Tendi la tua mano, Barack.

North Korea has completed the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel rods to extract weapons-grade plutonium, according to its official news agency.
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) added that "noticeable successes" had been made in turning the extracted material into weapons grade plutonium.
The statement comes one day after North Korea said it was ready for talks with the US on its nuclear programme.

(N Korea 'has extracted plutonium')

''Traditionalists'' in the People's Liberation Army and Communist Party hierarchy have recently gained the upper hand over those in China's Foreign Ministry and universities who favour a tougher line, says the report, based on dozens of interviews with scholars, diplomats and military officials in Beijing, Pyongyang and Seoul.
''China prioritises stability over denuclearisation due to a vastly different perception than the US and its allies of the threat posed by a nuclear North Korea,'' says the report, Shades of Red: China's Debate over North Korea.

(China softens North Korea nuclear stand)

Chiamiamola America.

The map has been referred to in various circles as America's birth certificate and for good reason; it is the first document on which the name "America" appears. It is also the first map to depict a separate and full Western Hemisphere and the first map to represent the Pacific Ocean as a separate body of water.

A reported 1,000 copies of the 1507 map were printed, which was a sizeable print run in those days. This single surviving copy of the map exists because it was kept in a portfolio by Schöner (1477-1547), a German globe maker, who probably had acquired a copy of the map for his own cartographic work.

(The Map That Named America)

Città sudcoreana nel 1972.

 

Dimenticate l'articolo, questo è solo un omaggio a Michel Platini.

It is clear that Mr. Platini is prepared to run as far in office as he did on the field. Further, in fact, because at his peak, in the 1980s, he created an illusion of languid nonchalance. While others strained muscle and sinew, one pass from him, one shot, one flash of imagination could win the contest.

(Former Star on the Soccer Field, Now Trying to Level It)

Migrant Mother.

Of all the many thousands of photographs that came out of this government-sponsored enterprise, none was more instantly affecting or has remained more famous than Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother. Taken in February 1936 at a pea pickers' camp near Nipomo, seventy miles northwest of Santa Barbara, it was published in the San Francisco News the following month, when it resulted in $200,000 in donations from appalled readers. In 1998, it became a 32¢ stamp in the Celebrate the Century series, with the caption "America Survives the Depression." For a long while now, I've tried to observe a self-imposed veto on the overworked words "icon" and "iconic," but in the exceptional case of Migrant Mother it's sorely tempting to lift it.

(American Pastoral)

Gli anni che verranno.

We hope party leaders seek solutions to China’s predicament by “breaking through monopoly” (破除垄断); by breaking through the monopolization of politics, leading China toward a process of normalized political competition, whereby power is checked and monitored in accordance with the constitution; by breaking through monopolization of the economy by the state; by breaking through the monopolization of civil affairs, allowing the healthy development of a civil society; by breaking through the monopolization of culture, allowing Chinese to think and speak freely in an atmosphere of tolerance and openness, and ensuring the unfettered flow of information.

(How the next ten years will decide China’s future)

Rivoluzioncina.

For the first time in its history, users will be allowed to create full web and e-mail-addresses using non-Latin characters.
The change has been announced by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) at its board meeting taking place in Seoul, South Korea.
According to supporters of the change, it marks a huge technological shift in the way the web works with the potential to open up access to millions of new users.
Until now, anyone wanting to set up a website has been forced to include a few characters of Latin script in the address, or domain name, that they choose.
Other scripts, Arabic or Japanese for example, can be used in the first part, but whatever language is used, the address must end with a small but very important collection of Latin alphabet characters, .com, .gov, .co.uk, .cn and so on.

(Web to be truly worldwide at last)

La vita sotto i generali. Testimonianza rara, anche se privilegiata.

Che bell'anno.



(Pyongyang, 1972)

Nello stesso pullman di Ansaldo.

