I've been asked by quite a number of people in the last couple days about my reaction to North Korea's underground nuclear test.

My response has been low-key, more like a shrug than anything else. What I am thinking is basically, what do you expect under the circumstances?

For my Global Network friends in South Korea and Japan it is quite different. They are feeling much more emotion about the situation. They are living right smack-dab in the middle of a region where the US is working overtime to create a new arms race - that will ultimately be pointed at China and Russia. North Korea is just the ploy to establish fear - but not the real "prize".

Sung-Hee Choi from South Korea wrote, "It has been a long time that the western propaganda has manipulated the people to abhor the North Korea and its leaders. They did everything to push the North Korea to the edge. I am not saying the North Korea leaders are immaculate. ..... Regarding Western propaganda, it was so persistent that even many peace activists in the world have been affected by it. It was one of the most difficult things that I had to encounter in the America. [Where she lived for 10 years.] It is not only me. The difficulty to make understand the North Korea's activities to the people outside of Korea has been the most difficult task for many Korean peace activists."

Then from Makio Sato in Japan we heard, "The US has ignited some right-wingers in Japan's Diet [Parliament] in order to rearm Japan and dispatch Japanese soldiers along with their own, and seduced some grudge-bearing economic leaders to drop off the self-restraint of not producing weapons, in order to jointly produce weapons and robot soldiers and planes..... Japan is edging towards rearming. If Japan rearms itself, what percentage of hope will be left in Korean reunification? We have to stop this."

The US goal is to return Japan to its aggressive fascist warlike state which would this time around become a US partner in controlling China. Japan would become the Asian-Pacific regional equivalent of Israel which serves as the US guard-dog in the Middle East. The US is now preparing India for that job on China's other front. Georgia is also being set-up for that role with Russia, as NATO has already been.

It's not at all difficult to see the US "grand strategy" taking shape if you just fit the pieces of the puzzle together.

Obama is on-board with the program. Just days ago V-P Joe Biden sent word to Georgia that we were with them all the way and will be bringing them into NATO real soon. Then once they are in NATO, and the US can use them to stimulate more fighting with Russia, the NATO treaty will "require" that the US rush to "protect" Georgia from an "aggressive" Russia.

Obama's job is to make it all look like the US is the force for good, always reaching out the friendly hand, trying to be Mr. Nice Guy, while in fact we've been setting up the whole deadly scheme.

It is classic empire building and sad to say the US has the disease big-time.