Mass Murder Still Continues Inside North Korea
After the decision by North Korea to declare and begin disassembling their nuclear program, the Bush Administration has agreed to lift sanctions long held against the regime in Pyongyang and remove that country from the list of state sponsors of terror.
To show their country is serious about disarming, the North Koreans are planning the televised destruction of the cooling tower at one of their major nuclear facilities at Yongbyon.
U.S. officials are quick to point out that this is only the beginning of a process that will be completed in stages. As the North Koreans fulfill each part of the agreement, the U.S. will in return make good on its promises.
The Bush Administration acknowledges that North Korea has a rich history of deception and broken promises and will of course be watched very carefully. Representatives from the U.S. and the IAEA will be allowed in to the country to monitor the progress of disarmament.
The disarmament of North Korea is of course a wonderful thing, however the world must not forget about the literal genocide that’s taking place in that country.
There is absolutely no country on the face of the earth with a worse record on human rights than North Korea. Kim Jong-IL makes Saddam Hussein look like a choir boy. North Korea is known as “the world’s largest prison camp” which is not an exaggeration by any means.
The cult-of-personality that the current Kim regime and his father before him have created in North Korea is unprecedented anywhere in the world. Most people have no idea the level to which that country is controlled. Their are only two phone lines in the entire country that reach the outside world, and you only need one guess to know who controls them.
More than 3 million North Koreans have died of starvation in recent years due to widespread famine. The Kim regime diverts what food aide it does allow in to the country to the military and party faithful.
The people of North and South Korea are genetically identical people, separated only by razor wire and a Stalinist madman.
However, North Koreans are on average 5″ shorter than South Koreans because of chronic malnutrition and starvation. South Korea is one of most technologically advanced nations in the world with a standard of living comparable to the United States, while North Koreans don’t even have anything to eat.
Human beings in North Korea have no value to the regime. The slightest infraction can result in a life sentence to one of the hundred of political prison camps scattered about the country. Prisoners live about as well as farm animals, and are worked until they die of starvation, hypothermia, sickness, suicide, or execution.
One particular human rights abuse is something right out of Nazi Germany. North Korea routinely tests chemical and biological weapons on prisoners. Sometimes gassing entire families together to study the effect of weapons.
Guards in these prisons are taught that prisoners are not humans but criminals who wish to destroy the country.
Collective punishment is the norm in North Korea. 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. There are children who are literally raised in prison camps if they’re fortunate enough to survive to adulthood. Their only crime is to have ancestors labeled as “criminals” by the regime.
One man who actually escaped from a camp he was born in says he had no idea about the outside world or anything. He thought it natural that he was in a prison camp because of his ancestors crimes.
“I didn’t know about America, or China or the fact that the Korean Peninsula was divided and there was a place called South Korea,” he said. “I thought it was natural that I was in the camp because of my ancestors’ crime, though I never even wondered what that crime was. I never thought it was unfair.”
The government practices total information control. North Koreans have no cell phones, no Internet access, and only limited government controlled television.
The bottom line is that while we celebrate what looks to be a nuclear disarmament of North Korea, we must also remember the horrifying cruelty that the citizens of North Korea will still be forced to endure.
Hollywood lefties love to play activist when it comes to global warming or Darfur, but the people of North Korea are suffering daily atrocities the likes of which the world has only rarely seen.
Robert Mugabe, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, or the Junta in Berma, are all amateurs when it comes to mass murder compared to “Little Kim” of North Korea.
-Chris Jones
Khan Network Had Advanced Nuclear Warhead Design
The Washington Post is reporting that the now defunct A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling ring was in possession of a far more advanced nuclear warhead design than has been previously reported. The blueprints were discovered on seized computers and showed how to build a compact nuclear warhead that would easily fit atop ballistic missiles. Specifically, the kind of missiles that both North Korea and Iran possess.
The real stink of it is that U.S. intelligence and the U.N. simply have no idea who the blueprints may have been shared with before they were discovered.
US shows evidence of alleged Syria-N. Korea nuke collaboration
Via the AP:
The Syrian nuclear reactor allegedly built with North Korean design help and destroyed last year by Israeli jets was within weeks or months of being functional, a top U.S. official said Thursday.
The facility was mostly completed but still needed significant testing before it could be declared operational, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
However, no uranium—needed to fuel a reactor—was evident at the site, a remote area of eastern Syria along the Euphrates River.
