Foreign Confidential ™
Foreign News and Analysis Since April 2005 -- formerly China Confidential -- What's Really Happening in the World
Monday, April 16, 2012
Yonhap Confirms Foreign Confidential™ Reporting: Iranians Involved in Ballistic Missile Program Observed N. Korea Launch
A dozen Iranian officials, responsible for the country's ballistic missile program, visited North Korea last week to observe its latest rocket launch, which ended in failure, a diplomatic source here said Sunday."On March 31, 12 Iranians of the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group (SHIG) arrived in North Korea. The Iranians undoubtedly were there to observe the missile launch and receive test data from North Korea," the source told Yonhap News Agency, requesting anonymity.South Korean government officials neither confirmed nor denied the allegations, citing a practice of not commenting on intelligence-related matter.
Iran was involved in Pyongyang's provocation, analysts say. North Korea's proliferation partner paid for the launch; Iranians observed the event.
The next day, Friday, April 13, Foreign Confidential™ again reported that an Iranian delegation "observed the North's missile launch … and will also be on hand for the country's upcoming missile firings … and nuclear tests."
Three days earlier, on April 10, Foreign Confidential™ reported "that a delegation of Iranian military and intelligence officers and scientists and technicians will be on hand for the event, as they were for previous nuclear and missile tests."
Iranian experts will probably observe the upcoming missile launch, which is set for sometime between April 12 and 16.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Why China's Bo Xilai Scandal Matters
The Bo Xilai scandal--the way it is unfolding and the power struggle that it reflects--is a reminder of how wrong the West's business and financial leaders and fawning media outlets were regarding China's political development. Contrary to their rosy predictions, China's astonishing economic transformation has not led to political democratization--certainly not at level of the national government, which controls national security and foreign policy.
The foolish conflating of economics and politics--the former is about wealth; the latter, power--recalls the forecasts of the period between the two world wars. The Nobel laureate Norman Angell, for example, argued in his popular nonfiction book, The Great Illusion, that the "economies of European countries had grown to such a degree that war between them would be entirely futile, making militarism obsolete." We all know how that turned out.
Which is not to say that China and the United States are destined to fight each other. On the contrary; although the potential for a future armed conflict between the countries clearly exists, it can and must be prevented.
The key to peace preservation is diplomacy. More specifically, avoiding a potentially catastrophic adversarial relationship will require a long-overdue revival of a concept that the "democracy promotion" and "humanitarian intervention" zealots have branded as obsolete--spheres of influence (as the term was used during the Cold War, of course, and not during the age of imperialism, when the industrialized European nations forced their way into China).
Notwithstanding its historic defense and security ties to Japan, which must remain strong for decades to come, the U.S. will have to recognize East Asia as China's sphere; and China will have to recognize Latin America and the Caribbean as America's sphere. Additionally, both nations will have to agree on what constitutes acceptable levels and forms of competition outside their spheres--for example, in Africa, where China has developed controversial political relationships in its relentless pursuit of energy and raw materials, or in the Middle East, where China's thirst for oil and interest in countering U.S. power and influence has (a) emboldened a nuclear-arming, clerical fascist regime that is bent on destroying Israel and driving the U.S. from the region, and (b) bolstered the Islamist regime's secular ally, which is waging war on its own people.
The urgent need for mutual understandings about spheres of influence and rules of competition between Washington and Beijing … and Washington and Moscow … is increasingly obvious and inexplicably ignored by the mainstream media, including liberal and conservative outlets.
Endnote: Ironically, the post-Cold War tendency of both Republican and Democratic U.S. administrations to treat the entire world as a U.S. sphere of influence has coincided with China's alarming Caribbean encroachment. Click here to read a column that indicates it could be too late to stop China from gaining potential military advantages in America's own backyard.
Copyright © 2012 Foreign Confidential™
100 Years Later, Titanic Mystery Endures
The RMS Titanic sank a century ago. But the mystery of who or what caused the ship to sink endures. Did an 1898 Novel, The Wreck of the Titan, inspire history's greatest maritime insurance fraud? Was the Titanic switched with its damaged sister ship, Olympic? Is that the luxury liner that lies at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean? Which vessel appears in the video below? Read on …
Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan is an 1898 novella written by Morgan Robertson. The story features the ocean liner Titan, which sinks in the North Atlantic after striking an iceberg. The Titan and its sinking have been noted to be very similar to the real-life passenger ship RMS Titanic, which sank 14 years later. -Wikipedia
Did Morgan Robertson's novel inspire Titanic's principal owner, J.P. Morgan (pictured on the left), and his partners to switch the ship with its hopelessly damaged sister ship, Olympic, and turn the sisters into twins, in order to sink the Olympic and collect otherwise un-collectable insurance money, thus saving their firm from bankruptcy? Did the plot go horribly wrong when the Olympic/Titanic hit an iceberg, and the Morgan-owned rescue ship was too far from the struck vessel to save its passengers and crew? Why were the surviving crew members detained, isolated, photographed and treated like criminals upon their return to England before being allowed to reunite with their families? Click, read, watch….
POSTSCRIPT: Robertson was found dead (conveniently?) in an Atlantic City hotel room in 1915. The cause of death was believed to have been a drug overdose.
Kim: Military Still First in N. Korea
Addressing Nation, Dictator Urges 'Final Victory'
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