Tag Archives: Kim Jong Il

News

Christian woman murdered by atheistic communist for distributing Bible

19 Comments

The Associated Press reports on a horrifying story from North Korea. (H/T 4Simpsons, Muddling Towards Maturity)

Excerpt:

A Christian woman accused of distributing the Bible, a book banned in communist North Korea, was publicly executed last month for the crime, South Korean activists said Friday.

The 33-year-old mother of three, Ri Hyon Ok, also was accused of spying for South Korea and the United States, and of organizing dissidents, a rights group said in Seoul, citing documents obtained from the North.

The Investigative Commission on Crime Against Humanity report included a copy of Ri’s government-issued photo ID and said her husband, children and parents were sent to a political prison the day after her June 16 execution.

A woman’s human rights are violated by a left-wing communist dictator. Where is the outcry from the secular left? Where is the Hollywood elite? Where is the ACLU? Is she not the right kind of victim?

Is there a difference between the atheist Kim Jong Il and other atheists like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens? Is the murder of this woman wrong, on atheism? Why is it wrong? Why is it rational to not murder innocent people, on atheism?

I wrote an entire series of posts on the problem of grounding morality rationally on atheism here.

News

North Korea conducts second nuclear test, Obama sternly disapproves

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Story from the New York Times. (H/T Stop the ACLU)

Excerpt:

North Korea announced on Monday that it had successfully conducted its second nuclear test, defying international warnings and drastically raising the stakes in a global effort to get the recalcitrant Communist state to give up its nuclear weapons program.

Word of the test sent a shudder through Asian financial markets and clearly caught South Korea and the United States off guard. The news hit just as South Korea’s government and people were mourning the suicide of former President Roh Moo-hyun. And hours after the test was reported, South Korean state media reported that the North had fired a short-range missile.

Stop the ACLU has reactions from around the blogosphere.

  • Michelle Malkin: Emergency wrist-slap to follow.
  • Ameripundit: Clearly this situation calls for additional appeasement. Oh, and a speech on how the United States should eliminate its nuclear weapons stockpile.
  • Ace of Spades: This failure of diplomacy clearly shows the need for more diplomacy…. missile defense remains unproven.

Obama who recently cut missile defense funding, and defunded our nuclear weapons program, has issued this sternly-worded statement of appeasement to the communist dictator. Democrats, what did you expect? Did you even try to assess his voting record and qualifications during the election? This was all as plain as day to anyone who could be bothered to read about Obama before his election.

What about Hugo Chavez?

The Washington Post also reports on Obama’s very good communist friend Hugo Chavez. (H/T Stop the ACLU, Nice Deb)

Excerpt:

WHILE THE United States and Venezuela’s neighbors silently stand by, Hugo Chávez’s campaign to destroy his remaining domestic opposition continues. On Thursday night state intelligence police raided the Caracas offices of Guillermo Zuloaga, the president of the country’s last independent broadcast network, Globovision. They claimed to be looking for evidence of irregularities in the car dealership that Mr. Zuloaga also runs. In fact this was a thinly disguised escalation of an attack that Mr. Chávez launched this month against Globovision.

In February Mr. Chávez eliminated the limit on his tenure as president after a one-sided referendum campaign that included ugly attacks on Venezuela’s Jewish community. Since then he has imprisoned or orchestrated investigations against most of the country’s leading opposition figures, including three of the five opposition governors elected last year. The elected mayor of Maracaibo, who was the leading opposition candidate when Mr. Chávez last ran for president, was granted asylum in Peru last month after authorities sought his arrest on dubious tax charges. The National Assembly, controlled by Mr. Chávez, is considering legislation that would eliminate collective bargaining and replace independent trade unions with “worker’s councils” controlled by the ruling party. Another new law would eliminate foreign financing for independent non-government groups.

Obama can’t object, because that’s what his Democrat constituents approve of doing with the right in this country.

What about Ahmadinejad?

If you can’t remember his name, think of “I’m mad in a Jihad”. Remember, Iran recently tested medium range missiles capable of hitting Israel.

News

Obama cuts military spending, blinks at North Korean aggression

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You knew that the socialist ACORN lawyer was going to cut military spending at some point. Well, he’s done it.

