Japan has the power to prod the Chinese into doing what needs to be done to bring North Korea under control. That is because of a little known deal with the North Korean port of Rajin to act as a trans-shipment hub moving Chinese goods to Japan. If Japan maintains a ban on North Korean shipping, Chinese profits will suffer, and there lies the leverage needed to get China on board.
Whether Japan holds a key or not (Good observation, though), do you really think that NK will cease its nuke program, and most importantly, allow unfettered access to everywhere for Western inspectors?
Yeah, right…
China could very well force Kim to make all sorts of announcements, but the genie is out of the bottle now, and seeing it go back would be critical.
I just can’t imagine a gaggle of Hans Blix types wandering freely around NK, do you? Maybe I lack imagination…
😉
North Korea is an admitted thorn but Russia is a far more ominous growing storm.
Listened to Doctor Endicott, Australian anti-nuclear advocate, speaking with Anna Marie Tremonte this morning.
Endicott who studies the world nuclear condition, said that Russia was the Elephant in the living room that no one can see. Russia has approximately 2000 hydrogen bombs capable of target delivery. Many major cities in North America are pre-targeted with this equipment.
Sweden: She also pointed out that nuclear plants in Sweden, only days ago, came within hours of a Chernobyl nuclear melt down .
I mentioned in previous comments here that power interruptions occurred in Sweden and at the time they were thought to be connected with the Muslim gang clashes with police.
Russia is quickly becoming more of a danger to us. I also mentioned the Canadian Corporation who have a multi-million$ lawsuit against Russia for the blatant theft of their large Hotel complex by Russian organized crime. Armed gangsters just walked into the complex and ushered the owners out.
Russia also refuses to cooperate with any law enforcement to provide information about the computer servers that are active in stealing identities worldwide along with a wide range of computer crime. One can assume that much of Russia is being run by organized crime and that leads to the question of who they are selling nuclear devices to.
The Tremonte – Endicott interview ended with Tremonte noting that the Sweden near meltdown story was not carried by CBC or the MSM. A telling comment. = TG
Bingo TG…..Russia is a Rogue State and Putin is out to make himself the commisar for life.
That little rat faced bastardis the single biggest menace in the world.
Yes, and where is Gorby now? I think Putin himself pushed the snuff botton on the fiesty lady journalist, the name of whome escapes me just now.
Glasnost is dead! = TG
Where you see the words “mafia” and “buziness-man” in Russia, read: the remnants of the KGB.This organisation is pervasive and behind just about every nefarious scheme coming from the former Soviet union..It was one of the few organisations to remain intact at the end of the cold war, and of course, Putin is ex KGB..
I see now that the despotic wack-job Kim says that sanctions would be an “act of war”. That little bastard needs to understand that a couple of nukes dropped on his head – now that would be an act of war!
This will affect nothing. North Korea will become a nuclear power and nobody can stop it. Having said that, I am less bothered by N Korea than Iran. At least you can trust atheists to not want to die.
Mikhail Khordorkovksy, who turned Yukos into a transparent company with western business practices, is rotting in Siberia now. He was funding opposition parties. The state took Yukos back because oil is Putin’s new economic weapon. He has cut off natural gas to the Ukraine and is now putting the squeeze on western friendly Georgia. All of the tv stations are in the governments hands again. 12 journalists are dead. Putin is re-Stalinizing Russia. It’s sad, but, the legacy of 70 years with communism is that the Russian sheeple are more like liberated geriatric zoo animals that can’t make it on their own. I was hoping for a big street rally after this journalist was murdered. Reports said 1000 people, maybe.
I’m still not convinced that more sanctions on NK are going to do much. This nutball really doesn’t care if his serfs eat grass or freeze to death. Now if he started to threaten the Chinese directly that could get really interesting.
I hope the lefties are proud of themselves for the shambles that their bs has made of much of the world.
Penny,
You noticed too! Putin is re-Stalinizing Russia. Your correct wording.
No wonder I forgot the brave Journalist*s name . . .
Chechen war reporter found dead
Politkovskaya had often received threats
Anna Politkovskaya, a prominent Russian journalist known as a fierce critic of the Kremlin’s actions in Chechnya, has been found dead in Moscow.
The 48-year-old mother of two was found shot dead in a lift at her apartment block in the capital.
A pistol and four bullets were found near her body and a murder investigation has been launched.
