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Monthly Archive: January, 2008

January 7, 2008

The Candidates on North Korea (Edwards, Giuliani, McCain, Obama, Richardson)

I have my own biases, of course, but I don’t do endorsements, chiefly because (a) you don’t care, and (b) this is single-issue analysis in a multiple-issue campaign. This is simply a presentation of what the various candidates have said in relation to Korea issues, but mainly North Korea. If it’s of interest to you or helps you make one part of your decision, great. If you can find a more detailed relevant statement by another candidate I wrote about...

Categories U.S. Politics
January 4, 2008

Anti-Slavery International: ‘Forced Labor in North Korean Prison Camps’

[Update:   Kathreb responds here, but VanMidd comes the closest to the truth:  “[A]ll us lefties are scoob smoking hippies on welfare ….”  Good on you for  admitting it, and I’d gladly return the favor by recommending a decent barber and springing for  bus fare  to the day labor center or the  nearest Home Depot.  It’s going to be a long road, VanMidd, but we’ll be here for you when you decide to take that first step.]   Over at...

Categories Activism/Human Rights
January 3, 2008

UniFiction Ministry to be abolished?

[Update:   The Marmot  is giddy about this.]   Had George Orwell lived in modern-day Korea, reality would have  mooted his most sardonic fiction.  After all, a  lying Ministry of Truth  is only marginally sillier than  a Ministry of Unification whose primary function is  keeping the slaves on the other side of the mine fields through the lavish financing of their overseers.  Today comes word that president-elect Lee Myung-Bak may put an end to this cruel joke by abolishing the...

Categories Appeasement/Korean Politics
January 2, 2008

Rep. Tom Lantos, diagnosed with cancer, will not seek re-election

Routine medical tests have revealed that I have cancer of the esophagus. In view of this development and the treatment it will require, I will not seek re-election. It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a Member of Congress. I will never be able...

Categories U.S. Politics
January 2, 2008

Condi Going to Pyongyang?

Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, citing a report from NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, reports that Secretary Rice intends to accompany the New York Philharmonic to Pyongyang this February.  I’m agnostic on the visit of the orchestra, but  a visit  from America’s senior diplomat will rightly be interpreted as an expression of American approval. This begs a question:  approval of what, exactly?  North Korea is ignoring its obligations under Agreed Framework 2.0, is still  lying about the full extent of its...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy
January 2, 2008

U-Tubed! (Part. 3)

Washington has long suspected North Korea of having a program to make highly enriched uranium (HEU) since shortly after it agreed to denuclearize in the first Agreed Framework.  North Korea  denied this at first, admitted it to two U.S. diplomats and three translators in 2002, and  then went  back to denying it.    Those denials  just got even less likely. As I previously noted here,  the U.S. asked for, and North Korea recently provided, samples of aluminum tubes we know it...

Categories Proliferation/Six-Party Talks
January 1, 2008

A Better War

HAPPY NEW YEAR.  Iraq and U.S. politics are two subjects that are being thoroughly covered by other blogs, but I’ve been following both stories very closely (while mostly sparing you my thoughts on either).  Here, however, are some interesting (to me) “miscellaneous” stories about Iraq, terrorism, and politics that might also interest you.  MY NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION is the same as last year’s:  to make better use of the FOIA.  This new law may make it easier for me to...

Categories Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Military
January 1, 2008

2007: A Lost Year

[Update 2 Jan 08: “North Korea failed to fulfill its October promise to declare all its nuclear programs by the end of 2007 — and the United States did not make a big deal out of it.” — WaPo, Blaine Harden] SO ENDS THE YEAR 2007, with this terse statement from the State Department spokesman: In September 2005, the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea agreed on a Joint Statement with North Korea that charted the way forward...

Categories Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks