Tag Archives: United States

Besides Personal Issues, Many Of Us Now May Face A Major War If North Korea Tension Won’t Calm Down!

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Original caption: "Flying under radar con...

Original caption: “Flying under radar control with a B-66 Destroyer, Air Force F-105 Thunderchief pilots bomb a military target through low clouds over the southern panhandle of North Viet Nam. June 14, 1966.” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As the world is getting weirder by the day, I wonder what weirdness the next morning will bring.  Many European economies that are in Euro zone are  looking like they are about to go supernova all the time; U.S. economy is not yet in a recovery and sort of stagnating; Syria is still in a deep civil war with proxy states choose sides (uttering chaos); elsewhere in the world I bet there are some conflicts that could be troubled as well, and so nobody is preparing for another conflict unless insanity creeps in.  Nonetheless, North Korea is threatening United States and South Korea.  Nonetheless, the West too is voicing and reacting louder than necessary, therefore things can get out of hand.  Russia joined in to warn all sides need to take a step back or things might get out of hand.  China had said something along the border of which Russia had voiced, but in a more neutral tone.  Surprisingly, China actually massed troops near North Korea’s border.  So, what is really going on folks?

My fear is that the West and North Korea war brinkmanships may get out of hand, and this will actually pull in more unwanted players than any side has ever anticipated.  No one likes to be threatened by anyone or by any mean.  Nonetheless, should we go to war for threats?  I think we should go to war only when an aggressor aggressively makes the first push, because war means there isn’t any real solution to attaining peace.  Furthermore, the days of small wars and bilateral wars had mostly been extinct.  Nowadays, any conflict can threaten to bring on multilateral conflict/war.  Just take a look at North Korea tension with the West as an example, one could see if the tension becomes more than just talk, not only the United States and her allies have to worry about North Korea’s actions, but China and her allies too have to worry about the outcome of North Korea conflict.

For sure, China would not want a destabilized North Korea.  China has big interest in keeping things to stay peaceful as they’re building their economy still, and a destabilized North Korea might make China’s neighbors to choose side.  When China’s neighbors choose side, trading between China and her neighbors might become destabilized too.  Also, I think China would not be happy if North Korea be absorbed by South Korea, because American troops then can border China in huge number.  Obviously, China is still a big trading partner of the United States, but I don’t think China likes the prospect of seeing American troops station near her border.  China is very keen on her Sun Tzu’s encirclement tactic, and the last thing China wants to see is to have herself to be contained and encircled by United States militarily, geopolitically, and economically.  I think, so far United States has the upper hand in encircled China militarily, but China has a stronger economy which is growing by the days.

I’m too young to have any real experience of Việt Nam war, because I only got to know of Việt Nam war through family accounts and history books, videos, and so on.  Nonetheless, what we know concretely is that North Vietnamese won the war over the South Vietnamese.  The South Vietnamese were Cộng Hoà, and North Vietnamese were Việt Cộng.  The Việt Nam war aftermath had North Vietnamese united and annexed the South Việt Nam with North Việt Nam as one, because North Vietnamese won the war after Americans pulled out (i.e., stopped the supports for the South Vietnamese).  During this time, China and Russia were no longer worried about the West involvement in Việt Nam.  Nonetheless, it was hard to say that China and Việt Nam became closer friends since Việt Nam was then invaded by China.  According to Wikipedia’s “Sino-Vietnamese War” article, China did that to warn Russia to back off on exerting influences into Southeast Asia.  Nonetheless, before China’s Việt Nam invasion, China and Russia were on the same page which to push the Americans out of Việt Nam.  They both achieved that, and the result was a united Việt Nam, under the ruling of the North Vietnamese.

When I look at Việt Nam war, I feel that I can understand North Korea conflict better.  How come?  First, both North Korea and Việt Nam border China.  Second, both North Korea and Việt Nam have had  or had a division among brothers, but Việt Nam’s north and south territories had already officially annexed as one.  North Vietnamese were also the enemies of the United States and vice versa.  Nonetheless, North Vietnamese are now ruling one Việt Nam, therefore the conflict between Việt Nam and the United States is no longer a conflict.  Furthermore, it seems that lately the United States is wooing Việt Nam ever closer to her side, to antagonize China.  North Korea is a different story, because she considered herself to be at war with the United States and South Korea.  As now, North Korea seems to have a more capable defensive and offensive capabilities than what the North Việt Nam once had (i.e., now it’s only Việt Nam).  Back then, China and Russia poured out a lot of efforts to help North Việt Nam secured South Việt Nam, and so North Việt Nam had successfully annexed South Việt Nam with North Việt Nam, making Việt Nam a unified country now.  Will the history to be repeated in North Korea?

