Terri is Gone

Terri Schiavo died this morning. Our thoughts and prayers are with her and her family today.

North Korean Public Execution Video - Update

The video of the public executions that took place on the 1^st and 2^nd of March 2005 that I previously posted here is, as I posted yesterday, no longer on line. Life Funds for North Korean Refugees (LFNKR, an NGO) has arranged an agreement with Jin-Net (Japan Independent News Net) to make a DVD for sale to support its work. Jin-Net is the Japanese news outlet that produced the original news story and owns the copyright to the video.

Yesterday I reposted the link to the streaming video of the execution of the 1^st of March.

LFNKR'S DVD page has made a 12 minute DVD available for $30 to raise funds for the NGO. They have also posted a link to a 3 minute clip of the video of the execution of the 2^nd of March.

Read Jin-Net's detailed discussion of the video and the events recorded.

See the clip of the execution of the 2^nd of March here (12.1mb). It is in English with an excellent explanation of events. It is a .wmv file, so you can right click on it and save it to your computer.

Little Freak Kim Jong Il cannot hide his crimes. History will condemn his as the present already has.

North Korea Human Rights Review

The UN Commission on Human Rights will hear a report on human rights in North Korea, including a screening of the execution video that I have posted here. The video is no longer on line, but there is an abbreviated report in English here.

North Korean Rights Abuses, Public Execution, Under Spotlight from CNS News.

Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - The situation in North Korea takes center stage this week at the U.N. Commission for Human Rights meeting in Geneva, where campaigners plan to screen secretly filmed footage of a recent public execution in the Stalinist state.

Former inmates of North Korea's notorious prison camps also will tell their stories and describe the plight of tens of thousands of others still there.

On Tuesday, a U.N. special rapporteur delivered a report to member states, urging immediate action to stop numerous rights abuses in North Korea.

The rapporteur, Thai law professor Vitit Muntarbhorn, was appointed under a resolution passed at last year's commission session. Since his appointment, Pyongyang has refused him access to the country.

Of course the DPRK denies that they abuse their inmates citizens.

Responding to Muntarbhorn's report, North Korean representative Choe Myong-nam said his country did not accept the rapporteur's mandate.

Choe dismissed the report as "tricky political propaganda" and said it was part of a "plot" by hostile forces who "would not hesitate in fabricating anything with a view to overthrowing the state system of the country."

And, the Dear Murdering Freak knows about the video.

Violations in North Korea will be highlighted further on Thursday, when non-governmental organizations in Geneva show a movie clip of a public execution reported to have taken place on March 2.

Life Funds for North Korean Refugees (LFNKR), a Japan-based NGO, said the footage was secretly taped in Yuson district near the Chinese border and smuggled out at great risk.

The clip shows a cursory public "trial" in an empty lot of two people, accused of illegal border crossing and human trafficking. One is sentenced to death, and the other to 10 years' imprisonment.

The blurry footage shows the execution, watched by a crowd, carried out minutes later. The condemned person is tied to a post and three soldiers ordered, in Korean, to "aim at the enemy ... fire."

As the soldiers force the body into a sack with apparent difficulty, an official is heard to intone: "You have witnessed how miserable fools end up. Traitors who betray the nation and its people end up like this."

According to LFNKR, North Korean defectors have corroborated key aspects of the footage, saying the execution depicted was similar to ones they had themselves witnessed in past years.

Refugee flight

The NGO noted that the region were the execution took place was on a major escape route into China, and said it was likely the regime intended the public killing as a warning to others not to try cross the border.

Last Friday, Seoul's Chosun Ilbo newspaper said in a report citing ethnic Korean sources in China that North Korean authorities had begun a large-scale investigation aimed at finding out who had filmed the execution.

That will, of course, require large amounts of killing.

Judicial Oligarchy Watch

We regularly see examples of abusive exercise of judicial power. Here is some more. Steve Dunleavy at the New York Post has a few things to say about has a few things to say about Judge Phyllis Gangel-Jacob.

BENCH THIS COURT KOOK BEFORE SHE RULES AGAIN

On her nitwit orders, Shavon Stewart Skinner, 25, a tragic quadriplegic, was removed from her guardian's custody, with the threat of police action if she didn't comply.

Her guardian, her aunt, Cynthia Stewart, 52, said, "She called me dangerous. What kind of judge is this? She is asking for three days evaluation of my baby in New Jersey.

"My sister, Oro, had her for 19 years before she had a heart attack and died."

"If Oro wanted her institutionalized, she would have done it," said distraught Cynthia before her charge was sent away by court order.

"I know what they will try to do. They will try to institutionalize her forever. Sweep her under the carpet. Get rid of her like Terri Schiavo. People do not like people like Shavon around."

Yesterday, Shavon was taken forcibly into a van and she started to cry.

I completely agree with Mr. Dunleavy's conclusion;

Please, Gov. Pataki, you know how to remove this arrogant fool.

This piece of judicial trash needs to be removed, and laws passed that will better enable people to get these decisions overturned.

Cuba - Another Worker's Paradise

Doc, over at Bloodletting has a story to tell about Hollywood's favorite country.

On the worker's paradise;

We deployed in the vicinity of the fenceline. We met the refugees as they approached, and with weapns in hand, denied them entry to the base. They had managed to traverse a kilometer deep minefield covered by towers with machine guns to get to this point. They had left everything they had ever known in order to get out of there. And we stopped them. We had orders. We had our orders, so we followed them. After enough shouting and threatening, the refugees eventualy gave up and headed back. Back into Cuba. While I was sweating my balls off under the hot sun, these refugees made a mistake. They had gotten through the minefield the first time, but they had not followed in their own footsteps going back. While I was thinking to myself how I wish these people would hurry up and go back so that I could head back to someplace with air-conditioning, one of them stepped on a landmine.

That explosion touched my world.

Then, I witnessed the worst thing I ever saw in my life.

I will not tell you what he saw, go read it. Read all of it. It brings tears to my eyes. Danny Glover and his Hollywood buddies can go to Hell.

Blogger is Being Difficult - Time for Motime?

Perhaps not yet, but Tom the Pooklekufr (who is a Constitutionalist, BTW) is just about ready and so am I. I already have an account there that I use just to log in and post at Jheka's blog. If I find the time, I think I'll start a blog there and see what it looks like.

North Korea Kidnaping Series

To help those who have been interested in this series, here is a list of links to all of the posts that I have written on the kidnapers of North Korea.

North Korea Kidnaps Japanese - Background

North Korea Lies To Japanese Families

What Happened to Megumi Yokota - Part 1

What Happened to Megumi Yokota - Part 2

What Happened to Megumi Yokota - Part 3

There are continuing developments, so there will be more to report. And, I have not yet written about the kidnapings from Europe, or the kidnapings of thousands of South Koreans (including a famous movie star and her husband).

Tricks of the Main Stream Media

In the March 29^th issue of The American Spectator George Neumayr writes, Lying Jesuits and Journalists in which he discusses liberal hypocrisy and mendacious word selection.

The media's instinctual use of "authorities" who are frauds -- the Drinans who clog their rolodexes (priests appear on television in proportion to their willingness to upend Catholic teachings) -- was just the tip of the iceberg during a weekend of torrential bias. Whenever a cultural controversy pops up, the bias that mainstream reporters furiously deny comes rushing back. Reporters and commentators were thrilled with the chance to try and nail Republicans for "overreach." To embarrass the Republicans and ensure that everyone would feel good about killing Schiavo, the media dug down into their bag of malicious tricks, using tendentious polling, a smear job against Tom DeLay, reports of faux-concern about conservative division (worrying about a cohesive Republican Party is of course foremost in their minds), and flat-out Orwellian propaganda to confuse the matter as much as possible.

The reliance on euphemism was almost nonstop. Much of the coverage was cast in the passive terms of not "prolonging" a life rather than starving a woman to death. The journalists rooting for her death didn't quite have the courage of their convictions. They didn't want to call murder by its proper name, so they searched out softer names for it.
Lest anyone figure out that the humanism of liberalism is essentially Hitlerite -- think about how often killing people deemed undesirables is the final solution in liberal schemes of human improvement -- specificity had to be avoided at all costs.

Just as reporters are more comfortable calling soon-to-be-killed human fetuses "blastocysts," so they prefer calling a disabled human like Schiavo a "vegetable." Reporters helped launch the abortion movement with euphemisms denying the humanity of children, now they help the euthanasia movement pick up speed with euphemisms denying the humanity of the disabled and the elderly. [emphasis mine - ed.]

There is much more, read it all.

Liberals Refuse to Understand Ronald Reagan

The San Francisco Chronicle printed a review by Josh Green of two new biographies of Ronald Reagan, The Great Communicator revisited - Historians land early blows in the slugfest over Reagan's legacy. It is not my aim to review a book review, but I did note the following in the review of Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons by Paul Lettow, Random House; 328 Pages; $25.95;

But the book fails to address SDI's legacy: an estimated $70 billion spent over 10 years for a system that still does not work, even in its latest incarnation under the Bush administration as a ground-based, midrange defense missile system. One could argue that SDI effectively scared the hell out of the Soviets and may have changed the dynamics of Cold War bargaining. But the ultimate failure of missile defense technology -- which, judging from last year's dismal test of the most recent interceptor missiles, still needs some work -- is a glaring omission.

SDI was not a failure, as is implied here. Its unstated purpose was to cause the Soviet Union (remember them?) to get into an arms race to develop a similar system, which Mr. Reagan knew they could not do, and in doing so, collapse. That is a purpose that could not be made public, else the Soviets would not have fallen for it.

SDI worked perfectly and did not have to actually be built, today's technical difficulties notwithstanding. (The ground-based system being developed is an entirely different system although it does use technologies developed for SDI.) This does not suit liberals, though, so they willfully refuse to accept it.

Mr. Green's disdain for President Reagan is evident from the very first paragraph of his book review. He simply cannot accept the notion that Mr. Reagan was a brilliant man who knew how to pull our country out of the morass that Mr. Carter put us in;

They all get their own libraries, no matter how little they may have read while in office.

They prefer to portray Mr. Reagan as some sort of bumbling idiot who happened to stumble into the Presidency and then stumble out of it after eight years.

Ronald Reagan knew something that Jimmy Carter and his leftists and various other brands of liberals and "intellectuals" did not. You cannot defeat an implacable enemy by "engaging and understanding" them. Liberals make the same arguments today in their campaign against the War on Terror. They are as wrong now as they were then.

And that is why they are not qualified to lead the country.

Oppression of Christians in the DPRK

While the LA Times endeavors to put a friendly face on the most murderous regime in the world, the Dear Murderer has not changed. The Christian Post reported on March 25^th, Christianity Rigorously Repressed in North Korea, Says Federal Agency.

North Korea represses religion and has an official ideology that is a form of secular humanism, a bipartisan federal agency said on Thursday.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which was created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 to monitor religious freedom in other countries, said interviews with North Korean refugees showed a pattern of arrest, imprisonment, torture and execution for public expressions of religion.

"Any reappearance of Christianity, possibly permeating from northern China to where many thousands of North Koreans fled from famine in the 1990s, is rigorously repressed," USCIRF North Korean researcher David Hawk said at a news conference, as reported by Reuters.

And Kim is not satisfied with killing only the Christians in his own country;

In recent years Pyongyang has reportedly grown worried about “spiritual pollution” of North Koreans and has attempted to persecute such “corrupt” citizens living abroad. In China, for example, where there are 100,000-300,000 North Korean refugees, Pyongyang has obtained support from Beijing to hunt the “fugitives” down.

A Japanese human rights activist reported that the North Korean government built a fake church in China (in Yanji, Jilin province), just 20 km from the border. There, Chinese police arrested many North Korean refugees and had them sent back to North Korea, the activist claimed. During long interrogations, North Korean government authorities reportedly ask the repatriated refugees what kind of contact they've had with South Korean missionaries working in China, if they read the Bible or attend church services. Those who admit to having contact with missionaries or any other religious affiliations and activities are reportedly imprisoned and condemned to death.

So there is blood on China's hands too. This does not come as a big surprise to Orthodox Christians.

William Kristol Nails It

In a piece published by The Weekly Standard for April 4^th, 2005 William Kristol has a few things to say about our black-robed oligarchy in "Evolving Standards of Decency".

First a word of thanks;

THANK GOD FOR OUR JUDGES. (Oops! Sorry. No offense, your honors. I didn't mean to write "God." Or at least I didn't mean anything specific or exclusionary or sectarian or unconstitutional by writing "God." It's just an expression I occasionally use. It does go way back in U.S. history. I hope it's okay.)

Anyway. Thank God for our robed masters. If it weren't for them, Christopher Simmons might soon be executed. In September 1993, seven months shy of his 18th birthday, Simmons decided it would be interesting to kill someone. He told his buddies they could get away with it because they were still minors. He broke into the house of Shirley Crook in Jefferson County, Missouri, bound her hands and feet, drove her to a bridge, covered her face with tape, and threw her into the Meramec River, where she drowned. He confessed to the crime, and was sentenced to death according to the laws of Missouri.

Later he suggests that we should not judge the judges too harshly;

So our judges deserve some criticism. But we should not be too harsh. For example, it would be wrong to suggest, as some conservatives have, that our judicial elite is systematically biased against "life." After all, they have saved the life of Christopher Simmons. It would be wrong to argue, as some critics have, that our judges systematically give too much weight to the husband's wishes in situations like Terri Schiavo's. After all, our judges have for three decades given husbands (or fathers) no standing at all to participate in the decision whether to kill their unborn children. It would be wrong to claim that our judges don't take seriously legislation passed by the elected representatives of the people. After all, our judges are committed to upholding the "rule of law"--though not, perhaps, the rule of actual laws passed by actual lawmakers. And it would be wrong to accuse our judges of being heartless. After all, Judges Carnes and Hull of the 11th U.S. Circuit told us, "We all have our own family, our own loved ones, and our own children."

As Charles would say, read it all for it is good.

Liberals will Never Get It

I was looking at Ancient Faith Radio when I discovered Terry Mattingly's blog, GetReligion. One of the writers of that blog, Douglas LeBlanc wrote, Ashley Smith's vilification begins. Ashley Smith is the heroic woman who helped Atlanta police capture Brian Nichols. Brian Nichols is the guy who killed a judge, a court reporter, a Fulton County sheriff, and a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent on Friday, March 11^th.

The story of Ashley Smith's heroism was bound to annoy some journalists as being too pat, too unbelievable, too much of a redemptive ending in a story of carnage and mayhem. Lee Siegel, television critic of The New Republic, raises some fair questions about whether Smith's story should be accepted uncritically, although reporters will have a difficult time gaining access to her captor, Brian Nichols, for some time to come.

Siegel's tone turns petty, however, when he characterizes CNN's coverage of Smith as an attempt to gain an audience among the 20 million readers of Rick Warren's Purpose-Driven Life.

Go read the whole piece for details and a wonderful conclusion where Mr. LeBlanc quotes Rabbi Philip Pohl, who compares Smith to the heroine from the book of Esther.

