Mick Hartley

The Hermit Kingdom

How near to collapse is the regime of Kim Jong-Il in North Korea? In the latest NYRB, Nicholas Kristof thinks, not at all:

One of the central unknowns is how fragile Kim Jong Il's rule is today. The conservative assumption is that it's quite shaky, and that with a little nudge the US could topple it. Unfortunately, commentators have been making two contradictory kinds of comments about North Korea since the 1970s. First, they've said now it's finally changing and opening up; and then they've said it's finally about to collapse. Notwithstanding all the information collected from defectors, diplomats, and spies, the place and its people remain mysterious and unpredictable.

Lately there's been more speculation that North Korea's regime is about to topple, partly because of reports of unrest and partly because Kim Jong Il has apparently sent out instructions that his pictures should be removed from government offices and schools. Maybe North Korea is on its last legs, but I doubt it. I'm afraid that the US will be wrestling with Kim Jong Il and his nuclear arsenal for many years to come. Or even with his son, Kim Jong Nam, and his even bigger arsenal.

Kristof believes this largely because he wants to believe it. He thinks the survival of the Kim dynasty would prove hugely embarrassing to Bush, who, he believes, has badly mishandled dealings with North Korea. No suggestions as to what a better approach might involve, but it's obvious Bush has mishandled things because....well, because he's Bush.

He invaded Iraq because it might some day develop nuclear weapons, even as North Korea was openly and vociferously going all out to expand a known arsenal of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. So the administration has tended to avoid talking about North Korea.

In contrast, this article in the Sunday Times paints a convincing picture of a regime on its last legs:

Far across the frozen river two figures hurried from the North Korean shore, slip-sliding on the ice as they made a break for the Chinese riverbank to escape a regime that, by many accounts, is now entering its death throes. It was a desperate risk to run in the stark glare of the winter sunshine. We had just seen a patrol of Chinese soldiers in fur-lined uniforms tramping along the snowy bank, their automatic rifles slung ready for action.

Police cars swept up and down the road every 10 or 15 minutes, on the look-out for refugees. A small group of Chinese travellers in our minibus, some of whom turned out to have good reasons to be discreet, pretended not to notice.

The two made it to shelter and we ploughed on towards a border post that offered us a rare opportunity to cross into the northeastern corner of the last Stalinist state, posing as would-be investors in an experimental free trade zone.

We had already witnessed one sign that North Korea’s totalitarian system is dissolving, even as its leaders boast of owning nuclear weapons to deter their enemies.

“It’s just like the Berlin Wall,” Pastor Douglas Shin, a Christian activist, said by telephone from Seoul. “The slow-motion exodus is the beginning of the end.”

In interviews for this article over many months, western policymakers, Chinese experts, North Korean exiles and human rights activists built up a picture of a tightly knit clan leadership in Pyongyang that is on the verge of collapse.

Some of those interviewed believe the “Dear Leader”, Kim Jong-il, has already lost his personal authority to a clique of generals and party cadres. Without any public announcement, governments from Tokyo to Washington are preparing for a change of regime.

The death of Kim’s favourite mistress last summer, a security clampdown on foreign aid workers and a reported assassination attempt in Austria last November against the leader’s eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, have all heightened the sense of disintegration.

If the regime were to collapse, it might suggest - horrors! - that the Bush approach was not so foolish after all.

Election Without Precedent

Michael Ignatieff in the Observer:

The election in Iraq is without precedent. Never, not even in the dying days of Weimar Germany, when Nazis and Communists brawled in the streets, has there been such a concerted attempt to destroy an election through violence - with candidates unable to appear in public, election workers driven into hiding, foreign monitors forced to 'observe' from a nearby country, actual voting a gamble with death, and the only people voting safely the fortunate expatriates and exiles abroad. Just as depressing as the violence in Iraq is the indifference to it abroad. Americans and Europeans who have never lifted a finger to defend their own right to vote seem not to care that Iraqis are dying for the right to choose their own leaders.

Why do so few people feel even a tremor of indignation when they see poll workers gunned down? Why isn't there a trickle of applause in the press for the more than 6,000 Iraqis actually standing for political office at the risk of their lives?

Explaining this morose silence requires understanding how support for Iraqi democracy has become the casualty of the corrosive bitterness that still surrounds the initial decision to go to war. Establishing free institutions in Iraq was the best reason to support the war - now it is the only reason - and for that very reason democracy there has ceased to be a respectable cause.

