Former President Kim Dae-jung, Nobel winner, dies at 85
August 18, 2009
SEOUL, South Korea – Former President Kim Dae-jung, who spent years as a dissident under South Korea’s military dictatorship and later won the Nobel Peace Prize for seeking reconciliation with communist North Korea, has died. He was 85.
Kim, who had been hospitalized with pneumonia since last month, died shortly after 1:40 p.m. (0440 GMT) on Tuesday, said Park Chang-il, chief of Severance Hospital in Seoul. He said Kim suffered respiratory distress, a pulmonary embolism and multiple organ failure.
The Nobel laureate’s wife, three sons and former aides were at his side, according to lawmaker Park Jie-won, Kim’s former presidential chief of staff.
South Korean leaders, from friends to former foes, had been paying their respects for days at the hospital to a man whose epic career spanned South Korea’s evolution from a brutal military dictatorship to a full-fledged democracy and global economic leader.
“We lost a great political leader,” President Lee Myung-bak said in a statement. “His accomplishments and aspirations to achieve democratization and inter-Korean reconciliation will long be remembered by the people.”
Kim built a reputation as a passionate champion of human rights and democracy who fought against South Korea’s military dictatorships and survived several suspected assassination attempts, including a 1973 abduction in Tokyo hotel by South Korean agents.
Once president, he was the architect of the “Sunshine Policy” — a novel approach to relations with North Korea that sought to bring the two wartime rivals closer as a way to encourage reconciliation.
His efforts led to an unprecedented thaw in relations with the North and culminated in a historic North-South summit — the first on the divided peninsula — in Pyongyang with leader Kim Jong Il in 2000.
His successor, the late President Roh Moo-hyun — who committed suicide three months ago amid a broadening corruption probe focused on the Roh family — maintained the Sunshine Policy. But Kim Dae-jung saw his work unravel when Lee, a conservative, took office in 2008, and conditioned aid to the North on the regime’s commitment to nuclear disarmament.
In response, North Korea cut nearly all ties with the South, suspended several joint projects born of warming ties and threatened to restart its nuclear programs. But Kim continued to advocate engagement with Pyongyang.
“The South and North have never been free from mutual fear and animosity over the past half-century — not even for a single day,” he told reporters in January. “When we cooperate, both Koreas will enjoy peace and economic prosperity.”
On Monday, North Korea announced it would restart some of the joint projects, including the reunions of families divided for decades by the 1950-53 Korean War.
Several dates are given for his birth, but Kim was born into a farming family in South Jeolla province in Korea’s southwest when the country was still under Japanese colonial rule.
Kim went into business after World War II ended Japanese rule, but as South Korea’s fledgling government veered toward authoritarianism after the peninsula’s war, he resolved to go into politics.
After three losing bids, he was elected to the National Assembly in 1961. Days later, Maj. Gen. Park Chung-hee staged a military coup and dissolved parliament.
Kim ran for the presidency a decade later, nearly defeating Park. The close call prompted Park to tinker with the Constitution to guarantee his rule in the future.
Just weeks after the presidential election, Kim was in a traffic accident he believed was an attempt on his life. For the rest of his life, he walked with a limp and sometimes used a cane.
In another apparent assassination attempt in 1973, suspected South Korean agents broke into his Tokyo hotel room and dragged him to a ship where he claimed they planned to dump him at sea. But the U.S. intervened, sending an American military helicopter flying low over the ship, and the would-be assassins abandoned their plan.
Upon his return to Seoul, Kim was put under house arrest by the Park government and then imprisoned. His release came only after Park’s assassination by own his spy chief in late 1979.
Kim was pardoned a few months later. But the drama did not end there.
Weeks after Park’s death, military leader Chun Doo-hwan seized power. Five months later, tens of thousands in the southern city of Gwangju took to the streets to protest the junta’s rule.
Tanks rolled in to suppress the uprising; the official toll was 200 dead but activists say the real count was far higher.
Accusing Kim of fomenting the uprising in his political stronghold, a military tribunal sentenced the opposition leader to death. Washington intervened again, and the sentence was commuted to life and later reduced to 20 years in prison.