Apparently being a Christian is too great a crime to be forgiven.

What Happened to Megumi Yokota - Part 3

North Korea originally said that she died in March of 1993. When presented with credible reports of her alive in 1994 they changed their story to say that she committed suicide in 1994. These reports came from defectors from North Korea to South Korea, not the least of whom was An Myong Jin and Kaoru Hasuike, another abductee. Since then they have done whatever they could to obfuscate her life.

According to the "Dear Wacko-Man" Megumi was buried after her suicide, and her body dug up years later to be cremated by her "husband". This ashes were the supposed provided to Megumi's family in a so-called act of compassion. Some compassion, the ashes were fake. This was proved by DNA testing in Japan after the ashes arrive there. Read about it in these articles;
From the Japan Times, Remains not those of Yokota.
From the BBC, Japan fury over abductee remains.

Megumi Outside of Intelligence Agency - Possible Composite Photograph

Ah Myong Jin reports that the location of the photograph is well known to him as it is just outside of a training institute (college) for the Intelligence Agency of the DPRK. He says that there could not possibly have been a car there since she was standing in a place that is a historical commemoration of a visit by Kim Il Sung. There is a bench there and a memorial tree planted in memory of the visit. I do not have information of Megumi's height, but Ah also reports that the proportions of Megumi with respect to the car are incorrect (if this photo is true she would have to be very short). These two facts indicate that the image of the car was artificially pasted into the photo. Sadly, I do not have the links to these reports, they exist in Japanese news sources and are provided to me in translation by my wife.

Not only did the DPRK provide fake remains and falsified photographs of Megumi to her parents, in a bizarre and cruel twist, they want them back!
N Korea demands return of remains;

"Now that the ultra-right elements of Japan insist that the remains are not those of Megumi... the DPRK cannot but urge the Japanese side to return them just as they were along with the DNA test data as demanded by the husband of Megumi," the agency said.

Is she still alive? That possibility has been advanced by several sources. The Mainichi Daily News on November 24, 2004 reported, North Korean deserter says Yokota probably still alive;

Abduction victim Megumi Yokota, who North Korea insists died in the 1990s, is probably still alive, a former Pyongyang agent who deserted to South Korea said in an interview with the Mainichi in Tokyo.

and;

The former agent believed the ashes given to the Japanese delegates were those of another person. He suspects that North Korean officials burned the person's body and claimed the ashes as Yokota's in a bid to make it impossible for Japanese officials to identify them.

During talks with the Japanese delegation, the man who claimed to be Yokota's husband refused to be photographed on the grounds that he worked for an intelligence office.

"I think he refused to be photographed because he is not her husband," An said.

An added that a Japanese abductee, not a North Korean, might be Yokota's husband.

As for North Korean officials' claims that most abduction records have been burned or discarded, An said, "Intelligence offices still use those records 20 or 30 years later. They never burn them."

How is it possible that she could yet live? There are rumors that she was a teacher of very senior officials and children of very senior officials of the DPRK including Kim Jong Il himself. An article that covers the photographs includes this rumor, Photos Intesify N. Korean Kidnap Outrage;

Media accounts have focused on inconsistencies in North Korean accounts of Yokota's death: changing dates, alleged contradictions in hospital records and suspicions that, as an attractive young woman, she was associated too closely with North Korea's elite to be allowed to leave.

"I imagine she had been very close to Kim Jong Il. I hear people say she had been his teacher and so on," said Kaneko Tomiyama, a 51-year-old Tokyo woman. "I think she was not allowed to return to Japan because she knew too much about the North."

The man identified as her husband also reportedly refused to provide hair and blood samples that would prove he fathered the girl identified as their daughter.

It is hard to imagine a more bizarre story of more cold-hearted cruelty than that shown by Kim Jong Il.

Ahmed Al-Jarallah Gets It

Ahmed Al-Jarallah is the Editor-in-Chief of the Arab Times. This was published on March 20^th. The Arab Summit in Algeria did indeed convene on the 22^nd.

I have no idea what they are publishing in the Arab language edition but this, at least, is pretty good. No 'summit,' no nonsense;

PEACE initiatives of the United States are the only things we see on the political horizon of the region. Arabs, well-known for their penchant for hysterical reactions, are digging into their dictionaries looking for new words to denounce these initiatives and coining new slogans to chant while they run around burning effigies and flags. This what the Arab Summit will see in Algeria Tuesday - a repetition of a similar scene which led to the failure of the Tunis Summit when Arab leaders preferred to go home.

The current crisis in the Arab world reflects the position of its leaders and not the people. We know citizens of the Arab world are far more advanced than their leaders. It is a proven fact Arab leaders neither communicate with their people nor have an idea of their true ambitions. Some Arab leaders even tried to create a people of their own, wanting them to be silly, low in self-esteem and easily led. These leaders, who trained their people with the help of intelligence agencies to participate in demonstrations praising them, don't even care for the suffering of their people.

The Syrian regime, which lacks wisdom and refuses to understand the ground realities, was surprised by the uprising of the people of Lebanon, which it has been occupying for 30 years. The stunned regime didn't bother to study the reasons for this revolution and hasn't cared to analyse this phenomenon, which has been going on for over two months. The Syrian regime is not the only Arab regime which is incapable of staying in touch with its own people. The Palestinian regime was doing the same until the death of Yasser Arafat. Now the Palestinian Authority is able to sense the needs of its people and has succeeded in pacifying armed groups. It has made various Palestinian groups agree to an armistice as a prelude to reconciliation.

I hope that he's right about the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinians, but I have little faith in them.

It would be nice if a few more people over there would stop the idiocy and work toward the end of tyranny, the Syrians need to wake up and smell the coffee.

Death Continues on his Way

Allan at the Barking Moonbat Early Warning System writes On A Pale Horse.

Death is laughing.

Judicial Oligarchy

No, we're not there yet, but if we continue to allow political issues to be settled by judicial fiat, we will be (and no, I am not talking about Terri Schiavo).

Ann Coulter has been a lightning rod for many because she has written some outlandish things, although she wrote them tongue-in-cheek. I suspect that she truly did not want the New York Time building destroyed instead of the World Trade Center. I enjoy reading her columns.

Via BlogMeister USA (thanks Pam), this piece by Ann Coulter, STARVED FOR JUSTICE. She uses the Terri Schiavo case as a starting point for a discussion, in her own inimitable way, of judicial power and its abuse.

I note that whenever liberals talk about "federalism" or "states' rights," they are never talking about a state referendum or a law passed by the duly elected members of a state legislature — or anything voted on by the actual citizens of a state. What liberals mean by "federalism" is: a state court ruling. Just as "choice" refers to only one choice, "the rule of law" refers only to "the law as determined by a court."

As a practical matter, courts will generally have the last word in interpreting the law because courts decide cases. But that's a pragmatic point. There is nothing in the law, the Constitution or the concept of "federalism" that mandates giving courts the last word. Other public officials, including governors and presidents, are sworn to uphold the law, too.

It would be chaotic if public officials made a habit of disregarding court rulings simply because they disagreed with them. But a practice borne of practicality has led the courts to greater and greater flights of arrogance. Sublimely confident that no one will ever call their bluff, courts are now regularly discovering secret legal provisions requiring abortion and gay marriage and prohibiting public prayer and Ten Commandments displays.

Just once, we need an elected official to stand up to a clearly incorrect ruling by a court. Any incorrect ruling will do, but my vote is for a state court that has ordered a disabled woman to be starved to death at the request of her adulterous husband.

And this pointed bit;

What was supposed to be the "least dangerous" branch has become the most dangerous — literally to the point of ordering an innocent American woman to die, and willfully disregarding congressional subpoenas. They can't be stopped — solely because the entire country has agreed to treat the pronouncements of former ambulance-chasers as the word of God. The only power courts have is that everyone jumps when they say "jump." (Also, people seem a little intimidated by the black robes. From now on we should make all judges wear lime-green leisure suits.)

President Andrew Jackson is supposed to have said of a Supreme Court ruling he opposed: "Well, John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it." The court's ruling was ignored. And yet, somehow, the republic survived.

Read her column, even if only to get her entirely gratuitous and delightful stabs at the Democrats.

AND, she does know something about the Law.

I have previously written on judicial power here, Overturn Marbury v. Madison?

Public Execution in North Korea - English Video

Here is streaming video from the Associated Press. This is only a video clip 56 seconds long. It is much easier to download, but leaves a lot out.

Their version of what is happening is different from the Japanese one. They believe that the crowd watching the trial and execution are simply curious onlookers. This is because news stories written at the AP are written by idiots.

Another difference is, they say the men are being tried for trying to cross into China. That differs from the Japanese version which says that the men were working with a Chinese broker to help North Koreans escape the country.

In fact the AP only got two things right, the manner of execution and the fact that the public execution is for the purpose of terrorizing North Koreans into remaining in the country.

I will always trust Japanese news sources over the AP.

My earlier post on this subject.

The Japanese Indepentent News Net video.

UPDATE 8/20/06: All of the links that I have posted for these videos are dead. I had a video saved on my hard drive that shows the execution of March 2nd in Yuson. I got it from www.CharlesBurke.com.

Public Execution in North Korea

Democrats Learn from Nixon

You may have heard about that so-called "talking points" memo that was supposedly circulated to all Republican members of the U.S. Senate. Hindrocket at Power Line has a few things to say about that, A Fishy Story Gets Fishier;

We have expressed skepticism about the authenticity of the "talking points" memo; the most recent developments have only served to heighten our skepticism.

First, an alert reader pointed out that the copy of the memo that was leaked to a left-wing web site does not quite match the "exact, full copy of the document" as quoted by ABC News. ABC News identified four errors in the document, each noted with a (sic). The first such error is in the very first word, a misspelling of Terri Schiavo's name. (Interestingly, ABC did not note as an error the fact that the memo got the number of the Senate bill wrong.) But in the scanned version of the memo itself, as now leaked to the web, three of the four typographical errors have been corrected. So, what is going on? Is the memo now being presented as authentic one that was fabricated or, more likely, cleaned up after the fact?

Second, our Washington sources tell us that a number of Republican Senators say they did not receive, and have never seen, the memo. This contradicts the implication that the memo is some kind of official Republican document that was circulated to all Republican Senators.

Third, the only clear evidence as to the origin of the memo is that it was circulated by Democratic staffers. Tom Maguire, author of Just One Minute, wrote to point out this story from yesterday's New York Times:

As tensions festered among Republicans, Democratic aides passed out an unsigned one-page memorandum that they said had been distributed to Senate Republicans. "This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue," the memorandum said.

So the memo has been traced to a group of Democratic staffers. What evidence is there that its origins go back any farther? None, that we're aware of.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (Moonbat-NJ) wants an investigation. I think he would regret it. Let's have that investigation. A nice big fat public transparent investigation. If this memo came from a Republican staffer, that that person must be instantly fired and his political career ended. I don' think that that is the case.

This is a Democrat dirty trick. And if the Democratic Party staffer that started it is found, he should be instantly fired and his political career ended. They won't do that though, they will protect him.

[Note to liberals, I use he/him in the correct English manner where, in context, it refers to both genders. If you don't understand that, buy a good grammar.]

What Happened to Megumi Yokota - Part 2

Locations of Abductions In Japan as Known Prior to Kim Jong Il's Confession

Megumi Yokota was the schoolgirl abducted from Niigata in the map shown. Part 1 discussed the actual event of her kidnapping.

As mentioned in the previous post, after growing up she trained spies for the North Korean government. On December 11^th, 2004 the Kyodo News Service reported; Abductee Yokota may have taught Japanese to N. Korean agent;

TOKYO, Dec. 11, Kyodo - A repatriated Japanese abductee says that Megumi Yokota, who was abducted to North Korea in 1977 at age 13, taught the Japanese language to a North Korean woman called ''Suk Ki,'' sources close to the abduction issue said Saturday.

Fukie Chimura has given the information to families of other abductees, the sources said, adding that Suk Ki might be Kim Suk Ki, who is believed to have underwent (sic) spy training along with former North Korean agent Kim Hyon Hui.

Nothing more is really known about her. The Dear Thug has provided three photographs of Megumi to her parents. You have already seen one. Here is another.

Composite Photograph of Megumi

This photograph purports to show Megumi as a young woman. There are several problems with this picture. On November 18^th the Mainichi Daily News reported, N. Korea accused of doctoring photo of missing abductee;

After returning to Japan, delegates gave copies of the three photos to the parents of Yokota, who was reportedly kidnapped at age 13.

Looking at one of them, which depicts an adult woman Pyongyang claimed to be Yokota, group members working for the missing people's relatives said Wednesday that it might have been doctored.

"The woman's shadow and the shadow of the trees in the background are cast in different directions," a group member said.

They suspect that the photo is a composite to hide a scene or a person in the original photo.

And, in an article published on November 19^th, 2004 the Japan Times reported;

One of three photographs of Megumi Yokota provided by Pyongyang is probably a composite, a group working on behalf of North Korean abductees' relatives quoted a professional photographer as saying.

North Korea gave three pictures of what it claimed is the abductee to Japanese officials at the abduction talks that ended Monday.

"It is probably a composite photograph, because there are shadows in both directions," the photographer was quoted as saying.

Examination of Composite Photograph of Megumi

Why would Kim go through such effort to fake evidence of Megumi's life? We will look at that in a later post.

What Happened to Megumi Yokota - Part 1

This is a question that I have intended to post on for some time. The case of Megumi Yokota has special poignancy for Japanese people. Her case is mentioned in two previous posts;
North Korea Kidnaps Japanese - Background and
North Korea Lies To Japanese Families (this post includes the hint that Megumi may still be alive).

After she was kidnapped and grew up (she was still a child of 13 when she was taken) she became a teacher of North Korean spies one of whom was involved with the "spy" who bombed a South Korean airliner in 1987.

Megumi in a photo supplied by the DPRK

Kim Jong Il admitted to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that agents of his personality cult government had kidnapped 13 Japanese nationals (an act of war, BTW). Megumi was kidnapped on November 15^th, 1977.

In a story published the day after Kim's confession to Mr. Koizumi The Guardian published the story with this about Megumi;

Megumi Yokota, the first of those on the list provided by the North Korean authorities, was 13 when she failed to return from a badminton class in 1977. She was last seen walking on her usual route home along a coastal road in Niigata, northern Japan. For 20 years, her parents thought she was just one of the thousands of people who go missing each year, but then reports started to emerge that a Japanese woman of her age and appearance had been seen in Pyongyang.

One captured agent had told them that Megumi had been carried off by boat and that she had struggled so hard in the hold of the vessel that she arrived in North Korea covered in blood from trying to scratch at the hull.

Ahead of yesterday's meeting between the two leaders, her parents had been hopeful for news that she was still alive. Instead, they were told that she had married, left a daughter and died.

More to follow.

Liberals - The Tolerant Ones?

