With each passing day, the idea of a military confrontation between the United States and North Korea seems less like a fuzzy figment of the imagination and more like a terrifying future prospect.

But with U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un locked in a tense battle of rhetoric, the Catholic Church is urging both heads of state to pursue a peaceful path and avoid the possibility of millions of civilian deaths.

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un watches a military drill marking the 85th anniversary of the establishment of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) in this handout photo by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) made available on April 26.KCNA/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS/FILE PHOTO

A top U.S. Catholic bishop has written to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to call for Washington to seek a diplomatic solution with Pyongyang, rather than continuing to ramp up the prospect of an all-out war.

Bishop Oscar Cantu of Las Cruces, New Mexico, wrote to Tillerson that while the threats from Kim and others in North Korea cannot be “underestimated or ignored,” the reality of a “high certainty of catastrophic death and destruction from any military action must prompt the United States to work with others in the international community for a diplomatic and political solution based on dialogue,” according to the Catholic News Service.

Cantu, who is the head of the international justice and peace committee at the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference, wrote that he and his colleagues supported the proposition of South Korean President Moon Jae-in to reopen negotiations with North Korea, a proposal that has also been backed by Catholic bishops in South Korea.

“This avenue, unlike most others, offers the Korean Peninsula a future free from military conflicts or crises, which could simultaneously threaten entire nations and millions of lives in the region,” said Cantu.

Catholics pray outside Myeongdong Cathedral during a mass by Pope Francis, in Seoul on August 18, 2014.ED JONES/AFP/GETTY

Related: Is the Catholic Church turning on Trump?

Catholic bishops in South Korea have been vocal in calling for a de-escalation in the current standoff between the two Koreas and the exchange between Washington and Pyongyang. The head of the church in South Korea, Cardinal Andrew Yeom Soo-jung, recently urged Catholics to pray for peace in the region and called upon North Korea to “come to the discussion table and abandon their nuclear weapons” for the sake of the “safety and future of all Koreans.”

The message has also come from the highest echelons in the Vatican. Pope Francis said in April that a third country should mediate between the United States and North Korea in order to avoid a war that would destroy “a good part of humanity, and of culture, everything, everything,” The Guardian reported.

But it’s not clear how much impact the message will have in North Korea, where freedom of religion—while provided for by the constitution—is effectively banned. The communist state sees religious belief as a threat to its nationalist ideology, persecuting and imprisoning citizens for commitment to a religious faith.

Kim’s government “reserves its most severe persecution for Christians,” according to the 2016 report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. People are imprisoned for trying to spread their faith or for singing hymns or praying, even if behind closed doors. Reports have also indicated that suspected Christians have been executed by the regime in the past for crimes including carrying a bible.

Pope Francis walks with then South Korean President Park Geun-Hye upon his arrival in Seoul, South Korea, on August 14, 2014.SONG KYUNG-SEOK-POOL/GETTY

The Roman Catholic Church has no official branch in North Korea, and the country is overseen by its bishops in Seoul. But since 1988, the government in Pyongyang has enabled three state-run churches to operate in the country, including a purported Catholic church run by the North Korean Catholic Association. Pope Francis invited members of this organization to attend a mass during his 2014 visit to Seoul, but it was declined.

During that visit, the pope called for dialogue between the two Koreas rather than “displays of force.” But with Trump threatening “fire and fury” and Kim promising a strike on the U.S. island of Guam, it seems that the message has not yet reached Washington or Pyongyang.

(Newsweek)

On Friday, hundreds of U.S. torch-bearing white nationalists rallied at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, protesting the planned removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

The extremists clashed with counter-protesters and police ahead of a larger event Saturday, which the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) said could be the largest white nationalist gathering in decades.

White nationalists carry torches around a statue of Thomas Jefferson on the grounds of the University of Virginia, on the eve of a planned Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S. August 11, 2017. Picture taken August 11, 2017.REUTERS

Speakers at Saturday’s Unite the Right rally include some of the most notorious figures in white nationalist and alt-right subculture, which according to the SPLC has been “electrified” by Trump’s run for office, who regard the president as “a champion of the idea that America is fundamentally a white man's country."

Below Newsweek profiles them.

Jason Kessler

‘White rights’ activist Jason Kessler, who lives in Charlottesville, is the organizer of the protest.

Kessler is a newly sworn in member of the ‘Proud Boy’s’ alt-right fraternity, which was created by Vice News co-founder turned right-wing provocateur Gavin McInnes. Members are expected to attend Saturday’s rally.

He is the founder of Unity and Security for America, described as a “right-wing political advocacy group.”

