News Society Data

The United Nations voted 15-0 to punish the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, but the resolution is already being undermined and threatens to allow a nuclear arms race in Asia.

China and Russia are giving the United States a glimpse of the opposition it will face when it deals with the Iranian nuclear problem. China may not be willing to enforce searches at ports and stops along its “porous” border with North Korea, which means that weapons parts could be illicitly snuck into the country. Not only is China a problem with regard to enforcement, it is also a problem economically. China has said that it will keep its economic and business ties with the Hermit Kingdom.

China has frequently affronted the United States, even on issues where the U.S. has had a legitimate point, but the shocker from Monday’s article in The New York Times by Norimitsu Onishi was that South Korea announced that it would be keeping its economic and business ties with the North. Those ties include an industrial zone and a tourist resort in North Korea. According to Onishi’s article, those two items are “an important source of hard currency for the North.”

In order for sanctions to have any effect on North Korea, all sides need to cooperate and show the North that they mean business. This is not a way to get that accomplished.

South Korea had originally said that if the DPRK conducted a nuclear test, they would move away from engagement and move toward punishment. It appears that they are not going down that line. Jonathan D. Pollack, a North Korea expert at the National War College in Newport, R.I., put it succinctly when he said “We’re in a situation where everyone is saying what they won’t do, but no one has yet said what exactly they will do.”

The U.S., which pushed for the sanctions, had to water them down to get approval from the Chinese and the Russians. While other countries haven’t said what they will do, neither has the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has aid that other countries who agreed to the resolution must abide by it, but the U.S. must put partisan domestic politics behind it and make sure the U.S. at least does it part. The U.S. can’t really control what the rest of the world will do, but the U.S. can make sure that it does its part. It doesn’t matter who is to blame, whether it is former President Bill Clinton, current President George W. Bush, Congress under Clinton or Congress under Bush. What matters now is that the world rallies around these resolutions and isolates Kim Jong-il’s regime. While he will upgrade his rhetoric, an isolated DPRK will feel the heat.

The only way that the DPRK will feel that heat, however, is if the sanctions are harsh enough to cause economic pain to the country.

While it could be said that Congress—won in the fall 1994 elections by Republicans—hampered the efforts of the Clinton administration, partisan electoral politics must not keep the United States from preventing a nuclear arms race that could involve terrorists. If the sanctions are enforced—and they should be enforced—the world should prepare for the possible collapse of Kim Jong-il’s decrepit regime and the massive refuge flow that will follow, as has been the concern of South Korea and especially China. All weapons must be secured and all refuges must be helped, lest North Korea be allowed to become the ultimate nightmare…an anarchic country with no government, an endless refuge flow and no control over weapons of mass destruction.

The governments that signed on to this resolution must enforce it. If, however, these governments do not enforce it, and if the six-party talks continue to fall apart, the Bush administration may have to confront a truth that it has yet to tackle…direct talks with a country that it despises. The only other alternative to that is one that Asia, and the U.S., currently cannot afford.

SOURCE
Onishi, Norimitsu. “Questions Grow Over U.N. Curbs on North Korea: Trade Paths to Stay Open: South Korea and China Say They Will Preserve Economic Ties.” The New York Times, Monday, Oct. 16, 2006.

Kevin D. Roberts
2006 Graduate - University of Connecticut - B.A. Journalism/Political Science
Torrington, CT 06790

Is it possible to monitor our Sun by using rays of light and capsulated in atomic size balls of energy and sending them through the Sun and then catching them again? Even with the Sun’s hot heat the encapsulated energy spheres would stay intact as they passed through the Sun.

If we could figure the exact direction of movement of the Sun with regards to the Milky Way and release the energy balls from the earth as we passed in front of the Sun then they would flow directly through the Sun at very high rates of speed. How is this possible you ask?

Well, I am contemplating that once we turn the energy balls on that they will be so strong that gravity will not affect them or any force for that matter and they will stay in a fixed spot as everything else moves.

Then we could measure exactly where they will go through the Sun and release a bunch of them at exact time periods and know where they went through. Then we can catch these energy balls by turning them off and leading the earth come back around or we can send a probe and catch them.

We could then measure the difference and changes to the energy spheres and calculate the heat, interior of the Sun and figure out what lies ahead in the way of solar flares, solar eruptions and the amount of fuel left in our Sun. Thus we could figure out its life expectancy and potentially learn much more about it and we may have ever known. That is my theory for the day, what is yours?

“Lance Winslow” - Online WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/ Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance in the Online Think Tank and solve the problems of the World; WorldThinkTank.net www.WorldThinkTank.net/