Turkmenistan’s new President, Gurbanguly Berdimukhamedov, has finally opened his country to Internet access to the outside world. What took them so long? In a word – ‘pizza’:

[The previous President] Niyazov’s government earlier had an unhappy experience with the Internet, when in 1998 London-based NetNames persuaded him to sell top-level “.tm” Internet domain names for a percentage of the profits. NetNames argued that companies would rush to embrace the domain, as “tm” represents “trademark” in the West. After selling more than 4,000 domain names Niyazov pulled the plug on the project, as he was offended by certain registrations, such as “pizza,” which he found uncomfortably close to the Russian word for female genitalia.

That word is pizda, if you’re wondering. When I checked pizda.tm was still up for grabs, so get in there.

Undettered by the possibility of obscene connotations is North Korea’s top guy Kim Jong-Il, who had an Italian chef interrogated until the chef broke the ice by saying he spoke Russian and delivered to North Korea to make pizza for Kim. Word on the NK street is Kim was also at first confused by the p-word, having his foreign guest initially delivered into his harem, before the confused Italian was told to get back in the kitchen where he belongs. “So sorry, Great Leader, I said I’ve got some great PIZZA for you!”

No signs of confusion about the meaning of the word ‘pizza’ from NK’s nukilar-wannabe pals Iran. The Iranians know exactly what it means and where it comes from. That is why it is banned there. The blaphemous infidel word ‘pizza’ that is, not the dish. “Elastic loaves” however remain ever popular. Can someone tell these clowns what Shiite means, while I go and register shiite.tm?

Presumably following a similar logic Pakistani Shiites like to burn Pizza Huts (Elastic Loaf Huts?) because they identify them with the “American administration”. Which leads me assume Pakistani Shiites also identify KFC and gas stations with Pakistani Sunni extremists. Pakistani Sunni mobs on the other hand prefer churches, the Holiday Inn, McDonald’s, trains and Christian schools and convents. Oh, and “blasphemers”, but that goes without saying.

Not to be outdone across the border in India earlier this month mobs destroyed the residence a of poorly performing cricket star:

“An AFP reporter at the site reported that the protesters were shouting “Dhoni die, die”, burning effigies of the long-haired player, who has scored 1,958 runs in 68 one-day international matches and is counted among India’s most aggressive batsmen.”

But back to the pizza.

Under the cover of pizza: In November 2004 Dutch police arrested Morrocan Islamist who was doing reconnaissance for a terrorist operation while delivering pizza. He was described in the the Dutch paper De Telegraaf as a “radical Moroccan pizza courier”. No moderate Moroccan pizza couriers were available for comment, but rumours has it they were quite incessed about the hijacking of their scooters by the radicals.

But back to the mob attacks.

On Sunday the British embassy in Tehran was under siege from a rock and firecraker pelting mob chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Britain”. “Pizza, pizza!” came the defiant reply from inside the high security compound.

Parallels have being drawn with the 1979 seige of the US embassy in Tehran, when the Islamists adorned the building with slogans such as “This is not a struggle between the US and Iran, it is a struggle between Islam and blasphemy” and “The more we die, the stronger we become”, but there is an earlier and bloodier precedent:

When in 1979 a horde of students invaded the American embassy in Tehran and took the entire staff hostage, it was not the first time such a thing had happened in the city. In 1829, a mob had broken into the Russian legation and killed all but one of its diplomats. The unfortunate head of the Russian mission was Alexander Griboyedov, who died in the carnage.

[....]

Griboyedov’s arrival in Tehran coincided with Ashura, a festival which involved great numbers of flagellants parading in the streets to re-enact the deaths of Hassan and Hussein, the sons of the Imam Ali. The atmosphere was highly charged with religious emotion and the crowds were putty in the hands of the mullahs. Griboyedov tactlessly chose to ride a black stallion, the same colour as the stallion ridden in the plays by the murderer Yazid. Doubtless still under Yermolov’s influence, he displayed a signal lack of courtesy to the Shah, and the members of his mission, with their public drunkenness and insulting behaviour, did not endear themselves to the people of Tehran.

