Open Sources, August 14, 2014

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TWO BY SEA: “Two North Korean men swam across the Yellow Sea border to defect to South Korea, a rare way of fleeing the hunger-stricken communist nation, government sources here said Thursday. South Korean marines on guard duty spotted them reaching Gyodong Island, just south of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), at around 4 a.m. Thursday, according to the sources. The island is about 2.5 kilometers away from the North’s closest western coast.”

I can’t imagine why anyone would do something that desperate when, according to an upcoming official (therefore, reliable) report, the “true picture of the people of the DPRK” has them “dynamically advancing toward a brighter and rosy future while enjoying a free and happy life under the socialist system centred (sic) on the popular masses and contribute to disclosing the dastardly moves of the US and other hostile forces.” And after all, no less an authority than Hazel Smith has told us that defectors exaggerate and just tell us what the CIA and the NIS want us to hear, ergo there’s no cause for unpleasant talk about sanctions and such.

Still, the absence of talk about a bright and rosy present could be interpreted as concerning. It must take an exceptional talent for doublethink to survive in Pyongyang.

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OVER AT NK NEWS, STAR REPORTER LEO BYRNE has a first-rate investigative report about the M/V Mu Du Bong, its lack of insurance, and North Korea’s scrambles to get it out of port. A must-read.

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ROBERT GALLUCCI CALLS FOR THE U.S. to hold talks with North Korea, but never quite explains what we’d be talking about. North Korea insists it isn’t denuclearizing, which narrows the agenda down to buying our way out of the next provocation. Obviously, that’s simply giving in to blackmail, and that’s a negotiation that never ends until the regime does. It’s a case where I find myself in rare agreement with Glyn Davies.

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HOW NORTH KOREA PICKS its cheerleaders, and how it keeps them in line, politically speaking (as opposed to choreographically).

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ALDERAAN SHOT FIRST: FBME Bank has laid off most of its staff, and its customers are panicking. I don’t blame them.

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AND YET IT DOESN’T: In one of those rare examples of “engagement” I’m rooting for, foreign experts explain how North Korea could become self-sufficient in agriculture. The problem with self-sufficiency that it’s the opposite of dependency. If the regime won’t listen, will these foreign experts try to engage directly with the people through broadcasts and leafleting? I hope so, because the more food North Koreans have, the more freedom they will have.

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CRITICISM FROM A SURPRISING SOURCE: “But, Lord, how did the moral center of the American left get so isolationist and selfish? How did it manage to cede the moral high ground to the right? Why does it see no difference between a moral obligation to save lives by avoiding murder — not just with humanitarian measures — and a kind of militarist lust for yet more adventure?”

The criticism works just as well against the isolationist right, if not more so.

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SPEAKING OF WHICH, and just in case this wasn’t already clear, Ron Paul’s Malaysian airliner conspiracy theory reminds us that he’s a babbling neurotic, a cult figure for the dispossessed, a magnet for lunatics, a right-wing Chomsky for B-list polemicists, and a man who has propagated some disturbing, bigoted viewpoints. This calls for another Mitchell and Webb conspiracy sketch.

It’s unfortunate that Paul is so very bananas, because there is a legitimate discussion to be had about the role and size of our government, and how the U.S. projects power abroad. Paul, unfortunately, has an existential and conspiratorial hostility to our government, both at home and abroad, and he carries armloads of crazy to that discussion. Here and there, Paul stumbles over a valid point, but now that we’re getting a glimpse of what the world looks like when America withdraws too much of its power, we’re reminded how ugly a place the world can be. I can see why Paul might not want us to believe what our lying eyes are telling us about that.

Of course, it’s not Ron Paul who really worries me. I can’t help asking myself how far the apple falls from the tree.

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A FEDERAL JUDGE HAS DISMISSED a lawsuit by Japanese-affiliated plaintiffs that would have ordered the removal of a comfort woman statue in a park in Glendale, California, and based on the L.A. Times’s report, the plaintiffs’ arguments are among the most frivolous and pernicious I’ve ever heard:

The opponents — Michiko Gingery, a Glendale resident; GAHT-US Corp., an organization that works to block recognition of the former sex slaves, also known as “comfort women”; and Koichi Mera, a Los Angeles resident — claimed in court records that by installing the statue, Glendale infringed upon the federal government’s exclusive power to conduct foreign affairs, violated the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution and caused opponents to avoid Central Park because the statue made them feel excluded and angry.

“The fact that local residents feel disinclined to visit a local park is simply not the type of injury that can be considered to be in the ‘line of causation’ for alleged violations of the foreign affairs power and Supremacy Clause,” Anderson said in court documents.

Just imagine all the misuses for arguments like that. Don’t you suppose German tourists feel an occasional twinge of discomfort when the walk past the Holocaust Museum? The problem, of course, is that the city and taxpayers of Glendale have now spent money paying lawyers to fight this nonsense. As a commenter at the LAT suggested, they ought to move for Rule 11 sanctions to compel the plaintiffs to pay their attorney fees. HT: Dennis Halpin.