Search Results for: Cao interview

June 4, 2010

How Al Jazeera Translates “Fair and Balanced” into Arabic

I had to see this for myself to actually believe it: Bjornar Simonsen, one of Alejandro Cao de Benos‘s obergruppenführers in the Korean “Friendship” Association, qualifies as an authority on North Korea in the eyes of Al Jazeera. But just to keep things objective and balanced, Al Jazeera puts Bjornar up against … John Feffer. You may not want to watch this if you’ve eaten processed meat or dairy products in the last hour or so, particularly if you have...

Categories Media Criticism/Propaganda/Useful Idiocy
February 11, 2010

China: We Have No Dissidents!

CHINA declared on Thursday it had ‘no dissidents’, just hours after a Beijing court upheld an 11-year jail term for one of the country’s top pro-democracy voices. ‘There are no dissidents in China,’ foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told reporters at a regular news briefing. [AFP, via Singapore Straits Times] Either they just strayed into Alejandro Cao de Benos’s alternative reality, or I just didn’t know they’d been there all along.

Categories China/WTF?
February 10, 2010

10 February 2010

Some perspective for those of you in Washington now: the weather right now in Verkhoyansk (55 below, as I write this). As a native of South Dakota, I never thought I’d see this place get a respectable blizzard._____________ An interview with Ha Tae Keung, a/k/a Young Howard, of Open News._____________ North Korea tries to keep the lid on dissent, which Alejandro Cao de Benos assures us does not exist._____________ The Korea Herald interviews Todd Zitin, the creator of Korean News...

Categories Anju Links
February 6, 2010

Tonight Is the Night for Kim Jong Il to Take a Satellite Photo of Washington, D.C.

Like about 200,000 of our neighbors, we’re all freezing in the dark here. The roads probably won’t be clear by Monday, and more snow is forecast for Tuesday. Our governor says it’s breaking all previous records. We’re shivering in good spirits and have plenty to eat — my son has now beaten me in three straight games of Monopoly — but this may be the last post for a while until power is restored, meaning the unfortunate delay of Part...

Categories Blogs & Blogging/Miscellaneous
June 3, 2009

Must Read: New Details Leaked on North Korea’s Counterfeiting

Say it with me: thank goodness Christopher Hill got the North Koreans promise never, ever to counterfeit our currency ever again — cross my heart and hope to be executed before a crowd of bused-in schoolchildren! A North Korean general who is a confidant of the country’s leader, Kim Jong-il, has been identified by U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies as a key figure in the covert production and distribution of high-quality counterfeit $100 bills called supernotes, according to documents and...

Categories Counterfeiting/Kremlinology/Media Criticism/Money Laundering/Sanctions
April 14, 2007

Agreed Framework 2.0: A Day 60 Scorecard

[Update: I decided to append various newsworthy or interesting reactions to the passage of this deadline at the end of this post; please scroll to the bottom to read. For new readers, the man on the right is Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, who expended years of connivance on getting us to make this deal, and who personally negotiated its amorphous terms. Hill has staked his reputation on the idea that North Korea is capable of abiding by the...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
August 7, 2006

Kim Jong Il Unplugged, Part 2

During Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levy’s recent visit to a series of Asian nations, I wondered just how Treasury’s green eyeshades had landed on a particular series of bank accounts that attracted his attention. Via a U.S. Treasury official who spoke with the Donga Ilbo, we now know that the answer is linked to the first two questions I asked after the mass arrests that came of Operation Smoking Dragon last August: 1. Were any North Korean nationals caught or implicated?...

Categories Counterfeiting/NK Economics
April 6, 2006

Is Kim Jong Il Bankrupt?

There is more evidence to suggest that North Korea really is in dire financial straits after all. Some would not call this a novel conclusion to make about a country in which 2.5 million people have starved to death, but a careful reading of what NGO workers and refugees tell us of how the food was passed out suggests that the North Korean regime was not unduly upset about that, as long as its elite ate well and never lacked...

Categories China/China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/NK Economics/Uncategorized
June 11, 2005

What ABC Told Us–and Didn’t Tell Us–About Life in North Korea

“It will be fascinating for us and for our audiences to see what life is like there and try to get a snapshot of everyday existence inside North Korea,” [ABC News president] David Westin said. ABC News has now aired its series of reports from inside North Korea, and I waited until I’d seen them before I made up my mind. Having fought my way through the wretched, insufferable, life-sucking crap-tangle known as Real Networks to see the reports, I...

Categories Uncategorized
June 11, 2005

What ABC Told Us–and Didn’t Tell Us–About Life in North Korea

“It will be fascinating for us and for our audiences to see what life is like there and try to get a snapshot of everyday existence inside North Korea,” [ABC News president] David Westin said. ABC News has now aired its series of reports from inside North Korea, and I waited until I’d seen them before I made up my mind. Having fought my way through the wretched, insufferable, life-sucking crap-tangle known as Real Networks to see the reports, I...

Categories Uncategorized
June 11, 2005

What ABC Told Us–and Didn’t Tell Us–About Life in North Korea

“It will be fascinating for us and for our audiences to see what life is like there and try to get a snapshot of everyday existence inside North Korea,” [ABC News president] David Westin said. ABC News has now aired its series of reports from inside North Korea, and I waited until I’d seen them before I made up my mind. Having fought my way through the wretched, insufferable, life-sucking crap-tangle known as Real Networks to see the reports, I...

Categories Uncategorized
January 9, 2000

The Alternative Reality of Christine Ahn

Dave at No Illusions wants to know more about Christine Ahn, the North Korean apologist (and American, as it turns out) whose views OhMyNews found worthy of the extensive interview I linked and fisked below. Even a cursory exploration of Christine Ahn’s views immediately raises questions about the honesty of OhMyNews’s coverage of her, given its failure to disclose that she is an active member in a pro-Pyongyang organization based in Oakland, California. Who Is Christine Ahn? North Korea is...

Categories Uncategorized
January 8, 2000

The Alternative Reality of Christine Ahn

Dave at No Illusions wants to know more about Christine Ahn, the North Korean apologist (and American, as it turns out) whose views OhMyNews found worthy of the extensive interview I linked and fisked below. Even a cursory exploration of Christine Ahn’s views immediately raises questions about the honesty of OhMyNews’s coverage of her, given its failure to disclose that she is an active member in a pro-Pyongyang organization based in Oakland, California. Who Is Christine Ahn? North Korea is...

Categories Uncategorized