Adrian Hong, co-founder of Liberty in North Korea (LiNK),
describes negotiations with North Korea as "a Faustian failure" (IHT 26 Dec 08).

After five years of effort, the much-vaunted "Six Party Talks" have essentially been acknowledged as an abject failure. Despite America's best efforts, North Korea has proven itself most capable at stalling and swindling.

The U.S. State Department calculated that accusations and actions condemning North Korea's human rights conditions (and China's abhorrent treatment of North Korean refugees) would only make negotiations more difficult with the famously temperamental North. As a result, we have witnessed an astonishing charade — the world's standard-bearer of freedom and justice in essence excusing, downplaying or outright ignoring the actions and the victims of the world's greatest oppressor.

There is a difference between name-calling and accurate description. North Korea is home to the largest modern-day gulag. Hundreds of thousands of innocent political prisoners toil and die in a network of concentration camps. Refugees, their advocates and experts have testified during the past decade about the public executions, rapes, forced abortions, mass starvation and other atrocities that meet the legal definition of "crimes against humanity."

. . . Having gained no verifiable denuclearization by North Korea, we are in the same place today as we were in 2003, except for semi-annual press conferences and photo ops in Seoul, Beijing and Pyongyang, at the cost of thousands more North Koreans tortured, starved and executed.

Negotiation must always be given a legitimate chance, and force must always be the last resort. . . . For the past four years, I have resisted calling for outright regime change, believing genuine attempts at negotiation to be a moral imperative. . . .

I was wrong. Now I cannot deny what I wish were untrue — the North Korean elites will never bargain away the only powers that prevent them from losing authority. They realize that any opening for freedom or reform would only allow breathing space for any potential resistance group. They know that the loosened flow of outside information would condemn the leadership's complicity in the suffering of North Korea's citizens. Most of all, they know the fate of men like Ceausescu, Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.

. . . Now, as we pretend concentration camps are a relic of the 20th century, as a tattered network of activists and defectors attempts to save as many people as it can, as children starve on the streets of cities like Yanji, Shenyang, Wonsan and Hamhung, our leaders and diplomats comfort themselves with the illusion that nothing can be done.

There was a time when we pledged to bear any burden and support any friend to ensure the survival and the success of liberty. We must now rid ourselves of the delusion that we can bring about real change without real sacrifice. We must shelter the broken and malnourished people who have managed to escape and allow them a chance at a new life. Most of all, we must wholeheartedly support those fighting a government that exhibits all signs of an unrelenting totalitarian evil, with more than just empty promises. If this government and its actions cannot be called evil, then the word has lost all meaning.

No one will care what I think, but it seems to me that both sides are blameworthy in the latest series of middle east horrors. Hamas never fully observed the 19 June cease-fire. Israel dishonoured its commitment to ease the embargo that imposes illegal and immoral collective punishment on Gaza's people.

Israel is entitled to defend itself and Hamas is responsible for ending a six-month cease-fire with a barrage of rocket attacks. Yet airstrikes and a prolonged ground war will not remove Hamas or bring lasting resolution any closer.

Egypt should open its border with Gaza to break the Israeli blockade. Arab countries must force Hamas to accept a new cease-fire. Israel must end its attempts to starve Gaza into submission. It will not succeed.

Meg Cox of the Christian Century on Theolog:

Am I allowed to say that this is wrong?

It is wrong for Palestinians to fire rockets at Israeli towns.

There. Now that I've said that, I believe it is okay to say that it's wrong for Israel to blockade Gaza so that people have no electricity for 16 hours a day, sewage can't be processed and hospital generators will go silent if fuel supplies run out.

May I add that it's wrong for people to lack enough food to eat because of a blockade? Causing children in Gaza to be without sufficient nourishment is wrong. This should not be happening.

What's that you say? In the Holocaust far worse was done to Jewish people, and I need to be sensitive to that? I agree. The Holocaust was horrifying, terrible. Never again should something like that happen, to anyone anywhere.

Now, as a U.S. citizen whose tax dollars have supported the Gaza blockade, I hope that it's acceptable to say that the blockade is wrong and needs to end. The entire population of Gaza, half of which is under the age of 15, should not be made to suffer for the offenses of those who fire the rockets.