Ms Politkovskaya’s murder has all the hallmarks of a contract killing, says the BBC’s Emma Simpson in Moscow.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5416218.stm
The award-winning journalist became ill with food poisoning on her way to report on the Beslan school siege in 2004, which some believed to be an attempt on her life.
==========
Professional snuff? Just the way Putin*s boys would do it. = TG
12 journalists dead? That is far more than I was aware of.
A sure sign of Stalinization. Next the free press will revert to *government organ* and news will once again be printed on photo copiers in church basements. = TG
The KGB – Putin method:
Do a professional hit on a prominent critical journalist.
The rest of the reporting community understands and go silent.
Very KGBish – – Putinish. =TG
If we are lucky they’ll invade afghanistan again to fight the the Taliban ;->
For years the leftists and msm have been blasting Pres Bush for acting alone. Now these same idiots are blaming him for not acting alone re NK.
Norad has just mobilized fighter planes over several cities in the USA.
That will be the day when western business interest twist the arm of China and risk losing profits!
NOT!
Mary: Norad is on alert because a small plane crashed into a New York City apartment bldg. They are saying that they believe not terrorist related.
TG
“Politkovskaya’s murder was at least the 12th killing of journalist who had angered the Kremlin during President Vladimir Putin’s six years in power. The Kremlin response was eloquent: As of late Sunday it was silent, even as the United States expressed shock and the European Union called the crime “heinous.”
From a great blog I discovered that covers all things happening in Russia:
russophobe.blogspot.com/
Scroll down to 10/9 for a summary of Putin’s behavior in systematically destroying democracy there.
How many cdn reporters would be killed for being against the govt. Poor dems in the US. First NK and now another plane crash into a NY bldg, taking Foley off the pages. And that crash coming within hours of Bush’s press conference stating enemies want to attack us. Been over 2 hours and no name or nationality of pilot, no id of the plane, no scenes of people rushing from the bldg. Was it a suicide by the pilot. Oh, plane come from New Jersey. 2 verified dead.
Penny,
Thank you for Russophobe.blogspot.com/
= TG
“Doctor Endicott, Australian anti-nuclear advocate”
Do you mean Dr. Helen Caldicott?
Not trying to put a white hat on that little twerp Yeltsin but Helen Caldicott is an anti nuke loonytoon.
She also advocates international agreement and control of natural resources.
What do you call those Maurice Strong types of folks?
My dear brother in-law went to one of her lectures in Calgary and came home all in a tizzy because she explained that the tetra pak juice boxes he was sent to school with, and then land filled, will be sitting in pristine condition 500,000 years from now.
“Sweden near meltdown story was not carried by CBC or the MSM. A telling comment”
They may have missed it but it’s really big news at: Green Left Weekly, 3w.treehugger.com, 3w.greenpeace.org
BTW – Japan has already declared it’s ports off limits to NK ships.
Wayne,
The Swede Nuke story you refer to is this one, No doubt.
Near-meltdown incident at Swedish nuclear reactor
Thursday, 3 August 2006, 12:32 pm
Press Release: Greenpeace
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0608/S00059.htm
Call for immediate closure of Sweden’s nuclear reactors following near-meltdown incident.
Greenpeace demands action as Swedish regulator meets to decide on possible shut-downs.
Sweden 2 August 2006. Sweden’s nuclear regulator SKI will meet in emergency session tomorrow (3 August) to decide on a possible immediate shut-down of all but one of the country’s nuclear power stations supplying up to 50% of Sweden’s electricity.
Greenpeace has called for the reactors to be shut down following a serious incident last week at Sweden’s Forsmark nuclear power station, in which *it was pure luck there wasn’t a meltdown* according to a former director of the plant.
The Forsmark incident was caused by the failure of back-up generators following a problem with the main power supply. If the backup system fails after a grid cut-off or a whole blackout, the operator loses instrumentation and control over the reactor leading to an inability to cool the core, which can lead to a meltdown (1).
In a report published last year, Greenpeace highlighted the widespread and frequent problems of failing power backup systems of nuclear reactors, which have also been reported in the US and Germany.
==== Scoop.co.nz ==
The worry about all these Nuke plants is twofold.
[1] the obvious, a resident *dirty* bomb and . . .
[2] The not so obvious. The need to bury waste in expensive stainless steel containers, in deep mine shafts well below any water table.
