The Pirate Bay sold for $6.7M US, goes legit.

This is a big surprise to me.

The Pirate Bay, the worlds largest BitTorrent tracker and a top 100 website, is in the process of selling itself to a software company. Maybe the constant legal battles have caused the founders to throw in the towel, or maybe it is the fact that they will end up going to jail shortly due to a major legal loss, but this sale comes as a major surprise.

One thing The Pirate Bay has consistently preached was independence. With the purchase by Global Gaming Factory X, and the implementation of a “new business model”, it seems that all The Pirate Bay once stood for is long since gone. Before you know it, The Pirate Bay will be synonymous with Napster as they fade into Internet history.

Remember that North Korean Ship the U.S. was tracking?

Sometime within the last two weeks the U.S. started tracking a North Korean ship suspected of carry weapons banned by the U.N. anti-proliferation resolution. I feel this was a sign to North Korea that the U.S. wasn’t going to sit around as they continued to flaunt laws in the face of the U.N, as well as a test to see just how committed China was to dealing with North Korea.

Well, the Kang Nam – the ship the U.S. was tracking – has turned around, leaving the world questioning where is the ship going and what is the next step in the game of Maritime chess.  The shit has been at sea for nearly two weeks at this point, eventually it will need to refuel.  When that time comes where will it find safe harbor and will the U.S. find a way to board it at that time?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says political overthrow has failed

Since the massive and bloody riots at Baharestan Square, very little news has come out of Iran regarding the uprising.  From what I can tell – reading the Twitter, Facebook and blog posts of those in in Iran – the revolution has all but come to an end.

Today Mahmood Ahmadinejad stated the overthrow driven by “political enemies of Iran” has failed:

“The enemies were not able to reach their objectives for the soft overthrow of the system,” he said, according to the semiofficial Iranian Labor News Agency, or ILNA. “The enemy is pursuing the objective of undermining the nation’s capabilities after the 85% turnout at the polls.”

And so, life goes on… sad from my perspective. Not because of a specific outcome but because the people of Iran have, apparently, been robbed of their ability to determine their future.

Last Friday a U.N. Security Council resolution forbidding North Korea from spreading nuclear and missile technology and it seem the United States is ready to test the will of the United Nations as well as the intent of North Korea.

Kang Nam, a North Korean ship, left port Wednesday and is expected to carrying banned materials.  Apparently this vessel has repeatedly shipped band materials in the past and, as such, intelligence agencies believe it may be doing so once again.

Here is where things get, well, interesting.  The U.N. Security Council resolution forbids a foreign power from forcibly boarding the ship.  I kid you not.  This would mean the USS John McCain, the interceptor, would need to radio the Kang Nam and say…

“Hey, yea, do you mind if we come aboard, look around a bit… see if you have anything illegal…”

If the ship actually has materials the outcome of that request is rather obvious.   Even if they do not, I suspect the answer would be the same.

If there is absolutely no power to prevent the North Koreans from proliferating missile and nuke technology, what is the point of the resolution and why is the United States making it a point to press the North Koreans?

In regards to the U.N. resolutions, well, it’s because the group is a paper tiger.  They want to have the ability to say “Look, we did something” while not really doing anything at all.  They are trying to keep everyone happy, even those in violation of the law and regulations they’ve established; all in the name of world peace.

Yea, good luck with that.

I suspect the U.S. is sending the USS John McCain to test the reaction of other U.N. Security Council members – to gauge their reaction – in order to set the potential groundwork for a defensive attack toward North Korea if American interests are targeted.

Second, this may also be a way of calling out China.  If the Chinese government supports the North Korean ship, or interferes with the intercept, they will do so on the world stage thereby showing the a conflict of interest between what was said in the UN and their real motives on North Korea (which would be protection of that State)

Finally, I believe a message is being sent to North Korea that we are serious; that all within the law will be pursued if they launch an attack.