Kessler claims to be neither a white nationalist nor white supremacist, however members of the KKK will be among his sidekicks at the rally. Hooded members of the racist organization held a July rally in the town.

Richard Spencer

White Nationalist leader Richard Spencer, center, chants back at counter-protestors as self-proclaimed "White Nationalists" and "Alt-Right" supporters gather for what they called a "Freedom of Speech" rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., on, June 25. Spencer is listed as a key "alt-right" figure in a new guide from the Anti-Defamation League.JIM BOURG/REUTERS

One of the first headliners at Saturday’s event was Richard Spencer, one of the founders of the alt-right movement, and president of the National Policy Institute white nationalist think tank, and has founded an alt-right media network.

Spencer led a rally in Washington D.C. after Trump’s election, in which members raised their arms in Nazi salutes, and declared “hail Trump.”

Matthew Heimbach

Heimbach is described by the SPLC as the “face of a new generation of white nationalists.”

As a student at the Towson University in Maryland, he founded and started a chapter of the Youth for Western Civilization (YWC), and the White Student Union (WSU).

The groups held a series of provocative events on campus in defense of ‘white rights,’ and patrols to combat what he described as a “black crime wave.”

Since graduating in 2013, he has become a regular on the white nationalist and Neo-Nazi circuit, addressing rallies.

Mike “Enoch” Peinovich

Penovich is an alt-right blogger and host of anti-Semitic podcast the Daily Shoah, which refers to the Hebrew word for the Holocaust.

The show is believed to be the source of the triple parenthesis or ‘echo’ anti-Semitic hate symbol, used by the alt-right to demote Jewish journalists or people of Jewish faith.

Tim “Baked Alaska” Gionet

Activist Tim Gionet, who goes by the name "Baked Alaska" on the internet, addresses a rally of self-proclaimed White Nationalists and "alt-right" supporters at what they called a "Freedom of Speech" rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, June 25, 2017.REUTERS

A former rapper and Buzzfeed social media strategist, Gionet went on the road with alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos in 2016, and has become a prominent alt-right troll, baiting opponents of Trump with alt-right memes via his Twitter account.

He has also collaborated with Mike Cernovich, an alt-right provocateur who has recently led an online campaign to displace Trump’s national security adviser General H.R McMaster.

(Newsweek)

August 12, 2017

Just weeks after Russia deployed streetfighting Terminator tanks to Syria, now Israel has unveiled its own urban warfare tank.

Israel's Namer isn't exactly a tank: it's a 66 ton armored personnel carrier derived from the chassis of the Merkava IV tank, but minus the turret. It can carry a crew of three plus nine infantrymen, and carry them under tank-like protection instead of the weaker armor of most troop carriers. But armed with only a couple of machine guns, it lacked firepower.

Now Israel is testing beefed-up weaponry on the Namer. The upgrade is a 30-millimeter cannon in an unmanned turret. Thus the upgraded vehicle will have the armor protection of a tank, but the firepower of an infantry fighting vehicle more like the Bradley, BMP or Puma.

Why the extra firepower? The same reason that Russia is testing T-72 tanks converted into Terminator 2 support vehicles armed with cannon and anti-tank missiles. Chastened by losing numerous armored vehicles in urban combat during the early conflict in Chechnya, Russia wants a tank-like vehicle that can support and protect regular tanks in city streets. For its part, facing combat in the alleys of Gaza and the villages of southern Lebanon, Israel wants a troop carrier with sufficient armor and armament to survive a street fight.

“An APC equipped with a turret and cannon gives it an advantage during urban warfare,” said Brig.-Gen. Baruch Matzliach, head of the Tank Program Administration, according to the Jerusalem Post. “The shortened cannon makes it more maneuverable, and [gives it] the ability to provide firepower to infantry soldiers. It also lets infantry soldiers be more independent on the battlefield, with less dependence on other units to provide firepower.”

Like the Merkava, the Namer is protected by the Trophy active defense system to stop anti-tank rockets. However, the weapons and protection won't compromise the vehicle's troop-carrying mission. “The turret is unmanned and does not penetrate the combat cell so that the ability to carry soldiers is not harmed,” Matzliach said. “Its operation is expected to be simple and will be performed by the APC's crew. The turret will also incorporate an active defense system and additional systems that will greatly contribute to its capabilities.”

