Communist Tax Lawyer

Taiwan’s Defense Minister Kao Hua-chu said over the weekend that Taiwan would continue to try and procure weapons from countries like the United States in an effort to stabilize the region.

“The United States has kept providing Taiwan with defensive weapons according to the Taiwan Relations Act, enabling Taiwan to be more confident in pressing for reconciliation with the Chinese mainland,” Minister Kao said.

“In the future, Taiwan will continue purchasing more weaponry from the United States… so as to build a smaller and leaner deterrent force.” Read the rest of this entry »

Opposition leader Viktor F. Yanukovich has declared victory over current Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in Ukraine’s 2010 presidential election, which has garnered immense international attention over the last few months.

It is not yet official, and Tymoshenko will not concede, but exit polls currently put Yanukovich three to four points ahead. Read the rest of this entry »

SEOUL (Reuters) – A senior Chinese envoy was in North Korea to prod the reclusive state back to stalled nuclear talks while the South sent a team across the border on Monday for talks to restart tourism projects halted due to political wrangling.

The North will also host the U.N.’s top political envoy later this week, with analysts saying this engagement may bode well for the dormant six-way disarmament-for-aid talks and could lead to Pyongyang reducing the security threat it poses to the region.

The destitute North is feeling pressure to return to the nuclear talks, where it can win aid to prop up its broken economy, due to U.N. sanctions imposed after its nuclear test in May 2009 and a botched currency revaluation that sparked inflation and rare civil unrest. Read the rest of this entry »

Following Poland and the Czech Republic, top military officials in Romania announced that they have approved U.S. plans to base surface-to-air missile interceptors within their country.

Romanian President Traian Basescu hastily issued a statement yesterday saying he was prepared to negotiate the details of the missile defense system which, he added, could be up and running by 2015. Read the rest of this entry »

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Somali pirates hijacked a North Korean cargo ship on Wednesday with an unknown number of crew on board, the European Union Naval Force said.

The MV Rim was seized in the Gulf of Aden, outside the internationally recommended transit corridor patrolled by the anti-piracy naval coalition, said Cmdr. Anders Kallin of the EU Naval Force. Read the rest of this entry »

It seems that since China apparently ruined the Copenhagen Summit in December and snubbed U.S. President Barack Obama while doing so, America has been on a mission show Beijing that although the U.S. is a mess, they will not be outmaneuvered in foreign policy.

They have done so by striking at some of the country’s most sensitive topics over the last month, namely: censorship, Taiwan, and the Dalai Lama.

It started with Google’s announcement that it would be leaving the Chinese market after suffering a series of sophisticated cyber attacks originating in China in addition to claiming that censoring their search results went against the company motto, “Don’t be evil.”

Google’s announcement came a week after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a private dinner with some of America’s top executives, including Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Coincidence? Read the rest of this entry »

America’s recent weapons deal with Taiwan was the correct decision, not “the wrong decision,” for the Obama administration. Here’s why:

WASHINGTON (New York Times)— For the past year, China has adopted an increasingly muscular position toward the United States, berating American officials for the global economic crisis, stage-managing President Obama’s visit to China in November, refusing to back a tougher climate change agreement in Copenhagen and standing fast against American demands for tough new Security Council sanctions against Iran.

Now, the Obama administration has started to push back. In announcing an arms sales package to Taiwan worth $6 billion on Friday, the United States leveled a direct strike at the heart of the most sensitive diplomatic issue between the two countries since America affirmed the “one China” policy in 1972. Read the rest of this entry »

Romanian President Traian Basescu advised Moldovans to carry out the requisite reforms needed to join the European Union on Thursday, during a meeting at a state university in Southern Moldova’s Cahul.

“I tell you, Moldova’s place is in the EU. You need to take a decisive road to the EU,” President Basescu said to a large gathering of students. “This means sacrifices, to be accepted by the political class and the population. But these are worth it because the EU means you can aspire to prosperity.”

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Moldova has been lead by a series of communist, pro-Russia administrations who kept the country as a middle path between Moscow and Bucharest. Read the rest of this entry »

The final piece of the puzzle, Kazakhstan has agreed to an overland transit deal that would grant NATO a more reliable supply route to Afghanistan than is currently being provided through Pakistan.

Ukraine, Russia, and Uzbekistan had already agreed to similar terms, but the northern supply line was impossible without the approval of the largest Central Asian country.

“This allows supplies for our forces to start moving from Europe to Afghanistan, beginning in the coming days, complimenting the very important transit route through Pakistan,” NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said.

The agreement is contingent on only non-lethal supplies passing through the area, but nevertheless, is of huge importance to NATO’s Afghanistan campaign as the Pakistan supply route through the Khyber Pass remains under frequent Taliban attacks.

Update: (New York Times) Militants Strike Convoy with NATO Supplies in Karachi