Kofi’s Bequest

Kofi Annan has been the head of the UN for ten interminable years. On his watch we have seen that once hopeful body degenerate into blatant corruption and repeated shirking of its supposed mission. But Kofi has left his indelible mark as a parting gift as he heads of into long overdue retirement. The new and improved Human Rights Council. When this new bequest of Kofi's can't even fool the US media, it is truly a disaster.

When the Human Rights Council was approved by the General Assembly in March, we were among the skeptics who doubted that it would be much of a change, mainly because the membership rules still allowed for the election of human rights violators. As it turned out, we were wrong: The council, which completed its second formal session last week in Geneva, has turned out to be far worse than its predecessor — not just a "shadow" but a travesty that the United Nations can ill afford.

For all its faults, the previous U.N. commission occasionally discussed and condemned the regimes most responsible for human rights crimes, such as those in Belarus and Burma. China used to feel compelled to burnish its record before the annual meeting. The new council, in contrast, has so far taken action on only one country, which has dominated the debate at both of its regular meetings and been the sole subject of two extraordinary sessions: Israel.

Western human rights groups sought to focus the council's attention on Darfur, where genocide is occurring, and on Uzbekistan, where a dictator refuses to allow the investigation of a massacre by his security forces. Their efforts have been in vain. Instead, the council has treated itself to report after report on the alleged crimes of the Jewish state; in all, there were six official "rapporteurs" on that subject in the latest session alone. One, Jean Ziegler, is supposed to report on "the right to food." But he, too, delivered a diatribe on Israeli "crimes" in Lebanon.

This ludicrous diplomatic lynch mob has been directed by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which accounts for 17 governments on the 47-member council and counts on the support of like-minded dictatorships such as Cuba and China. Council rules allow an extraordinary session to be called at the behest of just one-third of the membership, making it easy for the Islamic association to orchestrate anti-Israel spectacles. Several Muslim governments that boast of a new commitment to democracy and human rights — including Jordan and Morocco — have readily joined in this willful sabotage of those values.

I had earlier noted the distinctly Islamist bent of the final session of the council. This is Kofi's signature reform. His bequest to the world. An anti-Israel time bomb ticking away with UN support. A body saturated with hate that is supposed to be looking at the human rights of the world's governments and is, instead, a rubber stamp for anti-Semitism and a free pass for dictatorships. Welcome to Kofi's bequest to the world.

Avoidance

It seems Columbia University has decided it has taken enough bad press over its Junior Jackboot Brigade™. They're mad as hell and they are going to bar any witnesses to their version of free speech. All outside visitors are being barred from attending a speech by two former terrorists and a former Nazi at Columbia. On very short notice, too.

Why, we wonder, at 4:45 in the afternoon, a mere 3:15 hours before Walid Shoebat and his panel were to speak to an audience at Columbia University, all of whom had RSVP'd to the Columbia University College Republicans who were sponsoring the talk, and received invitations from them to the event, has Jewelnel Davis, the advising officer to Student Governing Board groups at Columbia decided to rescind all of the invitations?

Can it possibly be that, having been severely embarrassed by last week's events - when radical leftists at Columbia were left free to act as thugs and attack the Minutemen - and the blogstorm it precipitated, resulting in severe, public criticism of Lee Bollinger, President of Columbia University, for his lack of initiative at solving the problem, this week they decided to solve the problem - at the last minute - by restricting their popular lecturer to Columbia students and 20 invited guests.

I guess it's more important to keep anyone from the outside seeing what happens at Columbia than to allow speech.

School To Be Demolished Tomorrow

The small Amish school where five little girls were murdered and five more wounded will be torn down tomorrow. The materials will be hauled away to a landfill. The structure will not be burned. One area hospital that treated the survivors has done something wonderful for the grieving families.

"Tomorrow morning the school is going to be torn down," Mike Hart, a spokesman for the Bart Fire Company, said late Wednesday.

Private contractors are scheduled to start demolishing the school before dawn and will haul the debris to a landfill, a process expected to take about four hours, Hart said. "There will be no burning," he said.

The West Nickel Mines Amish School has been boarded up since Oct. 2, when gunman Charles Carl Roberts IV stormed the one-room schoolhouse, releasing 15 boys and four adults before tying up and shooting the 10 girls. Roberts, who had come armed with a shotgun, rifle, handgun and a stun gun, then killed himself.

