simply an initiative whereby the Communists propose to join with all workers belonging to other parties and groups and all unaligned workers in a common struggle to defend the immediate, basic interests of the working class against the bourgeoisie

Except for Cuba, the remaining Communist countries still have bureaucratic offices to manage the ‘United Fronts,’ which are now just shadows of their former selves. No one imagines that the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese KMT or China’s other “democratic parties” have any real power, and hence they have no legitimacy. “United Front Work Departments,” or their equivalent, exist in Vietnam and North Korea.

But as the example of North Korea shows, even a “United Front” can be encircled by hostile forces. North Korea’s incompetent leadership has acted so erratically, empathetically, and selfishly. And its emasculated United Front partners are unable to help it.

Teachers in the United States are the analog of the North Korean Kim Family Regime. US teachers have emasculated their United Front partners, alienated all but one outside force, and have allowed a massive brain drain to lobotomize their movement.

Under previous, smarter, leadership, teachers had created a United Front that remained relevant until the late 20th century.

• Teachers allied with labor unions, even though as public workers teacher wages were paid from funds partially taken from labor. To this day, the National Education Association is the largest labor union in the United States, and the American Federation of Teachers is the second-largest.
• Teachers allied with parents to form the National Parent-Teacher Association. While the NEA and AFT use labor-rhetoric to form alliances, the NPTA uses the rhetoric of childcare, used the rhetoric of childcare.
• Teachers allied with Districts, using a quirk in US election law to dominate the boards. In the US, even though local elections have the greatest impact on the lives of citizens, these elections also have the lowest turn-out. Therefore, an organized minority can regularly influence the outcome of local elections. Using both individual initiative and the NEA/AFT/NPTA alliances, teachers regularly take school board seats, allowing them to also act as stake-holders in districts.

Yet this “united front” is now as worthless as North Korea’s. The labor movement union has passed the teachers by, and the main utility of the NEA and AFT seems to be to obtain divisive partisan allies (which increases the stakes greatly). Parents are lukewarm allies, as they only want to make sure nothing wrong with child care. Districts have been under assault from the States for more than a Decade, and the harm caused by Teachers to Districts influence in that fight outweigh the influence Teachers are able to exert through local elections.

Teachers have allowed themselves to become encircled.

By failing to prepare workers for careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), teachers have alienated Large-Scale Consumers of Educated Workers. By not flattering State power, they have alienated States. By refusing to help Districts in political battles against States, they have alienated the local school boards, too. By virtue of their position as a consumer of education resources, they naturally alienate Publishers. And by refusing moves to allow the measurement of their performance, they have alienated the Federal-Academic Complex.

The encirclement of the Teacher’s united front has happened because the teaching profession has been lobotomized. Previously, highly discriminator labor norms effectively closed off many professions to ambitious women, funneling “the best and the brightest” into teaching. A small number of people may be able, for a short amount of time, to ignore their own interests for a political cause, but everyone else requires economic incentives. De facto and de jure discrimination against women in other fields had the effect of economically incentivizing smart and ambitious women into teaching. Now, however, those same incentives have the effect of moving smart and ambitious women away from teaching. As the ambition and sharpness of the teaching profession has declined, it is not surprising that this has effected the political abilities of teachers as a bloc.

The situation is not hopeless for teachers. The high-reward, high-risk movement of publicly aligning with the Democratic Party raises the possibility of a new set of political allies. But this is risky, and the agitators like Diane Ravitch appear to criticize Democrats (President Obama, Secretary Duncan, and Chairman Gates) at least as much as Republicans. The old united front is now to emasculated to carry water for teachers. And teachers have shown no signs of being empathetic to other stakeholders in the education reform debate.

I don’t know what will happen to North Korea. And I don’t know what will happen to Teachers. Both groups built earlier success using a clever United Front, both emasculated their traditional partners, and both now find themselves surrounded by hostile enemies. The future of both is bleak, but not hopeless, and there’s always chance a great leader might be waiting in the wings…

The Cleanest Race refutes most of our assumptions about North Korea

1. That North Korea’s leadership emerged from anti-Japanese rebels
2. That North Korea is Communist
3. That North Korea aims for self-sufficiency (“juche”)
4. That North Korea is operationally Confucian

Each of these is worth examining.

While few people believe the WPK’s claims to have emerged from a long history of guerilla warfare against Japan, Myers clearly doubst the WPK was anti-Japanese at all. Kim’s brother worked for the Empire of Japan, and early North Korean propaganda bragged that collaborators were just as likely as guerillas to obtain high government roles. Kim Il-Song (the least educated leader in the history of the Commmunist World) was far more concerned about building personal loyalty to himself that concerned with world communism, or opposition to one particular government in particular.

