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.

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.

Cold War Nostalgia. A link to the funniest TV commercial of all time–Wendy’s “Soviet Fashion Show.” It still works, in a way that Yakov Smirnov doesn’t.

Mourning liberalism. I have too much nostalgia for the contribution that liberalism once made to our society not to wince when I hear Sean Hannity speak of it as if it were a skin infection or an unnatural sex act. There was a time, after all, when liberalism stood for freedom and tolerance instead of hostility to everything America supports, simply because America supports it. The torch once held by Ken Kesey and Alan Ginsburg has been passed to Ward...

Condi to the North Koreans: Our offer is on the table, and you’d better give it serious thought now. FWIW, it’s a terrible offer from our perspective. And naturally, it didn’t meet its actual objective of mollifying South Korea’s inexhaustable compulsion to appease. Thankfully, the North will never accept it, particularly if we insist on rigorous verification.