Fidel está muerto

So there is a reason to cheer, the death of Fidel Castro, should be a cause of celebration and reflection for everyone who believes in individual freedom, world peace, human rights and has both liberal and conservative values.  For the regime he founded continues to be one marked by violence, intimidation, intolerance and denial.

Castro interrogating a farmer as private property rights get abolished

Castro was a thug, a murderer and a warmongerer.  He urged Khrushchev to attack the US with nuclear weapons, which would have triggered World War Three.  

He incarcerated political opponents, labelling anyone who opposed the regime as "mentally ill" so they could be locked up indefinitely for not realising how lucky they are to be under socialism.  

He imprisoned Cubans who had HIV, he ran a prison state that saw Cubans flee at their own risk by boat to the United States.  Americans didn't flee to Cuba to embrace socialism.

Cuba under Castro was propped up by the USSR, in effect, poor Russians helped keep Castro's revolution alive.  A policy that ended with the collapse of the USSR, but from then on Cuba's rhetoric was that it was poor because the US embargo hindered it.  How a socialist state can claim that its prosperity is dependent on trading with a capitalist liberal democracy remains a mystery.

Cuba's joke is the large numbers of vintage American cars roaming the streets, only recently supplemented by Chinese vehicles.  This is seen as quaint, but is reflects poverty. 

One of the great claims about Cuba's "successes" is statistics around education and healthcare, because it claims low levels of child poverty and life expectancy that is high compared to other Latin American countries.  Yet the source of these statistics is entirely the Cuban one-party state, which imprisons its critics, so has to be at least treated with a high degree of scepticism.   Whenever foreigners inspect the Cuban healthcare system, they get to see what the regime wants them to see.   The UN may take the reported statistics from all member states on face value, but that's naive and absurd.  Only once Cuba is free will the veracity of these claims be clear, for now it is at best opaque. 

Of course, the usual suspects have come out singing paeans over Cuba.  Red Ken Livingstone couldn't help himself on BBC Radio 4 today saying that Cuba was "open and relaxed", even though it is a criminal offence for anyone other than the state to publish or broadcast, and when confronted with the regime's intolerance he said that in the UK anyone supporting Hitler was imprisoned. Odious little worm.

Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn said he was a "champion of social justice" and dismissed imprisonment of dissenters and continued authoritarianism as saying "there are problems of excesses by all regimes",  confirming the man is a moral relativistic sympathiser with dictatorship.

Vladimir Putin said he made his country free, well maybe by his standards..

President of the EU, Jean Claude Juncker said Castro was a "hero to many", which indicates the quisling relativist tolerance of a man and an organisation that ought to be celebrating the end of a man, whose regime provided support and succour for brutal regimes that impoverished and denied the human rights of citizens of 12 current EU Member States.  

Canadian Prime Minister, the illiberal Justin Trudeau lionised him as having "deep and lasting affection" for the Cuban people, including those he killed for opposing him.

Sinn Fein, which until recently lionised terrorism as a legitimate technique to change minds and power, is commemorating him as a hero.

The position people take on Castro should be your litmus test for their morality.

Castro used violence against those who opposed him.  He criminalise anyone who published or broadcast any criticism of his regime, so he was intolerant and authoritarian.   Dismissing any politicians whose core strategy is to do violence to his opponents is appeasement of dictatorship, rejection of any liberal values whatsoever, and places his supporters in the same mould as fascist apologists.  

To claim that "well he gave them education and healthcare" justifies a system of terror for anyone criticising the government or any of its policies or any of those with the privileges and trappings of power, is the justification of a fascist.   For "he" gave them nothing.  He ran a prison slave state which forced teachers and doctors to do the bidding of the party, he used his comrades of another slave state - the USSR- to supply the equipment, technology and training - to deliver a system that could have been delivered under liberal democracy.   Indeed, Chile's post-Pinochet success demonstrates that a liberal free-market democratic government can deliver the prosperity, including high standards of education and healthcare, without pointing guns at its citizens for criticising the regime.  

The best that can be said of Castro is he replaced another vile dictatorship - the Batista regime - and that he could have been worse.  However, pardon me if I don't think reaching the abominable barbarities of Kim Il Sung, Enver Hoxha or Nicolae Ceaucescu is an "achievement".

So to hell with Castro.  Some of the people who claimed with Donald Trump being elected, he is the "new Hitler" are mourning the loss of a man who was much closer to Hitler than Trump is ever likely to be.  

If someone is an apologist for Castro, or says he "made mistakes" or " his human rights were dreadful but", then they are excusing the blood spilt, the poverty, the propaganda, the utter denial of human liberty, and the politics of fear, terror and the jackboot, over the politics of debate, diversity and tolerance.

Treat the apologists of Castro accordingly.  The people in Miami celebrating his death lived under him, or have relatives who do.  The people elsewhere mourning are exercising the freedoms that Castro never tolerated and Cuba doesn't tolerate today.

Let's hope Mugabe doesn't see out the year as well.

Let's hope Cubans in the New Year gain the freedom to speak openly and honestly about the past 55 years of their country, even though thousands of so-called "liberals" in the West couldn't really care less.

UPDATE:  In 2008 I wrote the Top Ten Reasons Castro should be hated.

In 2010 I wrote on how the Green Party of NZ appeased the Cuban dictatorship

Read Katherine Hirschfeld's critical review of Cuba's healthcare system, including how much of it is "informal" and how it is illegal to refuse any healthcare including abortions. 

Abandoning foreign policy now means Pax Rus - is it what you wanted?

Whether it be left-wing activists of the so-called "peace" movement or libertarians who think that foreign policy should mean immediate withdrawal from the world, the recent events in Syria have demonstrated that when the USA, and with it the Western world, decides to withdraw from being involved in other countries, that others will fill the vacuum.

So it is that President Obama, who ridiculed Mick Romney's claim that Russia was a rising threat, has left the opponents of the Marxist/militarist hereditary dictatorship of Bashar Assad wide open to being attacked, by the air, by Vladimir Putin's unashamedly expansionist military.  

Dad and son, and their personality cult

Had Obama been true to the neutrality that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee had presumably rewarded him for "ex.ante", he would have said that there is no Western interest in what happens to Syria.  For indeed, his pitiful actions (a few airstrikes against Islamic State) have demonstrated not much above it.  In fact, I would have respected, if disagreed, with a position that replicates that of the nihilist libertarian isolationists who want the USA to withdraw from the world, and let Islamism grow, tyrants take over its friends and do nothing, until the first missile, bomber or terrorist controlled airliner strikes US soil (actually scrub that, for when the latter happens, even they think the response is NOT to attack those who harboured them).

If the so-called "land of the free" wants to withdraw from the world, then those of us who bear the consequences of that withdrawal better be prepared for the cost of this, but let's not pretend that the USA gives a damn about other peoples wanting to be lands of the free or escape tyranny.  That's their battle, and if others want to join in their oppression, don't pretend that it matters.

So to Syria.

Can civilisation confront evil?

When Francis Fukuyama said the end of the Cold War was the "end of history" (a claim that no doubt will plague him for the rest of his life), the great hope was that the world was turning back from a blood soaked century of both war and tyranny.   However, just as the Holocaust was not the final word on genocide, the end of the Cold War was not the end of tyranny.