The atmosphere became more charged when one Mirza Yaqub sought refuge at the Russian mission. An Armenian Christian, he had been captured during the siege of Erivan, castrated, converted to Islam and eventually promoted to become the Shah’s personal treasurer.

The situation was now extremely delicate, and became more so when the palace claimed that Mirza Yaqub had absconded with a hefty part of the royal treasure. To make matters worse, Griboyedov was persuaded to take in two young Armenian girls, the property of the Shah’s son-in-law. After some days in the Russian mission, the girls began to smell and were taken to the bathhouse. The Persians assumed they were being given a ritual bath prior to a forced marriage to a Russian, and word got out that two Muslim girls were about to be violated. The next morning a huge mob gathered at the mosque. Fired by the mullahs, the mob attacked the Russian mission. All those inside, bar one, were slaughtered and everything movable was looted, including a substantial amount of bullion.

The Persian authorities were powerless to prevent it, and the rioting lasted for four days. Griboyedov’s body was sent on an ox cart back to his wife at Tiflis. Today, in the Kremlin, is displayed an 89-carat diamond, sent by the Shah to the Tsar by way of an apology.

On that occassion when the rabid mob stormed the building the Persian guards fled and soon the fanatical rioters, chanting “Allahu Akbah” were tearing through the roof of the compound and then tearing through its inhabitants, literally tearing them apart. Griboyedov’s body was recovered from the mob three days later and only recognised by a duelling scar on his hand. Another unfortunate victim had his head proudly displayed on a skewer at a nearby kebab stand. Only one person survived the attack. Griboyedov was also an outstanding playwright and his famous work “Woe from Wit” is still studied in Russian schools.

Back to modern times, and only days after the the 1979 attack on the US embassy in Tehran, the British embassy in Islamabad suffered a similar fate:

In November 1979, false rumors that the United States had participated in the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca provoked a mob attack on the U.S. embassy in Islamabad. The government’s delayed response enabled the mob to burn the embassy. Four people died, two of them U.S. nationals.

Its currently looking like another wave of pizza politics is on the creep in Pakistan.

You might think that the South Korean people would see the US as a friend and ally and perhaps be thankful for its help in the Korean War and for the billions of dollars in economic and military aid it has received since. Nope, nothing like it. Jonathan Last in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Americans generally think well of South Korea. The feeling is not mutual. A 2003 Pew survey found that 50 percent of South Koreans (and 71 percent of those age 18 to 29) have an unfavorable view of the United States. This isn’t anti-Bushism: 72 percent of those who disliked America said their hostility was toward the country in general, not just the president. The same survey found that half of South Koreans were “disappointed that the Iraqi military put up so little resistance in the war against the United States.” A 2002 poll found that, by a margin of 3-1, South Koreans opposed even the idea of the war on terror. Some allies.

South Korea has a long history of anti-Americanism. In 1982, for instance, South Korean students set fire to the American Cultural Center in Pusan. At the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the undercurrent of anti-Americanism was so strong that then-president Roh Tae Woo held a special meeting of his cabinet to try to figure out how to soothe public opinion. As one student radical explained to the Associated Press in 1989, “the United States and its proxy ruling force… are primarily responsible for all our country’s problems and divisions.”

[..]

The United States was a big issue in South Korea’s last presidential election in 2002, with the most anti-American candidate, Roh Moo Hyun, winning.

President Roh has been less than true blue. He believes that North Korea must be appeased. He and his predecessor, Kim Dae Jung, encouraged their countrymen to forget about the North’s frequent acts of provocation and extensive network of gulags. Instead, they taught South Koreans to view the North as a slow, underprivileged little brother – more of a burden than an enemy. That view has taken deep hold in the South Korean psyche: In 2004, 39 percent of South Koreans said that America was the biggest threat to their national security, while only 33 percent said North Korea was.

Just in case you keep track of these things, 54,246 American soldiers gave their lives to save the South during the Korean War. Between 1945 and 2001, the United States gave South Korea $15 billion in economic and military aid. The annual cost of maintaining our 30,000 troops on the Korean peninsula is about $3 billion. Which is a pretty hefty subsidy to be giving the world’s 11th-largest economy.

