Time Immortal

Never thought this day would come.

In a gesture demonstrating its commitment to halt its nuclear weapons program, North Korea blew up the most prominent symbol of its plutonium production Friday.

Next they’ll be telling me that Kim Jong Il’s regime has been overthrown and replaced with a liberal democracy.

Of course, in a sense, this gesture is just symbolic; North Korea could always get nuclear material from somewhere else, although it would be ruinously expensive. Still, even the gesture is something that your good blogger thought would never come about. And on that score, he is pleasantly surprised.

And they’ve even launched their first research rocket. President Mahmoud “wipe Israel off the map” Ahmadinejad gave the launch order personally, evidently.

In other news, the Iranians continue work on their “civilian” nuclear program. They are also still ruled by Islamist fanatics.

Some Western experts have suggested Iran’s space program could be a cover to develop its ballistic missiles, at a time when the U.S. and others are accusing Tehran of trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Ya think?

The appointment of her corrupt hubby and teenage son as “co-leaders” of her party tends to confirm David Warren’s point. These Bhuttos are made for walkin’, and one of these days these Bhuttos gonna walk all over you.

That said, if half the rumors running round are true, her murder nevertheless marks another bumpy descent. When Benazir’s unlovely dad was deemed too problematic to allow to live, General Zia had him tried and executed. If, as is widely believed, elements of the Pakistani Army, the ISI, and even General Musharraf’s cabinet had reached the same conclusion about Benazir herself, they didn’t waste time with show trials but simply signed up the nearest suicide bomber. The respective fates of Bhutto /pere et fille/ are themselves a mark of Pakistan’s decline.

Remember: Pakistan is a nuclear-armed nation. It is about the last place on Earth that any sane member of civilized society wants to see fall into the hands of the Islamists. But that seems to be exactly the fate it is headed for at present.