On March 7^th The Drudge Report flagged this story via Yahoo! Financial, PLAYGIRL Editor-in-Chief Outs Herself as Republican! (Matt Drudge's version here).

So how did this work out? Drudge reports today, 'PLAYGIRL' EDITOR FIRED AFTER OUTING SELF AS REPUBLICAN. In an email Michele Zipp sent to Drudge;

"After underlings expressed their disinterest of working for an outed Republican editor, I have a strong suspicion that my position was no longer valued by Playgirl executives. I also received a phone call from a leading official from Playgirl magazine, in which he stated with a laugh, "I wouldn't have hired you if I knew you were a Republican.

"I just wanted to let you know of the fear the liberal left has about a woman with power possessing Republican views."

So liberals stand for freedom of what, exactly?

Oh yeah, they stand for the freedom to kill the severely ill, mentally retarded, and the unborn while leaving murderers alive. I almost forgot.

Public Execution in North Korea - Video

Kim Jong Il has loudly denied that public executions are carried out in the DPRK. Three days ago my wife was reading a Japanese news site when she found a video of recent public executions that occurred on two consecutive days. It is a 20.1mb .wmv file and I have been trying to figure out a way to get it on the internet so that I could provide you with the link.

The Mutant Frog Travelogue has solved the problem.

North Korea Public Execution

The video. Right click to save it to your computer. It is 20.1mb, so be patient.

The video shows two consecutive days. During the first day you see a group of people brought to watch the trial and execution. It occurs out at the execution ground with the posts prepared on the other side of a van. The trial takes about twenty minutes. The crowd is then led around the van and two of the prisoners are executed, the other nine sentenced to prison terms. The crime? Crossing into North Korea from China numerous times to help North Koreans escape and being paid by a broker in China to do it. Immediately after they are shot you can here a guard ask loudly "Are they dead?".

On the second day the "trial" is even quicker, with the execution posts being put up during the trial. One man is executed for the same crime. Following the execution a guard loudly announces to the crowd, "this is what you get if you do not respect and work for Kim Jong Il Shogun".

After that you hear a raspy voice telling of the events. That is the guy who took the video disguising his voice.

Now we know what one of Kim's non-existent public executions looks like.


UPDATE 8/20/06: It appears that all of the above links are long dead. Here is another video that I had saved on my computer hard drive. It is now at www.CharlesBurke.com. It shows only the executions of the second day.

Public Execution in North Korea

Overturn Marbury v. Madison?

Abuse of judicial power is common. Judges routinely impose their personal political views on the law, particularly on the liberal side, resulting oftentimes in rule by judicial fiat. Now the Supreme Court finds that the United States Constitution is not sufficient and foreign law (and foreign dinner conversations) now must substitute.

Ben Shapiro at Towmhall.com has an interesting idea, It's time to end judicial review;

Perhaps judicial review wasn't such a great idea after all. In Marbury v. Madison (1803), Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall assumed the power of judicial review over acts of the legislature. According to Marshall, the Constitution vested in the Supreme Court the ability to overturn legitimately enacted laws if those laws conflicted with the Constitution itself.

It is anything but clear that the Constitution meant to create the power of judicial review. Marshall's opinion is full of holes, both textual and logical. As Judge Learned Hand stated, Marshall's opinion "will not bear scrutiny." Professor Alexander Bickel of Yale University agreed in his work "The Least Dangerous Branch": "The opinion is very vulnerable."

He is aware that some may consider his thesis radical and acknowleges it;

No doubt this view will be called radical. But, as "Brutus" wrote, "when this power is lodged in the hands of men independent of the people, and of their representatives, and who are not, constitutionally, accountable for their opinions, no way is left to control them but with a high hand and an outstretched arm ."

Congress Has to Intervene because Judges Cannot Think

evariste over at Discarded Lies posts, Cait's Oz: Terri's cerebral cortex has NOT been replaced with spinal fluid. This story demonstrates very poor logical thinking by the Judges who sit on the Second District Court of the State of Florida.

Why Don't They Just Shoot Her?

Andrew C. McCarthy at the National Review Online asks some excellent questions.

Is Prosecution the Solution?
Terri Schiavo is being tortured, torture is a crime, therefore...

The U.S. Congress and the Florida state legislature are struggling to overcome impasses in their efforts to enact laws that might save Terri Schiavo's life, or at least have her case reviewed by federal courts. But is there a more straightforward solution? Excruciatingly slow starvation and dehydration is clearly a form of torture. Torture is a crime. So why don't the state law-enforcement authorities in Florida prosecute Michael Schiavo and any person who is aiding and abetting him in carrying it out?

After the feeding tube that sustains Terri Schiavo was removed on Friday afternoon, National Review's John Miller asked a question (on NRO's weblog, The Corner) which was penetrating in its trenchant simplicity: "If somebody put a pistol to [Terri] Schiavo's head and pulled the trigger — you know, to give the "dying process" a little nudge — would the shooter be guilty of murder under Florida law?" Well, given that we've had no small amount of propaganda from right-to-die activists about the purported humaneness of letting Terri wither and die, why doesn't someone just shoot her — or at least administer the procedure employed to execute in capital cases. It would, after all, be quicker and thus more humane, right?

Mr. McCarthy writes an excellent legal discussion.

Murder by any other name is still murder.

UPDATE:
I don't know how I missed this, but if Terri dies Michael will be guilty of murder.
Read this from Discarded Lies;
Terri told what is about to happen to her, cries

Who is Ahn Chol?

The material in my earlier post about Ahn Chol dates from some time in the year 2000 as far as I can tell. I was curious to find out if he has survived. Running a Google search I was able to find some information on him, but none more recent than late 2003.

In January of 2003 MSNBC let Ahn Myong Chol tell us about himself in his own words.

Former guard: Ahn Myong Chol
North Korean prison guard remembers atrocities

Despite all efforts by that monstrous regime, even though he worked as a camp driver and later a guard, Ahn Chol did not lose his humanity.

He was at four different camps including Camp 22, which gas chambers I have already written about.

The article is not terribly long, but each sentence and every word that Ahn Chol says is important. I cannot even begin to do an adequate job of summarizing it. I don't read very many things that bring tears to my eyes, but this did. Some of it is strange as well as tragic;

At first I felt it was a movie film studio for the propaganda of North Korea, speaking ill of South Korean government. But actually the officer who brought me to the prison instructed me not to speak and not to smile. I was instructed if there is a prisoner who tries to escape or fight me, then I was allowed to kill him.

They call prisoners “re-settlers.” They called the prison the managing office for the “re-settlers,” and they call the prisoners non-guilty persons.

Some of it is only tragic;

The guard system is so strict there are few escapees, and sometimes we need to find out a way to be, get away from our guard’s life in the prison. And we try to find a pretext in order to go to college. One of my colleagues tried to make a prisoner escape by climbing the barbed wire fence, and then he shot him, and he went to college.

And then there is the story of Han Jin Duk;

At that time the tunnel was passing near the pig pen of the camp, and about 500 political prisoners were participating and there was one female named Han Jin Duk, 26 years old. I was in charge of giving food to the pigs. And my supervisor, when he saw the woman, she was beautiful. And he raped her, and he was found by the watchman officer. And he was investigated. My superior, his rank was reduced and the woman was sent to the detention center And then I didn’t see her for one year.

One day I was going to the place to load the coal, I met her. And I noticed she was exactly that woman, and I asked her, how you could survive. And she told me, that yes, I survived. But she showed me her body, and it was all burned by fire.

After six months I met her at the corn storage in Kusan district and found her putting on a used tire on her knees because her legs were cut off. Because of a coal mine wagon ran over her knees. And all she could do now was separate the corn grains from the cob.

The reason why she was forced to go to the prison is her father’s elder brother was purged at the Anbyon, Kanwhan Do province. She went when she was 5 years old. All of the family members were imprisoned. Her mother starved to death, and her brother also starved to death in the prison. I met her at age 26. So it means she was in the prison for 21 years. I think she no longer is in the world.

This is not even close to being everything in only a moderately long article. Go and read about what happened to two girls who were trying to take a piece of noodle out of a polluted pond.

But Ahn found his humanity;

I thought it is natural to punish or beat a guilty person. Because I was a driver, and I was a guard. But in the course of time, I had the opportunity to talk to the prisoners and found they are not guilty. And when I see the senior citizen kneel down in front of young guard, and he was treated badly, then my heart was breaking. And I thought this is not a humane thing.

Once I beat one person while training in tae kwan do. I kicked him with my foot, but fortunately he didn’t die.

And then;

My way of thinking was changed. While I was starting as a driver, before I took it as natural, and after a while I thought this is not the right way. So I was already changed before coming to the south. I didn’t change my way of thinking here in South Korea, in order to buy people’s hearts.

Because of Kim Jong Il and his subordinates and a small portion of citizens, the total nation of 20 million people are suffering such hardships. And the people are now changing to think that this regime is not right one. But they cannot speak out, because of Kim Jong Il’s atrocities.

This man has become a true hero.

Washington State Beer Drinkers

My friend Ted of Head's Up Brewing in Silverdale, WA has a blog - Head's Up Brewing. Unless you are prepared for a very steep increase in in your taxes, you need to read this, URGENT - BEER TAX HIKE WARNING.

Oh, and welcome to the blogosphere, Ted!

Ahn Chol - One of the Very Brave

Ahn Chol is a guy who regularly commits horrible crimes demanding immediate execution. He secretly videotapes the ordinary lives of the people who have the misfortune to live in North Korea, and gets that video into the hands of Japanese and Western journalists. To do this he crosses the border between the DPRK and China.

A Child in North Korea

He lives under constant threat of death from the Dear Murderer-Freak Himself, yet continues to inform the world of the horror that is North Korea.

Ahn Chol's most recent video coverage of North Korea!

　This August, I saw Ahn Chol several times at a city located by the China-North Korea border. This was in preparation for Ahn Chol's operation to secretly enter and film the reality of North Korea. We decided on filming the same black market that Ahn Chol filmed 2 years ago.

　There were two reasons why we decided on filming the same location. One was to measure the amount of "change" that has occurred to North Korea ever since it began receiving a great amount of foreign aid, and after Kim Jong Il began to show enthusiasm in foreign policy. We wanted to reveal the reality of what went on inside North Korea.

　The other reason was purely strategic. After the revealing of the shocking footage Ahn Chol filmed two years ago, the furious Kim Jong Il ordered the secret police the arrest of Ahn Chol. Kim Jong Il showed the footage to the head staff of all different sections of the secret police, and upon doing so, ordered the arrest and execution of Ahn Chol. "The man most wanted by Kim Jong Il". Ever since, Ahn Chol has been the target of a heated investigation by North Korean agents. Returning to North Korea under these circumstances would be incredibly dangerous. So, in order to fool the enemy, we decided to film the exact same location as last time.

We get to see the effect of all of the food aid that is entering the country (the United States,Kim's most hated enemy, provides large amounts of food to North Korea) and how it helps the "worker's paradise".

　This has been filmed in a large city that is a major distribution station of foreign aid. Still, one can see starving orphans weakly wondering the streets of the black market in search for crumbs of food. The food that was calculated to be enough for all the North Koreans has somehow found it's way into the black markets, and are now sold at expensive prices. The film shows a sign that prices wheat for 80-60 won. The average income of a North Korean per month is said to be about 80 won, so an average citizen wouldn't even be able to buy a bag of wheat.

Wheat that only the upper class can afford.

Read about the re-establishment of the distribution system. A system that distributes grain mean't for cattle with 10% rice mixed in to avoid foreign criticism. Why only 10%? Most aid goes into the hands of the upper class in this, the classless society and dream state of the Left™.

But, at least there is some benefit to the people of North Korea, right?

This is who can afford to buy food in North Korea.

　The other change is the complete revival of the secret police. When the food shortage became critical during 97-98, the threat from the secret police towards citizens weakened, and they almost lost faith in their strength. But the food aid completely revived them. Some of them even boast that the reason why North Korea doesn't change isn't because of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il or the Juche (self-reliance) philosophy, but because of them, the secret police.

Read it all.

The Oppressed Will See The Lies

The free flow of information has always been a problem for those who tyrannize their populations. It had a lot to do with the fall of the Soviet Union and the spread of freedom through eastern Europe. It is the free flow of information that is loosening the grip of the Communist government in China. Only leaders who can completely isolate their populations from outside information can hope to maintain their tyranny.

It how seems that the murderer-freak Kim Jong Il has run into a problem. In its March 15^th edition the New York Times reports, How Electronics Are Penetrating North Korea's Isolation;

SEOUL, South Korea - Halfway through a video from North Korea, the camera pans on a propaganda portrait of Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader, magnificent in his general's dress uniform with gold epaulets. Scribbled in black ink across his smooth face is a demand for "freedom and democracy."

If genuine, the graffiti speaks of political opponents willing to risk execution to get their message out. If staged, the video means that a North Korean hustler was willing to deface a picture of the "Dear Leader" to earn a quick profit by selling it to a South Korean human rights group.

Either way, the 35-minute video is the latest evidence that new ways of thinking are stealing into North Korea, perhaps corroding the steely controls on ideology and information that have kept the Kim family in power for almost 60 years.

So, how does this happen?

The construction of cellular relay stations last fall along the Chinese side of the border has allowed some North Koreans in border towns to use prepaid Chinese cellphones to call relatives and reporters in South Korea, defectors from North Korea say. And after DVD players swept northern China two years ago, entrepreneurs collected castoff videocassette recorders and peddled them in North Korea. Now tapes of South Korean soap operas are so popular that state television in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, is campaigning against South Korean hairstyles, clothing and slang, visitors and defectors have said.

"In the 1960's in the Soviet Union, it was cool to wear blue jeans and listen to rock and roll," said Andrei Lankov, a Russian exchange student in the North at Kim Il Sung University in 1985, who now teaches about North Korea at Kookmin University here in the South. "Today, it is cool for North Koreans to look and behave South Korean, as they do in the television serials. That does not bode well for the long-term survival of the regime."

Things that we take for granted. Things that are ubiquitous in free (and not so free) societies and are viewed as essentially unimportant may have the power to shake loose the worst, most totalitarian regime in the world.

At a human rights conference here on Feb. 15, defectors estimated in interviews that about one-third of the defectors in South Korea regularly talk to family members back in North Korea, calling owners of prepaid Chinese cellphones at a prearranged time.

To counter this, North Korea has reportedly started border patrols using Japanese equipment that can track cellphone calls. Reporters tell stories of their contacts who only make calls from their private garden plots in the hills, burying the cellphone in the ground after each call.

While Chinese cellphones only work a few miles inside North Korea, the videocassette phenomenon has reportedly spread throughout the nation, reaching into every area where there is electricity.

Read the article to learn about the videotapes and how the government is trying to move against them. This is not trivial. Prisons in the DPRK exist to kill slowly, as we have seen in earlier posts. As soon as I figure out how to host it, I will post video of the trials and executions of people convicted of helping other people cross the Chinese border (the trials last about twenty minutes with the executions immediately after - the posts to which the prisoners are tied are put up during the trials, which are held on site).

