Fausta's Blog

Now that Kim Jong Il is no longer, all the news outlets have gone out of their way to describe the despicable despot as “North Korean leader”, and his spawn as “North Korea’s new leader Kim Jong Eun“, about whom we know nearly nothing. Not even his age.

Eun is also spelled Un, depending on where you look, which makes me wonder if we’ll have another Gaddafi/Khadaffi/whatever multiple-spelling situation.

Be that as is may,

The state funeral for Kim Jong Il is scheduled for Dec. 28. North Korea has said no foreign delegations will be accepted.

The old son of a bitch may have been dead for months for all I care. The South Koreans are worried enough they’ll not light up the Christmas tree,

To remove a potential flashpoint, South Korea’s cabinet decided Tuesday it wouldn’t allow church groups to illuminate three large Christmas-tree shaped towers near the North Korean border. The giant towers, located about two miles from the border and visible from the North Korean town of Kaesong, were scheduled to be illuminated on Friday.

North Korea remains in the dark, regardless:

Leader? Please, a murderous tyrant should be called exactly that.

How can they tell?

Kim Jong Il dead, to be succeeded by Kim Jong Un,

In September 2010, Kim Jong Il unveiled his third son, the twenty-something Kim Jong Un, as his successor, putting him in high-ranking posts.

While we talk about the Afghan war document dump (and the eventuality of a hasty withdrawal and defeat in Afghanistan), here are a few noteworthy news items:

Signals in the Yellow Sea
China tries to deny U.S. aircraft carriers access to international waters.

The People’s Daily tips China’s hand that the top priority is keeping the carriers away. Not only is Beijing going to try to forbid the activity of surveillance in its economic zone, any ship with surveillance capability is unwelcome: “As the Yellow Sea is a high sea, the aircraft carrier can also detect the hydro-geological conditions of China’s submarines’ channels out to sea. Therefore, the two purposes of the joint military exercise, strategic reconnaissance and testing initial combat plans, will pose a threat to China.”

Such a blatant attempt to expropriate the rights of the U.S. Navy or any other navy to operate in international waters is not acceptable. The Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen said recently that his attitude toward China has “moved from being curious to being genuinely concerned.” It’s easy to see why.

China Rejects U.S. Suggestion for Asean Mediation on Territory

The dispute has raised concerns that an increasingly powerful Chinese military could seek to dominate Asian waters. Tensions have risen as Chinese companies have increased exploration efforts in the region to look for new deposits of energy and minerals.

North Korea Threatens to Nuke South

Iran Will Retaliate if Inspected

And one more step towards the narcostate at the southern border,
Mexico prisoners ‘freed for killings’ in Durango state
Gunmen who killed 17 people at a party in northern Mexico earlier this month were let out of prison to carry out the attack, state prosecutors say.

As my friend Richard said, when I asked if there’s lots more to come, “probably, but you wouldn’t know it if you were at the golf course.”

Worried yet?

North Korea:
South Korea Fires on North Korean Warship Near

South and North Korean warships exchanged fire off their western coast after the North’s vessel crossed a disputed sea border and ignored several warning shots, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in Seoul.

The North Korean vessel ventured 1.3 kilometers (0.8 miles) into waters claimed by South Korea at about 10:33 a.m. local time today, triggering a two-minute exchange of fire that left 15 holes in the South Korean vessel, according to the military. The North’s ship returned across the border in flames after it was badly damaged in the exchange, Yonhap News reported, citing a government official in Seoul it didn’t identify.

I was posting about this on Venezuela yesterday:
Hugo Chávez tells Venezuela troops to ‘prepare for war’ with Colombia

President Chávez of Venezuela told his country yesterday to prepare for war with Colombia, which he accused of being in league with the United States.

Only days after sending 15,000 troops to the volatile border, Mr Chávez, Washington’s main enemy in the region, ordered the Venezuelan military and people to prepare to “defend the homeland”, claiming that the US planned to use Colombian bases to mount an invasion of his oil-rich nation.

