Archive for March, 2004
Posted by Joshua on March 31, 2004 at 5:01 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Today comes the sad news that Kang Byong-sop, one of the courageous defectors who told the world about North Korea’s gas chambers, was seen on Pyongyang TV, reading a forced recantation of his charges. Undoubtedly, his days are numbered; one can only hope that his family will somehow manage to survive. China sent him back, of course, in clear violation of international law and the most fundamental principles of morality . . . both of which are clearly meaningless to the ChiComs.
To the heirs of Mao, power still grows from the barrel of a gun. Democracy is the mortal enemy of their grip on power, particularly if it were to be practiced in a free and united Korea on their own border. They will sacrifice anything to keep the natural aspirations of human beings from loosening that grip–especially their fraudulent Marxist principles. Any Chinese “liberalization” of its economy must be viewed in that context. In the end, it’s all about the preservation of the ruling class’s wealth and power.
We in America are still exhausted from the last Cold War (as some grow weary of the current hot one, small as it may still be in historical terms). That may explain our reluctance to acknowledge that we’ve entered a new one. The Chinese have no such reluctance. They are openly fighting a soft war against us and our values. The front stretches from the streets of Seoul to the Taiwan Strait, to the conference rooms at the UN Headquarters.
The fact that China holds a seat in the U.N. General Assembly–much less the Security Council–tells me everything I need to know about the moral authority of those bodies.
Posted by joshua on March 31, 2004 at 12:01 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Today comes the sad news that Kang Byong-sop, one of the courageous defectors who told the world about North Korea’s gas chambers, was seen on Pyongyang TV, reading a forced recantation of his charges. Undoubtedly, his days are numbered; one can only hope that his family will somehow manage to survive. China sent him back, of course, in clear violation of international law and the most fundamental principles of morality . . . both of which are clearly meaningless to the ChiComs.
To the heirs of Mao, power still grows from the barrel of a gun. Democracy is the mortal enemy of their grip on power, particularly if it were to be practiced in a free and united Korea on their own border. They will sacrifice anything to keep the natural aspirations of human beings from loosening that grip–especially their fraudulent Marxist principles. Any Chinese “liberalization” of its economy must be viewed in that context. In the end, it’s all about the preservation of the ruling class’s wealth and power.
We in America are still exhausted from the last Cold War (as some grow weary of the current hot one, small as it may still be in historical terms). That may explain our reluctance to acknowledge that we’ve entered a new one. The Chinese have no such reluctance. They are openly fighting a soft war against us and our values. The front stretches from the streets of Seoul to the Taiwan Strait, to the conference rooms at the UN Headquarters.
The fact that China holds a seat in the U.N. General Assembly–much less the Security Council–tells me everything I need to know about the moral authority of those bodies.
Posted by Joshua on March 24, 2004 at 4:29 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Suzanne Scholte, the President of the North Korean Freedom Coalition, sent me a draft of a bill introduced into the House yesterday as a counterpart to the Senate’s North Korean Freedom Act. You can see the bill and a summary of it here.
I’m still studying the text, but it looks like an important step forward. Even better, it’s a slap to the appeasers (that means you, Neville Nohsamos, human candelabras, and yeah-buts* over in Seoul) as they try to marshal their forces against this, despite their current state of division and disarray.
* Yeah-but: One who, when confronted with evidence of a hellish crime, reflexively attempts to shift responsiblity to another party or shift the entire discussion to another topic.
Posted by Joshua on March 24, 2004 at 3:49 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Question–how could anyone have expected the U.N. to establish and enforce principles when its members don’t share any?
Rabbi Cooper of the Wiesenthal Center has an outstanding op-ed about North Korea in the (Singapore) Straits Times, clearly the best English language newspaper in Asia. The Rabbi gives the U.N. both barrels, richly deserved and fully loaded with 00 heavy steel shot. How is it, he asks, that Kofi Annan speaks of preventing genocide–even of its need to admit its own prior failures to prevent it–yet completely ignores the ones that it could still stop (notably, in North Korea) if it had the will. Which leads back to the first question.
Ironically, today comes hope for an answer. This superb article is the best thing I’ve ever heard coming out of the U.N. Ever.
Until today, I thought my wife and toddler were the only ones to have heard someone make the serious suggestion (OK, rant) that we should slowly distance ourselves from the U.N. in favor of a standing international council of democracies. The next best thing would be the emergence of a powerful bloc of democracies within the U.N. The eventual object would be to strip dictators of the right to claim to represent their people while using the U.N. as a tool of grievance-deflection. Today, the keys to “multilateral” legitimacy are held by the butchers of Tienanmen, the murderers of Chechnya, and a certain snobbish, impotent European nation that hasn’t won a war against anyone but Greenpeace since the Middle Ages. Can’t humanity do better than this?
Posted by joshua on March 24, 2004 at 11:29 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Suzanne Scholte, the President of the North Korean Freedom Coalition, sent me a draft of a bill introduced into the House yesterday as a counterpart to the Senate’s North Korean Freedom Act. You can see the bill and a summary of it here.
I’m still studying the text, but it looks like an important step forward. Even better, it’s a slap to the appeasers (that means you, Neville Nohsamos, human candelabras, and yeah-buts* over in Seoul) as they try to marshal their forces against this, despite their current state of division and disarray.
* Yeah-but: One who, when confronted with evidence of a hellish crime, reflexively attempts to shift responsiblity to another party or shift the entire discussion to another topic.
Posted by joshua on March 24, 2004 at 10:49 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Question–how could anyone have expected the U.N. to establish and enforce principles when its members don’t share any?
Rabbi Cooper of the Wiesenthal Center has an outstanding op-ed about North Korea in the (Singapore) Straits Times, clearly the best English language newspaper in Asia. The Rabbi gives the U.N. both barrels, richly deserved and fully loaded with 00 heavy steel shot. How is it, he asks, that Kofi Annan speaks of preventing genocide–even of its need to admit its own prior failures to prevent it–yet completely ignores the ones that it could still stop (notably, in North Korea) if it had the will. Which leads back to the first question.
Ironically, today comes hope for an answer. This superb article is the best thing I’ve ever heard coming out of the U.N. Ever.
Until today, I thought my wife and toddler were the only ones to have heard someone make the serious suggestion (OK, rant) that we should slowly distance ourselves from the U.N. in favor of a standing international council of democracies. The next best thing would be the emergence of a powerful bloc of democracies within the U.N. The eventual object would be to strip dictators of the right to claim to represent their people while using the U.N. as a tool of grievance-deflection. Today, the keys to “multilateral” legitimacy are held by the butchers of Tienanmen, the murderers of Chechnya, and a certain snobbish, impotent European nation that hasn’t won a war against anyone but Greenpeace since the Middle Ages. Can’t humanity do better than this?
Posted by Joshua on March 18, 2004 at 10:33 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Rebecca MacKinnon at NKZone notes that the appeasers in Seoul are mobilizing against the North Korean Freedom Act. Reading this kind of nationalist pablum–and it really boils down to “Americans are incapable of real compassion for North Koreans, but let’s not give more than lip service to the concept, either”–makes the sarin seep from my pores. I lashed:
**************
Yu and Jeong [the appeasers] maliciously question our concern for the North Korean people because the concept of compassion transcending race or nation is incomprehensible to them. This much is evident to any soldier who has served in South Korea. So Miss Yu–if your nation really cares about the people of North Korea, why don’t you even mention what’s happening to them? Why does your government pooh-pooh reports that they are dying in death camps and gas chambers without even asking North Korea to permit an investigation of the facts? Why does your government veto UN resolutions that might give their pain a moment of ease? Why do you silence and turn away defectors? Why do two million murdered mean so little, when two who died accidentally mean so much? If you are really concerned about the North Korean people, why can’t we see any sign of it? In short, why do you expect us to join in the silence that your children will never forgive?
The North Korean Freedom Act is our way of demanding our “independence” from South Korea. South Korea can form its own policies, we can form ours. Hopefully, our policy will include more concern about the suffering of North Korea than Seoul’s has shown. South Korea’s delusional behavior and ugly spate of hate crimes against our soldiers has liberated us from our desire to subsidize that rich, spoiled, and morally cowardly nation with 37,000 of our troops and $15 billion of our dollars each year. The corporate welfare for Hyundai is about to end. After we protected South Korea’s safety for so many years, their government uses our soldiers to hold us hostage to morally reprehensible and diplomatically impotent policies that endanger our national security. The North Korean Freedom Act could save millions of lives in both North Korea and America by cutting the umbilical Gordian knot that binds us to those failed policies.