Lastly;

Draconian controls on internal travel and on travel to China have been breaking down, he said, and hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have traveled to and from Korean-speaking areas of China, exposing them to a thriving market economy and more South Korean television broadcasts.

"They are gradually learning about South Korean prosperity," Dr. Lankov said. "This is a death sentence to the regime. North Korea's claim to legitimacy is based on its ability to deliver the worker's paradise now. What if everyone sees that it is not delivering?"

This bears watching.

And a big thanks to Tom the Pooklekufr for the link.

EU Offers Appeasement to North Korea

In an opinion piece for the Japan Times in its March 17^th edition, Pyongyang under EU's wing Glyn Ford and Soyoung Kwon write about a "new independent stance on foreign policy issues" that looks a lot like an old stance. The DPRK is to be punished for developing nuclear weapons in violation of every agreement and treaty that it haws signed with free oil. That's right;

Reflecting this new stance, the European Parliament this week passed a comprehensive resolution on the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and nuclear arms in North Korea and Iran:

It urges the resumption of the supply of heavy fuel oil (HFO) to North Korea in exchange for a verified freeze of the Yongbyong heavy-water reactor, which is capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium, to avoid a further deterioration in the situation. At the same time it is calling for the European Council and Commission to offer to pay for these HFO supplies [emphasis mine - ed.].

It urges the Council of Ministers to reconsider paying 4 million Euros of the suspension costs for KEDO (the Korea Energy Development Organization) to South Korea to ensure the continued existence of an organization that could play a key role in delivering energy supplies during a settlement process [emphasis mine - ed.].

Although Kim Jong Il has openly admitted to possession of nuclear weapons, this is not enough for the EU;

The EP cannot substantiate U.S. allegations that North Korea has an HEU (highly enriched uranium) program or that North Korea provided HEU to Libya. It has called for its Foreign Affairs Committee to hold a public hearing to evaluate the evidence. "Once bitten, twice shy" is the consequence of U.S. claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. [claims which, it now appears, were true - ed.]

And of course, the required European sneer at current American leadership. Japan and the United States are the bad guys, and note the sneering reference to neocons;

In Japan, opinion is split by hardliners in the Liberal Democratic Party who view problems with North Korea as a convenient excuse to justify the abandonment of the Peace Constitution. They don't want a quick solution until crisis has catalyzed the transformation of Japan into what advocates call a "normal" country. [and why shouldn't Japan have a Constitution that she has written herself? - ed.]

The U.S. expects an EU financial commitment, but not EU participation. The neocons believe that EU participation would change the balance of forces within the talks inexorably toward critical engagement rather than confrontation.

The question is whether the EU's offer will point the U.S. into a corner or trigger a breakthrough. [Notice, the U.S. into a corner or a breakthrough by the EU. It assumes no chance of success by the U.S. and Japan in making the DPRK live up to its agreements - ed.] Will U.S. fundamentalists outmaneuver the realists who favor a diplomatic rather than military solution? Only time will tell.

What time will tell is - the Left™ will never understand that appeasement does not work. These are the same people who cannot see that the President's actions in Central Asian are causing people to stand up and demand freedom from their oppressors. These people loved Saddam Hussein, they love Bashir Assad, they loved the terrorists Arafat, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, "Dr." Rantisi, they love Hezbollah. To the Left™ these monsters are heros and their defeat is to be lamented.

So, who are these writers?

Glyn Ford, a Labour Party member of the European Parliament (representing South West England), belongs to the EP's Korean Peninsula Delegation. Soyoung Kwon is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University's Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Yep, leftists™.

A Chinese - Russian Rehearsal?

Found via The Drudge Report, REPORT: CHINA, RUSSIA TO 'REHEARSE INVASION OF TAIWAN'

The original stories are at the Russian Information Agency (RIA) Novosti
CHINA TRYING TO USE RUSSIAN ARMY FOR ITS OWN PURPOSES

MOSCOW, March 17. (RIA Novosti)-Yesterday, Chief of the Russian General Staff Yury Baluyevsky left for China to settle a scandal over the first Russian-Chinese military exercise, Commonwealth-2005, which is due to be held this fall off the Yellow Sea coast, writes Kommersant.

The initial plans were to practice operational teamwork in combating terrorism during the exercise. However, Beijing, skillfully changing the format of the exercise, has tried to re-orient the two countries' armies to practicing an invasion of Taiwan.

The choice of where the exercise will take place became a stumbling block. The Russian military selected the Xinjiang-Uigur autonomous region, basing their choice on the area's problematic nature due to Uigur separatists and its proximity to Central Asia, which has become an arena in the fight against international terrorism. However, Beijing flatly rejected the proposal. Instead, it suggested the Zhejiang province near Taiwan.

A joint exercise in this area would look too provocative and trigger a strong reaction not only from Taiwan but also America and Japan, which recently included the island in the zone of their common strategic interests.

The reason for that should be clear;

The Proximity of Japan, the Koreas, Russia, and China

On the Russian military's insistence, the exercise was shifted north to the Shangdong peninsula. However, the Chinese are trying to change the format of the exercise with proposals to enlarge the contingents with Marines and Pacific Fleet warships. Marine landings to seize the area will be practiced during the "antiterrorist" exercise.

In a follow-up article, RIA Novosti reports RUSSIAN-CHINESE MILITARY EXERCISE IS QUITE LEGITIMATE AND TRANSPARENT

BEIJING, March 17 (RIA Novosti) - The forthcoming Russo-Chinese military exercise is not directed against any third parties, Russian General Staff Chief, General of the Army Yury Baluyevsky, now visiting Beijing, said Thursday.

"This exercise is by no means directed against any third party," he said.

Commenting on the claims appearing Thursday in some Russian media to the extent that a Chinese invasion in Taiwan would be rehearsed during the exercise, General Baluyevsky dismissed them as "pure fiction".

China is pushing.

Beginning Tomorrow Afternoon...

Michael Schiavo will begin torturing his wife to death. The moral bankruptcy of Mr. Schiavo and the immoral and incompetent Judge Greer has been written on thousands of times by writers better than I. While my friends on the right side of the moral spectrum see the evil of this clearly one must wonder, why the blindness of those on the left. Perhaps it has something to do with the malignant and illiberal form of modern liberalism which results from the philosophy of monsters like Peter Singer. I still stand by my evaluation of American liberal political belief;

It seems that, according to this modern, malignant form of liberalism, the only people that shouldn't be killed are murderers.

So, about using that word, "torture". If it should happen that someone should suggest torture in even the most urgent and potentially catastrophic of cases (the ticking bomb scenario), as Alan Dershowitz did, liberals worldwide would rise up in outrage. Is the use of the word "torture" correct or justifiable?

Andrew C. McCarthy thinks so. In an article published today in National Review Online he makes the case very clearly.

Torturing Terri Schiavo
She’d be better off if she were a terrorist.

A few months back, I wrote an article for Commentary arguing that we ought to reconsider our anti-torture laws. The argument wasn’t novel. It echoed contentions that had been made with great persuasive force by Harvard’s Professor Alan Dershowitz: that under circumstances of imminent harm to thousands of moral innocents (the so-called “ticking bomb” scenario), it would be appropriate to inflict, under court-supervision, intense but non-lethal pain in an effort to wring information from a morally culpable person — a terrorist known to be complicit in the plot.

As one might predict with such a third rail, my mail was copious and indignant. Opening the door by even a sliver for torture, I was admonished, was the most reprehensible of slippery slopes. No matter how well-intentioned was the idea, no matter the lives that might be saved, no matter how certain we might be about the guilt of the detainee, the very thought that such a thing might be legal would render us no better than the savages we were fighting.

Well, lo and behold, a court-ordered torture is set to begin in Florida on Friday at 1 P.M.

Torture?!? Really?

Yes!

It will not produce a scintilla of socially useful information. It will not save a single innocent life. It is not narrowly targeted on a morally culpable person — the torture-victim is herself as innocent as she is defenseless. It is not, moreover, meant to be brief and non-lethal: The torture will take about two excruciating weeks, and its sole and only purpose is to kill the victim [emphasis mine - ed.].

Why?

On Friday afternoon, unless humanity intervenes, the state of Florida is scheduled to begin its court-ordered torture-murder of Terri Schiavo, whose only crime is that she is an inconvenience. A nuisance to a faithless husband grown tired of the toll on his new love interest and depleting bank account — an account that was inflated only because a jury, in 1992, awarded him over a million dollars, mostly as a trust to pay for Terri’s continued care, in a medical malpractice verdict.
[emphasis mine - ed.]

And the response of the "compassionate Left™"?

In this instance, though, deafening is the only word for the silence of my former interlocutors — -civil-liberties activists characteristically set on hysteria auto-pilot the moment an al Qaeda terrorist is rumored to have been sent to bed without supper by Don Rumsfeld or Al Gonzales (something that would, of course, be rank rumor since, if you kill or try to kill enough Americans, you can be certain our government will get you three halal squares a day).

Not so Terri Schiavo. She will be starved and dehydrated. Until she is dead. By court order.

Go read the whole thing and see how this treatment compares to the treatment that actual terrorists who have been convicted of capital crimes and sentenced to death get, and pray for Terri.

The Conspiracy is Found Out!

The moonbats clear thinking political watchers over at Democratic Underground have discovered the truth about 9/11. Is it true that 9/11 was the day 2000 election results were to headline?. "Genius" posted;

Absolutely. A press conference had been scheduled for steps of capital by Bob Fertik, Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi and Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. The results were going to show that Gore won Florida and the press conference was going to revolve around the removal of the loser from office. This press conference was widely publicized. It never took place though. Guess why.

Good thing that we were able to fool the Press. In Newsmax on Oct. 22^nd, 2003 Phil Brennan wrote The Making of a Myth – The Creation of a Lie;

A couple of weeks after the 2000 presidential election I was talking to a nurse in my doctor's office. The nurse, a very bright young black lady, told me that her vote had not been counted. I ask her how she knew that. "Oh, I know," she said, without revealing how she knew.

Not wanting to cruise on that sea of invincible ignorance, I let the subject drop. Her vote among the tens of thousands counted in Palm Beach County simply hadn't been counted. She knew that. That was it.

It was also the first hint I had that a monstrous lie was being propagated – a myth that would become a mainstay of Democrat propaganda just as the Herbert Hoover myth was dredged up in presidential campaigns for many years afterward. Democrats ran against Hoover, just as they are now running against the GOP and the U.S. Supreme Court for allegedly stealing the 2000 election from the sainted Al Gore.

Boy, do we have them fooled or what. We almost got away with it. There is going to be a lot of discussion about this at the next meeting of the VRWC.

UPDATE:
While knocking around the blogosphere I discovered that Jheka over at The Daily Blitz has posted on this also.

China's Religious Development

The People's Daily, the main propaganda rag of the People's Republic of China (PRC) has published an interview with Ting Kuang-hsun, chairman of the "China Religion & Peace Committee", and honorary president of the China Christianity Association [bet you didn't know that they had one of those], I'm full of confidence in China's religious development;

On March 13, the China Religion and Peace Committee held in Beijing [link is original to the article - ed.] the Second Plenary Session of the Second Committee. During the meeting in an exclusive interview by People's Daily,Ting Kuang-hsun, vice-chairman of the CPPCC National Committee, chairman of the "China Religion and Peace Committee", and honorary president of the China Christianity Association, said that he is full of confidence in China's religious development.

Normally I'd pass on this as communist propaganda to be read only for entertainment (or to make myself angry). Orthodox Christians know full well how the Chinese government has forbidden any Orthodox bishops to serve in China. While looking for the link to that, I found this, "Beijing is sending positive signals to Orthodox church", AFP October 21, 2004 at WorldWide Religious News (WWRN);

Chinese authorities, seen as repressive toward Roman Catholics, are giving increasingly encouraging signals to the country's small Russian Orthodox community.

Orthodox followers in China hope they will soon be able to practice their faith normally after being forced into hibernation for many years, partly because of a lack of active priests.

and

The Chinese Orthodox church reached its peak in the mid-1950s when it became autonomous and had two bishops who oversaw an estimated 20,000 faithful. However, the church was to suffer much at the hands of the Red Guard, which drove it underground in 1966.

The two bishops died in the 1960s and have never had any successors.

China's Orthodox community has since diminished, with many expecting it to disappear altogether after the death of the last active priest in December.

But, benefiting from the current healthy political climate between Moscow and Beijing, the Russian patriarchate has taken steps to revive the faith in the country.

Let us pray for success in China.

The Right Not to be Killed

Touchstone Magazine is a wonderful Christian magazine with largely orthodox viewpoints. I could kick myself for not having checked sooner, but on March 11^th in their Mere Comments section (which looks a lot like a blog) is this post by Kenneth Tanner about the coming killing of Terri Schaivo. In that post he links to an article by William Luse, Live or Make Die;

Not long after a Florida judge granted Michael Schiavo permission to have the feeding tube sustaining his wife, Terri, removed, I went round the room of a night class that I teach trying to find out who among the students had found a topic for their research paper. One young lady had chosen euthanasia. Was she for it or against it? Against it. The passive form, the active, or both? Umm, she hadn’t read about that yet.

It’s remarkable how little they know about subjects on which their opinions are vehement. I gave her a couple of examples to illustrate the difference between active and passive, then asked, out of sheer curiosity, if she or any of the others had heard of the Terri Schiavo case. None had. This struck me as odd, I said, since it was happening right down the road in St. Pete. Oh yes! A couple of them had heard of it, but were not familiar with the details. So I laid those details out.

Later in the piece William Luse discusses the crucial difference between Terri Schaivo's case and that of Christopher Reeve. In the third and fourth paragraphs of that section he writes;

And so far, I would say, so good, with one crucial difference: Take away Reeve’s tube and he will at once stop breathing; take away Terri’s, and her digestive system will not at once shut down. It will continue working until all the food is gone. In fact, it will begin to digest her own tissues until starvation is complete. [if I did this to either of my dogs I would go to jail - ed.] Reeve’s lungs would have no such residual activity.

Many will think this distinction too finely wrought, leaving their doubts undisturbed. And yet I wonder if they would have any doubt were Terri Schiavo fully conscious.

This is a thoughtful discussion of issues surrounding the rights of patients, using the case of Christopher Reeve, who was still alive when Mr. Luse was questioning his students, as a source for comparison and argument. There is a lot to read and a lot to think about here, so get a cup of coffee, sit back, read, and think.

Also, William Luse has a blog, Apologia.

PETA Won't Like This

Orthodox Christians are fasting, so we will have to postpone this.

Meryl Yourish has posted The Third Annual International Eat an Animal for PETA Day to protest PETA's vile ad campaign that compared eating meat to the Holocaust (they have since removed it from their site). In fact the title was Holocaust on Your Plate.

Tom, the Pooklekufr has an excellent post on this (language alert). Got Meat?