Likewise, North Korea is “Communist” in a sense that no other country has been. Indeed, early in North Korea’s history the Kim faction cleansed the party both of a pro-China “Yenan” faction and a pro-Soviet “Internationalist” faction. While Soviet-educated Koreans wanted an industrialized socialist state along the lines of East Germany or Bulgaria, and Chinese-educated Koreans shared these goals while believing that the unique conditions of East Asia meant that labor could easily substitute for capital in constructing socialism, Kim encouraged racist attacks against Communist “allies” while telling fellow-Communist leaders it was better to keep a population poor, to make them easier to control.

North Korea’s ruling ideology of “juche,” Myers claim, is made-up hokum for foreigners. Certainly North Korea exhibits no interest in becoming self-sufficient, instead depending on foreigners for capital in the form of aid, drug deals, and counterfeit currency transaction. Instead, Myers claim, North Korea’s ideology is Japanese Imperialism combined with Korean racism.

Myers argues that North Korea is a successor state of the Empire of Japan. Further, North Korea is the only successor state not to suffer a occupation (unlike Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan). North Korea, therefore, is the purest expression of the the unique blemd of cultural superiority, worship of an effiminate Mother-King, and the rearranging of society to serve the National Defense State without regard to private property.

That a racist worship of a mother-king is not Confucian goes without saying.

The Cleanest Race is an amazing book, very quick to read, and I highly recommend it.

From ChinaSmack:

qhz:

What is America? America is a country formed by a big bunch of the world’s oppressed and bullied people who joined together.

07148:

If you were an employee, would you follow a cowardly boss that makes you slave away but when something happens only knows how to hide in the back and scream a few times? Or would you follow a boss that only asks you to work according to his instructions and, when something happens, will help you deal with the problem when something happens?

奥特MAN:

First you need to understand something, America’s government puts the interests of the American people first.
China’s government puts the interests of China’s Communist Party first.
This is a fundamental difference.
As for Iraq, Africa, Afghanistan? What business is it of mine?!?!

网易浙江绍兴网友:

I do not understand politcs, but I too am “very happy”.

网易辽宁沈阳网友:

Seeing one’s own past president suddenly appearing before you in a hopeless situation, who could accurately describe this feeling?

网易浙江衢州网友:

You will never have the opportunity to understand [that feeling], because this is China, so if you were abducted by someone, I doubt no high-ranking/important person would come get you.

网易陕西西安网友:

Not giving up any citizen, even if they are soldiers who have died in battle in a faraway land are brought home regardless of cost. Great America!!!

Of course, not all believe the news at face value:

网易浙江丽水网友:

The feeling I have is that these two people may be important spies, otherwise, just using your brain a little and you would know, why would they make a big fuss over two journalists?

There were similar reactions after the U.S. Navy saved the first captain abducted by pirates in 200 years.

• The People, who has sovereignty over a country
• The Party, who guide the people
• The Leader, who guides the party

On the face of it, Juche’s People / Party / Leader view of the world is similar to the People’s Republic of China, with its emphasis on the Peopls’s Republic, the Communist Party, and Mao Zedong Thought. Indeed, Juche reads like a copycat of the cultural revolution — a plan to repeat what went “right” while avoiding what went wrong. Of course, the difference is that “Mao Zedong Thought” is really just a euphamism for the collective wisdom of the Party, while “the Leader” is a cult-like object of devotion through North Korea.

Ironically, given North Korea’s plan for a People’s Party’s Leader’s country, it didn’t turn out that way.

Kim Jung Il abandoned his original formulation, pushing an “Army First” policy that emphasizes the Korean People’s Army over the Korean Worker’s Party. Then the North Korean economy was destroyed, and the command-and-control system that guided people’s lived devolved into corruption, thievery, and brutality.

Kim Jung Il may or may not be dead. He may or may not have had a stroke, heart attack, or major surgey.

But his Juche idea is buried twice over: The Army Replaced the Party, corruption replaced rule, and the continuing growth of North Korea’s Core neighbors (China, South Korea, and Japan) rendered North Korea’s former economic wealth irrelevent.  Hope of the worker’s paradise that Kim’s dad tried to build was lost long ago.  Even Kim Jung Il’s simpler and more achievable goal of Juche is now out of reach.

Our focus must be on trying to “engage” (in the sense of subverting) the North Korean government, or whatever is left of it. The more corrupt, backchannel, guangxi connections between Pyongyang and Chinese and South Korean businessmen, the more we can first move North Korea from the most eratic country in the world to a worse-than-usual loser Gap state, like Burma. From there, we encourage whatever development we see, trying to lock the now bankrupt (in nearly every possible sense) North Korean state in to the broader world of the Asian New Core.

