#1
This is a bit overdone. During the Hajj of 2010 (or 1432 After the Hijra) the train was only functioning between a few stations and only had a few rail cars. We'll see what happens next year.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
12/11/2010 19:15 Comments ||
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It's well and good to worry about Pyongyang's nuclear capability, but it also matters for reasons the West seems disinclined to think about.
By Jonah Goldberg
If North Koreans were pandas, would we have let them suffer so?
Mr. Goldberg continues in fine form from there. He's right: one day the North Korean people will be free. When they are very few of us will be able to look them in the eye.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/11/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Doc, you can bet the percentage of people who can look them in the eye will be higher here at Rantburg than the general public, and far higher than the in the State Department and most lefty campuses.
#2
I believe 50 years of commitment to that DMZ and our insistence to try to allow them in has been more than enough to look "them in the eye". This is a country that has women get pregnant, have babies, and kill them to eat. I am DEAD serious and maybe they may not be able to look US in the eye.
Never-mind their Pagan God.
#4
Everything eventually becomes our responsibility, Grom. Everything.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
12/11/2010 8:51 Comments ||
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#5
Actually, we 'Saved the South Koreans' from a similar fate. Look at it as the 'half full' view. It was about 300,000 Chinese in November 1951 that made it the fate of the North Koreans.
#6
I lump NORK's in the same category as these Jacked up Old cars with $1.000.00 each wheels and no food for their children, same style over necessities mentality.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
12/11/2010 10:12 Comments ||
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#7
It is unwise to ponder the fate of the North Koreans too long, as that nation is a museum of the worst elements of 20th Century industrial horror.
There are some of them who were born, lived their entire lives, had children and died in forced labor camps, having no knowledge of anything else.
Treatment of some who tried to escape and were captured, was so hideous that even Chinese border guards were horrified and objected to their superiors.
#8
Them lion's share of guilt, not that they give a crap, goes to the ChiComs, who have propped these evil creatures up for 60 years. The US and its allies under the UN banner actually tried to free these people, and got a bloody nose for it. Since then, guilt goes to all the bankers and venal nations that let these reptiles secretly trade, counterfeit and narco/weapons traffic, all the while feeding their elites and the army on humanitarian aid for their starving masses. I feel great sadness and pity for the suffering of these people, but not shame. My country has done most of the world's heavy lifting, with damn little thanks, for almost a century. Between that and amazingly stupid domestic policies, we are near broken, and certainly broke. Good luck looking to the rising Chinese for their enlightened and benevolent attitude towards world power.
Its not too late to stop the sinking of our ship of state, but the tax deal just brokered gives me little hope that we are governed at last by grownups, not petty, grasping poltroons!
#9
I watched a National Geographic on North Korea the other day (its on Netflicks) which wasn't too bad.
A western Doctor visited Pyongyang to perform a bunch of eye surgeries and to show North Korean Doctors how to do it. Of course being Pyongyang the residents are the top of the food chain in the party and very, very, loyal.
Telling was after the surgeries, when the Doctor's and his assistants removed the bandages and the parients could see - a very emotional event as you can imagine.
All of them gave public thanks to the Kims. "Me and my descents will be loyal forever!" was a common thread. Weather they were forced, were scared to do anything else, or did it of their own free will (and it did seem like the later..) every one of them gave their thanks and appreciation to Dear Leader. None gave any appreciation to the Doctor or his staff - they were ignored in the rush to give thanks and worship to the Great and Dear Leader.
I feel sorry for the North Koreans - the vast majority of which have no idea what life is like outside of their borders. To them the entire world is even worse and Kimmie-boy really is the Great Leader which the entire world respects and admires. I don't feel that much guilt - the responsibility goes to the Kims themselves, their leadership and military, and China.
The real cost of any re-unifications won't be the starvation or poverty - it'll be the mental attitude of the newly released slaves who are so dependent on the government for everything - including what to think, that some, and I expect a lot, simply won't be able to accept anything else.
#10
I have no doubt that each and every Marine, soldier, sailor and airman of our country will meet the eye contact test.
And that almost all of our State Department will not.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/11/2010 13:06 Comments ||
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#11
And that almost all of our State Department will not.
Steve, I'm afraid that you're wrong here. The SHOULD not pass. But, these arrogant bast@rd$ can't ever imagine that they are at fault for anything. In fact I'm sure they blame the military for not doing this correctly.