A few months later, his sentence was suspended and he left for exile in the U.S., remaining there until 1985.
After two more unsuccessful runs for the presidency, Kim was elected to the nation’s top office in 1997 at the age of 72. He served from 1998 to 2003.
The defining moment of the Kim Dae-jung’s presidency was his historic meeting with North Korea’s Kim in Pyongyang in 2000.
The summit eased decades of tensions and ushered in a new era of unprecedented reconciliation. Families divided for decades held tearful reunions, and South Koreans began touring North Korea’s famed scenic spots.
His efforts won him the Nobel Peace Prize, and he remains South Korea’s only Nobel laureate.
“In my life, I’ve lived with the conviction that justice wins,” he said in accepting the honor. “Justice may fail in one’s lifetime, but it will eventually win in the course of history.”
But critics accused him of propping up the communist regime with aid, reportedly up to $1.3 billion.
And his legacy was tarnished by revelations that his administration made secret payments to North Korea before the 2000 summit. Kim defended the payments as a way to secure peace with the North.
Kim is survived by his wife and three sons: Kim Hong-up, Kim Hong-il and Kim Hong-gul. His first wife, Cha Yong-ae, died in 1960.
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Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim and Jean H. Lee contributed to this report.
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Arctic Sea Maltese-flagged ship disappeared
August 14, 2009
Speculation rife over missing ship
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By Penny Spiller
BBC News |
It is a mystery that could grace the pages of a thriller novel.
A cargo ship carrying timber worth $1.8m (£1m) from Finland to Algeria is apparently briefly hijacked off the coast of Sweden before continuing its journey through the English Channel – and then disappears.
Nothing has been heard from the Maltese-flagged Arctic Sea since its last recorded sighting on 30 July, and officials appear to have no idea where it could be.
If this event had occurred in the seas off east Africa, the finger would immediately have been pointed at Somalia’s notorious pirates.
But the Arctic Sea disappeared while rounding the west coast of France, in what are considered to be the pirate-free shipping lanes of Europe.
And as a maritime hunt gets under way to find the 3,988-tonne vessel, speculation is rife over what might have led to the Arctic Sea’s disappearance.
Was the ship carrying something other than timber, “something much more expensive and dangerous”, as one expert put it?
Or is its disappearance down to some commercial dispute or even a quarrel between rival Russian mafia gangs, as other observers have suggested?
Pre-trip repairs
However, all the experts appear to agree that the ship could not have sunk, as floating wood or oil would have been seen by now. They also say this was no typical hijacking.
The Arctic Sea, carrying 15 Russian crew, left Finland on 23 July bound for the Algerian port of Bejaia.
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 It seems some third party didn’t want this transit to be fulfilled so they made this situation highly sophisticated and very complicated  Mikhail Voitenko
Editor of Russia’s Sovfracht maritime bulletin |
A day later, in the Baltic Sea, the ship was boarded by masked men who claimed to be Swedish anti-drugs police. They tied up the crew and searched the vessel, reportedly leaving about 12 hours later.
These events were reported to the Swedish police in a round-about way.
A police spokeswoman told the BBC that the ship’s crew first alerted their shipping company to what had happened. The firm then informed Russian embassy officials in Finland, who contacted their counterparts in Sweden who informed the Swedish authorities.
The police spokeswoman would not comment on any alleged drug link to the ship, saying only that no line of inquiry could be ruled out.
But, while the true facts about what happened remain for now unknown, speculation about a Russian dispute that got out of hand is plausible, says David Osler who writes on maritime safety for Lloyds List.
“It doesn’t look like it’s a Somali-style hijack for ransom because there hasn’t been a ransom demand,” he told the BBC’s Today programme.
“It doesn’t look like it’s the sort of theft of a high-value ship or high-value cargo… so the longer it goes on, the more it looks like some sort of dispute between Russian interests.”
Mikhail Voitenko, editor of Russia’s Sovfracht maritime bulletin, goes one further to suggest “the vessel was loaded secretly with something we don’t know anything about”.
He ruled out drugs or “illegal criminal cargo”, adding: “I think it is something much more expensive and dangerous.
