According to this AP report via the Washington Times, North Korea has agreed to allow the U.S. to verify it is not producing nuclear weapons. In exchange Washington must drop their hostile stance. They don't say how the new verification steps will improve on the old, or what words and actions will convince them a hostile stance is not being taken.

Could it be? Via Sine Qua Non Pundit, North Korea May Offer Way Out of Crisis - Diplomats. Could it be they really are worried about a US invasion? Everything else points to North Korea being worried about internal collapse and using pretended 'fear of invasion' as a ploy to get the United States to the negotiating table where they can demand more economic handouts, but this makes me wonder. Of course the North Koreans may want to save face themselves, have a pretext to back down while pretending American aggression was their real fear. Who knows.

Ever since reading this via Little Green Footballs I wanted to blog about the good news from Yemen. Since many people have seen that article by now, I googled for more. I soon found the latest issue of the English language Yemen Observer. All it all it seems pretty level headed. Not everyone will agree with the editorial emphasizing the role of poverty in terrorism - but there is no attempt to pretend no Yemeni's are involved in it or to justify it. The local news page is largely about Yemen's efforts to modernize and promote economic growth. You can tell from the letters page they are aware of their overseas readership, so caution is advised as always.

If the January eighth post of talking points memo is correct, the pendulum swings back to Bush bearing a heavy share of the blame for the Korean Crisis aka the Korean Non Crisis. Apparently former Clinton administration officials are prepared to testify they gave Bush the nuke info when he got into office. He chose to share it with North Korea while we were tied up with Iraq and Afghanistan, apparently hoping to weaken the Korean negotiating stance.

The talk about pulling our 37000 troops out of Korea (same Josh Marshall post) might not be as silly as he thinks - if it's talk. The idea isn't (I hope) to pull them out, but to make the South Koreans think seriously about the danger posed by North Korea. Many of them do, but public discussion might inform many more. There is something to be said for guns over butter, but they should be prepared to offer a larger share of the butter if that's their proposal. Let's remember, after Japan and Germany, they may well be our third most successful attempt at helping a nation to remake themselves as a democracy. They have much to be proud of, and don't forget all the wild swings American politics has taken over the past fifty years.

I've just been rereading John Hiler's article on blogs and journalism, not for the first time. He's interested in the idea of the blogosphere as a "collective hive mind", smarter than any of it's components. He talks about a couple of times the "blog borg" beat professional journalists to a story, and one time when a blogger may have had a correction to a story which the New York Times and other papers all may have made the same error in. In this article and elsewhere, he balances this out by talking about the many times when professional journalists really are better at what they do.

I think the idea of a Stapledonian collective supermind (kind of like a Borg, but you join voluntarily and don't all dress alike, and your components make love and enjoy life more intensely than ordinary individuals) is really awesome, but I don't think we've even taken the first step along that path. If President Bush wanted to learn something about the best way to handle Kim Jong Il, he would be better off studying history or even reading the MSNBC Newsweek article I linked to in my January fifth entry than surfing the blogosphere. Although you do find interesting stuff percolating to the top at Blogdex, (that's where I first found the MSNBC Newsweek article) I don't think the blogosphere as a whole is smarter than it's smartest members - a purposeful human brain that can decide whom to rely on is still needed to make good use of the valuable information in the blogosphere and seperate it from the rest.

Arguably, individual neurons in the brain of a baby can do simple math and and/or logic which the baby cannot. Yet if these neurons apply the information coded in their genes correctly, they may create the foundation of a mind which will far surpass them. I wonder if we have the potential to do the same.

During my long ago college days, I remember looking through an annual index of Pravda editorials, and laughing to myself at the calculatedly aggressive phrasing of what was, after all, a government mouthpiece. Has the day really come when Pravda (literal translation truth, ironical as it long seemed) tells us stuff our own newspapers might forget to mention?

