Majorityrights News > Category: Geopolitics

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“The first time I saw ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, I had tremendous respect for George Bailey, who was the main character.”

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Trump gained the White house through a pledge to un-do the Iran deal and a claim that was his inspiration to run for President.

Newsweek, “Tillerson, Mattis and McMaster Present Trump With Plan to Stop Iranian Aggression”, 12 Sept 2017:

A Kurdish-Arab coalition known as the Syrian Democratic Forces has been battling ISIS in eastern Syria but has encountered hostile fire from Iranian-backed forces, as well as Syrian rebels backed by Turkey.

Taking Newsweek’s word for it, one would believe Iran is the aggressor and on the wrong side of this one - but is this true?

Ibid: Trump has railed against the landmark nuclear deal signed in July 2015 between the Islamic Republic and six world powers, threatening on the presidential campaign trail to rip up the agreement that lifted sanctions in return for reining in the country’s uranium enrichment program.

What did you really expect from Trumpstein?

My personal position with regard to so-called “Hispanics” is that we should first of all differentiate among them. “Hispanic” is an egregious term, auguring to do the very worst thing which we seek to stave-off, i.e., to blend away racial distinctions, as the term covers and then tends to politically coerce the blending of Amerindians, Whites, Jews and blacks.

We need to distinguish them hence. We need to distinguish Marrano “huWhites”. We need to distinguish those who are black and have anything beyond a small amount of black - they should be looked upon as an out group - not our friends: e.g., Puerto Ricans typically have a significant amount of sub-Saharan African, 25%. Whereas Mexicans on average have only small amount, 4% as evaluated by National Geographic Human Genome Project, Gen 2.0. These kinds, Amerindians and Indios (mixed Indian and White) should be looked upon as people to cultivate as allies.

Certain Caribbean mixes should be shown some compassion in an effort to reconstruct as much as possible the now non-existent pure Indian strains which were forcibly bred-away with African slaves by Spanish conquistadors. Similarly, Indos should be allowed protection from furthering of the mongrelization that was visited upon them by the Spanish conquests.

As these historical errors are corrected, “a new dream” act should be enunciated in which the riches and opportunities of the Americas are shared between Whites, Asians and Amerindios in exchange for friendly terms and alliance with Whites against black, Jewish and Muslim imposition.

This must be arranged in accordance with human ecological and resource management - especially population carrying capacity: which tends to be the elephant in the room that liberals overlook in their anti-racist fervor. Make the said kinds friends and hold them accountable to our alliance in pervasive ecology and human ecology of our distinct kinds. We do this deliberately, or we are without a vast alliance, in fact it is arrayed against us as distinct peoples (nationals) and our habitats all…

Haaretz, 6 Sept 2017:

Opinion // Save DACA: We U.S. Jews Won’t Let Trump End the American Dream

On DACA, the president appears unmoved by arguments of compassion, humanity, national interest or common sense. Now is the time to take a stand and take action.

“Dreamers” originally from Ecuador watch Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ remarks on ending the DACA program on a smartphone in Manhattan, September 5, 2017. Credit: Drew Angerer/AFP

●DACA ‘is being rescinded,’ Sessions announces after Trump moves to kill ‘Dreamers’ program

●U.S. Jewish groups blast Trump’s decision to scrap ‘Dreamers’ program as ‘cruel, unnecessary’

●WATCH // Donald Trump vehemently defended ‘Dreamers’ on Fox News in 2011

The Trump administration moved on Tuesday to terminate the legal status of 800,000 immigrant children and young adults. These young people are currently protected by Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. DACA is only available to people who have been in the United States continuously since June 2007, so this decision will exclusively impact kids and young adults who have been in the country for at least 10 years and have impeccably clean records. About three quarters of the so-called “dreamers” have U.S. citizen family members, and one quarter have U.S. citizen children.

DACA is an executive action taken by President Barack Obama in 2012 after decades of failure in Congress to enact any kind of immigration reform. There is broad agreement across party lines that people who were brought to the United States as children by their parents did not make a choice to come here, and therefore should be allowed to stay in the country that they call home. Leaders of both parties, as well as business leaders, faith leaders, and the majority of Americans polled about it, support DACA and have urged President Donald Trump to keep it in place.

