January 29, 2007

Deceptive Headline Watch: Yonhap

You don’t get self-fisking journalism very often, but here’s one that just falls off the bone like an overcooked roast (mmm, roooast).  Here’s the headline: U.S. must choose between sanctioning N.K. and compromising for denuclearization: report Well, what are we supposed to take from that, I wonder?  It could only be that inexplicable American obsession with people counterfeiting its currency that’s preventing us from denuclearizing North Korea.Until you read the actual quote, which says: “Currently the (George W.) Bush administration...
Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Economics/Six-Party Talks/WMD
January 27, 2007

At What Precise Moment Did Andrew Sullivan …

… transform himself from a principled defender of liberal values to someone who is willing to deceive to make his points?  The video shows Iraqi troops beating three men who’d been caught with a bag full of mortars in their car. I don’t defend the beatings, which at least one American tries fecklessly to stop, but calling people captured with mortars “civilians” is a bit of a distortion, no?    I noticed  it at the precise moment Bush declared his...
Categories Blogs & Blogging/Islam/Terrorism/Iraq
January 26, 2007

If He’d Just Thrown His Medals Across the Fence, He’d Be a Senator Today

Sixty Minutes will broadast a long-anticipated interview with traitor  Joe  Dresnok this Sunday, and one thing’s apparent:  he’s eating well enough. From the CBS promo story: The last American defector still living in North Korea says a billion dollars in gold couldn’t entice him to leave the country he ran to 44 years ago.  In the first communication from Joe Dresnok since he defected in 1962, the former G.I. also says his fellow defector, Charles Jenkins, who was permitted to leave...
Categories Abductions/Defectors/U.S. Military
January 26, 2007

Kim Jong Il, Defender of Free Speech

North Korea said on Friday the South Korean government was violating the public’s basic right to information by blocking access to Web sites sympathetic to the North. South Korea has denied access to more than 30 Web sites that it has designated “pro-North Korea” since 2004, including the North’s official KCNA news agency’s Web service and sites operated outside. “This is a fascist action against democracy and human rights as it infringes upon the South Koreans’ freedom of speech and...
Categories Censorship/Deprogramming
January 26, 2007

Scandal

Why on earth has it taken this long to let our soldiers kill the people who are killing them?  Micromanaging their fight against a hostile force transforms the rules of engagement into a suicide pact. The Bush administration has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Tehran’s influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear program, according to government and counterterrorism...
Categories Iran/Terrorism/Iraq
January 26, 2007

Shenyang Six Update

LiNK sends: Hello Friends,     …. It feels strange to be back here in Washington at LiNK headquarters, typing away at a computer. For those of you who have been following the news, the past few weeks have not been calm and restful- they have been rather dramatic and urgent. On December 21, 2006, myself, two LiNK field workers and 6 North Korean refugees were caught and imprisoned by Chinese authorities. I was taken into custody in Beijing, and...
Categories Activism/China & Korea/Human Rights/Refugees
January 26, 2007

Coup Rumors Swirl in North Korea

Update:   More coup rumors.  Thanks to a friend for alerting me to this one, although it doesn’t seem to have worked out the way I hoped: The South Korean government on Friday denied a Japanese report that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il could be ill or faced a military coup. Japan’s Jiji Press reported that Kim may be under house arrest at his villa in Wonsan along the east coast. “The Japanese report on Kim Jong-il seems groundless because...
Categories Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology
January 25, 2007

Axis, Schmaxis, Part 5

This blog  has previously tracked reports of  nuclear and missile  co-development between Iran and  North  Korea;  London’s Daily  Telegraph is now  reporting a widening expansion of Iranian-North Korean nuclear cooperation. North Korea is helping Iran to prepare an underground nuclear test similar to the one Pyongyang carried out last year. Under the terms of a new understanding between the two countries, the North Koreans have agreed to share all the data and information they received from their successful test last...
Categories Axis of Evil/Iran/Terrorism/Iraq/WMD
January 25, 2007

KTU Update

Korean Education takes another small step toward reform. The ministry said soon all bonuses will be performance-related. The seniority system will also disappear. With recognized capabilities, teachers in their early 40s can become vice principals, whereas long-serving teachers with low scores will miss out on promotion. Parents and pupils will now get to evaluate teachers, which is curious from a social perspective, because the status of teachers has traditionally been so high in Korean’s highly Confucian society that the idea...
Categories Korean Education
January 25, 2007

N. Korea Denies Misuse of UNDP Funds

Update 1/26:   The UNDP North Korea program has pretty much hit the wall.  The UN says  it will “adjust the North Korea program and delay its implementation” until “approved,” which most likely means until the audit is completed.   The U.S. annual allocation to the UNDP remains, but it has decided to withhold  all of those funds for the time being, and may propose an end to all UN programs in North Korea, except the humanitarian ones. Here’s the  one that really...
Categories "United" Nations/Famine & Food Aid
January 25, 2007

Lawless Will Stay

No link, because I’m passing along informed gossip from after-dinner conversation (no names, and no, this was NOT from  a certain  off-the-record event).  Indeed, his portfolio there will reportedly be enhanced to add Afghanistan and Pakistan to his area of interest. If this is in fact the case, it suggests that USFK restructuring will proceed as previously planned. The other informed gossip is split:  on the question of whether we are at the cusp of some kind of graceful-exit deal...
Categories 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
January 23, 2007

Lebanon on the Altar

Michael Totten reports, and has some pretty shocking pictures, and it’s depressingly doubtful that democracy can survive there. The Cedar Revolution will become a victim of Iranian infanticide and the amivalence of Europe, the United States, and other democracies to support it in its hour of need. The lesson comes through clearly: investing your nation’s survival in the United Nations and its French peacekeepers is like investing your savings in a partnership with that exiled Nigerian general who keeps e-mailing...
Categories "United" Nations/Iran/Islam/Terrorism/Iraq
January 23, 2007

al-Yahoo Update

[Update:   Another misleading headline from AP, here.  I suppose if you’re going to lament the terrible quality of our intelligence, you have to be even more depressed about the quality of the information we often get from our news media.  It strikes me as hypocritical for those responsible for the latter fiasco to be caustic in their criticism of the former fiasco.  At least the  CIA  can say that it’s not easy to unveil the deceptions of  secretive tyrannies. ...
Categories Media Criticism/Terrorism/Iraq
January 23, 2007

That’s funny. I thought the main sticking point was the fact that North Korea built and tested nukes.

South Korea recently asked the U.S. to consider selectively unfreezing at least five of North Korea’s 50 accounts with the Macau-based Banco Delta Asia, saying part of the US$24 million North Korean accounts were acquired legitimately, it emerged Monday. The issue has been the main sticking point in international efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis. [link] … not to mention all of North Korea’s extended absences from the talks, and breaking its last three four  nuclear agreements.
Categories Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/WMD
January 22, 2007

Phoney War (I)

It is a natural tendency of people to  accomodate themselves emotionally to conditions they cannot change.  At its most extreme, accomodation can explain an abused child’s seeming acceptance of an abuser’s predations.  At its most benign, it  can be a  mostly beneficial tendency to compromise with opposing views.  But there is a difference between  being open-minded  and fooling one’s self.  I’m still leaning against belief that a Democratic Congress with a narrow margin is going into an election year with...
Categories Appeasement/Diplomacy/Six-Party Talks/Washington Views/WMD