Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
My , my Mr. Karl Marx what language!!!! I know that Kim is one of the world's biggest jerks who is playing with nukes as though they are toy guns. But , you greatly underestimate him. He is bloody well shrewd and crafty and the ole bugger knows how to screw the U.S in Asia. He does what he says and that what makes everyone in the world so uneasy.
Akshay
This is all about China. Make no mistake. diplomatic and media sound bites aside, NK is behaving exactly as China wants. It is in China's perceived self-interest to preserve the status quo on the Korean Peninsula. That is: China wants a NK that is dependent (so that China maintains its leverage), weak (so that it cannot break away from China's influence), and dangerously armed (so that it can resist the US). China abhors the idea of a reunified Korea. It does not want another powerful economic and military competitor, like Japan or Taiwan, on its NE border; a rival that would allow US troops near the Yule River (the border between NK and China). Above all, China seeks to constrain and reduce American power in NE Asia. This is the key to understanding Chinese foreign policy regarding NK nukes. China's protestations in the media concerning NK behavior were disingenuous in the extreme, and designed primarily for propaganda and image purposes with its Asian neighbors, and especially the United States. And the propaganda has been largely successful. There is no underestimating the stupidity of the American media, much of which is concerned with blaming Bush for the NK nuke show. Be quite clear: there is no question that China could have prevented NK from detonating the nuke. It is time to teach China that there are some ramifications for this duplicity. Is it time for an American naval base on Taiwan? A nuclear armed Japan? A naval blockade of NK? A no-fly zone over NK air-space? Or should we simply let China get away with it?He's playing a dangerous game, and if he keeps it up, even China will want to see him go.
It's starting to look like the bomb, like Beloved Leader himself, was a dud. Or more likely, a total fraud (just like Beloved Leader!).
The July 4th fireworks in downtown Endicott registers a higher Richter rating than his so called "nuclear bomb".
I think that Beloved Leader's preoccupation with the bomb is to make up for his personal deficiencies. Since he's short, I'm sure he's not very big (if you know what I mean) and probably, once in the sack he's like his nuclear bomb... well short of a kiloton, in fact, not even a firecracker's worth.
Yep, Kim Jong Il is one reason Viagra was invented. Too bad they haven't come up with a pill to give the little butt fuck a personality, too. He can't make a date with a lady without pointing a gun to her head first.
Yes sir, good ol Kim Jong Il, the nerdiest looking tyrant the world has ever seen. He makes Bill Gates look like Carey Grant. I mean, look at him! That beady eyed menace looks more like an owl with an Afro than a ruthless dictator. Honestly ladies, unless you're a woodchuck or a squirrel, would you want to copulate with him? And if you did, you'd have to donate your babies to the National Institute of Ugliness!!!!
If it weren't for the fact that his father just happened to be the ruler of the country before him, Kim Jong Il would now be one of those sad cases that you see from time to time. If he weren't Kim Sr's kid, he'd probably still be living in his mother's basement, playing video games, smoking pot and calling dial-a-fantasy. And the closest he'd ever get to a manage a trois would be him, his right hand, then his left.
He'd probably have a job cleaning toilets with that hair of his... and since he's a shit head anyway, he'd be a natural.
Has it become obvious the little douche bag pisses me off?
So there, you yellow dog capitalist swine!
So apparently you would negotiate with murderers. You would negotiate with a criminal regime that has killed tens of thousands (if not millions) of its own citizens through terror and starvation so that it could remain in control. Bully, is the left that dysfunctional, that afraid, that immoral? Or is it just that uninformed? NK wants official recognition and security guarantees from America. Would you have given a security guarantee to Pol Pot? Well then why would you give one to Jong II? You do not negotiate with evil, you destroy it. Does not the left understand this? Any President that does a security guarantee deal with the gang of killers in Pyongyang will be justly condemned by history.It's just the payoff of Chimpy and Co's "Paris Hilton School of Diplomacy" tactics. "I don't like them, so I'm not going to talk to them. I'll talk with my friends and ignore them."
