Search Results for: John Kerry

September 19, 2016

Congress to Obama: Enforce N. Korea sanctions against Chinese banks

Three weeks before North Korea’s fifth nuclear test, I wrote, “The Obama administration isn’t following Kim Jong-un’s money. Congress should ask why.” Unfortunately, subsequent events soon affirmed that criticism; fortunately, Congress is asking, and it’s asking the right questions. The failure of the administration’s North Korea policy has even become an election-year liability for Hillary Clinton, forcing her to distance herself from the President and his policy (or more accurately, the lack of one). The Obama administration’s single greatest North...

Categories China/Sanctions/U.S. Politics
June 13, 2016

Meet the “Libertarians” who would surrender our liberty & our security to Kim Jong-un’s censors

I doubt that America has fully come to terms with the damage done to its freedom of expression by the Sony cyberterrorist attack of 2014, or by the increasing willingness of Muslim supremacists to extinguish our civil liberties through violence. It is an easy thing to be a civil libertarian when the subject is, say, the limits of a proposed law allowing the FBI or NSA to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists’ communications or monitor their social media posts. Even if we...

Categories Censorship/Cyberwar/Terrorism (NK)
March 6, 2016

WaPo editorial: “China’s switch” on N. Korea sanctions “had a lot to do with” H.R. 757.

After the President signed H.R. 757 into law, but before the U.N. Security Council approved resolution 2270, sanctions skeptics predicted that the new U.S. law would complicate diplomatic efforts to get China to enforce U.N. sanctions. Events thus far have refuted that view. After the President signed the new law, China, which had inflexibly opposed new U.N. sanctions for weeks, reversed course and voted for the strongest North Korea sanctions resolution so far. Even before China’s official retreat, China’s banks had already begun to freeze...

Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Sanctions
February 7, 2016

Ed Royce’s North Korea sanctions bill is already giving President Obama leverage over China

Kim Jong-un’s Groundhog Day message to the world was the announcement of a long-range missile test, and as you’ve no doubt heard, he has since made good on that threat. Like the movie “Groundhog Day,” this provocation cycle has been a variation on an endless loop. In 2006, 2009, and 2013, the missile test came before the nuke test, but if reports that His Corpulency is preparing yet another nuclear test are true, that will still technically be the case. Otherwise, events have...

Categories China/Diplomacy/Sanctions
January 8, 2016

Dems & Republicans join forces to support North Korea sanctions legislation

When it comes to North Korea policy, Washington’s most influential lobbyist has never been to Washington. He’s in his early 30s, never finished high school, chain smokes, likes to ski, loves the NBA and , favors dark suits and mushroom haircuts, has an explosive temper and a small nuclear arsenal, and weighs as much as a village full of his malnourished subjects. Tuesday’s nuke test may have come just in time for Congress to act before dispersing for a long...

Categories Sanctions/Washington Views
December 11, 2015

At the U.N., China shields Kim Jong-Un from prosecution, but not isolation (updates)

In February, two years will have passed since the U.N. Commission of Inquiry released its historic report on human rights in North Korea, finding “human rights abuses on a scale ‘without parallel in the contemporary world,’ comparable to the atrocities of Nazi Germany.” The bad news is that we’re still just talking about this. The good news is that America, and most of the world, are uniting around the importance of holding Kim Jong-Un accountable for those crimes. [Samantha Power addresses the...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
February 4, 2015

President Obama can’t explain what his N. Korea executive order does

The bottom North Korea story of the day is that Pyongyang, which denies having anything to do with the Sony cyberattacks, has just threatened us with cyberattacks. The North’s military will ratchet up its “retaliatory action of justice” by use of every possible means, including the nation’s “smaller, precision and diversified” nuclear striking means and cyber warfare capabilities, it added. [Yonhap] (I’m taking Yonhap’s word for this, because KCNA isn’t working for me today.) The top North Korea story of...

Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks
August 20, 2014

South Korea’s missile problem, and ours

For the last year, the South Korean government has been saying that it considers a North Korean attack a very real risk, and it has also said that if attacked, its retaliation will be swift and severe. Its President, Park Geun-Hye, recently expressed concern about a North Korean “misjudgment,” and touted the U.S.-ROK military alliance as the best deterrent against that. As recently as this week, she has been warning her army of the dangers of “complacency.” I don’t have...

Categories Missiles/NK Military/ROK Military
January 9, 2013

Open Sources, January 9, 2013

PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE this side of Pyongyang seems to be unhappy with Kim Jong Bill and Eric Schmidt.  They’ve managed to unite the Obama Administration (“not helpful“) and John McCain (“useful idiot“).  I’ll only link some notable examples here, but Don Kirk thinks Kim Jong Bill has handed Pyongyang “a propaganda coup” and takes a shot at AP Pyongyang for the stories it isn’t covering.  John Bolton takes issue with Kim Jong Bill’s misuse of the word “humanitarian,” and tries...

