Wordless Wednesday on Tuesday - An American in Pyongyang

Via NY Times:

PYONGYANG, North Korea — Playing the national anthems of North Korea and the United States, and works including George Gershwin’s “American in Paris,” the New York Philharmonic Orchestra presented a landmark concert here Tuesday evening, the first time an American orchestra has been allowed to perform in the isolated, authoritarian country.

On a stage flanked by the flags of the United States and North Korea, the orchestra performed works such as Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony and Bernstein’s overture to “Candide,” finishing to rapturous applause at the East Pyongyang Grand Theater.

The concert was broadcast live on North Korean state television and radio, as well as around the world.

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Didn't we always know that music soothes...

theteach

North Korea Shuts Down Its Nuclear Reactor

North Korean Reactor Is Shut, U.N. Confirms

By CHOE SANG-HUN

Published: July 16, 2007

SEOUL, South Korea, July 16 — Inspectors from the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency have confirmed that North Korea has shut down its weapons-making nuclear reactor, the agency said today.

The reactor was shut down in return for an initial shipment of 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil.

But the Communist North warned the United States that the real bargaining for its nuclear disarmament has only just begun.

North Korea told the United States over the weekend that it had shut down its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and had readmitted a permanent international inspection team.

Read the rest of the article here.

Additional articles:

U.S.: North Korea Claims Reactor shutdown (Breitbart.com)

In North Korea, 2002 All Over Again (New York Times)

theteach

McCain for President?

Last night at dinner at a family-style restaurant (I hate family-style restaurants), the female partner of the couple we were with said she would vote for John McCain for president in 2008. That he was the only viable candidate. I thought about that for a minute (because I like McCain and I do think he is a straight talker) but then spoke my conviction about voting for anyone in the mid-term elections coming up and in the presidential elections in 2008: I'm going to vote for the party in the up-coming elections - the Democratic Party. And even though I like McCain I can't trust him or any other Republican to make the kind of choices I'm hoping for: getting out of Iraq, safeguarding Roe v. Wade, universal health care, amnesty for illegal aliens already in our country, etc.

And then today I come across this article in Slate posted a few days ago:

SLATE
war stories:
Military analysis.
The Slime Talk Express
McCain is dead wrong about Bill Clinton and North Korea.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2006, at 4:32 PM ET

Sen. John McCain has skidded his Straight Talk Express off the highway into a gopher's ditch of slime. The moment came Tuesday, when he responded to charges by Sen. Hillary Clinton, his potential rival in the 2008 presidential election, that George W. Bush bears some responsibility for North Korea's newborn status as a nuclear-armed power.

Here, according to the Washington Post, is what McCain said in a campaign speech near Detroit:
I would remind Senator Clinton and other Democrats critical of Bush administration policies that the framework agreement her husband's administration negotiated [with North Korea] was a failure. Every single time the Clinton administration warned the Koreans not to do something—not to kick out the IAEA inspectors, not to remove the fuel rods from their reactor—they did it. And they were rewarded every single time by the Clinton administration with further talks.

McCain's version of history goes beyond "revisionism" to outright falsification. It is the exact opposite of what really happened. Let's take a look at the plain facts.

The article continues by describing various "sticks and carrots" Clinton extended toward North Korea which kept Korea from pulling out fuel rods, kicking out IAEA inspectors, and led to the signing of the Agreed Framework of Oct. 21, 1994, which effectively bottled up North Korea's nuclear program for eight years.

Unfortunately the accord fell apart, but not for the reasons that McCain and others have suggested. First, the U.S.-led consortium never provided the light-water reactors. (So much for the wild claims I've heard lately that North Korea got the bomb through Clinton-supplied technology.) Congress never authorized the money; the South Koreans, who were led by a harder-line government than the one in power now, scuttled the deal after a North Korean spy submarine washed up on their shores.

The article goes on to say that

when President George W. Bush entered the White House in January 2001, he made it clear, right off, that the Agreed Framework was dead and that he had no interest in further talks with the North Korean regime; his view was that you don't negotiate with evil, you defeat it or wait for it to crumble.

The article has a lot more to say and you can read the whole thing here but I just knew I was right and that when it comes to Republicans you just can't trust them. the teach