Liberal Leaves Party - Pelosi Out of Touch

Michael J. Totten received a comment that he promoted to an article. It seems that one of his readers, although very liberal (abortion, gay marriage, etc are all good with him) is being forced into the arms of the Republicans (gasp!) by the Democratic Party's love of terrorists, thugs like Saddam, and pro-Stalinist groups like A.N.S.W.E.R. as well as its ever more open anti-Semitism. Not anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, which in my mind they are the same thing anyway. This reader wrote a letter saying so to Nancy Pelosi (Moonbat, CA) and Michael J. Totten put it up.

A Letter to Nancy Pelosi

If I had to pick one guy who was most responsible for driving me out of the Democratic Party and into the arms of the Republicans, it would be Howard Dean. Welcome him to the DNC? I'd just as soon welcome Noam Chomsky, the late Edward Said, or Ward Churchill, or Juan "Israel is always wrong" Cole, or Leroi What's His Name, former "Poet Laureate of New Jersey" ("The Jews didn't show up for work on 9/11, 'cause they were in on the secret – the CIA/Mossad did it!), or the Middle Eastern Studies Department of Columbia University, or the Chairwoman of the Duke University Middle Eastern Studies Department ("Let's boycott the International Gay Pride Celebration in Tel Aviv – we don't want to give any encouragement to the International Zionist Conspiracy!), or Representative Cynthia McKinney, or her Jew bashing (not just Israeli bashing, but in-your-face Jew bashing) daddy.

Read the whole thing, and Ms. Pelosi's empty response.

A big hat tip to Van Helsing at Moonbattery. If you choose to visit him, read this too. I'm just going to leave that one alone. Van Helsing did a wonderful job.

DPRK Speaking from the Moral Low Ground

In the News from the Enemy category, Xinhua reports, DPRK: Japan has no qualification for permanent member of UNSC;

PYONGYANG, March 13 (Xinhuanet) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) stressed on Sunday that Japan has no qualification to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council in all respects, describing Japan's behavior to make desperate efforts for Security Council membership as "impudent and imprudent."

"This issue can not be solved by money or backing of big countries but by the recognition of the international community," said Rodong Sinmun, the leading daily newspaper of the DPRK, in a singed article.

"It has no pluck to take action responsible for world security and international order. If Japan, a servant following the United States, becomes a permanent member of the UNSC, it will only result in adding one vote to the US in harassing world security and international order," it added.

Of course the DPRK has great respect for the UN, international law including treaties, human rights.

"As Japan is a dangerous warlike state which is seeking overseas aggression going against the trend of peace, its attainment of the UNSC permanent membership will give the Japanese militarists the wing of revanche for aggression," the article said.

They really need to get a good dictionary or thesaurus and stop projecting.

Japan, along with Germany, Brazil and India, is stepping up its bid for permanent membership of an enlarged Security Council.

I openly admit my biases. It should go to Japan.

Chinese Belligerence

The Guardian reports, China Law Authorizes Force Against Taiwan;

BEIJING (AP) - China's parliament enacted a law Monday authorizing force to stop rival Taiwan from pursuing formal independence, sparking outrage on the self-governing island and warnings that the measure would fuel regional tensions.

The law does not specify what might trigger an attack and does not add new threats or conditions. Instead, it codifies the measures for authorizing Chinese military action.

The ceremonial National People's Congress passed the law despite U.S. appeals for restraint. It came a day after President Hu Jintao called on China's military to be ready for war and followed a 12.6 percent increase in the country's defense budget for 2005.

This situation is becoming ever more dangerous. Should there be war it will likely involve not only China and Taiwan, but the United States and Japan. The Japanese Ryukyu Islands form a line all of the way to Taiwan, separating the East China Sea from the rest of the Pacific Ocean.

The Proximity of Japan, the Koreas, Russia, and China

Reuters also reports, Chinese Parliament Passes Law to Warn Taiwan;

Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council quickly called the law a "serious provocation" unhelpful to the development of relations.

"It also brought emotional pain to the Taiwanese people," said chairman Joseph Wu. "At this point, the most important matter is that the Chinese government should sincerely apologize to the Taiwanese people for their grave mistake."

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao offered soothing words. "This is a law to strengthen and promote cross-Strait relations, for peaceful reunification, not targeted at the people of Taiwan, nor is it a law of war," he told a news conference.

The United States is bound to assist in the defense of Taiwan. The Chinese justify the anti-secession law by comparing it to the U. S. anti-secession legislation written prior to the American Civil War;

Saber-rattling in the Taiwan Strait by China's fast-growing military forces has in recent years drawn in forces of the United States, legally bound to help Taiwan defend itself.

Chinese President Hu Jintao Sunday urged the People's Liberation Army to "step up preparations for possible military struggle" and "prevent wars and win the wars if any."

China hopes the legislation will deter Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian from pushing for independence. Analysts say the PLA has no immediate plans to attack Taiwan, over which Beijing has claimed sovereignty since Nationalist troops fled there in 1949 as the Communists conquered the mainland.

Wen defended the legislation by comparing it to U.S. anti-secession legislation at the start of the 1861-65 American civil war, fought to prevent southern states from seceding.

"In the United States, the civil war broke out, but we here do not wish to see such a situation," he added.

This bears close watching. It is not a good situation and Chinese belligerence is making it worse.

New Orthodox Christian Links

Yesterday my wife brought these to my attention.

Check out Ancient Faith Radio and its parent site, Our Life in Christ where you can find archives of program broadcast at Ancient Faith Radio in .mp3 format.

And, Conciliar Press has a blog titled The Orthodox Way. This is outstanding, high quality stuff. Conciliar Press is a department of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America. They are now listed in my blogroll.

Here is a post about fasting as Great Lent starts today for Orthodox Christians.

The Rules

North Korea's GULAG Pt.3

I think that the exceptional evil that is Kim Jong Il and his satanic minions is clear by now to all but the most committed idiot leftist™. The "Dear Murderer-Freak" still exists only by virtue of his ability to blackmail the world with his weapons.

If you haven't yet, you may wish to read my two previous posts in this series:
North Korea's GULAG and North Korea's GULAG Pt. 2

The most recent piece from FrontPage Magazine helps to bring us up to date. North Korea: A Time for Action;

North Korea human rights abuse has reached a new peak last month in the midst of another nuclear crisis that was initiated by Pyongyang. Amid North Korea's announcement that it possesses nuclear weapons and is suspending its participation in “six-nation” nuclear talks, Kim Jong Il’s Stalinist regime also found time to execute 70 refugees who were recently captured en-route to China.

The Commission to Help North Korean Refugees, a highly reputable NGO, said that eight or nine of the 70 who were executed were put to death publicly in order to discourage others from attempting to slip across the border into China

Such practices have become a horrible routine in North Korea, yet they receive little attention due to the country’s nuclear menace. Even South Korea, concerned that raising the issue of human rights would “anger” its northern neighbor, abstained last March from voting on a U.N. resolution calling on North Korea to improve its human rights record [emphasis mine - ed.].

There are still between 150,000 and 200,000 prisoners in the DPRK's gulag, but apparently Camp 22 at Haengyong has been closed and the prisoners moved to Yodok, of which we have video;

At one of the more infamous camps, No. 22 in Haengyong (which has since been closed), some 50,000 prisoners toiled each day in conditions that killed 20 percent to 25 percent of them each year. Kwon Hyok, a defector and former Head of Security at Camp 22, has described chemical experiments carried out on political prisoners in specially constructed gas chambers [link added by the editor]. Official Korean documents listing individuals transferred for “the purpose of human experimentation with liquid gas for chemical weapons” confirmed Hyok’s testimony.

Following increased media and satellite attention, the North Koreans decided to dismantle Camp 22—a process that was completed in late 2004. But the political prisoners in Camp 22 were not released; instead, they were transferred to places like like Yodok Prison Camp, located 62 miles north of the North Korean capital Pyongyang, farther away from the South Korean border.

Footage obtained from a defector who managed to secretly film the Yodok camp revealed conditions similar to that described in Camp 22. In one scene, pairs of men and women were seen carrying what the Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun said were “canisters of human waste slung from a pole across their shoulders." [emphasis mine - ed.]

I wrote about Yodok here.

The video of the Yodok camp mentioned above. (when the dialogue askes to launch application, say yes, it is the mms protocol).

In a later post I will provide links to high resolution satelite photographs of North Korea including the former Camp 22 at Haengyong.

World's Worst Persecutor of Christians

This will probably not come as a big shock. Agape Press reports, Top Christian Persecutors: North Korea, Islamic Countries;

(AgapePress) - The communist nation of North Korea once again tops a list of countries where Christians are persecuted for their faith.

The 2005 "World Watch List" was complied by Open Doors USA, a ministry which serves the persecuted Church. For the third year in a row, North Korea heads the list because tens of thousands of Christians are currently in North Korean prison camps -- and at least 20 Christians were shot or beaten to death last year while in detention. Nevertheless, says Open Doors president Dr. Carl Moeller, persecution has not curbed church growth in that nation.

So, who is in second place? Well, no big surprise here either;

Saudi Arabia again held the second spot on the list, followed by Vietnam, Laos, and Iran. Five of the top ten nations on the list are dominated by Islam, notes the ministry. Moeller says Islamic countries are becoming increasingly hostile to Christianity.

"Islamic countries, especially those governments that are ruled under the tenets of sharia, or Islamic law, are the most repressing countries against Christianity. But I will say this," he adds, "Christians in those countries are experiencing the hand of God and blessing and growth -- even in the midst of what we would consider horrible conditions." [emphasis mine - ed.]

From the World Watch List link;

Saudi Arabia again held the second spot on the list, followed by Vietnam, Laos, and Iran. Other countries listed on the WWL’s top 10, from No. 6 to 10, include: Maldives, Somalia, Bhutan, China and Afghanistan. Newcomers to the top 10 are Somalia and Afghanistan. Dropping out of the top 10 are Turkmenistan (No. 12) and Myanmar (No. 17). Somalia moved up four places to seventh in the rankings primarily because “Christian converts from Islam are paying a high price for their new faith, especially in rural parts of this most lawless country in the world.”

Additionally, my friend Tom, the Pooklekufr, sent this to me via Valley of Decision.net, North Korean Horror. Imagine;

Close your eyes for a moment. Imagine yourself at fifteen. It was probably a year of growing independence as you got your driver's learning permit. You went to high school, encountered peer pressure, giggled in classes about crushes, went to movies or sporting events with friends. Now imagine you are a fifteen-year-old girl in another country. A country where you, just because you are female, are stigmatized and vulnerable to a world of dangers and a government that seeks to destroy rather than protect you. Imagine those pubescent years, struggling not with self-esteem, but with survival - forced to sell your blood for money. Imagine watching your little brother die because there is not enough food. The grass outside is gone because your family ate the last bit yesterday and you have not eaten since.

Imagine never knowing if your house will be raided and your family will be dragged to a gulag to face abuse. Abuse that you have heard spoken of in hushed tones of broken bones, scarred faces, beatings so severe the eyes pop out of their sockets. All for what? Singing a song that someone did not like. Refusing the sexual advances of an authority at work. Not giving officials special privileges. What happens to the people who are sentenced to more than just "light reeducation"? They disappear. So does their whole family, down to three generations, wiped out. That happened to your neighbor and you never saw her again.

You are only fifteen, but you already know what it is like to encounter death and worse. You have heard the rumors of girls younger than you being stolen. Like that eight-year-old girl who lived two doors down on the left - suddenly vanished. To be used by the officials as a sex toy, like so many others. You have seen the haunted eyes of your family and friends, trying to survive. You have witnessed the desperation of your parents. Your older sister tried to cross the border to find food two years ago, but never returned. Your turn is coming. Your parents don't want to send you into that den of wolves, but they have no choice.

Believe it or not, there is more. I'll continue posting on the evil that is the DPRK.

If you are not familiar with the pit of horror that is the DPRK's prison system, read my earlier reports.

North Korea's GULAG

North Korea's GULAG Pt. 2

North Korea Lies To Japanese Families

Freak Watch - Kim Jong Il

Communism and Islam are the two greatest threats to humankind in all of history.

The Goat Locker

I have a big day today, so I'm not sure now much I'll be able to write. Here is something for all of my non-military friends.

In the Navy the Chief Petty Officer quarters is called "the goat locker" because that is were "the old goats" are stowed.

To learn some Navy and CPO history, traditions, facts, trivia, and other lore visit The Goat Locker. And, being biased, I also recommend The Submarine Page, but visit all of it. There are many links. It is very informative, interesting, and fun.

Enjoy.

North Korea's GULAG Pt. 2

Yesterday I wrote on North Korea's Camp 22 where unbelievable horrors occurred. Here is the account from the BBC.

Kwon Hyok is one of about 4,000 North Korean defectors living in Seoul, South Korea.

Most escaped because of hunger, fear, torture, imprisonment or a simple hatred of the regime.

But Kwon Hyok is not one of those. In 1999 he was a North Korean intelligence agent stationed in Beijing when he was persuaded by the South Koreans to defect.

Six years before, in 1993, Kwon Hyok says he was Head of Security at prison camp 22 in Haengyong, an isolated area near the border with Russia.

We already know a bit about this camp. We have also already seen the "Heredity Rule" where three generations are eliminated to remove the root of disloyalty to the murderer-freak Kim Jong Il. The BBC article has a map of prison camp locations. This piece has a few details that the Guardian piece does not.

On top of the Heredity Rule, there is this;

In prison, says Kwon Hyok, "there is a watchdog system in place between members of five different families. So if I were caught trying to escape, then my family and the four neighbouring families are shot to death out of collective responsibility."

Then there are the Letters of Transfer;

In Seoul I met Kim Sang-hun, a distinguished human rights activist.

He showed me documents given to him by someone else completely unrelated to Kwon Hyok. He told me the man had recently snatched them illicitly from Camp 22 before escaping.

They are headed Letter Of Transfer, marked Top Secret and dated February 2002 . They each bear the name of a male victim, his date and place of birth. The text reads: "The above person is transferred from Camp 22 for the purpose of human experimentation with liquid gas for chemical weapons."

I took one of the documents to a Korean expert in London who examined it and confirmed that there was nothing to suggest it was not genuine.

But I wanted to run a check of my own with Kwon Hyok. Without showing him the Letter of Transfer, I asked him very specifically, without prompting him in any way.

"How were the victims selected when they went for human experimentation? Was there some bureaucracy, some paperwork?"

"When we escorted them to the site we would receive a Letter of Transfer," he said.

Read the article, it includes photos of Kwon Hyok and Kim Sang-hun.

This article and the Guardian piece I quoted last post are old articles. In my next post I'll bring things up to date (Camp 22 has been closed, probably because of news of what they did there).

North Korea's GULAG

If the communist propagandist reporter Giuliana Sgrena can say;

"I think that the happy end to the negotiations may have bothered them. The Americans are against this type of operation," she told Corriere della Sera newspaper Monday. "For them, war is war. Human life is worth little." [emphasis mine - ed.]

and the LA Times Shills for North Korea (thanks, Charles) in this puff piece, N. Korea, Without the Rancor by Barbara Demick, at least the Guardian Unlimited (What?!?, Those leftists?) can publish something a little more truthful. Antony Barnett reported this on February 1^st, Revealed: the gas chamber horror of North Korea's gulag, A series of shocking personal testimonies is now shedding light on Camp 22 - one of the country's most horrific secrets.

