29 December 2009: South Korea Channels N. Korea Aid Through the U.N., Blackouts, and Chinese Colonialism

A WELCOME CHANGE: President Lee is giving $22 million to W.H.O. and UNICEF aid projects in North Korea so that at least a few more kids will outlive the Kim Dynasty. That is a vast improvement over how things used to be under Roh Moo Hyun, whose “Unification” Ministry used to give unmonitored cash and food aid directly to Kim Jong Il and his minions, with predictable results. This time, South Korea’s donations are flowing through the U.N., which at least attempts to give humanitarian aid in-kind and monitor its distribution, meaning there will still be some discrimination and diversion, but at least there will be less of it. I’m aware of North Korea’s past success at scamming the U.N., and of the imperfections in its monitoring, but it for South Korea to give its aid through the U.N. still represents a vast improvement in getting its humanitarian aid to those North Koreans who need it most.

NORTH KOREA’S ELECTRICITY SUPPLY is running even lower than usual, with long blackouts reported in a number of cities, including Sinuiju.

IS CHINA DELIBERATELY KEEPING NORTH KOREA POOR? Open Radio is understandably cryptic about its sources for this conclusion, and I’m understandably skeptical about them. On the one hand, it’s hard to see how China could do a better job of driving away foreign investment than the North Korean regime itself. On the other hand, China’s arrest of Yang Bin does lend support to the theory that China wants direct control over foreign investment in its North Korean “sphere of influence.”

Below the fold, ranting fulminations. Click if ye dare!

A MUST READ, even if a few days old, on Iraq and oil, by Christopher Hitchens. Nothing that Iraq’s oil output is on track to hit 7 million barrels a year in the not-too-distant future, Hitchens clarifies who exactly is waging a war for oil by targeting Iraqi civilians:

What this means is that Iraq could quite soon be in a position to rival the output of Saudi Arabia and Iran. This is precisely what many of us in the regime-change camp used to point out: the huge, glittering prize of a democratic and federal Iraq situated between two parasitic theocracies and capable of challenging their oil duopoly.

If you bear this in mind, two further things also become somewhat easier to understand. The unbelievable cruelty and viciousness of the so-called “insurgency,” which daily continues to murder Iraqis in areas of the country that are not patrolled by Americans, is to a considerable extent a mercenary and reactionary movement financed from outside the country. The Sunni killers of al-Qaida in Mesopotamia draw on sources of support within Saudi Arabia, while the Shiite gangs are part of a shadow thrown by the so-called Revolutionary Guards and other paramilitary elements of the Iranian dictatorship. It is they who are shedding blood for oil and trying to prevent the recovery of a country that could challenge their patrons in more ways than one.

Can anyone show me the last time Michael Moore, Markos Moulitsas, Jim McDermott, or the ANSWER Coalition condemned Al Qaeda for sending a retarded teenager to drive a truck bomb into a crowd of Iraq civilians?

I’LL MAKE JUST THIS BRIEF COMMENT ON THE CHRISTMAS BOMBER: Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch haven’t uttered a word about Flight 253, which carried these children among 289 other souls. The Human Rights Industry would say that isn’t their job, but that the conditions of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad’s interrogation about similar plots are. To which I’d say, that’s just my point. To many on the left, an admittedly sweeping category that generally includes the Human Rights Industry, no act of murder, terrorism, or genocide by anyone opposed to America is worthy of more than token condemnation, no matter how many victims, and no matter how innocent they may be. The self-loathing double standard that immunizes or soft-peddles the comparatively colossal crimes of anti-Americans is why Kim Jong Il gets away with the mass murder of North Korean men, women, and children. It is also why the terrorists’ tacticians believe their tactics will work.