What we are now seeing unfolding in Iraq and Syria, with the self-styled "Islamic State" is the latest incarnation of the philosophical embrace of the idea, common to all tyrants, that human beings do not exist for their own purposes, but are subordinate to the purposes dreamed up by others - to be slaves to a "greater" ideal, that involves the sacrifice of their time, property, passions, morals, beliefs, bodies, families and 

"Islamic State" has goals which are common to that of other eliminationist totalitarians:

- Impose its totalitarian law on areas it occupies, with brutal punishment for transgressions;

- Demand all residents of those areas embrace its ideology;

- Kill those who reject it or who are deemed to be "inferior";

- Enslave selected numbers of those it controls (in this case women it selects for sex slaves);

- Enforced breeding to grow its own numbers and dilute/weaken those it occupies.

It has parallels throughout history.  The Khmer Rouge (which dispatched between 1-2 million by execution or starvation), the Croatian Ustashe (who famously enforced one third of Serbs to be converted to Catholicism, one third deported and one third executed), militarist Japan, Nazi Germany and numerous Marxist-Leninist regimes once embraced by one of Nicky Hager's heroes.

Some may say it's not "our problem", although it is clear that some of the "Islamic State's" murdering hoards hail from the UK, Australia and other Western countries, and it is also clear that the "Islamic State" is getting funding from individuals in a wide range of countries, both Western, but also the hereditary dictatorships that the West has friendly relationships in the Persian Gulf.   It would appear the idle rich in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and the like are quite keen on funding those who behead children and impales their heads on sticks.  

Yes, just consider that, pause for a minute and think about a "militant group" (as is the accepted euphemism nowadays) that executes young children, impales their heads on sticks in a town, to warn of what happens if people do not embrace its totalitarian form of Islam.   Now consider that there are people in your country that are not only not offended by this, but willing to go and help out the killers.  
Furthermore, the Islamic State does not simply want a Caliphate over Iraq and Syria, but across the entire Middle East and seeks to wage jihad against the United States and Britain.  It doesn't just want to "peacefully" impose Shariah law (you know a bit like how the Taliban did in Afghanistan or the Khmer Rouge turned Cambodia's calendar to Year Zero), it wants the world to become a caliphate.

Be clear also that it is very well funded from selling oil from Syrian oil fields and if it gained control of more in Syria and Iraq, it could acquire weapons and have levels of funding the Taliban could only have dreamed of.

So think 9/11, 7/7 and think a level of danger that betrays the head in the sand "libertarians" who think this is a problem in the Middle East that can be ignored.   Even if Israel and the Palestinians signed a peace treaty tomorrow that finalised the "two state solution" (even if Israel was wiped off the map), the "Islamic State" would not hesitate, unlike its brethren Hamas.  Even if all of the Muslim world was run by a Caliphate, it would not hesitate, unlike its brethren Al Qaeda (who disowned it for being "too violent").

These are killers that, unlike the Nazis, unlike the Khmer Rouge and unlike the Rwandan gangs of blood thirsty murderers, gloat over their brutality.  Yes, it isn't just a surreptitious dark eliminationism, it is a loud and proud campaign of slaughter.

Remembering Ahmadinejad

(From 2008..)

Ahmadinejad's speech (yeah you would figure he'd say something ridiculous) had little coverage in the media. Maybe they are all tired of the Iranian holocaust denier's comments, but they shouldn't be.

His interview in Time Magazine had him say:

"As to the Holocaust, I just raised a few questions. And I didn't receive any answers to my questions. I said that during World War II, around 60 million were killed. All were human beings and had their own dignities. Why only 6 million? And if it had happened, then it is a historical event. Then why do they not allow independent research?

TIME: But massive research has been done.

AHMADINEJAD: They put in prison those who try to do research. About historical events everybody should be free to conduct research. Let's assume that it has taken place. Where did it take place?"

So Ahmadinejad continues his anti-semitic lunacy. His actual UN speech has some gems:

- the "passing of the era of agnostic philosophies".  In short, he believed the West is dominated by Christianity;

- he bemoans violence as a means of solving crises, he who led a regime that dished out violence in abundance;

- "Justice is about equal rights, the correct distribution of resources in the territories of different states". Chilling stuff, who decides what is correct?

- "The Islamic Revolution toppled a regime, which had been put in place through a coup, and supported by those who claim to be advocates of democracy and human rights, thwarted the aspirations of the nation for development and progress for 25 years through intimidation and torture of the populace and submission and subservience to outsiders." Irony no?  This regime that murders anyone who rejects the state religion, and flogs the victims of rape.

- "those who have actually used nuclear weapons, continue to produce, stockpile and extensively test such weapons, have used depleted uranium bombs and bullets against tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Kuwaitis, and even their own soldiers and those of their allies, afflicting them with incurable disease"  Extensively test nuclear weapons? Use bullets against tens of thousands of who?

- "After September 11, a particular radical group was accused of terrorist activities -- although it was never explained how such huge intelligence gathering and security organizations failed to prevent such an extensive and well planned operation."  9/11 conspiracist then?

- "In Palestine, a durable peace will be possible through justice, an end to discrimination and the occupation of Palestinian land, the return of all Palestinian refugees, and the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital."  Sure it will.   Bound to be a durable peace, after you've wiped out the "Zionist entity".

The Islamic Republic of Iran is a throwback, to the dark ages and is the antithesis of democracy and justice, denying anyone in the country who wishes to reject Islam, fundamental rights.

It ought to be ostracised across the Western world, universally condemned by secularists and advocates of human rights.  It is a land where individual freedom is subordinated to a theocratic dictatorship.

It's an utter disgrace that so many on the left, who are only too fast to jump on Christian conservatives, (often quite correctly), appease the beastly regime - because it fits into their visceral hatred of the United States - when, if they were living in Iran, virtually none of them would have the tolerant liberal views they express, tolerated at all.

Iranians start to stand up

Following Egypt, Iranians protest against their gerrymandered theocratic "democracy", that allows any point of view as long as it supports the status quo.

Good for them.  Iran's theocratic dictatorship brutally suppresses political dissent, it executes more people than any country other than China, including rape victims and children.

update

OK so I didn't say much then.  However,  Iranians appear to have released their urge for reform by voting for the most reformist candidate they were allowed, who may - at best - ease the absurd economic policies that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had inflicted upon them all.  Hassan Rouhani has proven himself to be at least amenable to diplomacy over confrontation and has reduced internal pressure for major reform.

However, let's not get too excited.  Iran still imprisons political dissidents.  Iran still executes apostates. Iran is still intervening in the Syrian Civil War on the side of the Assad dictatorship (primarily on sectarian grounds) and in Iraq.  However, its imperialism gets nary a peep of criticism from the so-called peace movement.

There is a long way to go, and Hassani wouldn't be President if the regime thought he might seriously undermine this theocracy.

Yet it is also clear that he has been brought in to save the regime from the ineptness of past leadership bankrupting the economy and sabre-rattling.  This does not include abandoning its nuclear programme or the capability to develop a nuclear weapon, but it might mean stalling it or containing it, and drastically curtailing Iran's long standing policy of extending support to the likes of Hizbollah and other Islamists (but not Al Qaeda) in other parts of the world.

The key point being that Iran wants the end to economic sanctions so it can grow, although this wont be enough for the largely cosmopolitan population of Tehran, aching for more personal freedom, it will remove pressure for reform elsewhere.

So at best there is hope that Iran will threaten the outside world less, especially Israel, but it will still imprison and murder its own people for blasphemy against Islam and seeking a government that isn't theocratic.  For all of that, it will and should remain a pariah.

The problem of Egypt

Egypt has no tradition of respecting individual liberty or secularism.

