The North Korean situation-2

Now the West and its allies are thinking about putting more sanctions on the North Korean regime and I don’t believe it will make any difference. The Russians and the Chinese will surely reject this outright and the biggest hindrance is China with whom the North Korean have 90 percent of the trade. China fears that if North Korea regime falls, it will have to deal with hundreds and thousands of North Korean on its border and it will have to divert more armed forces to that border. Other thing is that unification with the South Korea will make a more powerful neighbor who will have the backing of the U.S. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that China is clearly helping the North Korean with the parts and knowhow needed to build the nuclear technology as a nation supposedly on the brink of starvation cannot do it alone and still be belligerent about its ambition to strike the U.S. And now the latest is that North Korea has launched a missile capable of reaching some major cities of the U.S. and I don’t see any urgency on the part of the Western world to do anything about but to condemn such action and show some concern. I don’t see any concern that the threat of North Korean nuclear and missile program is as great as that of Iranian threat. It is time now to put pressure on the Chinese to curtail their support of the North Korean regime as the cost of not doing anything and only condemning each time is not working.

The North Korean situation

While the west and the U.S. were totally obsessed with a nonexistent Iranian nuclear threat (which has now be supposedly contained) and religiously trying to protect their allies in the Middle East, the world completely ignored what was happening in North Korea. Iranian threat was more of rhetoric but now that the North Korean have supposedly launched an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching Alaska and Hawaii, the U.S. has no options remaining in order to deal with them. They were trying to put pressure on the Chinese to force the North Korean to behave but it was a futile exercise. This I don’t understand, a country which has been portrayed as being on the brink of starvation and cut off from the rest of the world, develop nuclear bombs and ballistic technology and there is nothing the west and its allies can do but watch with helplessness. While the nuclear deal with Iran was done with the permanent United Nations members plus Germany and with threat of a U.S. attack, no such deal seems to be on the table with North Korea which seems to be a far great threat to the U.S. than Iran ever will be. The west and U.S. has secured its allies in the Middle East with the so called Iranian Nuclear deal but who will come to the rescue of the United States if the North Korea launches a nuclear strike in Hawaii or Alaska GOD forbid. I think that the West was so much consumed with the Iranian threat and were literally arrogant with the North Korean threat or maybe they thought that the Chinese will take care of the North Koreans, that they never thought that the day will come when the North Koreans will become a threat to the West world and its allies (Minus the Middle Eastern ones)

The change in Saudi Arabia

The world got a surprise when the king of Saudi Arabia elevated his son to the post of crown prince, removing his nephew from the post who was instrumental in containing and fighting the menace of terrorism in the kingdom. Now the aging king pushed aside his nephew and elevated his young rising son to the post of Crown Prince. The new Prince was already making friends with President Trump of the U.S. and his senior adviser, his son in law and also is the architect to wean the Saudi Economy away from oil dependency to non oil revenue by a policy called vision 2030 opening up the Saudi market to foreign investment and selling some shares in the Saudi Arabian oil company Aramco. Although denied by the official Saudi sources, it has been reported that the new Prince is quietly quashing dissent by some of the elder princes and some of the purge is going on with the former crown prince loyalists. Although, news about palace intrigue is being controlled tightly but some news does come out. Anyway, the New Prince is also being reportedly behind the Yemen and Syrian war and is being aggressive on many foreign fronts, but a fresh blood was needed in the Saudi regime as the old ultra conservative people were looked as hurdles to the ambitions of the young Princes who have been educated in the Western world and want to bring foreign investment and technology to the kingdom. We will see how this clash of the old and the new guard plays out in determining the future of the Kingdom which is a very crucial partner of the west and Arab world’s largest economy.