At least this time the troops were not disrupted on their way tot he border by a taxi strike. On Venezuela, John Noonan said,

Colombian troops are better equipped, better trained, and are battle-hardened from years of fighting the FARC. The only edge that Chavez has is in the air, with his relatively modern Russian Sukhois and F-16s vs. Colombia’s aging Kfir (Israeli modified Mirage 5) fighters, but that could be offset with one U.S. AWACs providing aerial radar assistance. President Obama will likely avoid involvement–not necessarily an unwise move considering Chavez wants to play up the U.S. as an imperial aggressor meme–but providing some token assistance in the form of a non-combat support role (like AWACs) might be enough to put Chavez in his place. And it would further signal other U.S. allies that the White House still takes our defense alliances seriously.

Which is exactly why Obama is very unlikely to send any non-combat support.

As Ed put it,

It took America’s enemies a couple of years to take Jimmy Carter’s measure during the Cold War. It has taken less than that for our enemies to take Barack Obama’s measure.

It’s going to worsen.

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No podcast today because of a prior commitment, but you can listen to the archived podcasts.

A hostage release, a huge propaganda coup, and, very likely, the end of the six-party negotiations:

The WSJ looks at
Paying Kim’s Price
Was Mr. Clinton’s visit the down payment for a larger set of American concessions?

We don’t begrudge the congratulations Bill Clinton deserves for saving the two journalists from what might have been a nightmare 12 years of hard labor; that was the sentence a kangaroo North Korean court imposed for allegedly blundering across its border with China in March. But the important question going forward is whether Mr. Clinton’s visit was merely the down payment Kim extracted from the Obama Administration for a potentially larger set of American concessions.

That question is hard to avoid given that Mr. Clinton was met at the Pyongyang airport by Kim Kye-gwan, North Korea’s top nuclear negotiator. North Korea may have had its own propaganda reasons for putting its diplomat in the photo-op, and the White House insisted that Mr. Clinton’s mission was strictly humanitarian and that he was not carrying any messages from President Obama. We hope that’s true.

Yet Mr. Clinton’s visit is a message unto itself. It will bolster Kim’s bid to dissolve the six-party negotiations in favor of the direct talks with the U.S. he has long sought. It will also dismay some in South Korea and Japan, which have their own hostages in North Korea and will wonder why Mr. Clinton couldn’t obtain their release as well.

If it turns out that if a new nuclear negotiation really was begun during Mr. Clinton’s visit, it will also send the signal to North Korea that the worse its behavior, the more it stands to gain from the U.S. And it will mean that Kim’s price will be even higher to spring the next American hostages.

For years the North Koreans have wanted one-on-one negotiations with the US. They have them now.

Darleen congratulates Mr. Clinton, and waits for the other shoe to drop.

UPDATE
Team America II- Bubba in effect

North Korea launches beer advert
Because nothing in a beer ad says “refreshing” like chemists in labs, assembly lines, antiquated buildings, and North Korean Communist party officials:

Meanwhile the rockets are flying in the overall direction of Japan. The UN forbids that,

Resolution 1874, which was approved last month and which condemned the North’s nuclear test, was the third to be passed by the U.N. Security Council against the country since 2006. All three ban North Korea from launching ballistic missiles.

Obviously the North Korean regime f*rts in the overall direction of the UN as far as that’s concerned.

Ed asks, “Could a Taepodong-2 be next?”

…on Independence Day.

Fireworks for July 4th:

North Korea may launch a long-range ballistic missile towards Hawaii on American Independence Day, according to Japanese intelligence officials.

The missile, believed to be a Taepodong-2 with a range of up to 4,000 miles, would be launched in early July from the Dongchang-ni site on the north-western coast of the secretive country.

Intelligence analysts do not believe the device would be capable of hitting Hawaii’s main islands, which are 4,500 miles from North Korea.

Let’s hope the islands are out of range:

Apparently the NorKs were thinking of other targets but changed their minds lest they upset China:

Officials had initially believed that North Korea might attempt to launch a similar device towards either Japan’s Okinawa island, Guam or Hawaii.

