Very interesting take from sports journalist Jason Whitlock on why the NBA is kowtowing to the Chinese government:

FOX Sports 1 journalist Jason Whitlock connects the dots on how Nike influences the NBA and the athletic apparel company’s relationship with China.

“I’m going to try to explain this,” Whitlock said Friday on FNC’s ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight.’ “It’s very simple actually. Nike is in control of basketball — the NBA, college basketball, high school. Nike is the real person driving this conversation in this thing with China. If you go back to — and I’m going to connect it to politics — in 2015, in May of 2015, President Barack Obama went to Nike’s headquarters in Portland, Oregon and announced his defense of the TPP – Trans-Pacific Partnership.”

“A deal that was going to be very favorable for Nike, for China,” he said. “Who is the President that came after Obama and walked America away from the TPP? Donald Trump. Who is the shoe company that employs LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick and these other athletes that smear Donald Trump as racist? Who are the people constantly criticizing Donald Trump? NBA, Steve Kerr, Gregg Popovich.”

“The NBA answers to Nike,” Whitlock declared. “Nike is a $40 billion business. The NBA is an $8 billion business. President Obama, the basketball President, friendly relationship with the NBA, went to Nike’s headquarters to announce his defense of the TPP.”

“This thing is very simple. This is about money,” he said. 

“This is about a President that won’t cooperate with what Nike wants done,” Whitlock said on FNC. “Nike is using the NBA and its leverage over the NBA to go after this guy because they disagree with him about his policies as it relates to trade in China. It’s very simple.”

Real Clear Politics

You can read more at the link.

It may be unviable now, but if they keep testing it will eventually become viable like their current ICBM capability:

 A U.S. defense analyst on Tuesday dismissed North Korea’s possible pursuit of a nuclear retaliatory strike capability using a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) as unviable for now, noting vulnerabilities of its easily traceable underwater platform.

Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at RAND Corp., made the case amid concerns that Pyongyang’s recent test of a new SLBM could mark a fresh threat to Seoul and Washington, as its submarine could be capable of launching unpredictable, retaliatory strikes.

“The North Korean submarine, which was apparently developed from a Romeo-class submarine, remodeled and refit, is not extremely quiet. So, if they put nuclear weapons on that kind of submarine, it is going to be tracked from the time it leaves port,” he said during a lecture on nuclear forces hosted by a local think tank, the Asan Institute for Policy Studies.

“If conflict develops, it is going to be sitting at the bottom of the ocean and just destroyed. So, that is not a viable strategy to get to a second-strike capability,” he added.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

General Bell is speaking out against the OPCON transfer to South Korea:

A former commander of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) on Friday expressed his opposition to the planned transfer of wartime operational control, or Opcon, from the United States to South Korea, citing significant threat stemming from North Korea’s nuclear weapons development.

Gen. Burwell B. Bell, a U.S. four-star general who commanded the USFK from 2006 to 2008, said in a written interview with a Korean correspondents club in the United States earlier this month that he opposed the wartime Opcon transfer based on recent assessments that Pyongyang has made great strides in its nuclear weapons program that has made a conventional weapons-based deterrence model obsolete.  

Only the United States, he said, possessed the nuclear weapons and deployment capability to respond to the North Korean nuclear arsenal, and this capability can only be effectively planned and exercised in a wartime contingency if the U.S. command stands at the helm of the alliance. In terms of combat operations on the Korean Peninsula, the wartime Opcon transfer was unlikely to be realized, he added. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but from a military perspective General Bell is correct. Does anyone think that in a real contingency on the Korean peninsula a ROK general is going to be directing U.S. stealth bombers, space assets, nuclear weapons, and other strategic capabilities that only the U.S. has?

However, the OPCON transfer is not a military issue for the ROK, it is a political issue. All the issues that General Bell brings up, the ROK left could care less about. They don’t think North Korea would ever attack the ROK and that the U.S. military is actually a barrier to reunification. The OPCON transfer is one of the things they need to move towards the removal of U.S. troops from South Korea and seeking their confederation with North Korea.

Kim Jong-un is apparently sending a strategic message with his supposed horse trip to the summit of Mt. Paekdu:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un rode a white horse to visit Mount Paekdu, the highest peak on the Korean Peninsula considered the birthplace of his late father, slamming U.S. sanctions and calling for greater “self-reliance” efforts to frustrate them, state media reported Wednesday.

Kim has visited the mountain, considered one of the peninsula’s most sacred places, ahead of big political or diplomatic decisions and events, and the latest trip has spawned speculation about whether another big decision might be forthcoming.

The leader “climbed up Mount Paekdu, riding a white horse through the first snow,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported, releasing a series of photos of him riding a horse running up the snow-covered mountain.

Kim also visited a special tourist zone under construction in Samjiyon County at the foot of the mountain, and lashed out at the United States for sanctions and pressure against the communist nation. 

“The situation of the country is difficult owing to the ceaseless sanctions and pressure by the hostile forces, and there are many hardships and trials facing us,” Kim said, according to KCNA. “The pain the U.S.-led anti-DPRK hostile forces inflicted upon the Korean people is no longer pain, but it turned into their anger.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but I have to wonder if he really rode the horse to the summit or not? I think it is more likely he took a few staged shots at the bottom of the mountain and then had a helicopter take him to the summit for more staged shots.

Anyway the reason the photos were taken was to signal to the U.S. that they are running out of time to drop sanctions against the regime. Kim Jong-un has given the Trump administration until the end of this year to reach a denuclearization deal before another likely provocation cycle starts.

General McMaster is not a fan of dropping any sanctions on North Korea:

Herbert R. McMaster, the Donald Trump administration’s second national security adviser from 2017 to 2018, said at a seminar in Washington on Thursday that premature sanctions relief should not be granted to Pyongyang and that doing so would be the “definition of insanity.”

The remark came only days after working-level discussions between the United States and North Korea resumed for the first time in seven months but subsequently fell apart over the course of a day.  

McMaster claimed if Washington submitted to the North’s “provocation cycle” with its recurrent weapons tests, it would only enable Pyongyang to engage in “long, drawn-out negotiations, during which the North Koreans try to extort more money and payoffs.”  

“And then ultimately what do you get? You get a weak agreement that locks in the status quo as the new normal. And then North Korea breaks that agreement right away,” he added.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Here is what LeBron James had to say about the NBA’s China problem:

“I think when we talk about the political side, I think it’s a very delicate situation, a very sensitive situation,” James said. “Me personally … when I speak about something, I speak about something I’m very knowledgable about, something that hits home for me, something I’m very passionate about. I felt like with this particular situation, there was something not only was I not informed enough about. I just felt like it was something that not only myself or my teammates or our organization had enough information to even talk about it at that point in time, and we still feel the same way.”

Yahoo Sports

You can read more at the link, but James also took a shot at Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey who started NBA’s China problem with a Tweet supporting protesters in Hong Kong by James stating Morey “wasn’t educated” and only “thinking about himself”.

What isn’t there not to know other than the Chinese government is beating down pro-Democracy and human rights demonstrators in Hong Kong? How is showing support for the protesters a sign of only thinking about one’s self? Keep all this in mind the next time you hear professional athletes talk about social justice causes.