>> U.S. Jewish groups blast Trump’s decision to scrap ‘Dreamers’ program as ‘cruel, unnecessary’ 

■ Analysis: Trump’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment of Unsullied Dreamers

Like generations of immigrants before, including millions of Jewish parents and grandparents, the parents of these kids have made enormous sacrifices, not for themselves, but in the hope that their children would have a chance at a real future.

These kids are American in all but paperwork, and they are now living in fear. In just a few months, they may not be able to legally work, and will face arrest, jail and deportation. These are kids who have gone to school, made friends, joined teams, grew up, enlisted in the military, went to college, went to work, volunteered and lived normal, American lives. This moment should feel scary, disturbing and eerily familiar to all Jewish Americans.

Ending DACA serves no legitimate policy purpose and in fact, will hurt the U.S. economy. Particularly as we work to recover from Hurricane Harvey, where many DACA recipients are actively taking part in rescue and rebuilding efforts, the cruelty of this decision is in plain view.

Ending DACA will also make us less safe. As losing legal status causes people to recede into the shadows, they will be afraid to call and cooperate with the police. More parents will be afraid to take their kids to school and to church, to the park and to the doctor. More kids will live in fear of the knock on the door that will take their parents away.

HIAS is the global Jewish organization that protects refugees. We stand for a world in which refugees find welcome, safety and freedom. Guided by our Jewish values and history, we bring more than 135 years of expertise to our work with refugees. But our work is just one piece of the larger culture of equality and welcome we strive to create together with our supporters in the American Jewish community. Threats to the DACA program are not only threats to immigrants, but to justice, fairness and the longstanding values of our country.

This country’s history of accepting refugees and immigrants has offered generations of Jewish Americans the opportunity to recognize our full human potential and become part of the fabric of America. While there are disturbing elements that would deny this, and their voices are louder now, it is still true. It would be a stunning reversal and betrayal of our history to deny this opportunity to others who have already contributed so much.

The president appears unmoved by arguments of compassion, humanity, national interest or common sense. Now is the time for American Jews to take a stand and take action through elected officials in Congress. We can call Congress and insist that our representatives immediately pass a law that will allow these kids and young adults to stay here legally and permanently. This law must include no conditions or trade-offs, or in any way punish other immigrants.

We must restore basic fairness and morality to the way we treat immigrants in this country, and there is no better place to start than with these young Americans.

Melanie Nezer, Haaretz Contributor, is senior vice president of public affairs for HIAS, the global Jewish nonprofit that protects refugees

Free Thought Project, “Rothschild Just Dumped Massive Amounts of US Assets, Sending an Ominous Signal”, 30 Aug 2017:

In an ominous move, Lord Jacob Rothschild has aggressively moved to limit his exposure to “risky” U.S. capital markets.

In what is a sure signal to oligarchs across the globe, Lord Jacob Rothschild, founder and chairman of RIT Capital Partners, has substantially minimized his exposure to what he views as a risky and unstable U.S. capital market. In the half-yearly financial report for RIT Capital Partners, Rothschild explained the company’s aggressive moves to significantly reduce exposure to U.S. assets.

“We do not believe this is an appropriate time to add to risk. Share prices have in many cases risen to unprecedented levels at a time when economic growth is by no means assured,” Rothschild said in his semi-annual report.

Additionally, Rothschild stated that he believes quantitative easing (QE) programs employed by central banks, such as the Federal Reserve Bank in the U.S. will “come to an end.”

Rothschild was quoted in the report as saying, “The period of monetary accommodation may well be coming to an end.”

Signaling a potential disaster in the making in the United States financial markets, Rothschild reduced the investments RIT Capital Partners has in the U.S. dollar by nearly fifty percent. On December 31, 2016, RIT Capital Partners reported a 62 percent net value asset investment in U.S. dollars. In the latest report released by RIT Capital Partners on June 30, 2017, the company has a 37 percent net value asset investment in U.S. dollars.

Over that same period of time, Rothschild increased RIT’s investment in Sterling and the Euro.

Just last year, the bond manager of what was once the world’s largest bond fund had a dire prediction about how “all of this” will all end. And by “all of this,” he means the propping up of financial markets by central banks.

