A Lindberg for Our Times

I made several calls to the Jane Goodall Institute last week to get their response and reaction to this post on her recent visit to Pyongyang, and Pyongyang’s use of her name for its propaganda. I contrasted Jane Goodall’s moral neutrality on North Korea, the world’s worst violator of human rights against her scathing criticism of the United States and its elected leader. I suggested that Jane’s foray into the occupation of “human rights activist” ought to be pursued with more moral consistency.

After a day of calling, leaving messages, and getting no response, someone–but not the actual PR person–finally did call me. I took down her e-mail address, sent her a link for my post, and offered the JGI the opportunity to tell me where I was off base. The caller said someone would be contacting me the next day. A day after “the next day,” that still hasn’t happened, but I certainly did get some clarification, though not from JGI.

While googling, I found this brochure from a group calling itself the Environmental Education Media Project. A reading of the brochure makes it very clear that much, if not most, of their work is done in cooperation with the Jane Goodall Institute, Jane herself, and the Television Trust for the Environment, which sponsored Jane Goodall’s recent Pyongyang visit. Indeed, EEMP seems to have been either a partner or facilitator for Jane Goodalls’ November 2004 trip to Pyongyang. This quotation from Page 11 seems to rule out the (North) Korean Central News Agency as the only party with an interest in shilling for the North Korean regime:

Films about Korea would introduce the DPRK from a compassionate humanistic point of view. They could lower the tension as through understanding tension does get lowered.

Hel-lo!!!?????

In the Orwellian world of the Euro-left, a guided tour through Oz, green spectacles and all, is what passes for understanding. Meanwhile, behind the curtain, one quarter of a nation faces starvation in a state that could choose to feed every last one of them. What would help my understanding would be a reason to believe that Kim Sang-Hun isn’t holding a transfer order for a gas chamber there at lower right, or a good reason why those people all starved when their government was building all those expensive toys that go “whoosh” and “boom.”

Help me understand, Jane, because I still can’t see the compassionate humanistic side of that.