“It seems some third party didn’t want this transit to be fulfilled so they made this situation highly sophisticated and very complicated,” he told the Russia Today news channel.
He pointed out that the unknown cargo could have been loaded in Russia’s Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad, between Poland and Lithuania, where the ship underwent repairs before picking up its cargo in Finland.
The ship is operated by Helsinki-based Solchart Management, which is believed to be linked to the Russian firm Solchart Arkhangelsk. It is registered in Malta, under the name of a Russian company.
Calls to the head of Solchart in Finland, Viktor Matveyev, went unanswered, but there is no suggestion that either the firm or the crew knew or were involved in any illegal activity.
‘Pretty much anywhere’
For now, there remain a lot of questions and few real answers.
Malta’s maritime authority is leading the hunt for the ship. It said on Wednesday the ship had not tried to enter Gibraltar waters and so could be heading out into the Atlantic Ocean.
Russia has drafted in all its vessels in the Atlantic to help with the search.
Arctic Sea is equipped with an automatic tracking system, but this appears to have been either switched off or stopped working since its last signal on 30 July.
And where might the ship be now?
“It could be pretty much anywhere,” says David Osler. “It’s not a very fast ship so it can’t have quite got as far as the Far East. But it could be near West Africa or South America.”
Tough challanges faces Iran
August 14, 2009
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By Jon Leyne
BBC Tehran correspondent |
After the turmoil of the last two months, it was a moment when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could attempt to restore his dignity.
This time the drama was neatly choreographed as the oath was administered.
The hugs, handshakes and kisses all in proper order, unlike the awkward moment on Monday when he was officially endorsed by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.
But in front of the president were a number of empty seats, as some MPs and other senior figures boycotted the ceremony.
The British and European ambassadors did attend, but Western governments declined to send messages of congratulations.
And, as his second term begins, Mr Ahmadinejad faces an increasing series of problems.
Deep split
There are the demonstrations on the streets.
For the moment they do not look big enough to unseat him, but by their sheer persistence, the protesters are rattling the government, keeping it off balance.
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After the election I demonstrated in support of the government. This is because I see the protesters as a minority group who are trying to impose their view on the majority Amir, 28-year-old architect, Tehran
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And there is always the possibility of a much bigger explosion of protests if the government tried to arrest the opposition leaders, or perhaps when students return to university in October.
The split at the heart of the Iranian political establishment was confirmed by the boycott of the ceremony by all three opposition presidential candidates, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, Mohsen Rezai, as well as two former presidents.
But Mr Ahmadinejad will be equally worried about the growing number of conservative former allies he has antagonised, before and after the election.
He has two weeks to present a new cabinet to parliament for approval and, even though parliament is made up almost entirely of fellow conservatives, if past form is a guide it could be a tough battle.
Daunting challenges
Then there is the economy. It has been almost forgotten in recent weeks, but the disastrous state of Iran’s economy is one of the big reasons for Mr Ahmadinejad’s unpopularity in the country.
Many lawmakers – as well as foreign envoys – did not attend the ceremony
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The government staved off problems before the election, but now they could be compounded by a collapse in confidence as the administration struggles to stay in control.
And this is about the time the recent collapse in oil prices will start working its way through to government finances.
Then, of course, there is foreign policy – Iran is under growing pressure from the West to answer President Barack Obama’s offer of new talks on the nuclear issue.
Mr Ahmadinejad’s natural response is one of defiance.
But that might risk alienating China and Russia, and that could mean new sanctions to add to Iran’s current economic woes.
So Mr Ahmadinejad faces a daunting series of challenges as he tries to resume business as normal.
Above all, he faces a crisis of legitimacy. The doubts concern not just his election victory but increasingly the whole Islamic system under which Iran is governed.
For the president it will be an interesting four years ahead – if he survives that long.
bbc.co.uk
Defence Industry Daily
August 14, 2009
The Penny Drops: Iraq Chooses its COIN Aircraft
13-Aug-2009 18:28 EDT
Related Stories: Americas – Other, Americas – USA, Asia – Other, Europe – Other, Fighters & Attack, Issues – International, Lobbying, Other Corporation, RFPs
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In April 2007, Flight International reported that the USAF’s Aeronautical Systems Center (ASC) has issued a solicitation on behalf of the Iraqi Air Force [IqAF] to buy at least 8 counter-insurgency (COIN) aircraft that can serve a dual role as a intermediate to advanced single-engine turboprop trainers. The aircraft should be delivered from November 2008 – April 2009, with options to buy additional aircraft in annual lots of 6.
