The EU’s Divisions: Richard Gere weighs in against the lifting of the EU’s arms embargo against China. I thought this discussion was all over, but anything that helps to expose, discredit, and obstruct the EU’s cynical pursuit of morally neutral “multipolarity” ought to be welcomed. The real redemption of Europe in this case is the amount of internal opposition there to lifting this embargo.
The last time I visited Zimbabwe, 15 years ago, it was the breadbasket of southern Africa. It didn’t look economically dynamic and the sense of “watch what you say” oppression was palpable, but the main roads were being fixed, crops were growing, and the cities seemed to function. It was obviously a far better-run country than Kenneth Kaunda’s Zambia in that day.
Today, Zimbabwe has 90% unemployment and people are literally starving—in a nation that used to export its crops and is blessed with superb land that can be farmed year-round. Robert Mugabe is generally to blame for this state of affairs, by creating the perfect laboratory for the failure of wealth redistribution. He’s also destroyed several institutions for which Zimbabwe was once a model to its neighbors, including its free press and its uncorrupted and independent judiciary.
If you’re interested, here is some photoblogging from yesterday’s election. Here is a disturbing-yet-inspiring report from an opposition poll-watcher, and here’s a report from Nicholas Kristof that’s so courageous and honest that it nearly makes up for an awful commentary he recently wrote about North Korea.
Note to Nick Kristof—you’re a much better reporter than commentator. Keep your day job.
This text is from today’s New York Times, discussing oil-for-food:
The Volcker committee cleared Mr. Annan of using any influence in the awarding of an oil-for-food contract to the company that employed his son Kojo Annan, but it faulted him for conducting only a superficial inquiry into the company’s [Cotecna, the one that employed his son Kojo and paid him $300,000] relationship with the United Nations once conflict of interest concerns arose.
The report also accused Mr. Annan’s longtime chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, of shredding three years of office files covering the period when the program was in place and a second aide, Dileep Nair, head of the Office of Internal Oversight Services, for filling a high-level post in the program with someone who devoted virtually all his time to other matters.
Mr. Annan said that he accepted the panel’s findings and that in his case they amounted to exoneration.
Cleverly, the Times starts by setting the bar high at the question of direct influence. Somehow, that doesn’t quite manage to soften the impact of a top U.N. aide shredding piles of possibly incriminating documents. No cabinet secretary, for example, would last a day in Washington after such a finding by an inspector general or the GAO. How this is being heralded as an exoneration for Annan is simply beyond me. Regular readers already know that I’ve spent a few years prosecuting and defending criminal cases. Were this guy my client right now, I’d be stapling his mouth shut tighter than a Lutheran wallet.
Now, before you read the whole story and challenge my choice of the most newsworthy excerpt—and I invite you to do that, of course, but not just yet—take this little test and see what headline the Times put on this story:
a. Report: Top Annan Aide Shredded Oil-for-Food Documents
b. Report Faults Annan on Son’s Oil-for-Food Contract
c. Some Question Annan’s Viability at U.N.
d. U.N. Inquiry Exonerates Annan
Answer here, and it’s not exactly on the front page, either. Wouldn’t it be nice to see the Times do a headline on the U.N. that’s as hard-hitting and prominent as, say, this? Another headline you’re not likely to see: “Report Blames ‘Poor Tradecraft,’ Not Political Pressure, for Iraq WMD Errors.”
Now guess which organization will reform itself faster.
Hint: it’s not the one whose staff members have diplomatic immunity from obstruction of justice charges. If there’s any truth to this report, Iqbal Riza should be staring into the maw of a 20-year hitch at Marion. Isn’t it patently questionable that Kofi Annan’s close aide could have destroyed all those heaps of documents without his knowledge? If I could prosecute Riza for obstruction, I’d be offering him 5 years at a medium-security pen if he’d give up his boss.
The EU’s Divisions: Richard Gere weighs in against the lifting of the EU’s arms embargo against China. I thought this discussion was all over, but anything that helps to expose, discredit, and obstruct the EU’s cynical pursuit of morally neutral “multipolarity” ought to be welcomed. The real redemption of Europe in this case is the amount of internal opposition there to lifting this embargo.
The last time I visited Zimbabwe, 15 years ago, it was the breadbasket of southern Africa. It didn’t look economically dynamic and the sense of “watch what you say” oppression was palpable, but the main roads were being fixed, crops were growing, and the cities seemed to function. It was obviously a far better-run country than Kenneth Kaunda’s Zambia in that day.