Don't get me wrong, the American media do some amazing stuff. I think it was in the American media I learned how the military has been trying to use access to information and the front lines to manipulate them. All the same, if this is true, I wish I had heard it here first.

Of course the media did mention some fighting in Afganistan where an American died, but I didn't know we had 10,000 troops there. Is this story of a ground war heating up correct?

Via Watch, this MSNBC Newsweek article on Kim Jong Il. After reading it, I am leaning towards agreeing with this closely reasoned OxBlog post where he retracts one thing he said before right up front, then goes on to argue that since North Korea started making nukes before Bush got into office, Bush can't be blamed, and criticizes the Bush critics for not offering workable alternatives. I'm not totally convinced, but I like his style.

South Korea has much reason to be proud. Like many countries, they had a long history of subjugation before world war two. Unlike most of them, they successfully developed into a democracy with the military firmly under civilian control. Democracy is nothing without free speech and freedom of the press - what's the point of voting when you're not allowed to head what the other side has to say? They are a developed nation that competes economically rather than receiving foreign aid. I say all this as an American, with what I believe to be a largely American audience.

The reason this is so worth emphasizing is that in some ways this is a frustrating time for Americans. Some South Koreans, especially younger ones, seem to feel either that America and North Korea are equally responsible for the current crisis, or even that America is somewhat more responsible. Oddly enough, I don't think even the North Koreans really want us to believe that. They want us to know that they will not let their people die of hunger and cold until their is a revolution, nor will they spend less on their army to care for their people and improve their economy. These demands for a non agression pact with the United States are not really caused by a fear of invasion - as always they want to get us to the bargaining table so they can extract economic aid in return for commitments they already made previously.

Nobody really wants a war with North Korea. Since South Korea is justly proud of all their economic achievements and wants a relationship of equals with the United States, they should be prepared to shoulder a large share of the costs - after all sunshine is the policy they favor, and they live much closer to North Korea than we do. These costs can also be investment opportunities. Nobody is really willing to spend more and more to feed the ever increasing demands of a nation that puts military spending first while demanding others support their people. This aid should come in the form of foreign investment in North Korea. Those South Koreans who firmly believe the North is bargaining in good faith should not consider the risks unacceptable.

Although of course the North Koreans began building nuclear bombs before George Bush even became President, his remarks about axis of evil and two wars at once accomplished nothing. After the various claims and demands and accusations of the North Korean government over several decades have been contemplated we might not owe them much of an apology, but we should regret any misunderstandings that have been fostered in South Korea. In addition, since even George Bush appears not to want war, and since the North Koreans will not back down, and since we don't want to let them manufacture bombs until they decide to do something more drastic to force us to bargain with them, we have no choice but to negotiate. That being the case, remarks which make these eventual negotiations into a loss of credibility to the United States are regrettable.

I believe these are good starting points as guiding principles for negotiation.
1. Trust nothing not verified - and think hard how they could circumvent the verification before accepting it.
2. North Korea doesn't actually want a war, because they know they would lose.
3. North Korea will start a war if they believe their freezing and starving people are on the point of revolution.
4. If they succeed in getting more and more by demanding it, they will continue. One point is non-negotiable - the aid must come in a form that will more North Korea towards being a self sufficient nation with something to lose.
5. Foreign investment is also the path to a freer North Korea.

I've edited my sidebar - after a reading the comment below the December 31st entry and writing a private e-mail and receiving a brief reply, I'm pretty much convinced Dear Raed is a genuine Iraqi blog. I'm not an expert, but how do you know anyone is who they say, except Atrios.

This started me thinking about all the things that might seem inconsistent about me and my attitudes to someone from a different country. I'm not absolutely sure what's prudent to say, so I'll let him take the responsibility for deciding what to say and what not to say in my comment section. Even in the United States you can't safely say absolutely whatever you want on the web, I was just reading about some people who would be in trouble for a joke faked Dow Chemical web site if they could catch them. I do want to thank Salam Pax for helping to make my blogging more fun and interesting for me.