With news out that North Korea may be planning on firing a missile toward Hawaii on the 4th of July, and this intercept, the situation may get very interesting, very fast, in the next two weeks.

In an interesting move, China has suspended diplomatic ties with North Korea over the latest military actions:

China suspended government exchanges with North Korea after Kim Jong-Il’s regime last week tested a nuclear device and fired short-range missiles, Yonhap News said.

China has halted plans to send officials to North Korea and won’t accept visits from Kim’s government either, the Korean- language news agency said today, citing unidentified diplomatic sources in Beijing.

China’s foreign ministry has said the country “resolutely opposes” North Korea’s nuclear test. China on May 25 agreed with the U.S., Japan and Russia to work toward a United Nations Security Council resolution censuring North Korea. The U.S. and Japan want the statement to call for cutting the communist country’s global financial ties, UN diplomats said.

As China was North Korea’s biggest political supporter in the past, what signal does this send and how will North Korea react? Is this political grandstanding or something more on the part of China?

The news of out Korea (North and South) all points to North Korea testing more of their military toys.  Today it happens to be a new type of short-ranged missile. Reports of activity around ballistic missile sites are also coming in, and U.S. officials are warning that more nuke tests should be expected in the coming months.

All of this makes me ask – What’s up with North Korea?

Originally, I thought the nuke test took place to correspond with Memorial Day as NK executed other such tests on U.S. holidays in hopes of getting our attention.  This time, however, the level of continued military testing seems rather unusual.  Rather elevated.

Sure, it could be the North simply playing with their toys, but the timing and activity level is questionable.  All of this makes me ask what is North Korea trying to get from the world community?  As the country has virtually no energy resources, could they be trying to get more oil?  Do they want increased grain shipments?  In the past, the NK leadership would hit and “we need…” in exchange for an end to the testing.  No so this time.

Something doesn’t fit.

While the useless body called the U.N. sits around debating what type of draft resolution should be presented, North Korea goes on their way testing.  Even if sanctions are past against North Korea, what is the U.N. going to sanction?  The country already has nothing.  You can’t really take away something from a person who has nothing to begin with.  The only outcome of sanctions will be increased anger (or aggressive positioning) on the part of North Korea.

So, really, what’s the deal and how is the world going to react?

As if setting off a Nuke wasn’t enough, North Korea also tested a short-range missile:

“A single ground-to-air missile with a range of 130 km (81 miles) was fired from Musudan-ri, Hwadae County,” it quoted a diplomatic source as saying.

Musudan-ri on the northeast coast is the North’s major missile launch site. The North fired a long-range Taepodong-2 rocket from there on April 5.

Again, this seems like an odd time.  The only thing I can figure is this happens to coincide with the Memorial Day holiday in the U.S.  Like their last major test, could it be they are trying to send a signal to the U.S. for some reason?

Whoa, where in the world did this come from?

North Korea is saying they’ve had a successful underground nuclear weapons test on Monday. While they’ve been busy testing missiles the last month or so, this one seems out of the blue – well, to me anyway.

There seems to be a lot of gaps in the story thus far, but here is what CNN has:

The announcement came little more than an hour after the U.S. Geological Survey reported a magnitude 4.7 seismic disturbance at the site of North Korea’s first nuclear test, in October 2006. The North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency said Monday’s test was conducted “as part of the measures to bolster up its nuclear deterrent for self-defense in every way.”

“The current nuclear test was safely conducted on a new higher level in terms of its explosive power and technology of its control and the results of the test helped satisfactorily settle the scientific and technological problems arising in further increasing the power of nuclear weapons and steadily developing nuclear technology,” KCNA announced.

Let’s assume this is correct and indeed a nuke this, not some HUGE pile of normal explosives, why is North Korea testing another nuke?  Are they attempting to gain attention from the west (and their neighbors) because they are looking for some type of concession?  Is there a political problem internal to the country and this is the governments way of flexing muscle?

This all seems very… oddly timed.