Today, Zimbabwe has 90% unemployment and people are literally starving—in a nation that used to export its crops and is blessed with superb land that can be farmed year-round. Robert Mugabe is generally to blame for this state of affairs, by creating the perfect laboratory for the failure of wealth redistribution. He’s also destroyed several institutions for which Zimbabwe was once a model to its neighbors, including its free press and its uncorrupted and independent judiciary.
If you’re interested, here is some photoblogging from yesterday’s election. Here is a disturbing-yet-inspiring report from an opposition poll-watcher, and here’s a report from Nicholas Kristof that’s so courageous and honest that it nearly makes up for an awful commentary he recently wrote about North Korea.
Note to Nick Kristof—you’re a much better reporter than commentator. Keep your day job.
This text is from today’s New York Times, discussing oil-for-food:
The Volcker committee cleared Mr. Annan of using any influence in the awarding of an oil-for-food contract to the company that employed his son Kojo Annan, but it faulted him for conducting only a superficial inquiry into the company’s [Cotecna, the one that employed his son Kojo and paid him $300,000] relationship with the United Nations once conflict of interest concerns arose.
The report also accused Mr. Annan’s longtime chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, of shredding three years of office files covering the period when the program was in place and a second aide, Dileep Nair, head of the Office of Internal Oversight Services, for filling a high-level post in the program with someone who devoted virtually all his time to other matters.
Mr. Annan said that he accepted the panel’s findings and that in his case they amounted to exoneration.
Cleverly, the Times starts by setting the bar high at the question of direct influence. Somehow, that doesn’t quite manage to soften the impact of a top U.N. aide shredding piles of possibly incriminating documents. No cabinet secretary, for example, would last a day in Washington after such a finding by an inspector general or the GAO. How this is being heralded as an exoneration for Annan is simply beyond me. Regular readers already know that I’ve spent a few years prosecuting and defending criminal cases. Were this guy my client right now, I’d be stapling his mouth shut tighter than a Lutheran wallet.
Now, before you read the whole story and challenge my choice of the most newsworthy excerpt—and I invite you to do that, of course, but not just yet—take this little test and see what headline the Times put on this story:
a. Report: Top Annan Aide Shredded Oil-for-Food Documents
b. Report Faults Annan on Son’s Oil-for-Food Contract
c. Some Question Annan’s Viability at U.N.
d. U.N. Inquiry Exonerates Annan
Answer here, and it’s not exactly on the front page, either. Wouldn’t it be nice to see the Times do a headline on the U.N. that’s as hard-hitting and prominent as, say, this? Another headline you’re not likely to see: “Report Blames ‘Poor Tradecraft,’ Not Political Pressure, for Iraq WMD Errors.”
Now guess which organization will reform itself faster.
Hint: it’s not the one whose staff members have diplomatic immunity from obstruction of justice charges. If there’s any truth to this report, Iqbal Riza should be staring into the maw of a 20-year hitch at Marion. Isn’t it patently questionable that Kofi Annan’s close aide could have destroyed all those heaps of documents without his knowledge? If I could prosecute Riza for obstruction, I’d be offering him 5 years at a medium-security pen if he’d give up his boss.
So, just how hard it is to picture this brawl happening over something other than soccer?
Well, so much for that highly ordered, robotically obedient society:
Angry North Korean soccer fans in Pyongyang pelted visiting players and referees with bottles and cans on Wednesday evening, requiring the intervention of the police and providing seldom seen evidence of spontaneous violence in the tightly controlled stat
Still, the story isn’t entirely amusing, as the BBC reports:
A North Korean defector and former football official told Reuters that his homeland had an organised society and such behaviour was unlikely to be tolerated.
“I have never seen anything like this myself,” he said. “The people responsible are likely to be tracked down and severely punished.”
But on the bright side, if there’s one nation on earth I want to have strained relations with North Korea, it’s Iran.
UPDATE: So, if you were playing for the Japanese team, might you be having a few second thoughts about attending that match in Pyongyang about now?
Score One for ‘Soft’ Power: The inside story of how Freedom House helped overthrow the Kyrgyz dictatorship is here.
