North Korea: Bill Clinton's Second Chance

                                 Diplomacy Only Choice for North Korea-US Relations


     On Andrea Mitchel's report July 7, 2017, James Clapper said the only solution he sees for the North Korean situation is diplomacy. To that end, consider:

     President Bill Clinton always wanted a Nobel Peace Prize. He tried unsuccessfully in the Middle East to follow in the steps of Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jimmy Carter. From his experience bringing home two U.S. hostages from North Korea, he has credibility with Kim Jong Un. By opening up new contacts with the United States, he could help free Kim Jong Un from the Chinese clutches that threatened to replace him with his half brother, Kim Jong Nam. The last thing Pyongyang needs is more cloistering sanctions.

     President Trump offered Xi Jinping a great trade deal in exchange for help curbing North Korea's threats to South Korea, Japan, and the United States. Why shouldn't Pyongyang benefit from a great U.S. trade deal? Or, better yet, from Tiger Woods' help building a golfing resort in North Korea. Asians love golf.

     No Clintons were among "The 100 Most Influential People" in TIME magazine's annual list in 2017, but Kim Jong Un was. Wish he'd come to the U.S. to attend TIME's New York party for invitees. At least he knows he's on the list with Donald Trump, Juan Manuel Santos, Theresa May, Pope Frances, and other world leaders.

     Couldn't President Clinton bring Dennis Rodman back to visit basketball-loving Kim Jong Un and set up a future exhibition game by the Harlem Globetrotters in North Korea? After all, they are called the Globetrotters. It may be too soon for help with U.S. training methods to pay off for North Korean athletes marching into PyeongChang, South Korea, for the Winter Olympic Games next February. But sending a well-dressed contingent of new speed skating challengers there would announce that their golfers, archers, and badminton and ping pong players will be ready for the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo.

     And isn't it time for the ePals.com website, that enables U.S. classrooms to work on projects with classrooms in foreign countries, to reach out to teachers and students in North Korea to learn about more cities than Pyongyang? Later, President Trump would discover there is a beach city called Wonsan that would be perfect for a golfing resort. Could an earlier North Korean-US partnership classroom project create a toy for Hasbro or Mattel to market?

     Entertainment seems to have a magnetic pull on North Korean leaders. How did Kim Jong Nam lose his chance to succeed his father? He discredited the family by trying to go to Disneyland in Japan. And wasn't Kim Jong Nam's mother an actress and isn't Kim Jong Un's wife a singer? U.S. booking agents might discover some untapped talent in North Korea. Ben Affleck is someone who could handle the challenge of developing an ARGO-type script and acting in and directing a film, not in China but in North Korea.

     With nuclear weapons and long range missiles, Kim Jong Un got the world's attention. He's now in a position to capitalize on a new opening to U.S. diplomatic, trade, development, media, sports, education, and entertainment resources. This is his moment...and Bill Clinton's.

   

   

   

29 Countries Influence 7 Billion People

TIME magazine's annual list of the world's "100 Most Influential People" in the May 1/May 8, 2017  issue focused a spotlight on a wide variety of business titans, leaders, icons, artists, and pioneers who have taken on the world's problems. Not only those on the list, but also those who wrote about people on the list, offer inspiration to young and old still looking for fields where they can make a difference.

     Arianna Huffington quoted Demi Lovato: "There's no point to living life unless you make history, and the best way to make history is to help others."

     Writing about Vladimir Putin, former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who made history by opening up the U.S.S.R. and its economy, acknowledged "certain measures of authoritarian nature...were justified" to stabilize the Russian state and its economy. But he went on to say:
   
     I am convinced that Russia can succeed only through democracy. Russia is ready for political competition, a real multiparty system, fair elections and regular rotation of government. This should define the rule and responsibility of the President.

     To find previous posts about people on TIME's list of influential people, go to "Labels" and check for the following: Juan Manuel Santos, Pope Francis, Sandra Day O'Connor, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Kim Jong-un, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Melinda Gates.

     

Meet the Farmer Behind the Produce Label

A label on your banana tells its country of origin, but the UK's Fairtrade Foundation (fairtrade.org) site tells you about the farmers who grow and harvest your bananas, what benefits they receive, and where you can buy Fairtrade certified bananas.

The Fairtrade site also provides the background of other produce: cocoa, coffee, cotton, flowers, sugar, and tea. Something to read while enjoying your banana.

Celebrate Uplifting Efforts to Promote Self Reliance in Africa

On this Easter Sunday, what better time is there to recognize the day-to-day efforts nuns in Tanzania and Kenya make to improve the lives of women and the poor in Africa?