Posted by: Alan Cramer ||
12/11/2010 14:02 Comments ||
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[Chosun Ilbo] North Korea's nuclear and missile capabilities grew substantially under the Sunshine Policy during the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations, and the North now reportedly has about a dozen nuclear weapons. Pyongyang is also operating hundreds or even thousands of uranium enrichment centrifuges, whose existence South Korean leftwingers denied.
"As a result of the former administrations' deliberate disregard under a decade of the Sunshine Policy, the crisis is now coming to a head," a Cheong Wa Dae staffer said Monday.
◆ No Halt to Nuclear Development
North Korea's nuclear development program was no threat in February 1998 when the Kim Dae-jung government was inaugurated. No nuclear test had taken place, nor was there a uranium enrichment program. The 1994 Geneva Framework Agreement, whereby the North agreed to freeze its nuclear facilities if it was given light-water reactors, seemed to be working. But now North Korea has "about 10" nuclear bombs, according to a Unification Ministry estimate.
The North long denied its uranium enrichment program. Suspicions were first raised in October 2002 by then U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly. The South Korean leftwingers, taking sides with the North, said the program was invented by the neocons in the U.S. to ratchet up tensions and block reconciliation in Northeast Asia. In February 2007, then Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung said there was "no intelligence" that the North has a uranium enrichment program.
But in early October this year, the North showed U.S. nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker a facility with hundreds of centrifuges for uranium enrichment. Uranium nuclear weapons can be developed covertly and do not require testing like plutonium-based weapons. "They are more dangerous than nuclear weapons made from plutonium extracted from reactors," said Cheon Seong-whun of the Korea Institute for National Unification. A uranium enrichment facility with 1,000 centrifuges requires a mere 900 sq. m area and can enrich 20 kg of uranium a year, sufficient to make one nuclear weapon.
North Korea started building enrichment facilities in the early 2000s, said a senior North Korean military scientist who defected to the South in 2000. That was when the first inter-Korean summit was in preparation. The joint statement agreed in the first summit did not mention the nuclear program at all, and the second summit communiqué only said "joint efforts" should be made to resolve the nuclear issue."
◆ Missile Development
When Kim Sonny Jong-un officially emerged as heir to Kim Jong-il on Oct. 10 in a military parade on the anniversary of the Workers Party, an intermediate-range ballistic missile was shown to the international press for the first time. Dubbed "Musudan" by the U.S. intelligence services, it has a range of 3,000 to 4,000 km, making it capable of reaching the strategic U.S. military base in Guam.
North Korea has simultaneously boosted nuclear and missile capabilities in the past decade, because "it can threaten the U.S. as well as the South only if it can load nuclear warheads on missiles," said Baek Seung-joo of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. The so-called Taepodong 1 missile the North test-fired in August 1998 flew some 1,600 km. The firing came four days prior to the opening of the 20th session of the Supreme People's Assembly, which marked the launch of the Kim Jong-il regime.
The Taepodong 2 missile, fired in July 2006, failed, but a long-range missile launched in April 2009 flew 3,200-odd km. The North is now bent on developing missiles with a range of 6,700 km, capable of attacking Alaska and Guam. It has over 600 Scud missiles with a range of 300 to 500 km and 200-plus Rodong missiles with a range of 1,300 km.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/11/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Another lesson on appeasement, to go along side the Munich Agreement ("peace in our time")
Since the Democratic Party's "shellacking" in last month's midterm elections, speculation has been growing about a possible 2012 presidential primary challenge to President Obama launched by his party's disgruntled left. I posted such an editorial, from the same dead-tree media, last week.
Talk of a primary challenge has only ratcheted up following Obama's announcement of the tax deal he cut this week with congressional Republicans.
Warning: If the Democratic left does to Obama in 2012 what it did to incumbent President Carter in 1980 via Ted Kennedy's damaging Democratic presidential primary challenge - or what the Republican right did to incumbent President George H.W. Bush in 1992 with Pat Buchanan's entry into the GOP primary - the Democratic party as a whole will find itself paying a steep price for years to come. We live in hope ...
That's a promise, not a threat. Make no mistake: If the left costs Obama his presidency in 2012, the Democratic Party as a whole will lose out. Don't worry, dear reader, he'll get around to telling us how horrible that would be!
Sabotage the nation's first black president and the Democratic Party might as well bid farewell to its most loyal base of supporters: African Americans. Then the author observes all the black groups - young, women, etc. who voted for the One who might not support the Dims without O, but then claims his supporters are "racially and ethnically diverse." Then we get a long list of the One's fantastic achievements, not to be found with the likes of McCain-Palin - good thing we didn't elect those bozos!
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/11/2010 09:42 ||
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#1
the Democratic party as a whole will find itself paying a steep price for years to come.
