1 July 2010

Congratulations to Barbara Demick, whose wonderful book, “Nothing to Envy,” has just won Britain’s Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction.

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Closets Are for Clothes! Yonhap: “N. Korean leader makes robust outings amid tension with S. Korea”
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The aid NGO Caritas claims that North Koreans will suffer from donor fatigue. I think donor fatigue has afflicted me, too. I’d long been a supporter of monitored food aid, but I’ve coe to doubt that Kim Jong Il will ever allow monitoring of aid distribution that meets basic, internationally accepted standards. Furthermore, it’s not the lack of aid that’s causing the hunger or even, I suspect, the lack of food. The problem is one of distribution, caused by the regime’s discriminatory food distribution system and its intentional destruction of the markets on which 80% of North Koreans depend for their food supply. What good is it for us to try to feed the people of a country when their government is clearly so committed to the opposite goal?
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It’s always interesting to me what thoughts go through the minds of North Koreans before they take the risky decision to defect:

I joined the military in the early 1990s. I started at the bottom and I worked my way up and became a captain. I was in the military for eight years.

I was always taught how great North Korean society is and how superior it is, but while I was in the military I started to question my education. I realised that there are so many contradictions. Also, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il are worshipped there as Gods.

I started to wonder whether there was another society outside of North Korea – and whether it would be better. I thought about it for a long time and I wanted to find out, so I decided to defect. I also wanted to change North Korean society. [BBC]

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All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
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I’m sure this must have been a pretty tense moment.
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A majority of Germans wants the Deutschmark back.
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Now, that’s not very nice (ht to a reader).
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My philosophical struggle for today is whether it’s wrong to prompt anyone to pray for Christopher Hitchens, whose writing I love and hate in almost equal measure, and whose article and photograph here inspired my masthead. He’s had some terrible news — cancer of the esophagus, which took Tom Lantos from us just months after he announced his diagnosis.