Janus Henderson U.S. @JHIAdvisorsUS

Gross: Global yields lowest in 500 years of recorded history. $10 trillion of neg. rate bonds. This is a supernova that will explode one

When the U.S. stock market is trading at all-time highs, but Lord Rothschild is divesting RIT from those same markets, the central bank manipulation of market valuations becomes apparent.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that Rothschild’s RIT investment portfolio has returned roughly 2,000% since its formation – so he obviously understands how to position his assets to get big returns on investments, thus these recent moves should be a red flag to every American.

In explaining his recent investment moves, Rothschild, the RIT chairman stated:

“We have a particular interest in investments which will benefit from the impact of new technologies, and Far Eastern markets, influenced by the growing demand from Asian consumers.”

The report also noted that RIT had invested in Social Capital, a tech investment firm based in Silicon Valley, and that Francesco Goedhuis, Chief Executive of J. Rothschild Capital Management, will serve on the company’s advisory board. Social Capital provides seed funding for companies in the education, finance, and health care business sectors.

Rothschild also mentioned the advent of a fourth industrial revolution in the RIT Capital Partners report, noting, “As the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ develops, it becomes increasingly important for your Company to be able to assess investment opportunities in the innovation driven changes which are affecting almost every business sector.”

The fourth industrial revolution will be driven by new technologies that work to integrate the digital, biological, and physical worlds. Rothschild indicated in the report that the fourth industrial revolution was a driving factor in his investment in Social Capital.

Video presentation.

Background Briefing recently interviewed Johathan Taplin about his book, Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermine Democracy, and his op-ed at The New York Times, Google’s Disturbing Influence Over Think Tanks.

Some highlights: The New America Foundation funded a group called The Open Markets Group, which was headed by a guy named Barry Lynn; and they were the most important group of scholars looking at monopoly in America. When the EU sanctioned Google with a 2.7 billion dollar fine, The Open Markets Group put out a statement applauding the EU and saying American anti-trust regulators should follow their example. Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google, who provides most of the financing for the New American Foundation, was incredibly angry about this and essentially told the leader of New America, Ann Marie Slaughter, that she had to get rid of the Open Markets Group. She then wrote Barry Lynn an email saying that they had to leave by September 1, and essentially fired them. This is exactly the kind of political pressure that Google plies all over the world in terms of not just academic institutions, but think tanks and others in order to keep the political narrative in their favor and not have people who oppose them.

They pay off academics and think tanks, getting them to write favorable articles (totaling a hundred from each) about Google and denying their monopoly. This is how Google curries influence by dominating the communications channels of Washington D.C.

Eric Schmidt, who is the biggest funder of the New American Foundation and who is one of the top executives at Google, was the number one visitor during the Obama administration. He was logged in more times visiting the White House than any other single person in the entire eight years of the administration.

Google’s regulatory capture: not only was Schmidt the most frequent White House visitor, more than any other CEO, by a long shot. But then Schmidt was able to put people from Google into the various agencies in the Obama administration. So, the person who ran the Patent Office was formerly the person who ran Google’s patent practice; the person who was the Assistant Attorney General for anti-trust in the Obama administration was the person who had been Google’s anti-trust attorney. Google had people high-up in The Federal Communications Agency. It was pernicious, it was everywhere…

One could say “Eric Schmidt is a liberal” and “he’s helping Hillary Clinton”, but literally the day after Clinton lost he was out there communicating with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in the hopes of getting in bed with Trump. Not only did he extend invitations to them to come to his conference in Italy; but he also went to the White House and railed on about how Trump was going to be a great help to the economy with his new initiatives; so, its very clear that he has very little political conscience what-so-ever; he’s just going to go where the money is.

People from all sides are recognizing the Google has too much money and power to frame narratives, to shape and influence culture; its platforms such as Facebook and Youtube are not only the way 3/4 of Americans get real news, but also conduits of propaganda: e.g., Steve Bannon and the Mercers used market targeting in their campaign to defeat Hillary Clinton, used social media very skillfully with fake news, used Russian bots to amplify their effect. An interesting note along with that, the intelligence community observes that Eric Schmidt’s daughter worked for SCL, the company that controlled Cambridge Analytica - the company that Mercer owns and that Steve Bannon’s on the board of.