It's just another foreign policy failure brought to us by the geniuses at Chimpy and Co. Of course, if they're setting up threats to frighten the electorate with....Nah...They can barely manage not to screw up a one car funeral, let alone something that twisted and convoluted.
So apparently you would negotiate with murderers. You would negotiate with a criminal regime that has killed tens of thousands (if not millions) of its own citizens through terror and starvation so that it could remain in control. Bully, is the left that dysfunctional, that afraid, that immoral? Or is it just that unimformed? NK wants official recognition and security guarantees from America. Would you have given a security guarantee to Pol Pot? Well then why would you give one to Jong II? You do not negotiate with evil, you destroy it. Does not the left understand this? Any President that does a security guarantee deal with the gang of killers in Pyongyang will be justly condemned by history.
10/10/2006
More thoughts on NoKo: Time to hermetically seal the Hermit Kingdom
Filed under:
* General
site admin @ 2:15 pm
North Koreas nuclear test is a policy failure for everyone.South Korea has failed. South Koreas sunshine policy has been called appeasement, but there was more to it than that frightened pay-off. North Korea has 23 million people, South Korea almost 49 million. In 1990 West Germany had roughly 65 million people when it began to absorb East Germanys 17 million. 16 years later, Federal Germany has not quite digested the East. Compared to North Korea an artifact of the agricultural revolution now possessing nuclear weapons East Germany was Beverly Hills. South Koreas absorption of North Korea might take four decades; it would certainly entail a huge sacrifice by the South Koreans, in GDP and in their individual economic expectations. The sunshine policy sought to nudge North Korea toward long term development.
But it didnt work because North Koreas leaders are paranoid criminals who care about their regime, not their country.
Japan has failed. Until Kims July missile volley, in regards to North Korea Japan pursued a policy of public quiescence and private uneasiness. Japans leaders know Japanese rearmament will set off political alarums in Asia. Japan, I think, has intended to expand its military capabilities, but do so slowly, so it minimized political reactions. North Korea has forced Japans hand.
China has failed. North Koreas July missile volley embarrassed China. Chinese security specialist Shen Dingli said last week that North Korea considers its national interests (in acquiring nuclear weapons) to be greater than its relations with China. In Shens words, Chinas diplomacy has also been a failure.
Kims nuke test publicly exposes Chinas failure a major powers failure on its own border.
No one likes to lose face, but face is particularly important in North Asian social relationships and diplomacy. China has lost face once again.
Likewise US diplomacy, aimed at ending North Koreas emerging nuclear threat, has failed. The Clinton Administration attempted to buy the nukes with economic carrots, the Bush Administration (with its six-nation talks) tried to pry the nukes loose using a diplomatic squeeze. Neither gambit worked, because both strategies to be effective relied on steady Chinese cooperation. And that has not (yet) occurred.
Of course the biggest failure is North Korea.
While North Korea starves and slips deeper into poverty, South Korea has become a world-class economic and political success. South Korean diplomat Ban Ki-moon has just been nominated to serve as UN Secretary-Generaland dont underestimate Kims dismay. Mr. Ban will have a global podium. Every time Kim sees Mr. Ban his Dear Leader ego will take a hit. Secretary-General Ban sends the message that South Korea is a leader, North Korea a criminal rogue which meets day to day expenses by counterfeiting cash and smuggling drugs.
The nuke test appears to have galvanized Chinasuggesting it may politically and economically boomerang on Pyongyang.
Its time for China to make a choice to defend the wealth-producing global system that is modernizing China or continue to propo up a nuclear-armed failed state that ultimately threatens Chinese economic health.China needs to propose a land and maritime embargo of North Korea, one that hermetically seals the Hermit Kingdoms borders. And then help enforce it.