Posted by joshua on March 18, 2004 at 5:33 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Rebecca MacKinnon at NKZone notes that the appeasers in Seoul are mobilizing against the North Korean Freedom Act. Reading this kind of nationalist pablum–and it really boils down to “Americans are incapable of real compassion for North Koreans, but let’s not give more than lip service to the concept, either”–makes the sarin seep from my pores. I lashed:
**************
Yu and Jeong [the appeasers] maliciously question our concern for the North Korean people because the concept of compassion transcending race or nation is incomprehensible to them. This much is evident to any soldier who has served in South Korea. So Miss Yu–if your nation really cares about the people of North Korea, why don’t you even mention what’s happening to them? Why does your government pooh-pooh reports that they are dying in death camps and gas chambers without even asking North Korea to permit an investigation of the facts? Why does your government veto UN resolutions that might give their pain a moment of ease? Why do you silence and turn away defectors? Why do two million murdered mean so little, when two who died accidentally mean so much? If you are really concerned about the North Korean people, why can’t we see any sign of it? In short, why do you expect us to join in the silence that your children will never forgive?
The North Korean Freedom Act is our way of demanding our “independence” from South Korea. South Korea can form its own policies, we can form ours. Hopefully, our policy will include more concern about the suffering of North Korea than Seoul’s has shown. South Korea’s delusional behavior and ugly spate of hate crimes against our soldiers has liberated us from our desire to subsidize that rich, spoiled, and morally cowardly nation with 37,000 of our troops and $15 billion of our dollars each year. The corporate welfare for Hyundai is about to end. After we protected South Korea’s safety for so many years, their government uses our soldiers to hold us hostage to morally reprehensible and diplomatically impotent policies that endanger our national security. The North Korean Freedom Act could save millions of lives in both North Korea and America by cutting the umbilical Gordian knot that binds us to those failed policies.
Posted by Joshua on March 18, 2004 at 4:33 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The charge the Chinese prosecutors used neatly encapsulates their cynical contempt for freedom. They called him a “human trafficker” for trying to help North Korean refugees escape from China–where life cowers under the daily threat of deportation back to the death camps in North Korea–to haven in South Korea. The brilliant Claudia Rosett told the story best here, in the Wall Street Journal, where she writes a bi-weekly column.
Seok is also a professional photographer and stringer for the New York Times, but even the entreaties of James Brooke (not to mention the tears of his wife) were not enough to save him from two years in prison. Reporters Sans Frontiers circulated a petition for his release, to no avail. Grumbling from the State Department about human rights may have finally done the trick. American threats to get serious about human rights (all of them empty so far) often lead to the release of a series of dissidents. This is China’s typical tactic for mollifying world opinion to that it will be left alone to oppress the other billion people it rules.
Now, Norbert Vollertsen writes me to say that Mr. Seok will be released, and the BBC is also reporting it. Please let it be so. He has much to tell us, if we are ready to listen. Welcome home, Seok Jae-Hyun. We never forgot you.
Posted by Joshua on March 18, 2004 at 3:32 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Just a day after Muslim terrorists called France an “ally of Satan” (which by definition means they apparently no longer see the United States as Satan), Taiwan’s president Chen Shui-Bian has called France “evil-hearted” for joining China in its recent naval threaxercises that coincidentally come just before Taiwan’s election.
Doesn’t Taiwan understand? It’s nothing personal for the French . . . it’s just business. After all, they’re quite willing to make the same moral compromises when they’re selling arms to Taiwan.
Posted by joshua on March 18, 2004 at 11:33 am · Filed under Uncategorized
The charge the Chinese prosecutors used neatly encapsulates their cynical contempt for freedom. They called him a “human trafficker” for trying to help North Korean refugees escape from China–where life cowers under the daily threat of deportation back to the death camps in North Korea–to haven in South Korea. The brilliant Claudia Rosett told the story best here, in the Wall Street Journal, where she writes a bi-weekly column.
Seok is also a professional photographer and stringer for the New York Times, but even the entreaties of James Brooke (not to mention the tears of his wife) were not enough to save him from two years in prison. Reporters Sans Frontiers circulated a petition for his release, to no avail. Grumbling from the State Department about human rights may have finally done the trick. American threats to get serious about human rights (all of them empty so far) often lead to the release of a series of dissidents. This is China’s typical tactic for mollifying world opinion to that it will be left alone to oppress the other billion people it rules.
Now, Norbert Vollertsen writes me to say that Mr. Seok will be released, and the BBC is also reporting it. Please let it be so. He has much to tell us, if we are ready to listen. Welcome home, Seok Jae-Hyun. We never forgot you.