The solicitation requires a single-engine turboprop powered by a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 family engine, that is in “wide use,” with an advanced suite of sensors and weapons including electro-optical sensors and guided weapons capability. Indeed, it went one step farther and narrowed the field to 4 candidates that can be difficult for a novice to tell apart.
That schedule has slipped considerably, but a formal request has now been issued for 56 aircraft, as Iraq seeks a combination of trainer and armed counterinsurgency aircraft to support its force. Delivery will give the IqAF’s its first combat aircraft since the Saddam Hussein era. Work is reportedly underway, and a contract has been placed for the complementary trainer version…
- The COIN Contenders
- Contracts and Key Events [updated]
- Additional Readings
Continue Reading… »
UK Orders Engine Upgrade for Chinook Fleet
13-Aug-2009 17:26 EDT
Related Stories: Engines – Aircraft, Helicopters & Rotary, Other Corporation
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The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence (MOD) has agreed to purchase 55-L-714A engines and spares from Honeywell to retrofit the RAF’s fleet of 48 Chinook helicopters under a contract valued at $185 million. The 55-L-714A is the international customer upgrade for the T55 turboshaft engine [PDF]. The upgrade increases the engine power by 17%, increases the maintenance intervals and reduces fuel consumption by nearly 5%, according to Garrett Mikita, president of defense and space at Honeywell Aerospace.
The Chinook is the UK’s “aircraft of choice in Afghanistan for heavy lift,” says Pete Worrall, director general helicopters in the MOD’s Defence Equipment & Support organisation.
The high altitude of the rugged Afghan terrain takes its toll not only on troops but also on aircraft. The air at higher altitudes is less dense and that means less lift, which reduces helicopter carrying capacity. Smaller helicopters have problems carrying useful loads in Afghanistan, and most helicopters used there are medium size or larger…
Continue Reading… »
Dutch Upgrading Their AH-64Ds
13-Aug-2009 17:21 EDT
Related Stories: Americas – USA, Boeing, Contracts – Intent, Europe – Other, Helicopters & Rotary, Support Functions – Other
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On Aug 6/09, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced a formal Dutch request for modification kits to upgrade its 29 AH-64D Apache Block I attack helicopters to Block II configuration, along with associated support equipment, spare and repair parts, tools and test equipment, personnel training and training equipment, publications and technical documentation, engineering change proposals, an other support. If a contract is signed, it could be worth an estimated $181 million.
Dutch AH-64Ds lack the mast-mounted Longbow millimeter-wave radar, but this upgrade would otherwise move them to the same configuration as the vast majority of the American fleet. It will also gives them more advanced “Arrowhead” MTADS sensors, color cockpit displays including moving digital maps, updated self-protection suites, and several features designed to improve maintenance and lower operating costs. It will make coalition operations and maintenance sharing easier in places like Afghanistan. There, the Americans operate their AH-64D fleet with Longbow radars removed, while the British WAH-64Ds have made good use of those radars thanks to their more powerful engines. All are in high demand, thanks to their flexibility and 30mm cannon.
The prime contractor will be the Boeing Corporation of Mesa, AZ, and there are industrial offset agreements proposed in connection with this sale. Implementation will also require 4 contractor representatives in The Netherlands to conducting training for a period of 2 weeks.
A newfound planet orbits the wrong way
August 13, 2009
SPACE.com Jeanna Bryner And Robert Roy Britt
– Wed Aug 12, 11:21 am ETUpdated 11:05 a.m. ET
Planets orbit stars in the same direction that the stars rotate. They all do. Except one.
A newfound planet orbits the wrong way, backward compared to the rotation of its host star. Its discoverers think a near-collision may have created the retrograde orbit, as it is called.