Gender Differences

Gerard Baker in the Times has some fun with the Larry Summers controversy:

You might think a distinguished and senior professor at one of America’s most renowned universities had seen it all by now. After a few decades of teaching and writing, a top academic such as Nancy Hopkins, professor of biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one might assume, would have developed a sturdy carapace of scholastic experience that would shield her from nasty side-effects of shocking solecisms by peers or students.

But this month at an academic conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Professor Hopkins observed something so unspeakable that, as she subsequently told reporters, it almost caused her to faint. “I just couldn't breathe,” she said. If she had stayed in the room, she went on, she would have either “blacked out or thrown up”.

What could have caused Professor Hopkins’s oesophagic crisis? Some grisly slide-show depicting the results of a hideous crime, perhaps? An outburst of obscenities from the podium? Something noxious dropped stealthily into her coffee during the mid-morning break? (You know how bitter these intra-academic rivalries can be.)

No. The answer was the spectacle of a fellow academic, a rather grand one, indulging in one of the most heinous transgressions known to humankind — daring to challenge that precious hegemonic orthodoxy of American academia, the impossibility of gender inequality.

North London Photoblogging

Well, this is pure self-indulgence, but hey, aren't these new-fangled digital cameras great?

Darfur Bombing

A hundred people killed in a bombardment by their own government - should be headline news, shouldn't it? Ah, but it's Darfur.

About 100 people were killed or wounded in a Sudanese air force bombardment in south Darfur on Wednesday, the United Nations revealed yesterday.

The attack on villagers outside Shangil Tobaya put to flight "thousands" of people, a UN spokeswoman, Radhia Achouri, said, amid growing signs the ceasefire in the wartorn region has collapsed.

The report is the latest sign that Khartoum has broken the ceasefire brokered with rebel groups last year. "It is definitely one of the most serious violations of the ceasefire," Ms Achouri said.

African Union (AU) monitors in the region said they had been prevented from investigating reports the Sudanese government bombed other villages in Darfur. They said attacks had been heard in the el-Fasher and Nyala areas.

"The Darfur situation is getting very serious," said an AU source.

On Wednesday, the UN reported that Sudan had bombed another village earlier this month, killing 100.

Khartoum has yet to reply to UN questions about the reported bombings.

Kofi Annan is, apparently, "deeply disturbed". He "urged both the Sudanese government and rebel movements in Darfur to comply fully with their commitments under the ceasefire agreement they struck in April last year."

The Holocaust Industry

The view from Tehran on Holocaust Memorial Day (via Roger L. Simon):

Subjecting an ethnic group or nation to torture under any pretext is quite unacceptable, but it is worse when the suffering is abused, and it is the worst when a group tries to exaggerate the event for political purposes.

By exaggerating the suffering of the Jews during World War II, Zionist groups and the Israeli regime are taking advantage of the situation by raising the issue at international organizations in order to neutralize any opposition to their diabolical plots. [...]

The revisionist historians have proven in two decades of study that if Hitler had carried out a systematic program to eradicate the Jews, it would have taken more time than the six years that the war lasted. They have also proven that such an act of ethnic cleansing through the use of the poison gas Zyklon-B, as the Zionists claim, was not possible at the time.

Norman J. Finkelstein, a Jewish professor at New York University critical of Zionist policies, has called the claim the “Holocaust Industry”, which is only meant to boost support for the government of Israel.

Over the past several decades and since the event was questioned, Zionist propagandists have tried to substantiate this claim through various means.

The Zionists are trying to revitalize an issue which has become discredited in the eyes of world public opinion by using the press, radio, television, the Internet, and, most importantly of all, cinema and the great filmmaking industry in Hollywood, since most of the significant players of this influential industry are Jews. [...]

The victims were from different nations and ethnic groups, including the Jews, who also lost many people, but the Jews were not the only victims of the war and a greater number of innocent people from other ethnic groups also lost their lives.

The issue of the Holocaust and the anniversaries held for the event are only meant to promote the repressive policies of the Zionists.

The Jews suffered as a result of Hitler’s expansionism, just like other innocent victims but should not be granted special privileges over the others.

The declaration that six million Jews were killed in World War II is an exaggeration of the truth. Furthermore, the suffering and pains of a nation cannot justify their crimes against other nations.