DPRK Studies » Blog Archive » North Korea Endorses Barrack Obama
It’s quite understandable that North Korean leadership would prefer Obama over McCain, considering – from statement he has made, data on his website, and information from the CFR – he actually has a grasp of the issues in play over concerning North Korea and will not appease them. This is, ironically, an area where Obama would pretty much continue a Bush policy.

Of course, as Bush II’s policy on North Korea has been unstable, there’s no reason to think Bush III will hold any firmer a line.  More probably, John McCain’s embrace of westernizing countries (Vietnam, etc.) and antagonism to tired dictatorships (Iran, etc.) rightfully spooks Pyongyang.

Hat-tip to DPRK Studies, One Free Korea, ROK Drop, and Zen Kimichi.

Two e-mail messages in as many days convey some very bad news about North Korean refugees in two Southeast Asian nations, Thailand and Laos. Both nations, apparently seeing no U.S. objection and a new U.S. disinterest in the subject of human rights for North Koreans generally, are catching refugees and are planning to send them to their deaths, or a fate worse than. A reader writes:

Just caught this story on naver – It seems about 52 defectors have been apprehended by Thai authorities and if convicted of entering the country illegally are expected to be sent back to North Korea.

That would be the first mass repatriation of North Koreans by Thailand, and a grave development indeed.

If you have an account, please digg this.

Sometimes, proliferation is grand.

Very hopeful, if true:

The dynamics have shifted dramatically since the last talks. When Pyongyang tested its first nuclear bomb two months ago, defying pleas from Beijing, it alienated itself from its only ally.

The extent of that alienation has been revealed in essays by China’s leading strategic thinkers. The bitter sense of betrayal felt in China about its communist neighbour, on whose behalf 360,000 soldiers, mainly volunteers, died during the Korean war 53 years ago, sets the tone for the extraordinarily frank essays in China Security.

…

He sees the biggest winner, after the North Korean regime, as Japan – unless China acts firmly against Pyongyang. “If China continues its ambiguous policies on the North Korean nuclear issue, the US will encourage Japan to become nuclearised.”

…

Zhu Feng, director of the international security program at Beijing University, says a recent opinion poll shows 44per cent of Chinese people dislike North Korea more than any other nation. “The Chinese leadership now understands it may have deluded itself about the Kim Jong-il Government pursuing a good-neighbourly policy that Pyongyang would gradually be won over by China’s kindness,” he says.

Mr Zhu says that while Beijing’s support of UN resolutions against Pyongyang’s nuclear testing is seen in North Korea as “an act of treachery by its socialist big brother”, when the test happened, “in Beijing, ire turned into fury. It was no less than a slap in China’s face”.

The important meeting of the central committee of the Communist Party three months ago proclaimed that a nuclear North Korea was a formidable challenge to China’s “core interests” – a phrase previously used only about Taiwan independence.

Chinese help would be need to kill Kim.

“Panel issues list of pro-Japan collaborators,” Yonhap News, 6 December 2006, http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/Engnews/20061206/610000000020061206210859E2.html (from One Free Korea).

South Korea is an immature state whose power should be limited to the extent possible. South Korea is not an ally, but merely a state that must be “engaged.”

American policy in the Korean peninsula should be aimed at moving North Korea closer into the orbit of the People’s Republic of China. The only valid alternative is the total collapse of the North Korean regime and the return of immediate & full citizenship of all north Koreans in the Republic of Korea.

South Korea should not be allowed to extend its position and power by administering North Korea as a colony. South Korea is too volatile a state — too obsessed by Arabesque conspiracies and fetishism for revenge — to be trusted as a regional power

Some evidence:

Don’t Blame actual War Criminals:

A Korean government commission cleared 83 of 148 Koreans convicted by the Allies of war crimes during World War II.

The commission ruled that the Koreans, who were categorized as Class B and Class C war criminals, were in fact victims of Japanese imperialism.

Of the 148 Koreans convicted of war crimes, some 23 would eventually be executed.

Blame the Children of Political Enemies:

The panel, launched in May last year, was formed under a special law enacted in 2004 to seek out collaborators who endorsed Japan’s colonization of the peninsula.

Another 104-member presidential committee was launched in August with the mission of seizing assets owned by the descendants of the pro-Japan collaborators.

For what it’s worth, I hereby endorse Japanese colonization of the Korean pennensyla.

Like the Europeans in Africa, Japan’s sin in Korea is this: they left too soon.