#1
The IRA operated the Officials and the Provos. Officials supported Provo terror, even though they were not directly involved in same. The Taliban operates the same way.
It happens that desperadoes hold groups of people hostage - for instance in planes or banks. Sometimes the police or military take some quick action or try some ruse to remove the danger. Sometimes they refrain from moving an inch for fear that hostages will be killed or some disastrous explosion set off.
They may seek to talk the desperado out of his corner, perhaps offer to fly a plane hijacker to another destination after releasing his hostage. In many cases, they simply wait. Often - but not always - tiredness and exhaustion bring an end without drama.
Are we in a similar situation with North Korea? The big powers recognise that the threat or use of military power is not an option. Actions against key targets in North Korea could hardly be quick enough to prevent the regime inflicting horrible damage on South Korea and perhaps Japan. It need not use nuclear weapons. Seoul is within artillery range from the North. A sudden collapse of the North Korean state would also be a nightmare.
So what about talking? It has been done with varying success for many years and will no doubt be continued. The US has sometimes voiced threats and increased pressures, and usually thereby made the situation more dangerous. However, even during the Bush administration (second term), the US seems to have concluded that to talk North Korea out of its nuclear programme the regime must be offered something that is more useful to it than nuclear weapons and missile programmes. Conversely, the regime knows that for doing away with these programmes, it can demand a great deal.
Over the years, the North Korean regime has had good reasons to fear efforts to eliminate it through actions from outside - military attacks or subversive activities. It seems wise, therefore, that guarantees against such actions may have been placed on the table. For the North Korean government, the question may be what offers the best security - nuclear weapons of their own or a piece of paper.
Perhaps a piece of paper could be made more attractive if it were signed by all the relevant great powers and combined with a peace treaty. Perhaps it would also be more credible if it were offered in the margin of the revival of international nuclear disarmament. While allowing civilian nuclear power and guaranteeing access to uranium fuel, it would have to comprehensively ban nuclear weapons, enrichment of uranium, and reprocessing on the whole Korean peninsula.
The North Korean regime has often been isolated and ostracised. Although there have been good reasons for this, the country may well have felt humiliated. Against that background, the offer of diplomatic relations with the US and Japan, and normal relations with the world at large, may have considerable value as a part of a quid pro quo for dismantling the nuclear weapons programme and for other forms of engagement, for instance against the proliferation of nuclear and missile technology.
Many other offers can and are already part of the sweet talk: food and economic assistance of various kinds, and energy assistance - oil and perhaps a resumption of the construction of the two light-water reactors that were part of the 1994 agreed framework. There may be limits to the persuasive power of the Chinese government, but it is significant - and there can be no doubt that Beijing has an enormous interest in using it. A nuclear-capable North Korea shooting missiles over Japan could push Tokyo in a direction that would sharply increase tensions with China.
So while the security council and everybody else will condemn the latest North Korean missile tests, a resumption of the talks will be sought rather than more sanctions. Perhaps President Carter will go again to Pyongyang, reminding Kim Jong-il and the regime of the wishes of Kim Il-sung. We must hope that in the six-power talks formulas are found that can bring sufficient benefits to all sides. Such formulas are unlikely to include sufficient inspection to guarantee that no undeclared fissile material is hidden but must have guarantees against any capability to produce more such material.
And what if nothing is enough to persuade the North Korean regime? If it fears that nothing but a continued demonstration of its nuclear weapons and missile power will guarantee its existence? Then we shall have to be patient, seek to prevent proliferation, and wait for another day.
Hans Blix is chairman of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission and former head of the UN weapons inspection team in Iraq secretariat@wmdcommission.org Hans, about that UN Security Council condemnation.... anything forthcoming?
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Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
04/06/2009 09:43 ||
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Glorious! I love the portrayal of Olbermann.
Posted by: Mike ||
04/06/2009 13:32 Comments ||
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#4
I knew Pepsi would make it but Coke is the drink of "republicans".
I was surprised he didn't can RC and moon-pies also. Did you notice all the airlines, railroads and power companies survived as well as Big Oil? And where the hell was Wal-Mart?
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
04/06/2009 12:53 Comments ||
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#5
Jack, it was a short sketch, so they couldn't do all of the economy at once. Besides, they were concentrating on manufacturers rather than marketers.
Once they've got the manufacturers in line, they'll move to the stores.
There can be only one.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
04/06/2009 18:31 Comments ||
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#6
Besides, SNL should never be encouraged to make their skits longer!
Isn't it time for him to go home yet? It is good, in theory, that the new President of the United States is taking so much time to tour Europe. He arrived in London last Tuesday, has been to Strasbourg, Prague yesterday and now he's off to Turkey. It shows, I suppose, that he cares about the outside world and that is 'A Good Thing'. But his long stay means that we are hearing rather a lot from him, way too much in fact.