I guess some of the things most interesting to talk about wouldn't be a good idea - but if I lived in another country I might feel nervous about keeping a blog at all.

Salam Pax, if you're reading this and care to answer, is there anyone you would feel nervous about if they read your blog? If you choose to answer in public you might as well put it in the comment section below these words. If you have anything you think would be more interesting to talk about, go ahead. You write excellently in English by the way - I've never been good with any other language.

While I agree with Joshua Marshall that Bush has handled North Korea poorly, I think it's important not to get so caught up in criticizing Bush that we understate the depth of the basic problem - or rather, interlocking problems.

After all, North Korea did start this second secret effort to build a nuclear weapon before Bush came into office.

The North Korean government are now proven liars. They are brazen, claiming that they are forced to develop nuclear weapons because we no longer send them fuel oil - although they started a second secret effort to develop the bomb when their better know one was stopped in exchange for economic aid. How should we deal with them now?

Oddly enough, there is an argument for continued economic aid. If starvation in North Korea brings the government to the point of internal revolution, they might well attack South Korea first. Due to previous commitments, we would have to defend South Korea, perhaps in a war more bloody than the first Korean War. Before we cut off aid, the secret bomb developing program they were engaged in seems to have been much slower at bomb building that what they are doing now. Questions have also been raised about the humanitarian consequences of cutting off food aid. If we are going to consider continued aid to the North Korean government to prevent these problems, we must honestly acknowledge the potential consequences. First, no matter what monitoring they agree to, they will try to find a way to continue nuclear weapons research secretly - and will probably succeed, although the new secret programs may be much slower than the ones they replace. Bush is right about one thing - if we make blackmail successful, we should not expect the perpetrators to give it up. Secondly, while the North Korean government probably won't risk being toppled in a bloody war while they are receiving enough booty to live in comfort and avoid a popular revolution, they will certainly make sure their military machine is as threatening as possible to South Korea - and the worse the situation gets there, the more of their limited resources they will spend on their military, since blackmailing the west seems to be their most workable method of getting food. Which brings us to three - we may ultimately be perpetuating the problem with our so called humanitarian food aid. I do not know exactly what role the North Korean government played in their economic collapse. Other repressive governments such as China have achieved limited successes. If North Korea is not totally at fault economically that is one thing, but if they are they will cost the West more and more to support until they collapse. Apart from blackmail, their other economic success is selling missiles. It seems nations friendly to us can buy better ones elsewhere, which leaves unfriendly nations, or marginal ones, as buyers.

There are no easy answers. Let's talk about the consequences of refusing to be blackmailed. If we bomb their reactor they would probably invade South Korea. If we cut off all aid including 'humanitarian food aid' they would probably do the same, unless they felt they could make enough to survive by selling nuclear weapons, in which case they could fortify their position and wait for us to attack their barbed wire entrenched positions. To make it worse, the South Korean government seems to be in denial. If we cut off all aid to the North they may blame us for the war, even if it was ultimately inevitable.

In the face of repeated North Korean provocations, the Bush administration seems to be backing down, claiming they are looking for a way to talk to North Korea without giving in to blackmail, which is hard to do since that is their stated goal. Once we've started talking, they will accuse us of breaking off negotiations if we steadfastly refuse to give them more aid. I think we have to accept our stark choice - give in to blackmail or prepare for a Korean war. Of course American history is full of seemingly unresolvable problems that got solved or even just went away, along with the occasional problem like German aggression in the thirties and the great depression which didn't. I suspect that Bush doesn't want to fight North Korea, and will do basically the right thing, made harder and more dangerous by his axis of evil talk and his confronting the North Koreans we the evidence of their deceit without being prepared for their brazen acknowledgement and demand for more concessions from us. I'm not absolutely sure what the right thing is though - but I'm only one I've seen so far, left or right, with a horrible fear that what we really need to do if we are committed to South Korea is prepare for war with North Korea.