Nasser was widely admired, as he took over the Suez Canal and lost the war he was about to launch against Israel (and lost the Sinai Peninsula).

Anwar Sadat bravely made peace with Israel, gaining back the Sinai, and was assassinated for his efforts (and is largely forgotten).

Hosni Mubarak set up a massive military led corporatist state of rent-seeking self-aggrandisement, whilst simultaneously suppressing Iranian style Islamists.  The same Islamists who bombed hotels, tour buses and killed foreign tourists, until Mubarak's secret police authoritarian state put enough of them in prison.  Meanwhile he appeased a moderate form of Islamism, allowing for the occasional hassling of Christians and implementation of Shariah law.

So he gets overthrown, and elections are held. The world quietly condones it and lo and behold, a plurality of Egyptians choose theocracy, as the alternative is a patsy of Mubarak.

The USA, EU and the rest of the supposedly freedom loving West celebrated democracy, not individual freedom and rights.   Not separation of religion and state.

So how could any Western politician oppose a government led by the Muslim Brotherhood?  How could it oppose that elected government trying to change the constitution?  

Indeed.  Egyptians who supported Islamism were happy.  Egyptians who supported secularism, the small Christian minority and Muslims who keep their religion in the private sphere, were not.

Neither was the Army, which has a large network of businesses which keep many of the senior officers well fed and watered.   

So Egyptians who don't like Islamism, and Egyptians with a vested interest in the Army's own corporatist enterprises, protested.

The Islamists were less than happy as the Army overthrew their authoritarians, to reimpose their own.

Now the Army is killing those who resist it, but don't be fooled.  The Islamists would do the same, given their predilection to terrorism, their predilection to criminalising apostasy, to harassing those who are not of their faith, to censoring views, cultural expressions and humour they don't like, to constraining the role of women.   Then of course there is the widespread anti-semitism, which is far more widespread.

So whilst the philosophy, politics and the motives of the Islamists are thoroughly despicable and the anti-thesis of individual freedom and the secular liberal democracy that Western civilisation is supposed to be based on, the ends - the political defeat of Islamism - do not justify the means - opening fire on civilians.

The problem is that the Army is led by a man, who believes it is ok for women to have their virginity checked by men, to protect them.  

Egypt needs rulers who will allow people to live ascetic Muslim lives, by choice, or not to.  It needs rulers who believe in freedom, and who believe in separation of religion from state.

However, it doesn't have a majority of citizens who share those values...

North Korea's bad? The Sun thinks it's about circus animals

Regular readers will know I have a particular interest in North Korea (aka DPRK).  The reason being that it is, in my view, the most totalitarian regime the world has seen for any extended length of time, having now existed for 64 years, and is now the only successful three generational personality cult.  It is, as one writer described it, as if George Orwell’s novels “1984” and “Animal Farm” were taken not as warnings, but as instruction manuals.  Moreover, I’ve been there, although I am legally bound to not publish anything regarding that visit, and it is in the interests of my guides (who were exceptional), for me to do just that.

The sheer horror of the all pervasive denial of individual freedom and rejection of any objective consideration of reality, in favour of an “official view” is difficult to get across.  It is dehumanising, debilitating and life is cheap there.  It has all but scrubbed capitalism away, with private property rights virtually non-existent beyond a few personal chattels, with all employment defined and prescribed by the state.  Where you live, what job you do and your spare time are all almost entirely determined by others, and is a mixture of chance, favour and whim.   For those who insult the personality cult heads, or are deemed to be counter-revolutionary, the future is grim for them and their entire families.  If a man is said to have said something illegal, or folded a newspaper the wrong way (creasing an image of one of the leaders), or the like, it is to the gulags that he goes, with his wife or girlfriend, his parents, siblings and children.

You see in the DPRK, children can be political prisoners.  Forced to live in prisons high in the mountain valleys, from babies.  They receive rations that are starvation level, those who survive do so by eating bugs, mice and other things they can forage or hunt for.  Many are physically abused, some sexually abused, when old enough they are forced to work from dawn to late in the evening, every day.  It is one step removed from Nazi concentration camps, in that it isn’t gassing used to eliminate them, simply hard work, cold and malnutrition.

That horror isn’t easy to visit in the DPRK, for obvious reasons.  However, DPRK watchers have been adept at mapping, in great detail, where such camps are, with a brilliant Google Earth overlay.  For actual visitors to the DPRK, the horror is more subtle.  It isn’t in the power cuts, the propaganda, the relatively barren streets, crumbling infrastructure or the regimentation, it is what is not so obvious.  For there is a surfeit of videos and pictures of the DPRK’s key spectacles, none of which is that new.

It is the lack of children playing spontaneously, for their before and after school and weekend time is all taken up by state organised clubs and associations, all designed to promotion loyalty to the leaders, the party and the state, including dobbing in their parents for not being sufficiently loyal.  It is the orphanages where infants are shown off singing and dancing a song like “Kim Jong Il is our father”.  It is the constant climate of fear among citizens about who sees them, who listens to them and what will be said.  People who have had much history and information about the outside world kept from them, and what they do get is frequently heavily distorted.  People who are anxious to know about the outside world, to understand and to be free of fear.  Of course you never see those who are taken away, imprisoned, tortured or simply starving to death because of a regime that imprisons them and steals from them all to maintain a true 1% elite of privilege, gained by force, birth-right and fraud.

So what did Sun journalists Alex Peake and Simon Jones think was most important to focus on?  The treatment of circus animals.  The two of them lied their way into the country for a rather asinine story, probably wrecking future business of the tour company Lupine Tours, and quite possibly risking not only the end of the career, but also possible imprisonment of their tour guides.  A bit of research with DPRK experts (and there are a number of noted academics) would have told them the real cost of their “story” lies with others.

Now I’m all for thwarting dictatorships and embarrassing them, I’m particularly keen on getting more information into them and engaging with people who live there.  I’m also interested in raising the profile of the most serious atrocities of such regimes.  For the DPRK it must be the use of Stalinist type Gulags to imprison and enslave the children of political prisoners (though one can count the banishing of the disabled, uncounted public executions of political prisoners and the mass starvation of millions whilst the leadership dined like oligarchs).

However, for the Sun, it no doubt figured its readers were more interested in finding a country where they don’t know Michael Jackson is dead (hardly surprising, since the moon landings were never ever reported, and the Holocaust isn’t commonly known to have happened either), and where circuses involve the undoubted cruel treatment of bears and baboons.

Sad though it is, the treatment of the bears and baboons is not unusual outside Western Europe, and would also be found in many former Soviet Republics and China.  Quite simply the cultural norm of treating animals with compassion is alien to many cultures, and hardly a surprise for a state which retains structures and systems little changed from the ones the USSR transplanted onto it in the 1940s.

However, for the Sun to regard this to be the real tragic story of the DPRK is a travesty.   Although I would not be surprised if the human hating fraternity called PETA thinks the treatment of bears is more of an issue than the treatment of humans in the country, and that compassion for animals in the UK tends to rank higher than that for people.

I don’t belong to the feeding frenzy of hate-mongers who think any media owned by Rupert Murdoch is somehow evil – far from it.  However, this sort of “journalism” is not only rather facile, but at best is not useful, and at worst counterproductive.

For a start, if it means less people get to visit the place and expose it to foreign ideas and questions, because Lupine Tours is shut out of the market, then that is unfortunate.   I expect Lupine Tours to sue for breach of contract (presuming it was clever enough to include a contract that restricted the journalists).

