North Korea defied international warnings of censure and further isolation on Friday, launching a rocket that the United States and its allies called a provocative pretext for developing an intercontinental ballistic missile that might one day carry a nuclear warhead.
But in what was a major embarrassment to the North and its young new leader, the rocket disintegrated moments after the launching, and American and Japanese officials said its remnants fell harmlessly into the sea.
Maybe if you didn't starve your people with famines they'd have the energy to actually make your rockets work.
Here in America, when we think of Kim Il-Sung, we probably think of this:
The reality is that this sick son of bitch, now mercifully dead (for the people of North Korea), was the author of famine in his country and an oppressor of his people -- to serve his own pleasures:
From 1995 to 1997, famine raged in North Korea. According to a report by North Korea’s Public Security Ministry, up to 3 million lost their lives (source). As this isn’t the most neutral observer, real numbers are probably much higher. (See an older post here about not trusting governments with the job of human rights measurement). Still today, the country is in such a state that it won’t take much for famine to return.
It was Kim Il Sung who used to say, “Communism is rice,” meaning the system would succeed by giving the people enough to eat. The famine was caused by mismanagement and the inability to adapt to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the economic transformation of China.
All that said, Kim Jong Il acted with callous disregard to the suffering of his people. Rather than lose face, the North Koreans denied the food crisis for years and then kept humanitarian aid out of the places it was most needed. The regime executed people who tried to adapt by engaging in private business.
By the way, Kim Jong Il is famous for being one of the biggest foodies in Asia. Throughout the nineteen-eighties and well into the famine, he flew couriers around the world to procure delicacies for his own palate — fresh fish from Tokyo for his sushi, cheese from France, caviar from Uzbekistan and Iran, mangoes and papaya from Thailand.
Kim Jong-Il got the power by primogeniture from Kim Il-Sung and has passed it onto his 27-year old son, Kim Jong-Un, who is expected to be controlled by his uncle on his mother's side, Chang Sung-Taek.
Here's the three generations:
Grandfather
Father
Son
Grand Vizier (Chang Sang-Taek)
I'm sure they're expecting us to invade right now, and I'm sure Beijing is there to stop it, diplomatically at first.
This will be a very interesting week for President Obama. His Administration is saying it's taken out Al Quaeda, how about breaking down the walls into North Korea at this critical juncture. The top strategist in America against a regime that's been prepared to lose their dear leader for awhile, but probably hoped it would still not be so soon.
The question is, will someone from this crime family end up on a meathook and, if so, who will it be?
Thanks to enough blame to go around and go way back and, what's not hard to predict will be proven in court before this all ends, criminal negligence we're in the worst man-made ecological crisis since Chernobyl. The making of portions of the earth uninhabitable, more like our long ago poisoned and dried up neighbors in this solar system. More like entropy.
Nature organizes. Man attempts to impose will on nature, nature all too often disorganizes. It's ultimately all about our appetites for creature comforts and layers of security in an often hostile world.
I'm willing to give President Obama a chance to prove he's got a handle on this nightmare, or putting one into place. He's earned my trust thus far making strategic decision of value when being handed huge fountains of dute. He spoke today and is taking the type of responsibility Bush and his cronies couldn't muster. The responsibility we all have to start taking as well if we want to have a planetary future:
And he's got to be busy with this huge pile of dute suddenly flowing from succession-wracked North Korea, while relaunching out strategy for managing threats with Secretary of State Clinton.
Every once in a while there's a special event that reminds us of the wonderful freedoms we do enjoy (and must be vigilant to protect) here in the U.S. of A. After 140 days in bullshit captivity by the North Korean government, the brave, young Current TV journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, have returned home to free soil thanks to the visit by President Bill Clinton.
It seems impossible not to be moved by this statement by Ling:
Impossible not to be moved except, perhaps, if you're a hardened Neocon Conservative with a worldview stuck in the Cold War:
But, since Bill Clinton has a hand in their release, someone's got to step up and naysay the effort, and predictably, that task has fallen to former UN ambassador and noted rage-walrus John Bolton, who says the "Clinton trip is a significant propaganda victory for North Korea, whether or not he carried an official message from President Obama."
Thank you, John Bolton, for once again demonstrating the completely theoretical nature of Neocon philosophy. Not only does it not take into account in any way the two American lives at stake (let alone Euna Lee's young daughter with whom she was reunited) vs. some "propaganda" belt notch, but since there's no Iron Curtain or Eastern Bloc anymore, and Kim Il Sung is as marginalized as a tinpot dictator can be, that propaganda victory may be limited to his own state-run television system.
Go play your mental games with yourself, John. This is America. You know, give us your tired, your hungry, your falsely imprisoned.