Categories Anju Links
June 29, 2009

Obama Forms Team Plan B

The Washington Post is reporting that President Obama is forming an inter-agency team, much like the Illicit Activities Initiative that David Asher headed in G.W. Bush’s first term, to coordinate sanctions against North Korea: The White House is forming an interagency team to coordinate sanctions efforts against North Korea with other nations, senior administration officials said yesterday.  The team will be led by Philip S. Goldberg, a former ambassador to Bolivia who is slated to leave for China in the...

Categories Diplomacy/Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Politics/Washington Views
February 19, 2007

It’s Time for Jay Lefkowitz to Resign

I recently wrote a piece for publication on North Korea’s finances, the rumors of the then-prospective deal with North Korea,  and how to increase the pressure so that we could get a truly verifiable dismantlement of their nuclear program and a real and fundamental movement toward transparency.   If no favorable agreement could be achieved,  our financial strategy  showed real promise in  collapsing  the regime’s palace economy, and maybe even the regime  itself, something for which my aspiration is no secret. ...

Categories Diplomacy/Human Rights/Refugees/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views
January 24, 2007

What Jim Webb Should Have Said

[Welcome Instapundit readers.]   My fellow  Americans,  We  have  have a long  and glorious history that I join you in celebrating here tonight.  Let me share with you this deguerrotype of my great great great great grandfather, a penniless drunkard and street-corner pugilist  who sat in a Dublin jail,  until he  was paroled and came to Virginia in 1724, just in time to join in the massacre of the peaceful Massapequasimolie Indians.  I would hope you draw strength  from this...

Categories Terrorism/Iraq/Washington Views
November 15, 2006

Two Cheers for Tom Lantos

He’d get three if he’d said  it three years ago, and four if he offered a few more specifics, but Tom Lantos (D, Cal.) sounds at least as  tough here  as Jim Leach (R, Ia.) might have: The Bush administration’s policy toward North Korea has failed and a new approach must be tried, including punishing the North’s leaders and sending a U.S. envoy to Pyongyang for talks, a key Democrat said on Wednesday. Rep. Tom Lantos of California, who is...

Categories America/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/WMD
November 6, 2004

Slight of Hand

Funny, I seem to recall that last week, this election was a referendum on The War. Now that the results are in, the stealth doves who failed to fool enough of us red-staters to win the election can’t accept our answer. That leaves them spinning furiously to retroactively change the question and blunt the sharp tip of defeat. New party line alert: “It was all about gay marriage, and how Karl Rove used it to get all of us mouth-breathing...

Categories Uncategorized
November 6, 2004

Slight of Hand

Funny, I seem to recall that last week, this election was a referendum on The War. Now that the results are in, the stealth doves who failed to fool enough of us red-staters to win the election can’t accept our answer. That leaves them spinning furiously to retroactively change the question and blunt the sharp tip of defeat. New party line alert: “It was all about gay marriage, and how Karl Rove used it to get all of us mouth-breathing...

Categories Uncategorized
February 10, 2004

Must-Reads in the WSJ and Boston Globe–Remember When North Korea Was Worse Than Iraq?

James Taranto, my favorite blogger, writes “Best of the Web” on the Wall Street Journal’s online op-ed page. Today, he brilliantly played back the words of the North-Korea-is-worse-than-Iraq crowd of a year ago, in the context of the new gas chamber revelations (it starts about two-thirds of the way down the column). As you may recall, one of the arguments proferred against the war in Iraq was that North Korea was worse. One has to question what this has to...

Categories Uncategorized
February 10, 2004

Must-Reads in the WSJ and Boston Globe–Remember When North Korea Was Worse Than Iraq?

James Taranto, my favorite blogger, writes “Best of the Web” on the Wall Street Journal’s online op-ed page. Today, he brilliantly played back the words of the North-Korea-is-worse-than-Iraq crowd of a year ago, in the context of the new gas chamber revelations (it starts about two-thirds of the way down the column). As you may recall, one of the arguments proferred against the war in Iraq was that North Korea was worse. One has to question what this has to...

Categories Uncategorized
February 10, 2004

Must-Reads in the WSJ and Boston Globe–Remember When North Korea Was Worse Than Iraq?

James Taranto, my favorite blogger, writes “Best of the Web” on the Wall Street Journal’s online op-ed page. Today, he brilliantly played back the words of the North-Korea-is-worse-than-Iraq crowd of a year ago, in the context of the new gas chamber revelations (it starts about two-thirds of the way down the column). As you may recall, one of the arguments proferred against the war in Iraq was that North Korea was worse. One has to question what this has to...

Categories Uncategorized