Search Results for “senators letter”

January 21, 2016

WaPo: Senate Foreign Relations hopes to mark up N. Korea sanctions bill next Thursday.

Via the Washington Post this morning, we’re still pretty much where I said we were last week, but at least we have an expected date for a committee markup. The Senate is still trying to work out a bipartisan compromise between Senator Bob Menendez’s (D, NJ) weaker S. 1747 and Cory Gardner’s (R, CO) tougher S. 2144, rather than voting on the House bill that passed last week “with huge bipartisan support.” While the House and Senate bills contain generally the same...

Sanctions/U.S. Law

October 8, 2015

U.N. report demands that N. Korean leaders be held accountable through prosecution, sanctions

U.N. Special Rapporteur Marzuki Darusman has issued another report on human rights in North Korea (or more accurately, the lack thereof). The bad news is that the situation hasn’t improved, and North Korea and China are still stonewalling: Regrettably, the situation remains the same, despite the grave concerns reiterated by the international community in different forums. The Special Rapporteur also reflects on issues around accountability for those human rights violations, which should be addressed at an early stage, and on current efforts by the international community...

"United" Nations/Activism/Anju Links/Human Rights/Sanctions

October 7, 2015

Sens. Gardner, Rubio & Risch to introduce new North Korea sanctions bill (updated)

The new bill was revealed in this column by Josh Rogin, and includes a link to the full text. The bill, which still has no number, will be the Senate’s second version of the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act, following the introduction by Senators Menendez and Graham of S. 1747 in July. Both bills follow the lead of Ed Royce and Elliot Engel, the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who introduced H.R. 757 in January. H.R. 757,...

Anju Links/Sanctions

April 10, 2015

Help! Help! I’m being repressed! (Part 2)

Christine Ahn’s pursuit of global fame is having unintended consequences, mostly for Gloria Steinem. At Hot Air, Noah Rothman writes, “If women’s rights are also human rights, then North Korea is no friend to either.” He accuses Ahn and Steinem (and other “progressives”) of turning “a blind eye toward real abuses in order to support the cause of totalitarian statism.” In The Daily Beast, Lizzie Crocker writes that Ahn “has long been uncritical of North Korea, a country that has some committed...

Useful Idiocy

March 16, 2015

Three Pinocchios for Glenn Kessler’s “fact-check” on North Korea

If only for prudential reasons, 47 Republican Senators should not have written to Iran’s Supreme Leader. We only have one President at a time, and only the President should negotiate with foreign leaders. Parallel, shadow-government negotiations with foreign adversaries are wrong when Republican Senators do it; they were just as wrong when Jim Wright met with Daniel Ortega, when Nancy Pelosi met with with Bashar Assad over a Republican President’s objections, and when a young John Kerry met with Madam...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Iran/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/WMD

June 25, 2014

Open Sources, June 25, 2014

~ 1 ~ NORTH KOREA, WHICH PRESIDENT BUSH REMOVED from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, has threatened to “resolutely punish” Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop for “dar[ing]” to “slander the dignity of its supreme leadership.” Discuss among yourselves. Also, I think that should be “punish resolutely.” ~ 2 ~ HMMM: Shops are springing up in Chinese cities bordering North Korea which specialize in cheap cell phones that operate on the...

Anju Links

April 20, 2012

Anju, April 20, 2012

CHINA DENIES selling missile transporters (TELs) to North Korea, but the U.N.’s sanctions committee will investigate. Look for China to block the report if it comes up with any evidence that China, yet again, violated UNSCR 1874, 1718, and 1695. That’s how China responded to a previous report that it helped North Korea sell missiles to Iran. Last year, it also blocked a U.N. report on North Korea’s uranium enrichment program. Look for them to do the same when the...

Anju Links

April 17, 2009

Christopher Hill: Deep Kimchee for Iraq

Of the many things that will be written about North Korea this week, the least likely of these is, “Now there’s the kind of diplomacy we need more of.” Consider just the events of the last few days: the missile test itself, which may have hit closer to home than originally thought; the failure of the United Nations to enforce two of its violated resolutions; the broader failure of deterrence and counter-proliferation; and North Korea’s final repudiation of a February...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics

March 26, 2009

Chris Hill Lies to Entire Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Sam Brownback’s Finest Hour

[Updated below.] [A]s the current assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, [Christopher Hill] presided over negotiations with North Korea that deliberately minimized focus on the bleak human rights record of that country, ignored its nuclear proliferation, and had the practical effect of affirming its nuclear weapons capability. Hill also has a troubling hotdog tendency to play by his own rules, to the detriment of U.S. diplomacy…. Hill’s brand of cowboy diplomacy might be justified if it...