Freedom House is expected to announce the hiring of its new Director for North Korea Advocacy any day now, using $2 million in grant money that comes courtesy of Section 102 of the North Korea Human Rights Act. I have great respect for the work FH does, but I wonder if North Korea is a challenge for which they’re really prepared. They’re not going to be able to simply set up an office in Pyongyang and start slipping greenbacks to dissidents and setting up opposition media. It shouldn’t be difficult to persuade voters in any number of countries that the North Korean regime is positively revolting, but if they intend to do anything that will directly influence the ordinary people of North Korea, they will have to be prepared do something much bolder that what they did in Bishkek.
Are they be prepared to do it?
The New York Times has a very interesting article on the North-Korea Libya story today. Again, we almost delve into the question of how much evidence of guilt we demand in relation to deliberatively secretive regimes that create unbearable risks, and whether secretive regimes should be entitled to the benefits of doubts they cultivate. David Sanger misses the latter point entirely and indulges in plenty of gratuitous editorializing about Iraq. Put that aside, however, and he’s done a fine job of laying out the evidence of the North Korean transfer for the reader to evaluate:
The Bush administration, joined by United Nations inspectors, now say the uranium most likely came from North Korea and helps to build a case that the North has exported dangerous nuclear material to Libya, and perhaps beyond. The officials drew on scientific tests, secret documents and interviews with key players in the black market, which taken together are potentially highly incriminating. But the evidence is also circumstantial.
In interviews this week, administration officials and foreign diplomats disclosed that Libyan officials had also surrendered financial ledgers to the United States that provide a guide to the front companies involved in the nuclear network set up by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist. One large payment, American officials contend, was directed to North Korea, presumably for the uranium hexafluoride that arrived in Tripoli in 2001. But American and foreign officials who have seen the financial documents or been briefed on them say they do not prove a direct payment from Libya to the North Korean government.
The charge of “unilateralism” takes a kidney punch, too:
A European diplomat familiar with the I.A.E.A.’s investigation of the uranium shipment said a growing number of clues suggested that the source of the uranium was indeed North Korea. “There is a North Korean connection here,” he said. “But what it is exactly is a mystery.”
Sanger seems almost too embarassed to touch Dafna Lizner and Glenn Kessler for the reckless little screed they published in last week’s Washington Post fiasco, which I fisked here (the single malt distillation of stuff you’ve already read on this blog). Sanger goes to great pains to avoid telling us that his colleagues are full of it:
Last week, for the first time in public, the White House declared that the uranium came from North Korea. “The fact that nuclear material found its way out of North Korea to any destination is a source of serious concern for the United States,” said Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, in a letter to The Washington Post. The letter denied that American officials visiting Asia had focused on the North Korean connection to draw attention from the fact that Mr. Khan’s network in Pakistan - an American ally - had acted as a middleman.
Well, that’s certainly putting it mildly. The WaPo claimed that the administration “concealed” and “covered up” Pakistan’s role–in essence, that it lied to its allies. Sanger blew his responsibility to correct the record here. Hey, sometimes, I have to do nasty cross-examinations of perfectly nice people who for reasons that are very important to them, lie. Did it again today, in fact. I didn’t enjoy it, but when your business is the dissemination of truth, you do your duty. Professional courtesy shouldn’t intrude upon one’s obligation to the truth.
All that being said, the article is still a must-read, and Sanger’s reporting is still praiseworthy.
(Links to Part I, Part II, and Part III, and a highly recommended post at No Illusions.)
So, just how hard it is to picture this brawl happening over something other than soccer?
Well, so much for that highly ordered, robotically obedient society:
Angry North Korean soccer fans in Pyongyang pelted visiting players and referees with bottles and cans on Wednesday evening, requiring the intervention of the police and providing seldom seen evidence of spontaneous violence in the tightly controlled stat
Still, the story isn’t entirely amusing, as the BBC reports:
A North Korean defector and former football official told Reuters that his homeland had an organised society and such behaviour was unlikely to be tolerated.
“I have never seen anything like this myself,” he said. “The people responsible are likely to be tracked down and severely punished.”
But on the bright side, if there’s one nation on earth I want to have strained relations with North Korea, it’s Iran.
UPDATE: So, if you were playing for the Japanese team, might you be having a few second thoughts about attending that match in Pyongyang about now?
Score One for ‘Soft’ Power: The inside story of how Freedom House helped overthrow the Kyrgyz dictatorship is here.