The Syrian reactor was similar in design to a North Korean reactor at Yongbyon that has in the past produced small amounts of plutonium, U.S. officials said. Plutonium is highly radioactive and can be used to make powerful nuclear weapons or radiological bombs.
Top members of the House intelligence committee said Thursday after being briefed on the facility by intelligence and administration officials that the reactor posed a serious threat of spreading dangerous nuclear materials.
“This is a serious proliferation issue, both for the Middle East and the countries that may be involved in Asia,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich.
North Korea Bills Itself as ‘U.S. Partner Against Terrorism’
In an extremely rare public expression, North Korea officially thanked the United States for helping the crew of a North Korean cargo ship hijacked by pirates off the Somali coast late last month, describing the rescue as a symbol of Washington-Pyongyang rapprochement.
“We feel grateful to the United States for its assistance given to our crewmen. This case serves as a symbol of the DPRK -U.S. cooperation in the struggle against terrorism,” the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency said.
U.S. Experts Begin To Disable North Korean Nuclear Program
U.S. experts on Monday launched an unprecedented process to disable North Korea’s nuclear arsenal at the key Yongbyon atomic complex under a multilateral agreement.
A State Department spokesman acknowledged that the process has in fact started, but did not give details on what had been undertaken so far in the disablement of the plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon.
Disablement aims to make the reactor and other plants unusable for at least a year while talks on total denuclearization continue.
North Korea agreed to end its nuclear weapons drive in return for aid, security and diplomatic guarantees under the agreement among the United States, the two Koreas, China, Russia amd Japan.
U.S. team to begin disabling North Korean nuclear plant
U.S. technicians are likely to begin dismantling by the end of this week North Korea’s nuclear complex, which makes weapons-grade plutonium.
Christopher Hill, the top U.S. envoy to six-way talks to end Pyongyang’s nuclear arms program, said the U.S. team had “a specific list of measures” and would arrive at the nuclear complex to begin the dismantling process on Friday or Saturday.
Following lengthy six-party talks in Beijing involving North and South Korea, the United States, Japan, Russia and China, Pyongyang agreed that by the end of 2007 it would have disabled its main nuclear facilities.
North Korean Vessel Crew Overpowers Somali Pirates
Crew members of a North Korean cargo vessel Tuesday overpowered Somali pirates and violently regained control of the freighter captured off Mogadishu port.
The 22-strong crew of the MV Dia Honga Dan overpowered armed pirates who had seized it overnight Monday and were demanding thousands of dollars in ransom.
According to officials in Mogadishu the pirates who had seized the boat were members of a Somali clan who were meant to be guarding the vessel.
The incident was the second piracy attack off Somalia’s 2,300 miles of coastline in recent days.
Somalia, which lies at the mouth of the Red Sea, has been without an effective government since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre sparked a bloody power struggle.
The US, which has a navy base in the Horn of Africa, has been reluctant to involve itself in Somalia since 1993 when 18 U.S. servicemen were killed in a bloody battle with Al-Qaeda linked militiamen.
Satellite Imagery shows cleansing of suspect Syrian site
New satellite photos show that a Syrian site believed to have been attacked by Israel last month no longer bears any obvious traces of what some analysts said appeared to have been a partly built nuclear reactor.
Two photos, taken Wednesday from space by rival companies, show the site near the Euphrates River to have been wiped clean since August, when imagery showed a tall square building there measuring about 150 feet on a side.
Israel Struck a Nuclear Project in Syria, Analysts Say
Israel’s air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports.
Israeli Air Strike on Syria Kindles Debate in the U.S.
There is an interesting article in the New York Times this morning that discusses an internal debate within the Bush Administration about how to deal with North Korea.
As of right now our agreement with the North to provide various kinds of economic aide in return for dismantlement of their nuclear program still stands.
However, Israel is arguing that in light of the recent discovery of a possible clandestine nuclear program in Syria thanks to the help provided by North Korea, we should reconsider that deal.
Israel recently launched air strikes against a facility in Syria that is alleged to be home to some type of clandestine nuclear program. The Israelis allegedly sent special forces soldiers in to Syria prior to the bombings to retrieve some type of proof that the facility was indeed a nuclear facility.
They showed the proof to President Bush and he gave the go ahead for the air strikes. Now some in his Administration are advising him that the North cannot be trusted in light of these recent events.
According to the article Bush, Rice, and Defense Secretary Gates remain committed to the deal with the North at least for the time being.
By Chris Jones
The Hot Joints
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