Anju Links for 20 March 2008

HUMANS  AGAINST HUMAN  RIGHTS!    A group calling itself the Buddhist Human Rights Committee of South Korea isn’t uniformly enthusiastic about human rights:

“That the S. Korean government has raised human rights issues of North Korea shows that the government, at the instigation of the U.S., is pursuing a policy of division which fosters mistrust and confrontation between the people of South and North Korea.

Denouncing the U.S. as capitalist Yankees who detest and despise human beings, the committee said in the statement, “The U.S. is trying to impose a U.S.-style democracy and neo-liberalism on many countries regardless of their opinion. The committee added, “Human rights should not be used as a tool to challenge a regime by the standards of capitalism. If so, that would throw cold water on the reconciliation process and violate the spirit of unity between South and North Korea.   [Daily NK]

You might wonder what sort of “human rights” violation this group does oppose.  Or maybe you already guessed.  Here they are in KCNA, and here they are joining the usual suspects in an anti-American rally.  In  Korea’s nationalist-socialist fringe,  crude racist implications  that “capitalist Yankees” are subhuman is good politics.  But do you suppose they’ll ever wake up and realize that by proxy,  they’ve made  North Koreans the exception to the rule that humans  have human rights?   A good discussion topic to start with might be to ponder how many Buddhists practice their religion freely in North Korea, although  some would call that imposing neo-liberalism.  Do you suppose they’ll be as deferential to President Lee’s scheme to deny them their  inalienable right to express themselves with Molotov cocktails? 

AN AMAZING WEB SITE FIND at miarecoveries.org.  Arizona native Clayton Kuhles has chosen a fascinating hobby — he treks into the Himalayan foothills to find World War II crash sites from the hundreds of American and allied planes lost flying supplies across “The Hump” to the Chinese Army, along with hundreds of aviators.  The sites are so remote that they’re often  unknown to anyone but  a few local hunters.  Kuhles has just found the crash site of a B-24 that went down with eight of its crew. 

The U.S. government will send a recovery team, but Kuhles reveals some frustration that it wasn’t easy motivating the government to do it.  You have to wonder why that’s so, if there are hundreds of sets of American remains scattered in those mountains, and if we know where  some of them are.  Contrast that to this story, hinting that the North Koreans will let the  Pentagon send MIA recovery teams back to North Korea (for a price, I suppose).  One has to sympathize with all of the families of the missing, but doesn’t efficiency dictate that we should pursue the metaphorical “low-hanging fruit” first?  Each set of remains recovered from North Korea  costs us upward of $262,000 in “compensation,” which may or may not include inflated costs for food, lodging, and air fare for the Americans who travel there.  If the regime then uses that revenue to arm itself against us, aren’t we risking the living for the dead?

SOME TIBET UPDATES:  The L.A. Times continues to be a prolific provider of excellent reporting on the stubborn uprising:  how the security  forces fumbled their initial response to protests in Xiahe; the misplaced hostility and violence against ordinary Chinese transplants in Lhasa; and the roots of the hostility.  The Washington Post updates us on the diplomatic and P.R. beating the ChiComs are taking.  Radio Free Asia  tracks how  the protests  have spread, including into the Uygur regions.  In the end, of course, the ChiCom regime will succeed in imposing its will, probably for the foreseeable future.  But even as the regime gains the upper hand in and around Tibet, new protests continue to spring up, and more Chinese reinforcements must be called in.