Camp 22 is a camp for political prisoners (I'll bet you only thought we had those in the United States, right, Ms Sgrena?) in the mountains of northeastern North Korea near the borders with China and Russia.

Over the past year harrowing first-hand testimonies from North Korean defectors have detailed execution and torture, and now chilling evidence has emerged that the walls of Camp 22 hide an even more evil secret: gas chambers where horrific chemical experiments are conducted on human beings.

Witnesses have described watching entire families being put in glass chambers and gassed. They are left to an agonising death while scientists take notes. The allegations offer the most shocking glimpse so far of Kim Jong-il's North Korean regime.

Kwon Hyuk, who has changed his name, was the former military attaché at the North Korean Embassy in Beijing. He was also the chief of management at Camp 22. In the BBC's This World documentary, to be broadcast tonight, Hyuk claims he now wants the world to know what is happening.

'I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber,' he said. 'The parents, son and and a daughter. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing.'

Hyuk has drawn detailed diagrams of the gas chamber he saw. He said: 'The glass chamber is sealed airtight. It is 3.5 metres wide, 3m long and 2.2m high_ [There] is the injection tube going through the unit. Normally, a family sticks together and individual prisoners stand separately around the corners. Scientists observe the entire process from above, through the glass.'

And there is more;

His testimony is backed up by Soon Ok-lee, who was imprisoned for seven years. 'An officer ordered me to select 50 healthy female prisoners,' she said. 'One of the guards handed me a basket full of soaked cabbage, told me not to eat it but to give it to the 50 women. I gave them out and heard a scream from those who had eaten them. They were all screaming and vomiting blood. All who ate the cabbage leaves started violently vomiting blood and screaming with pain. It was hell. In less than 20 minutes they were quite dead.'

Defectors have smuggled out documents that appear to reveal how methodical the chemical experiments were. One stamped 'top secret' and 'transfer letter' is dated February 2002. The name of the victim was Lin Hun-hwa. He was 39. The text reads: 'The above person is transferred from ... camp number 22 for the purpose of human experimentation of liquid gas for chemical weapons.'

Kim Sang-hun, a North Korean human rights worker, says the document is genuine. He said: 'It carries a North Korean format, the quality of paper is North Korean and it has an official stamp of agencies involved with this human experimentation. A stamp they cannot deny. And it carries names of the victim and where and why and how these people were experimented [on].'

The number of prisoners held in the North Korean gulag is not known: one estimate is 200,000, held in 12 or more centres. Camp 22 is thought to hold 50,000.

Most are imprisoned because their relatives are believed to be critical of the regime. Many are Christians, a religion believed by Kim Jong-il to be one of the greatest threats to his power. According to the dictator, not only is a suspected dissident arrested but also three generations of his family are imprisoned, to root out the bad blood and seed of dissent. [All emphasis above is mine - ed.]

I have more on this from the BBC News and will post that shortly.

Kimchi Cures Avian Flu

This is too good to be true. From the Chosun Ilbo, Research Shows Kimchi May Be Effective Against Bird Flu;

Kimchi, a traditional Korean vegetable dish, has been found to be effective in treating avian influenza and other viral diseases affecting poultry.

A research team at Seoul National University said their findings show that a lactic enzyme in kimchi has remedial effects on chicken and other types of poultry, which had been infected with avian flu, Newcastle's disease and bronchitis.

The experiment was conducted on three groups of 13 chickens infected with the bird flu virus. The first group was given only water, while the other two groups were given either a concentrated or diluted fluid containing kimchi's lactic enzyme. A week later, all chickens in the first group died, but 11 chickens each in the second and third group survived.

"Kimchi is already known to have antibacterial powers. But this is the first time kimchi's effectiveness in curing viral diseases has been proven," said one researcher.

The team is planning to conduct further studies on the lactic enzyme and distribute it to poultry farms across the nation after obtaining permission from the National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service.

Arirang TV

My wife and I love Korean food and I do a lot of cooking with kimchi, so I am happy to report that there is good news for people too, The Beneficial Effects of Kimchi. We both have long believed that this stuff is healthy, and now we have validation [smiling].

It is one of the best foods in the world.

New Chinese SSBN, the Type 094

China has a new class of SSBN, the Type 094, that is expected to be operational in a year or two. Chinese Defense Today reports that this new submarine will have significant improvements over the old Type 092 Xia class SSBN (of which there is only one). These improvements will be in quieting, sensor systems, and in the propulsion plant. This is expected, why else develop a new class of submarine. The Xia is simply not a credible threat to the United States or Russia. It operates in Chinese territorial waters and is vulnerable to anti-submarine warfare (read LOUD). With the help of Toshiba they have significantly reduced that vulnerablilty (as have the Russians).

Carrying sixteen JL-2 missiles the weapons system will be able to target approximately three fourths of the United States from waters just to the northeast of the Kiril Islands. These missiles have a range of 8000 KM (4971 miles). As the Washington Times reported in 1999, the JL-2 will be the first strategic system to use secrets stolen from the U.S. during the 1990's. From the Statement of U.S. Rep. John Spratt (D-SC - Release of the Select Committee Report - Technology Transfers to China

The most significant technology that Hughes transferred to China was not the structural fix proposed for the fairing, but the "tutorial" they gave their Chinese counterparts in failure analysis and diagnostic techniques. The same is true of Loral. This assistance, according to the Department of Defense, is likely to make their rockets and their missiles more reliable; and this was a "defense service" under the International Trafficking in Arms Regulations that would not have been approved if a license had been sought. The gain is hard to quantify because it goes to reliability, and not the range, payload, or accuracy of Chinese rockets and missiles.

What have we learned from all of this? For one thing, we have learned that the culture of compliance with export control rules is weak, especially in these cases where the satellite makers have so much riding on a successful rocket launch. Self-interest overrides self-policing. We need tighter rules, closer oversight, tougher sanctions, more monitors, better training, and more export control officers. But we are lucky to learn this lesson without having lost very much. Our losses in this case were not comparable, for example, to the Toshiba case, where we lost the technology that is our submarines' secret to quietness. [emphasis mine - ed.]

This will be the first Chinese strategic weapons system that will be a real threat to the United States.

UPDATE:
Today FOXNews has a report via the Associated Press, Commander: China Building Military Quickly;

Admiral William Fallon — who commands U.S. forces in the Pacific — told the Senate Armed Services Committee that China's military might is growing exponentially. He calls that "disconcerting" and "unprecedented" — and he said much of the growth has come in the areas of maritime strength and aircraft attack capability.

KFA Vacation in North Korea

Thanks to joshua at onefreekorea for this. The Korea Friendship Association organizes a delegation to the DPRK every year.

They have a Flash presentation to advertise the trip and "solidarity event for the reunification of the peninsula. You've just gotta see this (courtesy of Boing Boing).

Also, while your clicking around, at the Official DPRK Homepage you can see a photo of two freaks at once.

UPDATE:
The great Michelle Malkin wrote on the nasty message that Boing Boing got when linking to the DPRK site for the Flash download.

It Was Not in Their Name

One of my favorite bloggers, evariste over at Discarded Lies, has posted a wonderful piece by Mark Steyn, who is one of my favorite writers. The right side of history [subscription required, but evariste has the whole thing - ed.]. I'll just give you the last two paragraphs;

The other day I found myself, for the umpteenth time, driving in Vermont behind a Kerry/Edwards supporter whose vehicle also bore the slogan ‘FREE TIBET’. It must be great to be the guy with the printing contract for the ‘FREE TIBET’ stickers. Not so good to be the guy back in Tibet wondering when the freeing thereof will actually get under way. For a while, my otherwise not terribly political wife got extremely irritated by these stickers, demanding to know at a pancake breakfast at the local church what precisely some harmless hippy-dippy old neighbour of ours meant by the slogan he’d been proudly displaying decade in, decade out: ‘But what exactly are you doing to free Tibet?’ she demanded. ‘You’re not doing anything, are you?’ ‘Give the guy a break,’ I said back home. ‘He’s advertising his moral virtue, not calling for action. If Rumsfeld were to say, “Free Tibet? Jiminy, what a swell idea! The Third Infantry Division go in on Thursday”, the bumper-sticker crowd would be aghast.’ [emphasis mine - ed.]

But for those of us on the arrogant unilateralist side of things, that’s not how it works. ‘FREE AFGHANISTAN’. Done. ‘FREE IRAQ’. Done. Given the paintwork I pull off every time I have to change the sticker, it might be easier for the remainder of the Bush presidency just to go around with ‘FREE [INSERT YOUR FETID TOTALITARIAN BASKET-CASE HERE]’. Not in your name? Don’t worry, it’s not.

As Charles would say, go read of it for it is good.

North Korea Lies To Japanese Families

One would think that out of simple humanity the North Korean government would tell the families of the people that they kidnapped and killed what happened to them. After all, even Kim Jong Il's fellow mass murderers explain what they have done when confessing to their crimes. Here in the United States the infamous "BTK Killer" has been captured and, having confessed, is telling the police everything. Ted Bundy made no secret of what he did to his victims. The families of the victims of these killers now know what happened to their loved ones, but Kim is happy to confess only to the minimum and obfuscate all details even to the extent of lying about remains sent back to Japan. A more cold-hearted, cruel thing is hard to imagine. I am writing of the history of events, so my source material is necessarily dated. These documents are contemporaneous to the events.

Having said that, I'll start with a recent article published by the BBC News that gives a good overview of the history of these bizarre and tragic events; Heartbreak over Japan's missing.

We already know the basic outline of events. The "Dear Leader", freak Kim Jong Il confessed to the Prime Minister of Japan, Junichiro Koizumi that his government kidnapped 13 Japanese nationals and that 5 of them were still alive. There are many who hold that the number is more like 200 and that they were taken not only from Japan but from Europe.

At least four of them are said to have died in their 20s or 30s. North Korean officials say two died from gas poisoning, two in a car crash, one from drowning and one from suicide.

But many people in Japan question North Korea's claims that they died due to natural disasters or natural causes.

Pyongyang said the graves of seven of the eight washed away in floods. The one set of remains Japanese officials were given have not provided any concrete information because they are said to have been cremated twice. [The story of cremated remains is, by itself, bizarre. I'll post more on that in the future. - ed.]

Five of the kidnapped survived. In October 2002 they were allowed to visit Japan, and never went back despite Pyongyang's protestations. [Kim expected Japan to return the victims to their kidnappers! - ed.] North Korea refused, however, to allow their seven North Korea-born children, and an American husband, to join them.

At a subsequent summit between Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in May 2004, five of the children were allowed to travel to Tokyo, to be reunited with their parents.

The circumstances surrounding the deaths of some of the Japanese is suspicious.

For the families of those who allegedly did not survive, questions remain.

The two Japanese who died on the same day as each other were Keiko Arimoto and Toru Ishioka. They had both vanished while studying English in Europe.

Mr Ishioka's family received a letter from him in September 1988 indicating he was living with Ms Arimoto and another abductee, Kaoru Matsuki, in North Korea.

It is now known Ms Arimoto and Mr Ishioka died less than a month after the letter was sent. Ms Arimoto's mother believes this was no coincidence.

"They must have been executed publicly because of the letter. They were used as a warning to other Japanese, to show them what would happen to them if they wrote letters to Japan," 76-year-old Kayoko Arimoto told Kyodo news agency.

A Japanese woman, Megumi Yao, has since admitted working with the North Koreans to try to ensnare Ms Arimoto and other young women.

Ms Yao was a member of a cell of Japanese radicals based in Pyongyang believed to be behind at least some of the disappearances.

One set of remains that have been returned to Japan are suposedly those of Megumi Yokota. DNA analysis has shown that those remains are actually those of two other people, not Megumi's. Then challenged on this the North Koreans reacted angrily. This has led many to believe that Megumi is still alive and prohibited from any contact with Japan because of her knowlege of North Korea, particularly if she were forced to train spies to be sent back into Japan.

Another set of remains were said to be those of Kaoru Matsuki who, as we read below, was supposed to have died at age 43. Those ashes incuded a bit of jaw bone that came from an elderly woman. Those were returned to North Korea and another set was sent to Japan. Those were found to be from four or five other people all in the same urn.

The claim by the North Koreans that all of the other graves were coincidentally washed away in floods is believe by no one.

Incredibly there are yet more bizarre lies and stories by the "Dear Freak". From the THINK (Their Home Isn't North Korea) Stories page;

In the summit meeting of 2002, NK admitted that there were 5 survivors, and said that 8 were dead. When asked for evidence of the deaths, a NK representative went somewhere to fetch the documents. When he returned in a few hours, he had papers that had date stamps in the exactly same spot, indicating that there is a technology similar to Xerox in North Korea. Also, the documents were all from the same hospital, although the 8 were supposed to have died in different parts of NK. Some of their birthdates were mixed up. NK returned an urn of remains, saying they were of Kaoru Matsuki, who had supposedly died at the age of 43. Japanese scientists later discovered that they were of an elderly woman. Kaoru was killed, NK said, in a car accident in a country where you hardly see any auto traffic. Shuichi Ichikawa drowned while swimming in the cold ocean in September when he hated water. Would a healthy young woman of 27 die of a heart attack, like NK says Rumiko Masumoto did? The cause of Keiko Arimoto's death, as they say, was carbon monoxide accident from a leaky heating system, when survivor Yukiko Hasuike confirms that the houses for Japanese abductees used no coal. And the graves of 6 of the 8 deceased were washed away by a flood, Pyongyang claims.

They don't even bother to lie in a convincing way.

The Japanese government has considered imposing sanctions against the DPRK as a result of this deception. The DPRK has clearly stated that that would constitute an act of war (as if kidnapping Japanese nationals is not an act of war).

Kim Jong Il insists that these cases are closed, that there is nothing more to talk about. For the Japanese these cases are very much open as so little information has been provided by the DPRK, and what has been provided has been clearly shown to be lies.

There is very much more to write. I have only begun to report the strange, twisted, and tragic stories of the cold-hearted monsters that rule and murder people in North Korea.

FrontPage Symposium - Leftism in Higher Education

FrontPage Magazine has a new Symposium: Ward Churchill: A Symbol of Higher Education?

Dr. Jamie Glazov, who is brilliant, as usual, hosts Ross Gregory Douthat, Thomas Brown, Ben Shapiro, and Tim Wise. See the Symposium for descriptions of who they are.

An excellent read. Excellent discussion. Interesting that the admitted leftist, Tim Wise, denies that there is a liberal bias in higher education. Read his (disingenuous) "arguments" and watch Dr. Glazov take him apart.

It is lengthy, but it is all good.

