On Pain and the Suffering of Others

On the 31^st of March, while the Pope was still living, The Orthodox Way posted this, Suffering, Pascha, and Pope John Paul II.

North Korea Will Try to Brazen it Out

Sometimes it is interesting to put two separate news stories together.

1. North Korea slams EU for criticism on human rights

2. North Korea in 'Spring Cleaning' of Border Area, Activist Says

From story number 1;

SEOUL: North Korea accused the European Union on Friday of a “dastardly act” for criticising Pyongyang’s human rights record after Britain said the reclusive Stalinist state could face sanctions for the way it treats its citizens.
...

The North’s official KCNA news agency cited a North Korean delegate to the rights talks as saying the European Union was acting selfishly by backing the position of the United States.

The delegate repeated a charge the North has made before, that Washington was launching an attempt at “bringing down the system of the DPRK under the pretext of human rights”, KCNA reported

From the story number 2;

SEOUL—The authorities in North Korea are in the process of a large-scale crackdown in regions of the country near its border with China, forcing hundreds of residents to move further inland in an attempt to stop people leaving and carrying out public executions, a Seoul-based activist told RFA.

"North Korean residents are referring to the occurrence as a spring cleaning," Chul-hwan Kang, director of the Democracy Network against North Korean Gulag, told RFA's Korean service.

"The North Korean government is arresting all the people who have connections with China and sending them inland. Some people are on the expulsion list just because they have cellphones," Kang said.

We have video of this;

Kang said three people were publicly executed in the border area after being convicted of human trafficking.

The DPRK being the killing ground country that it is, more starvation and more executions are in its future.

Public executions for 'control'

"Because of this kind of monitoring, people are scared to breathe in the Moosan and Hoiryung areas."

Kang said the re-emergence of public executions could indicate an economic situation as poor as during the famine years of the late 1990s.

"I think maybe the North Korean economy is as bad as it was in the late 1990s and the government is employing public execution as a tool to control North Korean people," he told RFA.

Kang said the inspection teams were probably ordered by leader Kim Jong Il, and were a joint effort on the part of the police, the National Security Agency and the judiciary.

"Kim wants to eradicate all problems in the border areas."

Yes he does, to the great sorrow of the Korean people.

Pope John Paul II on Salvation

Although these words are not from a leader in the Orthodox Church, they are none the less orthodox and very well worth reading.

From Crossing the Threshold of Hope by His Holiness John Paul II, WHAT DOES "TO SAVE" MEAN?

To save means to liberate from evil. This does not refer only to social evils, such as injustice, coercion, exploitation. Nor does it refer only to disease, catastrophes, natural cataclysms, and everything that has been considered disaster in the history of humanity.

To save means to liberate from radical, ultimate evil. Death itself is no longer that kind of evil, if followed by the Resurrection. And the Resurrection comes about through the work of Christ. Through the work of the Redeemer death ceases to be an ultimate evil; it becomes subject to the power of life.

The world does not have such power. The world, which is capable of perfecting therapeutic techniques in various fields, does not have the power to liberate man from death. And therefore the world cannot be a source of salvation for man. Only God saves, and He saves the whole of humanity in Christ. The very name Jesus, Jeshua ("God who saves"), bespeaks this salvation. In the course of history, many Israelites had this name, but it can be said that this name was waiting for this Son of Israel alone, who was meant to confirm its truth: "Was it not I, the Lord, besides whom there is no other God? There is no just and saving God but me" (cf. Is 45:21).

To save means to liberate from radical evil. This evil is not only man's progressive decline with the passage of time and his final engulfment in the abyss of death. An even more radical evil is God's rejection of man, that is, eternal damnation as the consequence of man's rejection of God.

Damnation is the opposite of salvation. Both are associated with the destiny of man to live eternally. Both presuppose the immortality of the human being. Temporal death cannot destroy man's destiny of eternal life.

And what is this eternal life? It is happiness that comes from union with God. Christ affirms: "Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ" (Jn 17:3). Union with God is realized in the vision of the Divine Being "face to face" (1 Cor 13:12), a vision called "beatific" because it carries with it the ultimate attainment of man's aspiration to truth. In place of the many partial truths which man arrives at through prescientific and scientific knowledge, the vision of God "face to face" allows enjoyment of the absolute fullness of truth. In this way man's aspiration to truth is ultimately satisfied.

Salvation, however, is not reducible to this. In knowing God "face to face," man encounters the absolute fullness of good. The platonic intuition of the idea of good found in Christianity its ultraphilosophical and ultimate confirmation. What we are speaking of here is not union with the idea of good, but rather union with Good itself. God is this Good. To the young man who asked, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Christ responded: "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone" (Mk 10:17-18).

World's Worst Regimes

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty reports that Freedom House has released its annual list of the world's worst human rights violators, U.S.: Freedom House Unveils World's Worst Regimes

Prague, 1 April 2005 (RFE/RL) -- The report, entitled "The Worst of the Worst: The World's Most Repressive Societies 2005," notes that six of the 18 most repressive governments are members of the UN's human rights commission.

Those are China, Cuba, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe.

Michael Goldfarb is a senior press officer with Freedom House. He told RFE/RL that these governments have subverted the commission's mandate.

