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Nov, 21, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Money matters?

Caroline B. Glick: Civilization walks the plank

Nov, 20, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: Bronfman's blindness

The Kosher Gourmet By Linda Gassenheimer: Portobellos add a hearty flavor to pasta with pesto

Nov, 19, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Spread the wealth? Jewish tradition and income equality

Elliot B. Gertel: 'Mad Men': Tackling prejudices or reinforcing them?

Nov, 18, 2008

Dr. Debby Schwarz Hirschhorn: The End of the Age of Reason

Jonathan Tobin: Does Barack + Bibi = Disaster?

Nov, 17, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The End of the Age of Reason

Diana West: Gulling Americans into making terror legit?

Nov, 14, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The Power of Spiritual Inertia

Caroline B. Glick: The perils ahead

Nov, 13, 2008

Stratfor Intelligence Briefing: How Bush and Obama together could change the Middle East dynamic

The Kosher Gourmet by JeanMarie Brownson: Sweet and savory, crispy and meltingly tender bestilla

Nov, 12, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Tyrannical Co-Workers

Michael Doyle: High Court to consider today donated monuments that may have religious messages in public parks

Nov, 11, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Will Obama stop government officials considering institutionalizing financial jihad?

Jonathan Tobin: They Will Decide Their Own Fate

Nov, 10, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: $8 billion, modern-day Tower of Babel being built?

Barry Rubin: A letter to the president-elect from a Middle East realist

Nov, 7, 2008

Rabbi Francis Nataf: Of Children and Immortality

Caroline B. Glick: Livni's Obama strategy

Nov, 6, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: How I tricked a classroom of apathetic students into grasping the fallacy of moral relativism

The Kosher Gourmet By Gina Kim: Tips for making the perfect soup --- includes recipes

Nov, 5, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Destitute Debtors

Bruce Weinstein: 'Religulos': Bad title,even worse movie

Nov, 4, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Treasury Dept. submits to Shariah law

Frida Ghitis: A surprise for Obama in the Middle East

Nov, 3, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: Who says Jews are Smart?

Jonathan Tobin: Was He Wrong About Everything?

Oct. 31, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Our Immutable Noble Essence

Caroline B. Glick: Running against Bush

Oct. 30, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: The End of the Special Relationship?

Steve Lipman: 'Kid Kosher' Gets A Title Shot

Oct. 29, 2008

Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: GET US THE TAPE THE L.A. TIMES REFUSES TO RELEASE, AND WE'LL GIVE YOU CASH!

Dr. Ari Korenblit: Making The Write Choice for President

Oct. 28, 2008

Mona Charen: Denial runs through American Jewry

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Sell-off to capitalism or sell-out to Islam?

Oct. 27, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Are tax deductions for charitable donations moral?

Jonathan Mark: The Mystery Of The Arab-American Vote

Oct. 24, 2008

'Why aren't all religious people vegetarians?': Response by Miriam Kosman

Caroline B. Glick: Testing Obama's mettle

Oct. 23, 2008

Daniel Pipes: Obama Would Fail Security Clearance

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: A fast chicken dish with an Asian accent

Oct. 20, 2008

Gary Rosenblatt: Still One Torah

Jonathan Tobin: Government 'Gifts' Are Not Free

Oct. 17, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: Sukkos and the Great Meltdown

Caroline B. Glick: The disappearance of law

Oct. 16, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Copying DVDs: RIP OR RIPOFF?

Cal Thomas: Blaming the Jews (again)

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Oct. 10, 2006 / 18 Tishrei, 5767

North Korea's nuclear test? Yawn

By Jack Kelly

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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In the fantasy world many liberals inhabit, every person on the planet except George W. Bush is a decent, rational human being with whom satisfactory settlements can be negotiated, if negotiations are conducted in good faith (that is, the U.S. acknowledges that tensions which exist are mostly, if not entirely, the fault of the United States).


North Korea's nuclear test this weekend has shaken this comfortable presupposition.


North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il is hard to love even by those who have warm, fuzzy feelings for Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. There just isn't much nice to say about a regime that routinely starves its people in order to build more weapons, even for people who love to say nice things about those who hate the United States.


The reported North Korean test has brought international condemnation, and has prompted an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.


The reported test also likely will spark renewed interest in ballistic missile defense, especially in light of views like this, expressed by North Korean spokesman Kim Myong Chol in the Asia Times last Friday:


"A next war will better be called the American war because the main theater will be the continental U.S., with major cities transformed into towering infernos."


So why don't I share in the general alarm?


First, North Korea has been suspected of having the bomb since at least 1998, and declared that it did in 2002. The test merely confirms what was already widely supposed.


Second, the bang wasn't very big. South Korean and U.S. estimates place it at roughly half a kiloton. This means the test probably was a dud, said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the Managing the Atom project at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "A plutonium device should produce a yield in the range of 20 kilotons, like the one we dropped on Nagasaki," Mr. Lewis wrote on the Defensetech Web site Monday. "No one has ever dudded their first test of a simple fission device. North Korean nuclear scientists are now officially the worst ever."


Third, the test has alarmed the South Koreans, who are rethinking their appeasement policy toward the North, and angered the Chinese, without whose continued support the North Korean regime cannot survive.


When they were developing their bombs in the 1990s, neither India nor Pakistan announced their nuclear tests in advance. Kim did, because he uses brinksmanship as a negotiating ploy, one which in this instance seems to have backfired.


"If Kim Jong Il deliberately timed the test to coincide with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit first to Beijing and then to Seoul, he may have dreadfully miscalculated," wrote Donald Kirk in the Asia Times Monday.


Kim's Stalinist policies have so screwed up North Korea's economy that only massive shipments of food and fuel — most of it provided by and nearly all of it funneled through — China, keep the country barely afloat. If China were ever to cut off the largesse, the regime would collapse.


China has resisted using threat of an aid cutoff as a negotiating tool in part because it fears the consequences of a North Korean collapse (tens of thousands of starving refugees flooding into Manchuria), and in part because China enjoys the migraines North Korea gives South Korea, Japan and the U.S. But North Korea's provocations are changing the calculus.


A North Korean nuke means Japan, and possibly South Korea, will obtain nuclear weapons of their own, a development China would very much like to prevent. The six party talks (about getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear program) have been going nowhere because China and South Korea have been unwilling to shake meaningful sticks at Kim's regime. But that calculus is changing.


Josh Manchester, a former Marine whose Web log (Adventures of Chester) is must reading for serious students of national security policy, thinks the test proves "American policy against North Korea is working.


"That policy, in a nutshell, is this: use all methods short of war to harm the economy of North Korea, making it impossible for that government to raise revenue from illicit activities, and thereby more and more difficult to retain power or fund its nuclear ambitions.


"This creates cascading effects that work in favor of the U.S: the possibility of a North Korean collapse forces China and South Korea to consider changing their stances in the six party talks, making it more likely the (five) will agree on a unified plan to de-nuke the peninsula, and that North Korea will have no choice but to accept."

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. Comment by clicking here.

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