Posted by joshua on March 18, 2004 at 10:32 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Just a day after Muslim terrorists called France an “ally of Satan” (which by definition means they apparently no longer see the United States as Satan), Taiwan’s president Chen Shui-Bian has called France “evil-hearted” for joining China in its recent naval threaxercises that coincidentally come just before Taiwan’s election.
Doesn’t Taiwan understand? It’s nothing personal for the French . . . it’s just business. After all, they’re quite willing to make the same moral compromises when they’re selling arms to Taiwan.
Posted by Joshua on March 17, 2004 at 3:41 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
At least we know they’re not referring to us this time. In fact, the terrorists have said something that’s actually debatable for once. Yet France, having chosen Faustian appeasement, still finds itself in the crosshairs of the haters. Should I repent this intoxicating schadenfreude I’m feeling? Not when France is helping China to intimidate Taiwan on the eve of Taiwan’s elections. Could it be any clearer that Europe seeks a middle ground between freedom and some ill-defined other?
All of this leads me to ask: which Satan won’t France ally itself with, if it will ally itself with Hitler, Saddam, the Iranian mullahs, and Fascist China?
Posted by Joshua on March 17, 2004 at 3:01 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The third (and so far, the best) of William Triplett’s pieces in NRO can be found here:
Posted by Joshua on March 17, 2004 at 2:36 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Spanish Socialists Agree on Terms of Surrender
Newly elected Socialist Leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero announced today that his party’s new cabinet had agreed on the terms of an unconditional surrender to al-Qaeda and would recognize Osama bin Laden as Spain’s first Islamic emir since 1492. The Spanish Foreign Ministry said that an emissary was en route to Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province to deliver the surrender document, which declares Spain to be a part of the Islamic Ummah as of midnight, March 20th.
Rodriguez said that he would lead a caretaker government until the arrival of al-Qaeda occupation forces from the Madrid suburbs. All churches would be required to close immediately, and all women would be required to be in full burka before the transfer of power. Fabric stores reported long lines for bedsheets in a variety of spiffy but muted pastel colors.
“The people of Spain have spoken,” said Rodriguez at the surprise news conference, which came less than a week after a Socialist election upset of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar’s Popular Party following a string of al-Qaeda linked bombings that killed over 200. “The voters have sent a clear message to this violent, shadowy organization that caused us so much death and suffering: ‘We surrender!’”
The reaction of one Spanish voter was typical. Asked why he voted for the Socialists, one 42 year-old man, who asked not be identified, wet his pants, curled into the fetal position, and cried “!Mami! !Mami!” One woman, interviewed at the funeral of the last of six of her family members who died in last week’s bombing, expressed approval for the new government’s decision. “While I had initial reservations over the whole burka thing, it’s a small price to pay to free ourselves from the influence of this uncompromising, rightist, war-mongering Yanqui President. Now, we will be ruled by an a tyrannical, mysoginistic, terrorist emir who nonetheless provides consistently excellent day care.”
Interviewed from an undisclosed location in a valley six miles north and twelve miles east of the Pakistani village of Jarkik in the Chitral District of the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, Bin Laden hailed his first-ever election victory by slightly raising his one remaining limb and uttering in a raspy croak that he would be a leader for all of the people of Spain who pray dutifully five times per day, obey the fatwas of the emir, and sacrifice themselves for the jihad . . . and behead the rest of them in his first 100 days in power.
Another senior Al-Qaeda offical, known only as Abu Hafs The Mauritanian, expressed his more qualified approval of the Spanish decision. “I am pleased that Spain has prostrated itself before our Holy Caliphate. Praise be to Allah, soon the streets of Madrid will run with blood of ever more unbelievers! But where will be find seventy-two virgins in a secular European country? Even if all of our martyrs must share the same seventy-two virgins, we foresee difficulty forming a quorum without substantial outsourcing.”
Some observers worried that the result could worsen relations between the United States and occupied Spain. Spain’s Foreign Minister sought to differentiate between disagreement with American policies and anti-Americanism, which he denied has played a part in the result. “We Europeans love Americans . . . as long as they’re scared, vulnerable, or dying,” he said.
The Foreign Minister also extended its thanks to neighboring France for providing invaluable technical assistance, including numerous examples of air-tight surrender documents. “We see this as a great victory for French diplomacy, the dawn of a new tomorrow in Spain’s relationship with Europe, of which France is the undisputed leader and moral torch-bearer,” said French Foreign Minister Dominique De Villepin.
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