Sabre-rattling
First, an update on the North Korea crisis easily forgotten amongst the tragedies in Iraq and Israel this week. The six-nation talks on North Koreas nuclear programme begin in Beijing on 27 August. There is a distinct lack of optimism surrounding the build-up to the talks. Are they for real? And does it matter what Pyongyang says?
This is what the famously neutral BBC had to say about it: the hawks in Washington are swooping on the Bush administration, urging it to take a much tougher line. Analysis is even being produced about how a war against North Korea might be won.
Oh, super!
North Korea wants a non-aggression pact with the US if it is to stop developing nuclear weapons. The US wont give them the pact. The North Koreans would doubtless continue producing nukes anyway.
As the Diary noted a couple of weeks back, were all hoping the talks can get beyond North Korea calling the Bush administration human scum and bloodthirsty vampires.
If theyre not careful, the North Koreans will start sounding like European peace marchers.
All hope, it seems, hangs on good old-fashioned reciprocity you scratch our back, well stab yours.
Relations between North and South Korea chilled this week after the North pulled out of the World Student Games in the southern city of Taegu, following the burning of the North Korean flag and a picture of Kim Jong-il by protestors marking Korean Independence Day.
The South apologised and the North reinstated its athletes, talking of a single bloodline between the two nations that should proceed towards reunification together.
Through its Proliferation Security Initiative, Washington is starting to focus on the connections between the two remaining members of the axis of evil, North Korea and Iran. Pyongyang is thought to be supplying Iran with ballistic missiles and assisting with its nuclear programme.
For their part, North Korean diplomats have already threatened the US with selling nuclear warheads abroad. Three German businessmen were charged this week with attempting to smuggle uranium processing materials into Kims Stalinist state.
The Bush administration has announced plans for a joint naval exercise next month in the Coral Sea off north-east Australia. This muscle-flexing (set to piggy-back on Exercise Crocodile) is intended to announce to the North that the US can and will interdict arms and the like going to and from North Korea. Washington feels that, in the words of an Asian diplomat in the New York Times, the North is feeling the pinch, and, hence, has agreed to the multilateral talks.
There has also been a quiet crackdown on North Koreas heroin smuggling in recent months just in case you werent already feeling cynical enough about the Norths commitment to peace talks.
The North is furious, and has announced it cannot dismantle its nuclear deterrent force [until] it becomes clear that the US does not hinder the economic cooperation between the DRPK and other countries.
On Monday, a huge maritime exercise took place in waters near North Korea, involving Russia, Japan and South Korea the first time these nations have embarked on joint manoeuvres. On the same day, Japan and China announced how for the first time these two nations would conduct mutual visits by warships.
Is everyone ganging up on North Korea ?
Russia also plans a land exercise this weekend on its 10-mile border with North Korea based on the premise that huge North Korean refugee flows have started, triggered either by war on the Korean peninsula or by the collapse of the government. (NYT)
War? Well, as Paul Reynolds of the BBC takes the trouble to remind us, former CIA director James Woolsey and retired Air Force General Thomas McInerney wrote in the Wall Street Journal of 4 August, We must be prepared to win a war, not execute a strike ... The US and South Korea could defeat North Korea decisively in 30-60 days.
On Monday, President Bush called Kim Jong-il a dangerous man who loves rattling sabres.
(Main sources: BBC News Online, New York Times, The Economist)
(Dont miss this BBC report on North Korean cinema, and Kims appetite for the Friday 13th slasher movies)
Learning lessons
Meanwhile, a reminder of nuclear strikes of the past is set to go on display in Washington.
The Enola Gay B-29 bomber which dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 has been reassembled and will go on public display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in December.
Said museum director JR Daily, future generations will sense first-hand the unalterable significance of this aircraft in World War II and human history. Lets learn from it.
Yes, lets.
Gun law
Perhaps the Dominican Republic congress has got it right.
Reports emerged this week under headings like Dominican congress bans weapons.
Sounded like a smart move to the Diary. In fact, the Dominican congress had banned the carrying of weapons within the Dominican congress not as big a move for peace as the Diary had hoped.
For those of you who didnt yet know, the Dominican congress is not the Swedish parliament. Alfredo Pacheco, the new chairman-elect announced on Monday that From today, nobody armed will enter the chamber not deputies, nor their bodyguards, nor administrative staff.
The decision came after shots were fired on 16 August as the deputies began to elect the new speaker. A power shortage, popular in the Americas these days, meant the election took place by torchlight.
The shooting is being blamed on a power struggle within the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD).
Divine immortality
Politics, of course, is a risky business.
But for some usually the bad ones it can bring immortality.
Just ask Councillor Dan Ilie Morega of Pades in south-west Romania. Councillor Dan has quite an inflated sense of his own bureaucratic importance. Dan has had himself immortalised in paint on the wall of the local church, dressed, according to Silvia Radan Duplain of the BBC, in black suit, white shirt and colourful tie, with his right hand on his heart.
He shares the space with St. Ilie, the prophet.
Councillor Dan claims he financed over 90% of the project to build the church. The project was his idea.
Unsurprisingly for a politician who thinks so much of his power, Councillor Dan is a proponent of big government. A councillor for the ruling Social Democratic Party, Dan is described as a government expert in the Public Administration Ministry.
Even less surprising, Councillor Dan was accused in October 2002 of trying to award government contracts to his own companies.
