North Korea: A Permanent Peace Treaty Is Worth Denuclearization

I think North Korea has been clear that it wants a permanent peace treaty with the US with China and Russia as witnesses, and then it will agree to denuclearize. It basically wants an ironclad guarantee that the US will not invade. I don't understand why that offer cannot be taken.

Take the offer, halt the joint military exercises for a halt in North Korean missile tests. China and Russia being witnesses would be great. They are two relevant powers in the region.

And top it off by withdrawing all economic sanctions. Maximize trade and travel between the two Koreas. Offer to blanket the whole country in 5G for free.

It will begin with a trickle. But North Korea will be East Germany sooner rather than later. The two Koreas will unite. Because people will soon enough begin marching with their feet. One just hopes South Korea can integrate North Korea with as few hiccups as possible.

North Korea In Sight

Image via WikipediaThe winds of democracy have to blow into North Korea too.

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The Atlantic : North Korea’s Digital Underground: the very archetype of a “closed society.” It ranks dead last—196th out of 196 countries—in Freedom House’s Freedom of the Press index. Unlike the citizens of, say, Tunisia or Egypt, to name two countries whose populations recently tapped the power of social media to help upend the existing political order, few North Koreans have access to Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. In fact, except for a tiny elite, the DPRK’s 25 million inhabitants are not connected to the Internet. Televisions are set to receive only government stations. International radio signals are routinely jammed, and electricity is unreliable. Freestanding radios are illegal. But every North Korean household and business is outfitted with a government-controlled radio hardwired to a central station. The speaker comes with a volume control, but no off switch. ........ media insurgents have a two-pronged strategy, integrating Cold War methods (Voice of America–like shortwave broadcasts in; samizdat-like info out) and 21st-century hardware: SD chips, thumb drives, CDs, e-books, miniature recording devices, and cell phones. ....... these new media organizations are helping to create something remarkable: a corps of North Korean citizen-journalists practicing real journalism inside the country. ....... This past December, Open Radio North Korea, a broadcast-news organization, broke the story that a train headed for Pyongyang with gifts from China for Kim Jong Un, the heir apparent, was reportedly sabotaged and derailed, in one of several sporadic and mostly unreported acts of resistance that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. ....... in January 2010, a North Korean factory worker was publicly executed by firing squad for phoning news about the price of rice to someone in South Korea ...... Like most of the other independent news organizations, it receives funds from the National Endowment for Democracy, as well as other NGOs and private donors. ...... The footage Ahn brought out was shocking: filthy, barefoot children scavenging for food, picking kernels of corn from cow manure. Glassy-eyed, the children told the interviewer that their parents had died and they were homeless and alone. ...... Once these North Korean defectors made it across the Yalu or Tumen River, they were startled to discover that even the poorest Chinese had higher living standards than they did ....... (A 2009 survey found that 58 percent of North Koreans had regular access to a cassette recorder with radio, and 21 percent watched videos on video-compact-disc players.) The confluence of these developments created a remarkable journalistic opening: just as defectors in unprecedented numbers were bringing more information out of North Korea, the spread of markets and secondhand technology was creating a conduit for getting more information in. ....... Until the late 1990s, all international phone calls were routed through Beijing or Moscow. ..... Cell phones, both legal and illegal, have become a fact of life only during the past five years. ..... NK Reform Radio interviews defectors now living in South Korea. Some are unable to fit into South Korean society ...... The subject that most interests North Koreans is the country’s ruling dynasty: founder Kim Il Sung, his son Kim Jong Il, and his presumed heir, Kim Jong Un. Most of their subjects know little more than the idealized history of the Kims churned out by the state’s propaganda mill. They are shocked to learn that Kim Jong Il was born in Russia, and not on the mythic Mount Paektu; Koreans are quite socially conservative and are aghast that he has fathered several children with women other than his wives. ...... d a clear correlation between the “consumption of foreign media” and “more negative assessments of the regime and its intentions.” ....... One night he heard a South Korean program that contradicted a number of the myths surrounding the Kim family. After a little research, he discovered that the broadcasts were true. Was everything he’d been taught a lie, he wondered? It wasn’t long before he defected. ..... had several e-books, which I got from China. The national security force arrested me for possessing them,” he tells me. The books were pretty innocuous fare, mostly motivational titles like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Related articles

• You: N. Korea tells S. Korea to produce defectors (france24.com)
• Trouble In North Korea ?? (themoderatevoice.com)
• South Korea will make second attempt to send North Koreans home (cnn.com)
• North Korea Blocks Citizens' Return Over Four Staying in South (businessweek.com)
• N. Korea Pressures Would-Be Defectors (online.wsj.com)
• Calls for democracy fly into North Korea (cnn.com)
• North Korea pressures South to repatriate defectors (ctv.ca)
• More surprises likely in North's transition, defector warns (search.japantimes.co.jp)
• North Korea Demands South Return Nationals Wishing to Stay (businessweek.com)
• US and South Korea Choose to Ignore Warnings from Kim Jong Il and Son (blogcritics.org)

Maloney: Stifling Debate, Stifling Innovation, Stifling Job Creation

Image via Wikipedia

I was never sadder about Carolyn Maloney's refusal to engage Reshma Saujani in weekly debates than when I showed up for this clean tech event: A Clean Tech Experience.

Before that I wanted the debates to happen because I wanted the world - District 14 - to see my wonderful, wonderful candidate. (Debating Is "Stunt" In A Maloney Democracy) My interests were political, and yes I had my preferred candidate. I was not hiding that.

Debates get you media attention, some name recognition, there are follow up articles in newspapers, there is buzz in social media.

It was also about democracy. I am a veteran of the democracy movement in Nepal. I appreciate democracy like many people living in democracies don't.

Sergey Brin's Is The Right Stand
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Happy July 4 Fred Wilson, Brad Feld

Debating is so very fundamental to democracy. Debates are a democracy's lifeblood. That's what happens in Congress, the ultimate temple of democracy. Members debate. No debate means no democracy. It is as if Carolyn Maloney wants to be declared dictator for life, the Kim Jong-Il of the East Side.

But at the clean tech event I realized the need for Carolyn Maloney, Reshma Saujani debates had much more concrete implications for the future of this city and this country and this world. This goes way beyond the politics of one congressional race.

Unless competing politicians like Carolyn Maloney and Reshma Saujani debate specifically about esoteric topics like clean tech and bio tech and nano tech, the electorate is not going to be part of conversations they so need to be part of if the jobs of tomorrow are ever going to be created. China is already eating America's clean tech lunch. If Maloney has her way, America never ever even gets to the lunch table. This so far has not been a choice between lunch and a late lunch. So far it has been a choice between a late lunch and no lunch at all. Thanks to Maloney the no lunch side has been winning so far in District 14 of New York.

We need Maloney out of there if we are going to be able to dream up the jobs, companies and industries of tomorrow.

Companies From The Clean Tech Event

• Rentricity Inc. 
• MJ Beck Consulting
• Sollega
• The New York City Accelerator for a Clean and Renewable Economy (NYC`ACRE)
• Pharos Enterprise Intelligence
• Bodega Algae
• US Power Generating Company ("USPowerGen")
• Efficiency 2.0
• Think Eco, Inc. 

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