However, the likely reaction of the DPRK is going to be more simple.  It will stop including the animal circus on tours visited by Westerners.  It wont save the animals.   However, it will give the impression that this is what matters the most – the treatment of circus animals.  It shouldn't be.

You see the impression most people have of the place is ludicrous dictators and nuclear weapons, with big monuments, mass regimentation and all other sorts of spectacles.  The unadulterated evil behind it all is largely ignored, particularly by the likes of Amnesty International and the leftwing protest movement - all too keen to damn the USA on its treatment of Islamist terrorist suspects, but never raising a protest against the torture of children by the DPRK.

A far more useful article would have sought out defectors, and discussed what they saw and experienced, and talked about the gulags with children in them.   This is what must be raised, again and again – the gulags must be opened up, letting the ICRC in and get closed down.  Children should not be political prisoners – ever (even though, in reality, virtually everyone in the DPRK is a political prisoner).

Better reporting on the DPRK is here in the Economist, about the horrors of the gulags, pointing out it is easier to lampoon the regime as freaky than to confront the true horror of the place.

This video of a starving orphan girl in the country is far more harrowing and disturbing than grotesque circus animals.   Although, I doubt PETA really thinks so.

Syria's bloodshed is the legacy of anti-Western isolationists

Children shot dead by snipers.

The stories out of Syria has resulted in growing pressure and concern from many countries, anxious that the "international community" is sitting by whilst Syria's government kills its own citizens, who simply want to be free.

None of this is a surprise to Syria watchers.  Hafez Assad established a brutal dictatorship when he took power, and showed little hesitancy in engaging in torture, summary executions and massacres of civilians to maintain his personality cult driven regime.  The Ba'athist regime established a feared secret police force and knew how quickly it could bully thousands of Syrians to turn out to maniacal rallies to boost the ego of this mediocre bullying pilot.  Like North Korea, he passed it on to his son, so Bashar Assad today has the dubious honour of leading one of the world's two hereditary non-monarchical dictatorships.

The Assad regime has always had warm relations with Russia and the Soviet Union before it.  Even today, Russia maintains a naval base in Syria (at Tartus) - the only non-CIS country to still have one.  Syria's armed forces are Soviet/Russian supplied overwhelmingly.   There is evidence of Syria having both chemical and biological weapons.

You'll notice a deafening silence about Syria from one usual set of protestors - the so-called "peace" movement, "anti-war" protestors and the usual group of anti-American, anti-Western supporters of any victims of Western military action.   You don't see them protesting outside Syrian embassies, you don't see rallies outside Russian embassies, or burning Russian flags.  You see no marches organised for the people of Syria.  Some of them may say that there is no "war".  I bet a few Syrians would disagree.

You see there is a war, it is worse than a trans-border war, because then there is someone to fight for you. This is a state turning on its citizens, turning on the people it exists to protect.  However, the so-called "peace movement" has never really cared about how states treat citizens, having had significant support from the Soviet Union.

You see for them Syria doesn't have the usual list of bogeymen behind it.  It was never supported by the US or any Western powers.  It hasn't had any military intervention from the West either.  It is led by a dictator who has a Marxist pedigree.  All awfully inconvenient when you want to pursue your world view that so much that is evil in the world emanates from foreign policy in Washington, London, Tel Aviv or Brussels (NATO).  

Of course the Assad clan have always been murdering their citizens.  It's not new.  Its willingness to invade Lebanon and run it as a client state has rarely achieved the opprobrium layered at Israel.  Syria, you see, has always been off the radar as it hasn't been led by anyone that has ever been supported by the West.  Not worth the effort protesting about from the point of view of the anti-Western protest movement.

Since the end of the Cold War, there have been interventions, for humanitarian purposes, in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Haiti and Libya.  The interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan had humanitarian outcomes, but were primarily motivated by the desire to remove aggressive dictatorships.

However, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have been costly, in money and lives, to those who participated.  It is inconceivable that any such actions would be repeated today.  The Libyan intervention only occurred because of determination by British and French governments to use air power alone to support the fall of Gaddafi, in part due to past guilt about the brief period of rapprochement that saw some appalling capitulations to that regime.

So "doing nothing" and certainly doing nothing unilaterally is consistent with the view of the leftwing so-called "peace movement".

President Obama opposed the war on Iraq and is keen to extricate the US from Afghanistan.  He is keen not to intervene in other countries, and indeed foreign policy has largely been left to the State Department.   European leaders gained little glory from Libya, and are far too solipsistic about their economic crisis to feel able to extend their power to Syria.   So attempts are made to use the UN Security Council to get consensus over sanctions - which of course will fail because Russia regards Syria, a country it taught to murder, monitor and maim, as an ally.

So anyone who sits by and gets angry and upset at why nobody does anything to protect Syrian civilians should take comfort - it is exactly the foreign policy of the radical left.  The Green parties in various countries, the backbone of the "Occupy" movement, the hard left of the Democratic Party of the USA, the so-called "peace" movement all support this strategy, as indeed does Republican Presidential contender, Ron Paul.  Governments should sit by and do nothing.

Does it mean that nothing should be done?  No.  Russia's support for the Assad regime is reprehensible and there should be loud and vocal protests against Russia and against Syria's government representatives elsewhere.  It should be legal for mercenaries to go to Syria and fight against the regime, but anti-mercenary legislation in New Zealand banned that.  You can thank the Greens and Labour for that.  The action against Syria should be privately led, by those who are willing to pay, supply or fight on behalf of opponents of the regime.

However, as despicable as the Assad regime is, I would not agree on an intervention by NATO or other forces without a clear strategy to replace his regime.  There is no appetite to do that.

Regardless, the conflict in Syria today has many dimensions.  It is Shi'ite vs Shi'a, Islamists vs secularists and Christians, it is a potential mess.  It is difficult to see how any intervention beyond economic sanctions and supporting any secularist opposition, and supporting broadcasts towards the country, could be useful without exacerbating the situation.

So while you witness the Assad hereditary dictatorship mow down men, women and children, and get upset about it, remember those who remained silent throughout the life of this murderous family's rule of Syria.  Note those who loudly proclaimed for the people of Iraq, after US intervention, but remain silent today.  Note those same people supported stopping you or anyone being mercenaries to fight for the opposition in Syria.  Note that they would, if consistent, loudly reject any measures by foreign governments to stop the Syrian government.

As Syrians fight to be free, note those supporting the government that oppresses them.  For they are based in Moscow and Tehran.  Given governments wont act without a UN Security Council resolution (which wont come because Moscow will veto it), you will see what happens when a state turns on its citizens and nobody provides those citizens with a means to retaliate.

The only moral response is for those, who know what they are doing, to conscientiously support forces of freedom, secularism and who oppose sectarianism in Syria against Assad.

There is no simple solution to Syria.  It might be that the previously inert Arab League may be able to exercise extraordinary pressure on Assad to step down and establish a transition to a new regime.   However, in the meantime more lives will be lost.    That is the price paid by people who face down a 40 year old Marxist personality cult laden dictatorship in an environment where no government dare try or even know how to use force to protect them.

Kim Jong Il's economic legacy

Let's test two of the great theories as to why North Korea is in poverty:

1.  North Korea has really only suffered since the end of the Cold War saw it lose markets and cheap oil.

2.  North Korea has also really only suffered due to the introduction of UN sanctions on trade with the country due to its nuclear programme.

