Search Results for: syria chemical

August 22, 2011

What Qaddafi’s Fall Means for North Korea

As I write this morning, the Libyan rebels are battling to seize Colonel Qaddafi’s surrounded Furhrerbunker, and the Untergang seems near. Yes, the differences may be as great as the similarities, but the similarities are still significant. The fall of the Libyan government to a popular uprising would have been unthinkable a year ago. Libya was a totalitarian state with no opposition movement, in which subversive ideas could not circulate freely. Like Syria, where recent events have been just as...

Categories Regime Change
June 9, 2011

Open Sources: Gates Disclaims Intent to Destabilize N. Korea

Did you really have to say that? According to a transcript released by the US defense department on Sunday, Gates, speaking at the annual Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore Saturday. said that Washington has no interest in carrying out regime change against Pyeongyang. Rather, the defense secretary stated that the US is interestsed (sic) in helping that regime become a normal state abiding by the norms of the international community. This is disappointing because I actually admire Gates very much; I’d...

Categories Anju Links
November 26, 2010

Before We Start Bombing North Korea, Let’s Try Turning It into Afghanistan

I don’t know about you, but when North Korea decided to shell South Korean homes and kill South Korean civilians in South Korean territory, my balance of risks shifted. We’ve always known that if U.S. and South Korean forces attack North Korea, North Korea would respond by trying to kill as many American and South Korean civilians as possible. Estimates that this would result in hundreds of thousands of casualties are probably worst-case scenarios, but a toll of several thousand...

Categories China & Korea/NK Military/Regime Change/Yeonpyeong Attack
May 28, 2010

28 May 2010

Axis, Schmaxis: “The seven-member panel monitoring sanctions against North Korea said in a report obtained by The Associated Press late Thursday that its research indicates that Pyongyang is involved in banned nuclear and ballistic activities in Iran, Syria and Myanmar.“ ______________________ Japan is moving to tighten restrictions on cash remittances to North Korea, and may authorize its coast guard to inspect North Korean ships in international waters. That would be a bold move, because North Korean vessels have previously refused...

Categories Anju Links/Cheonan Incident
May 24, 2010

Overthrowing Kim: A Capitalist Manifesto

[Originally published at The New Ledger, May 2010; edited for brevity in October 2017] Within the next 48 hours, South Korea is expected to announce that North Korea torpedoed and sank the warship Cheonan and killed 46 of her crew. Among the evidence the multinational investigation will cite will be the North Korean serial number on the torpedo’s propeller, recovered from the ocean floor. The sinking of the Cheonan may be the most serious North Korean provocation since 1968 —...

Categories Capitalism/Regime Change
February 13, 2010

Axis of Evil Watch

South Korea has told the Security Council that it seized garments “deemed to have military uses for chemical protection,” according to a report from Turkish Ambassador Ertugrul Apakan, chairman of a committee that monitors implementation of UN sanctions against North Korea. The incident was one of four brought to the attention of the Security Council because of possible violations of sanctions intended to halt North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs. Apakan also reported on Italy’s seizure of two luxury yachts...

Categories Axis of Evil/Missiles/Proliferation/Sanctions/WMD
November 20, 2009

Der Spiegel on the Al Kibar Strike (or Axis, Schmaxis, Part 10)

Der Spiegel has printed a very extensive story on the Syrian nuclear reactor at Al-Kibar, the Israeli air strike that destroyed it, and the aftermath. I haven’t had time to get through the whole thing, but one thing I can say is how much more soundly I sleep knowing that all that “axis of evil” nonsense is finally behind us: According to information SPIEGEL has obtained from sources in Damascus, Assad has been considering taking a sensational political step. He...

Categories Axis of Evil/Proliferation/WMD
June 21, 2009

Not that we should care, but it’s still “illegal” to search North Korean ships on the high seas (Updated: Missiles to Burma?).

