You Want Brimstone With That?

It seems old Mad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad isn't really paying attention to how well his sycophant, (T)Hugo Chavez has been faring with his "Bush is the devil" speech at the UN. That is, not too well. Mad Mahmoud is now saying that Bush takes his direction from Satan.

Speaking to a group of supporters, Mr Ahmadinejad said he himself had inspirational links to God, Iranian media reports.

He was talking to supporters at a mosque in the capital Tehran.

The reports come as Iran is facing the prospect of UN sanctions over its nuclear programme.

The president has been making light of the risk of any confrontation with the outside world.

According to the Iranian media, Mr Ahmadinejad said he had inspirational links to God, and went on to say that if you were a true believer, God would show you miracles.

Then the Iranian president said Mr Bush was similar to him.

According to Mr Ahmadinejad, the US president also receives inspiration - but it is from Satan.

He repeated: "Satan inspires Mr Bush."

One can only hope that Iran overplays its hand just as Mini Me Chavez appears to have done. And as Kim Jong Il is doing.

The “Mercy” Of The “Activists”

I posted yesterday about the people who the AP decided should be called "activists" and "vandals". You know, the ones who conducted coordinated raids on mink farms in Spain. They freed thousands of minks from captivity at the farms. Authorities are not certain, of course, but the operation bears all the hallmarks of previous operations by the British Animal Liberation Front. Well, it seems that some of the "liberated" mink have been recovered already. About 6,500 were released and around 4,550 have been recovered so far.

Unfortunately, 70% of the recovered mink were dead. So far.

A total of 6,500 minks were released Sunday from captivity, according to Galicia's government, but with many enjoying a short-lived freedom. Roughly 70 percent of the 4,550 furry runaways recovered to date were found dead, authorities said.

Raised in captivity for their luxurious furs, the animals "aren't used to living in liberty" and many die of hunger, a government spokesman said.

Those who survive can become aggressive and dangerous to local fauna — including humans — "as they move around rapidly and they can bite," he added.

Those released are members of the American mink species. Their existence in the wild can also accelerate the disappearance of their European counterparts who, experts say, figure among Europe's threatened species, along with the Iberian lynx and the Mediterranean monk seal.

So, the "mercy" of the "activists" includes the death of the majority of the subjects they "liberate. And untold damage to the European ecosystem. In other words, advance your cause regardless of cost or benefit.

Emotional Overload

I posted about Arianna Huffington's plea for the netroots to help write Ned Lamont's concession speech yesterday. Well, it seems the faithful have come through. In reading through this, I came to an epiphany of sorts. Something snapped into focus for me on why there is so much difficulty communicating these days. More about that after a few highlights:

Far too often politicians don't speak from the heart until it's too late.Freed from their consultants, they finally summon the passion and purpose that drove them into politics in the first place — ironically turning into the candidates they should have been all along.

We desperately need Ned Lamont to get to that point now, while there is still time — and two more televised debates — left in which to let the people of Connecticut know (exactly and unequivocally) why returning Joe Lieberman to the Senate would be such a disaster.

….

First and foremost, I want to apologize to all of you who gave your heart and soul — and your hopes for a better America — to this campaign. Instead of honoring that commitment, I ran a milquetoast race, and I am deeply sorry. You wanted reform, and I gave you warmed-over political platitudes. You wanted righteous indignation, and I gave you calculated criticism.

Like Al Gore and John Kerry before me, I forgot how high the stakes were. And I played it safe. I played not to lose rather than to change the country. I forgot that I had to give people a reason to vote for me — or a reason to vote against my opponent — every single day, every single hour. I forgot –and how could I forget? — how dirty the other side would play to win. I forgot that in building a successful business of my own, I had relied on my own gut instincts, not on advice from some M.B.A. textbook. I should have stuck with my gut; instead I let consultants tell me what to do and what to say.

I turned my campaign over to hired guns who think that running to the middle is a winning strategy — even though it's proven to be a loser time and time and time again. These Beltway professionals, some on loan from Democratic leaders who do not share my passionate opposition to the war — the core issue of my campaign — came in, having learned nothing from their electoral defeats, and ran the same cookie cutter campaign.