Nonsense.  The effect of the end of the Cold War was to make things worse, but the relative decline is inbuilt in the system of rigid state socialism.

Look at this, from the Washington Post:

Source: Washington Post

Stagnation has been the norm in North Korea for 40 years.  The gap between rich and poor has been a gap between South Korea and North Korea.  From 1972 to 1987 South Korea was under the rule of a military led dictatorship and subsequently transitioned to a vibrant and very open liberal democracy.  However, South Korea's dictatorship allowed far more economic and personal freedom than North Korea.  Today the average South Korean has 20 times the income of the average North Korean, with freedoms and a way of life as distant from North Koreans as New Zealand does to Haiti.  

As the Washington Post notes.  East Germany had one-third of the per capita income of West Germany at the time of reunification.  North Korea has one-twentieth.

By contrast, South Korea is a pinup example of roaring success in economic development.  From 1953 when after the Korean War it had per capita income akin to that of Bangladesh, it is today effectively a developed country. 

Do we really need any more case studies of capitalism vs. socialism?

Kim Jong Il - A life of terror

It is difficult to exaggerate the absolute vileness of what Kim Jong Il presided over since the death of his megalomaniac father Kim Il Sung, he is perhaps only exceeded by Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin and Mao in sheer numbers of those murdered, but the whole superstructure of the regime is such a layer upon layer of fiction that is defies easy understanding.  Almost everything about him and his regime was a lie, the reality evasion was on such a scale that millions died of mass starvation, hundreds of thousands lived and died in prison camps, including young children and the rest of the population lived under an ever present terror of facing oblivion due either to failure of the totalitarian state to deliver food and shelter, or because it would take them away.   

Kim Jong Il was born in 1941 in the USSR by his father, a small scale anti-Japanese guerilla leader who fled Korea with his wife Kim Jong Suk after a number of small successes in repelling Japanese imperialism and its cruel rule of Korea.  In the USSR Kim Il Sung learned of Marxism-Leninism and was impressed by the order and discipline imposed by Stalin.   Kim Jong Il would have been an insignificant small boy if his father hadn't been hand picked by the Red Army and Stalin's regime to be Moscow's plant in Korea.  He was brought along whilst the Red Army marched into the northern half of Korea at the end of World War 2.  Kim Il Sung had Soviet advisors and military assistance, as he set up a Korean communist party with Soviet alignment, which initially worked with and then purged and destroyed the indigenous Korean communist movement.  His ruthlessness, friendliness to Moscow and youthful charisma saw Kim Il Sung picked to lead the new state set up by Moscow to rival the UN/US backed Republic of Korea established in the south.  The Democratic People's Republic of Korea was born, and Kim Jong Il was 7 years old.

Kim Jong Il faced several childhood issues.  One was death of his younger brother to drowning, another was death of his mother in 1949 - allegedly exacerbated when she found out about Kim Il Sung's serial adultery (the "Great Leader" title not quite appearing yet though), and then the Korean War causing Kim Il Sung to evacuate with his children and new wife to be Kim Song Ae.

The world heard absolutely nothing of Kim Jong Il till 1973.  By then he had completed school and university, and was being groomed to be the successor.  Kim Jong Il had by then gained a penchant for expensive liquor, fast cars, young pretty women (he used his father's pleasure troops to recruit pretty young girls from age 13 to be trained to please him once they reached around age 15-16, in large numbers), guns and movies.   He lived the high life, drinking heavily (Hennessy especially), smoking and partying.  He never flew, and would happily arrange execution of those who displeased him.  His movie fetish became legendary.  He led establishment of a major film studio in Pyongyang, with multiple sets for different eras and countries.  He arranged kidnapping of actors, chefs and directors of Korean descent from south Korea and Japan, he also arranged for prostitutes to be brought in from various countries including Sweden.   It is notable his father died at age 82, but he couldn't manage past 70.

Yes, 70.  He is 70, not 69.

Between 1973 and 1980 he was referred to publicly in all media and books as "the Party Center" as he led day to day administrative business for his father.  In that exercise he successfully led various purges and ensured only loyal followers progressed to support him and his father, he also helped spear the unprecedented personality cult around his father, which after 1980 was duplicated for him personally.   The personality cult saw the glorification of a vacuous national ideology called "Juche", the constructions of statues and monuments across the country, and the completion of the cultural revolution that meant virtually all songs, films, books and art were focused on glorifying Kim Il Sung, the party, the state, Juche and all that was done by them.   Everything good was because of his father and later himself.  Everything that went wrong was due to the US imperialists, the south Korean puppet clique and the Japanese.

By the 1980s, Kim Jong Il had become the Dear Leader to his father the Great Leader and both operated as a pair.  Yet Kim Jong Il's high squeaky voice meant he was largely a recluse, living the high life, whilst ordering stories and tales to be written about his exploits.   Like his father it is claimed he gave "on the spot guidance" to hundreds of sites across the country.   What he did was perpetuate a system that create possibly the biggest and longest lasting prison state in history.

North Koreans have largely lived planned lives.   There is no private ownership of land, or indeed anything other than personal possessions.  Regular re-issuing of currency destroys savings.

Overseas travel was strictly prohibited, as was travel from one's own town or village.  Internal passports strictly regulated where anyone could travel, and life beyond one's home town was available only to few.  

News media was strictly under total state control.  All media reported to the people how lucky they were to live in the country and that people worldwide envied them.  They were told that South Korea was a state of slaves where Americans raped girls and kept Koreans as servants and mistreated them, starving them.  They were told everywhere else in the world was full of crime, starvation, war and deprivation.  Satellite TV was unavailable.  Foreign broadcasts were unavailable.   Radios were banned except for locally made devices with no tuning dial so that only local signals could be picked up.   The life in North Korea in the 1980s was hermetically sealed from the world.  Foreign popular culture was unknown.  Elvis Presley, Mickey Mouse, the Beatles and almost any movies, songs, fashions and brand from elsewhere were unknown, except to the elite.

Every day was planned.  Jobs included political education every day, people were constantly told to work harder and longer and never complain, be grateful and be frugal.   Every week every adult would go to criticism sessions where they must confess their own limitations and then accuse others of the same.  Every week one would fear being made a scapegoat.  Photos of both Kims were mandatory in every home, office, school classroom and public transport vehicle.  They had to be kept in perfect clean condition or punishment would be meted out.  Destroying newspapers with their images on them was forbidden.   All children were taken from their parents several hours a day into creches to learn their first words "Kim Il Sung (and latterly Kim Jong Il) is your father".  Children taught to owe everything to the Kims, and to put loyalty to them above their parents and friends.  Taught to be snitches for the leaders.  Taught to be part of the Police State.   Red Guards from their young teens, loyalty to leader and party first, and they would be rewarded if they reported on relatives and friends who were disloyal.

Kim Jong Il was a part of that and changed nothing when his father died.   When Soviet oil and aid ceased to flow, the economy was not reformed.   It remained centrally controlled and managed, entrepreneurship remained illegal, no freedoms were granted.   As a result, he continued to maintain a policy of terror.   Individuals feared that if they were found to be disloyal, they and all their relatives would be imprisoned in gulags - slave labour camps where they would work 16 hour days, 7 days a week, eating next to nothing.   Children from babies up would be included.  Abuse, sadism and torture are rife - reports have also come out of chemical and biological weapons tests being applied to some inmates.  

