07.26.10
Posted in Barack Obama, Congress, Corruption in Congress, North Korea, Terrorism at 1:04 pm by Administrator
Blogging has been sparse lately. I got a new computer, among other things, and you know what’s involved there – reloading applications, transferring files, deciding on what anti-malware software to use. Also, step-daughter is in town and we’ve been showing her a good time.
Anyway, the absurdityseems to spew like Gulf oil amid the backdrop of apocalypse. There’s the inconvienient document that would appear to undermine The Most Equal Comrade’s posture of indignation over Scotland’s release of the Lockerbie bomber. There’s Charlie Rangel’s upcoming appearance before the House Ethics Committee. There’s North Korea’s threat of a nuclear response the the joint US – South Korea naval exercises.
So we have the makings of an interesting week.
And now I have to run again. More later today, I promise.
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Posted in China, North Korea at 11:44 am by Administrator
China says that, by golly, it will certainly not defend whoever sank the Cheonon. Whoever, eh? It’s been conclusively determined that North Korea did it.
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05.25.10
Posted in Iran, North Korea, Nuclear proliferation, State Department cluelessness, World War III at 3:25 pm by Administrator
The first decade of the twenty-first century has been the most tumultuous and hair-raisingly alarming I have wintnessed in my time on earth, which began in the middle of the 1950s. For each and all of the mortal threats to our civilization these past ten years have delivered, there has been an abundance of written examination of warning signs we would have done well to heed.
I think none of these has been more prescient than a 2003 Commentary article by American Enterprise Institute scholar Joshua Muravchik entitled “Facing Up to North Korea.” He takes the reader through the timeline of the Hermit Kingdom’s nuclear ambitions, disregard for the Non-Proliferation Treat, duplicitousness, blackmail and mad brinkmanship starting in the late 1970s. The article came out, mind you, well before the U.S. rounded up North Korea’s neighbors for that ill-advised series of get-togethers known as the Six-Way Talks, at which nothing was accomplished.
As we know, there has been a new round in the cycle of belligerence that began with North Korea’s sinking of the Cheonon in late March. The very latest development in this round is North Korea’s severing of all ties with South Korea, including hosting guest personnel at the Kaesong industrial park. South Korean ships and planes will now have to be more careful than ever not to cross one microinch into North Korean sea lanes or airspace. Even a close brush with borders could be used as an excuse for an accusation for territorial violation. It will now be more difficult than ever to monitor developments in the north.
The last president of the United States (and I choose the word “last” rather than “previous” quite deliberately) caught quite a bit of hell for his Bush Doctrine, which posited that, in our age, the U.S. cannot wait for mortal threats to fully bloom before dealing with them. He was particularly excoriated for acting on that doctrine in the case of the Baathist regime in Iraq.
It’s ironic indeed that that president chose to ignore his own doctrine in the case of a threat that was even more ominous. After all, we didn’t have to rely on patchwork intelligence to determine whether North Korea had nuclear weapons. They told us plainly that they did. Not only that, they tested them twice. Still, Christopher Hill and Condi Rice blathered on about “unhelpful” moves and attitudes and kept convening their silly talks. And here we are, with war a real possibility.
We’ve run out of good cards to play in the Iran situation as well. The deal brokered by Turkey and Brazil have rendered further efforts to impose sanctions meaningless. In fact, Iran has said it will pull out of the arrangement if more sanctions are imposed.
The time to deal with these festering threats in a way that would be sure not to involve mayhem was years ago. Now we have a post-American regime that harbors utopian fantasies as our only bulwark against the two most evil regimes on earth, which are now technologically ready to scorch us should we try to thwart their designs.
Well, I guess God is our very last bulwark, should He deem us worthy of His mercy.
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05.24.10
Posted in Appeasement of rogues, Brazil, China, Corruption of the scientific world, Diciness of Western civilization's survival prospects, Diplomacy - ineffective and effective, Government spending, Iran, National Security, North Korea, Nuclear proliferation, Pakistan, South Korea, Turkey at 12:02 pm by Administrator
Caroline Glick’s Townhall column today demonstrates the interconnectedness of the various and sundry matters vexing us at present.
No one – not South Korea, the U.S. or any international body – is going to do anything substantive in response to the North Korean sinking of the Cheonon.
North Korea completed a successful fusion test recently, meaning it is preparing to add hydrogen bombs to its nuclear arsenal.
All the Turkey-Brazil deal with Iran did was demonstrate the ascendancy of all three countries. It changes nothing about the timeline for Iran being able to make nuclear bombs. That’s plural, and that timeline is measured in months.
Arms of the most lethal sort continue to make their way to Hizbollah in southern Lebanon.
China will build two more nucler reactors in Pakistan.
Why are those with the most to lose acting like their hands are tied in this scenario? Because China cannot be brought on board, not to knock it off with the nuclear projects with Pakistan, not with getting stern with North Korea, not with meaningful sanctions against Iran.
There is this little matter of its financing of the U.S.’s ever-growing debt. And that leads right back to Pennsylvania Avenue, to spending already in place, like the stimulus and socialist health care, as well as the spending in the pipeline, like the banking-reform bill that just passed the Senate, as well as this “infrastructure” monstrosity Congress wants to pass as soon as possible. Let us also not forget cap-and-trade, which refuses to die, no matter how badly “climate science” has been disgraced.
We’re on our own, folks.