Today, a reader and friend e-mailed me and asked whether it would be legal to board and search the Kangnam I on the high seas. Here, slightly paraphrased, is how I responded to that question. As a strictly legal matter, we have no such right. And in the end, so what? First, UNSCR 1874 does not authorize the use of force or the boarding of ships on the high seas, and does not invoke Chapter VII. It requires us to...

Categories Uncategorized
June 12, 2009

U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874 (Updated with Analysis)

For better or for worse, they passed it. As with UNSCR 1695 and 1718 before it, this will be as effective as the implementation. Much has been said about how China undermined both of those resolutions, and that is true, but too little has been said about how much the U.S. State Department also did to undermine them for the sake of a failure called Agreed Framework II. The good news is that this time, there are some early and...

Categories "United" Nations/Sanctions
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...

Categories Human Rights/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics
November 21, 2008

You Don’t Say

The U.N. is beginning to suspect that those Syrians and North Koreans may have been up to something suspicious after all. “It cannot be excluded” that the Syrian facility “was intended for non-nuclear use,” the IAEA report says.However, it continues, “The features of the building . . . along with the connectivity of the site to adequate pumping capacity of cooling water, are similar to what may be found in connection with a reactor site.” Pre-attack photographs show a “containment...

Categories Proliferation/WMD
September 8, 2008

Verify Distrust: Kim Jong Il’s Next Move

No one exceeds Kim Jong Il at the production of belligerent and grandiose theater. So exactly what sort of kind of theater is he putting on for international monitors at Yongbyon? That may depend on what you’d rather believe. Do you remember a time, back when Roh Moo Hyun and George W. Bush were still the presidents of their respective nations, when South Korean leaks always cast the Americans as too suspicious and inflexible? My, how times have changed. North...

Categories Uncategorized
January 22, 2008

Plan B: How to Disarm Kim Jong Il Without Bombing Him

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. — Albert Einstein Plan A, gentle diplomacy, has again failed to disarm Kim Jong Il. Whenever this happens (every time it’s tried) advocates of doing the same thing over and over again fall back on The False Choice, whether expressly or by implication: it’s their way or war. They know better, of course, which technically makes this a lie. And usually, this lie stands uncorrected: “People lambaste...

Categories Diplomacy/Money Laundering/NK Economics/Six-Party Talks
December 12, 2007

Senate resolution would set conditions for de-listing North Korea as a terror sponsor

I knew this was coming but was asked not to write about it. But now, I see that Richardson has a link to a Yonhap story about it. Now that it’s out, I’ll speak out of school for a moment and say that I suggested a couple of the provisions that made it into the resolution, although I’d rather not say which ones. The sponsor is Sam Brownback, who having dropped his presidential bid, is back to doing what earned...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. Politics
October 7, 2007

Who Cares About Politicizing Intelligence Now?

Washington was plunged into sleepy apathy this week as ABC News reported that the  Bush Administration  ingored, then  failed to act on intelligence about  nuclear proliferation and potential terrorism that could have endangered  millions of lives.  The report claims that the Secretary of State and the President  received credible reports that North Korea transferred nuclear technology to Syria,  but suppressed the information  to save a troubled diplomatic deal, and even  sought to tip  the Syrians off.  The latest report follows...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
September 22, 2006

The Case for Blocking Ban Ki-Moon

The United Nations is facing new denunciations for being feckless, ineffective, and corrupt. The sun also rose, obituaries were published, children went off to school, and leaves in the northern latitudes began to change color. There was something different about the latest criticism, however: despite its general similarity of content, it came from The Guardian, the flagship of the British left, and The Hudson Institute, virtually the Jesuit order of Washington neoconservatism. That’s a stunning convergence from two groups with...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
September 22, 2006

The case against Ban Ki-Moon

The United Nations is facing new denunciations for being feckless, ineffective, and corrupt. The sun also rose, obituaries were published, children went off to school, and leaves in the northern latitudes began to change color. There was something different about the latest criticism, however: despite its general similarity of content, it came from The Guardian, the flagship of the British left, and The Hudson Institute, virtually the Jesuit order of Washington neoconservatism. That’s a stunning convergence from two groups with...

Categories Anju Links