Another Việt Nam war (figure of speech but with deep meaning) is definitely going to be very costly for the United States.  Unless, the United States think the last Việt Nam war was a joke, then by all means the United States can bomb North Korea.  Nonetheless, I think North Korea tension isn’t a simple one, and I fear it might be worse than the Việt Nam war.  After all, let be fair, everyone has their own interest, including North Korea.  I think a North Korea tension might become very costly for many sides, United States, China, and others.  In the past, North Việt Nam (i.e., now it’s only one Việt Nam) wasn’t a nuclear power, but today North Korea is a nuclear power.  So, North Korea tension can definitely be even more complicated than the Việt Nam war if all sides do not manage this so called, North Korean tension, carefully.

I’m not biased toward any side, but I’m worry about the possible devastating costs of a real Korean war.  Aside from money/economic costs, lot and lot of human lives will be at stake if a real Korean war breaks out.  I pray that there won’t be one.  I pray that North Korea will become peaceful as the South Korea.  A peaceful North Korea will keep the status quo, because I think the status quo is definitely better than an all out Korean war!  What do you think?

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Will There Be A Day That We Can Say POVERTY IS NO MORE?

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Picture of siblings living in extreme poverty ...

Picture of siblings living in extreme poverty in El Salvador. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Although the “Poor Us:  an animated history – Why Poverty?” video which I embedded in this post doesn’t have an answer which can address poverty of the world, it certainly does heighten the awareness of an interesting topic which seems to never be out of sight and out of mind of earthly citizens since the dawn of time.  The video cherry picked few well known historic events and myths to narrate the story of historic poverties.  It also touched on few near contemporary historic poverty events.  It does not actually providing enough insight into why we humans could not get rid of poverty, but it’s understandable since we humans could not find out how to get rid of poverty once and for all yet.  Nonetheless, it does raise a point in that it recognizes many people since the historic pasts have been knowingly acknowledged the idealism of — if everyone is rich, nobody would want to do the dirty works.  Is it an ideal to hold dear to heart by us?  I certainly hope not, because this ideal is so readily promoting that fews should rule and the rest should toil away as slaves.  I think, instead of holding this ideal dearly to heart, one must strive on to find a real solution to poverty even if there isn’t one, and only by doing this the world would be a much nicer home for us all.

As technology advances faster than I could dream, here come the ideal of having machines to do the humans’ dirty works.  Will this address poverty as the human timeline moves ahead?  Then there is a very real problem at hand, and this problem is not going to be easy to swallow.  Which?  I’m talking about the explosion of populations around the world.

China is implementing one child policy still, but the government there is having a second thought about this policy as its society is now facing the problem of having more men than women, in term of population wise in correlation with the stability of a society.  Everywhere else is living a higher standard than the historic pasts for healthcare had improved greatly, therefore peoples’ lifespan is now much much better.  In short, the world that we know today has a population that is much much larger than any population of the pasts.  The kick is that as we move ahead into the future, the world is striving to have even bigger population.  It is easy to understand why this is so!  It is so, because today living standard is not going to suddenly slip back into the medieval living standard (i.e., living standard of medieval period).  Of course, I did disregard about the possibility of having the world going insane, did I?  Such insanity would be another world war (i.e., nuclear war) and the likes.  Such insanity might destabilize the current growth rate of the world population, but it certainly will never be a solution to extreme poverty.  In fact, if such insanity and the likes to occur on our future timeline, only stricken griefs and poverty can be seen even more at large, around the world.  So don’t even bet on such insanity, OK?

My point is that, although living standard of today is higher, but poverty is still too real to ignore.  Perhaps, higher living standard might make life a lot harder for people who are living in extreme poverty?  You know, the saying goes that if you’re a millionaire, you might as well spend like a millionaire… I think higher living standard might put some strains on the people who are living in stricken poverty.

Another point I want to make is that as technology improves to the point that everything can be automated, machines might make humans become jobless bunches.  When there is a will there is a strength to deploy machines to do human works.  After all, efficiencies must be met and cost saving strategies must be carried out in order for any business to make bigger profits, right?  As the rate of growth of world population explodes, I think the advancing of technological automatons might become the double edge sword — it cuts to kill and it also slices to feed.

Please enjoy the “Poor Us:  an animated history – Why Poverty?” video right after the break.

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Old Men Talk World Economy, I Like It!

