Archive for December 2007

Behind the scenes, a deepening crisis for Agreed Framework 2.0

December 20, 2007 Six-Party Talks, U.S. Politics One comment

Maybe the Dear Leader will save us all yet. From ourselves, that is.

If he does, it will be because he’s overplayed his hand again. A reader forwards a scan of a letter sent by three Republican U.S. Senators — Brownback, Grassley, and Kyl, the new minority whip, to Chris Hill, the architect of Agreed Framework 2.0. The letter requests that State specifically respond to this Congressional Research Service report’s allegations that North Korea continued to materially support Hezbollah and the Tamil Tigers recently. The letter asks why, if the reports are true, North Korea should be removed from the list of state sponsors of terror. You can read the signed version here:

kyl-grassley-brownback-letter.pdf

Kyl’s signature is significant and ought to worry State, given that he’s now the number two Republican in the Senate. Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, who co-sponsored [proposed] legislation setting conditions for removing North Korea from the terror list, did not sign. North Korea’s state news agency, KCNA, takes exception and does not leave us wanting for levity: Read more

U/S Lawless’s successor has Senate confirmation hearing

December 19, 2007 An Alliance?, U.S. & Korea, U.S. Military No comments

I’ve linked John Shinn’s advance Q&A below, and although I don’t have time to graf it, Shinn is saying — emphasizing, really — that he plans to drive on with USFK restructuring. He also sounds agnostic on North Korea’s commitment to disarmament. Read the whole thing here (it’s a big pdf).

N.Y. Philharmonic announces musical selections for Pyongyang

December 19, 2007 Appeasement, Deprogramming, Korean Society 3 comments

Let me say it: I’m very pleased that Dvorak’s 9th Symphony will be on the program. Those who are familiar with this music will know its optimistic, sweeping, subversive majesty. If allowed only one word to describe it, I would choose “open.” Here are links to the bucolic first movement and the triumphant fourth movement. Read more

N. Korea refugees commits suicide in Chinese jail

December 18, 2007 China & Korea, Refugees No comments

From Tokyo, where some NGO’s are holding an international conference on North Korean human rights, Human Rights Without Frontiers sends this sad news:  Read more

House resolution honors Henry Hyde

December 18, 2007 U.S. Politics No comments

The resolution passed unanimously last night (suspension of the rules, voice vote).  You can read the full text of the resolution here.

It’s sad to think of Hyde’s own passage; sadder still to contrast him with the rudderless party he left behind.  For purposes of Korea policy, we might as well be in a second Carter Administration with a 1975 Congress.  Yes, a few isolated Republicans (and one or two Democrats) take a principled stand here and there, but it seems doubtful that they can do much.  Functionally, we entered the third Clinton Administration a year ago.  The Korea Lobby and its friends in the State Department have the conversation all to themselves, and the extent of their confidence is such that they feel free to violate the law flagrantly and without a whimper of complaint from those self-proclaimed sentinels of our government in the media.  One has to wonder if someone of Hyde’s stature could have changed that, or whether he did, or for how long.

(Pause to swallow own bile.)

Republicans often sound depressed about the Democrats when they should be depressed about themselves instead.  Their party certainly hasn’t earned the donations or support of foreign policy conservatives this year, and no candidate in either party has yet said anything to pry dime one out of me.  And in the grander scheme, four years of Hillary Clinton — probably the least likeable politician of the last hundred years, save Spiro Agnew — could be just the thing to help the Republicans learn to stand for something and articulate some principle again.
One key lesson that this Administration will leave behind is the importance of not filling its top foreign policy slots with holdovers from the other party.  The GOP will never manage to carry out a successful foreign policy initiative until it purges the senior ranks in the State Department.