Hopefully, my self-inflicted defeat will help break this endless and tragic cycle and be a first step on the road to reclaiming the Democratic Party.

Well, that's all very emotional. It has all the pathos and grandiloquence that one would expect from an emotional Hollywood tearjerker of a movie. A regular Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. A veritable lollapalooza with a cast of thousands. That is when it really struck me.

That is exactly, precisely how many on the left see politics. As a Hollywood movie. They are the downtrodden hero standing up to The Man. They have little scripts running in their heads. Dialog where they triumph over the bad, evil people. And at the end of the movie they have scripted in their heads, everyone gets a pony and we all live happily ever after. Don't believe me? Read the part I left out of the intro to Ned's concession speech - as drafted by the HuffnPuff crew.

Maybe having Lamont look in the mirror and deliver this speech will be the political equivalent of that moment in Moonstruck when Cher slaps Nic Cage across the face and says, "Snap out of it!"

Politics as a Cher movie. Good Lord.

UPDATE: QandO has more.

Can’t Buy A Seat

In the UN Security Council voting, things are still looking grim for Venezuela. On the sixth round of balloting, Venezuela pulled to its highest vote total of 93 to tie with Guatemala. By the tenth round of voting, (T)Hugo's regime had fallen back to 77, with Guatemala surging back to 110, 15 votes shy of the majority needed to win.

Guatemala led in nine of the 10 ballots, but could not get the two-thirds majority necessary to win. Nonetheless, the results were a defeat for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who had campaigned by railing against the United States and promised to use his nation's voice on the 15-member council to counter Washington's influence.

The other four seats that will come open on the council were filled easily. South Africa, Indonesia, Italy and Belgium will start their terms on the council on Jan. 1, replacing Tanzania, Japan, Denmark and Greece.

Neither Venezuela nor Guatemala appeared willing to drop out of the election, which resumes on Wednesday with another round of balloting. Venezuela's U.N. Ambassador Francisco Arias Cardenas complained the United States has pressured countries worldwide to prevent Venezuela from winning the two-year rotating seat.

"Venezuela will not withdraw — we're fighting until the end," Cardenas said. "We are fighting against the first power of the world, the owners of the universe. We're happy, we're strong and we will continue."

It just does not look good for (T)Hugo's attempt at global bribery. His opposition at home should be able to have a field day with this. Chavez squandered the nation's resources trying to buy a seat on the UNSC, then urinated on the UN with his little speech. Talk about a dumb move.

Look for Chavez to call for Jimmy Carter to supervise the next round of balloting, with Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador from Mexico and AlGore as observers.

Harry Reid Imploding?

Well, probably not just yet, but his troubles are mounting steadily. Now it turns out he has paid Christmas bonuses for the support staff at the Ritz-Carlton (he has a condo there) with campaign funds. That is a violation of Federal law.

WASHINGTON - Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid has been using campaign donations instead of his personal money to pay Christmas bonuses for the support staff at the Ritz-Carlton where he lives in an upscale condominium. Federal election law bars candidates from converting political donations for personal use.

Questioned about the campaign expenditures by The Associated Press, Reid's office said Monday he was personally reimbursing his campaign for $3,300 in donations he had directed to the staff holiday fund at his residence.

Reid also announced he was amending his ethics reports to Congress to more fully account for a Las Vegas land deal, highlighted in an AP story last week, that allowed him to collect $1.1 million in 2004 for property he hadn't personally owned in three years.

In that matter, the senator hadn't disclosed to Congress that he first sold land to a friend's limited liability company back in 2001 and took an ownership stake in the company. He collected the seven-figure payout when the company sold the land again in 2004 to others.

Reid portrayed the 2004 sale as a personal sale of land, making no mention of the company's ownership or its role in the sale.

Reid said his amended ethics reports would list the 2001 sale and the company, called Patrick Lane LLC. He said the amended reports would also divulge two other smaller land deals he had failed to report to Congress.

"I directed my staff to file amended financial disclosure forms noting that in 2001, I transferred title to the land to a Limited Liability Corporation," Reid said in a statement issued by his office.

