Another great story on the "dear leader" that is Kim
■"North Korea Says Bumper Crop Justifies Limits on Aid," by James Brooke, New York Times, 6 October 2005, p. A3.
Good crop year, Kim says, demanding that virtually all of the food-related aid workers and programs in North Korea vacate the premises by New Years.
As the article says, "memories [are] fading of the famine that killed as much as 10 percent of North Korea's population of 22 million in the 1990s."
I've actually had Korea watchers write me and claim the numbers of dead were far smaller than estimated, like maybe only 200,000, an argument I find specious on this level: what's our track record on estimating deaths in totalitarian communist systems, like Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China or Pol Pot's Cambodia? What we learn time and time again is that we underestimated, not overestimated.
So why trust Kim now?
Here's what on-the-ground aid workers estimate: Even if the crop take is up 10 percent (and we know how communist totalitarian regimes provide "honest estimates" of such things), North Korea will be short 700,000 to 800,000 tons on corn and rice.
Does that matter?
Aid workers also estimate that 7 percent of the population is starving, that 37 percent are chronically malnourished, that 40 percent of kids suffer stunted growth, and one-fifth are underweight. "The average boy is 7 inches shorter and 20 pounds lighter than his South Korean counterpart."
You know those stories about abusive parents who lock the kid up in the closet for years and when they find him, he's this shrinky-dink of a dim wit? And you're aghast? And you can't believe society lets things like this happen?
Well, there is a global society. And we're letting this happen, year after year after year after year.
An A-to-Z rule set on processing politically bankrupt states, the centerpiece concept of Blueprint for Action. Not theory, my friends. It's about saving lives in the here and now all over this planet.