Group items tagged

Is North Korea back in the plutonium production game?

President Obama submitted three free trade agreements to Congress based on the flawed North-American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) model that has been devastating to our economy, American workers and to labor and environmental standards. Hundreds of thousands of American jobs have been displaced and outsourced as a result of our pursuit of trade policies which are adverse to the economic interests of the American people. My home State of Ohio is one of the top-ten states posting the biggest job losses since the passage of NAFTA. Unfortunately, the proposed free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama do nothing to address the significant flaws in the free trade model that prioritize the rights of multinational companies over the rights of workers and the American economy. The Korea-US and US-Colombia Free Trade Agreements are expected to increase our trade deficit by over $16 billion and result in the displacement or loss of over 200,000 jobs. This is on top of the over 2 million American jobs that have been displaced or eliminated over the past 10 years as a result of our increased trade deficit with China. The last thing American workers and our economy needs is more NAFTA-style free trade agreements.

North Korea tested a nuke and fired a rocket today. According to Reuters, a North Korean ruling party official said: "We have successfully conducted another nuclear test on May 25 as part of the republic's measures to strengthen its nuclear deterrent."

I'm not sure how seriously to take this article. The articles references two commentators, one from Financial Times and the other from Foreign Policy. Those are pretty legitimate, I guess. They say that the US is forming an alliance with South Korea, Japan, and others contra Beijing.

If American journalism should have learned one thing over the years, it is to be cautious and skeptical during the first days of a foreign confrontation like the one now playing out on the Korean Peninsula. Often the initial accounts from the "U.S. side" don't turn out to be entirely accurate.

Drought could parch close to 70 percent of the planet's soil by 2025 unless countries implement policies to slow desertification, a senior United Nations official has warned. "If we cannot find a solution to this problem... in 2025, close to 70 percent could be affected," Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, said Friday. Drought currently affects at least 41 percent of the planet and environmental degradation has caused it to spike by 15 to 25 percent since 1990, according to a global climate report. "There will not be global security without food security" in dry regions, Gnacadja said at the start of the ninth UN conference on the convention in the Argentine capital. "A green deal is necessary" for developing countries working to combat drought, he stressed. The next meeting on the convention is scheduled to take place in South Korea in 2010.

Just watched Barney Frank's embarrassing performance on Hardball tonight (scroll to 9:15 unless you can handle 9 minutes of Mrs. Alan Greenspan), and it is quite clear the spin is in for the flotilla mess, and it is all hands on deck to cover Israel's ass. ...

Simply because the Tucson shooting and violence in Mexico are in the headlines today, does not mean that existing stories like North Korean nuclear weapons are any less critical to stay on top of.