Claudia Rosett
October 9, 2006 12:29 AM
Expel North Korea
From the Kofi Annan Handshake Collection: This one with North Korea's Choe Su Hon Reuters, 2005
Well, here we are. North Korea says it has conducted a nuclear test. The moment is nigh for the United Nations to follow through on its threat to retaliate with unspecified action.
In the UN arsenal of inanities, that could of course mean anything from the Security Council expressing deep concern to the World Food Progam doubling its 2006 allocation of $102 million worth of aid on Kim Jong Ils terms for transitional assistance.
But seriously, if the UN has any interest whatsoever in addressing the clear and present danger of a nuclear-bomb-brandishing North Korea, there is something the UN could do, pronto. It could expel North Korea. That might not solve the long-festering problem of a totalitarian state that to this day runs a Stalin-style gulag, peddles missiles, narcotics and counterfeit currency, and has starved to death at least one million of its own people and staked its fortunes on a nuclear arsenal. But kicking North Korea out of the UN would at least provide the sort of minimal diplomatic gesture of which the UN is presumably capable. And for those inside North Korea who harbor well-founded doubts about the wisdom of their sociopathic Dear Leader and his murderous retinue, such a move would almost certainly come as valuable encouragement.
The UN charter, Chapter II, on membership, spells out in Article 4 that seats are open to peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present charter, and adds in Article 6 that A member of the United Nations which has persistently violated the Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the Organization by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.
Recall that North Korea was admitted to the UN only relatively recently, on the same day as South Korea Sept. 17, 1991 in one of those politically-morally-idiotically neutral gestures that have become a trademark of UN policy. Since then, North Koreas regime has cheated on its nuclear freeze deals, sopped up free fuel and food from the Free World, and set the pace for nuclear-extortion rackets which rogue nations are eyeing with glee, and Iran has clearly embraced.
What has the UN contributed to all this? Money and prestige for Kim Jong-Il; a seat as a member of Im not kidding the UN Conference on Disarmament; and a General Assembly stage upon which Kims reprentative, Choe Su Hon, had a chance just last month to strut, fret, and luxuriate in UN membership, along with such notables as Irans Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelas Hugo Chavez. By now, as North Koreas regime celebrates its first declared nuclear test, the very least the UN could do is yank the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea placard from its place in the General Assembly hall, revoke all DPRK passes for the UN grounds, and tell Kim and his representative excellencies to get out.
I think the Clinton deal was for reactors and commodities. Carter and Clinton tried to flat-out bribe NK. In all fairness, I have not see it written that Clinton offered a security guarantee to the NK criminals. But who knows what the peanut farmer said to Jong II behind closed doors in Pyongyang. Regardless, Carter got played, big time. And Clinton was naive enough to believe that Carter knew what he was doing.HEYYYYY! Is that a back handed insult to the Clinton administration whose negotiations proved to be a failure in the long (and short) run????
I see this kind of stuff in print all over and I am not buying. I do not believe that China seriously tried to stop the NK nuke test. They did not use, or even threaten to use, any of their economic leverage over NK. Was that the behavior of a country that wanted to "save face" and urgently prevent the test? Obviously not. A nuclear NK guarantees that Korean reunification will be a very long time coming, and that is what China preceives is in its self-interest. Rather, I believe the Korean (actual Koreans) who appeared on Charlie Rose last night accusing China of sabotaging efforts to block the nuke test because they want to preserve the status quo and constrain American power in NE Asia. All the rest is just masterful Chinese propaganda.China has failed. North Koreas July missile volley embarrassed China. Chinese security specialist Shen Dingli said last week that North Korea considers its national interests (in acquiring nuclear weapons) to be greater than its relations with China. In Shens words, Chinas diplomacy has also been a failure.
Kims nuke test publicly exposes Chinas failure a major powers failure on its own border.