Even outside the gulag system the mass starvation of the late 1990s was due entirely to the failure of the entire economic system to be productive and let people respond to demand, supply and reason.  Adopting "non-juche" farming techniques was forbidden, so millions starved, desperately trying to eat wildlife, bark, soil, weeds, whilst propaganda signs urged them to "only eat two meals a day".   Kim Jong Il ate lobster, drank liquors and remained obese.

He could have reformed his country, what he did was next to nothing.  The biggest revolution has been the introduction of a mobile phone network that pre-selected elite can use, but which is effectively allowing people to network without easy state surveillance.  He has also seen, informally, the borders become more porous, as corruption and awareness of the outside world has spread among the more privileged classes, especially as technology has slipped into the country, with very cheap CD and DVD players, and CDs, DVDs from south Korea via Chinese sources.  He stopped a military coup by raising the status of the military into the most powerful force in the country, essentially usurping the party.   

North Korea today is a military state led by a personality cult family.  Its main businesses are arms, narcotics, counterfeit currency and minerals.   Kim Jong Il visited China several times and China showed him the results of its dramatic reforms, but he was unmoved - believing that it was too risky to allow Koreans to set up their own businesses and interact freely.  The result is a dark, polluted, cold, state of terror, horror, starvation and fear.

Unlike official propaganda, and the parroted propaganda from Pyongyang's useful idiots in the Korean Friendship Association, who stick their deluded evil tongues up their figurative fundament of Kim Jong Il, he will be remembered as a short inadequate playboy murdering tyrant whose policies and approaches resulted in the deaths of millions, and suffering of tens of millions.

What is left is a country with exhausted broken infrastructure, an enormous military armed with weapons of mass destruction, unproductive agriculture, massive untapped mineral resources, a police state and a people whose lives have been wasted through ideological education and decades of lies and terror.

Reforming, modernising, freeing and re-educating this country is a monumental task.  Consider fixing East Germany to be like helping an overweight smoker to become fit and normal size, fixing North Korea is like helping a senile centenarian become an Olympic athlete with a Ph. D.

Kim Jong Il's death facts and sources UPDATES

I was driving near Taupo when I heard the news about Kim Jong Il's sudden death, and missed turning off.  Perversely you might think, I have a relationship with the DPRK, given it is the most totalitarian regime the world has ever seen - and know people there.  I studied it extensively in the 1990s and travelled there.   I am overwhelmingly joyous about his passing, but am thinking a lot about those who I know are there and who are looking for reform to come, knowing there must be change.  However, I am going to be driven nuts by reporters who are going to get a lot wrong about the place.

Let's get some points clear:

1.  Kim Jong Il was 70 NOT 69.  He was actually born in 1941 in the Soviet Union, not 1942 on "sacred" Mt. Paektu whilst his father was leading the liberation from the Japanese.  The 1942 birth year is a fabrication which appeared in the 1970s in publications.  The sole reason was to match his father, Kim Il Sung's, birth year of 1912.  So when Kim Il Sung turned 60, Kim Jong Il turned 30 etc etc.  The point of his birth in the USSR (near Khabarovsk I believe) is that Kim Il Sung had fled to the country due to the Japanese takeover, along with his mother Kim Jong Suk (who died in 1949 under circumstances that have multiple versions).

2. Kim Jong Un is expected to succeed him, but reality is likely to be quite different.  There is a significant power struggle about to happen (there was one when Kim Il Sung died as his second wife, Kim Song Ae sought to overthrow Kim Jong Il), and the list of members of the National Funeral Committee is very significant (see article here).  Kim Jong Un leads the list, number two is the rather  elderly Chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly Kim Yong Nam, Choe Yong Rim is third, and is Prime Minister and an ally of Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un.  Those two are close allies and expected to ensure Kim Jong Un leads.  Ri Yong Ho is number four, and is effectively now de-jure head of the military as a whole, and his ability to ensure loyalty to Kim Jong Un is likely to be critical.  At 69 he is not too old to achieve that, but his name will be one to watch.  Kim Yong-Chun is alongside him and may be expected to be a challenger as head of the army.

3.  Kim Jong Il's closest living relative is his sister Kim Kyong Hui, the most powerful woman in the country.  She may well seek to shadow Kim Jong Un because she is sole remaining issue of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Suk.  Kim Jong Il's half sibling Kim Pyong Il is not listed in the funeral committee, and was reportedly in Pyongyang earlier year because his mother- Kim Il Sung's second wife Kim Son Ae, is terminally ill.  He may seek to challenge Kim Jong Un, but has not be around in the country sufficiently to do so.   Kim Pyong Il and Kim Kyong Hui are the two people best placed to mount a civilian challenge of the leadership.

4.  North Korea is not as isolated as it once was.  The elite have mobile phones and are extensively aware of life in the outside world, with DVDs, CDs and other material circulating among the ruling classes.  Yet, the mass of the population do not have a clue, and may think the world is mourning with them.  They haven't the slightest clue of the wealth prosperity and freedom of South Korea.  Internet access is not available to anyone except a tiny elite, satellite TV is only available to that elite and in three hotels in Pyongyang, and it is a crime to own a radio that can receive foreign broadcasts.

5.  He died TWO DAYS AGO, which is astonishing.  It is telling that so much time passed compared to news of the death of his father.  Kim Jong Un will have sought to ensure he was not directly threatened.  However, it will be far more interesting in coming months.

The latest report is that the country is under curfew, under actual visible martial law.

If you want the most useful coverage of events then you will find it hard to beat the following sites:

- Daily NK - Providing the most regular, up to date and informed coverage of events.  In English, but originally Korean.   If you use any single source to follow events in coming weeks, use this.

- North Korea Econ Watch - Russian academic Andrei Lankov's excellent blog on events in the DPRK, with many sources of those who do business, travel and visit there.  Lankov is one of the world's leading DPRK watchers, with some fluency in Korean, as well as English and Russian, and a long history of visiting the place over many years.

- North Korea Leadership Watch - Self explanatory blog by Michael Madden, includes a great Kim Jong Il family tree

North Korea's own state monopoly news agency (no others allowed, absolutely no free speech or independent media or publishing of any kind) the Korean Central News Agency is here in English.

North Korea's international radio station, Voice of Korea in English

More will be added in coming days

UPDATE 1:  No foreign delegations allowed to Kim Jong Il funeral or for mourning.   Big questions regarding existing Western tour groups in the country.

UPDATE 2: TV3's Nightline coverage (New Zealand) is sloppy.  First, Kim Jong Il has NOT been the "Dear Leader" for over 10 years, but rather "Leader".  Secondly, the "military first" policy (Songun) is not "60 years old".  It dates from 1995 although is claimed to have arisen in 1961.

UPDATE 3: Daily NK is clearly managing to get unofficial reports from the DPRK presumably through a mix of sources.  Markets closed, night curfews, people prohibited for being outside.  Particular issues in the town of Musan.

100% result in DPRK election

North Korea held its local, municipal and provincial elections.

It had 99.97% turnout (disgraceful yes, but it was noted that some were working on oceans or abroad - haven't they heard of absentee ballots?)

and 100% of those who turned out voted for the single candidate.

Even the ephebophile, megalomaniacal, pathological liar.

Meanwhile, there are still tens of thousands in gulags, including hundreds of children, and Amnesty International still has no campaign on the place, oh and Reverend Don Borrie of Porirua still remains Kim Jong Il's useful idiot in New Zealand.

Bravery extends to Pyongyang

The so-called "Arab Spring" has produced unexpected ripples.

One is in the world's most totalitarian state.