He said he believed the 2001 sale did not alter his ownership of the land but that he agreed to file the amended reports because "I believe in ensuring all facts come to light."

Reid is charging that the Republicans are going after him. Actually, the AP appears to have him in the crosshairs. But this "culture of corruption" theme is turning around and biting the people who have been trying to use it even more badly than I thought it would. Reid is definitely on the defensive now.

UPDATE: Dan Riehl calls for Reid to resign. Ace Thinks the Republicans have to start playing just as dirty as the Dems are this year. Ed Morrisey calls for a full investigation by the ethics committee.

About Them Chickens

Paul Geary at The New Editor has a must read on polls, polling, election analysis, political punditry and pretty much everything else you need to know about the 2006 midterm elections. All the coverage you are seeing lately predicting the end of the world for the Republicans may be, to put it nicely, misguided.

For all the criticism we hurl toward 43rd St., The New York Times is still a first-class source for information and a must read. I became addicted to the Times real estate section 10 years ago while living in the tri-state area, during a stint at Nielsen Media Research in Fairfield County, Connecticut.

The interactive election guide online is a fantastic tool for the political junkie and the sort-of-interested alike, and probably the most comprehensive source for election information.

Having said that (you knew this was coming), the analysis part of the tool is, well, interesting.

The House is considered to be in play by most people, and the current analysis shows 57 seats in play — 19 "leaning Dem," 22 "leaning Rep," and 16 "toss ups." All 16 "toss ups" are in districts currently held by Republicans. All 22 "leaning Republican" are in current Republican districts.

In other words, there are zero Democratic seats that are even leaning Republican. This is less an "analysis" than it is a Democratic best-case scenario.

Consider a few facts: Incumbents historically win more than 90% of the time in House races. An incumbent who is not involved in scandal and who has a money advantage over a challenger wins north of 95% of the time. And most Americans don't pay attention to elections, especially off-years, until the last two weeks of the race.

And consider that there is a consistent skew toward Democrats in polls, which we've chronicled. This inability to get an appropriate random sample of voters has made pollsters unable to correctly predict close races. Remember not too long ago when their accuracy was alarming to the degree that we were worried they suppressed turnout on the West Coast? That is because fewer races were close then. Their clairvoyance was illusory.

Let's have a look at what "leaning" and "toss up" mean to the analysts at the Times.

Here are two examples of "toss up" races:

In New York-26, incumbent Republican Thomas Reynolds is running against Democrat Jack Davis. Reynolds had more than $3 million on hand vs. $63,000 for Davis as of the last FEC filing. That means Reynolds can afford to get out the vote and advertise his unredacted, unedited, and unfiltered message to the voters.

The Western New York district is historically Republican, having voted for George Bush by 12 points over John Kerry. Reynolds beat Davis by 12 points in 2004.

The downsides, according to pundits, are his stewardship of the National Republican Congressional Committee, as if everyday voters care about that. Reynolds admitted he knew about the Foley e-mails, and his top aide resigned. A poll shows Davis up by five points, but that was taken at the height of the coverage of Reynolds' relationship to the scandal. Also, the report doesn't say how "likely" voters were determined, or whether the Republican vs. Democratic breakdown of those polled was reflective of the district. Too often, it's not.

Does knowing about the Foley e-mails erase 12 points and a $3 million fundraising lead in an historically Republican district? History tells us otherwise.

Royal Navy Cannot Support Blockade Of NK

The once mighty British Royal Navy is unable to send any meaningful number of ships to support an interdict and inspect program against North Korea.

Plans to impose a blockade of North Korea to prevent the regime acquiring nuclear weapons were thrown in disarray last night.

China said it would oppose attempts to inspect suspect vessels and Royal Navy commanders said Britain was unable to make a significant military commitment to the proposed United Nations naval task force.

The United States is leading attempts to put together a force that would prevent suspect cargoes from entering the Marxist dictatorship and stop North Korea exporting weapons of mass destruction technology to rogue regimes such as Iran and terrorist groups.

Attempts to assemble the force began in earnest yesterday after the UN Security Council unanimously passed a resolution late on Saturday imposing tough arms and financial sanctions against Pyongyang following its claim that it had test-fired a nuclear warhead last week.

