Posted on 07/23/2005 2:07:28 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Ted Turner plans to visit North Korea next month to promote plans to protect plant and animal life in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, a swath of heavily fortified no-man's land that also contains rare and endangered species.
The CNN founder and philanthropist will join a list of prominent opinion-makers in academia and journalism to travel recently from the United States to one of the most secretive nations on Earth.
Analysts say North Korea has cracked open the door at least in part in hopes of explaining its view that concern over its nuclear program would be best addressed in talks between North Korea and the United States. President Bush, who labeled North Korea as part of an "axis of evil," has advocated multilateral talks involving six nations instead; the next round is to begin next week.
Turner's visit will coincide with a trip to Pyongyang by Donald Gregg, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea and current president of the Korea Society, based in New York, said Frederick Carriere, vice president of the group.
"North Korea is definitely reaching out to more people in the last few months," he said Friday.
Han Park, a Korea expert who directs the Center for the Study of Global Issues at the University of Georgia, said he helped facilitate the recent travel to North Korea of reporters from ABC News and The New York Times.
Phillip Evans, a Turner spokesman, said Turner planned to visit North Korea for a day or two "to promote the idea of north-south cooperation in restoring environmental integrity on the peninsula," with a particular emphasis on preserving the unique ecosystem in the demilitarized zone, or DMZ. He said Turner and others were pushing a plan to restore and conserve habitats and "strengthen local community residents through sustainable farming."
After visiting the north, Turner plans to travel to South Korea to address a conference sponsored by the DMZ Forum, a nonprofit organization that seeks to raise awareness of and preserve the zone's biodiversity.
The last remaining Cold War frontier, the DMZ slices 155 miles across the Korean peninsula, dividing the reclusive and poverty-stricken north from the booming south. Industrial development, particularly in South Korea, and lax environmental controls have threatened the environment in some parts of the Korean Peninsula, experts said, but the DMZ remains untouched.
About 80 species of fish thrive in DMZ rivers, including at least 10 found nowhere else on Earth, said Hall Healy of Facilitated Solutions International, an environmental consulting company. He said it makes sense to plan now to protect the DMZ's ecosystem rather than risking its economic development in the event of Korean unification or other events.
Hundreds of kinds of birds, including the endangered white-naped and red-necked cranes, fly over a ribbon of land roughly two miles wide, above leopards and Asiatic black bears and maybe tigers — scientists do not know for sure because few humans have ventured into the DMZ in the last half century.
"Where else on Earth can you find a place like that?" Healy said.
Perched above the port, in the style of the Hollywood sign, giant letters crumbling into the hillside proclaim, "Long Live Kim Il Sung," referring to North Korea's founder, who died in 1994. Other signs throughout the city herald his son and successor, Kim Jong Il, as the "Son of the 21st Century."
The city, though, looks like it never emerged from the 1960s. Most buildings are whitewashed cinderblock apartments or row houses built after the area was heavily bombed by the United States during the Korean War, and they give Chongjin a monochrome bleakness. Even the red paint of the propaganda billboards — "We are happy," and "We have nothing to envy," read two of the slogans — has faded in the sun.
"I had the impression of a ghost town. It was really colorless, gray. There was no life," said Violaine de Marsangy, a French aid worker who spent six weeks in Chongjin in 1999.
The big power plant on the waterfront operates at about 25% of capacity, so when dusk falls, swaths of the city vanish into darkness. Kathi Zellweger of the Catholic charity Caritas recalls being driven into Chongjin: "It's pitch dark at night, so dark you can't even tell there is a city."
West of the port is an industrial area, home to Chongjin Steel Co., Chemical Textile Co., May 10 Coal Mine Machinery Factory and Kimchaek Iron & Steel. These were once the pride of North Korea's industrial sector. No longer.
"Chongjin was like a forest of scrap metal, with huge plants that seem to go on for miles and miles that have been turned into rust buckets," said Tun Myat, who in 1997 became one of the first senior U.N. officials permitted to visit the city. "I've been all over the world, and I've never seen anything quite like this."....***
Wouldn't it be just awful if Ted the Red would be taken hostage when he's over there among his people....wouldn't it?
