Merry Christmas, Everybody!

North Korea, which President Bush removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008, has threatened a “sacred war” against South Korea. Well, that’s just great — even godless atheists are getting in on the whole “jihad” thing.

If your thoughts turn to the unfortunate people of North Korea this Christmas, LiNK is raising funds to help them.

Hmmm. Can’t link it, but I’ve just been passed an assessment by a respected publication that says there’s a 70% chance that the Kaesong Industrial Park will be shut down in 2011. I’d say so, too. Like I say, Lee Myung Bak can talk as tough as he wants and hold threaxercises all year, but Kaesong still screams “business as usual.” Lenin himself could not have imagined that the Capitalists would pay for the torpedoes and shells fired into South Korean ships and villages.

Well, that was cute.

Larry Niksch, formerly with the Congressional Research Service and now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has written a very good analysis of the possible scenarios for more North Korean provocations, and South Korean responses. Opens in pdf.

Thomas P.M. Barnett on the future of China:

Deng chose wisely: Reversing Mikhail Gorbachev’s subsequent logic, he focused on the economics while putting off the politics. This decision later earned him the sobriquet “the butcher of Tiananmen” when, in 1989, the political expectations of students quickly outpaced the Party’s willingness for self-examination. But it likewise locked China onto a historical pathway from which it cannot escape, or what I call the five D’s of the dragon’s decline from world-beater to world-benefactor: demographics, decrepitude, dependency, defensiveness, and — most disabling of all — democratization.

Well worth a read, even if you’re not a Barnett fan (I only am on odd-numbered days). Hat tip to Chris Badeaux.

Now this is just a wonderful feel-good story.