The star and its planet, WASP-17, are about 1,000 light-years away. The setup was found by the UK’s Wide Area Search for Planets (WASP) project in collaboration with Geneva Observatory. The discovery was announced today but has not yet been published in a journal.
“I would have to say this is one of the strangest planets we know about,” said Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at MIT who was not involved in the discovery.
What’s going on
A star forms when a cloud of gas and dust collapses. Whatever movement the cloud had becomes intensified as it condenses, determining the rotational direction of the star. How planets form is less certain. They are, however, known to develop out of the leftover, typically disk-shaped mass of gas and dust that swirls around a newborn star, so whatever direction that material is moving, which is the direction of the star’s rotation, becomes the direction of the planet’s orbit.
WASP-17 likely had a close encounter with a larger planet, and the gravitational interaction acted like a slingshot to put WASP-17 on its odd course, the astronomers figure.
“I think it’s extremely exciting. It’s fascinating that we can study orbits of planets so far away,” Seager told SPACE.com. “There’s always theory, but there’s nothing like an observation to really prove it.”
Cosmic collisions are not uncommon. Earth’s moon was made when our planet collided with a Mars-sized object, astronomers think. And earlier this week NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope found evidence of two planets colliding around a distant, young star. Some moons in our solar system are on retrograde orbits, perhaps at least in some cases because they were flying through space alone and then captured; that’s thought to be the case with Neptune’s large moon Triton.
The find was made by graduate students David Anderson at Keele University and Amaury Triaud of the Geneva Observatory.
Bloated world
WASP-17 is about half the mass of Jupiter but bloated to twice its size. “This planet is only as dense as expanded polystyrene, 70 times less dense than the planet we’re standing on,” said professor Coel Hellier of Keele University.
The bloated planet can be explained by a highly elliptical orbit, which brings it close to the star and then far away. Like exaggerated tides on Earth, the tidal effects on WASP-17 heat and stretch the planet, the researchers suggest.
The tides are not a daily affair, however. “Instead it’s creating a huge amount of friction on the inside of the planet and generating a lot of energy, which might be making the planet big and puffy,” Seager said.
WASP-17 is the 17th extrasolar planet found by the WASP project, which monitors hundreds of thousands of stars, watching for small dips in their light when a planet transits in front of them. NASA’s Kepler space observatory is using the same technique to search for Earth-like worlds.
- Original Story: Newfound Planet Orbits Backward
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Cold War spies
August 5, 2009
How vital were Cold War spies?
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By Gordon Corera
BBC Security Correspondent |
British spy Kim Philby handed over secrets to the Soviets
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The world of espionage lies at the heart of the mythology of the Cold War.
Along with nuclear weapons, spies were the emblems of the conflict.
But while the tales of adventure, betrayal and mole hunts have proved a source of rich inspiration for thriller writers, did they actually make a difference to the outcome?
Did intelligence make the Cold War hotter or colder?
It is difficult to know the answer.
“There were secrets that were important to keep secret and there was intelligence which it would be very helpful to have known,” argues former British Foreign Secretary David Owen.
“But my own instinct is that we didn’t really – with a few exceptions and a few important exceptions – really know exactly what was going on.”
One reason it is hard to make a judgement is that much of the intelligence collected was military or tactical in nature, and would only have proven useful if the Cold War had gone hot.
Much effort was expended in stealing secrets like the Soviet order of battle or the design of new Soviet tanks which would have been invaluable in case of war.
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Intelligence during the Cold War had a very big impact on the shape and size of the British defence programme Sir David Omand
Former UK Intelligence and Security Coordinator |
This type of intelligence was collected by electronic means and satellite reconnaissance, as well as by human spies. It was used to work out how to best equip and prepare the military.
Sir David Omand, the former UK Intelligence and Security Coordinator, says: “Intelligence during the Cold War had a very big impact on the shape and size of the British defence programme, on the kinds of equipment we bought and very specifically the actual capabilities that were built into that equipment to be able to encounter whatever intelligence showed was the capability of Warsaw Pact forces.”
During times of “hot war”, intelligence plays an important but ultimately secondary role in supporting military operations.
