Meanwhile, North Korean officials engage in even more bizarre behavior. For example, food and fuel supplies sent to North Korea have been halted, not to force North Korea to stop missile tests or participate in peace talks, but to return the Chinese trains the aid was carried in on.
In the last few weeks, the North Koreans have just kept the trains, sending the Chinese crews back across the border. North Korea just ignores Chinese demands that the trains be returned, and insists that the trains are part of the aid program. It’s no secret that North Korean railroad stock is falling apart, after decades of poor maintenance and not much new equipment. Stealing Chinese trains is a typical loony-tune North Korean solution to the problem. If the North Koreans appear to make no sense, that’s because they don’t. Put simply, when their unworkable economic policies don’t work, the North Koreans just conjure up new, and equally unworkable, plans. The Chinese have tried to talk the North Koreans out of these pointless fantasies, and for their trouble they have their trains stolen. How do you negotiate under these conditions? No one knows.
How can they have forgotten so soon? Clearly, this is a job for Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter!
” what the North Koreans were waiting for was some treatment of their exalted leader with respect and a direct communication….I think he was quite ready. I didn’t have to argue with him. When I outlined the specific points that I had been informed in Washington was the administration’s position, I presented them to him. And with very little equivocation, he agreed…. I think it’s all roses now…. I’ve known that there were people in Washington who were skeptical about any direct dealing with the North Koreans. They were already condemned as outlaws. Kim Il-sung was already condemned as a criminal…. And it was kind of like a miracle and almost an incredible statement that Kim Il-sung gave me in response to my proposals, and it was hard to believe….”
Thanks Kate! It’s always good to start the day with a laugh. Keep the trains….
Wow, Jimmy Carter never ceases to amaze me with his crazy thoughts. This guy was the President of the US??!! Yikes. Perhaps we should send him over to North Korea and film a reality TV show. Kim Il-sung would totally go for that. Simple Life: North Korea. I would buy a Kim Il-sung t-shirt with Jimmy Carter on it.
This looks like a job for the UN. If they fail send in the French, Germans and Belgium’s. Another laugh.
Yep, yes siree those nuclear mushroom clouds will keep the rose bed well watered.
BTW watch out for the thorns.
Watched CNN on North Korea with smuggled tapes from inside NK last night. Standard de riggeur executions by firing squad for regime dissenters. Kim would make Stalin proud of his concern for humanity.
I thought Fantasy Land was at Disneyworld. Apparently, it’s about 10,000 miles to the west..
Jimmy Carter……..makes Joe Clark look like a cynic.
I’ve always maintained that China and it’s protege’ N.Korea are far mor of a threat to us than Iran or Al Queada….the past 8 years would have been better spent formulating a dfinitive policy that addresses Kim’s insane nuclear saber rattling and Chin’s silent encouragement.
Jimmy Carter – the foreign dictator, tyrant, despot’s best friend. Little did we know when he was elected that he would never shut up.
Yup, Jimmy Carter has yet to find a terrorist, murder, dictator or other vermin thug he didn’t love.
Jimmy also seems to think that fraud election whereby commies and thugs steal elections (in places like Hugo’s Venezuela) are just peachy but fair election (in places like the USA) are stolen because Jimmy’s team didn’t win. I don’t think he comprehends the whole democracy thing…
Peanut Jimmy is scum who lives in an alternate reality of his own making where facts are never present so facts never get in the way.
I disagree with WLyonMacKenzie. China is not a threat.
N. Korea, I suggest, is economically and politically, falling apart. The sheer illogicality of keeping the trains, reveals a perspective that is isolated from reality. Their technological infrastructure is falling apart; their people kept from famine only by world support; and rather than working on both, the insane dictator focuses on His Military Might and steals railroad cars for parts.
I think the S. Koreans are right; just watch N.Korea fall apart. There frankly, isn’t much else that can be done. You can’t reason with an insane individual (Kim) and you can’t do much more than attempt to feed its starving citizens and ‘talk, talk gently’ to its insane leader.
North Korea is economcially anemic and militariliy couldn’t even punch its way out of Asia, much less mount any credible attack on America. Nearly all of DPRK’s missle tests failed within seconds. The nation’s logistics are nearly non-existent (look at an evening satellite shot of North Korea vs South Korea – see where all the lights are?) and the people are more likely to revolt against Kim Jong Il than George W Bush. Let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill.