The UN resolution prompted an angry response from North Korea, which said it would regard the imposition of sanctions as an act of war and described the resolution itself as "gangster-like".

I had no idea how diminished the Royal Navy has become, but assuming these counts are accurate, they cannot muster enough surface ships to equal one US carrier task force.

On a vaguely related front, the US NORAD command center at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado is being mothballed.

During the long nuclear standoff with Moscow, the nation's super-secret nerve center was a symbol of both Cold War might and apocalyptic dread, depicted in such movies as "WarGames" in 1983. But with the end of the Cold War, the war room is being put on "warm standby" to save money.

A staff will keep it ready to resume operations at a moment's notice if a blast-hardened command center becomes necessary, but the critical work is being shifted to Peterson Air Force Base, about 10 miles away.

"In today's Netted, distributed world we can do very good work on a broad range of media right here," Adm. Timothy Keating, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, said from his Peterson headquarters. "Right there at that desk, including one push-button to the president."

Moreover, the U.S. military says the countries that have succeeded the Soviet Union as the main threat to this country — hostile states such as North Korea and Iran — do not have the weapons to take out a command center in Colorado.

I can't say as I believe this to be a good development.

If True, This Is Big News

The Australian is reporting that Beijing appears to be considering backing a coup against Kim Jong Il. There have been unprecedented criticisms against North Korea's leader allowed on the internet ever since the nuclear test.

THE Chinese are openly debating "regime change" in Pyongyang after last week's nuclear test by their confrontational neighbour.

Diplomats in Beijing said at the weekend that China and all the major US allies believed North Korea's claim that it had detonated a nuclear device. US director of national intelligence John Negroponte circulated a report that radiation had been detected at a site not far from the Chinese border.

The US may have employed highly classified satellite technology to detect tiny leaks of gas or elements associated with nuclear detonation, according to a diplomatic source in the Chinese capital. This would explain Washington's reluctance to explain the findings in public.

The Washington Times disclosed that US spy satellites photographed North Koreans playing volleyball just a few hundred metres from a test site tunnel after the underground explosion.

The Chinese Government has been ultra-cautious in its reaction. However, since Monday, Foreign Ministry officials have started to make a point of distinguishing between the North Korean people and their Government in conversations with diplomats.

Ahead of yesterday's Security Council vote, some in Beijing argued against heavy sanctions on North Korea for fear that these would destroy what remains of a pro-Chinese "reformist" faction inside the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"In today's DPRK Government, there are two factions, sinophile and royalist," one Chinese analyst wrote online. "The objective of the sinophiles is reform, Chinese-style, and then to bring down Kim Jong-il's royal family. That's why Kim is against reform. He's not stupid."

More than one Chinese academic agreed that China yearned for an uprising similar to the one that swept away the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989 and replaced him with communist reformers and generals. The Chinese made an intense political study of the Romanian revolution and even questioned president Ion Iliescu, who took over, about how it was done and what roles were played by the KGB and by Russia.

This would be huge if it turns out to be true. It would also explain the sudden burst of fence building activity I noted earlier today. The article notes that details have suddenly been emerging about a number of failed coup attempts against Kim in recent years that have been previously unreported in the West. That and the sudden lack of interest in reining in vitriolic criticism of a close ally on the internet may actually mean there really is something going on here.

UPDATE: Others: Sundries Shack, Flopping Aces, Don Surber, Riehl World View, A Blog For All, Dean's World,  

Iraq Body Count Denounces Lancet Study

This is the end of any credibility in the Lancet "study" that pronounced massive civilian casualties in Iraq. This is a press release by none other than Iraq Body Count. It is devastating.

A new study has been released by the Lancet medical journal estimating over 650,000 excess deaths in Iraq. The Iraqi mortality estimates published in the Lancet in October 2006 imply, among other things, that:

1. On average, a thousand Iraqis have been violently killed every single day in the first half of 2006, with less than a tenth of them being noticed by any public surveillance mechanisms;
2. Some 800,000 or more Iraqis suffered blast wounds and other serious conflict-related injuries in the past two years, but less than a tenth of them received any kind of hospital treatment;
3. Over 7% of the entire adult male population of Iraq has already been killed in violence, with no less than 10% in the worst affected areas covering most of central Iraq;
4. Half a million death certificates were received by families which were never officially recorded as having been issued;
5. The Coalition has killed far more Iraqis in the last year than in earlier years containing the initial massive "Shock and Awe" invasion and the major assaults on Falluja.