The five wounded girls are all still believed to be hospitalized. The hospitals are no longer providing any information about the patients at the request of their families. One of the hospitals, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, announced this week it would waive the children's huge medical bills.

That is a wonderful gesture. Please remember those little girls. 13 year old Marian Fisher, 7 year old Naomi Rose Ebersole, 8 year old Mary Liz Miller, 7 year old Lena Miller and 12 year old Anna Mae Stoltzfus.

Leading The Lynch Mob

It seems odd, but lately I spend quite a bit of time following political races in state far away from where I actually live and vote. On the plus side, I get to read some rather well written stuff from a lot of sources. (I also get to read some badly written stuff, but that's another topic). One paper I check in with fairly often these days is the Hartford Courant, because of the Lieberman-Lamont race. I've been following that one for a long time now. But today, I read something not on Lieberman-Lamont that really caught my eye for two reasons. It reported a body slam on Ted Kennedy, one of my least favorite people in politics. It also did some very insightful analysis of the Foley matter and the overplaying of hands.

WASHINGTON — When the congressional page scandal broke last month, Democrats across the country saw a chance to lambaste Republican leadership - including Diane Farrell, who called on House Speaker Dennis Hastert to step down.

But when Sen. Edward M. Kennedy came to Connecticut last week to help her campaign, Rep. Christopher Shays hit back.

"I know the speaker didn't go over a bridge and leave a young person in the water, and then have a press conference the next day," said Shays, R-4th District, referring to the 1969 incident in which the Massachusetts Democrat drove a car that plunged into the water and a young campaign worker died.

"Dennis Hastert didn't kill anybody," he added.

That would be the body slam. Which is quite entertaining, but this is the one that really caught me:

But so far, the Democrats' idea to make Hastert the villain has not worked.

An ABC News/Washington Post survey taken Oct. 5 to 8 found that three of every four respondents did not think Democrats would have handled the Foley matter any better, and roughly two in three thought Democrats were pursuing the matter for political gain, not to raise legitimate concerns.

"The Foley scandal has not earned the Republican leadership any goodwill, but neither does it look like a point of differentiation for the Democrats," poll director Gary Langer said.

A Pew Research Center survey taken Sept. 21 to Oct. 4 had similar findings. Before the Foley scandal broke, voters preferred Democrats to Republicans by 13 percentage points - and after the congressman resigned Sept. 29, the margin was the same.

Job approval of Republican leaders, 33 percent before Foley quit, went up 1 percentage point afterward.

In the days ahead, said some analysts, Democrats need to be careful they do not appear to be leading a lynch mob.

"It could look to some people like they're not interested in due process," said Richard F. Fenno Jr., professor emeritus of political science at the University of Rochester.

Which is, of course, what I have been saying all along. Now we all like to quote others who agree with us, but sometimes it really helps when bona fide experts in a field issue a warning rather than a pundit. But damn, that body slam tickles me.

About That Double-Edged Weapon

There have been so many, but the "Culture of Corruption" one was one I took exception to early on. I warned how badly that could backfire. That was before Jefferson's cold hard cash problem came to light. It now seems that there's yet another small problem with that theme.

Harry Reid.

The focus of the AP's report is on the fact that Reid mis-reported the transactions in his Senate financial disclosure forms. He made the original investment personally, but transferred his land to a limited liability corportation in 2001, without reporting that transfer. It was actually the LLC that sold the land in 2004, but Reid reported the transaction as if it had been a personal sale of the land he bought in 1998.

Substantively, what happened is that Reid did this real estate deal with a friend named Jay Brown, a Las Vegas lawyer whom the AP describes as follows:

Jay Brown, a longtime friend and former casino lawyer whose name surfaced in a major political bribery trial this summer and in other prior organized crime investigations.

It looks like Brown did all the work and cut his friend Reid in on the deal. The AP report contains no evidence that there was anything crooked about the transactions themselves, although they apparently were never documented. Basically, the partners bought land that was zoned for residential use, and persuaded local authorities to change the zoning to commercial, then sold out to developers who put up a shopping center. Brown obtained the re-zoning in part by emphasizing Reid's participation in the deal.

Is there anything wrong with this? Not necessarily. You can make easy money by buying land on the outskirts of a fast-growing town like Las Vegas. It helps if you have the influence to get zoning changed, but, to be fair, there's nothing wrong with re-zoning land to permit commercial development as a community grows outward.

