Posted on 01/11/2006 10:16:24 PM PST by Royal Wulff
Beijing - North Korean leader Kim Jong II has disappeared in China. His luxurious special train which reportedly crossed the border into China Tuesday morning at Dandong was nowhere to be found Wednesday.
'We really would like to know where he is, but we simply don't have a clue,' said a South Korean military attache, who added he felt he was left in the lurch by his own intelligence services.
Although the train was seen travelling in the direction of Beijing by officials at two railway stations, Kim did not show up in the Chinese capital, sparking a torrent of speculation.
Some wondered whether Kim had only travelled through China on his way to Russia - a scenario 'almost ruled out' by one South Korean diplomat, given the fact that a direct rail connection exists between the North Korean capital Pyongyang and Moscow.
South Korean news agency Yonhap said it learned that the despotic North Korean leader had overcome his deep-rooted fear of flying and had flown to Shanghai, without explaining why his personal train would be travelling across China without him.
'He's not in Beijing at any rate,' the diplomat said confidently.
Instead of visiting Shanghai or Beijing, Kim Jong Il would do better to get to Macao as quickly as possible, observers joked, referring to an investigation into North Korean deposits in a bank in the southern Chinese enclave formerly administrated by Portugal.
In 1999, Macao was reintegrated into China as an autonomous region with special status. Macao is famous not only for its casinos and its mafia but also as a stomping ground for shadowy characters from North Korea. It's no coincidence there is a direct flight to Macao from Pyongyang. Investors from Macao even run a casino in the heart of the Stalinist state.
Kim Jong II's financial problems began in September when the United States took punitive measures against Macao's Banco Delta Asia, which allegedly helped North Korea distribute counterfeit U.S. dollars. The U.S. authorities are said to have seized fake U.S. bank notes produced by North Korea estimated at 45 million dollars.
The U.S. Treasury Department in September banned any deals by U.S. banks with Banco Delta Asia. The bank closed all accounts belonging to North Koreans, including accounts belonging to 20 banks, 11 trading firms, and 9 individuals, the Washington Post reported.
An investigation by Macao authorities into the bank triggered a rush on deposits and the Macao government had to take over the bank. Banco Delta Asia is believed to have managed substantial amounts of money for the family of Kim Jong Il. The sanctions would mean these stashes have dried up.
The U.S. also froze the assets of eight North Korean companies suspected of involvement in the proliferation of technology used for weapons of mass destruction.
The measures struck at the heart of the North Korean regime. The U.S. wanted to destroy the North Korea system with the sanctions 'by stopping its blood flow', the North Korean foreign ministry complained bitterly.
If the sanctions were not lifted, North Korea would not rejoin six-party talks on its nuclear programme with the U.S., China, South Korea, Japan and Russia, the ministry said, raising the stakes.
As host of the talks, China is worried that these 'new, complicated factors' might impede the resumption of the talks originally scheduled for the beginning of this year.
Experts said Kim probably hoped to discuss the sanctions and his financial predicament with China's government during his surprise secret visit. But he may find little understanding.
'We support the investigation by the authorities in Macao,' said Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan. China firmly opposed money laundering or other illegal activities, he stressed, adding possible criminal offences would be dealt with 'according to the law'.
They do have a way of changing the carriages so that trains can pass from China to Russia. I assume they have the same provisions at the North Korean border with Russia.
How MIL Specs Live Forever
The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates.
Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gage they used.
Why did they use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old, long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts.
So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome, They were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
Thus, we have the answer to the original questions. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification (Military Spec) for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. Mil Specs and bureaucracies live forever.
SO, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two war horses.
Professor Tom O'Hare
Germanic Languages
University of Texas at Austin
Space-Age Addendum
The next time you see the Space Shuttle sitting on the launch pad, take a look at the two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by a company called Thiokol Propulsion, at their factory in Utah. The original engineering design for the SRBs called for them to be a bit fatter and a little shorter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.
The railroad line from the factory passed through a tunnel in the mountains. The tunnel is only slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, a major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over 2000 years ago by the width of a horse's behind.
Ken Kuller
Funny. It does make you wonder how many other modern systems are constrained by standards set hundreds or thousands of years ago.
Panamax - biggest boat that can get through the panama canal. Our nuclear aircraft carriers are designed around it.
Somebody mistook him for a Kewpie Doll at a casino in Macao and took him home?
I've heard that story before (minus the space shuttle part). Always found it quite interesting... The Space Shuttle part only makes it more significant.
He's looking for the "cute" clintonista of his dreams, Madeleine Halfbright. The couple fell in love some years ago when she visited him in No Korea and gave him financial aid in the amount of billions of dollars from her boss, comrade clintoon.
They are meeting in a secret location somewhere beyond the great wall.
The tightest design constraint for new army vehicles is the c130 size limit...which exactly mirrors the size of railroad tunnels in austria through the alps...
Check out this site for details...
Be careful passing around rumors. :) I love a good story too and I've fallen for some dooseys. It's good to check the validity.
Here's a lil from the site I mentioned...
Where did the four-foot, eight-and-a-half-inch standard originate? Gabriel says it was from a Englishman named George Stephenson. Carts on rails had been used in mines in England for years, but the width of the rails varied from mine to mine since they didn't share tracks. Stephenson was the one who started experimenting with putting a steam engine on the carts so there would be propulsion to pull them along. He had worked with several mines with differing gauges and simply chose to make the rails for his project 4-foot, eight inches wide. He later decided that adding another six inches made things easier. He was later consulted for constructing some rails along a roadway and by the time broader plans for railroads in Great Britain were proposed, there were already 1200 miles of his rails so the "Stephenson gauge" became the standard.
Interestingly, the 4-foot, eight-and-a-half inch width has not always been the standard in the U.S. According to the Encyclopedia of American Business History and Biography, at the beginning of the Civil War, there were more than 20 different gauges ranging from 3 to 6 feet, although the 4-foot, eight-and-a-half inch was the most widely used. During the war, any supplies transported by rail had to be transferred by hand whenever a car on one gauge encountered track of another gauge and more than 4,000 miles of new track was laid during the war to standardize the process. Later, Congress decreed that the 4-foot, eight-and-a-half inch standard would be used for transcontinental railway.
I'm not trying to ruin anyones fun... I'm just tired of being lied to lately... The Truth for everyone! :)
LOL! I just woke up and was catching up on today's events.
No excuse, I know.
Perhaps he's meeting with Elvis.
Only if Elvis wants to use him in a ventriloquist act: "Now watch as I eat this here peanut butter an' banana sandwich, an' Lil' Kimmy sings 'Love Me Tender.'"
hehe- Kim chi!
He could have stopped for a swim in the Benzene River?
Maybe he thinks a breakdown in North Korea is imminent. Or an offensive is, and he wants to be somewhere safe
which carriers are panamax? I know the constellation was, but most if not all of our modern carriers are WAY bigger than panamax.
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