Category: Uncategorized

Other than the odd exceptional case of an outright admission, every specific accusation that a secretive regime has engaged in a specific nefarious act is subject to the collateral attack that it rests upon the inexact science of intelligence. Intelligence errors cut both ways, of course, and any administration facing a hostile press is certain to face withering criticism no matter where it chooses to assign the very real risk of error. What is so often missing in these discussions...

Iran Update: National Security Advisor Steven Hadley (via Dr. Zin) is optimistic that Europe is serious about its agreement to put meaningful pressure on Iran if it fails to negotiate in good faith. Better yet, that pressure may extent to Iran’s support for terrorism and suppression of its own people. I hope he’s right.

Daily NK reports two items of interest today. The first is purportedly the text of the judgments against those executed and imprisoned by the North Korean authorities there. Although it accuses most of the condemned of trafficking in North Korean women, treat that characterization with extreme caution; putting a sexual taint on a dissenter is an old trick that China has used pretty shamelessly against Korean underground railroad activists. It could be true, too. But then, why add this language?...

Notwithstanding the government’s best efforts, there has been an explosion of blogs in China, many of them talking about corruption. UPDATE: From NKZone’s own Rebecca MacKinnon, we learn that some Chinese are protesting the closing of a popular BBS.

Some have long insisted that democracy is incompatible with Asian values, but then again, the most visible proponent of that theory was Lee Kwan-Yew, the benevolent dictator of Singapore. Ross Terrill has an interesting argument in opposition, including this dead-on statement about North Korea: The nature of Kim Jong Il’s Stalinism precludes trust, effective inspections, or meaningful transmission of aid to the starving masses of North Korea. It becomes clearer with each lie from Pyongyang that only regime change there...

Iran Update: National Security Advisor Steven Hadley (via Dr. Zin) is optimistic that Europe is serious about its agreement to put meaningful pressure on Iran if it fails to negotiate in good faith. Better yet, that pressure may extent to Iran’s support for terrorism and suppression of its own people. I hope he’s right.

Notwithstanding the government’s best efforts, there has been an explosion of blogs in China, many of them talking about corruption. UPDATE: From NKZone’s own Rebecca MacKinnon, we learn that some Chinese are protesting the closing of a popular BBS.

Recent events in the Middle East are melting my pessimism and cynicism about the region. Events that I had thought would take decades seem to be emerging in months. The news from Iraq recently is downright encouraging: Iraqi citizens are taking up arms against the terrorists. In three different cities across Iraq, the people have also engaged in apparently spontaneous demonstrations against terrorists, extremists, and the government of Jordan, which Iraqis belive has tacticly tolerated support and sanctuary for them....

Some have long insisted that democracy is incompatible with Asian values, but then again, the most visible proponent of that theory was Lee Kwan-Yew, the benevolent dictator of Singapore. Ross Terrill has an interesting argument in opposition, including this dead-on statement about North Korea: The nature of Kim Jong Il’s Stalinism precludes trust, effective inspections, or meaningful transmission of aid to the starving masses of North Korea. It becomes clearer with each lie from Pyongyang that only regime change there...

Recent events in the Middle East are melting my pessimism and cynicism about the region. Events that I had thought would take decades seem to be emerging in months. The news from Iraq recently is downright encouraging: Iraqi citizens are taking up arms against the terrorists. In three different cities across Iraq, the people have also engaged in apparently spontaneous demonstrations against terrorists, extremists, and the government of Jordan, which Iraqis belive has tacticly tolerated support and sanctuary for them....

You said you’d pay us up front! Every time South Korea hits a new low of shamelessness or senselessness over Tokdo, all I can think of it just how little they’re willing to do for the millions of their starving and terrorized countrymen to the North. It’s almost as if there were an election coming up.

You can read the full text of most of Condi Rice’s remarks and interviews here. There’s simply an enormous amount of material for study here. I’m struck by the degree to which Condi sticks to the script, carefully repeating the same points nearly verbatim. The interesting points I take away from her remarks, with links, where appropriate: (1) The administration is very directly signaling its impatience with the six-party process, and that the U.S. is considering “further measures” without specifying...

You said you’d pay us up front! Every time South Korea hits a new low of shamelessness or senselessness over Tokdo, all I can think of it just how little they’re willing to do for the millions of their starving and terrorized countrymen to the North. It’s almost as if there were an election coming up.

You can read the full text of most of Condi Rice’s remarks and interviews here. There’s simply an enormous amount of material for study here. I’m struck by the degree to which Condi sticks to the script, carefully repeating the same points nearly verbatim. The interesting points I take away from her remarks, with links, where appropriate: (1) The administration is very directly signaling its impatience with the six-party process, and that the U.S. is considering “further measures” without specifying...

Since one of the AP reporters in Seoul seems to have a well developed sense of irony, I’ll let him or her tell what happened at Condi Rice’s press conference at the U.S. Embassy there yesterday: Earlier Sunday, Rice extolled the virtues of free and open societies at a news conference with Internet journalists, after security guards wrestled a man to ground as he loudly called for American intervention to free the communist North. “Miss Rice, the North Korean people...

Since one of the AP reporters in Seoul seems to have a well developed sense of irony, I’ll let him or her tell what happened at Condi Rice’s press conference at the U.S. Embassy there yesterday: Earlier Sunday, Rice extolled the virtues of free and open societies at a news conference with Internet journalists, after security guards wrestled a man to ground as he loudly called for American intervention to free the communist North. “Miss Rice, the North Korean people...

Years ago, the Tango Security Force was one of my main sources of business as a JAG prosecutor. Today, Condi Rice visited the place and spoke some words that the New York Times apparently construed as harsh. I’ve never seen a paper make so many characterizations of a statement without quoting the allegedly significant statements. I’ll try to dig them up as soon as State actually publishes them. I liked this part: “Even China must eventually embrace some form of...

Not that anyone’s listening to me, but I second the nomination of Claudia Rosett for a Pulizter for her oil-for-food reporting.