Category — North Korea

Senator Chuck Hagel sounds more like a blame America first leftist than a Republican senator:

SPIEGEL: You are, then, an advocate of America relying more on soft power than on the military?

Hagel: That’s the way we will make progress. We have to use our economic and also our cultural strength. Trust is the crucial currency in international relations. We willfully diminished the value of this currency and we now have to rebuild it. Trust is more important than anything else. North Korea was a part of the Axis of Evil, but now the United States is using the instruments of diplomacy in the Six Party talks.

We “willfully diminished” the value of trust in dealing with nations like North Korea and Iran? Bill Clinton trusted the North Koreans, but they continued their uranium enrichment activities anyway.   Hear, see, and speak no evil is the coin of trustworthy international diplomacy after all.

Hagel certainly sounds like a man bucking for a job in the Obama administration. It’s depressing to see the country club Republicans throwing in the towel.  No wonder conservatives are abandoning the GOP.

Via JustOneMinute:

Let me see if I understand this - John Edwards and the Krugman Democrats want to negotiate with the Iranians and North Koreans but not the drug companies or health insurers.

Well, as long as we are clear who the bad guys are.

Speaking of Iran, it looks like they almost got more than they bargained for when provoking US Navy warships this weekend (HT: Gateway Pundit):

In what U.S. officials called a serious provocation, Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats harassed and provoked three U.S. Navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, threatening to explode the American vessels.

U.S. forces were on the verge of firing on the Iranian boats in the early Sunday incident, when the boats turned and moved away, a Pentagon official said. “It is the most serious provocation of this sort that we’ve seen yet,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said: “We urge the Iranians to refrain from such provocative actions that could lead to a dangerous incident in the future.”

…There were no injuries but the official said there could have been, because the Iranian boats turned away “literally at the very moment that U.S. forces were preparing to open fire” in self defense.

The official said he didn’t have the precise transcript of communications that passed between the two forces, but said the Iranians radioed something like “we’re coming at you and you’ll explode in a couple minutes.”

We should have given them an express ticket to meet Allah.

Secessionists meeting in Tennessee

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - In an unlikely marriage of desire to secede from the United States, two advocacy groups from opposite political traditions — New England and the South — are sitting down to talk.

Tired of foreign wars and what they consider right-wing courts, the Middlebury Institute wants liberal states like Vermont to be able to secede peacefully. [snip]

Has anybody information on where all these “right-wing courts are? Secondly, Just how far bent to the left could the Middlebury Institute want in a court. How about a Star Chamber to clear up non-PC utterances and what, expunge rampant hate crime?

Flag of the Second Vermont Republic

Motto: “Vermont, we have maple syrup and omelets.”

If allowed to go their own way, New Englanders “probably would allow abortion and have gun control,” Hill said, while Southerners “would probably crack down on illegal immigration harder than it is being now.”

The U.S. Constitution does not explicitly prohibit secession, but few people think it is politically viable.

Vermont, one of the nation’s most liberal states, has become a hotbed for liberal secessionists, a fringe movement that gained new traction because of the Iraq war, rising oil prices and the formation of several pro-secession groups.

After secession, Vermont’s GNP will exceed only North Korea’s manufacturing excesses. As of now they cannot keep college grads here and business expansion will consist of Macramé and candle shoppes festooned with gingerbread gewgaws.

To these characters, running a business consists of running it into the ground. Then the elite will request the UN to send them rice and automatic weapons.

Thomas Naylor, the founder of one of those groups, the Second Vermont Republic, said the friendly relationship with the League of the South doesn’t mean everyone shares all the same beliefs. [snip]

The first North American Separatist Convention was held last fall in Vermont, which, unlike most Southern states, supports civil unions. Voters there elected a socialist to the U.S. Senate. [snip]

Yeah, between that embarrassment and the other bozo in the senate, a new state motto is needed. Perhaps, “Vermont, we’re all dysfunctional here.”

A charmingly lucid methodology to a significant problem, this should surpass the moonbat EU members before long, dispersing wisdom like pixie dust on the wind, leaving them broached like dead whales.

Switzerland: Europe’s heart of darkness?

Switzerland is known as a haven of peace and neutrality. But today it is home to a new extremism that has alarmed the United Nations. Proposals for draconian new laws that target the country’s immigrants have been condemned as unjust and racist. A poster campaign, the work of its leading political party, is decried as xenophobic. Has Switzerland become Europe’s heart of darkness? By Paul Vallely
At first sight, the poster looks like an innocent children’s cartoon. Three white sheep stand beside a black sheep. The drawing makes it looks as though the animals are smiling. But then you notice that the three white beasts are standing on the Swiss flag. One of the white sheep is kicking the black one off the flag, with a crafty flick of its back legs.
The poster is, according to the United Nations, the sinister symbol of the rise of a new racism and xenophobia in the heart of one of the world’s oldest independent democracies.