Last says he has an “escape fantasy” about the US military leaving South Korea. Actually this is not such a far fetched idea at all. Both Washington and Seoul are keen to move in this direction and over the next five or so years the US military presence, more a relic of the Cold War than a deterrant to North Korea or China, will be greatly reduced on the Korean peninsula. This will happen gradually as the South Korean military is restructured to reflect the realigned defence relationship, which currently hinges on the fact that the US has wartime operational control of the South Korean military (the Combined Forces Command). In a recent agreement the time frame for the transferral has been set as between October 2009 and March 2012 (a 30 month period).

The above photo is captioned:

A North Korean naval personel throws a stone at a photographer while he is being photographed on a boat along the waterfront of Yalu River in the North Korean town of Sinuiji, opposite the Chinese border city of Dandong, 19 October 2006. (Photo credit: LIU JIN/AFP/Getty Images)

Hmm, rocks aboard a boat? Has someone been neglecting deck duty? What would the Glorious Leader think of that?

Seems like a rather small rock he is holding though… And whats that on the floor, to his right? A bowl of rocks? Looks like dog food from where I am sitting. Then again, whats a dog doing aboard the boat? The mystery deepens… Perhaps its lunch. Perhaps the dog is lunch. Perhaps they eat rocks for lunch. Perhaps they are micronukes. Hey, its North Korea. Anything’s possible.

via FP Passport

Part 1 of the weekly round up has more North Korea lovin’ than you can poke a nuke at. Part 2 and the rest in the (Australian) morning.

So point your missiles in the air and launch ‘em like you just don’t care!

Jonah Goldberg in the National Review: Multilateralism Falls Short: Exceptions and reality.

Kim Jong Il would seem unrealistic even as a comic-book villain. In a world full of strange and exotic cultures, North Korea’s neo-Stalinist experiment ranks as otherworldly. Try to imagine what a North Korea exhibit at Epcot Center would display: emaciated, out-of-work actors (no shortage there) eating fake tree bark while guarding a giant concentration camp where prisoners are forced to worship a guy who should be wearing a tinfoil hat at the local library. Don’t forget to try the sawdust kimchi!

Proof that North Korea is a hard case can be found in the fact that the Democrats and Republicans have switched sides. Ordinarily multilateralist Democrats are now unalloyed champions of unilateralism, in the form of face-to-face negotiations with North Korea, while President Bush – that infamous go-it-alone “cowboy” – has embraced international teamwork. Both approaches are flawed for a simple reason: North Korea wants a nuclear weapon because it wants a nuclear weapon.

William F. Buckley on RealClearPolitics.com (Universal Press Syndicate): Diplomacy Hits Kim

We have been told for many years that Kim is obsessively vain. But I had not remembered the document of September 1997 from the official government news agency. Reproduced here are the last few sentences of the paean, which serve our purposes. The official document concluded:

“The General is the mental pillar and the eternal sun to the Korean people. As they are in harmonious whole with him, they are enjoying a true life based on pure conscience and obligation. They are upholding him as their great father and teacher, united around him in ideology, morality and obligation. So their life is a true, fruitful and precious life without an equal in history.”

In North Korea such tributes as these substitute for food, which does not exist, at least not enough to feed the country’s 21 million people, 10 percent of whom died of starvation in Kim’s first half decade in power.
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The proposed sanctions could hypothetically immobilize Kim. You can reduce the need for food by depriving incremental millions of it, but a million-man army needs fuel. Unfortunately, there isn’t any way to seal the border to the north, sufficiently to block extra fuel from passing through the long frontier North Korea shares with China. China has a special consideration here. The pressure of masses of North Koreans who want food and stability creates a huge problem, so much so that the Chinese worry more about instability in the Korean peninsula than about nuclear bombs dispatched from Pyongyang.

The diplomatic ideal, where China is concerned, is to mount sufficient pressure to influence Kim’s behavior, but not so much as to threaten his hegemony. The final formulation of Beijing’s collaboration will be critical, and the challenge in Washington is to egg it on to ensure that Dear Leader will recognize that he has gone one step too far.

