another 50k seriously injured. But that would be the mother of all hail Mary shots for them. When you consid
Re: (Score:2)
If they only managed to injure someone's dog they would still earn them a full retaliatory strike from the US who do have outstanding targeting capabilities and some fairly clean tactical nuclear war heads.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, if they lobbed a nuclear device anywhere inside the territory of the United States, there would still be a massive retaliatory strike from one of the Ohio-class submarines that you know is somewhere in the Pacific. Even if they landed one in a subsistence crater from where we nuked ourselves in the 1940s and 1950s at the Nevada Test Site, they still shot a nuclear weapon at us. You don't get to do that, and there's no handicap or 'aww shucks' mentality in that game.
They might not be able to hit us i
Re: (Score:2)
I actually really hope you are wrong. No question that the US has the capability of targetting Kim in his toilet, but if they ever did manage to land a single nuke on US soil I really really really hope the response is not 20+ massive bombs heading the other way.
Kill him, and his regime. But please don't spread nuclear fallout over a highly populated region which includes countries that have true ICBM nuclear capabilities. What would China do if its sensors picked up incoming nuclear missiles that could
Re: (Score:2)
You point out a lot of compelling reasons for the US to NOT rub out NK.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with turning the Norks into glass is that radiation drifts on the wind, right over Japan, and the U.S. Oh, you were thinking something smaller so the Norks have time to use their vast missile arsenal on Japan and S. Korea. How many of them are you willing to sacrifice?
Re: threatened to nuke America (Score:2)
There is a good reason why old ICBMs had insane yields, culminating the the Tsar Bomba
Incorrect; Tsar Bomba was not an ICBM warhead.
Re: (Score:3)
Wait... You think we "increasingly have such people in charge?" Nah, the world has always been like this. There have always been lunatics in charge. You might even say we have fewer in-charge lunatics now than we've ever had. Can you imagine if Caligula had had nuclear weapons?
Re: (Score:2)
Could you please at least design and launch an ICBM in a game before you post such nonsense? You sure are one of those guys that think the Minuteman comes down completely as it went up, boosters and rockets and all, right?
Is there any chance you could at least watch a video about an ICBM-test or at least read a wikipedia article on ICBMs? Please? It would be less painful to read your post if you did, because you sure wouldn't write such nonsense about a "midpoint". Hint: Reenty is really a bitch, both to ca
Re: (Score:2)
He also mentioned a parabola, which is the correct curve if the direction of gravity doesn't change. I'd imagine that using it for an ICBM would cause it to miss very badly. The correct curve is the ellipse, since the ICBM (the B stands for Ballistic) is essentially in an orbit that hits the planet.
Re: (Score:2)
The Tsar Bomba TEST [wikipedia.org] yielded 50MT. That was because it was missing it's outer uranium boost blanket that would've made it dirty as sin but a full 100MT.
I quote:
The initial three-stage design was capable of yielding approximately 100 Mt, but it would have caused too much nuclear fallout and the plane delivering the bomb would not have enough time to escape the explosion. To limit fallout, the third stage and possibly the second stage had a lead tamper instead of a uranium-238 fusion tamper ...
Re: (Score:2)
Get back on the campaign trail, Trump, leave the commenting to people with half a brain.
Re: (Score:2)
Hey! Juche doctrine forbids reliance on foreign powers! North Korea is very capable of fucking things up without any foreign interference!
Re: (Score:2)
the need to trash talk North Korea so hard
"Catastrophic" does seem a little over the top. Although technically correct, it's the kinda thing the NK's would pronounce about us if something blew up. But the NK make everything so much about theater (founder's birthday and all), it's hard not to get sucked into it and take a jab at 'em.
Objectively, though, each failure is a baby-step toward getting to something that works, so long as they don't shoot or hard-labor the failure engineers (to show the great leader's displeasure), and whenever they can b
Re: (Score:2)
Well, for one thing, the US is still at war with North Korea. We've just been in a nice long cease-fire. No treaty has ever been signed.
Your friend (Score:5, Insightful)
Your "friend" visited the heavily scripted tourist areas of North Korea. It's not an accurate comparison.
Re: (Score:2)
Not a dramatic difference, you say? [bbc.com]
While satellite imagery is nice, it's only a proxy. Try reading some of the stories told by people who used to live in NK and have fled the country.