But the ministry concluded launches toward Okinawa or Guam were ‘extremely unlikely’ because the first-stage booster could drop into waters off China, agitating Beijing, or hit western Japanese territory.

Now, let’s ponder for a moment who is propping up North Korea. Why are the Chinese going along with this?

I expect the Obama administration has a strongly-worded letter ready, just in case they need it.

UPDATE
GM Roper’s shortest post ever.

More
U.S. Fortifies Hawaii to Meet Threat From Korea

The U.S. is moving ground-to-air missile defenses to Hawaii as tensions escalate between Washington and Pyongyang over North Korea’s recent moves to restart its nuclear-weapon program and resume test-firing long-range missiles.

Here’s a photo of floating radar platform:

Then there’s that ship, too

In another sign of America’s mounting concern about North Korea, a senior defense official said the U.S. is tracking a North Korean vessel, the Kang Nam, suspected of carrying weapons banned by a recent United Nations resolution.

While we wallow in empathy, North Korea is getting bolder:

First they dropped the bomb on another test, then they launched an additional short-range missile from its east coast Tuesday night, and now North Korea Threatens Armed Strike, End to Armistice

- North Korea threatened a military response to South Korean participation in a U.S.-led program to seize weapons of mass destruction, and said it will no longer abide by the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War.

“The Korean People’s Army will not be bound to the Armistice Agreement any longer,” the official Korean Central News Agency said in a statement today. Any attempt to inspect North Korean vessels will be countered with “prompt and strong military strikes.” South Korea’s military said it will “deal sternly with any provocation” from the North.

North Korea’s Kim Jong Il has challenged President Obama more in four months than he did President George W. Bush in eight years.

Looking at it from the insane point of view of North Korea, what is the downside? A strongly-worded letter from the US, or one from the UN?

UPDATE
Time for a nuclear Japan:

Allahpundit weighs in on Sino-American relations.

Charles Krauthammer writes about the perils of being a philosopher-king:

When Austria is mocking you, you’re having a bad week. Yet who can blame Frau Fekter, considering the disdain Obama showed his own country while on foreign soil, acting the philosopher-king who hovers above the fray mediating between his renegade homeland and an otherwise warm and welcoming world?

Here are some of the side effects:

What “strong international response” did Obama muster to North Korea’s brazen defiance of a Chapter 7 — “binding,” as it were — U.N. resolution prohibiting such a launch?

The obligatory emergency Security Council session produced nothing. No sanctions. No resolution. Not even a statement. China and Russia professed to find no violation whatsoever. They would not even permit a U.N. statement that dared express “concern,” let alone condemnation.

Having thus bravely rallied the international community and summoned the United Nations — a fiction and a farce, respectively — what was Obama’s further response? The very next day, his defense secretary announced drastic cuts in missile defense, including halting further deployment of Alaska-based interceptors designed precisely to shoot down North Korean ICBMs. Such is the “realism” Obama promised to restore to U.S. foreign policy.

He certainly has a vision. Rather than relying on America’s unique technological edge in missile defenses to provide a measure of nuclear safety, Obama will instead boldly deploy the force of example. How? By committing his country to disarmament gestures — such as, he promised his cheering acolytes in Prague, ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Then there was the NATO issue:

And what did he get for this obsessive denigration of his own country? He wanted more NATO combat troops in Afghanistan to match the surge of 17,000 Americans. He was rudely rebuffed.

He wanted more stimulus spending from Europe. He got nothing.

From Russia, he got no help on Iran. From China, he got the blocking of any action on North Korea.

And what did he get for Guantanamo? France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One! (Sadly, he’ll have to leave his bridge partner behind.) The Austrians said they would take none. As Interior Minister Maria Fekter explained with impeccable Germanic logic, if they’re not dangerous, why not just keep them in America?

The Summit of the Americas is coming up next week. I fully expect that Obama will announce that he’s ending the Cuban embargo (even when he’d have to have Congress approve it).

What will that get the US?

You tell me.

Scott Johnson has more on the perils of being a philosopher-king.