Thursday, October 12, 2006
Velasco: Balls
By Diana B. Velasco
Grain Of Salt
THE United States was looking at the wrong place. There were no weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. They were in North Korea all along.
Last Monday, NoKor proudly announced to the world that it had conducted its first successful nuclear test. Although having only one tenth the energy of bombs dropped by the United States on Japan during World War II, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) says that it registered a 4.2 magnitude tremor in the area around Pyongyang during the time the alleged weapon was tested.
That's a lot of energy.
Even if I were not a geologist, I would still have been able to come to the reasonable conclusion that Korea has boasted, thumped on its chest gorilla-style and established itself as a socialist nation that is a threat to global security with that 4.2 detonation.
The news that an estimated two million Koreans died because of famine, that the nation has been heavily reliant on China to feed its ever hungering population, that its ruling elite drive around in luxury vehicles while the rest of its people toil in vain in the countryside, and the fact that this brazen nation invested so much resources in the development of arsenal that has been strongly dissuaded by the international community brings to mind one word. That word is immoral. And to think that immoral is a word that I have always tried to avoid using in this column.
But there is a part of me that is reluctantly in awe of this feat, if we dare deign to call it as such. And this awe is for the balls in brandishing their sovereignty. This, despite pressure that no less than the United Nations has consistently exerted against nuclear development as being part of the North Korean agenda. They snubbed numerous hearings and calls for cooperation, and got away with a slap on the wrist.
To anybody who has ever gotten goose bumps of the bad kind at the thought of a global village (where developed nations manipulated developing and underdeveloped countries in favor of their selfish agenda), this is an extreme but unflinchingly real counterpoint to calls for being isolationist and too autonomous.
In light of these recent events, I wait - but not with bated breath - on what the self-declared leader of the global police is going to do about the matter. World peace, a phrase so abused in beauty pageants, was the same invocation used by the United States in justifying their rampage in Afghanistan. The undiscovered weapons of mass destruction of Osama Bin Laden remain undiscovered, as the rest of the Moslem nation lay in ruins.
These same weapons of mass destruction were flaunted by North Korea for the entire world to see. I just want to know if George W. Bush has enough balls to deal with this truth.
(You may email missabsinthe@yahoo.com for your comments and reactions.)
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (October 12, 2006 issue)
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