The reason that there will be no war with N.Korea is simple math:
1)10.3 Million people in Seoul, South Korea
2) Several Million North Korean artillery pieces on the boarder within striking distance of Seoul.
3)Appox. time to demolition of Seoul by said artillery pieces: 3 hours.
The only way to fight a war with North Korea is a whole lot of tactical nukes along the boarder to take out the threat to Seoul. Then you’d have to get the wind right and hope it didn’t change. This ain’t gonna happen. Think of the worst case scenario and assume this to be the one that’s worse than that.
The good news is that the North is just sabre rattling for more food aid from the Americans (who are N.Korea’s largest aid donors in both food and heating oil.) The North just does this crap because “dear leader” craves attention and importance (and needs the free stuff his “economy” can’t produce – like food.)
The threat from N.Korea is not one of war with N.Korea. The threat is N.Korea’s penchant for raising funds by selling bad people technology they aught not to have. Like Iran and the Palestinian terrorist states and Al-Queda.
ol’ peanut brain jimmy was also the one that describe the shah of iran, described by my sister who was there during his regime as the most hated leader in the middle east, as a friend and ally of the united states.
he was so hated because of the completely entrenched cronyism of his dictatorship. nobody moved without giving tribute to one or another of his family members.
jimmy cawhtawh, friend and ally to the worst of the worst despots in post war world.
I give credit where credit is due. Jimmy Carter swings a mean hammer for Habitat for Humanity but other than that, the guy is a twit. IMHO
“a miracle”, “kind of hard to beleive”
yep
Warwick is correct to point out that it is near impossible to attack NK because of the threat posed to SK, not by artillery though, NK has been testing bio and chemical weapons on their own people(NAZI style exterminations on innocents), and it is these weapons(another blatant breach of the security council resolutions) that SK fear.
We need to evacuate the border and then bomb the hell out of southern North Korea as that’s where the NK communist party has it’s loyal support and infrastructures.
WHY is it that people with the putative high intelligence of a Jimmy Carter are so horny for for third world dictator thugs? Moral Narcissism? Other theories?
Willy and Jimmah, Mon and Maddy-Running-The-Show, and Kim: The Addictions. …-
America Continues To Suffer for Electing Democrats (Carter and Clinton: Democrat disasters )
WizBang ^ | July 05, 2006 | JOHN W LILLPOP
Posted on 07/05/2006 7:10:01 AM PDT by IrishMike
While America has generally prospered under the steady hand of GW Bush over the past five plus years, our nation continues to pay a steep price for electing Democrats in 1976 and 1992/1996.
Specifically, America’s 2006 Independence Day celebrations were marred by news that North Korea fired six missiles including a long-range one with capability to reach the United States. That missile failed shortly after launch.
North Korea’s experimentation with missiles and nuclear weapons is a direct result of wrong-headed policies implemented by the Clinton Administration.
With Secretary of State Madeline Albright running the show whilst Bill Clinton was otherwise engaged with Monica Lewinski and others in sex parlors Clinton established in the White House, fatal errors in judgment occurred in the name of official American foreign policy.
In effect, the Clinton Administration aided and abetted in the creation of the North Korean nuclear nightmare, under madman monster leader Kim Jong Il.
Had American military professionals been involved instead of an inexperienced, naive old woman and a president addicted to immoral sexual behavior, Mr. Kim Jong Il would have been put out of business years ago.
freerepublic
Perhaps because many of these particular ‘high intelligence’ types, (often with inflated egos), feel that they are somehow ‘underappreciated’, and despots recognize this and suck up to them as a manipulatory ploy?
‘High intelligence’ does not, necessarily, equate to common sense.
Jimmy Carter was & is, an incompetent boob. When he was as President. He is now, even worse, as a self appointed Ambassador to the worlds Psychotics ruling classes.
For those who did not live under his Presidency. IT was depressing, apathetic, crime ridden & a feeling of hopelessness pervaded both Canada, & the US. He helped bring about a world recession with PET’s help. Remember the NEP?