People used to use your line when talking about the Soviet Union. Guess what? The wall fell, the USSR collapsed and the situation turned out to have been as bad as we'd been led to believe by "propaganda", if not worse.
Re: (Score:2)
Why should we believe them? Anybody who wants to leave NK must be a capitalist running-dog and a lackey of the round-eyed yankee scum!
Re: (Score:2)
Google 'korea night satellite picture' you halfwit.
Re: (Score:2)
SK is definitely better off, but the difference is not as dramatic as you have been led to believe.
Here's an example of the difference [independent.co.uk]. I think it shows just how false your assertion is.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I don't see how wasting of energy on non-essential things (most of the light you see at night is from deserted buildings, advertising etc.) is a positive trait. But maybe I misunderstood the point of your post?
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, because clearly artificial light is wasting energy on non-essential things.
Signed,
the 18th century.
Re: (Score:2)
Your "friend" visited the heavily scripted tourist areas of North Korea. It's not an accurate comparison.
... and you know this because your government's propaganda told you to believe it.
Learn to think for yourself. Go to Google maps, and pan across the DMZ. Compare random areas of north and south. SK is definitely better off, but the difference is not as dramatic as you have been led to believe.
No, I know this because I have friends who have visited North Korea, had "minders" with them whenever they went anywhere, and know you can't go outside of certain tourist areas.
Re:Nork Watch (Score:5, Informative)
I have a friend that just returned from a trip to Asia. He visited both Koreas. His take, same thing with different propaganda.
South Korea has some significant things that NK doesn't, like food and electricity,
Look up one of those NASA composites of night shots of Earth from the ISS. What's that brilliantly lit island between Japan and China, you wonder? But look closer: it's really a peninsula.
Re: (Score:3)
South Korea has some significant things that NK doesn't, like food and electricity,
And a conspicuous lack of prison labor camps with mass graves. And a lack of sinking other people's ships. And a lack of executing people who say anything even a wee bit critical of the government (and their families, too, for good measure). The South also has completely irrelevant things like uncensored communications with the outside world. Little pleasantries like that.
Re: (Score:2)
North Korea could have those things too (Food, Electricity) if they didn't spend their national energy on pissing off the rest of the world. But they do, so they don't.
Re: (Score:3)
I have a friend that just returned from a trip to Asia. He visited both Koreas. His take, same thing with different propaganda.
My God, one Korea is a healthy liberal democracy with successful global tech and cultural exports, and the other Korea is a totalitarian dictatorship that can't feed its people, can't provide them with electricity, and is threatening and provoking it's neighbors on a regular basis both with rhetoric and military exercises.
Your friend is... okay, I'm not even sure how else to describe that sort of sheer, utter, willful ignorance. I've heard the same refrain from utterly naïve sympathizers my entire lif
Re: (Score:2)
Your "friend" did not noticed anything different. Like all people in North Korea are slim, because they are on permanet diet, because they do not have extra food.
They're smaller along other dimensions, too. [imgur.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not "all" people in North Korea are slim. Their 'dear leader' is pretty fat, actually.
Re:Nork Watch (Score:4, Informative)
There's no such thing in Cuba. You don't even need a tour guide. Source: Me. I've been to Cuba twice. I'm currently trying to go before I have to return home to Maine. I'm not sure why you'd state such a thing but it's not even remotely true. Yeah, it sucks to get caught in a lie but, you know, some of us actually travel and have traveled extensively.
Re: (Score:3)
Sure do. Here, have a look here:
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Pick a link, any link. You do not need a guide in Cuba and I know of nothing other than military areas and government buildings/property that is restricted access. My first trip to Cuba was with a tour group. My second was on my own and I meandered about at will and never encountered anywhere that they didn't let me in - and that included a few government buildings.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, because there's absolutely nothing to worry about when another government says that they are going to preemptively strike you or your allies with nuclear weapons on a weekly basis.
There's no place in the world today for that kind of bullshit, and even China is acting against them at the UN. I have no idea what the hell is with people defending North Korea's behavior here.
Re: (Score:2)
...and letting ex-presidents retain the honorific doesn't bother me nearly so much as incumbent presidents (or anyone else) using the term "commander in chief" when they're not referring to military affairs.
Re: (Score:2)
"Amerika" has now replaced "Hooray for Hollywood" as part of my zeitgeist.