They couldn’t have done what they did if there hadn’t been these two open platforms, Facebook and Youtube, which you could totally manipulate; there was nobody at the control of these platforms to block fake news in favor of Trump. However, there is no pornography on Youtube, which means that Youtube has very sophisticated technology which could filter out fake news, propaganda, etc., if desired.

Google’s market capture is profound, its users provide content and profiles (which marketers value, of course) which competitors cannot match. Google is not just a virtual monopoly, not just one of the most wealthy companies, it is the richest company and perhaps the most powerful monopoly ever. More:

New York Times, “Is It Time to Break Up Google?”, 22 Aug 2017:

By Johathan Taplin

In just 10 years, the world’s five largest companies by market capitalization have all changed, save for one: Microsoft. Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Citigroup and Shell Oil are out and Apple, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Amazon and Facebook have taken their place.

They’re all tech companies, and each dominates its corner of the industry: Google has an 88 percent market share in search advertising, Facebook (and its subsidiaries Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger) owns 77 percent of mobile social traffic and Amazon has a 74 percent share in the e-book market. In classic economic terms, all three are monopolies.

We have been transported back to the early 20th century, when arguments about “the curse of bigness” were advanced by President Woodrow Wilson’s counselor, Louis Brandeis, before Wilson appointed him to the Supreme Court. Brandeis wanted to eliminate monopolies, because (in the words of his biographer Melvin Urofsky) “in a democratic society the existence of large centers of private power is dangerous to the continuing vitality of a free people.” We need look no further than the conduct of the largest banks in the 2008 financial crisis or the role that Facebook and Google play in the “fake news” business to know that Brandeis was right.

While Brandeis generally opposed regulation — which, he worried, inevitably led to the corruption of the regulator — and instead advocated breaking up “bigness,” he made an exception for “natural” monopolies, like telephone, water and power companies and railroads, where it made sense to have one or a few companies in control of an industry.

Could it be that these companies — and Google in particular — have become natural monopolies by supplying an entire market’s demand for a service, at a price lower than what would be offered by two competing firms? And if so, is it time to regulate them like public utilities?

Consider a historical analogy: the early days of telecommunications.

In 1895 a photograph of the business district of a large city might have shown 20 phone wires attached to most buildings. Each wire was owned by a different phone company, and none of them worked with the others. Without network effects, the networks themselves were almost useless.

The solution was for a single company, American Telephone and Telegraph, to consolidate the industry by buying up all the small operators and creating a single network — a natural monopoly. The government permitted it, but then regulated this monopoly through the Federal Communications Commission.

AT&T (also known as the Bell System) had its rates regulated, and was required to spend a fixed percentage of its profits on research and development. In 1925 AT&T set up Bell Labs as a separate subsidiary with the mandate to develop the next generation of communications technology, but also to do basic research in physics and other sciences. Over the next 50 years, the basics of the digital age — the transistor, the microchip, the solar cell, the microwave, the laser, cellular telephony — all came out of Bell Labs, along with eight Nobel Prizes.

In a 1956 consent decree in which the Justice Department allowed AT&T to maintain its phone monopoly, the government extracted a huge concession: All past patents were licensed (to any American company) royalty-free, and all future patents were to be licensed for a small fee. These licenses led to the creation of Texas Instruments, Motorola, Fairchild Semiconductor and many other start-ups.

True, the internet never had the same problems of interoperability. And Google’s route to dominance is different from the Bell System’s. Nevertheless it still has all of the characteristics of a public utility.

We are going to have to decide fairly soon whether Google, Facebook and Amazon are the kinds of natural monopolies that need to be regulated, or whether we allow the status quo to continue, pretending that unfettered monoliths don’t inflict damage on our privacy and democracy.

It is impossible to deny that Facebook, Google and Amazon have stymied innovation on a broad scale. To begin with, the platforms of Google and Facebook are the point of access to all media for the majority of Americans. While profits at Google, Facebook and Amazon have soared, revenues in media businesses like newspaper publishing or the music business have, since 2001, fallen by 70 percent.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, newspaper publishers lost over half their employees between 2001 and 2016. Billions of dollars have been reallocated from creators of content to owners of monopoly platforms. All content creators dependent on advertising must negotiate with Google or Facebook as aggregator, the sole lifeline between themselves and the vast internet cloud.