His speeches have long under-delivered, usually leaving a faintly empty sensation in this listener even though I welcomed, moderately, his victory last year as offering the possibility of a fresh start and a boost to confidence.
Yet, we are told that he is a great orator and in one way he certainly is. He does have a preternatural calm in the spotlight and a mastery of the cadences we associate with the notable speakers in US history - such as JFK and MLK. But beyond that, am I alone in finding him increasingly to be something of a bore?
His performance at the first press conference in London with Gordon Brown featured moments in which he sparkled - his riff on loving the Queen was a high-point. But most of the serious answers that I listened to were interminable, windy and not very impressive. At points there were pauses so long that it appeared he had simply lost his train of thought.
Today, we were treated to another set-piece Obama speech, and my didn't he go on a bit? The crowd in Prague was huge, and initially wildly enthusiastic, but what he served up was not any more impressive than his damp squib in Berlin last year. Is there a computer which churns this stuff out for him?
"For over a thousand years, Prague has set itself apart from any other city in any other place. You have known war and peace. You have seen empires rise and fall. You have led revolutions in the arts and science, in politics and poetry. Through it all, the people of Prague have insisted on pursuing their own path, and defining their own destiny. And this city - this Golden City which is both ancient and youthful - stands as a living monument to your unconquerable spirit."
Empires rising and falling, destinies being defined and a Golden City standing as a monument to unconquerable spirit... goodness, what a ham. When he really gets going he's worse than Tony Blair.
But Obama was only warming up. "When I was born," (Everything usually leads back to him, you'll notice)... "the world was divided, and our nations were faced with very different circumstances. Few people would have predicted that someone like me would one day become an American President." (Him again)...
"Few people would have predicted that an American President would one day be permitted to speak to an audience like this in Prague. And few would have imagined that the Czech Republic would become a free nation, a member of NATO, and a leader of a united Europe. Those ideas would have been dismissed as dreams". (Not by Ronald Reagan they wouldn't have been, when most of Obama's Democrat friends thought the then US President's robust approach to the Cold War made him a loony on the loose).
"We are here today because enough people ignored the voices who told them that the world could not change. We are here today because of the courage of those who stood up - and took risks - to say that freedom is a right for all people, no matter what side of a wall they live on, and no matter what they look like... (subtly this time, but right at the end the sentence leads back to him again).
The Obamas have handled their trip well and in their public appearances have been a credit to their country. But I'll wager that within a year or so he'll be marked down as a wind-bag.
He's as much of a great orator as Bill Clinton was "The Education President". Bill Clinton was then the governor of a state at the bottom of the educational rankings.
It's the oldest trick in the book. Take your weakness and use foot-licking lackeys in the media to make it your biggest strength.
#4
Well, at least our newest spotlighted I hate America American didn't go up there and say, "I love Prague's Old World Style and Robusto, and that it has a full serving of vegetables in every 1/2 cup." or some off-the-script joke about how, in his brief but historic tenure as president, that after he is done with them these will e=be the first checks he has handled which won't bounce.
Where does one begin? Obama says in America there is a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Maybe that's because when there was a civil war in Europe's doorstep in the Balkans and genocide it didn't lift a finger until America led. Maybe it's because there was an invasion in Kuwait it didn't lift a finger until America led. Maybe it's because with America spending over half a trillion a year keeping over the sea lanes and defending the world, Europe is spending pennies on defense.
It's hard to appreciate an entity's leading role in the world when it's been sucking on your tit for 60 years as Europe has with regard to the United States, parasitically .
And then he goes on and calls America arrogant, dismissive, and derisive regarding Europe. The London Telegraph, a correspondent in Strasburg, said this was the most critical remarks he had ever seen a president give on foreign soil, and I think he's right. When Kennedy arrived in Paris, he did not attack Eisenhower and the United States. When Obama's elected president, he is president of all of the United States, including Americans who opposed him, and he owns American history, including a past he may not have wanted to engage in.
I think what he did is, in order to gain the adoration of the crowd, he denigrated his country in a way that I think is disgraceful.
Posted by: Mike ||
04/06/2009 12:40 ||
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He is disgraceful as much as his wife is beautiful, which is saying not much. I don't know what is more pathetic - his description of his own country or the fact he made it outside of his country. My God the standard has now been lowered lower than Jimmy Carter bashing in the Middle East.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
04/06/2009 13:07 Comments ||
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#2
"He is disgraceful as much as his wife is beautiful"
Are we talking about the same wife, Jack? Michelle - beautiful?
I guess if you like horse faces....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/06/2009 14:25 Comments ||
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