The issue of the Holocaust is only being highlighted to cover up Israel’s crimes in Palestine.

Dry Sex

I remember reading about this some years ago as a possible factor, largely unacknowledged, in the spread of HIV/AIDS, and now a post at Metafilter provides some links. It seems that African men in certain sub-Saharan cultures place a high value on dry sex. Not only do they believe self-lubrication of the woman's vagina reduces their pleasure, they also find it unclean:

Widely practised in Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia and South Africa, dry sex is hardly ever spoken about. It is penetrative sex between a man and a woman, where the woman has previously inserted a substance – methylated spirits, antiseptics, coarse salt, snuff, bicarbonate of soda, vinegar, talcum powder, ice, alum, Zam-Buk, traditional muti (usually prescribed by a traditional healer), soil with baboon urine, shredded newspaper, household detergents or bleach – into her cervix in order to make her vagina dry. Some women insert drying herbs in a cloth or stocking, which they keep inside during foreplay and remove just before penetration to 'make the thing behave, as one woman put it. They do this so when their lovers enter them, they are 'dry and clean,’ because both men and women see their wetness as a sign of promiscuity and dirt.

Soil with baboon urine? Yep, it's known as mutendo wegudo:

Sipewe Mhakeni used herbs from the Mugugudhu tree. After grinding the stem and leaf, she would mix just a pinch of the sand-colored powder with water, wrap it in a bit of nylon stocking, and insert it into her vagina for 10 to 15 minutes. The herbs swell the soft tissues of the vagina, make it hot, and dry it out. That made sex "very painful," says Mhakeni. But, she adds, "Our African husbands enjoy sex with a dry vagina."

Many women concur that dry sex, as this practice is called, hurts. Yet it is common throughout southern Africa, where the AIDS epidemic is worse than anywhere in the world. Researchers conducting a study in Zimbabwe, where Mhakeni lives, had trouble finding a control group of women who did not engage in some form of the practice. Some women dry out their vaginas with mutendo wegudo -- soil with baboon urine -- that they obtain from traditional healers, while others use detergents, salt, cotton, or shredded newspaper. Research shows that dry sex causes vaginal lacerations and suppresses the vagina's natural bacteria, both of which increase the likelihood of HIV infection. And some AIDS workers believe the extra friction makes condoms tear more easily.

Dry sex is not the only way African women subordinate their sexual safety to men's pleasure. In a few cultures, a woman's vagina is kept tight by sewing it almost shut. But in most African societies, the methods are subtler: Girls are socialized to yield sexual decision-making to men. Prisca Mhlolo is in charge of counseling at The Centre, a large organization for HIV-positive Zimbabweans. "You're not even allowed to say, 'Can we have sex?' " she notes. "So it's very hard to bring up condoms."

Mhlolo speaks from both professional and personal experience. She is HIV-positive, infected by her late husband. As AIDS eroded his immune system, he suffered from herpes, which broke into open sores on his penis. Mhlolo suggested condoms, "but he said, 'Now that I'm sick you have gotten yourself a boyfriend.' It was very hard."

Many people balk at discussing the sexual practices of particular cultures because the issue is too sensitive -- and, in Africa, too racially charged. Whites have caricatured African sexuality for centuries, casting black men as sexual beasts, and some whites still whisper that this is why HIV is running rampant among Africans. But such stereotypes miss the point, which is not the libido itself but the culture in which it finds expression. [...]

Of course, Africa contains thousands of cultures, some of which have strict sexual codes. But common to many sub-Saharan societies are the gender roles epitomized by dry sex: Women are unable to negotiate sex, and so must risk infection to please the man. In fact, there are very few female checks and balances on male behavior. This stark inequality "is part of our culture," Mhlolo says, "and our culture is part of why HIV is spreading."

This conclusion seems about right:

What South Africa and southern Africa need to save us from AIDS is nothing less than a cultural revolution. Mbeki was right about one thing: AIDS is a disease of poverty, but mainly because at this level the stark discrepancy between the power of men and women puts women at such extraordinary risk. Of course we need to deal with the appalling economic and health situation in our country, but we also have to deal with a culture that empowers its men so much more than its women when it comes to sex. In Africa, AIDS is a gender issue, and until we address it as such, we an never win the war.

