North Korea Update

The February 28, 2010 StrategyPage has an interesting update on the brutal conditions in North Korea.

The whole thing is worth reading, but here is one excerpt that stood out for me:

North Korea is so broke that it can't even expand its prison system. Currently, there are six main work camps, holding 200,000 prisoners. The camps run factories, mines and farms, but to build additional camps requires cash and resources the government doesn't have. So food for the camps is being cut, to encourage the weaker prisoners to die, and make room for the many new "economic criminals" (especially those sneaking food in from China.)

There is also paralysis at the top when it comes to resuming negotiations with the U.S. and neighboring countries, that are willing to provide food and other aid, if the north will abandon nuclear weapons. Many North Korean officials are willing to make the trade, but refuse to allow the inspections demanded.

The big fear is that the outsiders will find out how bad off North Korea really is. This, despite the fact that this is not much of a secret anymore.

(Read the full text.)

Fortunately, it looks like the Obama Administration is not in a hurry to agree to more negotiations and talks with such a weakened (yet unrepentant) enemy.

Given that I oppose so many of the current President's policies, I do wish to give him credit on those occasions where I agree with him.

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Defending Stalin?!?

While googling for a text relevant to my dissertation, I ran across "The Stalin Society." It describes itself in large text, next to a picture of Stalin, as follows:

The Stalin Society was formed in 1991 to defend Stalin and his work on the basis of fact and to refute capitalist, revisionist, opportunist and Trotskyist propaganda directed against him."

Um, wow. (Always those damn Trotskyites!)

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Lives of Others

Some time ago, I recommended the movie Lives of Others. It's a beautiful, heart-wrenching movie about life in East Germany under the watchful eye of the Stasi secret police.

The movie was so good that I thought I'd recommend it again, along with this interesting Wired article from a few months ago on the attempt to reconstruct the Stasi records, so that East Germans can learn exactly what their government recorded about their lives.

I never read anything about East Germany in my obsessive readings on communism a few years ago, but I'd like to do so, preferably a personal narrative of some kind. Any recommendations?

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Update on North Korea

StrategyPage has a very interesting update on the ever-declining state of affairs in North Korea. It's definitely worth reading, if you're interested in that horrid corner of the globe.

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