Thursday March 28, 2024
SNc Channels:

Search
About Salem-News.com

 

Apr-14-2012 23:02printcomments

North Korea's Recent Rocket Launch: Was It Really A Failure?

“I shot an Arrow into the air It fell to earth I know not where.” - Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Kim Jong Un
Kim Jong Un stroking Freudian hardware with his costumed military flunkies Is he "stroking" us?
Photo:
www.tumblr.com

(LAGUNA BEACH, CA) - Isn’t it possible that North Korea's latest rocket-launch-gone-bad, and for that matter all of the previous ones, are actually successes disguised cleverly as failures? Not an embarrassment but a victory for its newest leader Kim Jong Un? Popular media and political analysts are lock-stepped, united in alleging that this test was an abject act of hostile provocative aggression, a dangerous and threatening failure.

Oh my, what are we going to do? Be afraid, be very, very afraid world, the kid is just as bonkers as his isolationist Dad and the founding father granddad before him. How can the global community curb or convince these psychos to stop, move them back from the precipice of destabilization?

Can we work a backroom, terms undisclosed, confidential tradeoff deal with their only apparent friends, the Chinese, get them to lobby ‘cause another nation threatening intercontinental nuclear capability, Iran, is not answering our phone calls?

The media and world leaders are angry and alarmed, worked up into a frothy lather, biting their nails, moaning and gnashing of teeth, rolling of eyes, you know the churning, sleepless nights drill. If it bleeds, or could bleed, or might eventually bleed then it leads the show. They said or wrote the same End-Of-Times, cataclysmic things a few years ago when multiple missile launches resulted in the same types of failures.

"If You Squint, Nevada Looks A Lot Like North Korea" Or: "I Can See
North Korea From My Porch!" Sarah Palin 14 Kilo-ton Blast dubbed Charlie:
Yucca Flat, Nevada Date: October 30, 1951 Photo: US Government archives.

I’m no international beat journalist and certainly no expert on North Korea. However, as a 45-year student of Asian philosophies I can’t help but feel that the spirit of Chinese General Sun-Tzu, author of the quintessential military treatise Art of War, is laughing out there somewhere. There might be a method to this supposed madness and mayhem, that could explain it but seems to be stuck in our collective, binary-thinking blind spot.

These launches are propaganda, and Sun-Tzu practically invented it, consciously knew how, when and why to implement it. Maybe the North Korean leadership decided long ago to affect, to embrace projected craziness and unpredictability as their long-term strategy. As a way to leverage, manipulate and progress their small country’s agenda….not to mention get the USA and others to cough up billions in unreciprocated aid to stop them from such perceived hostile activities.

Growing up a white boy in some pretty rough mixed neighborhoods myself, if a potential street fighter or gangbanger blocked my way or confronted me, looked slightly whacko even though not gnarly, I hesitated to mix it up.

Size matters on the street, but sometimes a crazy look or vibe does trump girth, a knife and a wealth of tattoos.

Was there really an expensive satellite inside this recent rocket or did it have just enough fuel to get it up, up and away then blown up intentionally? What about the previous ones, were they dummies or are we? Has this been the stealthy, bogus insanity strategy in previous launches as well?

"How To Win Big Without Really Trying!" Photo: www.covershut.com

The lessons culled from “The Mouse That Roared,” a book from 1955 that was eventually turned into a 1959 movie starring Peter Sellers, screenings might not have been lost upon North Korean predecessors, maybe been viewed and partially integrated into Pyongyang pretzel logic that we consider inscrutable or convoluted.

A small country leverages money and prestige by threatening phony aggression upon a world power. It predicates its strategy upon the fiscal largesse historically shown by countries like the USA either before confrontations to avoid them or afterwards as a mitigating reward.

It inadvertently acquires a nuclear winter doomsday device similar to the one postulated in Dr. Strangelove (also starring Sellers)---The mother of all weapons of mass destruction. Threaten Armageddon, get (extort or blackmail) the big $$$, take the money and run away laughing.

Browse the web, the common comment thread is that North Korea is pursuing a nonsensical, suicidal, self-sabotaging path; that they are alienating everyone. Maybe they’re just diabolically out-waiting us all, patiently and persistently like Asian water torture. Why isn’t anyone looking at this as a scam, a ruse, a very crafty canard?

Poster for movie "Dr. Strangelove" - Time to
replace USSR with North Korea as the antagonist?

There might be a logical consistency to their apparent chaotic activities that’s eluding Western minds: The rockets fall back to Earth, but the North Koreans acquire unpredictable future bully status for relatively little expenses they are willing to incur.

The sockpuppet pundits analyze everything to death, why no pursuit of this possibility, that we’re being taken for a hayride and buy the increased anxiety that North Korea peddles us, the specter of a dreaded new Cold War?

They bluster and posture, hold their parades, go about pretending to stop what’s not really ever been started, but that’s real money they’ll be getting with no IOU of any value. The perceived threat wasn’t real anyway, an invisible and non-existent product in exchange for real things (money handed over and any trade sanctions or boycotts removed) desperately needed.

Personally, if I lived in that region my biggest fear wouldn’t be a nuclear threat by North Korea. I’d prioritize, put on my helmet, worry about the potential calamity of having one of those perhaps intentional Pinto-like clunkers or their debris field plow through my roof or into a nearby fuel depot because the North Korean are either really inept or just don’t care. You know, just like all of that bus-sized debris other nation's have dropping due to orbital decay? Whether they’re bluffing or not, hot metal raining down is also real and they don’t even seem to know where these cheap technological crates will end up.

"I Shot An Arrow…" They go up, General,
but where do these things land anyway? From left:
Ted Otis, Dewey Martin and Edward Binns.
Photo: Twilight Zone archives Episode aired on
15 January 1960

Adjacent neighbors lose either way. Meanwhile, North Korea has their country’s political leadership eyes on the prize, the big payday, the daylight at the end of the missile silo tunnel. Gamble a few hundred million $$$, get billions in return. Now THAT’S a lesson learned from applied capitalist revenue modeling.

The world IS intimidated and in a state of confusion about this, fretting and frustrated ---Also another classic Asian martial arts tactic, a feigned attack like an ingenious chess gambit. We then over-react, throw even more money than now being offered, their economic woes are solved.

In a kind of Twilight Zone redux, reminiscent of an episode titled “I Shot An Arrow,” things might not be as they appear due to the North Koreans penchant for obsessive, dictatorial privacy and informational firewalls. These missile launchs might have a surprisingly twisted and ironic ending, someday we may have the truth revealed inside by historians.

They’re not humiliated by this rocket’s fate. They’re shouting: “Mission accomplished, suckers, that gigantic American Eagle ($$$) is landing!”

FYI: If a project near you has some interesting enviro-aspect(s) that you think is/are worthy of Salem-News.com coverage and our readers attention, feel free to contact me with a very brief synopsis. Water-related “Blue Interventions” are my specialty!

_________________________________

Launched in 2010, Odd Man Out is the creation of Roger von Bütow and his OMO columns are written exclusively for Salem-News-com. Born and raised in the LA Harbor area, son of a German immigrant father, he moved to Orange County in 1965 and has lived in Laguna Beach since 1972. In 1998, he began his professional career in environmental review processes (CEQA, NEPA, MND, MND and EIR/EIS). He's a rare mix of cross-trained builder, writer and consultant as he brings his extensive construction experiences dating back to 1972 into his eco-endeavors. He has tremendous field and technical expertise in successful watershed restorations, plus wastewater, urban runoff, water quality monitoring/improvements and hydrologic mechanisms. He's built everything from commercial spas to award-winning private residences, and provided peer review and consultant analyses for single homes, subdivisions and upscale resorts.

View articles written by Roger Butow Read Roger's full biography on the Salem-News.com Staff Page

His resumé is extensive, try an online GOOGLE search of his personal journey and historical accomplishments. His consultation fees are reasonable and if you've got a major project that alarms you, that needs creative intervention, then he's your man. His credentials and "CV" can be provided upon request.

Contact him at his office: (949) 715.1912 or drop him an email: rogerbutow@cleanwaternow.com




Comments Leave a comment on this story.
Name:

All comments and messages are approved by people and self promotional links or unacceptable comments are denied.


[Return to Top]
©2024 Salem-News.com. All opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Salem-News.com.


Articles for April 13, 2012 | Articles for April 14, 2012 | Articles for April 15, 2012
Annual Hemp Festival & Event Calendar

Click here for all of William's articles and letters.

Support
Salem-News.com:

Tribute to Palestine and to the incredible courage, determination and struggle of the Palestinian People. ~Dom Martin



Sean Flynn was a photojournalist in Vietnam, taken captive in 1970 in Cambodia and never seen again.