Trudy Rubin in the Philladelphia Enquirer: Worldview | Why talks with N. Korea eventually must resume

North Korea’s apparent test of a nuclear weapon has provoked another debate over whether it’s worth negotiating with rogue states.

I believe this is not the moment for a U.S. dialogue with Pyongyang. This dangerous regime, with its track record of illegal weapons sales, must be disabused of any idea that it can get a free pass to the nuclear club. Strong U.N. economic sanctions are crucial, backed by a united front of U.S. and Asian powers. Also crucial is President Bush’s warning that North Korea will be held accountable if it passes nuclear materiel to other states or groups.

But then what? I’ve talked to no one – dove, hawk or owl – who believes sanctions alone will force Kim Jong Il to give up his arsenal. Nor does anyone believe military force is a viable option (provided Kim doesn’t sell his plutonium to al-Qaeda or Iran).

Unless sanctions are crafted to prod North Korea back to the table, it’s hard to see any chance of curbing Pyongyang’s nuclear program. But can talks with North Korea work?

Melanie Kirkpatrick with an idea that I’d love to hear more about, in the Wall Street Journal: “Let Them Go: China should open its border to North Korean refugees.”

The Border Police document, dated Jan. 10, 2005, begins blandly enough: “From the start of illegal border crossings in 1983,” it says, “the number of illegal immigrants from North Korea that have stayed in China has increased every year.” It adds, “Public Security and Armed Police departments have strengthened preventative and deportation efforts.”

The numbers it reports are newsworthy–and staggering: “To date, almost 400,000 North Korean illegal immigrants have entered China and large numbers continue to cross the border illegally.” And, “As of the end of December 2004, 133,009 North Korean illegal immigrants have been deported.” While Chinese authorities obviously know how many refugees they have deported, by definition they can’t know how many are in hiding. The estimate of 400,000 is sure to be low.

The Yanbian Finance Bureau document, dated Oct. 19, 2004, provides further evidence of the extent of the crisis. It is a letter to provincial authorities requesting more money to help with deportation efforts. “According to statistics from the Public Security, border police and civil administration, more than 93,000 refugees are still living in Yanbian Prefecture.” The letter goes on to say that although the Border Police Bureau has established “six new refugee-deportation and detention centers,” it does not have sufficient funds to do the job. Yanbian requests 30 million yuan ($3.8 million) a year “to solve this financial problem.”

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If Beijing wants to send a message to Pyongyang about its nuclear program, it could announce that, effective immediately, it is taking several steps: It will stop deporting North Koreans, allow the United Nations to set up refugee camps, and permit the resettlement of refugees in third countries, from which they could go to South Korea, whose constitution codifies its moral responsibility to accept its Northern cousins, or to other countries willing to take them in. The U.S., which so far has accepted a mere eight North Koreans, could step up to the plate here.

The Border Police document notes that since the early 1980s there have been six instances of mass migrations that have coincided with North Korea’s famines. Now, winter is coming, and there are already reports of food shortages. Allowing the world to help the North Korean refugees in China would help Beijing deal with a problem that is likely to get worse.

Thomas Lifson on RealClearPolitics.com (The American Thinker): “The Desperate Dictator: Kim Jong-Il”

Any dictator who can allow a million or two of his 20 million countrymen to die of starvation, rather than open up his country to allow the adequate provision of proffered aid, must be pretty well invulnerable. Death by starvation is visible, prolonged, painful, and heart-wrenching for the survivors. Anyone dominant enough to compel mass acceptance of starvation must have an iron grip on the reins of power.

Or so one might assume.

Thus most foreign observers consider Kim Jong-il to be acting to achieve foreign policy goals of some sort by provocatively launching missiles and detonating nuclear devices. Perhaps he is demonstrating to terrorist state customers that he has salable goods? Or perhaps he is seeking unilateral talks with the United States? Or perhaps he is just aid-seeking or even anticipating another deal like he got with Bill Clinton, in which the United States will supply billions of dollars in aid in return for promises he doesn’t intend to honor.

But an alternative theory of power in North Korea suggests that Kim is in fact desperate, and is acting to quiet a threatened rebellion by the only group which matters when it comes to domestic power: the North Korean military.