It’s not just newspapers that are hurting. In 2015 two Obama economic advisers, Peter Orszag and Jason Furman, published a paper arguing that the rise in “supernormal returns on capital” at firms with limited competition is leading to a rise in economic inequality. The M.I.T. economists Scott Stern and Jorge Guzman explained that in the presence of these giant firms, “it has become increasingly advantageous to be an incumbent, and less advantageous to be a new entrant.”

There are a few obvious regulations to start with. Monopoly is made by acquisition — Google buying AdMob and DoubleClick, Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsApp, Amazon buying, to name just a few, Audible, Twitch, Zappos and Alexa. At a minimum, these companies should not be allowed to acquire other major firms, like Spotify or Snapchat.

The second alternative is to regulate a company like Google as a public utility, requiring it to license out patents, for a nominal fee, for its search algorithms, advertising exchanges and other key innovations.

The third alternative is to remove the “safe harbor” clause in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows companies like Facebook and Google’s YouTube to free ride on the content produced by others. The reason there are 40,000 Islamic State videos on YouTube, many with ads that yield revenue for those who posted them, is that YouTube does not have to take responsibility for the content on its network. Facebook, Google and Twitter claim that policing their networks would be too onerous. But that’s preposterous: They already police their networks for pornography, and quite well.

Removing the safe harbor provision would also force social networks to pay for the content posted on their sites. A simple example: One million downloads of a song on iTunes would yield the performer and his record label about $900,000. One million streams of that same song on YouTube would earn them about $900.

I’m under no delusion that, with libertarian tech moguls like Peter Thiel in President Trump’s inner circle, antitrust regulation of the internet monopolies will be a priority. Ultimately we may have to wait four years, at which time the monopolies will be so dominant that the only remedy will be to break them up. Force Google to sell DoubleClick. Force Facebook to sell WhatsApp and Instagram.

Woodrow Wilson was right when he said in 1913, “If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of the government.” We ignore his words at our peril.

Sun “KIM’S COMING FOR EUROPE Japan’s PM warns North Korea will soon target EUROPE with nuke missiles as he hails Theresa May’s ‘smooth Brexit”, 31 Aug 2017:

Mrs May said Japan’s investment in Britain was “a powerful vote of confidence in the strength of the UK’s long-term economy” - The comments hint that the two countries could move quickly to strike a free-trade deal as soon as we quit the EU in 2019.

Japan and the UK pledged to work together to face down Kim Jong Un.

JAPAN’S prime minister today warned that North Korea could soon send nuclear missiles to Europe as he hailed Theresa May’s plan for a “smooth Brexit”.

Shinzo Abe called for the UK and other European countries must play a part in the fight against Kim Jong Un, saying the danger would not be confined to Asia.

Speaking ahead of a state banquet in honour of the PM, the leaders of Britain and Japan said they had discussed the threat from North Korea, which this week launched a missile over Japan in a new show of strength.

They agreed the threat is “unprecedented” and pledged to hold joint military exercises in a bid to show dictator Kim Jong Un that his crimes cannot go unpunished.

Mr Abe said: “That threat is felt not only by our country or Asia alone, it has become a global threat including Europe.

“North Korea will launch an ICBM [inter-continental ballistic missile] and the range would include almost the entire region of Europe.”

Mrs May demanded Kim’s ally China do more to restrain him, saying: “We need to ensure it’s not just words of condemnation, but that action is taken.”

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Michael Cohen, liaising with the Russian Federation.

Washington Post, “Top Trump Organization executive asked Putin aide for help on business deal”, 28 August, 2017:

A top executive from Donald Trump’s real estate company emailed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s personal spokesman during the U.S. presidential campaign last year to ask for help advancing a stalled Trump Tower development project in Moscow, according to documents submitted to Congress on Monday.

The request came in a mid-January 2016 email from Michael Cohen, one of Trump’s closest business advisers, who asked longtime Putin lieutenant Dmitry Peskov for assistance in reviving a deal that Cohen suggested was languishing.

“Over the past few months I have been working with a company based in Russia regarding the development of a Trump Tower-Moscow project in Moscow City,” Cohen wrote to Peskov, according to a person familiar with the email. “Without getting into lengthy specifics, the communication between our two sides has stalled.

