Tea at Trianon: North Korea and Nuclear Weapons

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, September 15, 2013

North Korea and Nuclear Weapons

From Smithsonian Magazine:

Last February, North Korea detonated a nuclear weapon, the third test in its incredibly controversial nuclear weapons program. Then, it spent months and months posturing—threatening to resume its war with South Korea, targeting U.S. bases with long range missiles and releasing a highly provocative propaganda video depicting an attack on America. The countdown to war came and went, and North Korea’s displays just sort of faded away. But last night brought a twist: North Korea may have booted up its mothballed nuclear reactor, set to resume plutonium production and expand its nuclear arsenal.

If North Korea has restarted its nuclear program, says the New York Times, it would fly in the face of decades of work meant to stop exactly that. It also wouldn’t be particularly unexpected. North Korea, says Sung-Yoon Lee to the Times, has a “timeworn tactic of raising tensions to remind its adversaries that it is a menace that needs placating, then pushing for economic and diplomatic concessions.” (Read more.)