David Warren, in the Ottawa Citizen: Desolations

When I filed this, the United States was still trying to get a limp resolution through the United Nations, condemning North Korea for its claim to have tested a nuclear device, in defiance of all its international agreements. The Americans wanted something like “the full chapter seven” — which would not merely impose, but enforce a general embargo on all shipments of military equipment to the rogue state, and could lead to a naval blockade to isolate it. Instead, to please not only its enemies such as China, but its nominal allies such as France, the U.S. has watered its resolution down to “Article 41″ measures, such as making empty diplomatic gestures, and banning air travel. The pressure was continuing, to water the U.S. resoluton down some more.

The matter is unimportant at one practical level. For even if the psychopaths in Pyongyang cried uncle, they would only have to hide their nuclear programme a little more effectively, in return for the receipt of the generous aid package they negotiated a year ago. There being no commitment even from the U.S. to remove the rogue regime.

Charles Krauthammer on RealClearPolitics.com (the Washington Times) : What Will Stop North Korea

It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.

– President John F. Kennedy, Oct. 22, 1962

WASHINGTON — Now that’s deterrence.

Kennedy was pledging that if any nuke was launched from Cuba, the United States would not even bother with Cuba but go directly to the source and bring the apocalypse to Russia with a massive nuclear attack.

The remarkable thing about this kind of threat is that in 1962 it was very credible. Indeed, its credibility kept the peace throughout a half-century of Cold War.

Deterrence is what you do when there is no way to disarm your enemy. You cannot deprive him of his weapons, but you can keep him from using them. We long ago reached that stage with North Korea.

Richard Halloran on RealClearPolitics gives a run-down of the four options currently open in dealing with North Korea, and the limitations of each: “No-Win Reactions to N. Korea’s Actions”

The detonation of what North Korea claimed was a nuclear device last week should not have been a surprise as it has been evident for many months that the “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong Il, had no intention of giving up his nuclear ambitions.

The New York Times reported that the explosion had given the Bush Administration and much of Washington a “strategic jolt.” But that was because official Washington hasn’t been paying attention, consumed as it has been with Iraq, the Middle East, and the coming elections.

The critical question now is what the U.S. and its allies should do next. None of the options is promising: Negotiations, Sanctions, Military Force, Do Nothing

Jon B. Wolfsthal in Pittsburg Live: “Avoiding Armageddon”

After pursuing atomic weaponry for the better part of a generation, it now appears that North Korea has finally clawed its way into the “Nuclear Club.” And that means that the global strategic game has changed forever.

North Korea, which was barely tolerable to the major Asian powers back when it was merely a potential troublemaker, is now a real and present danger. The time for negotiations is over. Now it’s about containment and deterrence.

Todd Crowell on RealClearPolitics.com: “A Deadly Kind of Fizzle”

It is probably unwise to taunt a man who commands a million-man army. It is also probably unseemly to make light of the man’s ballistic and nuclear weapons, even if they don’t work.

Right now people around the world are running around in circles, pulling their hair and wringing their hands over North Korea’s underground atomic bomb test, when it ought to be the subject of late-night television comedians.

In the old days opposing armies faced each other in an open field before the battle , war paint on their faces, feathers in their helmets, rattling their shields and making rude comments about their opponents’ manhood.

Today global leaders rattle their ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons rather than spears and battle axes, but it is still a macho world. And in macho terms, Kim Jong-il is a man who literally can’t get it up.

A whole new world of ‘fucked up’ perpetrated by the sickness that is the North Korean regime:

The latest description of Kim Jong-il’s policy of state eugenics came from a North Korean doctor, Ri Kwang-chol, who escaped last year and told a forum in Seoul that babies with deformities were killed soon after birth.

“There are no people with physical defects in North Korea,” Dr Ri said. Such babies were put to death by medical staff and buried quickly, he claimed.
[..]

“I defied the order to abort the fetus the prison authorities contemptuously called a ‘Chinese Chink’ and was badly beaten and kicked in my belly by a guard. His name was Hwang Myong-dong,” she said.

One week later, said Ms Han, she was led to a prison clinic “where in a most blunt manner they extracted the dead child from my body”.
[..]