Just watch the TV from the times to get the feel of the ERA. WRKP is a good example.
This guy could not even have a military mission go right. Yet the Israelis of the same time took a whole plane full of people held from Idi Amin’s the cannibal clutches. His where the seeds plated that leed to Iran becoming a center of jihadism. Many US Marines paid for his blunders in death from the barracks attack in Lebanon by the huzballah. A real Carter Child. As was many other stupidities of the times.
I will never forget the rabbit that attacked him from the bank of a lake while canoeing. It went straight at him swimming( whoever has seen a rabbit swim lol). It tried to get at Carter in the canoe jumping out of the water to get at him in said canoe. The Secret Service had to paddle it to death.
This may be off topic a might. I think PMSH not going on a junket to Cuba before the US or even up till the present. Unlike every liberal Pm before him, has been a sign of his commitment to TRUE democracy. That he does not hob knob with Thugs, reporting to be leaders, speaks well of him. Carter like Pet could never cozy up enough to the worlds monsters. Neither could the Crook for
Shawanigan, nor the anti democratic communist millionaire from the Cayman islands. Maurice Strongs protégés.
Carter may be a friendly guy, but so was Barney Fife on Mayberry or Gilligan on the island. A human disaster generator.
The only way this nonsense from N Korea will end is for the people of N Korea to destroy the regime from within. This nut bar, Kim, has demonstrated to the world that he is clearly more than just a few bales short of a stack and I can’t see the people starving and sick for much longer. They will rise! What have they to lose?
It’s times like this that I wish we had an “effective” UN, rather than a bunch of crooks falling all over themselves trying to find new ways to line their pockets!
The crisis with N Korea is REAL. What can “we” do about it? NOTHING! … sad.
High intelligence usually equates to uncommon sense.
Average people have common sense, the super intelligent think uncommon thoughts.
That’s why I get such a rough ride…uncommon thoughts can’t be communicated to average people without child-like repercussions.
That was satire, I hope.
That satire was aimed directly at my runaway ego. I hope some people will be amused. I don’t take myself very seriously.
However, I do believe that uncommon sense applied correctly will open more doors to understanding than the everyday common variety.
Alzheimers or some other form of dementia perhaps? Of course that couldn’t explain the reasoning behind the entire Democratic Party, but it would at least encompass all those Democrats who aren’t sociopathic control freaks.
Internet lesson #1 down pat courtesy SDA, thanks
Current post and subsequent comments prime example for providing for the ‘internet scream.’
There’s where I admire Steved. Publicly never screams — he really belongs at UN table today where he can ‘ditch’ protocol and carry the the ‘negotiations’ forward.
Nice to meet you cynapse et.al.
maz2,
Why don’t you run for President. You seem to have all the answers…eventhough they are all reverse-prophetic in nature.
Well, I certainly have enough common sense not to predict what’s going to happen with NK. On the other hand, if you would like to see something really interesting, go to NASA’s Earth Lights map – http://www.tinyurl.com/jpq – and take a look at where NK is supposed to be.
Too bad he doesn’t have a major deposit of oil or the US would have pre-emptively invaded by now. In case there were any doubters about going in to Iraq for oil, there is your proof, North Korea.
After all they have WMD. Kim is a monster. He is a danger to his neighbours. All the excuses that the US used to go after Saddam. They won’t attack, no, they will negotiate. Now they will negotiate. They want to talk it over in a cool calm way. Even Bolton wants to make the UN work, in a cool calm way. Rice wants to negotiate with the 6 regional countries. Everything is cool all of a sudden. We can wait for negotiations and then inspections and then I guess anything else because time is not of the essence anymore but unlimited. Hmmm, isn’t that interesting. BS beats brains. No one will notice.
steved,
Everything is cool now because the Bush Whitehouse is in wind down mode now. Any rocking of the boat will jetison his GOP into oblivion the next election.
World leaders and his former supporters are headed for the exits as we speak. Time for W. to put the kid gloves back on.
coyote,where I agree with your comments on the’ineffective’UN,it does beg the bigger question…
Where human rights are being ignored,innocent people are being murdered or simply starved to death,does the onus fall on the victims themselves to fight for their lives?Or,do successful democracies have a moral obligation to seek out these’victims’around the world and help them in their struggles against oppression and tyranny?