Still not okay? How bad does Israel's treatment of the people of Gaza need to get before we're allowed to say that it's simply wrong? Now Israel is dropping bombs on Gaza's blockade-weakened towns and cities. Must we wait for something worse?

After the death of King George IV on 26 June 1830, The Times famously commented on 15 July 1830:

There never was an individual less regretted by his fellow-creatures than this deceased king. What eye has wept for him? What heart has heaved one throb of unmercenary sorrow? ... If he ever had a friend—a devoted friend in any rank of life—we protest that the name of him or her never reached us.

The departure of George W. Bush from ofice is similarly unlamented.

Describing Bush as "The Deluder in Chief" (7 Dec 08), The New York Times says, "We long ago gave up hope that President Bush would acknowledge his many mistakes, or show he had learned anything from them."

Margaret O'Brien Steinfels writes in Commonweal (5 Dec 08) of "cleaning up after the Bush administration"

Has George W. Bush been the worst president ever? ... Whoever wins the race to the bottom, the Bush administration has almost certainly presided over the most egregious run of mis-governance since the British ruled North America.

In Time (26 Nov 08) struggles to find much at all to praise.

At the end of a presidency of stupefying ineptitude, [Bush] has become the lamest of all possible ducks.

It is in the nature of mainstream journalism to attempt to be kind to Presidents when they are coming and going but to be fiercely skeptical in between. ... Bush [at the APEC Conference] has that forlorn what-the-hell-happened? expression on his face, the one that has marked his presidency at difficult times. You never want to see the President of the United States looking like that.

So I've been searching for valedictory encomiums. His position on immigration was admirable and courageous; he was right about the Dubai Ports deal and about free trade in general. He spoke well, in the abstract, about the importance of freedom. He is an impeccable classicist when it comes to baseball. And that just about does it for me. I'd add the bracing moment of Bush with the bullhorn in the ruins of the World Trade Center, but that was neutered in my memory by his ridiculous, preening appearance in a flight suit on the deck of the aircraft carrier beneath the "Mission Accomplished" sign. The flight-suit image is one of the two defining moments of the Bush failure. The other is the photo of Bush staring out the window of Air Force One, helplessly viewing the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina. This is a presidency that has wobbled between those two poles—overweening arrogance and paralytic incompetence. ...

In the end, though, it will not be the creative paralysis that defines Bush. It will be his intellectual laziness, at home and abroad. ... He is less than President now, and that is appropriate. He was never very much of one.

'The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country.' - George W. Bush
'If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.' - George W. Bush
'One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is 'to be prepared'.' -George W. Bush
'I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.' - George W. Bush
'The future will be better tomorrow.' - George W. Bush
'We're going to have the best educated American people in the world.' - George W. Bush
'I stand by all the misstatements that I've made.' - George W Bush
'We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe ' - George W. Bush
'Public speaking is very easy.' - George W. Bush
'A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.' - George W. Bush
'I have opinions of my own -- strong opinions -- but I don't always agree with them.' -George Bush
'We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.' - George W. Bush
'For NASA, space is still a high priority.' -George W. Bush
'Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children.' -George W. Bush
'It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.' - George W. Bush

Newsweek's coverage of religious responses to same-sex marriage caused some huffing and puffing. As a set of arguments, the article werer rather weak; but a news magazine is not a academic journal. Among the great flurry of commentators, I think Bromleigh McCleneghan is right when she comments on Theolog that Newsweek's cover piece is more a sermon than anything else.

Newsweek's December 15 cover story by religion editor Lisa Miller has provoked a good deal of talk about how the newsweekly, in printing what amounts to a liberal Christian apologia for same-sex marriage, has thrown caution and objectivity to the wind and become a (gasp) opinion journal. Christianity Today criticized the piece in an editorial, and its blog linked to a 2004 article laying out exactly why God has ordained marriage solely for men and women. Newsweek itself ran a Web-only debate responding to the piece, while OnFaith published a number of reflections on the subject by more liberal religious thinkers. And Kurt Soller, who writes Newsweek's letters blog, has his hands full with responses.

Amid all this chatter, the thing that interests me most is Miller's article itself. Why? Because it reads like a sermon. Not a great or super-ingenious one, but the kind of sermon you might hear in a liberal, mainline Protestant church—if and when a preacher actually deemed it appropriate to talk about sexuality from the pulpit.