"Countries with truly egregious human rights records managed to get themselves elected to the only United Nations human rights monitoring body," Goldfarb said. "Successfully, they work together in concert to prevent [condemnatory] resolutions passed against them. They prevent the open, legitimate and transparent debate about human rights abuses that are occurring throughout the world."

Of course the UN (which is worse than useless) flatly denies that they have anything but the highest standards in the protection of human rights worldwide.

On 21 March UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan recommended that states elected to a reformed "Human Rights Council" be chosen based on their compliance with the "highest human rights standards:"

"I think if we are able to transform that into a council with members elected directly by a General Assembly two-thirds majority -- with an understanding that those elected must have credentials in the human rights area and commitment to be able to hold up human rights standards -- we are likely to do better," Annan said.

He can hope, but the UN is far too corrupt to allow it. Well over two-thirds of the membership is made up of just such regimes. The very large percentage of the membership that is Arab and/or Muslim will not tolerate anything that does not condemn Israel for imagined crimes that they themselves really do commit every day.

The Freedom House report also includes detailed summations of the human rights situations in Belarus, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Goldfarb explained: "We saw rigged elections in Belarus recently. You have very, very high restrictions of political rights and banned political parties in Uzbekistan. In Turkmenistan there's essentially no rights. It's really the most repressive Central Asian republic. [emphasis mine - ed.] So you have these commonalities on severe restrictions on political rights in these states."

The report says Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka further consolidated his "personal dictatorship" in 2004. It notes that the recent elections and a parallel national referendum that lifted a two-term restriction on the presidency saw voter irregularities, tight control of mass media, and "intense pressure" on opposition and civic activists.

On Turkmenistan, the document says the government of President Saparmurat Niyazov continued its campaign in 2004 against real and perceived opponents of the regime.

Read the Freedom House Press Release, WORLD'S WORST REGIMES UNVEILED
Several of the World's Greatest Human Rights Violators Sit on UN Human Rights Panel

The report, "The Worst of the Worst: The World's Most Repressive Societies 2005," includes detailed summations of the dire human rights situations in Belarus, Burma (Myanmar), China, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. Chechnya, Tibet, and Western Sahara are included as territories under Russian, Chinese, and Moroccan jurisdictions respectively.

The report is available online.

Significantly, six of the eighteen most repressive governments--those of China, Cuba, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe--are members of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), representing nearly 11 percent of the 53-member body.

"Repressive governments enjoying CHR membership work in concert and have successfully subverted the Commission's mandate," said Freedom House Executive Director Jennifer Windsor. "Rather than serving as the proper international forum for identifying and publicly censuring the world's most egregious human rights violators, the CHR instead protects abusers, enabling them to sit in judgment of democratic states that honor and respect the rule of law," she said.

Read the report here, THE WORST OF THE WORST, THE WORLD’S MOST REPRESSIVE SOCIETIES, 2005. A Special Report to the 61st Session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights Geneva, 2005

Roman Catholic Popes and the Orthodox Church

Here are some useful links.

The List of Roman Catholic Popes

Popes of Rome who are Orthodox Saints

The Orthodox Church in America (OCA) Question and Answer pages answer many questions about our (sometimes difficult) relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism

Despite our difficulties I have the highest regard for Pope John Paul II. He did nore than any other in trying to bring our Churches back together. Reestablishment of communion is probably not possible, but he did not dismiss us as so many others have.

He lead with a firm hand, holding off liberal efforts to destroy the Church as has been done in the Episcopal Church in the US (ironically, the Church with whom we were most likely to establish communion) and other Anglican Churches.

Oh, and he was one of the Three who brought down Communism in the West.

Scientists Vow Loyalty to Kim Jong Il

The following from the KCNA, Scientists Meet to Vow Their Loyalty

Samjiyon, March 29 (KCNA) -- Scientists visiting the old home of leader Kim Jong Il in the secret camp of Mt. Paektu, the holy land of the revolution, held a meeting to vow their loyalty in front of his old home on Mar. 26. At the meeting the reporter and speakers said all the scientists would devote all their wisdom and enthusiasm to the scientific researches aimed at increasing the national power true to Kim Jong Il's Juche-oriented idea of attaching importance to science and his leadership.
They pointed out that they would channel great efforts into scientific researches to achieve a radical change in agricultural production this year and make a positive contribution to placing all fields of the national economy including power, coal and metal industries and railway transport on a modern IT basis.
They made a study tour of revolutionary battle sites and historical sites in the area of Mt. Paektu from Mar. 26 to 29.
During the tour they had diverse political and cultural programs. [emphasis mine - ed.]

While there may have been diverse political programs, diverse political ideas would get you killed.

And, btw, the Juche idea is why the people of North Korea are starving to death (when they are not busy being shot to death or gassed to death or poisoned to death or beaten to death or ...)

From an economic standpoint, Juche also calls for North Korea to be self-sufficient in industry and services, with as little foreign aid or interference as possible, and it has been applied more strenuously since the 1960's. Most of the economic focus has been on heavy industry, military spending, and agriculture, which North Korea considers its basic mainstays.

Prayers for Pope John Paul II

Reports, not yet confirmed, are that the Pope has died. I am typing through tears.

My prayers are with him and my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters.

He has surely earned his place in God's presence.

UPDATE 1043:
The shutters are still open and reports are that he is still alive. I am sure that his time is very close.

Pray for him, he is a great man.

Perhaps "earned" is a poor word choice, see my comment for clarification.

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.