In addition, Israel is also adding a turret to beef up the firepower of the Eitan—Israel's equivalent of the U.S. Stryker. “The Eitan will also come equipped with an FN MAG [machine gun], .50 caliber heavy machine gun, a 30mm cannon with a range of 2,500 meters and a missile launcher that can be operated without crew members leaving the vehicle and exposing themselves to the enemy,” theJerusalem Post said. Though lacking the thick armor of the Namer, the wheeled troop carrier will have the Trophy active protection system against anti-tank rockets.

At 66 tons, a Namer weighs twice as much as a Bradley and triple the weight of a BMP-3. Yet the IDF clearly feels that there is a role for what is essentially a cross between a tank and an armored personnel carrier.

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

Image: March 20, 2008. A tank during a training day held in the Golan Heights for the 188th Armored Brigade. Photography by Neil Cohen, IDF Spokesperson's Film Unit. Wikimedia Commons


(The National Interest)

MISSION, Texas (AP) — Hundreds of protesters wearing white and chanting in English and Spanish marched Saturday in Texas' first major protest against a border wall, crossing the earthen Rio Grande levee where President Donald Trump's administration wants to build part of the first phase.

The protesters launched what's expected to be a fierce movement against Trump's best-known immigration policy priority. Many of the participants acknowledged they might not be able to stop a project that the U.S. government is already planning, but they hoped to draw national attention to the cause and persuade lawmakers who have yet to sign off on funding for the project.

"We might seem small and insignificant. Maybe we are," said Anthoney Saenz, a 19-year-old native of the Rio Grande Valley, the southernmost point of Texas and a region where Trump has proposed putting 60 miles (97 kilometers) of wall as part of a $1.6 billion proposal. "But when our voices come together, when we band together as a community to try to get a voice out there, we have to hope we get heard," he said.

Organizers of Saturday's protest wanted to make clear the depth of local opposition to the border wall, which as proposed would cut through a federally protected wildlife refuge and split apart several border towns. Some 40 groups took part in the protest, from environmentalists to landowners' rights groups to immigrant advocates.

The procession set out just after dawn from Our Lady of Guadalupe, a towering church in the border city of Mission. Saenz, an altar server at Our Lady of Guadalupe, led the group wearing a white cassock and carrying a burner with smoky incense.

The procession grew as it headed south toward the Rio Grande, the winding river that separates the United States and Mexico in Texas. The marchers walked uphill on a dirt path onto the levees, built well north of the river to protect border cities in the valley from flooding.

It ended at La Lomita, a tiny century-old chapel just south of the levee. Some people quietly prayed inside the chapel as a rally went on outside.

While the U.S. House has passed a spending with funding for the wall, it faces an uncertain future in the Senate, where Democrats and some Republicans have spoken against it.

Government contractors have already been taking soil samples along the Rio Grande levees and have begun to examine property ownership records for the land condemnation lawsuits a border wall would likely require, according to local officials and landowners near the river. A map released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows tentative plans to build 28 miles (45 kilometers) of wall on the levee in Hidalgo County, the most populous county of the valley. Sections of fencing already stand on about 20 miles of the levee in Hidalgo County, built under the Secure Fence Act of 2006.

The remaining 32 miles (52 kilometers) would go in sections farther west in Starr County, potentially sealing off or splitting some border towns from the river and consigning homes and farmland to what some derisively call "the Mexican side."

Under the current proposal, the wall would seal La Lomita on the southern side of the levee. It would also cut through the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, a verdant sanctuary for 400 species of birds and nearly half of the butterfly species found in North America. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security can waive environmental reviews to build more quickly, and has already issued a waiver for proposed construction in San Diego.

Scott Nicol, co-chair of the Sierra Club's Borderlands campaign and an organizer of Saturday's rally, said some people who were neutral or quiet about the last U.S. government effort to build a border barrier are speaking against it this time.

"Because people have seen the walls go up and see what they do, it's not sort of an abstract, imagined concept," Nicol said. "There's a lot more opposition to it now than there was 10 years ago."

Marie Montalvo, a resident of San Benito, Texas, said she had been followed by the Border Patrol during a recent visit to Santa Ana to take pictures.

"I want my nieces and nephews, and the children of the Rio Grande Valley, to know that I was completely against this," Montalvo said.


(Yahoo Finance)

This article first appeared on The Daily Signal.

In September 2014, I watched a tank battle from a hilltop in Mariupol, Ukraine.

I toured that battlefield, the day the first cease-fire was signed, on Sept. 5, 2014. I witnessed a wasteland of charred, destroyed tanks, and armored personnel carriers.

And scores of dead soldiers who reminded me of the plaster molds of the dead in Pompeii, the way they seemed to be frozen in the moment and the motion of their deaths.

The conflict was then, and it remains today, a real war.