It does appear, though, that Reid clearly violated Senate ethics rules by failing to disclose the existence of the LLC and his partnership with Brown. He reported the income, but not the relationship. I suspect the reason for Reid's reticence is explained by the AP's description of his friend's history.

Is this timing questionable? Sure. It would seem pretty fortuitous that this suddenly sees print this close to the election. But that was always the danger of this sort of game in the first place. This really is the worst campaign season I can remember for this sort of thing, though. This one is arguably about Reid in particular and not a vehicle to strike at the whole party as the Foley matter is being played.

UPDATE: Others: Outside the Beltway, Balloon Juice, Hang Right Politics, Olberman Watch, Don Surber, Jawa Report, Riehl World View, Clayton Cramer,

Meanwhile, Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Crisis

North Korea has cheerfully announced that tough sanctions will be regarded as an act of war. Once again, Kim's logic shows he is a complete and raving lunatic. Apparently he's feeling the need to prove he's really important. He's not, but he likes to think he is. China has been propping his little fantasy life up all along. If they kick the props out, he goes down.

As the UN Security Council weighed what action to take against the regime, Pyongyang's number two and its foreign ministry warned of "physical" measures if it was hit with the kind of sanctions proposed by Washington and Japan, and threatened further tests.

Bush committed his government to seeking a diplomatic rather than military solution to the standoff, while at the same time boosting defense cooperation with Asian allies on the front line against the erratic communist regime.

He added it had yet to be confirmed that Monday's blast, announced by Pyongyang, was in fact a nuclear detonation.

"But this claim itself constitutes a threat to international peace and stability," he said.

"We are working with partners in the region and in the United Nations Security Council to ensure there are serious repercussions for the regime in Pyongyang" as a result of the test, Bush said.

The chance of sanctions grew after the North's main ally China said it would support punitive action.

"If the US continues to harass and put pressure on us, we will regard this as a declaration of war and will take a series of physical countermeasures," said a foreign ministry statement carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency.

It did not elaborate on the measures, but insisted it was still ready for talks to improve security and stability on the Korean peninsula. "We are ready for both dialogue and confrontation."

It would appear that there may be some kind of deal in the works to allow the interdiction and inspection of all vessels going into and out of North Korean waters, too. That will be a huge blow to the mad midget of Pyongyang. No more missile sales will about freeze his income.

Everything Old Is New Again

The latest comes from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, via Ann Althouse. Home to 9/11 conspiracy theorist and all-around punching bag Kevin Barrett. This will look great on the armbands.

Here's an opinion piece in the Badger Herald by Robert Phansalkar, a UW student (majoring in political science and languages and cultures of Asia):

The [“Think. Respect.”] program calls for university students to search for forms of discrimination and harassment on campus, and when present, to download a “bias incident report form” to be submitted to the Student Advocacy and Judicial Affairs unit of the Dean of Students for a potential investigation. Implicit in this reporting scheme is that students who harass will be punished or reprimanded in some way….

Ironically enough, the university’s protection of students against bias includes political affiliation…

Here's a letter in response to that article by UW polisci prof Donald Downs (who wrote this book about campus speech codes):

It was good to finally see that a student journalist has grasped the fact that the program, as presently conceived, poses a threat to honest discourse and privacy on campus. The program encourages campus citizens to report not only acts of harassment or discrimination that constitute official misconduct, but all forms of “bias,” verbal and non-verbal, without that term being defined in a manner that is consistent with First Amendment principles. In other words, the present policy amounts to a speech code, as it encourages people to file reports on other people’s attitudes and speech that informants deem insufficiently sensitive.

We've come back around to a very old idea. Oh, I know you think we're going for a Godwin's Law violation here, but it wasn't new then, either. It was already ancient back in the good old days of the Spanish Inquisition.

When the Inquisition arrived in a city, the first step was the Edict of Grace. Following the Sunday mass, the Inquisitor would proceed to read the edict: it explained possible heresies and encouraged all the congregation to come to the tribunals of the Inquisition to "relieve their consciences". They were called Edicts of Grace because all of the self-incriminated who presented themselves within a period of grace (approximately one month) were offered the possibility of reconciliation with the Church without severe punishment. The promise of benevolence was effective, and many voluntarily presented themselves to the Inquisition. But self-incrimination was not sufficient, one also had to accuse all one's accomplices. As a result, the Inquisition had an unending supply of informants. With time, the Edicts of Grace were substituted by the Edicts of Faith doing away with the possibility of quick, painless reconciliation.