Sweetness and Light reports on the cuts in military spending here. (H/T Gateway Pundit)

Excerpt from an AP article:

Production of the F-22 fighter jet, which cost $140 million apiece, would be halted at 187.

…The Army’s $160 billion Future Combat Systems modernization program would lose its armored vehicles. Plans to build a shield to defend against missile attacks by rogue states would also be scaled back…

See, the thing you need to understand is that wars start when aggressors believe they can win the war. When you build up your own military, aggressors start to understand that victory may not be so easy. That’s how you prevent wars from even starting. This is called peace through strength.

So, by cutting defense spending, Obama is basically emboldening aggressors. Not just aggression against us, but aggression against our allies. If our enemies do not believe that we have the will or the firepower to defend our interests, and those of our allies, abroad, then they will act against our interests. The North Korean missile launch is just the beginning.

Closing Velocity had some more details on the missile defense cuts. (H/T Hot Air)

  • Total cuts in missile defense: $1.4 billion or roughly 15%.
  • Cancel second Airborne Laser (ABL) aircraft, keep the one remaining ABL prototype as a testbed and revert to pure R&D.
  • No increases in Ground-based Interceptor (GBI) deployment in Alaska. Remaining silos will stay unfilled. European GBIs will be decided on later during the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).
  • Termination of the Multiple Kill Vehicle (MKV) program.

    • Hot Air linked to this Politico article, featuring comments by Newt Gingrich.

    Excerpt:

    “Dick Cheney is clearly right in saying that between the court decisions about terrorists and the administration actions, the United States is running greater risks of getting attacked than we were under President Bush,” said the former speaker of the House and Georgia congressman.

    On the North Korean missile launch, he said “the embarrassing repudiation of the United States appeal to the United Nations Security Council Sunday afternoon is a vivid demonstration of weakness. This is beginning to resemble the Carter administration’s weakness in foreign policy.”

    He said Obama’s speech on nuclear disarmament in Prague on Sunday “is a dangerous fantasy that runs an enormous risk. It is part of the Obama administration’s substitution of words for thoughts and fantasies for achievements.”

    “Now we no longer have a ‘global war on terror,’” Gingrich said. “We have ‘overseas contingency operations’ Now we will no longer have ‘terrorist attacks.’ We will have ‘man-made disasters.’ None of our enemies seem to have learned this new language.”

    “There was amazing symbolism in North Korea deciding to launch a missile the very day President Obama was speaking to Europeans about his fantasy of nuclear disarmament. The West has talked with North Korea for over 15 years and they just keep building nuclear weapons and missiles. We have been talking with the Iranians for a decade and they continue to build nuclear capability and missiles.

    “Pakistan has a lot of nuclear weapons. Russia, India and China have nuclear weapons. Hamas in Gaza fires missiles into Israel virtually every day. In this reality, our president proposes we have a big meeting in Washington to discuss nuclear disarmament.”

    And he contrasts Obama’s plan with Ronald Reagan’s policy.

    “Reagan felt that keeping a defensive shield alive was more important than a paper deal. The Obama administration is rapidly undermining our missile defense system while describing a fantasy world of trust and cooperation.”

    Here is  a related quotation from Ronald Reagan’s debate against the 2nd worst president ever, Jimmy Carter.

    And I’m only here to tell you that I believe with all my heart that our first priority must be world peace, and that use of force is always and only a last resort, when everything else has failed, and then only with regard to our national security. Now, I believe, also, that this meeting this mission, this responsibility for preserving the peace, which I believe is a responsibility peculiar to our country, and that we cannot shirk our responsibility as a leader of the free world because we’re the only ones that can do it. Therefore, the burden of maintaining the peace falls on us. And to maintain that peace requires strength. America has never gotten in a war because we were too strong.

    Ronald Reagan’s focus on strength projected abroad ended the cold war without firing a shot. And military spending is vital for achieving peace. But Obama is choosing a different path… the path of Jimmy Carter. And we all know where that ended.

    UPDATE: More on the NK missile launch, including Gingrich video on Fox News Sunday at Nice Deb.

    UPDATE: A new post on the effectiveness of waterboarding and Obama’s intent to prosecute the authors of counter-terrorism policies, possible including George W. Bush himself.