Search Results for “Obama not ready”

March 16, 2009

Opposition to Christopher Hill’s Iraq Ambassador Nomination Grows

Somewhere, Anthony Zinni must be smiling. There are now four senators — Brownback of Kansas, McCain of Arizona, Graham of South Carolina, and Ensign of Nevada — who have declared their opposition to Chris Hill becoming the next U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Recall from the experience of Kathleen Stephens, now our Ambassador to South Korea, that it takes just one senator to hold an ambassador’s nomination. Hill’s nomination will not go forward unless those senators all lift their holds. [Oops:...

Diplomacy/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics/Washington Views

March 11, 2009

11 March 2009

JAPAN WILL GO TO THE SECURITY COUNCIL if North Korea tests a missile. If they’re shivering in Pyongyang, it’s probably just cold there. ARBEIT NICHT FREI: If the prospects for the Kaesong Slave Labor Park were bleak enough already, briefly imprisoning its South Korean business managers there can’t have helped matters. UH OH: The new U.S. Trade Representative calls the U.S.-ROK FTA “unfair” as negotiated. Pretty much as I’d predicted — South Korea let the issue become toxic in the...

Anju Links

March 11, 2009

David Asher: How to Talk to North Korea

If Marcus Noland and Stephen Haggard are the world’s foremost experts on the North Korean economy, David Asher may be the world’s foremost expert on its illicit side — drugs, counterfeiting, arms trafficking, and the recouping of its ill-gotten gains. Asher served as the Coordinator of the State Department’s North Korea Working Group and the NSC’s North Korea Activities Group from 2003-2005. In that capacity, he was a key architect of the financial constriction strategy that briefly forced the North...

Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views

February 21, 2009

Human Rights Industry Reaps What It Sows; Humanity Loses

If I had to pick one single moment when the Human Rights Industry lost its focus on the objective measurement of evil, this statement by Amnesty International General Secretary Irene Khan may be it: “A new agenda is in the making, with the language of freedom and justice being used to pursue policies of fear and insecurity. This includes cynical attempts to redefine and sanitise torture,” said Ms Khan. She said the US claimed to be promoting freedom in Iraq,...

Activism/China/Human Rights

February 20, 2009

Sanctions? Yes We Can! (But Without the U.N.)

The power to tax is the power to destroy — Daniel Webster As the Obama Administration inherits an intractable, non-compliant, bellicose, and terroristic North Korea, the administration’s great challenge is to see beyond a strategy based on concessions alone. Via GI Korea, the new administration appears to be polarizing into factions, just as the Bush Administration did eight years ago. One of the factions advocates “normalization of relations with North Korea as soon as possible,” in other words, giving even...

NK Economics

February 10, 2009

Being Loved Is Overrated

Good morning, America — the world hates you slightly less! They took a poll shortly after Obama’s election: Views of the US showed improvements in Canada, Egypt, Ghana, India, Italy and Japan. But far more countries have predominantly negative views of America (12), than predominantly positive views (6). Most Europeans show little change and views of the US in Russia and China have grown more negative. On average, positive views have risen from 35 per cent to 40 per cent,...

Anti-Americanism/Europe/Geopolitics

February 2, 2009

Hostile Policy Update: State Terrorism Meets Priceline Diplomacy

As used in this chapter – (1) the term “international terrorism” means activities that “¦ (B) appear to be intended – (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they...

Appeasement/Terrorism (NK)

February 1, 2009

One Genocide that Wasn’t

[Welcome Gateway Pundit readers; Scroll down for updates] This site devotes most of its energy to bringing attention to a genocide that our news media, mostly for reasons not to their credit, generally fail to cover. Just for a moment, I’d like to pause to celebrate a genocide from which the world might just have been spared: Iraq on Saturday held its most peaceful election since the fall of Saddam. The vote to pick regional councils in 14 of the...

Terrorism/Iraq

January 30, 2009

Hostile Policy Update: North Korea Kills Off Sunshine

[Scroll down for updates] I don’t know why it comes as a surprise to anyone when North Korea reneges on anything: North Korea said Friday it is ditching a nonaggression pact and all other peace agreements with South Korea, in an apparent attempt to use the threat of an armed clash to press Seoul to give up its “confrontational” stance. The communist nation also said it will no longer respect a disputed sea border with the South, raising the prospect...

Appeasement/NK Military

January 26, 2009

Eberstadt: What Went Wrong

So over the weekend, I finally had a chance to read Nicholas Eberstadt’s fine summary of the Bush Administration’s eight years of drift and indecision on North Korea (hat tip to Robert Koehler). It’s hard to pick a favorite passage, but this one certainly struck a chord: In the absence of a coherent policy, though, the imperative of “success” in talks with North Korea suddenly took on a life of its own for the Bush team. (After all, there was...