Graffiti was found in Pyongyang saying:

"Park Chung Hee and Kim Jong Il are both dictators; Park Chung Hee a dictator who developed his country’s economy, Kim Jong Il a dictator who starved people to death"

Graffiti in North Korea is so rare that known incidents of it since the Korean War are countable on one hand.  To criticise Kim Jong Il in this way is unheard of, and would get anyone associated with it a summary execution.

Read Daily NK to see how the regime is reacting, by closing universities over the summer.

The cracks are appearing, it's just a tragic and pathetic shame that most of the self-styled promoters of human rights in the West ignore it.

Meanwhile, when WILL New Zealand's brainless and inane news media hound North Korea's willing idiot in Porirua - Reverend Don Borrie - for his decades of sycophantic apologies to a regime that holds babies and small children as political prisoners to be enslaved, raped, beaten and starved?

About the same time as it will ask probing questions of Cuba-philes like Matt McCarten and Keith Locke about treatment of psychiatric patients in Cuba, or should I say people deemed by the regime to be mentally ill because they don't embrace the regime.

By the way, I'm heading to New Zealand today... it's been two years...

The slaves commemorate their dead leader

Today is one day in the year when I can always feel thankful.  For it is the day that 24 million people who live in the world's largest prison are required and expected to celebrate the birthday of their dead, but still constitutionally empowered, President.

The cold soulless omnipresent photo of Kim Il Sung

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (you need that name to top off the entire effect of this vile absurdity) has Kim Il Sung as "eternal President" as he lies in state at his immaculate marble and granite palace in Pyongyang.  Koreans unfortunate enough to be on the northern side of the DMZ pay tribute to this wily murdering warmonger every day, bowing four times to his embalmed corpse.  They all have this very photo in their homes, offices, schoolroom, looking down upon them all, everywhere.  Yes Orwell was prescient. 

The prisoners are all expected to give gifts, but in turn they also get small gifts for their children.  They are, of course, expected to be grateful for they have "nothing to envy in the world" according to state media.  However, whilst they get gifts for their children, they are not foolish - they now sell them on the black market because food rations are so meagre.

What is particularly tragic is that the country is so closed that most of the slaves actually like him.  Why?  Because he maintained such a totalitarian grip on media, publishing and in completely rewriting history (and removing those who inconveniently know the truth) that he has painted himself as a hero.

His tale is that he founded a revolutionary army in his teens and he led that army to defeat the Japanese and expel them from the Korean peninsula by 1945.   The truth is that he led a small brigade in his late 20s who fought the Japanese in a few battles, but then fled to the Soviet Union.  Korean was liberated from Japanese enslavement because the US defeated Japan, helped by Chinese partisans (nationalist and communist) and the latecomer Red Army at the last minute.   

His tale is that he arrived in Pyongyang to crowds celebrating his return as a famous hero, when he was virtually unknown and installed by Stalin as a compliant local who would help mould Korea into a client state.  

His tale is that the US invaded in 1950 and he and his army fought back the imperialist invasion, despite US use of biological weapons and heinous atrocities committed against Koreans.  In fact, he invaded south Korea, brutally took over nearly the whole peninsula before the UN Security Council authorised a US led multilateral counteroffensive that would have defeated him, had Mao not gotten frightened by MacArthur's rhetoric and saved his skin.  There is no credible evidence of biological weaponry being used in the Korean War, and tales of US atrocities are grossly and obscenely exaggerated (but not completely without foundation).

His tale is that he rebuilt the country into a workers' paradise whilst south Korea lived under the tutelage of US capitalist slavedrivers using south Koreans as subjects, oppressing them under a brutal military dictatorship.   The south Korean people's single hearted desire being to reunify the country under Kim Il Sung's leadership.  The truth is that while dictatorship DID reign in the south until 1988, and working conditions in the 50s and 60s were harsh, the dictatorship was nowhere near as pervasive as Kim Il Sung's.  Living standards in south Korea soared since the Korean War, materially surpassed the north by the late 1960s and virtually no one in the south have any time for Kim Il Sung.  He is widely hated in the south.

His tale is that he developed a unique special ideology, called Juche, which empowers humanity and has millions of followers and acolytes around the world, who look upon him as their leader, a genius, "peerlessly great man" and numerous other sycophantic titles.  The truth is that he had academics concoct a contradictory and vague philosophy of isolationism, nationalism and pseudo-monarchical hypocrisy, which is virtually unknown in the world except for a strange handful of peculiar malcontents found in the likes of India, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Stoke on Trent.

His tale is that his people have nothing to envy in the world, that the world is full of famine, disease, exploitation, oppression, war, slavery, crime, depravity and death.  The truth is that he has created a country that has lost millions from famine, imprisons people in their home towns, tells them where and when to work, denies them privacy at all levels, demands their constant unquestioning obedience, lies to them on a scale and extent that is almost incomprehensible (virtually nothing positive about the outside world is ever reported, and with the exception of a tiny elite, little is shown of foreign culture, news or major events - such as the moon landing).  

His tale is that he has always worked long hours, tirelessly for the people, always giving them wise guidance and helping in all fields, and his knowledge and skills are unbounded in their brilliance and breadth.  He being a modest man who demands little, but gives all.  The truth is that he lived the life of a wealthy king with numerous well appointed palaces, food, drink, clothing and consumer goods from around the world, enjoyed his own "joy division" of especially selected beautiful young women to enjoy orgies that would make Berlusconi jealous, and by the mid 1960s had so ruthlessly purged any challenges to his rule that he could relax. All the time he called for his enslaved people to work ever harder, more tirelessly than before, filling up their "spare time" with activities either to defend the country, or extra-curricular activities for the monthly "celebrations" of him, his inarticulate playboy son, the party, the country, the army or Juche  Meanwhile, there has never been room for anyone disabled in the workers' paradise.

So whilst Libyans fight to depose their megalomaniacal ruler  (who has long been loved by the Kim gang), and others go about their daily life.  Be grateful for a moment that you're not in a country led by a lying murdering corpse, where you can't leave, where you are denied the truth of his life and his rule and are told to sacrifice more every day and you have nothing to envy in the world.

Evil in action

Whilst the world focuses on Libya, another dictatorship is mistreating families for propaganda purposes in a way that is undeniably despicable and outright evil.   It is yet another story of south Korea vs north Korea.

In early February, a DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) fishing boat drifted across the military demarcation line that unofficially marks the line of control between the ROK (Republic of Korea) and the DPRK.  The boat was intercepted by the ROK navy and the 31 people questioned.  The ROK determined quickly that the boat was genuinely lost and was not part of any covert military mission, so they were all given the option as to whether they wished to return to the DPRK or not.  27 chose to return, 4 chose to defect to the ROK. 

The ROK decided that on 4 March, the 27 people who wished to return would be handed over to the UN command at the Korean De-Militarised Zone (DMZ) at Panmunjom, to be handed over to the DPRK authorities.   The DPRK refused to accept them, demanding that all 31 people be returned.

So it began.

The ROK view was fairly simple.  The ship innocently drifted into southern waters in bad weather, and those aboard would be given a choice about where they wanted to go.  Freedom.  As simple as that.   

Of course, the DPRK doesn't make it quite that simple.   For the people who choose to stay in the south, their families face intense difficulties.  They will be labelled as being related to politically unsafe individuals, which will mean they too are unsafe.  They can face being forcibly relocated, losing their employment and homes, and being interrogated about their defecting relatives.  They are put under constant suspicion, for the fear is that they too will defect.   Some face imprisonment as a result, and a north Korean gulag is sheer hell.

