Tale of Two Faces

It's rather wonderful to see the U.S. under the occupied White House throwing out those different strokes for different folks when it's nuclear proliferation they're playing with. It was the best of worlds for India, where our makeshift foreign policy crew is offering to waive any kind of interference and give them assistance in developing nuclear power. The majority party is taking a lot of flak over this association with a discredited U.S.

Hours ahead of the United Progressive Alliance-Left Committee meeting to achieve a breakthrough in the impasse over the Indo-US nuclear deal issue, Communist Party of India General Secretary A B Bardhan said if the Government operationalises the deal, we will not give them any green signal for going ahead.
(snip)
Insistent on opposition to the deal, the Left parties termed the compromise formula to finalise the safeguards agreement at the IAEA as meaningless.

Bardhan said, "There is no change in our stand. We will hear what the government has to say.”

Special: Indo-US nuclear deal | Full coverage

Left leaders, who are unrelenting in their opposition to the agreement, were of the view that India will have no say when it seeks a waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which is dominated by the US.

It's the worst of worlds for North Korea, which has been attacked then courted, subjected to trade sanctions and now given a semblance of relief. Although the N. Korean Dear Leader's simpering rivals that of the cretin in chief, the people are desperate and need some opposition figure with stature to give them a degree of balance, not a quality to be found in this worst administration ever. This morning, an old nuclear facility got blown up for a great scenic background. It provided an unparalleled example of displacement activity.

U.S. Treasury financial sanctions aimed at ending North Korean money laundering, illicit financing activities and weapons proliferation remain in effect despite the easing of other sanctions against Pyongyang, a Treasury spokesman said on Thursday.
The move by the Bush administration to lift some sanctions after North Korea delivered a long-delayed account of its nuclear activities will not restore the country's access to the international banking system, Treasury spokesman John Rankin said.
"Any change in this situation will be a long-term process that depends on North Korea changing its behavior and bringing its domestic anti-money-laundering and counterterrorist financing regime into compliance with international standards," Rankin told Reuters.
North Korea was largely cut off from the international banking system in 2005 when the Treasury named Banco Delta Asia, a small bank in the Chinese gambling enclave of Macau, as a primary money laundering concern.
The Treasury accused the bank of circulating counterfeit U.S. currency produced by North Korea, and of knowingly handling transactions by North Korean entities involved in illicit activities, including the narcotics trade and sales of counterfeit cigarettes and other goods.

Of course, the minions are all gathered around cooing about the U.S. version of Dear Leader's progress in foreign relations in D.C. - except for the ejected John Bolton who is still spouting his condemnation for anything he can't manage. The news media dutifully reports that the U.S. is removing N.Korea from the terrorist list and giving it new freedoms to trade for the benefit of its starving populace. Like the actual situation in India, the actuality portrayed by the words the executive branch throws at them have only a vague semblance of the actual situation in the country it has danced a round with.

"What Happened" really needs a Volume Two, someday, perhaps with Christopher Hill as the author, to tell how the war criminals managed to mess up what had been a good working relationship with N. Korea, and warm relations with India, when they took over the White House. A chapter in it might well point out the nuclear hazards that were visited on the world by the administration's dumbshow.

How a welter of poor behavior and worse policies converted our position to last in esteem among nations should make interesting reading, long after the Democrats are in position to restore our relations and position in the world. Hopefully, at that time we will not have another war or two going, that this insane cabal has thrown us into.

Brinksmanship would be too complimentary a description of the blustering face that this regime has shown to the civilized, and not so civilized, world.