The idea wasn't new even then. Romans used it.

The frumentarii were the secret service of the Roman Empire. It had been long-standing policy of the Roman legions and armies of occupation to utilize informers and spies….

We have a junior jackboot brigade at Columbia and the secret police coming to Madison.

It will look great on the armbands.

Food And Drug Administration

Or perhaps drugs in food is more appropriate. Item: Bringing burrito behind bars bombs.

SANTA FE, N.M. - A woman who brought a burrito to a friend in jail has been accused of using the burrito to try to smuggle in heroin. Rosemary Gonzales, 42, is charged with bringing contraband into a place of imprisonment. Bond was set at $5,000.

Corrections officers found a hypodermic needle inside the burrito that Gonzales brought Tuesday to a female inmate at the Rio Arriba County jail, according to a report filed in Rio Arriba County Magistrate Court.

Does Mexican food make you sleepy? This kind would.

Item: Munching McDonalds makes for munchies.

LOS LUNAS, N.M. - Three workers at a Burger King restaurant were arrested after two Isleta tribal police officers discovered that the hamburgers they ordered were sprinkled with marijuana.

The Isleta Police Department officers ate about half of their burgers Sunday before discovering marijuana on the meat. The officers used a field test kit to confirm the substance was pot, then went to a hospital for a medical evaluation.

No word on whether the officers were hungrier after they ate. Notice that both stories are out of New Mexico. What in the heck is going on down there?

Item: Pint pot of pistachio pot?

MARIANNA, Fla. - The ice cream container had a green substance in it, but it wasn't pistachio. Jackson County's sheriff's office said a woman was arrested Sunday for trying to bring marijuana hidden in an ice cream container to an inmate.

Lacheral Williams, 27, was charged with the introduction of contraband to a correctional facility after she was searched by an employee at Sunland Pathways, sheriff's Major John Dennis said.

Authorities said they found "a green leafy substance" in a pint-sized ice cream container Williams had brought with her when she came to visit a resident of the forensic unit for developmentally disabled offenders.

Well, at least this one wasn't in New Mexico. We have a trifecta.

Fewer Choices And Higher Prices

John Stossel has a stinging commentary on a lawsuit against fast food giant McDonald's. Two teenage girls are suing the company saying that they were misled by advertising and became fat and sick because of it. A Federal judge has allowed the suit to proceed.

Three years ago, the girls accused McDonald's of deceptive advertising and selling unhealthy food. Judge Sweet dismissed the suit because the allegations were too vague. "Where should the line be drawn between an individual's own responsibility to take care of herself and society's responsibility to ensure others shield her?" he asked. "The complaint fails to allege the McDonald's products consumed by the plaintiffs were dangerous in any way other than that which was open and obvious to a reasonable consumer."

But he invited the plaintiffs to re-file it with more specific information. Sure enough, they did, and last month, the judge ruled that the girls had identified to his satisfaction "40 deceptive ads" and "sufficiently described" the harm McDonald's food allegedly caused them: "obesity, hypertension and elevated levels of LDL cholesterol."

Who knows what a jury will do when the lawyers play on its sympathy for the overweight girls. Whether McDonald's wins after a lengthy legal battle or loses and gets hit with a big damage award, you and I will pay through higher prices. Our choice of foods could even be limited if fast-food chains decide it's the only way to avoid future lawsuits. Au revoir, French fries?

Are we a nation of responsible adults or children? I don't want government to be my Daddy any more than I want it to be my Big Brother.

Whatever happened to self-responsibility? Sure, McDonald's commercials put the best spin on its products. All advertisers do that. Individuals should exercise caution, and parents should teach their kids a little skepticism. It's not as if information about nutrition is hard to come by. Today we're constantly harangued about cutting calories, reducing fat, and exercising more. McDonald's competitors, such as Subway, provide lots of counter-information. You'd have to live in a cave not to know about this stuff.

This was inevitable after the "tobacco settlement" that made a bunch of lawyers obscenely rich. The frenzy to get corporations to pay for what the plaintiff chose to do to him or herself is getting worse and worse. Stossel suggests a "loser pays" approach. Unfortunately, we all know how badly that has fared in the past against the Trial Lawyers powerful lobby. Which is, of course, funded by those obscenely rich lawyers who hit the judicial jackpot in one of these cases. But the system will lead to fewer and fewer choices for consumers and higher and higher prices, so that more and more obscenely rich lawyers can be created.