La règle de ce voyage dans le pays le plus fermé de la planète - se fondre dans le paysage comme l'un des rares touristes le visitant - impose bien sûr une vision singulièrement tronquée d'une Corée du Nord où la propagande est érigée au rang de discipline artistique. On ne voit que ce que l'on vous montre, et ce que l'on peut glaner dans les interstices. Pyongyang, cette fois, donne plutôt l'impression d'un voyage à Sofia ou à Minsk dans les années 1950. Les bâtiments, le tramway, les boutiques en sous-sol des immeubles, tout sent les grandes heures de l'économie planifiée. Pour autant, ce n'est pas cette image caricaturale d'une ville où des hordes de citadins efflanqués et déprimés hantent de grises rues. Au contraire, il se dégage de la «ville des saules» une étonnante impression de calme, avec un air dont les rares voitures ne suffisent à altérer la pureté, de vastes avenues arborées et des rues où les seules agressions publicitaires sont les fresques à la gloire du régime. On y croise des cadres en costume, des femmes à la rassurante et universelle coquetterie, des couples qui flirtent dans les parcs ou le long des rives du fleuve Taedong. Bien sûr, Pyongyang est une vitrine, et les carreaux sont plus sales dans les bourgades de province, voire dans les rues excentrées de la capitale. Et il y a aussi ces longues files de citadins fatigués attendant des bus asthéniques, ces vieilles dames courbées sous le poids d'un sac de toile contenant tous leurs trésors.

(Voyage hors du temps en Corée du Nord)

Obama, più Carter che Truman.

Mr. Obama exhibits both the initial inexperience—and some of the naïveté—of Harry Truman when he took office. He has framed the challenge of radical Islam largely in terms of what a contrite America must do to apologize to the Muslim world, instead of addressing endemic religious intolerance, autocracy, statist economies, tribalism and gender apartheid that help fuel extremism.
The Obama administration reaches out to enemies such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al Assad, the Castro brothers and Hugo Chávez. It pays far less attention to British, Colombian, French, Israeli and Japanese allies. In unilateral fashion we withdrew promises of land-based antiballistic missile defense from Eastern Europe, giddy that we might appease the Russians into abrogating their patronage of Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Will an inexperienced Barack Obama, in the fashion of Harry Truman, learn quickly that the world is chaotic and unstable—best dealt with through strength and unabashed confidence in America's historic role galvanizing democratic allies to confront illiberal aggressors?
Or will a sermonizing Mr. Obama follow the aberrant Democratic path of the sanctimonious Jimmy Carter: finger-wagging at allies, appeasing enemies, publicly faulting his less than perfect predecessors, and hectoring the American people to evolve beyond their supposed prejudices?
America awaits the president's choice. The world's safety hinges upon it.

(Truman and the Principles of U.S. Foreign Policy)

Bancarelle a Pyongyang.



(Un album sulla Corea del Nord)

Non era Bush.

Militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan punctuated Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s arrival here with deadly attacks on Wednesday, underscoring their ability to cause chaos even in the face of offensives on both sides of the border.
In Pakistan, a devastating car bomb tore through a congested market in the northwest city of Peshawar, killing as many as 101 people, many of them women and children. Pakistani authorities said the attack was the country’s most serious in two years, and the deadliest ever in Peshawar, which has become a front line for Taliban efforts to destabilize the government through violence.

(Clinton Arrival in Pakistan Met by Fatal Attacks)

Pare che a Pyongyang leggano Orwell (urge verifica)...

Biblioteca nazionale di Pyongyang, pomeriggio di un giorno qualsiasi di fine ottobre 2009. All'ombra di una grande statua di Kim Il Sung, "Presidente eterno", le cui mani posate in grembo sorreggono un quotidiano mentre lo sguardo domina paterno l'immensa sala centrale, chini su minuscoli banchi di legno stuoli di lettori compulsano, assieme a testi cari alla tradizione asiatica, una serie di volumi insoliti per questa latitudine: i capolavori della letteratura occidentale.
Il titolo "1984", romanzo di fantasia estremo e terribile, scritto nel 1948 ma di cui molti hanno intravisto la successiva materializzazione proprio nella società ipercontrollata della Corea del Nord, è - per quanto sembri incredibile - tra questi.

(Oltre la censura della Corea blindata)