I see this kind of stuff in print all over and I am not buying. I do not believe that China seriously tried to stop the NK nuke test. They did not use, or even threaten to use, any of their economic leverage over NK. Was that the behavior of a country that wanted to "save face" and urgently prevent the test? Obviously not. A nuclear NK guarantees that Korean reunification will be a very long time coming, and that is what China preceives is in its self-interest. Rather, I believe the Korean (actual Koreans) who appeared on Charlie Rose last night accusing China of sabotaging efforts to block the nuke test because they want to preserve the status quo and constraint American power in NE Asia. All the rest is just masterful Chinese propaganda.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Not Atomic [Michael Yon]
A very well-placed government source told me Tuesday afternoon that the North Korean explosion was non-nuclear. The explosion may have been an actual nuclear test this is unknown but the source reports the outcome was non-nuclear. The source stressed the importance of bearing in mind that though the explosion occured in North Korea if it was actually a test and not merely a dictator clamoring for attention and influence the test may have been by or for the Iranians. The source reported that American physicists with access to the information see no sign of nuclear activity, however. My source also mentioned that Japanese sensors picked up no radiation signatures.
This further confirms some of what Bill Gertz reported in the Washington Times this morning.
Posted at 4:35 PM
Japan Emerges
by Arthur Waldron, Ph.D
Published on March 31st, 2005
LOOKING FORWARD
Though not widely noticed in the media, the now unmistakable determination by Japan to take seriously her own and regional security is easily the most consequential recent development in Asia, the repercussions of which are only beginning to be detected.
While traders have dismissed Japans over-leveraged and slow-growing economy in favor of the China boom, and diplomats taken a parallel approach to her political role, things have been changing in the island nation. To begin with, the fifty years of low profile diplomacy, official pacifism, and tendency to trust the United States to take care of her, no matter what, would appear to be behind us.
Several factors are at work here. One is simply the natural, demographically-driven emergence of Japan from the shadow of World War II. Another is the growing evidence that, as with treasury bills, so with alliances and promises of military support, the United States is becoming over extended, having issued far more than she can comfortably redeem. Finally comes the security situation in Asia itself, which is growing more uncertain, owing primarily to North Korean missile and nuclear weapon development and Chinas clear intent to become the major regional military power.
Japans security policy until recently has been similar to that she followed after the grand bargains struck at the Washington Conference of 1921-22, in which China came to the international table for the first time as a full equal and saw her territorial grievances, notably in Shandong, remedied, the presumption being that she had now become a fully-fledged and responsible international player, while at the same time Japan was forced to abandon her bilateral alliance with Britain, in return for promises of consultation among the Powers should conflict emerge, and multilateral security (i.e. everyone agrees to protect everyone else) in place of the tangible tie to London. Japan then planned for peace guaranteed by a concert of Asia.
Of course things did not work out as planned: within ten years of the end of the Conference (to this date still the most comprehensive and thorough attempt to deal with Asian issues) Japanese troops had occupied Manchuria and were menacing China. The outbreak of the full Pacific War, ended only with nuclear weapons, was only five years away.
Something had gone terribly wrong; something that should be noted very well today. Some historians have argued that blame for Japans new aggressive policies was to be found in internal developments: hunger, economic down turn, autocracy, eventually the Japanese version of fascisman argument that, whatever its merits for explaining the 1920s and 1930s is clearly irrelevant to the solidly constitutional Japan of today. So perhaps we should listen to other historians, less well known than those who concentrate on Japanese domestic history, stressing instead a series of completely unexpected developments in the region that even the most liberal Japanese leaders saw as threatening to their countrys security.
Most important of these was a strong but erratically guided rise of Chinese power that saw that countrys government, goading and reacting to the resentments of her people, flout many of the undertakings she had made at Washington. Almost simultaneously came political splits and then civil wars in a China that at the time of the Conference had seemed politically stable and set on a course of peaceful economic development. These wars threatened continental interests that Tokyo considered vital, and when the allies who had promised at Washington to consult on such threats and act to protect legitimate interests failed to do so, Japan attempted to do so herselfin a catastrophic way that saw both democracy and millions of Japanese people perish.