Human Rights/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics

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

August 14, 2008

North Korea’s Next Tantrum

A shoe is about to drop, but which shoe? Among Washington’s Korea-watching klatsch, there’s a popular parlor game that goes like this: DOVE: The North Koreans are proud, fanatical, and emotional. You have to be careful not to antagonize them with idle talk about human rights and intrusive verification or you’ll spoil the negotiations. And we’re this close (thumb and index finger a milimeter apart) to a breakthrough. HAWK: The North Koreans are calculating and react with malice aforethought. Their...

Abductions/Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks

May 31, 2008

Kathleen Stephens Nomination Woes Deepen

In March, I explained why I believe that Kathleen Stephens is the wrong person to be our next ambassador to South Korea. In April, I explained why Senator Sam Brownback had placed a hold on Stephens’s nomination, effectively blocking it. Brownback announced his opposition by going to the Senate floor to deliver an impassioned speech — “Google Earth has made witnesses of us all” — that made use of my own satellite image grabs of Camp 22. State had applied...

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

May 8, 2008

Growing Congressional Opposition to De-Listing North Korea as a Terror Sponsor

Well, other than the omission of North Korea’s nuclear weapons, uranium enrichment, proliferation to other terror-sponsoring regimes, and an oddly low figure for fissile material, North Korea’s disclosure is a full disclosure. Other than the nearly complete 50-megawatt reactor and an unfinished 200-megawatt reactor, it (sort of) caps North Korea’s ability to produce one kind of fissile material. Other than the unknown quantity of completed nuclear weapons left in Kim Jong Il’s hands, it’s a breakthrough for disarmament. And other...

Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics

April 24, 2008

Chris Hill Resignation Watch: Nuke Disclosure Starts a Category 3 Sh*tstorm

[Update: Watch the CIA’s video on the al-Kibar reactor: I’d love to know how they got those photographs of the reactor’s interior, and I can only guess that some trusted person who is now in a much safer place took them.] How stupid and how evil does Kim Jong Il have to be to get the attention of Congress in an election year? This stupid and this evil: The United States on Thursday released an intelligence document with photographs of...

Appeasement/Proliferation/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics

April 23, 2008

More Senate Republicans Rebel Against Bush’s North Korea Policy

Fourteen Republican senators have signed a letter to President Bush opposing his agreement to let the North Koreans off the hook on full disclosure, disarmament, money laundering, terror sponsorship, concentration camps, abductions — you name it — before we lift sanctions. An excerpt: We are … concerned about the present course of action on North Korea’s nuclear program being pursued by representatives of your Administration. It cannot be said that North Korea has complied with its commitments. From all appearances,...

Appeasement/Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics

December 20, 2007

Behind the scenes, a deepening crisis for Agreed Framework 2.0

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...

Six-Party Talks/U.S. Politics

June 12, 2007

Win the Battle, Lose the War: How South Korea’s Brilliant Negotiation Skills May Have Killed the FTA

[Update: The USTR will reportedly call for renegotiation of the entire deal, in part to make the draft FTA compliant with U.S. labor standards. More at the bottom of this post.] Absolutely stomach-turning. After all of the Bush Administration’s brave rhetoric about “forced labor” and “material support” for “atrocities,” it ended up signing a free-trade agreement that could very well have allowed slave-made, axis-of-evil Kaesong imports into the United States. Then, because there was no denying the staggering hypocrisy...

Anju Links/Human Rights/Human Trafficking/NK Economics/U.S. Politics

July 20, 2004

URGENT NK Human Rights Act Update

The Chosun Ilbo is reporting that Congress will vote on the North Korean Human Rights Act this week. No, this bill is not as strong as the original North Korean Freedom Act, but great things have small beginnings, and a strong response from voters can help build toward better things later. In brief, this bill does the following: 1. Increases funds to broadcast to North Korea for more hours every day, and to find ways to get tunable radios to...

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Search Results for: senators letter