Pyongyang Travelogue

December 18, 2007 Uncategorized 10 comments

Submitted by a reader at my invitation, and unedited:

Read more

Iraq Phantom Count

December 17, 2007 Media Criticism, Terrorism/Iraq No comments

Jim Gateway Pundit raises serious questions about the accuracy of no less than six recent mass casualty reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, including some that appear to have been manipulated by the enemy.  The significance of this does not end with the fact that we can’t believe the news that’s reported, because in a democracy, the quality of our public policy decisions is only as good as the quality of our news.  Our media have become accomplished at resisting perceived manipulation by the government, but as the Lebanon fiasco should have made clear, they’re still far too vulnerable to manipulation by terrorists.  If the terrorists can manipulate our news, they can manipulate our public policy through the stupidest and shallowest among our leaders.  Here, I refer to anyone (a, b, c) who would have us flee Iraq, leave it to al Qaeda and Iran to saw a jagged line through it, and suggest that doing so would ”end this war.”

With violence in Iraq now at its lowest level since 2003 or 2004, it’s again possible to do some fact-checking of the Bilal Hussein version, which went unchallenged throughout 2004-2006.  And of course, media reports may well have underreported some casualties, too, because the facts are hard to find and check on the battlefield, but also because al Qaeda and other insurgents didn’t want their atrocities reported.  What these reports tell us is why, and how frequently, we should distrust casualty figures from media reports.

And we are still not finished.  Iraq Body Count, which gets its numbers from – you guessed it — media reports is now well along on the way to becoming history’s second draft.  Consider the broader implications these six reports suggest.  How many false reports might have inflated Iraq Body Count’s numbers, or Lancet’s?  Does anyone doubt that the left will try to write these questionable statistics into the history books?

Another bad harvest in North Korea

December 17, 2007 Famine & Food Aid One comment

The Rural Development Administration of South Korea, via the Daily NK, reports that this year’s cereal crop in North Korea may be 2.5 million (metric?) tons short of the country’s needs, at just over 4 million tons. 

Although these figures are obviously of questionable reliability, when compared to prior-year harvests, a 4M-ton cereal harvest would be about mid-range between the harvest figures at the height of the Great Famine and the years since then. Â In relative terms, however, food deficit of 2.5M tons would be higher than North Korea itself reported during the famine years of the mid-1990′s. 

North Koreans have learned to put away anything they can for the winter, so if there will be famine, it’s most likely to happen in the spring.  If the situation is desperate enough, people will eat their seed grain and slaughter draft animals, which will affect harvests for years to come.

Venceremos Con Vuitton!

December 17, 2007 Humor/Satire No comments

Let it never be said that revolution has to be an ugly business.

Don’t let the absence of tact, polish, logic, and stability fool you: Ron Paul slithers like a true pol

December 17, 2007 U.S. Politics 9 comments

Please don’t take this as a reflection on my personal life, but perhaps because I’ve lived in Nevada, Korea, and Washington, D.C., I have only mild moral objections to voluntary exchanges of sex for money between adults.  I’d think that this would be a rare point on which I’d agree with Ron Paul.  But when asked if he was ”shocked” to learn that the Moonlight Bunny Ranch had contributed to his campaign, Paul missed the chance to defend social libertarianism by saying, “Of course not.  I don’t believe it’s government’s role to regulate personal morality.”  Instead, Paul slithered through a muck of:  Hey, how should I know who’s sending me checks?  (Because the reporter just told you so.  Now answer the damn question.) 

I can live with honest differences of opinion with anyone who means me no harm, but I question the judgment of people who assume that Ron Paul is more sincere than other politicians because Paul dares to be wacky.  And is it just me, or when Paul is giving his answer, does he really seem to be defending his decision to keep the spigots open on that white supremacist money he’s taking?  I wonder if Paul thinks those people “believe in freedom,” too. 

Paulbots love to rail at the media for ignoring their candidate.  Maybe they should be thankful the media really haven’t called Paul on this and let him share a stage with candidates with the discretion to refuse neo-Nazi money.  I don’t want to overstate this.  Ron Paul takes David Duke’s money, but he isn’t David Duke.  But if Ron Paul were (a) as smooth and polished as David Duke, or (b) stealing oxygen at Democratic debates instead of Republican ones, I don’t think as many pundits would do him the unjustified charity of giving him national air time and dismissing him.

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