Kim Jong Il thanks Hillary Clinton

Dear Dear Leader Vice President Hillary Bill Clinton

Thank you so much for your generous birthday gift offer. I knew the pending missile tests would get your attention. I get so ronery (yes I saw that stupid Team America movie too), sorry little joke. I know Bill loves jokes, like I love ladies. I know you like them too.

I’ll be 67, and there will be a huge party in Pyongyang today because the people here love me (see last year). Sorry you can't come, because you'd see millions out to see me, like the ones for your Great Leader Obama.

It pleases me so much at the magnanimity of the US imperialist aggressors that you want to make peace with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. You have finally recognised that you were defeated in 1953 by the brave Korean People’s Army, much like my father singlehandedly kicked the Japanese scum out of Asia.

I know some say it’s because you now have Great Leader President Obama, who I see organises the same sorts of displays of public affection and fawning adulation that I and my father long have enjoyed. That shows me how much closer our countries have come. Bush didn’t understand mass adulation like Obama does. Your husband Bill is clever, letting the negro man take over to generate adulation, whilst putting you there as the real General Secretary. You don’t let people out of the family take over now do you? I mean, just because Great Leader President Obama has a background in progressive politics that made me smile don't mean you let the family down.

Anyway your gift is enticing. You want to give us the peace treaty we have long demanded, diplomatic relations and to take money from your taxpayers to help build my socialist economy. CNN said you want to” assist in meeting the energy and other economic needs of the North Korean people”.

That’s wonderful news. The evil Bush overthrew one of our main markets for sophisticated aeronautical delivery devices, the grassroots drugs market is tough, and those Iranians aren’t wealthy enough to buy those new clear materials we try to sell them (your intelligence got the pronunciation wrong). I can’t seem to sell enough vinalon and magnesium clinker to be able to import Hennessy, Mercedes or computers for my humble country houses.

However, I know you’ll love my plans for the economy. There is a great hotel to be finished in Pyongyang, we want to set up a worldwide TV channel to spread the Juche idea of self reliance (which is catching on now capitalism is dead), and there are hardly any statues of me around. We have loads of workers of all ages in mountain camp homes where they eagerly work seven days a week, with enthusiastic supervision, and the lowest carbon footprint imaginable, ready to help build consumer products for your people. I also want faster internet access, so I can see the hard working young Swedish women who do so much to entertain workers of many lands with their lack of modesty. I know you’ll appreciate them.

Your gift it reminds me of the funny gift your husband Bill gave to the Korean nation in 1994. You were to spend US$4 billion giving us light water nuclear reactors and 500,000 tons of free fuel oil paid for by the US taxpayers (and some of your satellites) in exchange for us stopping plutonium enrichment. He’s such a laugh. We figured that since I run and control everything, and Bill joked about that girl (I could teach you all lessons on handling concubines), we could have the gift AND enrich plutonium. We made some weapons, let one go off, and hey we taught that Bush a lesson. I know you appreciate that.

So how about this, give us the aid, the peace treaty, pull your troops out of the south of Korea like we always wanted, and we’ll let you see all the facilities you have talked about. We will report how your aid money is being well spent and the Korean Central News Agency will report how the country is succeeding so well, like it did accurately since the 1950s.

Get the Japanese imperialists to give us compensation too, and hey we can all get together, and have a bomb. I mean, we’ll have destroyed that bomb, and reunited the country too.

Oh and can you make sure you send Trey Parker and Matt Stone to be your first ambassadors? I'm sure they'd like to meet the greatest film director in the world - me! I'd like to correct them on their depiction of my country at my special film production holiday camps.

Regards

General Secretary Kim Jong Il, Chairman of the National Defence Commission, Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army

Able bodied lowlife on invalids benefits

Deborah Coddington in the Herald on Sunday outlines why the government should review every single recipient of the Invalid's Benefit. She talks of the mother of a murderer, who also happens to be a Mongrel Mob member, who verbally abused the wife of the deceased. Someone New Zealand taxpayers are forced to keep housed, fed, clothed, boozed and entertained.

As Coddington says, if the Greens call this beneficiary bashing, let them spend their own money on the likes of them. Good luck setting up the charity called "supporting the underclass trash who help destroy the lives of others".

Big powerful Auckland council run by a celebrity?

The Sunday Star Times suggests this.

However, Aucklanders should say thanks but NO thanks, if what they want is lower rates and for local infrastructure to be provided on the basis of need, user pays and economic efficiency.

A big powerful council will want to get into every aspect of policy.

A celebrity Mayor would find it difficult to resist what they tend to be addicted to - attention and applause. Thousands would run to the Mayor wanting help and the drug of big government - OPM - Other People's Money. After all, what celebrity wants to be Mayor and simply say "no. You should try to convince people to pay voluntarily".