In the early months of the war, with Ukraine’s regular army on its heels, everyday Ukrainians filled the ranks of a partisan army that stopped an offensive by combined Russian-separatist forces, which was, at that time, leapfrogging across the Donbas.

It was a grassroots war effort—an example of a society that didn’t need to be coaxed into a war by propaganda but by a spontaneous, organic realization that the homeland was at risk.

Ukrainian society, not its armies, repelled Russia’s 2014 invasion of the Donbas.

Men of the Ukrainian volunteers battalion of Donbass rest in the village of Shirokine, Donetsk region on June 6, 2015.ALEKSEY CHERNYSHEV/AFP/GETTY

And now, three years after the war began, and more than two years after the Minsk II cease-fire went into effect, Ukrainian soldiers are still out there in the trenches, weathering daily artillery attacks, mortars, snipers, tank shots, and rockets, in a static war that feels like it has no end.

The war is mainly fought from trenches and fortified positions along about 250 miles of front lines in the Donbas. It’s a long-range battle, in which soldiers hardly ever see whom they’re shooting at.

It’s a terrifying type of combat, which I had never experienced during my career as an Air Force special operations pilot in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The February 2015 cease-fire, known as Minsk II, is a farce. The war is still going on, and soldiers and civilians, on both sides, are still dying and being wounded almost every day.

Yet, the war has hardened Ukraine, both its citizens and its soldiers, and proven that the country is ready and willing to fight for its freedom.

During my years of reporting on the war, Ukraine’s military evolution has been nothing short of remarkable.

In 2014, the Ukrainian army was a rudderless force, which had been gutted in equipment and personnel by 25 years of purposeful neglect and dismantling by successive, corrupt governments that were beholden to Moscow.

In the past three years, and while fighting a war, Ukraine has rebuilt its military into the second-largest in Europe, comprising about 250,000 active-duty troops and 80,000 reservists. On the Continent, only Russia’s military is bigger.

“It’s like building a boat while you’re already out at sea,” Luke Coffey, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Foreign Policy Center, told me.

Additionally, Ukraine increased its military budget by 23 percent the year after the war began. Ukraine’s current defense budget of about $6 billion represents roughly 6 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. And military spending is set to increase by about 10 percent annually.

Ukraine now operates more than 2,800 tanks—compared with 423 in France, 407 in the U.K., and 408 in Germany.

Similarly, Ukraine’s arsenal comprises 625 multiple launch rocket systems—compared with 44 in France, 42 in the U.K., and Germany’s 50.

Yet, while Ukraine maintains a numerical advantage over other European nations in terms of troops and conventional weapons, its military needs to modernize. Much of its arsenal dates from the Cold War.

Many of the Kalashnikovs the Ukrainian troops use have serial numbers from the 1970s, some from the 1960s or older.

Yet, in a complete about-face from the Cold War, Ukraine’s strategic military doctrine now identifies Russia as the country’s top security threat. Resultantly, Kiev is rebuilding its military with the specific objective of defending against a Russian invasion and adopting NATO standards by the year 2020.

To modernize, Ukraine is revamping its military-industrial complex.

In 2015, Ukraine was the world’s ninth-largest weapons exporting nation. In 2016, Ukraine’s arms exports contracts jumped by 25 percent from 2015 levels, totaling about $750 million.

Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president, has called for Ukraine to rank among the world’s Top 5 weapons exporting countries by 2020.

Yet, in my opinion, the revamp of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex has been misguided.

Ukraine’s nationalized defense production conglomerate, Ukroboronprom, has focused on building showcase items like tanks, sophisticated rocket systems, and armored personnel carriers. Thereby siphoning limited funds from dealing with practical battlefield needs.

For example, after more than two years of a static conflict, there are still no mobile army surgical hospital units off the front lines to provide initial medical care for wounded troops. If wounded, Ukrainian troops travel across potholed roads, often in the back of civilian vehicles, to get to the nearest hospital for treatment.

Ukrainian troops are still mostly dependent on non-governmental organizations and civilian volunteers for things like combat medical training, individual first aid kits, body armor, uniforms, food, and water.

At most places, Ukrainian soldiers still used Soviet-era paper maps of the battlefield. Although some enterprising university students have created apps for tablets, which can be used for targeting artillery on a digital map of the war zone.

But the soldiers still have to buy the tablets on their own.

In the front-line town of Marinka, Ukrainian troops have to steal electricity from the local power grid because—after three years of war—the government hasn’t yet given them generators.