A worrying new extremism is on the rise. For the poster – which bears the slogan “For More Security” – is not the work of a fringe neo-Nazi group. It has been conceived – and plastered on to billboards, into newspapers and posted to every home in a direct mailshot – by the Swiss People’s Party (the Schweizerische Volkspartei or SVP) which has the largest number of seats in the Swiss parliament and is a member of the country’s coalition government.

With a general election due next month, it has launched a twofold campaign which has caused the UN’s special rapporteur on racism to ask for an official explanation from the government. The party has launched a campaign to raise the 100,000 signatures necessary to force a referendum to reintroduce into the penal code a measure to allow judges to deport foreigners who commit serious crimes once they have served their jail sentence.

But far more dramatically, it has announced its intention to lay before parliament a law allowing the entire family of a criminal under the age of 18 to be deported as soon as sentence is passed.

It will be the first such law in Europe since the Nazi practice of Sippenhaft – kin liability – whereby relatives of criminals were held responsible for their crimes and punished equally.

The proposal will be a test case not just for Switzerland but for the whole of Europe, where a division between liberal multiculturalism and a conservative isolationism is opening up in political discourse in many countries, the UK included. [snip]

Dr Schlüer is a small affable man. But if he speaks softly he wields a big stick. The statistics are clear, he said, foreigners are four times more likely to commit crimes than Swiss nationals. “In a suburb of Zürich, a group of youths between 14 and 18 recently raped a 13-year-old girl,” he said. “It turned out that all of them were already under investigation for some previous offence. They were all foreigners from the Balkans or Turkey. Their parents said these boys are out of control. We say: ‘That’s not acceptable. It’s your job to control them and if you can’t do that you’ll have to leave’. It’s a punishment everyone understands.” [snip]

What an agreeably cogent approach to parenting and crime control this is.

And it is all so worrying to human rights campaigners that the UN special rapporteur on racism, Doudou Diène, warned earlier this year that a “racist and xenophobic dynamic” which used to be the province of the far right is now becoming a regular part of the democratic system in Switzerland.

Dr Schlüer shrugged. “He’s from Senegal where they have a lot of problems of their own which need to be solved. I don’t know why he comes here instead of getting on with that.”

Such remarks only confirm the opinions of his opponents. Mario Fehr is a Social Democrat MP for the Zürich area. He says: “Deporting people who have committed no crime is not just unjust and inhumane, it’s stupid. Three quarters of the Swiss people think that foreigners who work here are helping the economy. We have a lot of qualified workers – IT specialists, doctors, dentists.” To get rid of foreigners, which opponents suspect is the SVP’s real agenda, “would be an economic disaster”.

Here’s the usual liberal drek, a leap from the logical Particular to the Universal where every foreigner is frogmarched out of the country. Sounds suspiciously like our own brand of loons. With the left, there is only all, no terms used like some, few or most.

Dr Schlüer insists the SVP is not against all foreigners. “Until war broke out in the Balkans, we had some good workers who came from Yugoslavia. [snip]

The abuse of social security is a key problem. It’s estimated to cost £750m a year. More than 50 per cent of it is by foreigners.”

Does this not sound familiar? This is happening in our own social programs.

There is no disguising his suspicion of Islam. He has alarmed many of Switzerland’s Muslims (some 4.3 per cent of the 7.5 million population) with his campaign to ban the minaret. “We’re not against mosques but the minaret is not mentioned in the Koran or other important Islamic texts. It just symbolises a place where Islamic law is established.” And Islamic law, he says, is incompatible with Switzerland’s legal system.

Islamic law (Shari’a) is incompatible with any democratic form of law, no exceptions.

To date there are only two mosques in the country with minarets but planners are turning down applications for more, after opinion polls showed almost half the population favours a ban. What is at stake here in Switzerland…is a clash that goes to the heart of an identity crisis…of a globalised economy, increased immigration flows, the rise of Islam as an international force and the terrorism of 9/11. Switzerland only illustrates it more graphically than elsewhere. [snip]

He is fiercely proud of his nation’s independence, which can be traced back to a defensive alliance of cantons in 1291. He is a staunch defender of its policy of armed neutrality, under which Switzerland has no standing army but all young men are trained and on standby; they call it the porcupine approach – with millions of individuals ready to stiffen like spines if the nation is threatened. [snip] The transfer of power from the commune to Brussels would seriously change things for the ordinary Swiss citizen.”

