14 January 2010: The Morally Retarded Lorin Maazel, Part 3

JEFFREY GOLDBERG IS READING “NOTHING TO ENVY” and contrasting the plight of its subjects with Lorin Maazel’s moral equivalence between America in North Korea. Like Karajan and Bernstein before him — try that for equivalence! — Maazel’s political views add more value to our discourse for the criticism they evoke than for their own substantive merits.

THE H1N1 OUTBREAK CONTINUES in North Korea, although it’s very difficult, for the most familiar of reasons, for anyone to know how serious it really is.

AND PERHAPS NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON: South Korea is again reported to be overhauling its North Korea contingency plans.

N.C. HEIKEN’S DOCUMENTARY “KIMJONGILIA,” which I’m sure is positively loaded with what Christine Ahn calls “tired old tropes about North Korea” — and perhaps even some new ones — is now in theaters. I haven’t seen the film but wouldn’t miss the chance to. Here’s a review.

IN THE JOONGANG ILBO, a call for better efforts to integrate North Korean defectors into society.

AND THAT NORTH KOREAN WOMENS’ SOCCER TEAM we’ve been talking about? North Korea never bothered to apply for visas for them.

IS IT JUST ME, or does it seem like South Korea would really like to go nuclear? If I were Lee Myung Bak and I had to choose between nuclear deterrence and the U.S. State Department as my country’s primary security guarantor, I’d want nukes, too.

BLOG FIND: Rep. Ed Royce, the single most effective member of the House on North Korea human rights issues, has a blog, Foreign Intrigue.

JOHN BOLTON ON NORTH KOREA’S “PEACE” STRATEGY, as explained to Greta Van Susteren: I think Bolton could have answered the question much more concisely if he’d simply said that North Korea is trying to change the subject from denuclearization and reboot the entire six-party conversation as delaying tactic. In theory, the idea of a peace treaty wouldn’t be offensive to those of us who think that conversation should be broadened to talk about chemical weapons, biological weapons, missiles, and human rights — including China’s own violations of the rights of North Korean refugees — but then, we run into the same fundamental obstacle regardless of which North Korea issue we attempt to “solve.” Unless North Korea is prepared to accept basic transparency, we’ll never know that they’ve kept their side of any agreement, promise, treaty, or framework.

DOES GOOGLE HAVE A CONSCIENCE AFTER ALL? It’s probably too early to say, although they’ve begun to show signs of having one.