The next battle for Auckland should be about resisting a supercouncil. The Labour government inspired Royal Commission should be ignored. The key issue is what is the role of local government.

That is a debate the Royal Commission never was asked to enter into, because Labour's belief is "whatever the local community empowers it to do" - which of course simply means "whatever councillors want".

THAT ladies and gentleman is the problem of Auckland local government - it has become the hobby horse of far too many power hungry petty fascists, tempered by good natured people who seek good governance. These battles shouldn't happen - local government, if it is to exist, should be confined to "public goods". National could do worse than introduce a new Local Government Bill, that gives councils 3 years to divest themselves of activities that are not "public goods". That same period should include a prohibition on ANY rates increases over that time.

Rodney Hide is Minister of Local Government, you would think top of his agenda would be abolishing the power of general competence - the power that currently gives councils the power to do whatsoever they like, as long as it is ratified as part of the Long Term Council Community Plan. Abolishing this would do more for Auckland governance than any behemoth sized council.

Spineless Cameron on Wilders

David Cameron can lamblast the downfall of society, with the latest news of a 13yo boy fathering a child of a 15yo girl - par for the course of the chav underculture in Britain - because he's a Tory toff and the sons and daughters of the privileged never get pregnant, at least not in The Sun. It's an easy target, who is offended by damning teenagers?

So the testicular capacity of the Conservatives when it comes to Islamists is a little different. The Tories sat on the fence, far more interested in attracting Muslim votes than being principled. George Osborne questioned the wisdom of it, in terms of attracting publicity, but he wouldn't talk of freedom of speech.

The Tories aren't any more interested in this than Labour.

The trial of Duch

Notwithstanding Zimbabwe's horror, it is cold comfort to recall the regime that almost certainly represented the zenith of the philosophy of Marxism-Leninism.

The one regime that ran the steamroller over society, not caring the bones it broke in the process, to make all as one. It eliminated money, as an instrument of capitalism. It executed all those who were educated, it worshipped the illiterate manual labouring peasant, and damned those who had other skills, languages or abilities. It was the ultimate regime of backwardness, it was anti-technology, anti-trade, anti-foreign and anti-capitalist. Mass manual labour was meant to bring happiness, 1975 was designated Year Zero, and around 2 million people died of famine or executions.

It was Democratic Kampuchea, now again Cambodia - run by the Khmer Rouge. Many on the left cheered its victory, including Keith Locke, who undoubtedly ignored the hazy reports from the Khmer Rouge controlled parts of the country of brutal oppression. Images that can be seen in China Pictorial weekly propaganda magazines of the age - peasants disturbingly subdued all dressed identically, with images of Saloth Sar (Pol Pot). Even the vile linguist Noam Chomsky, who evades like a weasel the fact he claimed reports of massacres and brutality in Democratic Kampuchea were CIA propaganda.

Ironically, the communist regime of Vietnam overthrew the Khmer Rouge, because of border incursions, the particular nationalist brutality of the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese, and knowledge of the horror that had damned its neighbour.

I need not tell the story of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The film "The Killing Fields" tells part of it. The book by Haing Ngor "Surviving the Killing Fields" tells you far more about the brutality, inhumanity and bloody minded sadism of the regime.

Phnom Penh was evacuated of virtually all residents, except for some belonging to the regime, and for a prison set up there. Tuol Sleng was set up as S-21, an interrogation centre and prison. Few left alive. 17,000 went through it, the numbers who survived are no more than 20. The man who led S-21 was Duch. He is a mass murderer and sadist. He forced prisoners to torture each other. He demanded confessions that prisoners worked for the CIA or KGB, and would torture until they said so - if they didn't, they would be killed. If they did, they would be left to die of their horrible injuries. He took photos of them all before they were tortured and executed. Tuol Sleng today is a museum of the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, with the eery photos of those who were murdered there covering the walls.

Duch converted to Christianity in the 1990s and has begged forgiveness, but so few of his victims are alive to even offer it. Cambodia finds it difficult to confront its past, with all too many of those in power today having had some role in "Democratic Kampuchea". So it is pleasing regardless to read in the Times that he is about to go on trial. Never, ever should the perpetrators of sadistic tyranny feel they can get away with it, plead forgiveness and all will be well. Cambodia lost nearly 1 in 3 of its citizens because of the Khmer Rouge.

As a footnote, Malcolm Caldwell, a Scottish academic and Marxist, thought the world of the Khmer Rouge. He wrote glowingly of the peasant revolution, and loved it so much, he went there to see it for himself. The Khmer Rouge murdered him on that trip, following days when he was awe inspired by what he saw. Such poetic justice.