Friday, May 01, 2009
Obama Official Pooh-Poohs North Korean Nuke Test
The downplaying has already begun.
Ahead of the next North Korean nuclear weapon test, which China Confidential predicted on Wednesday, April 22, a senior Obama administration official said he expects North Korea to test a nuclear weapon. But the official, a veteran arms control negotiator who served in the Clinton administration (more change you can believe in), also said he expects the North to return to international disarmament talks and seemed to downplay the significance of the test.
AP reports:At an event at the Brookings Institution, US President Barack Obama's policy coordinator for weapons of mass destruction, Gary Samore, said North Korea was trying to divide the five countries that have been involved with it in disarmament talks and was looking for ways to provoke problems. "It's very clear that the North Koreans want to pick a fight," he said.
Say what? There is more:Samore said that the United States is committed to the six-nation talks and predicted that North Korea would be forced back to negotiations within nine months.
"We'll just wait," he said. He added that he believed that other major powers would support further sanctions against North Korea if they carry out a test.
"The Chinese are very, very angry at the North Koreans," he said.
China Confidential analysts, who accurately predicted North Korea's October 9, 2006 nuclear test--to the day--expect the Stalinist/Kimist state to detonate a device on or around this July 4 in order to overshadow and mar U.S. Independence Day celebrations. China Confidential analysts further predict that the North will not return to the six-party forum absent major concessions from the Obama administration--amounting to huge bribes and an abandonment of South Korea and Japan.
Pyongyang intends to take over South Korea and dominate Japan. The North will never peacefully give up its nuclear weapons. Instead, it will continue to manufacture and test nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles--and share the technology and knowhow with its Islamist ally, Iran, which the administration is bent on appeasing in order to pacify Afghanistan and counter Pakistan after both countries fall to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The Bush administration foolishly relied on China to moderate its nuclear-armed vassal; but Beijing disappointed Washington time and again. In its last year, the Bush administration also effectively ruled out military attacks on Iran to end its nuclear program, and also denied Israel the green light to launch its own attacks.
The Obama administration is taking the failed Bush policies to a wholly new and unprecedented level. The new administration not only aims to appease America's enemies--Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Syria--but also hopes to align with them.Clinton Claims 'Engaging' Hugo Chavez Could Counter Chinese-Iranian Inroads in Latin America
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today defended the Obama administration's "engagement"--code for appeasement--of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez and other left-wing, anti-U.S. Latin american leaders as a way to counter "quite disturbing" Chinese and Iranian inroads in the region. AFP reports:Clinton said President Barack Obama has had to take a new tack after his predecessor George W. Bush's efforts to isolate such leaders only made them "more negative" toward Washington and receptive to other powers.
"I don't think in today's world ... that it is in our interest to turn our back on countries in our own hemisphere," Clinton told diplomats and other State Department staff.
She described the new world as "a multipolar world where we are competing for attention and relationships with at least the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians," adding such countries can soon fill the void.
"If you look at the gains, particularly in Latin America, that Iran is making, that China is making, it's quite disturbing," the chief US diplomat said.
Continue here.More About China's Wall Street 'Black Book'
China Confidential is learning more about a purported "black book" of alleged complicity by Wall Street investment bankers in alleged acts of financial fraud and corruption on the part of Chinese companies that sought to raise capital in the United States during the public listing boom. Click here or scroll down for yesterday's exclusive story, headlined "Could China's Black Book Put Wall Street Bankers Behind Bars?"
Some of the information that is becoming available has a comic edge. For example, a source in Hong Kong tells China Confidential that the so-called book--really, a massive file or database--includes an account of a U.S. stock exchange representative being shown $3 million in actual, physical cash in a Chinese company's vault after he repeatedly questioned a cash or cash-equivalent entry in the company's audited financial statements. Another case allegedly documents a Chinese CEO, seeking to go public in the United States, keeping his company's "real books"--opposed to its "IPO books"-- in the trunk of his luxury car.
Numerous instances of payoffs are also allegedly documented, as well as instances where Communist Party officials used family members and offshore shell companies to hold shares in high-flying firms.
Big Name Firms
Many, but not all, of the black book cases involve mid-cap companies and lower-rung bankers. The biggest name firms on Wall Street--a few of which no longer exist--allegedly also appear quite prominently in the tome, which, sources say, was compiled by a bureau of China's Ministry of State Security, or Guojia Anquan Bu (Guoanbu), which is responsible for both foreign intelligence and domestic security.
Assuming the story is accurate, there is a cruel irony about the dreaded MSS--a KGB-style organization known for domestic repression as well as overseas spying--publishing a black book, even for internal use or selective circulation (i.e. blackmail). Black books have been written and published to document crimes against humanity by the Chinese and Soviet Communist governments and Nazi Germany. The latter work--which was ignored by corporations and banks eager for German business--surfaced before World War II and the death camps, when prisoners were tortured, beaten, and killed in secret police stations and concentration camps. Click here to read an archived Op-Ed essay on the Chinese and German black books by the late, great journalist and champion of human rights, A. M. Rosenthal.
In line with its foreign intelligence mission, the MSS has itself created thousands of front companies in the West in order to steal commercial and scientific secrets and conduct espionage operations against the United States and European countries.
Saturday, 2 May 2009
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