Right-Wing Pundit Hypes Fictional North Korean EMP Threat

Frank Gaffney (Photo: Raw Story)

It was only a matter of time before the right wing would turn the current crisis on the Korean peninsula into a parody. It’s not entirely surprising that chief conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney kicked things off on Thursday with an interesting theory about he thinks the real threat from North Korea is.

Gaffney told Laura Ingraham radio show fill-in host Raymond Arroyo that we should really be worried about the North Koreans putting one of their nukes on a ship to the West Coast, attaching it on a short-range missile and — don’t aim it at any particular large American city where it would inflict the most damage — but fire it up above the atmosphere creating the dreaded “Electro Magnetic Pulse” that will (supposedly) put the entire United States out of business for good:

GAFFNEY: They certainly have an abundance of shorter range missiles which could be brought close to our shores aboard ships. A capability that their Iranian partners, we know, have demonstrated. And by lobbing a relatively small, relatively unsophisticated nuclear weapon of the kind that they seem to have tested now three times on one of these short range missiles high over the United States and detonating it outside of our atmosphere, the North Koreans know they could inflict incalculable harm on this country, even perhaps with just one of these weapons.

And how would that work? Such a weapon detonated in space would trigger something called “Electro Magnetic Pulse,” a very powerful form of electromagnetic energy that would essentially damage or destroy every piece of electronic gear and particularly sensitive equipment like transformers that are the backbone of our electrical power grid. And if those go down, we cease to exist as a 21st Century society because without electrical power, look at Katrina as an example or what happened with Sandy more recently, except the power doesn’t come back on after a couple of days or a couple of weeks. It stays off and that means, really, returning us to kind of a pre-industrial society.

Listen to the clip here:

So the North Koreas will ship a nuke and a missile all the way to the United States — undetected — attach the nuke to the missile (a process they have yet to master) and launch it way up in the atmosphere while U.S. defense officials (particularly the Missile Defense Agency) are none the wiser. If that sounds like something out of a doomsday fiction novel (or a video game), you’re right.

As CAP’s Matt Duss once noted referring to Gaffney’s claim that Iran would pull off such a stunt, “it’s probably worth pointing out here that the likelihood of Iran, or anyone, actually pulling off such an attack is roughly the same as Iran building an enormous, space-bound vacuum cleaner and sucking up all of America’s oxygen.”

Gaffney — who is is director of the far-right Center for Security Policy and whose writing regularly appears in somewhat mainstream publications — is also one of the country’s most prominent Islamophobes and was the brainchild behind Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) conspiracy theory she famously peddled last year that certain elements of the U.S. government were under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood (Bachmann got to keep her seat on the House Intelligence Committee after the widely-panned and criticized affair).

But what is the real threat from North Korea? ThinkProgress has a run-down here.

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White House: Latest N. Korean threats 'not the path' to resolving conflicts

White House press secretary Jay Carney warned Tuesday that North Korean threats to restart a nuclear reactor it mothballed five years ago would only further isolate the country from the international community.

"The fact is that North Korea's announcement that it will restart its facilities at Yongbyon is another example of its pattern ... of violating its international commitments," Carney told reporters at the White House.

The North Korean state news agency on Tuesday reported plans to "readjust and restart all the nuclear facilities" at its complex in Yongbyon. The facilities include a uranium enrichment facility and reactor shuttered after a 2007 agreement with the United States and other nations.

Carney said the latest posturing from North Korean leaders was "not the path" to resolving conflicts in the region.

"We have seen consistent behavior that is counterproductive, to say the least, to a goal that one assumes North Korea's leaders aspire to, which is an improvement for lots of North Korean people," Carney said, adding the country "must abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons."

The decision to restart the Yongbyon reactor was the latest in a string of symbolic and substantive moves by North Korea in the wake of new sanctions levied in response to the country's nuclear test in February. North Korea has disabled an emergency contact line with South Korea, and officials stated they consider the county in a "state of war" with their southern neighbor.

