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March 03, 2005
North Korea: Headquarters of Tyranny
Hugh Hewitt points out this ridiculous article in today's LA Times that defends the North Korean government.
Here are some excerpts, "We were hoping for change from the U.S. administration. We expected some clear-cut positive change," the North Korean said. "Instead, Condoleezza Rice immediately committed the mistake of calling us an outpost of tyranny. North Koreans are most sensitive when they hear that kind of remark."
Well maybe you should stop being an outpost for tyranny if you do not want to be called one. I think outpost might be too mild of a term. Maybe headquarters for tyranny is more accurate. I wonder how sensitive the millions of North Koreans who are dead or unjustly imprisoned because of the regime feel about your sensitivity. I guess we can not ask the millions of dead North Koreans killed by their government how sensitive they feel about these comments because they are dead.
Next excerpt, "He also said that U.S. criticism of North Korea's record on human rights was unfair and hypocritical. In its annual human rights report on Monday, the State Department characterized North Korea's behavior as "extremely poor." It said 150,000 to 200,000 people were being held in detention camps for political reasons and that there continued to be reports of extrajudicial killings. "Is there any country where there is a 100% guarantee of human rights? Certainly not the United States," the businessman said. "There is a question of what is a political prisoner. Maybe these people are not political prisoners but social agitators."
If they are agitators, they are probably that way because they do not like being ruled by a blood thirsty dictator. North Korea has arguably the most evil government on the planet. They lock people up or kill them for no good reason except the government feels like it. They also kidnap innocent civilians from other countries like Japan and South Korea.
Final excerpt, "While Westerners tend to stress the rights of the individual, he said, "we have chosen collective human rights as a nation…. We should have food, shelter, security rather than chaos and vandalism. The question of our survival as a nation is dangling."
Except that you do not even have that. Your people are starving to death. They have to eat bark, pine needles, and grass to survive and many of them do not survive because they have no food. You have no old or handicapped people because they are all dead because your government could not feed them. You do not even have any paper. Meanwhile the butcher Kim lives a life of luxury.
The most disgusting part of this article is that reporter writes that this guy is speaking for North Koreans. He is not. He is speaking for the government of North Korea. There is a difference. If he wasn't speaking for the government, he would not have been allowed out of the country because the North Korea government does not allow its citizens to leave unless they are government agents on a mission.
Roger L. Simon writes, "As one who has traveled to communist countries on several occasions -- China and Cuba in the late seventies; the Soviet Union twice in the late eighties -- I found it easy to recognize the rhetoric of the totalitarian intelligence agent. (I spent a lot of time with them as my guides and translators.) I wondered why the Times' reporter didn't make this clearer. Is it possible that she did not understand she was being propagandized by regime operatives claiming to speak for "North Koreans"? Perhaps she believes she was merely "reporting" what she heard"
I think there are two possibilities here: First this reporter is an idiot and honestly does not understand that she is being fed a line by this puppet of the regime. The other is that she knows exactly what is going on and is willing to be a shill for the most evil government on the planet. Either way this article is a disgrace.
Update (3/4/05): Vodkapundit has more here. "Of course, this story was hardly the first time the LA Times or the MSM in general has pulled a Duranty regarding North Korea. The Times itself employs nutbag columnist Robert Scheer, a longtime apologist for every Communist depost who's ever reigned. Scheer personally signed on to a letter expounding on the wonders of Kim's odious father Kim Il Sung after a visit in 1970."
Posted by Pete at March 3, 2005 04:17 PM
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