They'll be doing that regardless.
O'bullshit's a symptom, not a cause.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
12/11/2010 10:08 Comments ||
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#2
Then the author observes all the black groups - young, women,, etc. who voted for the One who might not support the Dims without O,
A bridge, not any bridge, but an awesome, gorgeous, ribbon bridge http://www.10news.com/news/19475131/detail.html in San Diego, I have for sale to the folks what believe that.
#3
I hate to break it to the author but the Buchanan challenge really didn't do squat to poppa Bush, it was Perot coming from outside the Republican party that did the damage. Cold War over, people wanted change. Same thing happened to Churchill when Ww2 ended.
It occurred to me as I was looking at the various Wikileaks-related posts and news articles today, that the way to combat Wikileaks is to add to its stash. If they've got 250,000 pieces of classified material, add another 250,000 full of nonsense. Witness the amusing fallout from the Pak press gobbling up what somebody told them (but they were too lazy to verify) was Wikileaks content.
A lot of people, many of them people I like, are making the mistake of thinking Assange is standing up for freedom and openness. My opinion is that he's standing up for his own ego at the expense of some of government's very legitimate requirements for confidentiality, covering not only the protection of sources but also the requirement that diplomats be able to pass their frank assessments to their governments even though they have to smile and nod and profess undying admiration for people who're actually crapbuckets. It's so much fun tugging Uncle Sam's beard that nobody's really thinking about the consequences. David Warren explains it thus:
A conscious act of treason has been performed -- very smugly -- and there is yet no prospect that anything will be done about it. Wikileaks continues to publish privileged U.S. diplomatic traffic day by day, with the full co-operation of the world's "progressive" media, and with the impunity that is granted by an elite "liberal" culture, which lives in something like Michael Ondaatje's moral universe.
Which is unfortunately the alternative universe from which Barack Obama stepped, when he became president. He evidently does not have the intellectual equipment to understand the grave duties he has assumed. And that includes the duty to do something about open acts of treason.
If you don't believe that there are is a legitimate requirement to protect sources then google Ivy Bells and Richard Pelton. If you don't believe that dropping diplomatic correspondence into the wrong hands can have catastrophic effects then google Zimmermann telegram. Used to be most diplomatic correspondence was classified for anywhere from 50 to 100 years. A lot of the classified stuff I worked with was reviewed, not declassified, after 30 years, not so much for content as for sources.
Halal food movement has the strength to lead Muslims to rule the global economy as the food is the basic need of every human being, said Dr. Mustufa Ceric Grand Mufti Bosnia and Herzegovina while addressing the delegates of global Halal Congress at Islamic Chambers of Commerce and Industry here today.
Global Halal Congress scheduled on December 4 in Karachi which is being attended by delegates from 17 countries can be a break through for Pakistani exporters as the congress has the agenda of institutionalize the Halal certification and standardization of Halal products in Pakistan. Speaking on the occasion Grand Mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who is also the Grand Mufti of Sanjak, Croatia and Slovenia said that people of his country love Pakistan and hold this in a high esteem on its role during ethnic cleansing and insurgency. Their love for Pakistan is reflected in the fact that mosques in Bosnia and Herzegovina made collections as a relief fund for the flood hit people in Pakistan. The amount collected was the biggest in the history of Bosnia he disclosed. The grand Mufti who declined to quantify the collection said that it was submitted to the authorities when arrived Pakistan this morning. Elaborating his point of view regarding potential of global Halal market, the grand mufti said that since food is the basic need of every human being the Muslim Ummah should focus on developing strong base of food production which he said would left other technologies used by the West as a source of economic prosperity.
Commenting on the state of Muslim Ummah, the grand mufti remarked that out of the total refugees in the world over 70 percents are Muslims rendered shelter less due disturbances sparked in their homelands yet the irony is that the Muslims are labeled as the terrorists. Mufti Saheb in a lighter mood said something very serious that Muslims of the world love each other yet they do not respect each other which is the major cause of unity and strength among themselves.
#2
A few weeks ago, someone at the halal butcher in Lackawanna, NY (home of the Lackawanna Six) forgot to close the back door. Apparently one hundred and fifty animals got out and headed west on the main road through the neighborhood, toward the horizon. Until the halal butchers' guild increases the standards for the profession, I'll not worry that Muslims will soon rule the world economy through lamb chops.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Since the Democratic Party's "shellacking" in last month's midterm elections, speculation has been growing about a possible 2012 presidential primary challenge to President Obama launched by his party's disgruntled left. 
