Sanctions And North Korea

From CNN:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. military and intelligence community have been tracking several shipments of material they believe have left North Korea and are destined for Syria or may have already landed there, a Pentagon official confirmed.

The monitoring has been taking place for the past several weeks, he said.

The official could not confirm several recent news reports that nuclear material from North Korea has arrived in Syria and was the potential target of a recent Israeli airstrike there.

In fact, he said none of the information he had reviewed as part of his job indicated any nuclear material was involved.

Some of the material is believed to have been high-grade metals that could be used in weapons such as missiles or solid-fuel rocket technology.

But "there is concern with shipments going into the region and with their eventual arrival in Syria," the official said.

The United States is also looking into the possibility material had been shipped from North Korea to Iran and traveled overland into Syria, he said, adding there were indications a ship had docked in Syria recently. [Emphasis added.]

Huh. So much for U.N. sanctions, then. As if sane minds didn't already understand the futility of the thing.

The thing that really strikes me about the CNN article is that boldface bit in the last paragraph. Take a look at this map of the Middle East:



So you tell me. How does something get from A) Iran to B) Syria overland?

Right. It would have to go through either Turkey or Iraq! (Actually, it could get there through Kuwait and Saudia Arabia, too, if it went through Basra.)

The point is, Turkey, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia are all ostensible allies....

And United Nations Security Council Resolution 1718 is supposed to prevent North Korea from trading in weapons and nuclear materials, isn't it?

What a freakin' joke.

So here's a nifty little German video about how North Korea handles pesky little inconveniences such as U.N. sanctions:



Yes, indeedy.

Street Justice In Tehran

Or at least justice as it occurs on the street. Gleaned from the Daily Mail via Snoop at politicalpartypoop.com:

His face covered by a balaclava, an official brandishing a cane repeatedly lashes the back of a man found guilty of breaking Iran's morality laws.

Two police officers hold the legs of 25-year-old Saeed Ghanbari and another his arms to ensure there is no escape from the punishment of 80 lashes handed down by a religious court.

Traffic was brought to a halt in Qazvin, 90 miles west of the capital Tehran, as more than 1,000 men gathered behind barricades to watch the public flogging.

So why was this terrible thing happening to Saeed? The Daily Mail continues:

It was unclear exactly what his offence had been as the country's strict morality laws cover many areas, but it was reported he had been convicted of abusing alcohol and having sex outside of marriage.

The public lashings have been endorsed by the judiciary as a way of deterring alcohol abuse at a time when it is on the increase among young men but some religious leaders are said to be questioning their validity, fearing they have an adverse impact on the country's image abroad.

Although men and women convicted of flouting public morals are routinely flogged in detention centres, public floggings are considered rare.

Hmmmm. It seems to me that if our own judicial system called for public floggings for people who got drunk and had sex outside of marriage, there'd be a whole shitload of public floggings going on.

Lesson to be learned: Don't move to Iran.