If these assertions are true, they further imply:

• incompetence and/or fraud on a truly massive scale by Iraqi officials in hospitals and ministries, on a local, regional and national level, perfectly coordinated from the moment the occupation began;
• bizarre and self-destructive behaviour on the part of all but a small minority of 800,000 injured, mostly non-combatant, Iraqis;
• the utter failure of local or external agencies to notice and respond to a decimation of the adult male population in key urban areas;
• an abject failure of the media, Iraqi as well as international, to observe that Coalition-caused events of the scale they reported during the three-week invasion in 2003 have been occurring every month for over a year.

In the light of such extreme and improbable implications, a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data. In addition, totals of the magnitude generated by this study are unnecessary to brand the invasion and occupation of Iraq a human and strategic tragedy.

Even if you are against this or any other war, you should not want your point of view to prevail by way of lies. IBC stood up today and refused to countenance those lies. Bravo.

OTHERS: Sister Toldjah, Gateway Pundit, LGF, QandO,

Venezeula Not Getting The Votes

In the fourth round of voting, Guatemala still leads Venezuela 110 to 75 despite the switching of six votes. It seems increasingly likely that a compromise candidate will take the open UNSC seat.

Guatemala, supported by the United States, received 110 votes, down from 116 in the third round, while Venezuela got 75 votes, up from 70 in the third round. Six nations abstained.

But Guatemala did not get the two-thirds majority needed for victory in the 192-nation body.

Further rounds of balloting are necessary during which a new compromise candidate could emerge.

However, Brazil's U.N. ambassador, Ronaldo Sardenberg, said it was still premature to think of a substitute candidate until the trend became clearer.

Venezuela's U.N. ambassador, Francisco Javier Arias Cardenas, said the United States had tried to turn the vote into a contest between his government and Washington, and said votes cast for his government had been "votes of conscience" in favor of the developing world.

"We are not competing with a brother country. We are competing with the biggest power on the planet," he told reporters, adding that Venezuela would not withdraw from the race.

But U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said, "I think it is very clear there's a candidate with a strong predominant vote." However, he expected more rounds. "This has just begun."

Sometimes bribery gets you nowhere. So it would seem with (T)Hugo Chavez. The lopsided vote tally shows that a lot of people he thought he had bribed cheerfully took his money then double crossed him. One very interesting comment from one ambassador:

Lichtenstein's U.N. ambassador, Christian Wenaweser, told reporters, "It's going to be very hard to turn that (vote) around."

He and several other ambassadors said that President Hugo Chavez's September speech to the U.N. General Assembly did not win him friends. Chavez called President George W. Bush a "devil" and said the American leader had left the smell of sulfur hanging in the chamber.

"Many people felt it was bad taste," said Tanzanian Ambassador Augustine Mahiga. But he said Guatemala might have won the seat outright had the United States not lobbied so hard on its behalf.

So the "devil" speech is being seen as a big mistake, but some are also seeing the US lobbying effort as one. Interesting.

UPDATE: After the sixth round, both nations have 93 votes with one vote cast for Mexico.

Blocking Initiatives

John Fund explores the growing tendency of judges blocking initiatives and referendums from state ballots. (I covered a similar analysis by Thomas Bray earlier this month here.) Fund doesn't approach it in exactly the same way, but the results are pretty much the same: judges are limiting ways to get around ossified legislatures when they will not act in accordance with the electorate's wishes. This is a very bad sign. The left is essentially taking away a tool that is extremely useful to all citizens, regardless of political affiliation.

Direct democracy in the 24 states that allow it often makes government function when arrogant, self-absorbed legislatures are gridlocked. Voters in several states have imposed term limits and curbed bilingual education and racial quotas, hot-button issues legislators often shrink from tackling. Liberals have used initiatives to pass minimum-wage hikes and tobacco taxes that were often blocked by legislatures where powerful lobbyists hold sway.