Sister Stella Storch, a member of an order of Dominican nuns who runs a sewing and computer program for orphans whose parents died of AIDS. malaria, and TB in Tanzania, observes, "I've been to a lot of trafficking conferences for years, and they're all rescue programs after the women have been damaged, but this is preventative of trafficking, so that makes this program unique."

Sister Storch aims to develop self-confidence and esteem in young women by teaching skills they can use to earn a living for themselves and their families. She points out how these women love their country and their families, and if they are not hungry, they won't be tempted by traffickers to leave Africa. Sister Storch works with the UN's "Empowering Women's Future AIDS Orphan Sewing Project "(unanima-international.org) that Sister Helllen Bandino of the St. Therese of the Child Jesus order helped found in Bukbuba, Tanzania 16 years ago.

Although nuns and missionaries are inspired by the teachings of Christ, they are practical rather than mystical. "There's no McDonald's for these girls to work at, says Sr. Storch. When girls are hungry, a straight seam isn't important to them, but I have to make a straight seam seem important. I tell my students, without straight seams I can't sell their placemats, napkins, clothing, and bags. To help raise the $5000 needed to buy 20 sewing machines a year from China and ship them over sea and poor roads to the western side of Lake Victoria, Sr. Storch also sells about 100 scarves she knits each year for $20 each.

The girls who board and learn at the Dominican order's motherhouse pray before class, at the end of the day, and for benefactors. When it comes to menstruation, good hygiene, and relationships with men, Sr. Storch says, I teach them "(A)ll the things a mother would normally teach a daughter."

Dominican Missionary Sisters in nearby Kenya have a different challenge, barren land unable to produce food for Nairobi's metropolitan area. One of the Sisters, Dominica Mwila, learned how to do agricultural research from her father, who directs an Agricultural Training Institute. Although the nuns had built six greenhouses to control temperatures, manage drought and rainfall conditions, and prevent loss from insects, rodents, and other wild animals, plants died of wilt disease from a bacteria infection. Research discovered hybrid tomato seeds that resisted the disease.

The Sisters invited local farmers to their greenhouses to see their healthy tomatoes and to share with them information about their farming methods. Harvests outgrew the needs of the religious community which also began to grow peppers, broccoli, maize, onions, and cabbage outdoors as well as in greenhouses. Neighbors used to a two-mile walk to the nearest market were happy to buy the nuns' surplus produce. Revenue from these sales pays salaries of tutors for 80-100 children and farmworkers who come from Nairobi's Kalinde slum for training. The Sisters encourage trainees to use the knowledge and skills they learn to start their own projects.

"Self-sustainability is tough and challenging," Sister Mwila says, but greenhouse farming is a sure way to have food and money. Alleluia!

The Importance of Studying Literature in a Scientific Age

Just after I began reading Siddhartha Mukherjee's engaging and informative book, The Gene, I saw Julia, a new Muppet with autism, joined the characters on Sesame Street. Did a gene cause Julia's deviation from "normalcy" and could she be "fixed" by manipulating her genes? Quickly I realized my line of thinking was the dangerous conclusion Mukherjee warns us all to seriously consider.

     Taken together, the 21,000 to 23,000 genes that live in cells on a human's 46 chromosomes carry a set of genetic instructions that cause proteins to build, repair, and maintain our bodies. Once the particular function of a gene or set of genes is identified, genetic technologies can change a function and produce copies. Voila, genetically modified seeds, food, animals, and humans.

     Like a physicist working with atoms can develop a bomb or a hacker can use code to create fake news, a geneticist can manipulate genes to alter humans permanently. These masters will be able to control our bodies, to make what they consider perfect or imperfect humans. What do they do, when they find an unborn child has Down's syndrome or cystic fibrosis? Who will defend the innocent from the guilty and the guilty from the innocent? And who will define "innocent" and "guilty?"

     Science marches on taking us into an age of robots, artificial intelligence (AI), clones, drones, virtual reality, driverless cars, and more. Looking at the horse's name, "Cloud Computing," of the winner of the Preakness, the second race in the Triple Crown after the Kentucky Derby, you see how technology is reaching into all fields. Could Kellyanne Conway have described the Internet of Things (IoT) in a way that didn't suggest microwave ovens spy on us? Yes, but the ridicule that greeted Rachel Carson's expose of DDT in Silent Spring and the skepticism about the miracles at Fatima did not make the messages they delivered any less real.

     The University of Wisconsin-Madison described Matthew Aliota, one of its "Forward under 40" honorees, as "an expert on tropical mosquito-borne diseases" who believes "scientific communication is an important responsibility." To his way of thinking, research findings that are shared quickly with the public can improve public health. Mukherjee would add that shared research findings also would enable the public to understand and react to potential problems caused by these findings. Laughter, ridicule, and skepticism are hardly the right responses to important breakthroughs.