Leave the whole darn DMZ to rot for the sake of fish, deer and flowers? What about the people who owned that land? What about the fact that much of it would be valuable farmland? Yes, it would be awful if the geographically small country that is Korea were to utilize the few natural resources given to it. /sarc
Damn, those socialist success stories are something ain't they Hillary, Ted?
Turner is worried about the varmints and fauna in the DMZ? Turner has screwed up priorities.
Yes.
Can't they just keep him?
The other day, NK said free electricity wasn't 'enough'. They want a good deal more from the US. One can only guess what else, but as things stand, they'll have to get in line behind the Arabs and everybody else.
As for Ted, why doesn't he turn his vast properties into conservation land?
***.........The Turner Foundation has doled out $165,000 to the Ruckus Society, an ultraviolent anti-"globalism" group. Ruckus is not the usual bunch of angry activists marching around toting signs or dressed up like vegetables. It's a covert militia, a small but potent army determined to cripple corporate America.
Ruckus operatives run training sessions for starry-eyed, mayhem-minded activists before major demonstrations like those in Seattle, Washington D.C., and Genoa. There, radical wannabes learn "urban climbing and rappelling," "police confrontation strategies," "street blockades," and other forms of disruption. Huge amounts of tax dollars are spent monitoring and controlling their intent to destroy property.
Ruckus is at the core of what Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney called "a cadre… of criminal conspirators" who "go in and cause mayhem." Timoney would know; in Ruckus-aided protests during the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, 15 of his officers were injured, and 23 police cars damaged.
But to the Ruckus Society, none of that matters. Says their director, John Sellers: "I think you can be destructive, you can use vandalism strategically." (When Sellers was arrested by Timoney's men, officers confiscated piano wire and gasoline-soaked rags tied to chains from fellow demonstrators at the scene.) "It may be violence under the law, but I just don't think it's violence."
Ruckus openly engages in domestic terrorism with the goal of instilling fear in the commercial establishment and the consumer public that supports it. Witness the anti-World Trade Organization (WTO) riots in Seattle in 1999, when trained hoodlums ran roughshod over the city's commercial district, smashing windows, setting fires, overturning vehicles, ransacking stores, and putting lives at risk.
At Ruckus's Action Camps, footsoldiers learn all about "using the media to your advantage." In the midst of the flames and screams of Seattle, Ruckus staffers could be found giving on-the-record quotes to national media figures. When it was all over, Sellers did not express remorse for the damage done. Instead, he smugly told USA Today, "We kicked the WTO's butt all over the Northwest."
Sellers has a reason to be smug: The Ruckus Society is achieving its goals. By breaking laws, escalating conflicts between police and protesters, and operating military-style training camps, Ruckus has opened the door for other anti-consumer radicals. To be taken seriously within "the movement," Ruckus is proving, activists must be prepared to engage in organized conflict with police officers. It's not activism; it's insurrection. ...............***
http://www.consumerfreedom.com/oped_detail.cfm/oped/139
They may barbeque his fat butt!
It would be better if he takes his ex-wife, Commie Traitor Jane Fonda and several fruitcakes with him.
Turner is just plain weird. He's detached from reality. He's worried about fauna and flora on the DMZ?
I'm worried about N. Korean nukes. I'm concerned that millions of people are miserable slaves in another insane state like N. Korea. I'm not worried about some snail darters or a couple of plants in the DMZ.
Maybe he could worry about the thousands of tunnels the NK's have dug in to S. Korea.
Get some perspective dude!
I thought the DMZ was patrolled by both sides. Excuse my if I am being rudely skeptical but 2 miles wide and roughly 155 miles long is 310 square miles, not all of it river of course. Do they really expect me to believe that 80 species of fish exist in this area and nowhere north or south of the DMZ?
Or his fat head!
LOL
It is a huge stretch.
At your LINK:
***"Global Inspiration for Transboundary Peace
and Nature Reserve" with Speaker Mr. Ted Turner***
Barf!
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