Switzerland has the toughest naturalisation rules in Europe. To apply, you must live in the country legally for at least 12 years, pay taxes, and have no criminal record. The application can still be turned down by your local commune which meets to ask “Can you speak German? Do you work? Are you integrated with Swiss people?”

It can also ask, as one commune did of 23-year-old Fatma Karademir – who was born in Switzerland but who under Swiss law is Turkish like her parents – if she knew the words of the Swiss national anthem, if she could imagine marrying a Swiss boy and who she would support if the Swiss football team played Turkey. “Those kinds of questions are outside the law,” says Mario Fehr. “But in some more remote villages you have a problem if you’re from ex-Yugoslavia.”

The federal government in Berne wants to take the decision out of the hands of local communities, one of which only gave the vote to women as recently as 1990. But the government’s proposals have twice been defeated in referendums.

The big unspoken fact here is how a citizen is to be defined. “When a Swiss woman who has emigrated to Canada has a baby, that child automatically gets citizenship,” Dr Schlüer says. But in what sense is a boy born in Canada, who may be brought up with an entirely different world view and set of values, more Swiss than someone like Fatma Karademir who has never lived anywhere but Switzerland?

The truth is that at the heart of the Swiss People’s Party’s vision is a visceral notion of kinship, breeding and blood that liberals would like to think sits very much at odds with the received wisdom of most of the Western world. It is what lies behind the SVP’s fear of even moderate Islam. It has warned that because of their higher birth rates Muslims would eventually become a majority in Switzerland if the citizenship rules were eased. It is what lies behind his fierce support for the militia system. [snip]

The drama which is being played out in such direct politically incorrect language in Switzerland is one which has repercussions all across Europe, and wider.

Neutrality and nationality
* Switzerland has four national languages – German, Italian, French and Romansh. Most Swiss residents speak German as their first language.

* Switzerland’s population has grown from 1.7 million in 1815 to 7.5 million in 2006. The population has risen by 750,000 since 1990.

* Swiss nationality law demands that candidates for Swiss naturalisation spend a minimum of years of permanent, legal residence in Switzerland, and gain fluency in one of the national languages.

* More than 20 per cent of the Swiss population, and 25 per cent of its workforce, is non-naturalised.

* At the end of 2006, 5,888 people were interned in Swiss prisons. 31 per cent were Swiss citizens – 69 per cent were foreigners or asylum-seekers.

* The number of unauthorised migrant workers currently employed is estimated at 100,000.

Sippenhaft or Sippenhaftung-Liberals ought to love this concept:

It should be noted that other totalitarian regimes have used similar practices, even if they have not codified them in law. During Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge of the 1930s many thousands of people were arrested and executed or sent to labour camps as “relatives of the enemies of the people.” One well-known example was Anna Larina, wife of Nikolai Bukharin. Similar practices took place in the People’s Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. A prominent example is Deng Pufang, son of Deng Xiaoping. They also take place currently in North Korea.

How diplomacy really, really works.

VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog director said on Friday he and Iran’s chief negotiator had agreed to draw up an “plan of action” within two months on how to resolve questions about Iran’s disputed nuclear program.

International Atomic Energy Agency director Mohamed ElBaradei said he hoped the stalemate of the last weeks could be broken and described the two-hour meeting with Ali Larijani as “quite satisfying”.

Yet while Larijani also spoke of “good progress”, they reported no breakthrough in the core dispute — Iran’s defiance of U.N. demands to stop uranium enrichment. [snip]

Tehran has said the U.N. Security Council must first return authority over its file to the Vienna-based IAEA, which would end sanctions pressure — a non-starter for Western powers.

Instead of freezing all enrichment-related activity, as the Security Council has demanded, Iran has accelerated the program and says it has passed the point of no return.

“When the world saw that the (Iranian) nation is pursuing this goal with unity, the world surrendered,” Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi was quoted by ISNA news agency as saying on Friday. “We have passed the dangerous moment.” [snip]

Iran has about 2,000 centrifuges installed as of early June, most of them enriching uranium and others undergoing test “dry runs” without uranium in them, but is likely to reach the 3,000 threshold by the end of July, diplomats have said.

Three thousand could produce material for one bomb within a year if run non-stop at supersonic speed. [snip]

We have no idea what China and North Korea are shipping to Iran; enriched uranium to speed up building a bomb(s) or machined casings. Perhaps the trigger assembly or tritium (H₃) to boost the output shipped in without anyone knowing.