     Throughout the world, the public depends on communicators (authors, journalists, editors, film and TV directors, advertising copywriters, playwrights, social media content developers, artists, and the like)  to read about and understand the potential and problems of each new technology and to know how to provide an engaging presentation that informs us of our choices.

When Survival is Reality, Not a Sideshow for Man and Beast

Buddhists call the saola (sow-LAH) the "polite animal." Biologists call it "critically endangered."

Saolas are the cattle-like, grazing mammals with long tapered horns that inspired William DeBuys to write about them in The Last Unicorn. The elusive saolas live in a remote, forested area on the Laos-Vietnam border, where a Hmong team captured one for the private collection of a tribal leader in 1996. Bill Robichaud braved malaria, dengue fever, typhus, and leeches to study the captured saola that lived only 18 days.

Robichaud's experience shows how the protection of wildlife can become an international career for curious young people who grow up hiking, camping, fishing, wondering about different cultures, and testing their survival skills in freezing weather and steamy heat. The following examples of where Robichaud has worked during his career provide a glimpse of job opportunities in the international wildlife field:

• International Crane Foundation
•  Nakai-Nam Theun National Protected Area of Laos
• Bronx Zoo Wildlife Conservation Society
• Global Wildlife Conservation
• Saola Working Group
• International Union for the Conservation of Nature

A day's work for those in international wildlife conservation often entails convincing villagers to protect forest resources by removing the traps used for illegal wildlife poaching. Since Laos knew the United Nations considered the country among the world's least developed, it was a source of pride to discover the forests of their Annamese mountain range housed rare saolas. Laotians also learned their forests and rivers produced commercial bamboo shoots, mushrooms, and fish not only exotic "bush meat" urban consumers consider a status symbol and monkey, rhino, box turtle, and other animal parts Vietnamese wildlife traders collect for traditional Chinese medicine.

Like areas being set aside for the preservation of elephants and tigers, the Saola Working Group hopes to capture all living saolas and breed them in a center in Vietnam. Under the leadership of Poland's Wroclaw Zoo, a consortium of zookeepers is studying methods to keep captured soalas alive in captivity. In 15 to 20 years, these saolas would be released into protected forests in Laos and Vietnam. No saolas ever will be headed to zoos.

World Energy Attitude Shifts

According to a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2016 the global economy grew and carbon dioxide emissions from energy production did not. In fact, the IEA found worldwide carbon dioxide emissions have remained the same for three years.

Progress is uneven but promising. China reduced emissions 1% last year, and India just passed tougher auto emissions standards in March, 2017. Where lower priced alternatives to coal have encouraged countries to switch to natural gas, renewable power sources, and nuclear energy. carbon dioxide output has declined or stabilized. In every country, improved energy efficiency has helped the environment in terms of carbon dioxide reduction and less deforestation. In Malawi, for example, rural and urban consumers have been willing to consider replacing traditional three-stone fires with an investment in clay, metal, or thermoelectric stoves that burn charcoal more efficiently than charcoal and much more efficiently than wood.

The growing concern about climate change has stimulated the search for green energy alternatives. In Norway, the Ocean Sun company is working on solar farms that can float on the ocean and transmit power back to crowded urban areas. Others are looking into technology for floating wind turbines, for generating power from hydrogen, and for using the hydropower of waves, tides, and rivers.

 At its gold mines in Suriname and Burkina Faso, Toronto-based IAMGOLD is using solar energy to reduce the use of diesel oil that generates greenhouse gases. The company sees the hybrid diesel solar photovoltaic engine, built by the Finnish group Wartsila at its gold mine in Burkina Faso, not only as a way to make an environmental contribution to the world but also as a way to reduce energy costs, protect against fuel price volatility, and increase local employment.

Efforts to convert the power of Atlantic Ocean waves into energy in the Orkney Islands north of the Scottish mainland and at the Wave Hub facility in Cornwell off the far southwest coast of England have been less successful. Besides the prohibitive cost, tricky engineering problems and the need to develop new materials capable of withstanding storm stresses and corrosive salt water require solutions. A device needs to handle the variety of pounding storms and normal waves, up and down motions, and wave speeds. Navigation needs to avoid these devices. And biologists view the moving parts of underwater turbines as a threat to sea mammals, fish, and diving birds. Yet, the UK's European Marine Energy Centre in the Orkneys attracts tests by Wave-tricity's Ocean Wave Rover and Finland's Wello Oy Penguin. Australia's Carnegie company has been financing CETO's Wave Energy Technology which has placed giant buoys off the coast of Cornwell in an attempt to produce emission-free energy and desalinated freshwater.