To my eye,the UN has lost virtually all of it’s relevancy through it’s unending’dithering’in the face of ongoing atrocities.I hold them in contempt for allowing the deaths of millions while playing their petty political games….disgusting!
NK is constrained by China, S. Korea, and Japan, Steve. The US does not need to be the prime mover there.
Iraq, on the other hand, was not so constrained. In addition, Iraq and Afganistan are sitting right on top of the Islamofascists principal logistical corridor, and they bracket Iran.
That’s why Coalition Forces liberated Baghdad before Pyongyang.
Steve d., David Brown,
Look back up at my comment from 11:19.
That is why N.Korea isn’t rubble. And if it’s all about oil all the time, and N.Korea doesn’t have any, explain the Korean war.
Idiots.
david brown and vitruvius
Points well taken. Iraq is certainly well positioned strategically. I think they were well constrained though even with the oil for food debacle there was nothing lethal getting in and their radar was kept ineffective.
vitruvius – yes, the ‘lights out over N. Korea’ certainly gives an indication of the non-industrialism there. The state is an economic and humanitarian disaster. And yes, that’s the reason for attacking Iraq – that corridor of islamic fascism.
Incredibly ignorant allegory by steved; that IF a state has oil, then, the USA will attack it; but IF it doesn’t have oil, then the USA won’t attack it. Unreal. He never ceases to astonish me, both for his ignorance and illogicality and his utter unawareness of history, of reality. Incredible.
You know, steved, rather than wasting money attacking nations for their oil, which the US could obtain by purchasing it anyway, why not put your money into research into other energy sources? Hey – that’s what the US is doing!!! Oh, so that must mean that they attacked Iraq for another reason. Did you read, did you understand what vitruvius wrote?
Do you think the Iraq War has anything at all to do with islamic fascism and the method of dealing with islamic fascism is to enable democracy!!!
Warwick,
I don’t know why you lumped me in with Steve d. I don’t share his vision(s).
My simple explanation of the Korean war is that it was a war of ideologies as in communism versus capitalism.
I can only imagine that Bush and Co. are slowly starving the Kim il regime out much the same way that the former USSR was handled. There are many similarities the Gulag being 1 of them.
david brown, I don’t think that the Korean war was simply over ideologies – eg communism vs democratic capitalism. N. Korea, backed by the Soviet Union, attacked S. Korea.
No, I don’t see how Bush and co. (Do you mean the USA?) are starving N. Korea. I think that Kim is doing that to his own country, all by himself. No-one is making the choices, other than him, to spend such huge amounts on the military and ignore economic and industrial development. Those are his choices. Nothing to do with the USA.
China has a problem with N. Korea, because of the thousands of illegals trying to get into China to flee N. Korea. And that’s despite the N. Korean population having been brought up completely isolated, informationally, from the rest of the world, and totally brainwashed. Again, that’s Kim’s choices.
Massive World Food Bank aid has prevented open famines but the poverty and peasant-agriculturalism is endemic.
When you are dealing with someone, a dictator, who has made clear choices to starve his own people, make industrial dev’t impossible, and focus only on military images – and, when that country is situated such that invasion would harm S. Korea, then, there is little you can do, but ‘watch it happen’ and watch N. Korea implode in itself.
North Korea has reaped what it has sown all on its own.
The people of North Korea are dying because the of communism. Communism can’t feed itself. Can’t produce enough goods. Can’t allow its people freedoms. Even the USSR had to be fed by Canada’s grain.
Communism can’t produce enough goods or grow enough food because it doesn’t function. It isn’t a feasible economic system. Its net result will always be misery and death and there can be no other result.
Communism goes against every part of human nature and to deny this and pretend that it’ll work if not for this or that dictator is to have your head up your a$$.
It wasn’t Mao or Stalin that made communism into a death camp. It was the communism itself. There can be no communism without extreme force, mass executions, mass starvation, oppression and neglect. It’s inherent in the ideology. Communism is just another form of Totalitarianism. Just like Fascism, it is the most pure form of human evil.
“Communism isn’t feasible.” Thanks, Warwick, I’ll use that from time to time if you don’t mind. Great phrasing.