One element of a parallel to these developments is already in place. North Koreas nuclear capability has deeply unsettled Japan, which has every reason to question whether the missile defense system that seems to be Washingtons answer to this offensive threat will in fact ever work well enough to make Japan genuinely secureas well as to wonder whether, if defense does not work, Washington will really be willing to fight a nuclear war with North Korea to save Japan. Japanese regularly affirm their complete confidence in the alliance and in American extended deterrence. This particular American has his doubts.
China too is increasingly attracting attention in Tokyo. Several months ago one of Beijings nuclear submarines made a long cruise through Japanese territorial waters, failing to surface and fly her flag as international usages require. Of course Japans highly skilled anti-submarine forces tracked the craft every inch of the way, through the Japanese island chain that stretches more than a thousand miles to the south of the main Japanese islands. The Chinese submarine returned to base as its trip was hailed in the Chinese press as a vivid demonstration of Beijings formidable new power.
In Japan, however, actions spoke louder than words. Tokyo announced that it was taking formal charge of the Senkaku islands, a little more than sixty miles northeast of Taiwan, which the Chinese (and the Taiwanese) have long claimed as well, calling them Diaoyutai. Plans were announced to develop bases in the island chain, and amphibious and rapid-deployment forces, as well as modest garrisons, to protect them.
What these decisions meant in practice was that any Chinese naval forces wishing to reach the open sea from their coast, would now have to pass through a thousand mile long Japanese-controlled barrier, or else seek to exit through the narrow waters between Japan and Korea, and Japan and Russia, to the north, or Taiwan and the Philippines to the south. Some Chinese admirals understood this, and pointed out with respect to Taiwan only if that island were in Chinese hands, and a Chinese navy based on that islands east coast, where waters are extremely deep and favorable to submarine operations, would it be realistically possible for Beijing to carry out the genuine blue water operations to which she aspires. Otherwise her access to the Pacific is potentially but effectively blocked.
But Japans security interests would be gravely compromised were China to possess Taiwan as a naval base. Since China could obtain that only by force, Tokyo for the first time explicitly stated that she shared Washingtons interest in a peaceful solution to the Taiwan Strait standoff.
Were China genuinely sagacious about her interests and diplomacy, she would never have allowed relations with Japan to deteriorate to this degree. For half a century after World War II Beijing had the best of all imaginable Japans: pacifistic, friendly, aid-giving. Now that Japan has been made to vanish, primarily by needless and symbolic Chinese belligerencean error of Beijings diplomacy comparable in magnitude of potential damage only to her two other greatest and most damaging mistakes: namely, her failure to make terms with the United States in 1949, despite Ambassador Leighton Stuarts clear remit to do just that, which brought decades of hostility and (in China) economic decay, and the antagonizing of India, a would-be friend under Nehru, through the border war of 1962 and subsequent action, which helped call into being a militarily and nuclear capable potential great power right where China needed one least: on her vulnerable southwest frontier, flanking territories inhabited by ethnically non-Chinese peoples. As realist theorists of international relations would predict, a loose, balancing coalition is beginning to emerge.
It is too late for China to prevent the entente from emerging of Tokyo and Washington, joined with other neighbors, an entente that checkmates Chinas more ambitious plans for military hegemonynot a bad thing, not least for China, as what she needs most is internal peace, development and reform, in which she has made great progress over the past several decades, yet which would all perish utterly in case of real conflict.
The question is whether China will change course, and seek genuine trust and friendship with her neighbors, Japan above all. The signals are mixed. Some Chinese writers on foreign affairs understand exactly what must be done. But in China itself, the bloody shirt of Japanese atrocities in World War II (real and atrocious) is proving an irresistible political rallying flag. For example, anti-Japanese demonstrations and flag burnings are spreading in China, while Beijing is reportedly orchestrating a campaign to deny Japan her well-deserved permanent seat on the UN Security Council. This will win no friends in Tokyo, where China needs them.
