13 February 2007

Surrendering to blackmail

According to the Daily Telegraph a deal has been struck whereby North Korea will shut down its main nuclear reactor within 60 days and then irreversibly disable it - in exchange for this, the regime will get 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil and then 950,000 tons of aid. It appears the trade sanctions on luxury goods (and not least Japan's courageous termination of all financial transfers and trade between the countries) has hurt.
Well that will keep Kim Jong Il and his murderous cronies cozy wont it? 200,000 people in the political prison system including children related to political prisoners. Children doesn't mean 17 year olds, it means ALL children. It tests chemical weapons on prisoners. You might want to read Aquariums of Pyongyang for more about this.
So it's nice to help prop up this regime
Hopefully it will be verifiable, hopefully North Korea will allow spontaneous unscheduled inspections, hopefully it will allow inspections of all of its suspected facilities.
It wont. Official access into North Korea comes through 2 flights a week from Beijing, the occasional flight from Russia and a daily train from Beijing, and presumably the ferries from Japan will resume shortly. In a totalitarian police state you can hardly do anything spontaneous.
Unless it can be verified, this deal is nothing more than a way to prop up a slave state, a slave state that gets little criticism or protests from those who claim to give a damn about human rights.

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