“Only Very Small Numbers Of Businesses Have Worms”

Which most people would be relieved to hear. But in California, the government is encouraging businesses to get their very own worm infestations as soon as possible. No, really. We're not making this up.

Always on the cutting edge of all things environmental, California is encouraging public and private-sector employees to bring worms to work so that the creatures can chew up apple cores, sandwich scraps and other lunch leftovers and produce compost.

The employees are then invited to take the stuff home and use the all-natural fertilizer in their gardens and on their houseplants.

The state's Integrated Waste Management Board is so serious about this that it has posted on its Web site a list of top 10 ways to recycle on the job, and No. 2 is: "Keep worms in your office."

Supporters of the idea say that once you get over the ick factor, it's not so bad. Open up a bin and it looks like a box of odorless, wet coffee grounds.

"Worms are the most forgiving pets you'll ever own," said Carol Parker, the "worm lady" who cares for the worms at the public works office. "You can go away for two weeks and ignore them and they're fine."

Tips for keeping happy worms are available on the state's Web site. Among other things, it suggests buying your worms from a worm supplier, to make sure you get the right kind. ("Unless you are pretty well brushed up on oligochaetology, do not try to dig up worms from your backyard.")

The site provides a long list of suppliers across the state to choose from, including As the Worm Turns, Live Nude Worms, and the Happy D. Ranch Worm Farm, which sells a three-tray "worm factory," which for $117 includes a bed of shredded coconut fiber and two pounds of worms.

To start a homemade bin, experts recommend putting down a little dirt and shredded damp cardboard or newspaper. Be sure to poke holes in the bin — air flow is necessary to promote decomposition and keep odors down — and make absolutely certain you've bought the right kind of worms. Apparently if they are not red worms, they may try to escape en masse.

We can't wait to hear about the first case where someone got the wrong worms. That will be a hoot. So remember, get your worms from Live Nude Worms! (GREAT name.)

Bullet-Resistant Big Birds Invading Illinois

We mean really big birds, too. The emu invasion of Illinois is progressing steadily with the animal uprising's special genetically engineered bullet-resistant emus in the forefront. These things are tough and very elusive. Sort of the stealth tank of the animal uprising.

GRANITE CITY, Ill. - Packing 100 pounds on its 5-foot frame, the big bird gave police in this St. Louis suburb a mighty run, confounding them all six times someone reported the ostrich-like beast bugging motorists last weekend along busy Illinois Route 3.

Police finally caught up to the claw-footed menace Monday and ended the ruckus once and for all, cornering the emu, a cousin to the ostrich, and shooting it dead out of fear it'd again wander into traffic and kill someone.

Two days later, police on Wednesday still were pecking away at the vexing question: Where did the bird come from?

"We figured someone would call and say, `That's my bird!'" Police Chief Rich Miller said. "But we still haven't heard from anybody."

….

In June, police in Carbondale, about 100 miles south of Granite City, needed five shotgun blasts and three rounds from a rifle to dispatch one of the flightless birds after cornering it in a residential area, where it was said to have even pecked on a home's window.

In both cases, police say they had no other recourse in dealing with a species known to be elusive — they're capable of moving up to 35 mph — and aggressive with anyone who gets too close.

"We figured that sooner or later our luck was gonna run out" and the emu here would cause a traffic wreck, Miller said. "If we had some way to catch it, somewhere to take it, that'd be fine. The ability for us to be second-guessed is always out there, but we decided (Monday) that now is the time to end this."

Carbondale police haven't said publicly if they ever tracked down an owner of the emu they killed, and messages with those authorities Wednesday weren't immediately returned.

We have our suspicions about the reason for the silence from Carbondale. They finally took out one of the emu's main weapons and the emus take that very seriously. We believe the Carbondale police department has been overrun by vengeful emus.

Aircraft Hits NYC Building - 2 Dead

It appears a small aircraft has hit a condo building in New York City. Officials are reporting two confirmed dead. They are also saying there is no indication it was a terrorist act. As of the last report, they have not identified the airplane or offered any real explanation of what happened yet.

Christine Monaco, a New York spokeswoman for FBI, said there was no indication of terrorism, but that officials "have been sent to the scene as a routine." FAA spokesman Jim Peters said all three New York City-area airports were operating normally.

"The initial indication is that there is a terrible accident," said Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke.

