"Do these slaves really love their chains?" (Hitchens)

Christopher Hitchens has a piece over on Slate that gives us a window into North Korea's plight (for lack of a better term):

Here are the two most shattering facts about North Korea. First, when viewed by satellite photography at night, it is an area of unrelieved darkness. Barely a scintilla of light is visible even in the capital city. (See this famous photograph.) Second, a North Korean is on average six inches shorter than a South Korean. You may care to imagine how much surplus value has been wrung out of such a slave, and for how long, in order to feed and sustain the militarized crime family that completely owns both the country and its people.

Interesting piece...give it a look. Hell, it's Hitchens. He's always interesting.

Enjoy the tree bark sandwiches...

WASHINGTON: North Korea has rejected American food shipments and asked aid groups to leave the country by the end of the month, the United States and a leading aid agency said, in another sign of tensions as Pyongyang plans a rocket launching that Washington sees as cover for a long-range missile test.

A U.S. State Department spokesman, Robert Wood, said in Washington on Tuesday that the North gave no reason for refusing U.S. food aid. North Korea faces chronic food shortages and has relied on outside aid to help feed its 24 million people since famine reportedly killed as many as two million in the 1990s.

Kim Jong Il wants cold hard cash...not food stocks. The benefit of taking foreign food aid and passing it onto his military is minimal since he already steals the food out of the common citizens' mouth to feed them at present.

You can't buy rocket fuel with a can of SPAM. Besides, he knows that if he waits a bit, he'll get a strongly worded letter from the United Nations, and an appeasement gift of whatever he requests from the current US president in exchange for a double promise handshake not to continue with the development of nuclear weapons.

Still so ronery...

SEOUL (AP) — Kim Jong Il was unanimously re-elected to North Korea's rubber-stamp parliament, state media said Monday, in elections closely watched for signs of a political shift or hints the autocratic leader is grooming a successor.

Turnout Sunday was 99.98%, with all voters backing the sole candidate running in their constituency, the official Korean Central News Agency said.

The mountains wept with joy (it rained). The oceans rose in anticipation (tide came in). The people cheered with vigor (guns pointed at their heads).

Congratulations Il one...may your subjects continue to enjoy their tree bark sandwiches.

All together:

I'm so Ronery /
So ronery /
So ronery and sadry arone /
There's no one /
Just me onry /
Sitting on my rittle throne /
I work very hard to be number one guy but, stiwr there's no one to right up my rife /
Seems rike no one takes me serirousry /
And so, I'm ronery /
A rittle ronery /
Poor rittle me /
There's no one I can rerate to /
Feewr rike a biwd in a cage /
It's kinda siwry / but, not reawry / because, it's fiwring my body with rage /
I'm the smartest, most crever, most physicawry fit / but, none of the women seem to give a shit /
Maybe someday, they'wr awr notice me / And untiwr then, I'wr be ronery /
Yeah, a rittle ronery /
Poor rittle me...

Hatchet job of inanity...

WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush's last effort to seal an agreement to dismantle North Korea's nuclear weapons program during his presidency collapsed Thursday, leaving the confrontation with one of the world's most isolated and intractable nations to Barack Obama's administration.

Four days of negotiations in Beijing ended in impasse after North Korea refused to agree to a system of verifying its promise to end all nuclear activity. Among other things, the North Koreans have objected to soil and air samples being taken near nuclear facilities and being taken overseas for testing.

Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times' red-headed stepchild, the International Herald Tribune, does his best to paint Bush as a failure in this piece.

"...eludes Bush's grasp"
"...collapsed..."
"...progressed erratically, punctuated by brinkmanship and breakdowns..."
"...depriving him of a late diplomatic breakthrough in the sunset of his presidency."

The truth of the matter is that the Bush Administration wants a substantive and verifiable agreement. Because, guess what happens when you take North Korea at their word?

Sherman...to the Wayback machine....
Ok, Mr. Peabody...

There is good reason to distrust any talking solution to the missile crisis. North Korea has not been very nice in recent years. Some in the Red Team still cling to the notion that being nice to brutal dictators is the only way to solve problems. This solution has not worked with Kim and will never work.

Kim stuck the Clinton administration with the bill after years of talk, dancing, wining and dining the dopey State Department diplomats hired by the boy president. In 1994, Clinton sent Jimmy Carter to negotiate. Jimmy solved the crisis by declaring that there was no crisis as long as we sent Kim money. Yet, even before Carter got back to D.C., Kim had already cashed the U.S. aid checks and restarted his nuclear weapons program.

Madam Albright called Kim "charming" and danced with him – as if there was nothing to resolve. Kim's tactics worked very well with the Clintonoids. The years of chatting about solving the crisis gave him time to develop long-range missiles and nuclear weapons.

In 1998, Clinton misled the American public and Congress, getting the Pentagon's top general and the CIA to both attest that North Korea could not get a missile together for at least 10 to 15 years. Only weeks after the chairman of the Joint Chiefs testified before Congress, Kim shot a Tae'Po Dong missile over Japan, with bits and pieces falling just short of the U.S. coast.

Trust, BUT VERIFY...Right President Reagan, sir?