Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------------------------- [Well folks,
aren’t you glad that someone
finally had the courage to do
it? Oh, let the appeasers and
milquetoasts howl about “prejudicing” the progress of re-unification efforts
which are “opposed” by Washington, about reinforcing so-called “punitive”
Washington policies like “draconian sanctions” and “reneging” on its commitment
to finance non-nuclear power for DPRK after “ordering” DPRK to abandon
nuclear. Let them squawk!! And get ready for the yammering of the fellow-travelers about the “millions of
dead” from “U.S. aggression” and the “most thorough and relentless aerial
blitzkrieg ever visited on a single state” for which there were no so-called “reparations.” At least someone on the Left can brave these cowardly distractions and
conceits, roll up their sleeves and give North Korea the laurel for “World’s
Worst Country.” A fitting choice
to be sure, since it combines “despotism” with “state failure,” in sharp
contrast to Hitchens’s favoured Bosnia, for example. Of course, the competition
was fierce, and among the also-rans is poor Zimbabwe, whose citizens will be
devastated to learn they’ve now lost the title of Hitch’s “favorite African
nation.” ]
Christopher
Hitchens July 9 issue — A couple of
months ago, the White House held a screening of a movie about the life of
Varian Fry, the great prewar humanitarian who rescued innumerable artists and
writers from Nazified Europe. Several current leaders of humanitarian and
relief organizations were invited and one of them was presented to President
George W. Bush. “What,” inquired the chief executive, “is the worst country in
the world?” “Congo, Mr. President,” came the reply. “Oh yes—I had that Paul
Kabila visit me recently. So, what’s the second worst country?” “Afghanistan
Mr. President.” “Right—where them loonies shoot up the statues.” PICKING THE WORST COUNTRY in the world is
not unlike choosing rogue nations—a parlor game that is open to interpretation,
whether informed or not. What goes
to make up a real hellhole? The chief ingredients are tyranny, chaos and
corruption, but in most countries, the lack of one tends to mitigate the
presence of the others. An authoritarian state can bring stability and order;
on the other hand, chaotic countries are more likely to have governments that
are not very good at repression. In Baghdad I have been sickened by the
pervasive feeling of fear while feeling reasonably confident that, if I was
knocked down by a car, an ambulance would come. In the Congolese capital of
Kinshasa, I realized there would be nobody to call. Some dictatorships, like
China, are tough on crime as well as any form of disorder; Tiananmen Square on
an average day is very controlled but also very safe. Whereas in Zimbabwe,
which used to be my favorite African nation, the state now uses criminal
elements for “law enforcement.” Nor should one forget the systems and societies
that are perfectly open, unless you happen to be a member of the wrong “race”
or religion. Yet there is one place on earth that is
home to all these forces of misery: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Into this tiny space has been packed the worst combination of absolute
despotism and utter breakdown—a weird coincidence of totalitarianism with state
failure. It’s the totalitarian aspect that strikes
you first, as it did me when I visited North Korea last winter. Fifty years of
ultra-Stalinism have made the very idea of a private life almost unthinkable.
Every move and utterance is planned and scripted, with an entire people
endlessly mobilized for a cult of hysterical adulation. The president of the
country is a dead man named Kim Il Sung, whose rotund visage glares from every
wall. All other official leadership posts are held by his son Kim Jong Il,
whose birth is said to have been attended by miraculous signs and portents. All
films, all books, all newspapers and all radio and television broadcasts are
about either the Father or the Son. Everybody is a soldier. Everybody is an
informer. Everybody is a unit. Everything is propaganda. There are no minorities in North Korea,
but that doesn’t mean its society isn’t intensely chauvinistic. Children are
drilled to think of Japanese and Americans, in particular, as monstrous. It is
forbidden for citizens to have any contact with the handful of foreign visitors.
One of my party-appointed guides told me that South Korea would need to be
liberated very soon by the North, before intermarriage and exposure to
outsiders could mongrelize the South Korean people. The old justification for the Stalinist forced-march
system was that at least it led to development. But even in Pyongyang, the
capital city which is reserved for approved citizens, one can see that this
excuse doesn’t work. Neither does anything else; the place is stalled and
hungry and subject to constant blackouts. There are no cars on the streets;
there is no construction except of tawdry shrines to the Holy Family. A very
small window of dollar bribery has opened up in recent years, but there’s
nothing to buy and no black market. Corruption at the leadership level is
exorbitant, with palaces and limos and (a special obsession of Kim Jong Il’s)
megalomaniacal movie projects. But there’s no trickle down, no enlivening
parallel economy. Out in the countryside and in provincial
towns, I saw people scavenging individual grains from the fields and washing
themselves in open sewers. On the almost deserted roads, animals do a good deal
of the hauling. Domestic pets are nowhere to be seen. Perhaps most have been
eaten, for the fact is that North Korea is a famine state and, in many of its
provinces, a vanishing state. The few aid workers who remain tell of orphanages
crammed with wizened babies. Nobody knows the death toll—the best guess is
between 1.5 and 2 million—but in addition a generation of physically and
mentally stunted children has been “fathered” by the “Dear Leader.”
Well-attested rumors of cannibalism have filtered across the border to China,
where a Korean-speaking minority has lately been augmented by refugees so
desperate that they will risk shooting in order to brave the river. A system
where you can’t live but you can’t leave is the definition of hell. I was shown a film shot secretly in
the North. It had footage of deserted towns, empty factories, wandering and
neglected children and untilled fields. Most reports agree that the country’s
once productive coal mines have been allowed to flood, and that there are no
pumps that can be brought to bear. As if in mockery of all this dereliction and
misery, the regime invests in building rockets for export—perhaps the only
functioning part of the economy and a further guarantee (as if hysterical
xenophobia were not enough) that international help will be hard to come by. I think that covers everything. On the one
hand, the country is marked by rigid and fanatical militarization, complete
censorship and total party control. On the other, it continues to be plagued by
galloping underdevelopment, scarcity and social implosion. No food and no
culture. No future and no past. Just an unbearable present, both predictable
and unstable. It can’t get any worse than this, except that it will. The
envelope, please... Hitchens is a columnist
for Vanity Fair and The Nation and the author most recently of “The Trial of
Henry Kissinger.” ------------------------------------------------- This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been shut down ==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: archive@jab.org T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================ |