Choi Yong-hwa, 28, described how she was made to accompany a heavily pregnant woman, who had also been returned across the bridge from China, to a clinic where doctors induced labour.

After the infant was born, Ms Choi said she and other women stood by in disbelief as it was suffocated with a wet towel. The mother passed out.

A 66-year-old grandmother also testified to witnessing the deaths of babies at Sinuiju, two of them healthy boys born at full term. The first belonged to a 28-year-old woman called Lim.

The witness was holding the newborn in a blanket when a guard grabbed him by a leg and threw him into a large box lined with plastic.

A total of seven babies – five born prematurely after labour was induced – were left to die in the box. Two days later the premature babies were dead.

The two full-term boys were still blinking, although their lips had turned blue.

A guard battered them to death with forceps, the witness said. At the Nongpo centre in Chongjin, witnesses saw the “children of betrayers” tossed into a wicker basket, covered in plastic sheeting and left to die.

One woman watched the killing of seven babies, taken from their mothers and left face-down on the ground within their view. After two days the guards smothered any that were still alive. “Guards would say the mothers had to see and hear their babies die because they were Chinese,” the report said.

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“It’s vital to recognise that juche – the dogma of self-reliance – is not a theory but a cult and that Kim is worshipped as the leader of a religion,” said a veteran Western diplomat who negotiated with the North Koreans on 19 visits.

“These Koreans genuinely believe they are a master race and that the peninsula will be united under the rule of the Kim dynasty.”

Behind the facade of a Supreme People’s Assembly, a presidium, a cabinet and the Korean Workers party, North Korea operates as a one-man military dictatorship founded on clan rule, blood ties and deification of the leader. Kim is falsely said to have been born on the sacred slopes of Mount Paektu.

James Lileks recalls the many rounds of North Korea Vs the West, the musical:

First we had the Clinton talks, in which North Korea promised to be good. They were given some lovely parting gifts, including much-needed heating oil to warm the officer barracks in the death camps. Then came the six-way talks, which were interrupted briefly for three-way talks over two-way radios; then the my-way-or-die-way talks we’re now experiencing. Along the way North Korea broke the seals, restarted its Secret Bomb Program, enriched nuclear fuel and fortified it with vitamins, lobbed missiles hither and yon, and behaved exactly like the sociopathic criminal state everyone knows it to be. The West’s most forceful reaction was a puppet movie that made fun of Kim Jong Il. As we speak, the U.N. Security Council is studying the feasibility of a sequel; debate hinges on a French demand to call the puppets “marionettes.”

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Are the North Koreans afraid of the West’s reaction? Shaking in their boots, yes, but with laughter. As their ambassador said: “It will be better for the Security Council of the United Nations to congratulate the DPRK scientists and researchers instead of doing such notorious, useless and rigorous resolutions or whatever.”

Nice little Valley Girl-speak there. Sanctions? Boycotts? A 3-D picture of Kofi Annan in which he appears to shake his finger at you when you turn it from side to side? What-EVer.

Notorious, useless AND rigorous? Girl, thats sounds hea-VEEE.

Actually this ambassador sounds a bit like a hip hop version of Borat. Perhaps they are both graduates of the Glorious Musical Institute for Forwardment to Virtuous Socialist Freedom and Ambassadorsnedtprom back in the USSR?

Notorious DPRK is in the house. Point your missiles in the air and launch ‘em like you just don’t care. Like, what-EVer. TALK TO THE HAND. D to the P to the R to the K, homeboy!

Kim Jong Il and his crue, the Notorious DPRK, break for a photo opportunity during the recording of “Oh, so lonely”.

(I especially recommend a rigorous examination of the facial expressions in the second row from the top. You like!)

In fact Borat is soon to release his debut album. “Borat: Stereophonic Musical Listenings that Have Been Origin in Moving Film ‘Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan’.”

Coincidence? I think not. This whole “nuclear test” is one big Ambassadorsnedtprom alumni ploy to promote Borat’s movie and the whole world is falling for it. Will stop at nothing to promote his filth, this guy.

And the Imperialists tremble at the arrival of the Socialist Technical Revolution.

Pobeda!

(h/t Samizdata)