Open Sources, March 16, 2013

SPOILER ALERT: The AP says “UN sanctions may play into North Korean propaganda.”

I’m sure they’re in a perfect position to forecast that.

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NORTH KOREA, WHICH WAS REMOVED from the list of state sponsors on October 11, 2008, has moved some long-range 170mm guns and 240mm rockets (which are capable of carrying thermobaric warheads and other nasty things) to sites within range of Baengnyeong Island.

Discuss among yourselves.

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I SEE LITTLE EVIDENCE to support the Kim Jong Un assassination story, and plenty of reasons to question it, as much as I wish it were true.  I have to think that if it were true, at least some of the foreign diplomats, tourists, shady businessmen, and other dogs in Pyongyang would have barked.  Did anyone hear gunfire?  If so, I doubt even the AP would have sat quietly on its new master’s lap.

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LET THE ARMS RACE COMMENCE: The Japanese government is shopping for cruise missiles. So in the last year alone, China and its rabid lapdog have (nearly) convinced Japan to renounce pacifism, and made the Obama Administration enthusiastic about missile defense now that senators are demanding and getting increased deployments of interceptors.  When the U.S. and its allies set up a NATO-like alliance in the Pacific, and when Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan all nuke up, China will only have itself to blame.

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ARGUE, IF YOU MUST, about whether Christine Ahn is a North Korean sympathizer, but we’ve established, conclusively, that North Korea is a Christine Ahn sympathizer.  Ahn’s latest twaddle, cited approvingly by KCNA, is a call for a “feminist, anti-militarist approach” to achieving the goals of a regime that starves women into whoring themselves out to Chinese johns to buy corn for their children. It’s the sort of tinny harangue that might appeal to as many as a dozen people in search of something more adequate than themselves, for whom the willful defiance of reason itself implies a power and strength they seek but can’t find within.

Meanwhile, if you ever care to know what a real feminist thinks about North Korea, she thinks this. (Ht to you-know-who-you-are).

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THE DISNEY CORPORATION, which owns the Harlem Globetrotters, wants you to believe that it had absolutely nothing to do with the Globetrotters’ command performance for a man who sends little children to death camps.  Shame on them all.

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JUDGING AMERICA BY DETROIT seems at least as unfair as judging North Korea by Pyongyang, I’d reckon.  Still, the whole “eating snow” thing should have been our first clue. (HT: Theresa)

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NORTH KOREA’S TWO MINUTES’ HATE, now featuring Park Geun Hye.  This is how it always begins.  I can hardly wait for the KCNA banners when she shuts down Kaesong.

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LiNK IS SELLING t-shirts for a good cause.

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NEW FOCUS LOOKS AT the history of regionalism in North Hamgyeong.

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MY GOD, IS HE actually serious?