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.

Daily Telegraph's offence to New Zealand

I'm livid, beyond livid.

The Daily Telegraph being one of the serious UK newspapers, and one of the only two remaining true broadsheet format newspapers (the FT being the other) is one of the great newspapers of the world.  Yes, it tends to side with the Conservative Party,  but this political slant is well known and understood.  In the UK you know the politics of your papers, but they write for a broader church than that.  The Daily Telegraph exposed the ridiculous expenses claims of MPs from all parties before the last election, and did not hesitate to expose Conservative MPs as well.

One of its writers is Geoffrey Lean.  He is considered an "environmental correspondent" having previously been environmental editor for the more left leaning  Independent.  His Telegraph blog is here, but his insult is not located here.

It is this headline:

"New Zealand earthquake : the vengeance of Mother Nature".

Yes, the implication being that some anthropomorphised entity has inflicted vengeance on New Zealand.  For what? Why?

He goes on:

"as the people of Australia and New Zealand have been the latest to find out, she also has a nasty and highly destructive temper."

The female is "mother nature", so again he implies this is a cognitive being who is angry.  I am sure he doesn't really believe this but he goes on...

"And she's getting more irritable as the years go by. The devastating earthquake in Christchurch, and Queensland's cyclone and floods, which have so tumultuously ushered in 2011, follow the second worst year for disasters on record."

The end is nigh.  So what?  What have people done to reap this?

"Munich Re says that 90 per cent of last year's disasters were due to the weather, providing "further indications of advancing climate change". Sceptics disagree, and certainly no particular disaster can be attributed to global warming. But the increase is what most scientists have long predicted would happen as the world warms up."

So a reinsurance firm is making a link, but he naturally say no disaster can be attributed to global warming, but the increase is what would happen as the world warms up.

Sound like he is blaming the earthquake on global warming.  He goes on talking about droughts, floods, storms and hurricanes and then says:

"And, of course, earthquakes, like the disaster that has hit Christchurch, have nothing to do with it."

Whew, thank goodness for that, except hold on. What the hell is that headline about?  Why write about it now?  Why the fuck say "New Zealand earthquake: The Vengeance of Mother Nature" unless you are making some link?

"But whatever the cause of the increase in disasters, humanity has made their impact far worse."

He then says buildings make things worse, which of course implies we should live in caves or tents, a rather inane comment really.

He backs out of linking the earthquake to anything:

"Christchurch aside, maybe Mother Nature sometimes has reason to be annoyed."

Who?  Aren't you the annoyed one?

Not as annoyed as me.  You see he didn't mean anything, but he did try to get attention because of the earthquake.  He had a headline that is vile, as if Christchurch was the result of nature's "anger" at humanity, he did it while corpses are still being pulled out of the rubble.  Even ignoring his hatred of humanity in treating nature as if it is a living being that emotes, it was in appalling bad taste.

Even worse bad taste was that this article was one of the "Editor's choice" on the website.

For shame Daily Telegraph.  For shame!

Hitchens damns Obama's impotence

Writing in Slate, Christopher Hitchens shares my disappointment at Obama's complete failure to show any kind of leadership on Libya.

He writes:

it became the turn of Muammar Qaddafi—an all-round stinking nuisance and moreover a long-term enemy—and the dithering began all over again. Until Wednesday Feb. 23, when the president made a few anodyne remarks that condemned "violence" in general but failed to cite Qaddafi in particular—every important statesman and stateswoman in the world had been heard from, with the exception of Obama. And his silence was hardly worth breaking.

Meanwhile as I have already said, Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro have placed themselves with Gaddafi.  China and Russia's authoritarian leaders have naturally sat on the fence, hoping their own people don't get any bright ideas or that anyone looks in their own blood splattered back yards.  Obama acts similarly.

It is an outrageous withdrawal from world affairs, one that would put no pressure at all on Russia or China to relent on a resolution at the UN Security Council.  Yes, in Egypt it was difficult for the US to be at the forefront in a revolution that deposed an erstwhile ally, when it both feared the instability but welcomed the call for freedom and democracy. Yet, with Libya it should have been different.

Hitchens continues pointing out the bravery of those without the world's most potent military on their side.

By the time of Obama's empty speech, even the notoriously lenient Arab League had suspended Libya's participation, and several of Qaddafi's senior diplomatic envoys had bravely defected. One of them, based in New York, had warned of the use of warplanes against civilians and called for a "no-fly zone." Others have pointed out the planes that are bringing fresh mercenaries to Qaddafi's side. In the Mediterranean, the United States maintains its Sixth Fleet, which could ground Qaddafi's air force without breaking a sweat. But wait! We have not yet heard from the Swiss admiralty, without whose input it would surely be imprudent to proceed.


Quite, it is so feeble as to be embarrassing.  Americans should be embarrassed and mortified at how far their country has fallen in international affairs.   It could take relatively painless steps and gain enormous goodwill and support in the region, and do more to generate friendship and pro-Western feeling than anything else could.   Though this is the same President cutting broadcasts by the Voice of America to China.

It is rather straightforward Mr President:

- Libya has long had a history of being an arch-enemy of the US and your allies;
- Gaddafi's history has been one of unashamedly shedding blood of innocents and supporting those who do so;
- The USA is, despite your inept efforts, still by far the world's largest economy and military superpower.

I even think Hillary Clinton would do more.

Dubya certainly would have.

Chavez and Castro side with Gaddafi

Pinup boy of so many in the left, from Ken Livingstone to Matt McCarten, Hugo Chavez, is siding with Gaddafi as is Fidel Castro (Spanish reports).

Who is surprised?

The international left has long been sympathetic to this thug, a thug who has chemical and biological weapons, admits it, who has engaged in terrorism against civilians whether by plane or by nightclub.  

They are all murdering thugs, all of whom happily use force against those who they disagree with, all part of the transnational community of tyrants.  The only difference with Chavez is that he is an elected one who has not been completely unhindered in his pursuit of power.

At what point will the lowlives in the West who have lauded the likes of Chavez and Castro admit they got it wrong?  That they, like the legions of useful idiots who denied the mass slaughter under Mao, who denied the mass slaughter under Stalin, some who even denied the Khmer Rouge's genocidal scale rivers of blood, who constantly apologised for regimes that are as bloodthirsty as the anti-Marxist military dictatorships and thugs who they targeted.

Those of us who actually do believe in individual freedom have been consistent, called a spade a spade.  Called Castro, Chavez, Pinochet, Gaddafi, Mubarak, Assad, Suharto, Kim Jong Il, Ahmadinejad, Bokassa, Mobutu, the lot, all dictators.  All vile, all despicable, all inexcusable.  Some are worse than others, but none deserve to be celebrated or supported.

So what's wrong with some people?