Freedom House is expected to announce the hiring of its new Director for North Korea Advocacy any day now, using $2 million in grant money that comes courtesy of Section 102 of the North Korea Human Rights Act. I have great respect for the work FH does, but I wonder if North Korea is a challenge for which they’re really prepared. They’re not going to be able to simply set up an office in Pyongyang and start slipping greenbacks to dissidents and setting up opposition media. It shouldn’t be difficult to persuade voters in any number of countries that the North Korean regime is positively revolting, but if they intend to do anything that will directly influence the ordinary people of North Korea, they will have to be prepared do something much bolder that what they did in Bishkek.
Are they be prepared to do it?
The New York Times has a very interesting article on the North-Korea Libya story today. Again, we almost delve into the question of how much evidence of guilt we demand in relation to deliberatively secretive regimes that create unbearable risks, and whether secretive regimes should be entitled to the benefits of doubts they cultivate. David Sanger misses the latter point entirely and indulges in plenty of gratuitous editorializing about Iraq. Put that aside, however, and he’s done a fine job of laying out the evidence of the North Korean transfer for the reader to evaluate:
The Bush administration, joined by United Nations inspectors, now say the uranium most likely came from North Korea and helps to build a case that the North has exported dangerous nuclear material to Libya, and perhaps beyond. The officials drew on scientific tests, secret documents and interviews with key players in the black market, which taken together are potentially highly incriminating. But the evidence is also circumstantial.
In interviews this week, administration officials and foreign diplomats disclosed that Libyan officials had also surrendered financial ledgers to the United States that provide a guide to the front companies involved in the nuclear network set up by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist. One large payment, American officials contend, was directed to North Korea, presumably for the uranium hexafluoride that arrived in Tripoli in 2001. But American and foreign officials who have seen the financial documents or been briefed on them say they do not prove a direct payment from Libya to the North Korean government.
The charge of “unilateralism” takes a kidney punch, too:
A European diplomat familiar with the I.A.E.A.’s investigation of the uranium shipment said a growing number of clues suggested that the source of the uranium was indeed North Korea. “There is a North Korean connection here,” he said. “But what it is exactly is a mystery.”
Sanger seems almost too embarassed to touch Dafna Lizner and Glenn Kessler for the reckless little screed they published in last week’s Washington Post fiasco, which I fisked here (the single malt distillation of stuff you’ve already read on this blog). Sanger goes to great pains to avoid telling us that his colleagues are full of it:
Last week, for the first time in public, the White House declared that the uranium came from North Korea. “The fact that nuclear material found its way out of North Korea to any destination is a source of serious concern for the United States,” said Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, in a letter to The Washington Post. The letter denied that American officials visiting Asia had focused on the North Korean connection to draw attention from the fact that Mr. Khan’s network in Pakistan - an American ally - had acted as a middleman.
Well, that’s certainly putting it mildly. The WaPo claimed that the administration “concealed” and “covered up” Pakistan’s role–in essence, that it lied to its allies. Sanger blew his responsibility to correct the record here. Hey, sometimes, I have to do nasty cross-examinations of perfectly nice people who for reasons that are very important to them, lie. Did it again today, in fact. I didn’t enjoy it, but when your business is the dissemination of truth, you do your duty. Professional courtesy shouldn’t intrude upon one’s obligation to the truth.
All that being said, the article is still a must-read, and Sanger’s reporting is still praiseworthy.
(Links to Part I, Part II, and Part III, and a highly recommended post at No Illusions.)
The New York Times has a very interesting article on the North-Korea Libya story today. Again, we almost delve into the question of how much evidence of guilt we demand in relation to deliberatively secretive regimes that create unbearable risks, and whether secretive regimes should be entitled to the benefits of doubts they cultivate. David Sanger misses the latter point entirely and indulges in plenty of gratuitous editorializing about Iraq. Put that aside, however, and he’s done a fine job of laying out the evidence of the North Korean transfer for the reader to evaluate:
The Bush administration, joined by United Nations inspectors, now say the uranium most likely came from North Korea and helps to build a case that the North has exported dangerous nuclear material to Libya, and perhaps beyond. The officials drew on scientific tests, secret documents and interviews with key players in the black market, which taken together are potentially highly incriminating. But the evidence is also circumstantial.
In interviews this week, administration officials and foreign diplomats disclosed that Libyan officials had also surrendered financial ledgers to the United States that provide a guide to the front companies involved in the nuclear network set up by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist. One large payment, American officials contend, was directed to North Korea, presumably for the uranium hexafluoride that arrived in Tripoli in 2001. But American and foreign officials who have seen the financial documents or been briefed on them say they do not prove a direct payment from Libya to the North Korean government.
