Sunday, March 25, 2012
India Worried About Pakistan Nukes
Obama Visits DMZ, Peers at N. Korea
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Iran Sanctions Seen Pushing Up Oil Prices
RNW Leaving the Airwaves After 65 Years
All nationals of the Netherlands, today remember the countless countrymen killed in the streets and squares of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Remember those who were tortured and subjected to Fascists in police stations and concentration camps. Relatives of those who are no longer with us, we cautiously extend our deepest sympathy to the people who rebelled to help Jewish families! Because we are the Dutch, tolerant people. Because we will not tolerate that the same people as we, Jewish men and women, Jewish children are tortured and killed. That is why we rebelled!
N. Korea, Iran Overshadow Nuclear Summit
Friday, March 23, 2012
US Accuses Iran of Backing Syria: So What?
Sunday, 25 March 2012
"Insider threat" is India's key concern--the possibility that Pakistani nukes could end up in Islamist terrorist hands.Click here for the story.
Scanning hell on earth from one of the most dangerous places on the planet….
A U.S. Presidential show of solidarity with South Korea as the North observes the 100th day of mourning for Dear Leader Kim Jong Il. Click here for the story.
Analysts say the nuclear-armed Kimist regime is likely to react to Obama's visit; the period from now until mid-April could see several new provocations, including Pyongyang's planned missile launch.
Disaster on the brink of becoming a catastrophe….
Reuters political risk analyst Peter Apps reports Western sanctions have not only failed to stop Iran's menacing nuclear advance; the measures have "helped push oil prices to levels seen threatening the global economy." Even worse, he reports that "far from producing compliance, ratcheting up the economic pressure is making the Islamic Republic more volatile, unpredictable and perhaps dangerous," according to experts. Click here to read his piece.
One hopes that U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian and Chinese counterparts will discuss Iran in a truly serious way on the sidelines of the upcoming nuclear security summit in Seoul, South Korea, as appeasement of Iran seems to have made war inevitable, much the way appeasement of Nazi Germany in the 1930s made World War II inevitable.
Service to End May 11
The Dutch government is about to do to its legendary international broadcasting service what the Nazis could not do--kill it.
Radio Netherlands Worldwide, which claims a weekly reach of about 50 million listeners, says it plans to close most of its services, including broadcasting to Dutch expatriates, and relaunch--mainly as a website--with a skeleton staff and a focus on producing content for audiences in countries "where free speech is suppressed or threatened."
An RNW spokesperson says the changes "have been forced on RNW by the Dutch government’s decision to slash our budget by 70 percent with effect from 1 January 2013."
The new budget will come from the Foreign Ministry rather than the Ministry of Education and Culture as at present.
"The editorial independence of RNW will remain sacrosanct," the spokesperson says.
RNW will hold a final, 24-hour marathon broadcast on May 10 and 11 to mark the end of its 65 years of service.
The Netherlands, ironically, is believed to have started the international broadcasting business, with regular transmissions starting in 1927 from shortwave stations to the Dutch East Indies--now Indonesia.
Broadcasts Inspired Dutch Resistance
Following the Nazi occupation during the Second World War, the Dutch government in exile was granted air-time on BBC transmitters. The Radio Oranje program was a daily commentary.
The Queen of the Netherlands, Wilhelmina Helena Pauline Maria, who was forced to leave her homeland, regularly appeared on the BBC and Radio Oranje, often calling Hitler the "arch-enemy of all mankind." Her late-night broadcasts on Radio Oranje, along with those of Winston Churchill, inspired the Dutch resistance. Here is the text of one of her 1942 speeches:
The Nazis outlawed listening to BBC and Radio Oranje. They even banned radios; but many Dutch people used small, self-built radios that could be hidden from the enemy. Some of these sets have survived and can still be found in museums and private collections.
The Germans also used a number of radio jammers that they turned on during the broadcasts.
One of the chief commentators on Radio Oranje, Henk van den Broek, was given the task of re-starting public broadcasting once the country was liberated. He began Radio Herrijzend Nederland, which eventually became RNW, in 1946, modeling it after the BBC.
RNW's English-language shortwave broadcasts to North America were discontinued in 2008 after a survey found that more listeners to the network were using the podcasting service instead of shortwave radios.