Iran promises 100 kg of enriched uranium before talks resume. Meanwhile, the moonbats believe talking will convince the Irani powers to halt. Right.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An asteroid may come uncomfortably close to Earth in 2036 and the United Nations should assume responsibility for a space mission to deflect it, a group of astronauts, engineers and scientists said on Saturday.

Astronomers are monitoring an asteroid named Apophis, which has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking Earth on April 13, 2036. [snip]

Wouldn’t it be great if the UN had these odds of solving Darfur, Iran, North Korea, the Moros in the Philippines or Bosnia.

“It’s not just Apophis we’re looking at. Every country is at risk. We need a set of general principles to deal with this issue,” Schweickart, a member of the Apollo 9 crew that orbited the earth in March 1969, told an American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in San Francisco. [snip]

Schweickart wants to see the United Nations adopt procedures for assessing asteroid threats and deciding if and when to take action. [snip]

Perhaps lofting the entire UN complex on an intercept trajectory might deflect the asteroid; at the minimum, it would solve the problem of the UN. On second thought, make it a manned mission.

Anyway, go here for great photos, much information on space and of course lots of data on NEA’s (Near Earth Asteroids with dates, sizes and distances)

The media is hailing it as a “landmark” deal, but it’s no different than the first deal the North Koreans broke with the Clinton administration. I’m not all that excited about being blackmailed by a regime we know can’t be trusted. And what message are we sending to the Iranians and other nations with WMD or nuclear ambitions? All this deal does is buy time. If the North Korean don’t come back for another $300 million or more in “support”, then the Iranians or some other rogue state will. The only potential bright spot is the administration has more time to get the missile shield operational because blackmailers rarely stay bought for long.

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has relied on the wise leadership of Kim Jong-il to make sure there have been no outbreaks of AIDS in the reclusive country, its official media reported on Friday.

North Korean media, which often gives glowing reports of Kim offering expert guidance on subjects as varied as cobbling shoes, firing howitzers and irrigating fields, said its Dear Leader has been deeply concerned about AIDS.

“Under the wise guidance of leader Kim Jong-il, the DPRK (North Korea) established the strategy of prevention and control of AIDS with orderly systems of its information, prognostication and watch, and examination across the country,” an official newspaper said.

“On this basis, measures have been taken not to allow a single AIDS case,” Minju Josun said in a report carried on the English-language KCNA news agency.

UNAIDS said it has no definitive data on AIDS in North Korea, one of the world’s most secretive states.

The U.N. program estimated that by 2002 fewer than 100 cases of HIV infection had occurred in the country of just over 22 million.

Given the left’s love for dictatorial governance, this news should cause a stampede to the airports.
Imagine, all the dissolute lifestyles with out any attendant health strictures. This great medical break through can only occur once in a century.
I expect Kim Jong-il will welcome the afflicted; he probably will set up an educational program to instruct them on proper sanitary practices.
In a country of 22 million, having fewer than 100 cases of AIDS, it is worth moving to this Brigadoon.

Hurry.

A wave of the chuck’s tail to Drudge

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi would bring to the office a level of left-wing liberalism that will be unprecedented. In the National Journal’s 2005 ideological ratings, which were based on scores of votes, Mrs. Pelosi was ranked more liberal than 91 percent of her House colleagues on economic issues, 96 percent on social matters and 82 percent on foreign-policy issues. Here are her relative rankings (economic, social, foreign) for 2004 (93, 88, 81), 2003 (92, 89, 70), 2002 (88, 84, 90) and 2001 (94, 83, 93).
[snip]

Over the years, Mrs. Pelosi has consistently voted against welfare reform, including the 1996 bill signed by President Clinton and its re-authorization. In 1998, she opposed a constitutional amendment to permit school prayer in the classroom. In 1999, she opposed allowing state and local governments to display the Ten Commandments on public property, including schools. She has voted against education IRAs. In 2003, she opposed a $10 million program for school vouchers in the District of Columbia. That same year she voted against the 10-year $400 billion Medicare prescription-drug bill because she preferred one that was twice as expensive. Mrs. Pelosi has repeatedly voted for tax increases and opposed tax cuts, even the 2001 bill that doubled the child tax credit to $1,000, among other cuts.