Even those who return face difficulties.

According to Daily NK:

One defector who used to work as an NSA agent explained, “The NSA will accuse them of responsibility for the defection of the other four, demanding to know why they didn’t persuade them otherwise,” adding, “There must be at least one Party cell secretary among the 31. Those people will definitely be targets for criticism.”.  Such interrogations generally take around a month. After that, the repatriated individuals have to sign a written oath not to disclose what they have heard and seen in South Korea, and will then be allowed to return to their homes, in this case in Hwanghae Province.

Defectors unanimously agree that the fishermen will thereafter be closely monitored by agents of the NSA, People’s Safety Agency, and chairmen of their local people’s unit on the basis that the authorities think they could cause ideological unrest after being exposed to South Korean society.

Damned either way of course.

The DPRK view naturally is different.  The idea the regime could ever countenance that people could defect from a perfect society is ludicrous.  So it says: 

"It is sheer nonsense for the south Korean authorities to talk about "defection" and the like by four of them.

The unreasonable attitude of the south Korean authorities is touching off bitter anger among the people in the DPRK. The families and relatives of the inhabitants now under custody there are eagerly waiting for them to come back as early as possible."

On top of that, the DPRK Red Cross, which has always been completely in collusion with the regime (not disowned by the ICRC), has even been threatening according to the Korean Central News Agency:

The detained citizens have made clear their stand to go back to the DPRK from the outset and demanded their early repatriation. Nevertheless, the south side claims that it will not send some of them, talking about "defection" and "respect for freedom of will." Such attempt can never be allowed as it is a very unreasonable and rude act contrary to humanitarianism and international usage. 


Worse still, the south side has resorted to a sinister "defection operation", taking those citizens to different places all the while. This fact is arousing anger of everyone.


Their repatriation is an important matter related to the north-south relations rather than a humanitarian issue, the message said, warning:


If the south side does not comply with this just demand of the DPRK, it will be held wholly accountable for the consequences arising therefrom. 

Next time the Red Cross asks you for money (and given that almost everywhere it does remarkably good work), ask the representative about whether any of it is going to the north Korean Red Cross and explain why it shouldn't.

So a stalemate has emerged.  The DPRK has demanded that there be a face to face meeting between the families of all of the people, and the men themselves, at the Neutral Nations Supervisory Committee meeting rooms at Panmunjom.   The idea being to get the four people who wish to defect to be weakened by seeing their distressed family members, as well as to produce propaganda to paint the ROK in a bad light.

So the DPRK has instead released a video showing the family members reading out prepared statements, and clearly terrified.  Their statements go along lines as follows "She grew up in a good system where she had no real worries and could enjoy learning" and

"My husband is not that kind of person; I trust in this because he is someone who got a scholarship from Han Deok Su Industrial University, studied, has the honor of being a Party member and became a cadre, always working faithfully for the fatherland, people, Party and Suryeong" (Suryeong means "Great Leader").

This brutal prison state cannot conceive of how people may choose, even knowing the consequences for their loved ones, to leave it and live somewhere where their lives ARE their own.  A place where your home, employment, relationships, travel, reading and activities are not decided, monitored and controlled by the state.  So it cynically uses the families of those who wish to defect, to emotionally plead with the defector to return to the prison state - the defectors knowing too well that if they don't return, it will mean being hassled, possibly imprisoned and certainly materially deprived because of "guilt by association".

That's the difference between freedom and sacrificing your life for the "greater good". 

The ROK government gave all of the people on the fishing boat the choice to stay in south Korea or return to north Korea, patently without coercion.  It has forced no defections, as is seen by most willing to return to the DPRK - simply because family ties are too important, and for fear of what would happen to them.   Those who choose to stay in the south have done so because presumably they believe their lives will be better as a result, and it would be hard to imagine why that would not be true.

The DPRK government wants its slave subjects all back, it will harm the families of those who do not return, and if they all return it will hail that it was because of the indomitable strength and indefatigable will of the leaders, party, army and state that the "south Korean puppets" submitted to the will of the people who wanted to return to their beloved socialist motherland, after witnessing the degradation and depravity of life in the "US-occupied south".  

So for now, the DPRK is refusing to receive those who want to return home, because it is using the families of those who don't, as political footballs.  If it cared one jot for the people concerned, it would allow the families of those who want to stay in south Korea to follow them, and then allow those who wish to return to do so, in full knowledge that they also could bring their families south.

However, in a socialist totalitarian prison state, it isn't about the people - it is about the system.  The people are cogs in the wheel of a system ostensibly about people, but which is as distant from human compassion as you could possibly be.

Vogue felches another dictator

The world of fashion presents itself as being about aesthetics.

This week Vogue magazine has shown itself to be so skindeep as to be sickening.

You see it has undertaken a sycophantic paean to Asma al-Assad, wife of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Assad is President because his father was.  He inherited it from his delightful father Hafez al-Assad.  Hafez al-Assad established a police state under rule of the Ba'ath Party combining Soviet style socialism with the brutality of an ethnic minority (he was Alawite) seeking to dominate a majority that might otherwise be less enthused about his rule.

The Syrian police state detains without trial and executes political opponents.  There is no independent media or political dissent permitted in Syria.   One of its techniques of extracting information from dissidents is the "Syrian chair" which carefully bends ones back backwards until vertebrae break one at a time.

Vogue didn't mention that though.

Neither did Vogue mention the at least 17,000 people massacred at Hama in 1982, as Assad senior sought to wipe out the Muslim Brotherhood, but essentially shelled and bombed the city for days on end to clear the population.   

However it did mention how Bashar Assad won the 2000 election with 97% of the vote - no questioning of that at all.   Not a mention of how free and fair Syrian elections are not.

Yet the article is mostly about his wife.  A London born Syrian girl, daughter of a cardiologist who was working with JP Morgan when she started "dating a family friend" who was Bashar.  As if that was just like anyone dating the son of a dictator.  What a world!

The rest of it is gushing sycophancy.  All the good work she does, how "normal" their life really is, and how she is part of the effort to modernise Syria and build a civil society in a Middle East full of Islamists.

Yes.  

No difficult questions asked about torture, extrajudicial executions and political prisoners.  Nothing about the suppression of speech and political discourse.  Nothing about alliances with Iran, nothing about invading Lebanon.  Nothing about overthrowing its elected government.  Nothing about chemical and biological weapons. 

Foreign Policy says:

It's hard to imagine that a Vogue editor woke up this morning and decided it wouldn't be hugely embarrassing to publish a puff piece today, at the moment of the greatest upheaval in the Middle East in two generations, about Syria's ruling family. But that appears to be exactly what happened. 

The article does not once mention the protests currently under way in the Middle East, including scattered evidence of demonstrations in Syria. Instead, the article focuses on Syrian first lady Asma Assad -- the "freshest and most magnetic of first ladies," endowed with "[d]ark-brown eyes, wavy chin-length brown hair, long neck, an energetic grace." At a time when other Middle Eastern first ladies, notably Tunisia's Leila Trabelsi, have been the target of protesters' wrath, this may not be the wisest moment for Asma to flaunt her glamour.

Vogue.  Not just vapid and intellectual fodder with those with the depth of a teenage groupie, but instrumental in providing succour and good publicity to dictatorship.   Then again, Naomi Campbell's brainlessness in her dealings with dictator Charles Taylor was simply more evidence of an industry built on making money from being clueless.