Aid to North Korea?

A recent news story I read said that the United Nations is planning to spend more than $290 million on a number of aid programs in North Korea. Apparently this is part of some negotiating tactic to get the country to accept oversight conditions from the countries that will donate to the cause.

According to the news story:  "The U.N. plans demonstrate the determination of the world organization and its most influential backers -- notably, the U.S. government, which is the biggest single financial supporter of most U.N. aid and development organizations -- to keep dangling carrots of assistance before the North Korean regime."

At t least a dozen U.N. agencies hope to be involved over the next five years in North Korea’s national welfare, in areas ranging from health care and education to sanitation and civil service training. Exactly what that involvement would be was a little vague, as there were no details given of specific programs planned to address  these areas.

I guess the reason I've never gone into diplomatic service is that I don't understand why the U.N. and the U.S. would invest that kind of money into a plan that has no guarantee of success. Even if Kim Jong II accepts the oversight conditions, there is no guarantee that his son, who will probably take over leadership in the near future, will abide by the deal.

That's an awful lot of money to risk on what could be a roll of the dice. And I'm sure there are a lot of hungry people in Africa, Pakistan, and a lot of other places who would like a piece of this  290 million-dollar pie.

For more about the proposed aid CLICK HERE

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By the way, the real reason I haven't gone into diplomatic service is because nobody asked me. But I think I could do a bang up job and I wouldn't waste a lot of money doing it.

Friday's Odds and Ends

I'm starting something new on the blog. Since Fridays for me are all about tying up all the odds and ends of my week and making sure I got everything done, I came up with the idea of doing an odds and ends piece every Friday. Basically it will be just little bits of absurdities, maybe a touch of humor here and there, and anything else I want to throw in there.

First off, I want to say how irritating voice mail can be. Do you remember when we were able to dial a number and talk to a real person? Some mail systems are so bad you can get in an endless loop and never connect to a real person.

Yesterday, I had three calls to make to follow up on some business and I wanted to get that out of the way first thing. Voice mail all around. So I left messages. No call backs by late afternoon, which means I did not get to mark those items off my to-do list.

It also really irritates me when people do not respond to an e-mail request.  Part of my day job involves asking businesses if they want to advertise with WinnsboroToday.com. and since we are Online, much of that contacting is done via e-mail. I've had people contact me about rates and we may trade a few e-mails back and forth discussing options, then they don't respond to my final e-mail asking if they want the ad. If they decided not to, you would think they would at least have the courtesy to say so.

On a more serious note, I read yesterday about North Korea issuing a warning to the U.S. and South Korea to cancel the planned joint war-games or face serious retaliation. Didn't we already fight that war?

That's all for today. I've got a few other odds and ends to catch up on, like those three phone calls from yesterday.