Memo to RNW Management: Your announced focus on producing content for countries where press freedom is limited is admirable and in keeping with RNW's noble wartime history. But before abandoning all other kinds of programming, you might also consider daily, 24/7, Internet-based broadcasting--in Dutch and in English, which has become the international language--of news and entertainment, including music, from and about the Netherlands. It would be relatively inexpensive to produce two such channels, featuring a mix of live and prerecorded programming. Assuming a viable business model, you may even be able to find a partner or investor or a sustaining, institutional sponsor--say, a large company or a leading, not-for-profit foundation--for the new, online venture. This reporter would be happy to help you.
BONUS: Click here to screen an archival gem, a 1985 TV documentary about an iceskating race narrated by an RNW radio star of the time; and below, for a recent, RNW video report from Sierra Leone (which has a lively, free press) about a youth-oriented "radio station in a box" donated by a Dutch NGO.
World leaders including US President Barack Obama will launch a summit on the threat from nuclear-armed terrorists on Monday, but the atomic ambitions of North Korea and Iran are set to feature heavily.
North Korea's upcoming rocket launch has overshadowed the run-up to the two-day meeting in Seoul, which seeks agreement on locking down fissile material that could be used to build thousands of terrorist bombs.
Click here to continue. An especially chilling excerpt is set forth below.
The ACA [Arms Control Association] says there have been 16 confirmed cases of unauthorised possession of HEU or plutonium documented by the IAEA since 1993, mainly in the former Soviet Union.
Alexandra Toma of the Connect US Fund, which promotes nuclear non-proliferation, said a sophisticated extremist group could plausibly take advantage of such lapses.
"It takes only 50 kilograms of highly enriched uranium to make a crude nuclear bomb" the size of a grapefruit, she told a Seoul forum Thursday.
Obama to Visit DMZ
President Obama plans to visit the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates North and South Korea--the most heavily-fortified border in the world.
Barbed wire, watchtowers and land mines line the DMZ, while across the nearly 250 kilometer-long stretch of land, an estimated two million troops--one million on each side—stand ready to resume battle at anytime.
The DMZ was established in 1953 as part of the armistice agreement that ended combat in the Korean War. There has never been a peace treaty, and the two Koreas have remained in a formal state of war ever since.
Although it is considered one of the most dangerous places on Earth, the DMZ has seen only isolated incidents of violence. In one of the most well-known cases, in 1976, North Korean soldiers killed two U.S. soldiers who were escorting a Korean work force using axes to trim a tree. The North Koreans killed the Americans with the workers' own axes.
International observers monitor the cease-fire at the DMZ, while U.S. troops are stationed alongside the South Korean soldiers.
Popular Tourist Attraction
Despite the threat of tensions, the zone—particularly the Joint Security Area where North and South Korean forces stand face-to-face—is a popular tourist attraction. Visitors can get a glimpse of North Korean soldiers and an apparently uninhabited town, what is referred to as the North Korean “propaganda village.”
A VOA correspondent, Steve Herman, who has visited the area, says the tours are strict, from U.S. Army escorts to instructions on appropriate clothing, to warnings against pointing at anyone on the North Korean side.
“They get very upset," Herman says. "I mean, it's very hard when you see something over there in the North, and you're talking to someone you're with, and you say, 'Hey, look at that over there,' and you start to point. I mean, I've done that. And the soldiers admonish you pretty quickly about it."
Herman adds: "Another thing that you will sometimes notice is how the South Korean soldiers stand behind these blue buildings. They obscure half of their bodies so as not to be a prominent target for the North Korean troops, so that does give you some indication of how hazardous the duty is at the JSA and in the DMZ.”
The blue buildings belong to the U.S.-led United Nations Command. Tourists can go into one where the two sides have held negotiations. The building straddles the border, with the dividing line going straight through its negotiating table.
The zone has also become a common stop for U.S. presidents. When President Obama travels there for the first time on Sunday, he will follow in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
Iran's clerical fascist regime should never have been allowed to come to power more than three decades ago, and certainly should not be allowed to acquire atomic arms. But that doesn't mean that it does not have the right to supply (sell?) its ally, Syria, surveillance equipment and guns and ammunition. Given the West's support for an armed revolt in Syria--following the unnecessary NATO intervention in Libya on the side of Islamist-led rebels and the Obama administration's emboldening of the Muslim Brotherhood-backed rebellion in Egypt--there is something ridiculous about this story.
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