Georgia; North Korea Invites Inspectors; Mining company tax in Australia; Mike Daisey's Apple Story Discredited; Coptic Pope died; Megaupload / Kim Schmitz Update; Kony 2012 Update
To kick off another hair-raising week of news we start off with Mark reporting this week from Tbilisi, Georgia about what the latest newz is from the old republic. In the latest dispatches from North Korea, nuclear inspectors are invited to visit, but the young leader also plans to launch a satellite to celebrate his father. The Australian government, meanwhile, makes a bold move introducing a big new tax on all mining companies. Mike Daisy might have a sweet boy's name, but this week we learned his apple story was not big in terms of truthiness. Pope Shenouda III of the Coptic Christian Church died this week. An interesting man, with an impressive life, and fantastic headgear. In keeping with our commitment to newz updates, we also bring you an update on MegaKim, as well as uncle Kony and the 2012 campaign.
Links:
I just want to give some comments about the part about North Korea. The name of the leader is Kim Jong-Eun (depending on transcription type you choose it can be Kim Jong-Un as well). The J is spoken like in “jungle”. Unfortunately I couldn’t find an example for the “eu”…and I’m not good in the phonetic alphabet… :(
2012 marks the 100th birthday of Kim Il-Sung, the great leader and eternal president. NK said for a pretty long time now, that they will be a “strong and prosperous country” until 2012 (well…at least in the propaganda).
The problem with the satellite launch is that they show with that, that they have a developed a working long-range model. The Taepodong-1-missile was shot over Japan to show, that they can reach Japan. Now with the Taepodong-2 they want to show that they can reach the US (Alaska iirc) with their weapon arsenal. Since North Korea always uses a kind of blackmail to get what they want, this is obviously part of it.
The US won’t launch a military attack against North Korea because nobody in the region has an interest in that. China is afraid about tons of refugees, South Koreas capital Seoul is in range of the artillery of NK and a unification would be far pricier than that of Germany (the last estimate that I read was 2.5 times pricier than that of the unification of Germany). Japan could be targeted by NK as well. And China won’t approve of a war against NK, they are still kinda allies, even so NK is in the minor position and China could probably do something about the state of the country. After all it seems that the last travels of Kim Jong-Il to Beijing was about getting Beijings blessing for Kim Jong-Eun as a rightful heir of the leadership. And like Richard J. Samuels once said in a talk he gave at the Free University of Berlin: If NK wouldn’t exist, it would have been invented. With such an enemy available you can give a lot of things a reason (i.e. security policies). Ah, and I doubt that Kim Jong-Eun is better than his father and grandfather. Nobody knows yet what is influence is, but after the dead of Kim Jong-Il the borders got shutdown tight and punishments for border-crossings got harsher and more strict. But I have to admit that I do not know what the current state of the borders to China are. They might be opened up a bit after the mourning phase was over. NK also stiffened the control of foreign media which is one of the main influences which could lead to a change because it shows that the propaganda is completely wrong. Thus I doubt that Kim Jong-Eun is a new generation that will bring betterment to the country.