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Economy

Economy (Photo credit: CassadeyFedel)

When people often talk about world economy, polarized elements of politics tend to creep into the talk and demand something to be politicized.  This often creates angst among the participants of the talk.  Furthermore, a participant which is against or for the political point of view will definitely not compromise his or her position on the matter, therefore nothing will be resolved or be persuaded.  This is why I often hate to listen only to one side of the story or politicize anything, because it’s a lot easier for me to just sit back and do the listening and watching of whatever that is being politicized, whether such a matter is deserving such a merit or not is another story altogether.  With this in mind though, matters such as world economy that are highly politicized and being debated often cannot be left out of whatever political talk easily even if one does not want to touch the political side of the matters.  Perhaps, these matters are so important to the livelihood of each earthly citizen.  (Or in another way to put this, “It’s the economy, stupid!”)

Even more now than ever before, matters such as the world economy or an economy which is important to the world are evermore very much the concerns of each earthly citizen or I should say the citizen of the world.  How come?  To say the least, besides economic policies, technology matters!  You might think I’ve digressed, but perhaps I just have done so by a little bit.  How so that technology matters when we’re talking about economics?  Continuing below…

The world of today has become so small in term of how we’re able to communicate so clearly and so effectively even though there are oceans that separate several continents.  Technology has allowed and will improve and will continue to allow information, transportations, and other technological important mediums to flow across the world effectively unless a country’s government is hampering these opportunities, therefore the information age and several other obvious technologies such as advanced transportations are now effectively shrinking the world to a point of obvious (i.e., small).  In short, the advancing of technology helps make globalization realizes easier.

With advanced developments in technology in general, whether the progress is made in the information or transportation or whatever technological sector, the positive progresses of these developments have had effectively changed how the world of today is operating.  Furthermore, these so called positive progresses in technology effectively change the economic progress and general attitude of each country and the citizens of a particular country and the world.  I have to say though, these positive progresses of technology might be viewed as negative effects for parts of the world, because several parts of the world see their economy declines and correlate that progresses have been made in technology but citizen livelihoods have not been improved.  Perhaps, technology in general is just a tool among the tools in a tool box?  Should the reform of economic policy and other policies might make more sense in the argument of bad economics?

In a sense, the main point I want to make within this blog post is that it’s very hard to not politicize matters such as the economy of a country or the economy of the world in general, but with effort one can at least try to make it’s a friendly debate when such a topic would arise.  Specifically though for this blog post, I want to emphasize on why economy matters.  After all, economy matters a lot as it is the lifeblood of the livelihood of the citizens that are being supported by a particular economy.

It’s easy to say that economy matters, but do we really understand why there are so many bad economies have came to light and will come to light in our time?  And this to be said is not to compare with other times of our complete history, whether our history is complete or not is another story altogether.  Of course, I’m not an expert on the economy matters at all, therefore I like to embed some very interesting videos which may be able to spill some light onto our contemporary economic matters.  If you enjoy watching old men talking about economic matters, then by all means the videos right after the break might be somethings that you are going to be pleased with.  Enjoy them videos!!!

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Thorium Is Now Gaining Popularity; China Pushes For Thorium Kind Of Nuclear Energy

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Nuclear power plant symbol

Nuclear power plant symbol (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Back in November 14, 2011, I had written “Can Thorium Be The Only One Element That Energizes The World Of The Future?” article, and this article highlighted what some nuclear energy experts had suggested.  They suggested that the world might be safer and more energy abundant if nuclear energy can be developed with Thorium (90-Th) and not of Uranium (92-U).  At the time of the writing, I was pessimistic about Thorium future.  Just now though, I’d read The Telegraph’s “China blazes trail for ‘clean’ nuclear power from thorium” article, and suddenly Thorium seems to get a lot more attention than usual.  The Telegraph article suggested that not only China, but Norway, Japan, and UK are also looking into ways that they can harness Thorium for nuclear energy.  With all of the commotions for Thorium now, I suppose to be optimistic about a possible future with abundant amount of safe, green energy.  Nonetheless, the future has yet to be written, therefore we cannot be too sure on such a future until we really see it.

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Lightroom 4 Photo Fun – California Trip (November 2012)

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California Trip (November 2012) Sneak Peek Photo

California Trip (November 2012) Sneak Peek Photo

Went to California for a short vacation, and I took nice photos there.  I wished I could have taken more, but I didn’t have enough time to do so.  California had so many nice landscapes that I could not find in Georgia, and so I think it would be nice for me to revisit so I could try to take photos in styles that I had not been able to do so with the trip I just had.  Anyhow, if you want to check out the photos I had taken during my California vacation trip (November 2012), you can always click on the sneak peek photo or hop over to EndlessBit.com.  Enjoy!!!

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Lightroom 4 Photo Fun – Fernbank Natural History Museum Dinosaur Replica

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Check out couple photos that I took of the dinosaur replica at Fernbank Natural History Museum.  Of course, if you look closer, you will see that I’ve posted both original and retouched photos.  Anyhow just click on the sneak peek shot to visit the gallery, OK?  Enjoy!!!

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