The charge of “unilateralism” takes a kidney punch, too:
A European diplomat familiar with the I.A.E.A.’s investigation of the uranium shipment said a growing number of clues suggested that the source of the uranium was indeed North Korea. “There is a North Korean connection here,” he said. “But what it is exactly is a mystery.”
Sanger seems almost too embarassed to touch Dafna Lizner and Glenn Kessler for the reckless little screed they published in last week’s Washington Post fiasco, which I fisked here (the single malt distillation of stuff you’ve already read on this blog). Sanger goes to great pains to avoid telling us that his colleagues are full of it:
Last week, for the first time in public, the White House declared that the uranium came from North Korea. “The fact that nuclear material found its way out of North Korea to any destination is a source of serious concern for the United States,” said Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, in a letter to The Washington Post. The letter denied that American officials visiting Asia had focused on the North Korean connection to draw attention from the fact that Mr. Khan’s network in Pakistan - an American ally - had acted as a middleman.
Well, that’s certainly putting it mildly. The WaPo claimed that the administration “concealed” and “covered up” Pakistan’s role–in essence, that it lied to its allies. Sanger blew his responsibility to correct the record here. Hey, sometimes, I have to do nasty cross-examinations of perfectly nice people who for reasons that are very important to them, lie. Did it again today, in fact. I didn’t enjoy it, but when your business is the dissemination of truth, you do your duty. Professional courtesy shouldn’t intrude upon one’s obligation to the truth.
All that being said, the article is still a must-read, and Sanger’s reporting is still praiseworthy.
(Links to Part I, Part II, and Part III, and a highly recommended post at No Illusions.)
South Korea is making it official:
A high official from the National Security Council, speaking on condition of anonymity, said during a discussion with reporters that, “Korea will break away from its Cold War-era ‘camp’ diplomacy.” By “camp diplomacy,” it appears he was referring to the structure of conflict between the South Korean, U.S. and Japanese “camp” and the North Korean, Chinese and Russian “camp.”
. . . .Receiving a report from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday, President Roh said, “Korea must play the role of balancer so that tensions do not revive within Northeast Asia.” It has been learned that the president has recently said that hegemonic competition between China and Japan was a major factor of insecurity in Northeast Asia, and that Korea needed to block a situation in which a U.S.-Japan alliance faced off against China.
So we can bring our troops home now, right? Of course not! Amazingly, South Korea insists that “[i]n the processes of carrying out the role of balancer, Korea will make as its base the Korea-U.S. alliance.” Uh huh. I’m sure that with the National Guard and Reserves overextended and two hot wars going on, Don Rumsfeld–like Odysseus ordering himself tied to the mast–will see the urgent priority of keeping 32,000 active duty personnel in Korea to protect the region from his own fiendish plans.
Korea–where policy comes from the barrel of a bong.
Here are links to Part I, Part II, Part III, Part III 1/2,and Part IV, and Part V.
South Korea is making it official:
A high official from the National Security Council, speaking on condition of anonymity, said during a discussion with reporters that, “Korea will break away from its Cold War-era ‘camp’ diplomacy.” By “camp diplomacy,” it appears he was referring to the structure of conflict between the South Korean, U.S. and Japanese “camp” and the North Korean, Chinese and Russian “camp.”
. . . .Receiving a report from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday, President Roh said, “Korea must play the role of balancer so that tensions do not revive within Northeast Asia.” It has been learned that the president has recently said that hegemonic competition between China and Japan was a major factor of insecurity in Northeast Asia, and that Korea needed to block a situation in which a U.S.-Japan alliance faced off against China.
So we can bring our troops home now, right? Of course not! Amazingly, South Korea insists that “[i]n the processes of carrying out the role of balancer, Korea will make as its base the Korea-U.S. alliance.” Uh huh. I’m sure that with the National Guard and Reserves overextended and two hot wars going on, Don Rumsfeld–like Odysseus ordering himself tied to the mast–will see the urgent priority of keeping 32,000 active duty personnel in Korea to protect the region from his own fiendish plans.
Korea–where policy comes from the barrel of a bong.
Here are links to Part I, Part II, Part III, Part III 1/2,and Part IV, and Part V.