The threats have prompted maneuvering by the Pentagon, which has dispatched stealth B-2 bombers, F-22 Raptor fighter jets and B-52 bombers to the regions. American and South Korean troops have also conducted joint military exercises, and the Navy shifted a guided missile destroyer to waters off the Korean peninsula.

"We are taking appropriate measures in response to the bellicose rhetoric and provocative actions" from North Korea, Carney said.

The White House also said administration officials had been in regular contact with leaders in Seoul, Tokyo, Moscow and Beijing to coordinate a response. Carney said President Obama was being regularly briefed on the situation.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told CNBC on Monday that the U.S. should be "very concerned" by North Korea's posturing.

"The kind of provocation and bellicosity they're showing now with their rhetoric raises a lot of concern," Panetta said.

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‘The Walking Dead’ Open Thread: He’s Korean!

This post discusses plot points from the February 17 episode of The Walking Dead.

Is morality a luxury? One might think that, in a world overrun by zombies, setting up an ethical code should take a backseat to survival. But the strongest moments in Sunday’s othewise lackluster Walking Dead made the opposite case, using a breakdown in the relationship between brothers Merle and Darryl as a case study in why morality would and should be a central concern in a post-apocalyptic world.

The brothers begin feuding in the woods, as the meager spoils of their hunting efforts lead Darryl to question whether they shouldn’t make a beeline back for the well-stocked prison. But the real rift emerges when they spy a small group of survivors fighting a losing battle against a group of walkers. Darryl sees people in trouble who need his help. But Merle sees useless dead weight to whom he owes nothing. “They ain’t never cooked me a meal,” he sniffs.

However close Darryl and Merle may have been at one point (even morally speaking, as they apparently planned to rob the prison group when they first encountered it), the conflict over the embattled group on the highway reveals how far they’ve grown. Darryl believes human life is something worth protecting irrespective of utility. Like a normal person, he believes leaving people to die when you can save them to be a grave moral ill. It’s such an important part of his moral character that he barely hesitates to run in, crossbow blazing, and save the day. Merle is left little choice but to follow his brother but, in a nice touch, he saunters towards the battle in a fashion resembling nothing more than a walker’s shuffle, his move away from humanity reflected in his actual movement.

Darryl finally snaps after Merle attempts to stick up the terrified survivors for food. Demanding “an enchilada” from the Spanish-speaking “beaners,” Merle’s moral ugliness is on full display, and Darryl can’t take it anymore. He points his crossbow at his brother, demanding Meryl let them go and deciding to march back to the prison irrespective of what his brother wants. Merle’s Randian selfishness has made him toxic, so untrustworthy and morally repellent that his own brother can’t stand to be alone with him.

The underlying point here is that morality isn’t just a luxury in this world: it’s something people need, both a survival adaptation and, more importantly, one of the only things that makes their apocalyptic life worth living. Last week, it seemed like family ties were the most powerful motivating force for survivors, shredding group bonds as if they were paper. But Darryl’s move back to the prison suggests ethics run deeper than blood. Merle’s utter lack of humanity makes it impossible for Darryl to depend on him; he needs to be with people who place the same value on his life as he places on theirs to survive in a world where no one can really provide for themselves.

In a clever bit of dialogue, this point is directly connected to Merle’s racism. When Darryl sets off for the prison, Merle pleads with Darryl that he might not be welcome: “I tried to kill that black bitch…damn near killed that Chinese kid.” Darryl’s pithy response — “he’s Korean!” — points to the fact that he’s bothered to get to know these people, while Merle’s refusal to see them as anything other than stereotyped cartoons keeps him out of a community defined by shared trust. Human kindness isn’t a relic of a bygone world. It’s a necessity.

But Darryl’s moral revolt isn’t just about the fact that he can’t trust Merle in a tight spot. Darryl appears to simply not want a life in which he either leaves innocent people to die or thieves from them. In his mind, Merle has abandoned the very things that make life good and valuable, the values and beliefs that make humans noble and underpinned their brotherly love itself. “I may be the one walking away,” Darryl tells his brother, “but you’re the one who’s leaving.” As they’ve both returned to the prison by the end of the episode, the central question going forward is whether Merle can return from this moral exile as well.

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