As the United States has become increasingly dependent on foreign sources for oil, Mrs. Pelosi has always opposed drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In recent years, she has become protectionist — leading the opposition in 2000 against then-President Clinton’s successful effort to establish permanent normal trade relations with China. She also opposed giving Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush trade-promotion authority; and in 2005 she voted against the Central American Free Trade Agreement. In 2004, she voted to end Radio Marti broadcasts to Cuba. She voted to reduce funds for the B-2 intercontinental bomber, which performed superbly in the 1999 Kosovo War, in 2001 in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Mrs. Pelosi has repeatedly opposed anti-missile defense, even as a nuclear-armed North Korea has tested ballistic missiles.

Only one question remains, on whose side is she?

China finally delivered the message to North Korea. Maybe they just got tired of dealing with it or perhaps the thought of a nuclear Japan and South Korea wasn’t all that appealing. But whatever moved them to action; it elicited a swift and contrite response from Kim Jong Il who is willing to come back to the negotiating table now.

It also confirms what we knew all along—the Chinese have a lot of influence over North Korean. We just need them to keep the pressure up and North Korea inline.

The detonation in North Korea was a nuclear weapon. Negroponte confirmed this today, 10/16/06. However, he said it was a small device, about a kiloton, equivalent to 1000 pounds of TNT.

It’s not a city buster; thank God for small favors, right? Probably it’s no bigger than a suitcase. What a relief. We’re safe, the borders are secure, and the Congress did its work.

They sure did!

Try not to let this ruin your faith in the UN, but the resolution punishing North Korea is useless. South Korea continues to work on joint economic projects with the North, and China has no intention of inspecting cross-border shipments. So if North Korea’s neighbors aren’t concerned about the nuclear threat, why should we?

The way ahead is clear now. First, withdraw our troops from South Korea. They want closer ties with the North so our troops serve no purpose. Our presence there is really a vestige of Cold War containment policy, and the South clearly signaled they no longer support us.

Next, move our troops to Japan. The Japanese are the only responsible regional power. They understand the danger and strengthening our ties with them is an important hedge against China’s growing influence. I’d also sign a nuclear technology transfer similar to the one we signed with India to strengthen their own defensive posture.

Last, I’d completely withdraw from any negotiations with North Korea. China and South Korea’s lack of concern is a clear signal that we don’t need to be involved. And since our troops are going to be based in Japan now, we remove a “threat” to North Korea allowing us to more effectively wash our hands of the situation.

This tree needs shaking, but I doubt we have the intestinal fortitude to take the steps necessary to change how this game is being played. It’s really simple—work with the people who want to work with you and let those who don’t figure it out themselves.

You have to wonder how long failures in US intelligence are going to be tolerated.  In fairness, predicting North Korea’s erratic actions is difficult.  Flip a coin on whether the North Koreans will launch a long-range Taepodong-2 or not because your odds of getting it right are just as good.  But failure to properly assess their nuclear capabilities is a disaster.  If the intelligence community was telling President Bush the North Koreans were incapable of producing a nuclear weapon and didn’t have the facilities for a test, it’s time to rip this community apart and start over.

The White House appears to have embraced Cold War era containment to deal with nations like Iran and North Korea. Gone is the axis of evil. Forget about spreading freedom and justice. Realpolitik is the new currency of this White House when it comes to international affairs.

But can containment work in the modern world? It’s highly unlikely. The Cold War allies shared a common ideology that allowed them to address problems in a united manner. Does China, Russia, or even Europe share our values? The fallacious notion a containment policy can be implemented is already sunk by Russia and China’s opposition to stiff North Korean sanctions. Good luck getting an oil hungry China to do anything significant to Iran.

If the White House wants realpolitik, try recognizing the people you are consulting as friends really aren’t. Welcome to Clinton redux when it comes to US foreign policy.

The North Korean’s certainly know how to raise the ante:

“If the U.S. keeps pestering us and increases pressure, we will regard it as a declaration of war and will take a series of physical corresponding measures,” the North’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Everyone agrees the North Koreans are unpredictable, but would they really attack us? For that matter, do they have a delivery mechanism capable of reaching us? The threat of North Korea attacking us is the least of our concerns really. Proliferation is the real problem here.

Their nuclear weapons and technology are valuable commodities. As one of the world’s poorest and most reckless nations, selling the technology and finished products must be a very tempting idea. What if their weapons test was primarily a message to buyers that the bombs and technology work and not a negotiation tactic aimed at the international community?

If our only answer is sending this to the UN for endless debate, we are in real trouble. These weapons will proliferate to terrorists and more nations in search of blackmail money. How will we respond when nuking us over “offensive” cartoons is the preferred option instead of rioting in their own countries?