Even those Christians who agree with Miller's basic premise may be frustrated by her article, noting that in places it fails to compel, or lacks nuance. But my point is this: while we've been dueling over sexuality and collectively editing our resolutions, the task of offering a public, explicit argument for same-sex marriage and a nonliteralistic biblical hermeneutic has fallen to the religion editor at Newsweek.

If our parishioners have learned something critical about their faith tradition from Laura Miller because their pastors are unwilling to teach it themselves, we mainliners should be ashamed. (And if we've hesitated out of fear of opposition from those in the pews, we might simply be wrong. If those outside our struggling, homogenous churches decline to join us in worship and discipleship—not because they lack a desire to know God, but because they are not sure they won't be welcomed—our institutions and communities will continue to decline. I hope that Miller's article will be a starting point for further conversation, deeper attention to scripture and greater honesty about the role of sexuality in all people's lives and identities. ...

I hope that the church will find the renewed courage to teach and preach the word of God, to proclaim the gospel to all with ears to hear it.

The oceans' shifting balance—IHT 12 Dec 08.

Most of us understand that what we give off in the form of exhaust—from cars and manufacturing and energy production and burning forests—makes its way into the atmosphere, and is responsible for changes in the global climate. What is less familiar is the fact that the oceans are absorbing as much as a third of the carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere.

The effects are already being felt. That added carbon dioxide is slowly making the oceans less alkaline and more acidic, altering the chemical balance on which much of oceanic life depends. Carbon dioxide reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid [the same as in soft-drinks], a process that consumes carbonate ions. Those ions are necessary for the chemical reaction used to form calcium carbonate, the structural element in corals and the shells of many marine animals.

As the oceans acidify, shells will simply dissolve. The growth of coral reefs will slow, and their structural integrity would be weakened, making them more vulnerable to storms and erosion. That would be a catastrophic loss. The list of potential long-term effects to oceanic life is only beginning to be explored.

Scientists have understood ocean acidification for a long time. But what they are learning now is how quickly it is increasing, in step with increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. New studies show that if carbon dioxide emissions continue at current rates, shells and corals could begin to dissolve—especially in the southern oceans—within 30 years. Observations from many places, including the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, suggest that ocean acidification is proceeding much faster than anyone had thought.

Combating a change as fundamental as this requires a fundamental change in awareness and behavior. What is needed is a mental stencil of the kind you find near storm drains in Los Angeles that say: "This Drains to Ocean." A third of whatever we emit in the way of carbon dioxide ultimately drains to the ocean, which is all the more reason to curb emissions quickly.

The North Korean leadrship deliberately uses idolatry to place itself at the centre of the people's spiritual affections as well as their economic, political and social life. DailyNK.com reports that North Korea is creating more and more objects that laud and idolize Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il throughout North Korea, in order to unite the people in spite of the severe economic crisis. The 23 metre 1972 Kim Il Sung statue in front of the Museum of Korean Revolution, is best-known and was once covered with gold. Similar, smaller statues are in all major cities of North Korea and there are over 140,000 structures idolizing the Kim dynasty. Revolutionary monuments or historic memorials at places where Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il are known to have been, are being made or restored constantly.



The régime seeks to boost loyalty and revolutionary consciousness through collective visits to the historic sites. Increasing numbers of mosaic murals are appearing in prominent locations, the biggest as large as 30m by 20m.

Jane Portal, the author of Art under Control in North Korea visited North Korea twice and assessed this idolatry as the world's most intense, saying that Stalin and Mao Zedong's idolatry annot be compared with the Kim's hunger for praise. She says that "Portrait paintings or photographs of Kim Il-sung hang on the wall in every home, issued by state to every household. They are usually placed high on a blank well, looking down the room. For many years, families would begin and their day by bowing down to the image. Portraits also hang in ordinary offices, classrooms, shops, factories, hospitals and libraries. In more recent years, they have been joined by a second portrait of Kim Jong-Il. Posters such as this, reproduced in Portal's work, reinforce the Kim cult by showing workers paying attention to newspaper bearing the Great Leader's picture." (Kim Won-shik, Choe San-kun and Kim Kwang-hak, Looking respectfully at General Kim Il-Sung, Sun of the nation, 1975.) May this people who walk in darkness be freed to see a great light.

Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where there were no rootless Christmas trees hung with candycanes and breakable stars Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where there were no gilded Christmas trees and no tinsel Christmas trees and no tinfoil Christmas trees and no pink plastic Christmas trees and no gold Christmas trees and no black Christmas trees and no powderblue Christmas trees hung with electric candles and encircled by tin electric trains and clever cornball relatives Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where no intrepid Bible salesmen covered the territory in two-tone cadillacs and where no Sears Roebuck creches complete with plastic babe in manger arrived by parcel post the babe by special delivery and where no televised Wise Men praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where

no fat handshaking stranger in a red flannel suit and a fake white beard went around passing himself off as some sort of North Pole saint crossing the desert to Bethlehem Pennsylvania in a Volkswagen sled drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer and German names and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts from Saks Fifth Avenue for everybody's imagined Christ child Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and ran away to where no Bing Crosby carollers groaned of a tight Christmas and where no Radio City angels iceskated wingless thru a winter wonderland into a jinglebell heaven daily at 8:30 with Midnight Mass matinees Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year and softly stole away into some anonymous Mary's womb again where in the darkest night of everybody's anonymous soul He awaits again an unimaginable and impossibly Immaculate Reconception the very craziest of Second Comings

—Lawrence Ferlinghetti. A Coney Island of the Mind, New Directions, 1958

The situation in Zimbabwe has reached the stage where the only responsible thing for its neighbours to do is to take over by force.

Cholera will kill many hundreds, perhaps thousands. The health-care system has collapsed. The water and sewerage system has broken down. The Limpopo river is infected. There is no government worthy of the name.

Food supplies are nearly exhausted and the last harvest failed. Less than a fifth of the working age population is employed and much of that unpaid. Public-sector workers are staying away from work. The cost of a bus fare or a lunch exceeds their daily wages.

Hyperinflation (estimated by one source as 89.7 x 10^21 % p.a. at 14 November) makes cash unavailable and money worthless. It can be fixed, but Mugabe does nothing but print money to finance his bankrupt régime.

The army is close to mutiny and desertions are rife—although staff officers still benefit from Mugabe.

There is little hope that a new government will be formed as violence against the opposition continues and Mugabe maneuvers to retain the little that remains of real power.

There is far better case for invasion of Zimbabwe than there ever was for Iraq.

The Vatican has since been forced to hastily "clarifiy" its position, stating that the Roman Catholic Church does not oppose efforts to decriminalize homosexuality despite its opposition against a U.N. declaration on gay rights. It has been widely for its decision to oppose a proposed UN resolution calling on governments worldwide to de-criminalise homosexuality.

Regarding a "penal code that criminalizes homosexuals or even foresees the death penalty for them, there is nothing to discuss: The Holy See is totally opposed," spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said. "It is a position that respects the rights of the human person, in his dignity," Lombardi said during the presentation of the papal message for the World Day of Peace. He also stated the Church's opposition to "any unjust discrimination on the basis of homosexuality."

Lombardi said that while the Holy See opposes "legislation that penalizes homosexuality," the Church still disagrees with any initiatives that are aimed at "putting all forms of sexual orientation on the same level." L’Osservatore Romano printed a statement by Lombardi criticizing the press for misrepresenting the Vatican with provocative headlines.

Archbishop Celestino Migliore had said that the Vatican opposed the resolution because it would "add new categories of those protected from discrimination" and could lead to reverse discrimination against traditional heterosexual marriage. "If adopted, they would create new and implacable discriminations," Migliore said. "For example, states which do not recognise same-sex unions as 'matrimony' will be pilloried and made an object of pressure," Migliore said. Vatican spokesman Rev Federico Lombardi said "no one wants the death penalty or jail or fines for homosexuals" but defended Migliore's comments, adding that the Vatican was in the majority on the issue.

A strongly worded editorial in Italy's mainstream La Stampa newspaper said the Vatican's reasoning was "grotesque". Pointing out that homosexuality was still punishable by death in some Islamic countries, the editorial said what the Vatican really feared was a "chain reaction in favour of legally recognised homosexual unions in countries, like Italy, where there is currently no legislation". An editorial in Rome's left-leaning La Repubblica newspaper said the Vatican's position "leaves one dumbstruck." Margherita Boniver, a leading member of the Italy's leftist Democratic Party, called it "alarmingly anachronistic."

