The war of words between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is escalating global tension. An outbreak of hostilities cannot be confined to the Korean peninsula alone.
A preemptive first strike by the US reacting to Kim’s threat to send long-range nuclear missiles against the US territory of Guam and even into the American heartland in the Midwest is not a remote scenario.
Guamenians are considered US citizens. So too are the thousands of Filipinos who have settled there. Once a quiet idyllic South Pacific island, many American retirees chose to spend the sunset of their lives in Guam. People in Guam are now in panic that the madman Kim Jong Un has targeted them to show off his arsenal and newly discovered toy.
From Washington, President Trump assured the people of Guam the US will not sit idly by and wait for North Korea to make good on its threat. That validates the statement of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and defense department officials who earlier said “military options are on the table.”
The US has 6,800 nuclear warheads with a reach of 10,000 kilometers or approximately 6,213 miles. Fired from their silos in the US mainland, these Intercontinental Ballistics Missiles (ICBM) can reach all the way to the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. It may come without prior notice or warning even as Kim Jong Un is having his usual dinner of Bulgogi and kimchee.
But despite the puny although no longer primitive nuclear capability of North Korea, it is even more dangerous than the whole arsenal of America. Why? Because you have a walking time bomb in Jong Un who has an itchy finger on the trigger to unleash his nuclear warheads.
God help us all against this lunatic. A nuclear missile unleashed by either Trump or Jong Un will have serious consequences for the Philippines. For sure, the deadly fallout of either a strike on Guam or Pyongyang will reach the Philippines.
How will other nations with nuclear capability like NoKor ally China and Russia react to a preemptive US strike? Russia has more nuclear warheads of 7,000 more than the 6,800 listed by Jane’s military book of nuclear stockpile and other weapons of war.
Bautista vs Bautista
The battle of the Bautistas for the P1 billion the Commission on Elections chairman has reportedly stashed away is turning ugly. Comelec chief Andres Bautista said his wife, who had taken on a lover, is trying to extort millions from him not to make public bankbooks, titles to real estate property, including a condo unit in Bonifacio Global City and another one in San Francisco, California,
Mrs. Patricia Paz Bautista’s lawyer, Lorna Kapunan, on the other hand, was reported on MSN Philippines saying that it is the Comelec chief who is using his secret condo units as “sex dens..”
Does the resourceful Mrs. Bautista have compromising photos of her husband? Was she able to secure the reception logbook with the names and times that her ex-husband’s female visitors came in? This, as they say, make for juicy plot in a film. No need to write a fictional plot. Just follow the lines in real life and make script in the style of a roman a cleft.
As we wrote on Wednesday, the messy marital split is drawing the prurient interest of those people with a vicarious appetite for scandal, especially in a situation involving a pretty woman, an important public official and money worth billions.
The saddest part of this whole Le Affair Bautista is its impact and collateral damage for the ex- couple’s four young children. Chairman Bautista, in near tears during a live interview on TV, said that one of his children has stopped going to school because of bullying classmates who make references to his broken family and the father’s alleged ill-gotten wealth.