Welcome, WOC and Command Post Readers

. . . from your webmaster, just an angry ex-soldier and bleeding-heart conservative waging war by other means. Stop to look at this brand-new BBC video clip first. Then get yourself a stiff drink. I’ll wait.

Back already? Then you now know the level of Treblinka depravity we’re talking about. Now, take a look at this, edit as liberally as you like, cut and paste it into the Web form here, and do something about it.

Our efforts may have already saved nearly 500 lives. Please help us keep up the momentum. The best way to prevent war and shut down the concentration camps in North Korea is to hit the regime where it can’t take the hit–in its finances (more on that here) and among the hearts of its people, who secretly loathe it. Why else, after all, would 300,000 of them risk their lives to flee Kim Jong-Il’s “paradise on earth”?

UPDATE:
Kim Jong Il needs a new publicist.  The U.S. media had paid no attention at all to the NKHRA (and not much attention to the defections themselves) until the Rodong Shinmun said the 468 defectors were all “kidnapped.” 

After you scan these photographs and note the curious absence of cuffs, shackes, hoods, and fearful scowls, check out this blistering editorial in the Chosun Ilbo (the largest daily in S. Korea) and these stories on the front page of the NYT and the main page of CNN.com.  CNN closed with this nice little backgrounder: 

North Korea, one of the world’s most centrally planned and isolated economies, faces desperate economic conditions.  At least a million people are believed to have died of starvation in North Korea while Pyongyang diverted resources to develop weapons of mass destruction.  

CNN has also reported 2 million dead, but nobody can really verify anything.  Either way, nice PR work, boys.  You’re certainly more persuasive than I could ever be.