Dan Rather Has Problems with Integrity

The Weekly Standard reports in its March 14^th issue, Wrong from the Beginning - Even in 1963, Dan Rather was a poor excuse for a newsman;

Eddie Barker, for one, remembers. The news director for CBS's radio and TV affiliates in Dallas at the time of President Kennedy's November 22, 1963, assassination, Barker is widely credited with first reporting on the air that the president was dead, having received word through a doctor acquaintance directly from the hospital ER. Rather, then based in Dallas as a reporter for CBS's national news broadcast and working out of Barker's newsroom, later took credit for the scoop, Barker says. The error is repeated in historical accounts often enough to annoy the now-retired Barker, though he says the falsehood was later acknowledged by Rather.

It was a different lie--one delivered on national news, and at the expense of children--that caused Rather trouble at the time. As reporters from around the world descended on the Texas city, Rather went on the air with a local Methodist minister who made a stunning claim: Children at Dallas's University Park Elementary School had cheered when told of the president's death.

The tale was perfect for the moment, reinforcing the notion among distant media elites that Dallas was a reactionary "City of Hate." It slyly played to a local audience, too: The school named was in upper-income University Park, one of two adjacent municipal enclaves that shared a school district and a reputation for fiercely protected, lily-white privilege. Finally, for the ambitious Rather--a native Texan and then a Dallas resident--the account represented the very sort of revealing, local dirt that the throngs of out-of-town competitors would have to work far harder to get.

Except that it wasn't true, and Rather knew it, Barker says.

Go read the whole thing, the story gets even better with Dan avoiding editting but doing the false story live and getting himself and the national news guys thrown out of the studio building.

Aggressive to a fault, as the ignominious end of his four-plus decades at CBS makes plain. As Barker himself--a CBS newsman for
most of his career--says, "Anybody who followed CBS's coverage last year knows that they were doing a gut job on the president."

Hillary Clinton to Visit North Korea

The Korea Times reports in today's edition, MDP to Arrange Visit to NK for Hillary Clinton;

The opposition Millennium Democratic Party is trying to arrange a visit by Hillary Clinton to North Korea along with a group of U.S. senators.

Party chairman Han Hwa-kap plans to meet with U.S. Ambassador to Seoul Christopher Hill today to discuss the issue, according to MDP officials Sunday.

``If possible, the visit will come sometime later this year,’’ an MDP member said on condition of anonymity.

Apparently this has Administration support;

MDP has said the New York senator, Clinton, hoped to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to discuss the nuclear issue. Hillary’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, had actively pushed for rapprochement with the North Korean regime in the final months of his administration.

``We understand that both South Korean and U.S. governments would support Senator Hillary Clinton's North Korea visit,’’ an aide to the Korean opposition leader said, requesting anonymity.

Another party member said the U.S. Congress and administration strongly support the senators’ bids to visit North Korea as part of efforts to find a peaceful solution to the continuing impasse involving North Korean nuclear drive.

It will be interesting to see the DPRK's reaction. I am assuming that this has the support of the current government of South Korea (ROK).

UPDATE:
The Dong-A Ilbo reports, Hillary Clinton Denies Alleged Plan to Visit North Korea;

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, denied her alleged plan to pay a visit to North Korea this year. Her spokesman told United Press International (UPI) regarding reports by some Korean newspapers that “at least those parts in the reports that mention Sen. Clinton are wholly incorrect,” adding, “She has not discussed or planned such a trip.”

Recently, some Korean newspapers reported that Democratic Party leader Han Hwa-gab noted he intended to meet with U.S. ambassador to Korea Christopher Hill to mediate Sen. Clinton and other senators’ visit to the North.

Note to Ward and the America-Hating Left

From FrontPage Magazine, a piece by David Yeagley, who really is an American Indian (Oklahoma Comanche), Listen, Ward: Real Indians Love America;

Ward Churchill wants everyone to think that Indians hate America. The truth is Indians love America, more than most people here. Today there are nearly 200,000 living American Indian veterans. That’s nearly one out of eight Indians. Churchill’s fake Indian voice, though loud, is way off-key. Real Indians honor America, and are quick to honor their warriors.

The percentage of Indians in the American military is proportionately higher than that of any other group, and Indians have been fighting for America since the war of 1812. Indians have served in all the major American wars, often without acknowledgement because they weren’t American citizens until 1924, when Congress declared them so. Indians serving in World War I, “the Great War,” served as volunteers.

The article goes on to discuss cases from Chief Red Fox Skiuhushu in 1917 to PFC Lori Piestewa, Sgt. Terrell Dawes and a number of heros in between including Medal of Honor awardees. For instance during World War II;

The service of American Indians during WWII is renowned. There were code talkers from some sixteen different tribes. A new book on Comanche code talkers provides invaluable information on Indians in modern military service: William C. Meadows, The Comanche Code Talkers of WWII, (2002). Indian code talking began with Oklahoma Choctaw Indians in WWI.

He goes on to write of his own experience when he lobbied to get legislation passed in Oklahome to teach public school students American patriotism and as a result lost his job;

Then there’s me, an Oklahoma Comanche who lobbied before the Oklahoma state legislature with the endorsement of Gov. Frank Keating, to create a bill to ensure the teaching of American patriotism in Oklahoma public schools. Of course, this has not yet come to pass, but I did manage to lose my teaching job at Oklahoma State University (OKC) over the publicity my efforts generated. (Call me a casualty of political war.)

Read the whole thing, it is excellent. Read the embedded links too, they describe Dr. Yeagley's battles with the Leftist™ totalitarian mindset in "higher education".

French Anti-Semitism Takes its Toll

Haaretz (yeah, Leftie™, I know) reports, Survey: 60,000 French Jews want to move to Israel.

Some 60,000 French Jews are interested in immigrating to Israel, according to Bar-Ilan University research conducted by Dr. Arik Cohen.

The research was based on questionnaires given to the 125,000 Jewish tourists from France who visited the country in the past summer. They constitute a third of the total population of French Jews [emphasis mine - ed.].

Of those asked, 52 percent said they see their future in Israel. Half of those aged 15-18 said they had personally experienced instances of anti-Semitism in the past four years. A third of the youth said they are considering immigration to Israel in the near future.

I have long commented at Little Green Footballs on the matter of French anti-Semitism and French preference for Arabism and Islam. Well, now they are reaping the fruit of their preferences. France has long been anti-Semitic and has only recently been backing away from that. It is too late. They have allowed their Muslims to live in their country without assimilating while at the same time abusing their Jews. Now their Jews want to leave. Well, what a shocker!

Call me a square old man, but I believe that everything has consequences, and that one must take responsibility for the consequences of one's actions, decisions, and words.

The Christian and Jewish beliefs, culture, and customs provide all that is civilizing about western culture. In France (and England and elsewhere) Christianity is being abandoned and the Jews are being persecuted while Islam is being encouraged by the authorities and the Left™ elite.

With the lose of their Jews and the abandonment of Christianity, they are lost. We in the U. S. will once again have to bail them out in the interest of our own national security.

They are on a greased slide to dhimmitude.

North Korea Kidnaps Japanese - Background

I don't know if any of my five or six readers are aware of the history of North Korea kidnapping and murdering Japanese nationals, so I am beginning a series on this topic. First some background.

The DPRK during the period 1970's - 1990's as a matter of policy, using military personnel in military operations kidnapped Japanese nationals from beaches of northern Japan and from other countries in Europe. The purpose of these abductions was to provide teachers of Japanese language and culture to DPRK spy trainees. For a good introduction to the history of this issue please read these:

• The Group of Seven Individuals Protest Against North Korean Abduction of Japanese Citizens
• The Ad in the New York Times
• Flash Version of the Ad (it plays slowly but watch the whole thing, it is heart rending)
• THINK: Abduction by North Korea Resource Site
  

From the Introduction page at the THINK site;

Imagine yourself on a date with your lover on a beautiful sandy beach, or walking down the street to your local grocery store. Suddenly you are grabbed, blindfolded, gagged, and stuffed in a bag. You are taken on a small boat and later on a cargo vessel to a land where nobody speaks your language and no one allows you to contact your family for a quarter of a century.

That's what happened to the citizens of Japan. They were abducted by the North Koreans under the order of their leader, Kim Jong Il. And WE WANT THEM BACK.

On September 17, 2002, Chairman Kim Jong Il, after denying the fact for decades, finally admitted to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that North Korea had abducted Japanese nationals. Why did he admit it? Because he wants our food. He wants our money.

5 of them returned on October 5, 2002, after 24 long years. ONLY 5 of them. And the North Korean leader said, without showing any credible evidence, that 8 others had died because of illness and accidents and added that there were no more abduction cases. He is not allowing families of the 5 survivors, including former American soldier Mr. Charles Robert Jenkins [since freed and living in Japan - ed.] of North Carolina, to come and rejoin their loved ones in Japan.

There are many, many more Japanese who believe their family have been abducted by North Korea. Investigative Commission on Missing Japanese Probably Related to North Korea, a citizens group looking into the issue, recently submitted a list of approximately 200 citizens [emphasis mine - ed.] who have disappeared between 1953 to 1997 to the National Police Agency and urged for investigation.

The Japan Times Online reports in a story dated April 20, 2003, Japanese-American museum in LA to help families tell abductees' tale also gives some background.

"My daughter was abducted 25 years ago by North Korea, so we came to the U.S. to let people know about this incident and to ask for their support in resolving the issue quickly," Yokota said at the meeting.

Yokota's daughter, Megumi, went missing in Niigata Prefecture in November 1977, at age 13. According to North Korea, she was abducted by military personnel, married a North Korean man in 1986, gave birth to a daughter the following year and committed suicide in 1993 while being treated for depression. Megumi's daughter remains in North Korea.

The case of Megumi Yokota has been especially sensitive. For details on her case and others read the Stories page of the THINK site. It is compiled in chronological order and presents a series of stories that are true studies in horror.

So the Dear Leader has ordered his men to re-investigate the cases. And his team has handed 7 shipping containers of "evidence" to Japanese government officials on November 15, 2004. But what did the cargo contain? Lies, lies, lies! What the North claimed to be remains of Megumi Yokota turned out to be of complete strangers after a thorough DNA test. The SECOND set of ashes (the first set they sent out in 2002 were also fake) NK returned saying they were of Kaoru Matsuki were of 4 deceased, none of whom were Kaoru .

There are more lies. NK admitted that the last set of death certificates they supplied in 2002 were _made up_ in a hurry since they could not find the originals. The pictures of Megumi in her 20's they handed last month turned out to be composites. The officials let Japanese representatives meet Megumi's "husband" but did not give requested hair samples because a DNA test can prove him being a dummy. Latest testimonies by survivors indicated that: 1) Rumiko Masumoto and Yaeko Taguchi were single after when NK says they each got married, 2) Yaeko was seen alive even after the date of death supplied by NK, 3) Yaeko said she taught Japanese to a NK spy called "Okka" whose name coincides with that of KAL bomber, though NK denies the connection, and more.

How sick is the DPRK and its murdering freak "Dear Leader"? This sick, when 5 Japanese who had been kidnapped were "temporarily" returned to Japan to see their families, their children were held hostage in the DPRK for their return (to their kidnappers). When the abductees decided to remain in Japan the reaction from the DPRK was;

...a spokesman for the North Korean Red Cross complained, "ten days have passed and the five have not returned. Why," they asked, "is Japan breaking faith by violating points to which it already agreed?" He expressed astonishment at such infantile behavior. [that the victims of this crime would not be returned to the criminal - ed.]

This from Recovering a Lost Opportunity, Japan-North Korea Negotiations in the Wake of the Iraqi War by Wada Haruki.

There is too much to get into one post, I will be writing a lot more about this.

The range of horror in the many crimes of the DPRK and its mentally damaged "Dear Leader" murderer-freak is demonstrated in many different ways in many different stories, not the least of which is the depravity shown in the events surrounding the kidnapping of Japanese citizens by the government of North Korea.

Chinese Submarine Development

The Winter 2004 issue of Undersea Warfare has a report on the history of submarine development by the Chinese, From Humble Origins, China's Submarine Force Comes of Age. From its beginnings;

200 Submarines for Imperial China

Following the humiliating Opium War of the mid-19th century, China faced continual encroachment from Western nations, and total defeat at the hands of the “upstart” Japanese in 1895. The occupation of Beijing by an alliance of powers in 1900 only added insult to injury. China’s profound maritime weakness, however, encouraged surprisingly bold thinking about emerging technologies for undersea warfare. Over the last decades of the 19th century, Chinese leaders attempted vainly to gain the support of foreign powers, particularly Britain and France, for constructing a modern navy. In 1915, a former U.S. naval attaché, CDR Irvin Gillis, arranged for the visit of Vice-Admiral Wei Han and 30 Chinese student officers to Groton, Connecticut to observe submarine building and operations. According to one account, Wei Han “delighted [Electric Boat] officials by announcing that China needed a fleet of 200 submarines.” An initial purchase of 12 vessels was inked, and plans for training Chinese crews were put into place. Unfortunately for China’s navy – and for Electric Boat – these agreements collapsed as the imperial regime gradually gave way to the so-called warlord era.

To current developments;

These efforts are complemented by domestic production. In addition to retaining approximately 30 aging “Romeos” and continuing to build the derivative Ming class – with 20 now in the force – China has begun series production of its indigenously designed and manufactured Song class, the first of which was launched in 1991. The Songs – probably at least five, with eight or more under construction – incorporate advanced foreign technology and can launch anti-ship cruise missiles while submerged. China is also building the Type 093 SSN, with the first already nearing sea trials. Beijing boasts that this submarine will have performance equal to a Los Angeles-class SSN. Also on the ways is the Type 094 SSBN, which analysts expect at sea as early as 2005 with 16 8,000-kilometer nuclear-armed missiles [more on this later - ed.].

PLAN leaders are ambitiously developing the human dimension of their underwater force as well by elevating the status of their professional non-commissioned officers in an effort to enhance and retain their skills. China’s admirals have also acknowledged that they have to compete for skilled labor by increasing the pay of some ranks by 100 percent in 1999-2000 – and the PLAN is aggressively increasing the number of officers holding advanced degrees. Training in the PLAN submarine force is strongly influenced by U.S. capabilities and operations. ...

This is a fairly long article and is an interesting read, including photographs of various Chinese submarine classes.

UPDATE:
The Washington Times in its Dec 3, 2004 edition reports, China tests ballistic missile submarine.

China's military has launched the first of a new class of ballistic missile submarines in what defense officials view as a major step forward in Beijing's strategic weapons program.
The new 094-class submarine was launched in late July and when fully operational in the next year or two will be the first submarine to carry the underwater-launched version of China's new DF-31 missile, according to defense officials.
"When fully operational, it will represent a more modern, more capable missile platform," said one official familiar with reports of the new submarine.

CIA World Factbook - North Korea

The CIA World Factbook is an excellent resource that I used while underway on submarines. It includes pretty much everything a person would want to know about a country. The entry for North Korea is very informative.