Money Laundering/NK Economics/Washington Views

January 22, 2009

Gullible’s Travels: The Selective Disbelief of Selig S. Harrison

Here’s the latest installment of North Korea’s hostile policy: The North Korean military declared an “all-out confrontational posture”Â against South Korea on Saturday as an American scholar said North Korean officials told him they had “weaponized”Â enough plutonium for roughly four or five nuclear bombs. American intelligence officials have previously estimated that the North had harvested enough fuel for six or more bombs, although it has never been clear whether the North constructed the weapons. The scholar, Selig S. Harrison,...

Media Criticism/Proliferation/Washington Views/WMD

January 17, 2009

Hostile Policy: N. Korea Threatens ‘Confrontration’ Along Sea Boundary

It looks like Joe Biden was right about at least one thing: Military tension escalated sharply along the inter-Korean border on Saturday as North Korea vowed to take an “all-out confrontational posture” against South Korea, just hours after it said it would hold onto its nuclear arms. South Korea put its military on heightened alert, warning that armed clashes might take place in disputed waters in the Yellow Sea …. “Now that traitor (South Korean President) Lee Myung-bak and his...

NK Military/ROK Military/Terrorism (NK)

January 15, 2009

John Bolton Abducts Hillary Clinton, Assumes Her Identity, Nears Easy Confirmation Wearing Drag and Mask

First George W. Bush became Jimmy Carter, now this, at “Hillary Clinton’s” confirmation hearing: “Our goal is to end the North Korean nuclear program – both the plutonium reprocessing program and the highly enriched uranium program, which there is reason to believe exists, although never quite verified,” she said. Her vision of North Korea policy was much stronger in her written statements provided to Senator Richard Lugar before the hearing. “The new Administration will pursue direct diplomacy bilaterally and within...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics/Washington Views

December 17, 2008

Even the Metaphors Are Deadlocked!

In the summary of its December 15th press briefing following the collapse of the Not-Quite-Agreed Framework, the State Department admitted that the talks are at an impasse and declared that the “[b]all is in North Korea’s court.” Interestingly, the Chosun Ilbo, summarizing a Rodong Sinmun editorial calling on North Koreans to unite around “the strength of comradeship,” headlines with the opposite conclusion: “Ball Is in America’s Court, N.Korea Warns.” Here, I must register rare agreement with our State Department. Our...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks

December 1, 2008

N. Korea Expels Half of the South Koreans from Kaesong.

North Korea has allowed 880 South Korean people to stay in the inter-Korean industrial complex in the border city of Kaesong, far less than expected by the South, South Korea’s Unification Ministry spokesman said Monday. North Korea verbally informed South Korea of its decision Sunday night, Kim Ho Nyoun told a press briefing. [Kyodo] You say that like it’s a bad thing. Updates: The better media reporting on this subject probes two questions: (a) how will this affect Kaesong and...

Appeasement/NK Economics

December 1, 2008

Watch Your Back, Comrade

No, this is not a post about Hillary Clinton’s role in Barack Obama’s cabinet. I’ve read a lot of silly reporting about Kim Jong Il’s rumored stroke, but I’ve also seen and heard enough leaks from people who ought to be in the know that I’m actually starting to believe that he’s seriously debilitated. This latest one comes from former CIA officer Art Brown, and it makes it sound as though the power struggle to inherit all this is already...

Diplomacy/Kremlinology/U.S. & Korea

November 25, 2008

Because if it’s counterintuitive and groundless, it must be true!

I think the headline of this New York Times story by Choe Sang Hun ought to give you the idea: “Latest Threats May Mean North Korea Wants to Talk” Right. North Korea is serially flicking all of switches on the Sunshine machine to the “off” position, snipping the hotlines, storming out of talks, typing up eviction notices for the fools and scoundrels who inhabit Kaesong, and shooting the occasional housewife. Yet “experts” are found to conclude that this means that...

Appeasement/Uncategorized

November 14, 2008

And the lions shall lie down with the lambs, and there shall be good eatin’ for the lions.

I am not one who believes that Barack Obama is a closet Muslim or Trotskyite just waiting to fling open the republic’s gates to let the barbarians in, nor have I seen credible evidence that a significant percentage of the population ever really did. On the other hand, the significant percentage of the population wearing those creepy cultish idol-worshipping shirts will find the feet of clay in due course. I do believe that within the next several years — the...

Geopolitics/U.S. Politics

Search Results for: Obama not ready