President Obama is prepared to begin sacrificing America’s nuclear arsenal. He wants to eliminate nuclear weapons worldwide.

North Korea, for one, has other plans.

As journalist Walter Lippmann observed in 1943, the push for disarmament after World War i only proved “tragically successful in disarming the nations that believed in disarmament.”

The Times Online reported on Friday,

The world’s intelligence agencies and defense experts are quietly acknowledging that North Korea has become a fully fledged nuclear power with the capacity to wipe out entire cities in Japan and South Korea.The new reality has emerged in off-hand remarks and in single sentences buried in lengthy reports. Increasing numbers of authoritative experts—from the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (iaea) to the U.S. defense secretary—are admitting that North Korea has miniaturized nuclear warheads to the extent that they can be launched on medium-range missiles, according to intelligence briefings.

Though South Korea is against this classification of North Korea, it is apparently becoming accepted reality. The Times report cited several instances, including a Foreign Affairs article by Defense Secretary Robert Gates published earlier this year in which he referred to the “arc of nuclear powers running from Israel in the west through an emerging Iran to Pakistan, India, and on to China, North Korea, and Russia in the east.”

Earlier this month, the disconnect between the president’s rhetoric and the reality of arms proliferation became embarrassingly clear. Just before President Obama was to deliver a speech in Prague outlining a plan intended ultimately to eliminate the world’s nuclear arsenal, North Korea successfully launched a missile that could hit the U.S. West Coast.

The action demanded a mention in the president’s speech: “North Korea broke the rules once again by testing a missile that could be used for nuclear weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response,” he said. “Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something.”

Unsurprisingly, the “strong international response” has yet to materialize. The rules aren’t binding. Violations aren’t being punished. Words mean nothing. North Korea has become a full-fledged nuclear power because it understands that reality. Iran is not far behind.

The dream of a nuclear-free world will remain on hold for now.

Fresh Evidence of Why Europe Will Never Let Turkey Join

Supposedly, Turkey would like to join the European Union. It’s been trying to do so for over 20 years. Trouble is, it’s becoming less secularist, more Islamic, and thus apparently can’t help but behave in ways that truly aggravate Europe.

At the nato summit earlier this month, members were set to confirm Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Denmark’s former prime minister, as the alliance’s new secretary general. But then the Turkish delegation unexpectedly threatened to veto the appointment.

Why? Turkey cited as one of its reasons the 2005 incident where a Danish newspaper published some satirical cartoons about Muhammad. Prime minister at the time, Rasmussen refused to punish the paper, saying he was restrained by Danish law from interfering with the Danish press. “[R]esentment at this position led Turkey—which is under its own constitution not an ‘Islamic’ country—to use the occasion of a nato meeting to try again to interfere with the internal affairs of a member state,” reported the Australian last Thursday.

A second reason for Turkey’s opposition to the Dane is just as telling. The Australian continued,

[A] television station on Danish soil broadcasts, in the Kurdish language, to Kurds in Turkey and elsewhere. The government in Ankara, which evidently believes that all European governments are as [unrestrained] as itself, brusquely insists that Denmark do what Turkey would do and simply shut the transmitter down.Once again unclear on the concepts of the open society and the rule of law—if the station is sympathetic to terrorism, as Ankara alleges, there are procedures to be followed—the Turkish authorities attempt a fiat that simply demands that others do as they say.

Citing a couple of other issues that rub nato the wrong way, the Australian summarized the situation thus:

Turkey wants all the privileges of nato and EU membership but also wishes to continue occupying Cyprus, denying Kurdish rights and lying about the Armenian genocide.On top of this, it now desires to act as a proxy for Islamization and dares to waste the time of a defensive alliance in trying to censor the press of another member state.

This is hardly the sort of behavior that will ingratiate Turkey with the European states it is trying to court. Despite official denials, Ankara is becoming Islamicized. As a result, its effort to join the European Union is a dead cause, as the Trumpet has forecasted for 12 years based on biblical prophecy.

At the nato summit, President Barack Obama managed to convince Turkey not to veto the Rasmussen appointment. But France’s Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner now says that, based on Turkey’s unruliness, he opposes its bid for EU membership.

Europe is prophesied to be distinctly Roman Catholic in character, and to view Islam in an increasingly adversarial light. Turkey is prophesied to be locked out of the Continent’s alliance, and yet, awkwardly, never quite ready to give up trying to join. Watch as events follow that biblical pattern.

Angst Building in Germany

“The economic meltdown has rattled the confidence of the skilled workers at the heart of the German economic and social model,” wroteSpiegel this week.

For the first time since World War ii, Germany’s middle class has been shaken to the core. It is not those with low-income jobs, like retail workers in discount stores or careers for old people, who are at greatest risk. Instead, it is those working in the highly productive industries at the heart of the German economic model who face the full force of the downturn.

The German economy is set to shrink by another 7 percent with 1 million more people ending up in unemployment lines. According to Spiegel, “Germany has long been overshadowed by warnings that a crisis was looming. But now it’s here.”

Deteriorating economic conditions surely won’t help stem the rising tide of far-right extremism in the country. According toSpiegel, there has been a 16 percent increase in far-right crimes in Germany over the last year, bringing the total to 20,422. Violent crimes were up 5.6 percent, including two murders.

Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble admitted the latest numbers were disturbing. Part of the incline in numbers is due to a statistical change, but “the rise was also driven by a growing far-right youth scene whose members dress like left-wing anarchists, in black-hooded jackets,” wrote Spiegel. According to Mr. Schäuble, “They are attracting young people to a greater extent than the conventional far-right scene has been able to so far.”

China Flexes Economic Muscle

In a climate of global economic uncertainty, China has presented itself to many struggling countries as an attractive alternative to Western financial reliance. Some experts are calling China’s new overtures a challenge to the existing order. The Washington Post wrote,

Overseas aid and loans are just one way China is asserting itself in its new role as a world financial leader. While polishing China’s own image, Premier Wen Jiabao and other top leaders have blamed the West for the global economic crisis. Chinese officials increasingly are challenging the primacy of the dollar, warning other countries about the danger of keeping reserves in just one or two currencies, such as dollars and euros. And as the global economic crisis has eroded faith in U.S.-style capitalism, there’s growing talk that a new “Beijing Consensus” will replace the long-dominant Washington Consensus on how developing countries should manage their economies.

A report released by South Korea’s Ministry of Strategy and Finance titled “The Beijing Consensus” warned that countries accepting China’s aid “may lower their guard and gravitate toward a Chinese-style economic model.” The Post also reported,

This week, China’s allies Kazakhstan and Pakistan—both of which recently got new loans from China—threw their support behind calls from China’s central bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, to create a new world or Asian reserve currency to replace the dollar. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who also signed a credit line with China recently, has backed the proposal.In the past five months, China has signed $95 billion in currency swap agreements with six countries that now hold part of their reserves in yuan. The government has also begun to allow companies in southern China to settle contracts with foreign neighbors in yuan instead of dollars or euros.

Nouriel Roubini, a professor at New York University, said that within the next 5 to 10 years, “the Chinese currency could be the new reserve currency.”

Pay on Wall Street Bounces Back

With the country in recession, jobs being lost by the millions, and taxpayers funneling hundreds of billions to banks, you will never guess what is happening on Wall Street. According to the New York Times, “Workers at the largest financial institutions are on track to earn as much money this year as they did before the financial crisis began ….”

Of the large banks receiving federal help, Goldman Sachs stands out for setting aside the most per person for compensation. The bank, which nearly halved its compensation last year, set aside $4.7 billion for worker pay in the quarter. If that level continues all year, it would add up to average pay of $569,220 per worker—almost as much as the pay in 2007, a record year. …At other banks, pay scales tilt in favor of particular units. JPMorgan Chase, for example, is setting aside what would total $138,234 on average for workers. But in the bank’s trading and investment banking unit, if revenue stays at first-quarter levels, workers are on track to earn an average of $509,524 over the year. That figure was $345,147 in 2006.

You can read what we wrote about additional backdoor taxpayer-funded bailouts here.

Britain’s Slide Toward Totalitarianism

“Thought police muscle up in Britain” ran a shocking headline in the Australian last week. In it Hal G.P. Colebatch paints a frightening picture of British society:

Britain appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent. …The government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalize politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years’ prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out. It was Straw who previously called for a redefinition of Englishness and suggested the “global baggage of empire” was linked to soccer violence by “racist and xenophobic white males.” He claimed the English “propensity for violence” was used to subjugate Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that the English as a race were “potentially very aggressive.”

A bizarre mix of self-loathing, rejection of history and political correctness is destroying British society. For more, see our article in the April edition of the Trumpet, “Want to Know What a Former Superpower Looks Like?”

Will Swine Flu Become a Pandemic?

Swine flu could become a global epidemic, the World Health Organization (who) warned yesterday. Up to 68 people in Mexico have died from the new flu, with more than 1,000 suspected cases having been reported. Concern is now growing that the same strain may be spreading in the United States; there have been 11 confirmed cases and at least eight more suspected cases of swine flu reported. The who labeled the outbreaks of the never-before-seen virus a “public health event of international concern,” one step short of the threat level for a pandemic.

“A pandemic would deal a major blow to a world economy already knocked into its worst recession in decades by the crisis in financial markets,” writes Newsmax.com. Whether this particular flu strain will grow to pandemic levels remains to be seen, but we can expect disease epidemics in the future. Widespread disease epidemics and pandemics are symbolized by the fourth horseman of the apocalypse in Bible prophecy. This horseman poses a dire, unprecedented and imminent threat in these end times.

Elsewhere on the Web

Pictures of U.S. Barak Obama accepting a virulently anti-American book from Hugo Chavez were shown all over the news last week. What is less known is that the book, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, is on the syllabi of at least 20 U.S. colleges. The book accuses America’s capitalist society of raping Latin America’s resources and says that the U.S. victimizes people in the region to promote its own growth. After Obama accepted the gift from Chavez, the book immediately landed on best-seller lists in America.

Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna’i gave a strong warning to the people of Israel this week. “The Israeli home front will be part of any future war,” he said. “Everyone needs to know that there is a chance in the next war that a missile will fall in their backyard. In contrast to the past, this time we are not scared of preparing the entire population for this possibility.”