Time Management

Recently the state of Maine and New Jersey had a budget crisis serious enough to close down the whole state for both of them. Since I live in New Jersey, I will talk about the budget crisis that has been thankfully resolved after a three days pass and now the state recreational facilities and all non essential state institutions will open once again. During the closure of all non essential state institutions including Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) , I read complaints on the internet such as some people license or registration was expired and they went to renew it and found out that the offices of DMV were closed and people were upset about it since they could not renew their documents. Other thing that I read was that some of the people just went to the offices and found out there that the departments are closed due to state budget crisis and they were surprised that they did not read it and here I was surprised by how ignorant and ill informed choose to be. I don’t know if the people are so busy that every waking and sleeping moment of their lives they care only about their lives or just lazy enough that they want to do everything at the last moment. The registration and renewal of vehicle licenses are not sent out two or three days ago that people don’t get the chance to do it. They are sent out two months before they expire to give people ample enough time to do it. If they have not done it, it is not the state’s fault that you did not renew it and also life is so unpredictable that things should be done way ahead of it, if you can really do it. Another thing is that people really are not that well informed or even informed about what is happening around them that they are surprised when they find out something which has been in the news for a long time. And then the people say, we are falling behind other nations in terms of knowledge and information.

Vacation and Jobs

The magic word vacation, who would not want to have a vacation all the time, I mean it is fun to be away from work for a few days or few weeks trying to relax and not think about your co workers and your bosses and just unpleasantness of working in a closed environment. But every time that I have asked someone about their vacation, they say that had a fabulous time, but the time was too short, like when they say that weekend was great but it was too short. Most U.S. companies provide their employees two weeks of vacation per year with some three weeks per year as the starting point. So with these two or three weeks, it looks like the vacation time is short as compared to European countries. But the job provides you with the means and the money to finance your vacation. But when you do have the time, then you don’t have the means to finance your vacation. I am talking about when you unemployed, you have all the time in the world to go on vacation while still searching for a job but you don’t have the financial means and the mental stability to fulfill your wish to go on vacation for as long as possible since you are unable to sustain vacation even for trips that does not require air travel because the hotel accommodation is enough to bust your budget even when you have a job. A catch-22 situation indeed.

I don’t want to listen to your music

I usually ride the train whenever I need to go to the city and then walk around to my destination. Sometimes the train is quiet enough that you can catch a shut eye if you find a seat or just be yourself but most of the time, there will be one of two person who are listening to music which is loud enough to distract you from what you are doing. Some people are really annoying enough to blast their music so as to sound some cool person. I see it as being annoying class of human beings who think we should all be sharing his passion of music like we are his or her captive audience. And it is not only on the train but sometimes on the streets; some person will be walking by blasting his music or some car cranking the music up so that he or she can share what kind of obnoxious music they are listening. One can listen to all the music they want without blasting it through their ears and into the whole damn train, where you become the only object of dislike just because you choose to blast your music and provide free music to the unwilling and captive audience. It is not just a form of torture that they put you through but also in the long run damages your ear drums which I believe they don’t really care. In the end I don’t really care if you listen to classical music or some other kind, keep the music to yourself and volume down enough so that we the other people, who are already cranky from traveling, can have some peace and quiet for a few minutes with the people whom we would not like to travel but are forced to due to our circumstances.

Tattoo and Jobs

I had an interesting listening to some of the people who are have tattoo on their bodies but they have to hide it when they have to interview, attend a meeting or go to some formal occasion. It is the same conservative environment that despite all the changes still regard tattoo as being some of gang related or rebellious thing. Same thing goes for piercing. But as for some piercing you can take off during interviews or some formal occasion, it is harder for a person with a tattoo to take it off without some surgical procedure which can be painful, expensive and leave some scars behind. I really don’t see anything wrong with having tattoos even when you are going for an interview, although I do say that it can be distracting to the interviewer. But if I was interviewing someone, I would not mind if they have tattoos on their body. But here I would say that if the tattoo is on your face which is more prominent and on the whole parts of your arms and your neck, I would be a little bit hesitant to interview that person and may be even distracted by it. It is not that I would judge him on the basis of tattoo, it will be a just a little bit of distracting to me. A few tattoos here and there is fine as it does not hinder the person ability to do their job or distract others from doing their job, but when you are awash with tattoos and they only thing you see are the tattoos, your interview will not go so well as the person interviewing will keep on thinking about what the tattoos mean and why and under what circumstances he went for it.