The proposed UN resolution has nothing to do with marriage. same-sex or otherwise. It is about stopping jail and the death penalty for homosexuals. The resolution is simply aimed at the around 80 countries who outlaw same sex-relations in all circumstances, and the 9 states or regions within a state where the mandatory sentence for being homosexual is death, including Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen.

The resolution is to be presented by Rama Yade, France's state secretary for human rights, with the support of all 27 members of the European Union. "France's initiative ... is an initiative that is based on existing texts. The idea is not to create new rights. The idea is ... to make decriminalisation possible," a French Foreign Ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said.

Will there be an '[un]Holy Alliance' between the Vatican and Islamic states at the United Nations to oppose the proposed resolution? Surely the Vatican has the collective wit to differentiate decriminalisation of homosexuality from support for same-sex marriage. Then again, perhaps not. Sadly the church of Rome's vision is so clouded by prejudice that it cannot understand a simple human freedom.

Evaluating the Rudd government's performance in bringing equality to gay and lesbian Australians, Sam Butler concludes in SX:

On one hand, Labor has demonstrated goodwill, efficiency and thoroughness, and should be commended for achieving in only 12 months what the Howard government failed to do in almost 12 years. However, Kevin Rudd's personal reservations about non-traditional families and stubborn intransigence against any form of federal relationship modelling for same-sex couples—as well as Labor's inability to provide a viable alternative—would suggest any future reforms may be met with higher hurdles to clear.

Pluses

• Promised audit of discriminatory statutes was not only completed comprehensively and well within a few months uncovering over 100 laws needing rectification.
• Legislation passed to remove very many of those discriminations.
• Family law amendments that will now provide same-sex couples access to the Family Court.

Minuses

• Interference by the Rudd government, without a clearly stated reason, in the Australian Capital Territory's proposals for civil partnership legislation, which had to be watered down to avoid being overruled by the federal government.
• Lack of a formalised national model of relationship recognition.
• Equivocation over same-sex adoption.
• Personal silence by Rudd on same-sex equality. It has been fine that Attorney-General McClelland and Senator Penny Wong have carried the work. That is their job. But the Prime Minister's non-involvement has been at odds with his tendency to have something to say on almost everything else.
• Inaction on federal sexuality and gender identity anti-discrimination protections. The government has been very cautious on this, no doubt worried about controversy on exemptions for religious institutions, especially schools and welfare agencies.

The Grocer's son (Le fils de l'épicier) written and directed by Éric Guirado, is superb. As usual, I'm too lazy and too unskilled to write a proper review. So I'll steal some quotes from Stephen Holden's excellent review (NYT 6 Jun 08) to do the job.

The rolling countryside of Provence may be a dream vacation spot, but it is the last place in the world that Antoine (Nicolas Cazalé, pictured), the sullen 30-year-old protagonist of The Grocer's Son would like to be. . . . Antoine reluctantly returns to his rural hometown after 10 years in the big city when his father (Daniel Duval) has a heart attack.

. . . As the movie affectionately observes the gruff, self-reliant customers, some of whom hobble to the van on canes, it has a documentary like realism. You grow to respect these hardy, weather-beaten people who lived their whole lives close to the land.

Antoine brings to his customers the same surly, put-upon attitude with which he confronted his superiors in urban restaurants where he held and lost a succession of waiter's jobs. Brusque and detached, he repeatedly offends old folks whom his father had befriended on his rounds. Even when they voice their disgruntlement, Antoine doesn't seem to notice.

It is only when he is joined by Claire (Clotilde Hesme), a free-spirited friend visiting from the city, that his attitude begins to soften. . . . Slowly Antoine warms to the rural environment he turned his back on and, almost despite himself, begins to feel a tentative happiness and community spirit. Mr. Cazalé's subtle performance makes his transformation entirely believable and prevents this cautiously upbeat movie from curdling into a sentimental advertisement for the simple life.

His performance is matched by Paul Crauchet's and Liliane Rovère's sharp thumbnail portraits of two regular customers . . . an increasingly frail widowed farmer who trades fresh eggs for staples . . . [and] a haughty, self-sufficient woman with a past, [who] is softhearted under a prickly exterior and has a wicked, deadpan sense of humor. . . .

The Grocer's Son is a triumphant accumulation of such quirky, perfectly observed details.