Nobody is going to do anything about North Korea.
South Korea and China would rather let everyone in the country starve to death, than try and stand up to the pathetic threat that IS the “Democratic” “People’s” “Republic” of Korea…
Mark Steyn hit the nail on the head with “Axis of Evil”…
Since Iraq was so obviously worthy of liberation, due to mass graves and NOT any particular WDM threat… At what point does North Korea fall under the same category???
Warwick
What exactly do you mean by communism? Everybody throws that word around and frankly I don’t think there is any evidence it exists outside the mind of conservatives. Kim is a Fascist or despot both have nothing to do with workers being in charge of their lives. Kim was in charge of their lives. That is not communism in any sense.
David Brown
We agree again. two for two. don’t be embarassed its not your fault.
Well, according to Wikipedia, Steve, which is as I understand it not generally considered to be a conservative bastion: “Communism is a political ideology that seeks to establish a classless, stateless social organization based upon common ownership of the means of production. It can be classified as a branch of the broader socialist movement. Communism also refers to a variety of political movements which claim the establishment of such a social organization as their ultimate goal.”
Although I would be loath to speak for Warwick, I suspect he meant it in that sense, in order to allow reasonable communication between sentient humans. Alas, it is not the case that all humans wish to be reasonable.
Vitruvius: Another good one is von Mises on socialism: “Socialism cannot work” (the calculation problem). Seems to contain an element of hyperbole but he means long term, and certainly not wihtou getting prices from parallel free market economies; but even then they are not perfectly applicable to the domestic market but only very rough approximations.
Canadian Observer asked:
“Or,do successful democracies have a moral obligation to seek out these’victims’around the world and help them in their struggles against oppression and tyranny?”.
Good question. The answer seems to be that in this 50-50 world you can’t get the liberal half to sign on unless the action is devoid of any economic or strategic interest. Example: George Clooney recently held a rally to push for intervention in Darfur (where the US has no real economic or strategic interests). The left as we all know has an awful problem getting self- interest, also known as “life”.
It can be argued that 800,000 died in Rwanda because the West had no real economic or strategic interests there.
Utopias don’t work in general, because they assume some form of stasis. Biologists have a word for stasis, they call it death. The biggest problem with the communist variety of utopia is the static notion of common ownership of the means of production. It entails a classic tragedy of the commons: people don’t look after what they’re not responsible for or don’t have authority over. In the communist utopia, individuals are responsible for nothing, and have authority over nothing; the state assumes all responsibility and authority. It can’t work.
Stasis – death, indeed!
Re: “the tragedy of the commons” a very good and astute friend told me the other day that “there is no known instance of a person washing a rental car”. We both had a awfully good chuckle.
Trust the Knight for all your North Korean “news” needs!
http://www.ashesoftyranny.blogspot.com/
Geez….Oil hit $75bbl today, gas in the US is around $3 per gallon, the Iraq war has cost somewhere in the region of $3,500,000,000,000 so far…….and there are STILL people who think the US invaded for oil?
How much cheaper just to have done a deal …..like France, Germany, Russia, China…et al.
Vitruvius
Thanks, yeah that definition embodies one of the more salient facts. It calls for the end to states. You know, states that tax, etc. This is the opposite of what all so called communist governments are about. People have been sold a bill of goods about communism. The whole idea was to free the common man from being subservient to owners and the state. He is in charge of his own life and work place. Modern socialism is democratic and works within the capitalist framework. In other words it has adapted to modern circumstances just like conservatism.
Nice try, Steve, but I’m not going to bite on a postulation that starts with “communism” and then conflates it with “modern socialism”.
Here, let’s try this…
Ideologies are like lighthouses. They provide beacons that help us navigate away from the shoals of structureless random thought. Nevertheless, they are built upon the rocks themselves. If we get too close to lighthouses, we wreck there too.
Forever adrift and yet navigating to the best of our ability, we float in a fluid state, neither solid nor gaseous, blown by the winds of time.
U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News it appears
North Korea is making preparations to launch
another long-range Taepodong 2 missile in final assembly.
A South Korean newspaper reported that North Korea has three or four more missiles on launch pads. Officials believe these are signals that North Korea is not backing down. …-
free republic