Establishment forces have long resented that initiatives allow voters to do an end run around them and are always looking for ways to limit them. Florida's Legislature put a measure on next month's ballot that would require a 60% supermajority for passing all future constitutional amendments. Such a barrier would discourage many groups from even trying to qualify measures. In Massachusetts, more than 170,000 voters signed petitions for a ballot measure against same-sex marriage. But the Legislature, which is required to vote on initiatives before they reach the ballot, is trying to avoid holding a vote. House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi has urged his colleagues to make sure the issue marriage "never, ever appears as a question on the ballot."

But the biggest threat to initiatives comes from the courts, which are striking measures from the ballot with abandon. The Florida Supreme Court, infamous for its creative rulings in the 2000 recount, has removed a proposed measure creating a nonpartisan commission to redraw the state's gerrymandered legislative districts on the grounds it deals with more than one subject.

In Oklahoma and Nevada, measures restricting government's powers of eminent domain and restricting land use were either removed or gutted on single-subject grounds. In Montana, an initiative limiting growth in the state's budget to increases in population and inflation was declared invalid because it authorized judges to modify the spending cap. A district judge ruled that provision represented a second subject.

Many of these legal rulings are forcing off "conservative" initiatives (not all). What the people pushing these methods fail to understand is that the rulings set precedent. Eventually, that will come back to bite them later. That is not a good thing. The other thing that Fund reveals that is highly troubling is union involvement in trying to block initiatives:

Sometimes lower-level government officials actively prevent the gathering of signatures. In Nebraska, a group seeking to put a spending cap on the ballot expected to face union-paid "blockers" who would yell at and otherwise intimidate people being asked to sign petitions as well as robo-calls warning voters that signature gatherers might engage in identity theft.

What they didn't expect was that unionized police forces in Omaha and Lincoln would deny signature gatherers the right to work outside driver's license bureaus, libraries and the public sidewalks that lead to private buildings. Some police officers would even threaten petitioners going door to door with arrest, saying they first needed a permit to "solicit." A federal judge had to issue a temporary restraining order stipulating the right to collect signatures outside public buildings and on sidewalks. Freed from harassment, spending-cap proponents collected over a third of the necessary signatures in just a week and qualified for the ballot.

This is an unconscionable abuse of authority being exercised at the direction of union officials who are not elected by the public. This is a very bad thing in the long run. Read the whole thing, if the trend continues it will be harder and harder to get around the ruling class of political elites. That is not something we need in the nation.

US Confirms North Korean Nuke Test

The United States has released a statement that confirms there was some sort of nuclear device tested in North Korea last week. It was relatively small, and still may have been a fizzle.

In a short statement posted on its Web site, Negroponte's office also confirmed that the size of the explosion was less than 1 kiloton, a comparatively small nuclear explosion. Each kiloton is equal to the force produced by 1,000 tons of TNT.

"Analysis of air samples collected on October 11, 2006, detected radioactive debris which confirms that North Korea conducted an underground nuclear explosion in the vicinity of P'unggye on October 9, 2006," the statement said.

Proof of concept or fizzle, the threat is the same at this point.

And Yet Another Reason

Here's yet another reason why the nutroots all-out assault on Joe Lieberman was a truly awful bit of campaign strategy. The incredible waste of resources.

Lamont contributed $3,751,378 in the reporting period. Contributions from individuals totaled $1,091,766.

Last Friday, Lieberman's campaign reported it had about $4.7 million on hand heading into the last month of the campaign.

Lieberman's report showed he raised $6.1 million and spent $4.9 million between July 20 and Sept. 30.

Lieberman is running as an independent after losing the August Democratic primary. His campaign did not release a detailed breakdown of the donations, but he received nearly $5.5 million from individual donors and just over $632,000 from political action committees, according to the report.

The Lamont campaign said the candidate has contributed $6,252,878 himself to date. His campaign also said Lamont has received $2,758,174 from some 30,000 individuals through Sept. 30.