The aircraft struck the 20th floor of a building on East 72nd Street, said Fire Department spokeswoman Emily Rahimi. Witnesses said the crash caused a loud noise, and flames were seen shooting out of the windows.

"It's a mob scene with police and helicopters circling," said Sandy Teller, watching from his apartment a block away. "There's a dozen ambulances and lots of firefighters waiting on 72nd, on the corner. There's lots of stretchers ready, gurneys. And lots of emergency people waiting."

The crash struck fear in a city devastated by the attacks of Sept. 11 five years ago. Witnesses said sirens echoed across the east side of Manhattan as emergency workers rushed to the scene. The crash triggered a loud bang. Broken glass and debris was strewn around the neighborhood.

"There's a sense of helplessness," Teller said. "Cots and gurneys, waiting. It's a mess."

The Federal Aviation Administration said it was too early to determine what type of aircraft was involved, or what might have caused the crash in the middle of a hazy October afternoon.

More as this develops.

UPDATE: The New York Times has pictures and a map.

UPDATE: A New York Yankees player, pitcher Cory Lidle appears to have been one of the victims. It is reported to be his personal airplane.

UPDATE: Screw Loose Change is documenting the Rapid Response Conspiracy Theory Team™ - They are already in full fantasy mode. A Blog For All was practically live blogging this, by the way. You can get a feel for how information develops in the media over there. It's like a time capsule.

Thailand Averts Coup

No, not the coup they already had a little while ago. A new coup attempt by the animal uprising. A crocodile coup.

BANGKOK (AFP) - Thai authorities have seized more than 200 live crocodiles that were being smuggled from Cambodia to a private farm in Thailand.

The endangered animals, along with a box of frozen crocodile skins estimated to be worth 600,000 baht (16,000 US dollars), were seized by Thai customs officials in Chonburi province, 80 kilometers (50 miles) southeast of the capital Bangkok.

"They were probably being imported to captive breeding facilities in Thailand," said Tassanee Vejpongsa, a spokeswoman for WildAid, a non-profit group seeking to stop the illegal animal trade.

Crocodiles are almost extinct in the wild and it is illegal to import or export them without government permission, she said.

"We don't know the domino effect on the wildlife population so we have to be vigilant about monitoring the trade," Tassanee said.

Acting on a tip, Thai customs officials said they began following the truck Tuesday after it crossed the Thai-Cambodia border.

The driver of the truck, a Thai national, has been charged with the trafficking of endangered species, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years or a fine of four times the value of the imported goods.

"Smuggling" being the way the authorities are covering the nefarious plot up. It was the crocodiles paying a human accomplice to carry them to Bangkok. They were simply watching the news coverage of the recent Thai coup and figured, "Hey! We could do that!". They wouldn't discourage go-go dancers, either. They'd be handy as snacks.

Election Follies 1.0

Election officials in Grand Haven, Michigan are scrambling to get ballots reprinted in time for the election. It seems a teensy little typo crept into the ballots. Or crept out, depending on how you look at it. One little letter didn't make it into the printed version despite multiple proof readings.

They left the 'L' out of 'public'.

A total of 170,000 ballots will have to be reprinted.

The mistake appeared in the text of a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would ban some types of affirmative action.

The word "public" was misspelled one of the six times it appears, county Clerk Daniel C. Krueger said Tuesday. Five or six people in his office had proofread the ballot, but it was an election clerk who found the mistake early last week.

"It's just one of those words," Krueger said. "Even after we told people it was in there, they still read over it."

The oopsie will cost Ottawa County $40,000.

Japan Issues Tough Unilateral Sanctions

Japan's government has joined the Australian government and slapped hard sanctions on North Korea. Japan is barring all North Korean vessels from its waters and instituting an almost total travel ban.

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan has approved new bilateral sanctions on North Korea including a complete ban on North Korean imports in response to its declared nuclear test.

Japan will also prohibit all North Korean ships from Japanese waters and will bar the entry of almost all North Korean nationals.

"To protect lives and the assets of the Japanese people, we cannot tolerate the actions taken by North Korea," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters, after a meeting of the government's security council.

"Considering the improving capability of North Korea's missiles and its nuclear capability, Japan is the country that is most affected by the actions of North Korea in terms of security," he said.

"Additional measures will be considered", if the United Nations approves a sanction resolution, Abe added.

One by one, those few nations that still had any dealings with North Korea are turning their backs on Kim. If the UN can step up and if China actually gets on board, Kim's days may well be numbered.