Father Vladoiu, the churchs public administrator, was quite realistic in his appraisal of the situation. What do you expect, if he paid for it? he told the BBC.
Taking the rap
Weird goings-on in South Africa.
Not only did the South African cricket team fail to beat England in a test match at Nottinghams Trent Bridge, but twenty-two white extremists on trial for treason have claimed they are being tortured while on remand in prison by being forced to listen to rap music.
Pretorias C-Max prison plays the Metro FM radio station over its PA system. Metro FM is aimed at a young black audience.
Lawyers representing the men from the Afrikaner Force claim their clients are being put through psychological torture by being made to listen all day to black music.
We have men sitting here in tears who are busy cracking, said attorney Rudi Lubbe. Some of my clients have suffered breakdowns, said lawyer Paul Kruger.
The men are standing trial for murder, high treason and forty other charges.
One of their attempted murder victims was Nelson Mandela. The smart money says their crack-up story wont wash.
Sanctioned sponsor
Every now and then, the Diary finds an excuse to write about Juventus football club.
Well heres another opportunity. Once again it involves the clubs relationship with the family of Libyas Colonel Gaddafi.
Sportswear giant Nike has taken over from Lotto as the manufacturer of Juve shirts. But theres a problem. The shirt that the bianconeri will wear for this seasons European Champions League (club footballs most prestigious competition) is sponsored by Tamoil the Libyan oil company.
Now, unless you live on Mars, youll be aware that Nike is an American company. As such, it is subject to US law. This means that the company cannot produce replica shirts with the Tamoil logo on them, due to US sanctions against Libya.
The sanctions have been in place since 1986, and, of course, with Libya starting to transfer $2.7 billion in compensation for victims of the Lockerbie bomb as the Diary was being written, have been the subject of much talk recently.
Nike will lose a lot of money as a result. Juventus has a big fan base in North Africa. Al-Saadi Gaddafi, son of make-up wearing Libyan leader Muammar, sits on the Juventus board and owns a significant share of the Italian club.
Serious soccer
More football problems, this time in east Africa.
UN officials have complained to the Ethiopian government that Ethiopian troops keep infringing the border into Eritrea, in order to play football.
The football-mad troops were told to move on each occasion by the UN who monitor the security zone, but the soldiers refused to go until the full-time whistle.
Apparently, the UN is taking the incidents very seriously indeed.
(Meanwhile, see the New York Times article on the Interim Iraqi Committee to Administer Sports, through whom 80,000 footballs have imported. Says national team coach Immanuel Baba Dano, [Young people] want only fields and balls, to play, to forget their problems. But if you dont help them, they have nothing else, they will want to fight and kill Americans.)
The Kaiser of California
A quick update on the election race to become Governor of California.
I want to be the peoples governor, declared Arnold Schwarzenegger this week, Diana-style.
Gray Davis, still Governor, talked of a right-wing effort to steal elections Republicans cannot win.
The San Francisco Chronicle called the election a freak show.
Rob Lowe (aka White House Deputy Communications Director Sam Seaborn in TVs The West Wing), a Democrat, joined Arnies team because he believes The Terminator will put the people above partisan politics.
The Austrian daily Kronenzeitung ran the proud headline on its front page Will Schwarzenegger be Kaiser of California?
The US Sci-Fi Channel cancelled an all-day Arnie fest in order not to give the star free publicity. Were pulling our Arnold marathon in deference to the electoral process, said Kat Stein of the Sci-Fi Channel. We wanted to level the playing-field in California.
The cable network was planning to screen Terminator 2, The Running Man, and Conan the Destroyer. Instead, it plans to run a day of California disaster movies.
But arent the news networks already doing that?
Lunar bound
Finally, if like the Diary, youve just about had enough, then help may be at hand.
According to Bernard Foing of the European Space Agency, humans could be living on the moon within twenty years.
Get in line.
[I]t will depend in the end, Foing told BBC News Online, on the political will to go and establish a human base for preparing for colonisation of the Moon or to be used as a refuge for the human species.
Can we rely on the politicians to think long-term and get us off this planet?
Quotes of the week
The civilised world will not be intimidated. President Bush, responding to the news of the bombing of the UN Headquarters in Iraq.
He impressed everyone with his charm, his energy, and his ability to get things done not by force but by diplomacy and persuasion. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UNs special representative in Iraq, who died in the Baghdad blast.
Iraq is a rich country that is temporarily poor. L. Paul Bremer, US administrator in Iraq
For two years Americans have been safe. Because we are safer, our liberties are more secure. US Attorney General John Ashcroft defending his controversial Patriot Act.
We commit ourselves to sustain our mutual empowerment by breaking the silences among us. A statement by African nuns at the All Africa Sister to Sister Conference, who have decided to start talking about and recognising Aids.
I would not bury Amin. I will never touch Amin. Never. Not even with a long spoon. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Idi Amin, the former dictator who died this week in Saudi Arabia
Im not ashamed of considering it, because his regime goes down in the scale of Pol Pot as one of the worst of all African regimes. David Owen, former British foreign secretary, who admitted this week that he suggested assassinating Idi Amin when he was in government.
You used to be honoured with the music of harps, but now you are in the world of the dead. You lie on a bed of maggots and are covered with a blanket of worms. A quote from the Old Testament book of Isaiah that prefaced a report on the death of Idi Amin in the state-owned Sunday Vision newspaper, Uganda
Contact the Diary Editor: dominic.hilton@openDemocracy.net
