Posted on 06/02/2009 5:02:17 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
The Axis of Madness
03 June 2009
By Yulia Latynina
North Korea tested a nuclear bomb near Russia's border, but the Foreign Ministry advised Russians not to panic.
North Korea is a totalitarian state led by a man who makes Josef Stalin and former Chinese leader Mao Zedong look like Cub Scouts. This is a country where people die from hunger. Many of the roads lack asphalt, but hordes of North Koreans come out every Sunday on a "voluntary" basis to level the surface. If the volunteers don't show up for work, they could be shot.
North Korea's coastline is ringed with barbed wire. When fishermen occasionally get shipwrecked on the Russian shore, they beg their rescuers not to inform Pyongyang because this would mean arrest or the firing squad at home. Defecting is also not an option since family members left behind would be shot.
North Korea is the only nation in the world where nobody knows with certainty who is leading it. Is the great leader Kim Jong Il still alive? Or has he been stuffed with straw and put on display for the people to worship?
North Korea also has giant military factories built deep inside caves. Neither the United States nor China has such factories. Although the Soviet Union built these kinds of installations, they were used exclusively for bomb shelters and military command centers, not factories. In these factories, North Korea constructs nuclear bombs. Besides bombs and missiles, the only thing this reclusive country manufactures is cocaine.
North Korea is a maniacal state. Last week, it detonated a nuclear bomb less than 300 kilometers from Vladivostok, but it didn't warn Russia ahead of time. What would happen if the United States detonated a nuclear bomb without any warning less than 300 kilometers from a large Russian city? The Foreign Ministry and the Kremlin would go berserk -- and rightfully so.
Without any warning, North Korea test-fires nuclear missiles that shower debris onto Russian territory. It seizes Russian vessels in what it considers to be its territorial waters. A few years ago, Kim promised then-President Vladimir Putin that he would destroy his nuclear weapons -- only to say several days later that he was just joking.
Kim Jong Il is a son of a bitch. But unlike what former Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza was to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the North Korean dictator is definitely not "our son of a bitch."
Does North Korea's aggressive foreign policy benefit Russia? As a member of the nuclear club, Russia has a strong strategic interest in making sure that no new members are admitted -- particularly maniacal ones.
Does Gunvor, the top trader of Russian oil and gas that had $70 billion in revenues in 2008, benefit from North Korea? Yes. Gunvor -- like any oil and gas trader -- benefits when North Korea tests nuclear bombs, pulls out of the armistice treaty with South Korea, threatens to invade its neighbors and destabilizes global affairs because the end result is a spike in oil prices.
Russian history had its share of both crazy and noble tsars, but it has never had a leader who tailored his foreign policy to benefit oil traders.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
I agree with that.
Russia and China must feel like they are under the gun, to be as silent on this as they have been. They don’t want to become North Korea’s first target.
They both are under an extreme threat, if NK become fully nuclear weapons proficient.
I wish the U.S. would meet with South Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Russian representatives, and develop an agreement that would see North Korea awoken by one massive surprise attack some early morning.
It has to be neutered, before friend or foe are attacked with nukes.
Surpassingly strange when the Russian press begins to make a lot more sense than the American press. We live in odd times.
more like "disturbingly interesting times." :-(
“May you live interesting times.” is putatively a Chinese curse.
Ironic. We were in a cold war with the USSR from 1948 to 1989. And with great effort and cost the US and its allies defeated communism in Russia.
So now we just meekly accept that socialism or communism is couching at our door.
Somewhat weird.
What about Iran ? That is your son of a b.
When one’s enemies are more alert, awake, knowledgeable, perceptive, accurate, sane, ‘patriotic,’ realistic . . .
than one’s leader . . .
the depth of the poo has reached Everest proportions.
. . . or Marianas Trench proportions . . . or both.
...North Korea is a totalitarian state led by a man who makes Josef Stalin and former Chinese leader Mao Zedong look like Cub Scouts... Kim Jong Il is a son of a bitch... Does Gunvor, the top trader of Russian oil and gas that had $70 billion in revenues in 2008, benefit from North Korea? Yes. Gunvor -- like any oil and gas trader -- benefits when North Korea tests nuclear bombs, pulls out of the armistice treaty with South Korea, threatens to invade its neighbors and destabilizes global affairs because the end result is a spike in oil prices. Russian history had its share of both crazy and noble tsars, but it has never had a leader who tailored his foreign policy to benefit oil traders.Thanks TigerLikesRooster!
They could cripple America but North Korea would be reduced to glowing pulp. One nuke sub could do the deed. The same would be true if they hit Russia or China.
So much of the N.K. is under ground I’m sure a lot of the cockroaches would still live.
Last week, it detonated a nuclear bomb less than 300 kilometers from Vladivostok, but it didn't warn Russia ahead of time.
200 miles. Seems a bit rude, actually, thought of that way. North Korea is, first and foremost, a Soviet experiment, and Kim is the son of the guy the Soves put in office. His own son is now waiting in the wings, a third generation fruitcake with his hand on a nuclear button. Not, one would suspect, exactly what good ol' Uncle Joe Stalin had in mind.
But there it is for all the world to see: the perfect end to the militarist, socialist police state experiment: an insane monarchy, overdeveloped military, starving people, and a country turned into a hell worthy of Dante. Cleaning up this mess will mean killing a lot of earnest, brainwashed worker ants who probably deserved better in life. In that sense it's a tragedy, but then social experiments of this type usually end up that way.
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