If this sort of counterproductive approach takes command, then we can expect rising tension in the region, and strains on the United States, the traditional guarantor of the Asian balance of power, but now preoccupied (perhaps for many more years), with Iraq and the Middle East. Without the United States or another balancer, the region will have to find its own equilibriumsomething it has never been able to do since the nineteenth century, regularly slipping into conflict instead.
We must bear in mind that the reason todays Japan is not a military super power bristling with nuclear missiles and commanding powerful fleets of submarines and aircraft carriers is not that she is incapable of developing such technology: at the time of Pearl Harbor, it should be recalled, the Japanese Zero was a far better fighter plane than anything the United States possessed. Rather Japan, with the lesson of World War II and the counsel, even before that war, of some of her leading politicians, has since 1945 chosen not to seek military power and to rely instead on international mechanisms, alliances, and diplomacy. Should that decision be changed, the likelihood is that Japanese military technology and power would soon outstrip any regional rivals.
TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea appears to have conducted another nuclear test, Japanese national broadcaster NHK said on Wednesday.
Japanese government sources had information that there was a tremor in North Korea this morning and they were checking on the possibility of a nuclear test, NHK said.
Defying warnings from its neighbors, the United States and the U.N. Security Council, North Korea announced on Monday that it had conducted its first-ever nuclear test. Pyongyang had earlier said a U.S. "threat of nuclear war and sanctions" had forced its hand.
© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20061009-115158-2477r.htm
U.S. Doubts Korean Test Was Nuclear
By Bill Gertz
U.S. intelligence agencies say, based on preliminary indications, that North Korea did not produce its first nuclear blast yesterday.
U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that seismic readings show that the conventional high explosives used to create a chain reaction in a plutonium-based device went off, but that the blast's readings were shy of a typical nuclear detonation.
"We're still evaluating the data, and as more data comes in, we hope to develop a clearer picture," said one official familiar with intelligence reports.
"There was a seismic event that registered about 4 on the Richter scale, but it still isn't clear if it was a nuclear test. You can get that kind of seismic reading from high explosives."
The underground explosion, which Pyongyang dubbed a historic nuclear test, is thought to have been the equivalent of several hundred tons of TNT, far short of the several thousand tons of TNT, or kilotons, that are signs of a nuclear blast, the official said. I dont know, the Lawrence Livermore nuke weapons scientist that I saw interviewed last night said that true nuclear device tests are often small and that he saw nothing in the data to suggest that it was not a nuclear test. The reporter asked if a 4.2 quake could be caused by conventional explosives and the scientist said it was in the upper range of theoretically possible, depending on the sub-surface depth of the blast and other conditions.
The official said that so far, "it appears there was more fizz than pop."
A successful nuclear detonation requires a properly timed and triggered conventional blast that splits atoms, setting off the nuclear chain reaction that produces the massive explosions associated with atomic bombs.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said assessing the validity of North Korea's claim of a successful nuclear test could take several days.
"We need to find out precisely what it is that took place yesterday, and that is something that's going to take awhile for the scientists and others to work through," Mr. Snow said.
"Nobody could give me with any precision how long it will take until they can say with certainty what happened."
Nuclear bombs make big waves, with clear signatures that make them fairly easy to detect, analyze and confirm that they were caused by splitting atoms. But smaller blasts -- as North Korea's appears to have been -- are trickier to break down, scientists told the Associated Press.
"It takes days, dozens of lab hours, to evaluate results. Now we can have only a rough estimate," said Russian nuclear physicist Vladimir Orlov of the Moscow-based Center for Policy Studies in Russia, a nonproliferation think tank.
-
Japan Detects Tremors; Quake Shakes Area
Oct 10 8:20 PM US/Eastern
The Japanese government detected tremors on Wednesday that led it to suspect North Korea had conducted a second nuclear test, officials and news reports said.
Shortly after Japan said it suspected another test had been conducted, the country's meteorological agency reported a magnitude-6.0 earthquake shook northern Japan.
U.S. and South Korean monitors said they had not detected any new seismic activity in North Korea on Wednesday.