“As this project is too important, I am hereby requesting your assistance. I respectfully request someone, preferably you, contact me so that I might discuss the specifics as well as arranging meetings with the appropriate individuals. I thank you in advance for your assistance and look forward to hearing from you soon,” Cohen wrote.

Click to page showing Trump-Russian links

Cohen’s email marks the most direct outreach documented by a top Trump aide to a similarly senior member of Putin’s government.

Cohen told congressional investigators in a statement Monday that he did not recall receiving a response from Peskov or having further contact with Russian government officials about the project. The email, addressed to Peskov, appeared to have been sent to a general Kremlin press account.

The note adds to the list of contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials that have been a focus of multiple congressional inquiries as well as an investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III exploring Russian interference in the 2016 election. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the Kremlin intervened to help elect Trump.

Cohen’s email to Peskov provides an example of a Trump business official directly seeking Kremlin assistance in advancing Trump’s business interests.

Cohen told congressional investigators that the deal was envisioned as a licensing project, in which Trump would have been paid for the use of his name by a Moscow-based developer called I.C. Expert Investment Co.

Cohen said that he discussed the deal three times with Trump and that Trump signed a letter of intent with the company on Oct. 28, 2015. He said the Trump company began to solicit designs from architects and discuss financing.

However, he said that the project was abandoned “for business reasons” when government permission was not secured and that the matter was “not related in any way to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.”

Cohen’s request to Peskov came as Trump was distinguishing himself on the campaign trail with warm rhetoric about Putin.

Cohen said in his statement to Congress that he wrote the email at the recommendation of Felix Sater, a Russian American businessman who was serving as a broker on the deal.

In the statement, obtained by The Washington Post, Cohen said Sater suggested the outreach because a massive Trump development in Moscow would require Russian government approval.

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When considering that the population of North Korea has virtually the same genetics as South Korea (demographic “twins” - not all that different from Japan, either) an interesting case study is presented for the influences of social construction, as the contrasts of North Korean and South Korean society are vast despite indiscernible genetic differences. Nevertheless, let us not lose site of the obviously important evidence and factors of biological determinism either: the high i.q. of North Korea (like the south) can account for their capability to rapidly develop full nuclear capacity on their own.

DT, “North Korea shows Guam attack in new video as it warns of ‘merciless revenge’ against US over drills”, 22 Aug 2017:

North Korea has unveiled a propaganda video of its threat to fire missiles near the US territory of Guam as it threatened the US with “merciless revenge” for ignoring Pyongyang’s warnings over annual military drills with South Korea.

Displaying images of Donald Trump staring at a cemetery filled with crosses and Vice-President Mike Pence enveloped by flames, the nearly 4 minute video showed the island of Guam being targeted by intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

“Americans should live with their eyes and ears wide open. They will be tormented day and night by the Hwasong-12 rockets without knowing when they will be launched,” the caption reads, according to Yonhap. “They will be in jitters.”

“(We) just wish US policymakers should seriously think twice ahead of an obvious outcome (of a war),” another caption says, showing a photo of US Defence Secretary James Mattis. “Time is not on the US side.”

With the exercises continuing on Tuesday,  North Korea upped its rhetoric, saying it would be a misjudgment for the US to think that Pyongyang would “sit comfortably without doing anything,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, citing an unidentified military spokesman.

The ongoing drills and visits of US military officials to South Korea create the circumstances for a “mock war” on the Korean peninsula, KCNA said.

The comments represent a more belligerent tone after a war of words between the US and North Korea appeared to have subsided.

Mr Trump praised North Korean leader Kim Jong-un last week for waiting to launch missiles over Japan into waters near Guam, after previously warning of “fire and fury” if he continued to threaten the American homeland.

Tensions increased in July after North Korea conducted two intercontinental ballistic missile tests. Mr Trump has said military force is an option to prevent Mr Kim from gaining an ICBM that could deliver a nuclear weapon to the US.

Missile launch shown in new North Korean propaganda video, which threatens the US generally and Guam specifically.

North Korea targets Guam in propaganda video

Unperturbed street scene in Seoul, South Korea.

“Garden of Morning Calm”, South Korea.