Daily Archives: December 8, 2004

Iraq

The Open Air Prison

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“Returning Fallujans will face clampdown,” by Anne Barnard, Boston Globe, 5 December 2004, http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/12/05/returning_fallujans_will_face_clampdown/ (from Democratic Underground).

Life in Fallujah…

The US military is drawing up plans to keep insurgents from regaining control of this battle-scarred city, but returning residents may find that the measures make Fallujah look more like a police state than the democracy they have been promised.

Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times. Buses would ferry them into the city, where cars, the deadliest tool of suicide bombers, would be banned.

This is the bloody end of apartheid. More and more, Sunni Arabs are realizing that they have lost. Their actions have alienated the Kurds and the Shia (even the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani didn’t condemn the Fallujah assault), and their political fate is bleak. In South Africa, the Afrikaaners were able to join the ANC and loose influence quietly. Imagine them, but more hated.

In 1946 Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland expelled their German resisdents. In Iraq, we’re just creating perpetual prisons.

Korea

The Monsters

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From Digital Chosunibo, via NK Zone

N.K. Falsifies Remains of Abducted Japanese National
DNA tests have revealed that the alleged remains of a Japanese national kidnapped by North Korea decades ago that were repatriated under a recent bilateral agreement in Pyongyang are in fact the mixed ashes of several other corpses, fuelling calls for further sanctions against the Hermit Kingdom and a suspension of food aid.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hosoda Hiroyuki said Wednesday afternoon that DNA tests on what North Korea claimed were Yokota Megumi’s remains revealed them to be a mixture of several other people. North Korea has admitted to kidnapping Yokota in 1977 and claimed she hung herself.

Secretary Hosoda expressed regret over the test results and criticized North Korea by saying that the Communist state’s investigations into abducted Japanese nationals had been falsified.

…

Yokota vanished in Niigata on Nov. 15, 1977, at the age of 13, prompting Japanese media and investigating authorities to suspect that she had been abducted by North Korea.

The Northern leadership later confessed, explaining that Yokota had married in 1986 and given birth to a daughter named Kim Hye-kyung. She was hospitalized for depression and allegedly hung herself after telling friends she would take a stroll on Mar. 13, 1993. North Korea said that her husband, Kim Cheol-jun, cremated Yokota two and a half years after she committed suicide.

Yokota’s parents were enraged about the test results and demanded Japan impose economic sanctions against North Korea.

The DPRK must be destroyed. They are not humans. They are monsters in human form.

It’s trivial in comparison, but the DPRK is also “modernizing” North Korean property laws

Changes in North Korea’s Criminal Law to Protect Private Property
North Korea made significant revisions in both its criminal and civil rights law back in April to apparently reflect the changes it expects to see in the future. The latest revisions in North Korea’s criminal law are the first in five years. Among the notable changes are those related to strengthening regulations to protect private property.

Under the new guidelines, an individual found guilty of illegally seizing another’s possession will be sentenced to more than 10 years of hard labor from the current less than 10-year period

Sickening.

Education

Teh Bgi Kdis Aint Guud Eethur

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It’s not only schoolchildren who are behind.

News.com reports the functional illeracy of professional adults is a multi-billion-dollar a year problem.

A recent survey of 120 American corporations reached a similar conclusion. The study, by the National Commission on Writing, a panel established by the College Board, concluded that a third of employees in the nation’s blue-chip companies wrote poorly and that businesses were spending as much as $3.1 billion annually on remedial training.

An example:

“I updated the Status report for the four discrepancies Lennie forward us via e-mail (they in Barry file).. to make sure my logic was correct It seems we provide Murray with incorrect information … However after verifying controls on JBL – JBL has the indicator as B ???? – I wanted to make sure with the recent changes – I processed today – before Murray make the changes again on the mainframe to ‘C’.”

wtf???

Now, I’m well known for g41m15m5, so I won’t be hyper-critical. But it’s a good thing to know the United States doesn’t have a corrupt monopoly controlling public education.

That would be a disaster.

Hat tip slashdot, Tom Barnett.