All of that money raised and spent to defend a seat that was safely in Democratic party hands. All that money that could have gone to other candidates. All the time Lieberman could not spend helping other candidates. <sarcasm> Absolutely brilliant. </sarcasm>

China Increases Fence Along North Korean Border

China appears to be stepping up its effort to build a concrete and barbed wire fence along the North Korean border. Although the project has been underway since 2003, progress appears to be accelerating in the wake of Kim's reported nuclear test. Whether the fence is meant to stop North Korean refugees, cross-border smuggling or simply meant to mark the border is not clear.

Scores of soldiers have descended on farmland near the border-marking Yalu River to erect concrete barriers 8 to 15 feet tall and string barbed wire between them, farmers and visitors to the area said.

Last week, they reached Hushan, a collection of villages 12 miles inland from the border port of Dandong.

"About 100 People's Liberation Army soldiers in camouflage started building the fence four days ago and finished it yesterday," said a farmer, who only gave his surname, Ai. "I assume it was built to prevent smuggling and illegal crossing."

Though the fence-building appears to have picked up in the days following North Korea's claimed nuclear test last week, experts said the project was approved in 2003. Experts and a local Hushan official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the project, said the military was in charge of the building.

A Defense Ministry spokesman, Ye Xing, declined comment, saying he was not authorized to release information on border security.

The fence marks a noticeable change in China's approach to North Korea. In the decades following their shared fight against U.S.-led U.N. forces in the Korean War, China left their border lightly guarded, deploying most of its forces in the northeast toward its enemy, the Soviet Union.

But the border became a security concern for Beijing in the past decade, as North Korea's economy collapsed and social order crumbled in some places. Tens of thousands of refugees began trickling across the border into northeast China, fording the Yalu and Tumen rivers or walking across the ice in winter.

I think this is a sign that Kim burned a lot of goodwill with China by testing the nuke. Whether that is enough to do permanent damage remains to be seen. China appears to want to keep North Korea and Kim's regime alive for the moment, but it cannot be entirely comfortable with an unpredictable madman running things just across an easily transited border.

Canezilla

Forget Godzilla (properly Gojira) or Mothra, the Japanese have something else to worry about now. Monster cane, a variety of sugar cane that is, well, monstrous.

IE ISLAND, Japan (Reuters) - It is three meters tall and productive even in poor soil, it holds up in droughts and typhoons, and it yields twice as many stems as most sugarcane. No wonder they call it "Monster Cane."

This new variety of sugarcane, named for its size as much as its vigor, is grown on a test field on the tiny island of Ie in Japan's southernmost prefecture of Okinawa.

When a powerful typhoon swept through the region last month, knocking down trees and houses, the cane was unharmed.

Researchers at major Japanese beer maker Asahi Breweries Ltd. are hoping that someday farmers across Okinawa will be growing Monster Cane not only for sugar but also to fuel cars, raise cattle and fertilize farmland.

Formally known as "high-biomass sugarcane," Monster Cane is Japan's first variety designed to produce ethanol without sacrificing sugar output. It was jointly developed by Asahi and the National Agricultural Research Center for Kyushu Okinawa Region, an administrative agency.

In a few months, the cane grown on Ie will be harvested to feed a pilot plant run by Asahi Breweries, which aims to test its technology for producing ethanol from cane at a cost of just 30 yen (25 cents) per liter, making it competitive with gasoline.

Asahi aims to put its technology into practical application after completing tests at the pilot plant in 2010.

Researchers also hope the new variety will breathe life into Japanese farming of sugarcane, an important part in crop rotation in Okinawa, by adding value to sugar production.

"We believe biomass energy will be widely used in Japan in the future, and as a maker of alcohol, we want to contribute to society using our technology," said Satoshi Ohara, researcher at Asahi's Engineering & Technology Development Laboratory.

There is no word on when the movie is due out.

Jokes aside, this sounds like a good thing. One worry about increasing use of ethanol fuel is that it will cut the available supply of food for the world. With this cane, it would appear more sugar and alcohol can be produced in the same amount of acreage. That is a net positive. (We still see major motion picture possibilities as well, but tht's another discussion).