I can just picture how profit-minded *interpreneurs* in NKorea, China, Iran and Pakistan and India will cut corners on their storage methods = TG
I just wrote a column titled; “things that go bump in the night”. The discussions regarding putin and meltdowns are very interesting. They do not however address what to do with the madman in North Korea. The cbc and toronto star can do their little dance and I’m prepared to let these fools sacrifice themselves. I do not not want to sacrifice the rest of us to please some stupid armchair diplomats in Toronto.These issues do not make for academic discussion. the bobmbs are real.
I just wrote a column titled; “things that go bump in the night”. The discussions regarding putin and meltdowns are very interesting. They do not however address what to do with the madman in North Korea. The cbc and toronto star can do their little dance and I’m prepared to let these fools sacrifice themselves. I do not not want to sacrifice the rest of us to please some stupid armchair diplomats in Toronto.These issues do not make for academic discussion. the bombs are real.
TG
“it was pure luck there wasn’t a meltdown”…
This is just the usual Greenpeace bullshit that they propogate whenever an operator breaks a fingernail at a nuclear facility.
In Sweden, as in all western countries, the reactors are protected by three levels of defense-in-depth safety features begining with automatic scraming when there is a loss of coolant. The safety devices are all passive – i.e. they take effect, without human intervention, if there is trouble. A rudimentary description of this stuff would require a couple of pages but, suffice it to say that the general principle of auto-protection is the same one that prevents elevators in skyscrapers from falling when a cable breaks.
In spite of the incredible series of screw-ups at Three Mile Island, the built-in safety features worked as designed and prevented the accident from threateing the public. Conversely, the graphite-moderated reactor at Chernobyl had no auto-protection of any kind (and not even a containment structure to keep the resultant mess in situ), and the end result was a Greenpeace delight.
Perhaps the failure of the MSM (which is mostly virulently anti-nuke) to report the “incident” was because it wasn’t newsworthy, and even the CBC didn’t see a way to hype it up into a near-disaster.
Thank you Zog for the first bit of truth in the forest of anti nuke nonsense.
Zog,
I read your heated contempt for Greenpeace and your loyalty to Canadian Nuke plant safety as any record would support.
My points are two.
[1] Any plant is a target for sabotage or Missle hit.
[2]
Storage is *out of mind and out of sight*.
You must admit that a contractor entrusted to safely store nuke waste is likely to enrich himself by million$ especially in NKorea, China, Pakistan and Iran. It*s just the wild nature of life in those places to cut corners. Agreed? = TG
One interesting factor that is not acknowledged in this post is that South Korean has a very, very, very large population that believes in a true and living God who can answer prayers. And they are praying concerning this problem (North Korea). It will be very interesting to see if there is an answer (supernaturally speaking that is)
TG
1) An external attack wouldn’t breach the containment building unless it was a “bunker buster” dropped right beside the structure. (Or a nuke of course, but why would an attacker waste one of those on an isolated power plant when the weapon could take out a city. Sabotage is a very real threat, and I hope that security has been beefed up post 9/11 (probably not though). However, knocking out a nuclear power plant, although a severe economic blow, wouldn’t kill a lot of people, and that seems to be the objective of modern terrorists. A lot more havoc could be created by poisoning food and water supplies, setting off a “dirty bomb” in a major city or crippling some of the main Canada to U.S. gas lines in mid winter.
2) I really have no idea what some of the iffy countries are doing with their spent fuel. North Korea is apparently reprocessing it to extract plutonium – a few others may be just letting it pile up in on-site swimming pools, just as we do. Only the French have a rational and successful program fror dealing with the stuff. They’ve been reprocessing it for more than 30 years, not only for themselves but for other countries as well – notably for Japan. Here in Canada, we have an effective, albeit expensive solution involving reprocessing (a money loser with Candu waste) followed by casting the really hot and nasty residue in pyrex glass for final disposal in underground vaults. Back in the early 70s, some of those blocks were kept in water for about a year and the water remained drinkable. The problem in this country isn’t technical but political. NIMBY plus activist resistance to any serious effort to excavate a permanent storage facility. People are funnier than anybody.
Re: Spent fuel
Re-reading my post, I realize that somebody might get the idea that spent fuel reprocessing and glssification of final waste are actually happening in Canada. Not so. We have the technology but not the political will or any sense of urgency. Sorry if I confused anybody.
Zog,
You more or less agreed with the two points.
Over time the wrong people can be employed in a plant and do surprising things when the order is given.
[2] Political, no sense of urgency re. storage safety. If we in Canada say let the grand-children pay to store the stuff, then the less ethical countries will likely flush it into the ocean when no one is looking. That will eventually lead to a world eco-shutdown. = TG