Jihad in the Netherlands

Butterfliesandwheels link to the latest from Christopher Hitchens, on Jihad in the Netherlands:

When the bin-Ladenist forces in Spain committed mass murder in the center of Madrid earlier in the year, they did so amid a huge controversy over the war in Iraq and on the eve of a general election. So badly did the Spanish government handle the affair—seeking to blame it all on a Basque nihilist faction—that many Spaniards were able implicitly to indict George W. Bush for the whole mess. This social and psychic suicide was not possible in the Dutch case. Holland gave up all concept of “empire” a generation ago. Moreover, it has since been the most generous and multicultural society in Europe, welcoming not only its former subjects from Indonesia but becoming a haven in general. And its reward has been to be targeted by Tawheed ["the current Islamic extremist abuse of the Qur’anic word for “unity” or oneness against all heretics"]. One cannot emphasize enough that the victims here are not just secular artists like Theo van Gogh but people of Muslim origin who do not accept homicidal fundamentalism. This is the warning that many liberals have been overlooking or denying ever since the fatwah against Salman Rushdie in 1989. And it is spreading: even as I write this, a Belgian legislator of Moroccan extraction, Mimount Bousakla, has been threatened with “ritual slaughter” for denouncing van Gogh’s murder. Any thinking person can see that we will soon be facing jihad on the streets of Germany and France and England as well. A secret army has also been formed within our borders in the United States, though its triumphant first operation did not alert as many Europeans as it might have.

Better News

Since all we've heard from Darfur recently has been bad, it's worth registering this sliver of good news:

The humanitarian crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region, once labelled the world’s worst, appears to have eased - with the death toll from disease dropping - the World Health Organisation said yesterday.

Although confirmation was pending, there were clear signs the numbers dying from hunger and infectious diseases among the more than 1.5 million refugees in the western Sudan region had fallen, said the WHO’s crisis chief, David Nabarro.

A massive appeal for aid was launched last year when details began to emerge of the plight of hundreds of thousands of black Africans in Darfur, forced from their homes by Arab militia.

Millions of pounds was raised and a major relief operation was rolled out to tackle the looming humanitarian crisis. [...]

The WHO yesterday said that, while the crisis was far from over, some positive signs were becoming apparent that the relief operation had alleviated the worst of the suffering.

"The kinds of information that I am receiving on water supply, sanitation, food access and health services ... would mean that the death rates are likely to have reduced," Mr Nabarro said. "We have almost certainly gone down to within the threshold limit for a humanitarian crisis."

In particular, there appeared not to have been the outbreaks of dysentery, diarrhoea and hepatitis in October, November and December that had occurred over the previous three months, Mr Nabarro said.

Befuddled Poms

A Mark Steyn-style piece in the Aussie Daily Telegraph from David Penberthy (via Dhimmi Watch):

Here's a challenge for swimwear designers. Britain's advertising watchdog last week banned a series of television commercials featuring bikini-clad women because they were offensive to Muslims.

Stand by for the burqini, a fetching one-piece ensemble made entirely of black hessian, measuring 2m in length and equipped with a small vent through which women can stick their snorkel.

Also in Britain, the Fox network has agreed to demands from the Muslim Council of Britain for talks over a BSkyB drama depicting middle class Muslims as members of a terrorist sleeper cell. Just where do television executives dream up such fantasy?

Unless they were aiming for an accurate account of that September 11 hiccup, where middle class Muslims who were members of a terrorist sleeper cell murdered 3000 innocent people.

Again in Britain, a search and rescue service near the town of Preston had last week its funding slashed when authorities discovered it hadn't rescued enough ethnic minorities.

It wasn't that the Bowland and Pennine Mountain Rescue Team had done nothing while minority folk lay stranded at the bottom of cliffs.

In fact, it soon emerged there hadn't actually been any to rescue. But that's hardly the point.

And on Sunday, the Home Office confirmed it was considering a request, again from the Muslim Council of Britain, for this week's commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz to be made racially inclusive.

Muslim leaders are threatening to boycott the event unless it acknowledges the holocaust of the Palestinian intifada.

In Britain, the cancer of political correctness seems all the more malignant, fuelled perhaps by the fabled determination of the Brits to be unfailingly polite.

As a result, the country looks through Australian eyes like a multicultural worst-case scenario, where befuddled Poms tie themselves up in knots to address all sorts of ludicrous grievances and in doing so undermine the values which have made this country a beacon for democracy and free expression throughout the civilised world.

Well yes, it's over the top, but I can't resist that "befuddled Poms".