I have to wonder though, under "Government type" it says;

Communist state one-man dictatorship

and under "Suffrage" it says;

17 years of age; universal

I understand that the CIA is reporting what North Korean law says about suffrage, and the CIA report is perfectly straight about the DPRK, it is "no holds barred". So, no criticism of the CIA, but of the DPRK and their hypocritical "laws" ... what the hell does "suffrage" mean in a one-man Communist dictatorship run by a mentally damaged malignantly narcissistic murdering freak like Kim Jong Il?

Read the report, that's an order.

Oh, and there's a map.

UPDATE:
IMAO has a humorous take on the most recent news regarding North Korea: ignis fatuous.

Philosopher of Death - Peter Singer

My friend Tom, the Pooklekufr (and a Constitutionalist, BTW) sent me this, The most influential philosopher alive by Marvin Olasky and published by townhall.com. He also sent this short biography from Wikipedia.

This is where the Left™ is going;

PRINCETON, N.J. -- Republicans are winning elections, but the long-term problem of the left dominance within academia remains. Consider, for example, the influence of Princeton professor Peter Singer.

Many readers may be saying, "Peter who?" -- but The New York Times, explaining how his views trickle down through media and academia to the general populace, noted that "No other living philosopher has had this kind of influence." The New England Journal of Medicine said he has had "more success in effecting changes in acceptable behavior" than any philosopher since Bertrand Russell. The New Yorker called him the "most influential" philosopher alive.

Don't expect Singer to be quoted heavily on the issue that roiled the Nov. 2 election, same-sex marriage. That for him is intellectual child's play, already logically decided, and it's time to move on to polyamory. While politicians debate the definition of marriage between two people, Singer argues that any kind of "fully consensual" sexual behavior involving two people or 200 is ethically fine.

For example, when I asked him recently about necrophilia (what if two people make an agreement that whoever lives longest can have sexual relations with the corpse of the person who dies first?), he said, "There's no moral problem with that." Concerning bestiality -- should people have sex with animals, seen as willing participants? -- he responded, "I would ask, 'What's holding you back from a more fulfilling relationship?' (but) it's not wrong inherently in a moral sense."

If the 21st century becomes a Singer century, we will also see legal infanticide of born children who are ill or who have ill older siblings in need of their body parts.

Question: What about parents conceiving and giving birth to a child specifically to kill him, take his organs and transplant them into their ill older children? Singer: "It's difficult to warm to parents who can take such a detached view, (but) they're not doing something really wrong in itself." Is anything wrong with a society in which children are bred for spare parts on a massive scale? "No."

With apologies to my friend Charles, read all of it, for it is good.

There is also the Wikipedia entry. Under the heading "Abortion, euthanasia and infanticide" we read;

Consistent with his general ethical theory, Singer holds that the right to physical integrity is grounded in a being's ability to suffer, and the right to life is grounded in the ability to plan and anticipate one's future. [what?!?!, someone who is mentally ill and cannot perform this function has no right to life then? - ed.] Since the unborn, infants and severely disabled people lack the latter (but not the former) ability, he states that abortion, painless infanticide and euthanasia can be justified in certain special circumstances, for instance in the case of severely disabled infants whose life would cause suffering both to themselves and to their parents. [links are from the Wikipedia entry, they are not mine except where indicated - ed.]

If this is not evil, then nothing is evil. Look again at the first two paragraphs of the townhall.com piece. This is not some "way out there" nutcase who is without influence. This guy is the most influential philosopher alive.

I have an earlier post related to this. This man is a Professor at Princeton University teaching amorality and death to our nation's students.

I am so angry my hands are shaking.

UPDATE:
Last November MSNBC reported, Netherlands grapples with euthanasia of babies - Hospital carries out procedure on few terminally ill infants.

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A hospital in the Netherlands — the first nation to permit euthanasia — recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling revelation: It has already begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives.

The announcement by the Groningen Academic Hospital came amid a growing discussion in Holland on whether to legalize euthanasia on people incapable of deciding for themselves whether they want to end their lives — a prospect viewed with horror by euthanasia opponents and as a natural evolution by advocates.

In August, the main Dutch doctors’ association KNMG urged the Health Ministry to create an independent board to review euthanasia cases for terminally ill people “with no free will,” including children, the severely mentally retarded and people left in an irreversible coma after an accident.

We are on that slippery slope to eugenics. Strange how we can fail to learn even the biggest lessons.

Freak Watch - Saparmurat Niyazov - Part 2

My friend evariste over at Discarded Lies has a new post about this freak. His post is based on a report from the BBC, Turkmen leader closes hospitals;

Reports from Turkmenistan say President Niyazov has ordered the closure of all the hospitals in the country except those in the capital, Ashgabat.

The order, announced by a government spokesman, is part of the president's radical health care policies.

Yeah, that might be radical.

President Niyazov apparently took the decision to close the hospitals at a meeting with local officials on Monday.

"Why do we need such hospitals?" he said. "If people are ill, they can come to Ashgabat."

For the Turkmens, it means the end of a nationwide health service already on its knees.

There are few able doctors and little medicine in rural Turkmen hospitals, and last year President Niyazov sacked 15,000 medical workers, replacing them with army conscripts. However the local hospital was the only place for sick people to go - especially those without the funds to travel to Ashgabat for treatment.

For an idea as to the size of Turkmenistan (larger than California) see the CIA World Factbook and this map. Most poor rural Turkmens are not going to be able to get to Ashgabat for hospital care, especially since they will be seriously sick or injured while traveling (hence the need for hospital care).

And if closing the hospitals was not enough,

At the same time, the president has also ordered the closure of rural libraries, saying they are pointless because village Turkmens do not read.

Criticism of the president is not allowed in Turkmenistan, but civil rights activists abroad say he has destroyed social services while spending millions of dollars of public money on grand projects, such as gold statues of the leader and a vast marble and gold mosque, one of the biggest in Asia.

This man is a malignant nacissist, which puts him in a group with Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Kim Il Sung, and Kim Jong Il. We should be paying attention.

Previous Niyazov Freak Watch

Kofi Annan Threatens Syria?

Emperor Misha I over at The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, a master fisker, takes a look at the United Nation's "Leader", fisking this piece from the BBC in his customary muscular way.

This Yapping Little Cur Is Getting A Bit Tiresome,

Kofi Annan warned that the Security Council might take action if Syria fails to pull out by April.

Speaking to Dubai-based al-Arabiya channel, Mr Annan said he will report to the Security Council in April on how far Syria has complied with the resolution.

"If it's partial withdrawal, I will have to report. If it's total withdrawal, I will have to report," Mr Annan is quoted as saying in the interview to be broadcast on Friday.

"But of course, if they [Syria] do not perform, the council may wish to take additional measures," he adds.

But...

Mr Annan's spokesman Fred Eckhard later said Mr Annan's comments should not be interpreted as having set a deadline or expressing support for sanctions if Syrian troops remain in Lebanon beyond April.

I'm sure that the Syrians are taking no notice of the U. S. and our Coalition partners in Iraq and are paying very close attention to the UN. I'm really very sure.

Very.

Really.

Freak Watch - Kim Jong Il

Here is the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2004 for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor on February 28, 2005. Most people hear a few things about how awful Kim's regime is. This report gives detail to the stories.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) is a dictatorship under the absolute rule of Kim Jong Il, General Secretary of the Korean Workers' Party (KWP). In 1998, the Supreme People's Assembly reconfirmed Kim as Chairman of the National Defense Commission and designated that position the "highest office of state." Kim's father, the late Kim Il Sung, was declared "eternal president." The titular head of state is Kim Yong Nam, the President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly. Elections for the 687-member Assembly were held in August 2003. Only the KWP and two small satellite parties participated. The elections were not free. The Kim family remained the object of an intense personality cult, and the regime continued to cling to "juche," an ideology of extreme self-reliance, even though the population was dependent on international aid for survival. The judiciary is not independent.

But you already knew most of this. There are details of all aspects of life in the DPRK in this report.

The country's traditional highly centralized and tightly controlled economy has broken down under the stress of chronic shortages of food and fuel. Citizens increasingly have sought employment in the informal economy. Most citizens must supplement limited amounts of government-subsidized rations with food purchased in markets.

...

The Government's human rights record remained extremely poor, and it continued to commit numerous serious abuses. Citizens did not have the right to change their government. There continued to be reports of extrajudicial killings, disappearances, and arbitrary detention, including of many persons held as political prisoners. Prison conditions were harsh and life-threatening, and torture reportedly was common. Pregnant female prisoners reportedly underwent forced abortions, and in other cases babies reportedly were killed upon birth in prisons. The constitutional provisions for an independent judiciary and fair trials were not implemented in practice. The regime subjected citizens to rigid controls over many aspects of their lives.

These are from the introductory paragraphs. The bulk of the report is under the heading of RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS. A few samples follow.

a. Arbitrary and Unlawful Deprivation of Life

Defector and refugee reports over several years indicate that the regime has executed political prisoners, opponents of the regime, some repatriated defectors, and others, including military officers suspected of espionage or of plotting against Kim Jong Il. ... In some cases, notably at the height of the famine in the 1990s, executions reportedly were carried out at public meetings attended by workers, students, school children, and before assembled inmates at places of detention [emphasis mine - ed.]. ... Religious and human rights groups outside the country reported that members of underground churches have been killed because of their religious beliefs and suspected contacts with overseas evangelical groups operating across the Chinese border (see Section 2.c.).

...

b. Disappearance

Numerous reports indicated that ordinary citizens are not allowed to mix with foreign nationals, and Amnesty International (AI) has reported that a number of citizens who maintained friendships with foreigners have disappeared. ... There were other reports of kidnapping and hostage-taking, apparently intended to intimidate ethnic Koreans living in China and Russia. The Government continued to deny that it had been involved in kidnappings of non-Japanese foreign nationals.

...

c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

In its 2001 submission to the U.N. Human Rights Committee, the Government claimed that torture is prohibited by law; however, many sources confirm its practice. According to a report by the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (USCHRNK), torture "is routine and severe." Methods of torture included severe beatings; electric shock; prolonged periods of exposure; humiliations such as public nakedness; confinement to small "punishment cells," in which prisoners were unable to stand upright or lie down, where they could be held for several weeks; being forced to kneel or sit immobilized for long periods; being hung by one's wrists; being forced to stand-up and sit-down to the point of collapse; and, forcing mothers recently repatriated from China, to watch the infanticide of their newly born infants [emphasis mine - ed.]. Defectors reported that many prisoners have died from torture, disease, starvation, exposure, or a combination of these causes.

There is just far too much to quote here. To learn what a truly monstrous regime this is, read the report.

Freak Watch - Saparmurat Niyazov

Kim Jong Il is not the only freak in town. There is also President Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan. In a style that is a combination of the worst of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il he has established a personality cult and written a holy book of his own. Amnesty International was able to take its attention off of the United States and Israel long enough to say this in an old article dated September 12^th, 2003;

"Away from international public scrutiny President Niyazov freely pursues his personality cult. Today is Rukhnama day in Turkmenistan, a public holiday celebrating the President's "holy" book Rukhnama (Book of the Soul) -- which he compares to the Bible and the Koran; he claims that the book 'was born in (his) heart through the will of the Almighty' and that Turkmen people should live their lives according to this book."

Everyone has to know parts of the Rukhnama by heart. Pupils, students, teachers and prisoners have to recite paragraphs of the book on many occasions. In order to pass the entry exams for universities, students have to answer questions about the Rukhnama. Prisoners have been denied release because they refused to swear the oath of allegiance to the President on the Rukhnama.

Ok, so old news, right? Wrong, according to Forum 18 the Niyazov freak is still at it.

On March 1^st, 2005 Forum 18 reports, TURKMENISTAN: President's personality cult imposed on religious communities.

Amongst pressures on religious communities is a government-enforced cult of President Niyazov's personality. Forum 18 News Service has learnt that Muslims face mounting pressure to venerate the president's two volume ideological book, the Ruhnama (Book of the Soul), while Russian Orthodox churches must have a minimum of two copies of the Ruhnama. One government minister claimed that the Ruhnama would make up for shortcomings in both the Bible and the Koran, neither of which were, he claimed, fully adequate for the spiritual needs of Turkmens. The personality cult includes a massive mosque decorated with quotations from the Ruhnama, a gold statue in Ashgabad that revolves to follow the sun and a monument to the Ruhnama. Also important in the President's cult are his books of poetry, and Muslim clerics were last month told that "it was a priority task for clergymen to disseminate the lofty ideas in our great leader's sacred books on the duties of parents and children."

We ignore these freaks at our peril.

Turkey Continues to Persecute Christians

While reading the web sites of The Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate I found the Yale University School of Law White Paper that discusses Turkey's failure to live up to its obligations to the Ecumenical Patriarchate and its Orthodox Christian minority. This is a paper that was prepared at the request of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and released on December 11, 2004.

Turkey's Compliance With Its Obligations To The Ecumenical Patriarchate and Orthodox Christian Minority (Requires Adobe Reader)

Anyone who believes that Turkey is a country where Christians can worship freely and where the Clergy can function in a way that we in the West would consider normal is wrong. Although Turkey is no longer chopping off the heads of Christians the persecution is there.

Turkey has never relented from its plan to depopulate the land of the Christians who were there before the Ottoman Turks. Asia Minor was a predominately Greek and Christian land even until the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. That is no longer true. A genocide occurred that is little remembered today. This comes from The Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. I'll not repeat all of the quotes, but here are a few;

“The Turks have decided upon a war of extermination against their Christian subjects.”
German Ambassador Wangenheim to German Chancellor von Bulow, quoting Turkish Prime Minister Sefker Pasha, July 24, 1909.

“...the entire Greek population of Sinope and the coastal region of the county of Kastanome has been exiled. Exile and extermination in Turkish are the same, for whoever is not murdered, will die from hunger or illness.”
Herr Kuchhoff, German consul in Amissos in a despatch to Berlin, July 16, 1916.

“The time is near for Turkey to be finished with the Greeks as we were with the Armenians in 1915.”
Talaat Bey [Minister of Internal Affairs - ed.] as quoted by an Austro-Hungarian agent, January 31, 1917

There is much more. Genocide was committed in all of Asia Minor, Pontus, and Armenia. Turkey denies this to this day and takes aggressive action against whomever tries to remember it. Europe remembers the Armenian Genocide, but few remember the others.

Genocide of the Pontian Greeks

26 July 1909 Sefker Pasha [Turkish Prime Minister - ed.] visited Patriarch Ioakeim III and tells him: "we will cut off your heads, we will make you disappear. It is either you or us who will survive."

Although the Turks no longer openly murder their Christians, the persecutions continue, as Yale University School of Law White Paper makes clear.

I go to church with people who lost family members in the Pontian Genocide, it would be nice if Turkey would at least acknowlege that it occurred, but they deny that any genocide, Armenian or Pontian, occurred at all.

And now they want to be in the European Union. At least they could be made to offer religious freedon to their citizens first, but Europe has lost her respect for all (Christian) religion during the past 50 years, but that is for another article.