Indeed.

I find it rather amusing that the greatest fear of the west is that nuclear weapons will fall into the hands of terrorist groups, yet the current solution is to invoke sanctions.

So in review:

1. North Korea proves it has bombs.
2. Sanctions employed, North Korea starved of resources.
3. North Korea needs to make some money, and get back at the west. Hmm... what could they sell?

Actually, I don't think it's all that likely that they would sell a nuclear weapon. Despite the hype, I don't think the terrorist movements are as well financed as some believe - not to the tune of buying a nuke anyway.

But it's an amusing (and kind of disturbing) line of logic, if not a tad simplistic.

TurnRightThenLeft

The Article does not touch on the "sell nuclear weapons to terrorists issue" but I agree with your logic.

Kim Jung-il is no fool and has used missile and nuclear developments to pressure his neighbours and increase his (and North Korea's) international status. Passing his technology to terrorists could upset this military-industrial state program by inviting retaliation.

As you imply sanctions (already too late and would cause starvation and economic collapse) would eventually pressure Kim Jung-il into desperate acts. This could include nuclear blackmail through threatening to put the weapons into the hands of terrorist groups.

Rather than North Korea directly selling to terrorists the process of selling to Iran is a more realistic possibility. Highly Islamic Pakistan already has nuclear weapons so if Iran did buy North Korean weapons this may represent a slight increase in the sale to terrorist risk rather than the quantum leap that Bush and Co argue.

Iran is awash with oil cash so any passing on of weapons to terrorists will likely be motivated by religion and/or politics rather than a high price cash sale. Yet Iran knows Israel (maybe the US) would quickly become aware of a sale and nuclear retribution would be swift.

A dark picture.

Luckily Australia is far from the action, but are we far enough?

Pete

How can you all be so BLIND...don't you realize that this is a CIA PLOT....

now.. look at the TIMING... "Obviously" this has been engineered by the CIA under orders from 'BUSH' and the Republican NeoCons.. because their hopes of re-election are fading.

Nothing could be BETTER for them now... more FEAR.. more justification of 'harsher security measures'... now they can CONTROL us more.. take away our civil rights.

SHAME on the CIA for manufacturing this incredible hoax..

None of you REALLY believe N.Korea has Nukes.....do you ?

Surely ur not THAT easily deceived ?

I repeat..this is clearly a CIA plot.. orchestrated to help Republican re-election.

Its all in the TIMING...TIMING...TIMING....

Our activists are well tuned into the 'REAL' situation there.. our people on the ground know whats REALLY going on....

Marilyn, Carl, Chris... did I do well ? :)

Bd,

FINALLY your opening your eyes. LOL

I actually think it might be the other way around, NK may have timed doing this test to make Bush and co. look stupid. While bush/Cheney are banging on about Iran's phoney nooks NK have the got the real deal, of course Bush won't do anyhing about because a) their military is overstretched and NK would put up a proper fight b)there just isn't a lot there for them, its China's western border and their proximity to the oil fields there that they are really concerned about.

Then again, I may be a CIA agent planted to spread disinformation, crazier things have happened....:)

Davo! - I guess I deserved that - fair enough.
But look, the umpire is still out on NK.

Let's start by going to the IRIS Seismological site:

http://www.iris.edu/seismon/ - then find the little yellow circle on North Korea (Mag 4,2 Oct 9) - zoom in and examine the thing for yourself. Look at the charts of the seismographs. You will also notice that this morning's false alarm was just that - paranoia - because that tremor was nowhere near.

You can see a satellite picture of Oct 9's coordinates if you like:

http://cryptome.quintessenz.org/mirror/dprk-test.htm

We think that the yield of the explosion was very low. From Wayne Madsen:

"some media sources are hyping the kilo-tonnage of North Korea's underground nuclear weapons test. Although some outlets are reporting that the bomb tested by North Korea was 5 to 15 kilotons, in fact, it was between 1.5 and 2.4 kilotons, considered a surprisingly low yield by Western scientists. By comparison, the bombs dropped by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 22 kilotons."

The other intelligence websites indicate the same. What does this mean? There is a minimum amount of plutonium required to achieve critical mass, so if this was truly a plutonium bomb it must have been an utter fizzer.

AHA!

If it was a fizzer, that also means that the contamination and residual radiation must have been awesome. Yet we still await official confirmation from the satellites that monitor radiation from above.

A fizzer means that they were not able to smack the pieces of plutonium together fast enough (called "assembly" by the boffins) and the stuff simply vaporises before it can take all take part in fission - make sense?

Cut a long story short and keep this in your favourites. Everything you ever wanted to know about making atomic bombs, but were afraid to ask:

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/

OR - it was just a bloody big pile of conventional explosive.

Cheers

pete asked :

"Luckily Australia is far from the action, but are we far enough?"

well, today's NT News allowed Murdoch's warmongering editors to enthuse (certainly mindlessly, and quite possibly inaccurately) that Darwin lies within the strike range of North Korea.

as I described in the other thread, while we may be geographically displaced, Howard et al are persuing an aggressive role. The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties are currently investigating two new treaties which would weaken Australia's existing controls against nuclear proliferaion in the region, and send nuclear materials and technologies to North Korea's nuclear armed neighbour, China.

Whereas other nuclear armed nations clearly bear the responsibility to lead by example, and pursue unilateral disarmament, I believe that Australia's significant uranium reserves present us with another particular responsibility : to cut the problem off at its source, and close our uranium mines.