Even something as simple and inexpensive as modifying off-the-shelf drones for reconnaissance and targeting mortars is still being done by civilian volunteers. Many of whom are patriotic university students.

The bottom line: Ukraine’s military-industrial complex is being undermined by corruption. Altogether, it’s more committed to building weapons for export than meeting the needs of Ukraine’s troops in the field.

The Ukrainian government allocated 13.5 billion hryvnias (about $500 million) in 2016 to repair, modernize, and produce new weapons for its armed forces.

Ukroboronprom, however, said it received only one-third of this amount from the government, and is operating at less than half its production capacity.

Yet, despite its materiel shortfalls, Ukraine now has a battle-hardened military that has been fighting a type of conflict, with which virtually no active-duty U.S. troops have combat experience.

I’ve had the chance to observe the U.S. Army’s training operation at Yavoriv, in western Ukraine. And the overall impression I had was that the Ukrainian soldiers had more to teach the Americans than vice versa.

Trench warfare, tank battles, artillery and rocket barrages—Ukraine’s army has years of experience fighting a conventional war with no air support, scant possibility of air medevac, and limited supplies. They’re used to being on the weak side of a fight. That’s not a familiar place for most U.S. troops to be.

Ukrainians also have years of experience defending against Russian hybrid warfare, including cyberattacks and targeted propaganda. In short, Ukraine has a lot of experience, which the U.S. military and its allies, if they are wise, should study to understand what a war with Russia would look like.

The war in Ukraine is a case study in Russian hybrid warfare. And Ukrainian troops, with limited means available, have improvised a successful defense against it.

After three years of war, in which more than 10,000 Ukrainians have died, morale remains good among the Ukrainian troops. Although they’re weary after three years of war under difficult conditions.

Each time I visit the front lines, I ask the Ukrainian soldiers what they’re fighting for. Throughout three years of unending combat, their answers have not changed.

They say they’re fighting for their country’s freedom. They believe that if they laid down their arms, left their positions, and went home, Russia would simply invade behind them.

Underscoring this existential threat to the homeland, Ukrainian society has militarized due to the war.

Across the country, civilians regularly meet on the weekends for military training. They comprise a network of partisan forces called territorial defense battalions, which can be rapidly mobilized to defend against a Russian invasion.

This grassroots defense mindset—which saved Ukraine from disaster in 2014—promises a protracted guerrilla conflict should Russia ever again launch a major offensive in Ukraine.

Ukrainians have the will to fight. They’ve proven that by fighting and dying for their freedom, singlehandedly, against the world’s second-strongest military for more than three years. But they need help.

The U.S. has, to date, provided Ukraine with some technology, which has proven useful on the battlefield. I’ve observed Ukrainian troops using the U.S. Raven drone on the front lines outside the town of Marinka, to target their mortars on enemy positions and vehicles.

The U.S. has also equipped Ukraine’s military with counter-battery radars, which are now deployed to protect some military positions.

They are not being used, however, to defend civilian areas, like the towns of Marinka and Avdiivka, which frequently come under rocket and artillery attacks.

A Ukrainian military official told me: “These units, although nonlethal, are still considered to be weapons, therefore we do not place them in residential areas or cities in order to not attract enemy fire and jeopardize the safety of civilians who live there.”

The perennial question here in Washington is whether the U.S. should send Ukraine lethal, defensive weapons. Based on what I’ve seen, and from conversations with Ukrainian officials, U.S. lethal weapons would, at this point, be a largely symbolic gesture. But it would send a strong message to Moscow about U.S. resolve to defend Ukraine from more aggression.

It would also be an affirmation for the right of any people, no matter whose sphere of influence within which they find themselves, to choose their own destiny.

Yet, to truly make a difference on the battlefield, as it exists today, Ukrainian troops still need the basics like body armor, night vision goggles, encrypted radios, and first aid kits.

One last, quick aside before I close.

While I was embedded with the Ukrainian army in Pisky in June 2015, I made friends with an impressive 19-year-old soldier named Daniel Kasyanenko. He was afraid that the war was ruining his soul, he told me, and that he had seen too many horrible things to ever be happy again.

Two months after I met him, a mortar killed Daniel while he was fighting in the trenches in eastern Ukraine.

Yesterday, I emailed Daniel’s mother, Marina, and told her I was in Washington DC to tell people about the war, and what her son had died fighting for.

She replied to me: “Thank you. The whole world must learn the truth about the war in Ukraine. You do what you can to prevent our boys from dying.”

Nolan Peterson, a former special operations pilot and a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, is The Daily Signal’s foreign correspondent based in Ukraine.

(Newsweek)