But, during periods of tension short of full-scale military action like the Cold War, intelligence takes on a more central position.
In the absence of traditional warfare, intelligence becomes itself the primary battleground as each side tries to understand the enemy’s capabilities and intentions, as it seeks to undermine their position using covert action, psychological operations and forms of subversion.
Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6) had a troubled beginning to the Cold War, not least because it was penetrated by its Soviet counterpart, with men like Kim Philby and George Blake handing over secrets.
But slowly it became more professional, recruiting and running agents who could provide information on the activities of the Soviet bloc.
Intelligence sceptic
Some former diplomats query the record of intelligence in providing insight into political trends.
Rodric Braithwaite, a former ambassador to Russia at the end of the Cold War and later Chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, is something of an intelligence sceptic.
A Soviet spy’s insights changed Thatcher and Reagan’s approach
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“I was always rather encouraged by the Joint Intelligence Committee, who used to send us drafts of their assessments on Soviet affairs with the secret bits cut out because they didn’t want to have them sloshing about in Moscow.
“With the secret bits out, the conclusions they were coming to were exactly the same ones that we were coming to in Moscow because the information that mattered was available at both ends and it was mostly either conversations with people, which were not particularly secret, or what was in the newspapers.”
But Sir Gerry Warner, a former deputy chief of MI6, believes intelligence helped ensure politicians had a realistic understanding of what the Soviet Union was up to.
“It is always a temptation if somebody is saying ‘I am a friend of yours and I don’t mean any harm’ to accept that.
“But if you are being told all the time by a microphone in your ear that it is totally untrue and that he’s holding a knife behind his back, he’s about to kick you where it hurts, the temptation is less to trust him.”
Running agents behind the Iron Curtain involved risk – risk to the life of an agent but also politically in terms of raising the temperature.
“The main concern was always balancing the value of possible intelligence against the risk,” explains Sir Gerry Warner.
“If an espionage operation was uncovered it was always an important public event – the media got into it, the other side would play it up – and therefore there was a political risk clearly.”
Understanding intentions
Spy rows flared periodically. In the early 1970s, the UK expelled more than 100 Soviet diplomats from its embassy in London.
So did these kind of operations and activities fuel distrust and paranoia?
The identity of most agents remains secret but a few have become public and one or two of those can be claimed to have made a real impact.
One was Oleg Penkovsky, a colonel in Soviet military intelligence.
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Knowing your enemy is very important indeed Baroness Daphne Park
Former MI6 controller |
His information – passed to MI6 and the CIA in the early 1960s – helped President Kennedy manage the Cuban missile crisis successfully by identifying the extent of Soviet missile capability and how far the Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev was likely to push events.
The most useful strategic intelligence comes from penetrating the leadership of your enemy so that you understand not just their military capability but their intentions.
That was something MI6 only managed late in the Cold War largely thanks to KGB Colonel Oleg Gordievsky, who spent a decade towards the end of the Cold War supplying intelligence to MI6 which revealed how paranoid the Soviet leadership was of a first nuclear strike by Nato.
“The British service could not believe it but because I proved it very well they eventually believed it,” he said.
“Knowing your enemy is very important indeed,” argues Baroness Daphne Park, a former MI6 controller.
“It was very important that we should know that they were as paranoid as that. I don’t see how we would have known it any other way.”
Col Gordievsky’s insights had a profound effect on both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in rethinking how they approached the Soviet Union, which in turn helped them manage the end of the Cold War.
“What nobody wanted was to be surprised,” Sir John Scarlett, the chief of MI6, told me in his office.
“And that intelligence knowledge, intelligence base if you like, gave knowledge which greatly reduced that fear of a surprise attack.
“And, as the Cold War developed, more confidence developed that the other side was understood, and that helped manage the situation and was a key reason why we got to the end without a blowout.”
The one thing the spies failed to predict, along with everyone else, was of course the end of the Cold War itself.
MI6: A Century in the Shadows is a three part series for Radio 4.
You can listen again to the second episode Heroes and Villains via the BBC iPlayer.
The final epsiode, New Enemies , will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Monday 10 August at 900 BST and 2130 BST.
bbc.co.uk