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05.20.10
Posted in North Korea at 4:34 pm by Administrator
North Korea had to know that South Korea, with the corroboration of international experts, would determine with certainty that the Cheonon was sunk by a North Korean torpedo. Over forty South Korean sailors were killed in this attack. NK is still denying its responsibility, and threatening all-out war if there’s any retaliation. Will the world tell the families of those dead sailors to swallow their fury and be accomplices to cowardice, or will the world, through the voice of the South Korean government, proceed on the principle that doing what’s right is necessary regardless of the consequences? That’s the grim juncture at which northeast Asia finds itself today.
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05.12.10
Posted in Iran, Middle East, North Korea, World War III at 3:55 pm by Administrator
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, speaking in Tokyo where he is visiting, said that the shipment of over 30 tons of arms seized in Thailand last year was headed from North Korea to Hamas and Hizbollah. Says Iran and Syria wee helping to facilitate the transfer.
North Korea. That would be the same country that sank its next door neighbor’s ship last month with a torpedo.
TCM finds this whole scenario boring and bothersome. He wants to focus on fundamentally transforming the United States of America.
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04.21.10
Posted in North Korea, Nuclear proliferation at 4:06 pm by Administrator
That’s North Korea’s latest position.
Makes any further rounds of such talks pretty pointless, doesn’t it?
Still, I could see the “what-Western-civilization?” regime going for it.
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04.09.10
Posted in Israel, North Korea, Nuclear proliferation at 1:39 pm by Administrator
North Korea vows to keep building nuclear weapons. Now, come on, guys, that’s not helpful. Come back to the Six-Way talks.
Bibi Netanyahu has cancelled his planned participation in The Aquarian Totalitarian’s upcoming nuclear summit after learning Turkey and Egypt were going to insist that Israel sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Good move. We need for the only Western nation in the Middle East to keep its neighbors guessing as to just how big a can of whup-ass it has in reserve.
Let’s head off any moral-equivalence idiocy right here: Israel: good guys, NorKor: evil wackos.
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03.27.10
Posted in Barack Obama, Human freedom, Ideology, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Nuclear proliferation, Russia, World War III at 1:33 pm by Administrator
TCM’s self-satisfaction at having reached a nuclear arms reduction agreement with Russia fits into a recent pattern of foreign-policy moves that further confirms the conclusion that his zeal is for a left-wing vision of utopia, in which all cultures and ideologies have equal merit and that the power of the idea of humankind’s unity can surmount the cumulative lessons of history.
As Jamie Fly at the link above says, TCM is preoccupied with a 1980s-era problem in a 2010 world in which rogue players pose the really pressing threat. A mutual reduction in US and Russian strategic force doesn’t mean squat to the Kim regime, the Iranian mullahs, or any of the world’s myriad jihadist networks eager to get their hands on what an increasing number of states have.
When one considers TCM’s blatant humiliation of Benjamin Netanyahu, leaving Bibi to cool his heels while he went upstairs for dinner with his family (and saying, “If there’s anything new [as in any reconsideration of Jerusalem home-building], let me know”) and the decision to go for less-than-maiximum sanctions against Iran, in the context of his excitement about this new treaty with Russia, it becomes hard to muster any encouragement about a safer and more just world. This is a worldview that got a foothold in our society some fifty years ago, when red-diaper babies sat in coffee houses listening to guitar-strumming folk singers. This is the worldview of those whose highest priority is feeling good about how much they care for “humankind” in the collective, who have no use for the particular, lest some pesky detail of history reveal a glitch in the notion that endless peace is plausible.
TCM finds the whole business of foreign policy boring compared to his grand plan for the regime that will occupy the land mass known for 234 years as the United States of America, but to the extent he deals with it, his moves are of a piece with his domestic thrust. The idea is that egalitarianism will be the order of the day on every scale. On the world stage, the country known until recently as the United States of America will be just another place on the globe where a certain percentage of the world’s comrades happen to reside. Nothing special about it.
And that means that there will be no room for a different vision, one which invites the possibility of free and sovereign individuals, unhampered by the state as they go about the achievement of their own dreams. No one anywhere will have a place to which he or she can go to see if such a vision can work.
No place left to stand, that’s what The Aquarian Totalitarian has in mind for those of us who harbor the audacity of freedom.
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03.26.10
Posted in North Korea, World War III at 4:00 pm by Administrator
America’s attention hasn’t been focused on the northeast Asia theater of our current global tinderbox lately, but that will change starting now.
North Korea threatens “unprecedented nuclear strikes” against South Korea and the United States should they try to exploit perceived instability in the North.
One could dismiss this as more of the bluster to which we have become somewhat inured over the past few years, except that it’s occurring at the same time a South Korean naval vessel with 100 personnel on board is sinking off the coast of North Korea, and the only possible cause being mentioned in news reports so far is a torpedo attack.
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10.17.09
Posted in China, North Korea, Nuclear proliferation at 9:02 pm by Administrator
Greta Van Susteren blogs about how she sees the current juncture of the North Korean situation, having just spent several days in Pyongyang and, I think, some other areas of that country.
The real bottom line comes in her last paragraph. The thrust of her post is that China needs to do more to goad NK to knock off its nuclear beligerence and to open up a bit, particularly economically. However, about the time we broach that conversational vector, China understandably says, “Um, yes, perhaps we can discuss that, but right now there is the matter of your debt, which we’re holding.”
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09.12.09
Posted in North Korea, World War III at 9:58 pm by Administrator
Of course, the other enemy that TCM is making good on his campaign pledge to sing kumbaya with is North Korea, which has responded to this gesture with an announcement of yet another nuclear bomb test.
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