Among the hundreds of reasons that I'm a libertarian is this little essay by P.J. O'Rourke. It's from "Eat The Rich", a book on economics for the mainstream reader who would otherwise never pick up an economics text. Parts of it are laugh-out-loud funny.
The essay is about the miracle of Hong Kong. Hong Kong is full of Chinese people. They have the same work ethic as China. Same past experience as China. Hong Kong has worse land than China; it's just a rock in the ocean. No natural resources except for the people. With Hong Kong and mainland China you have a near-perfect subject/control group setup for an experiment....
In the previous century, China went into full-blown Marxist/Commie/Socialism. Those poor people went through government-induced famines, economic disasters and purges that had body counts ten time greater than that of The Holocaust. Hong Kong had the good experience of going as Free Market as possible, given the circumstances.
Time magazine just named Hong Kong the best city in the world for 2012.
This may or may not be related to The Heritage Foundation giving Hong Kong the #1 spot in their index of economic freedom.
And yet, just 70 years ago, Hong Kong and China had almost identical standards of living. One became a typical socialist shithole while the other prospered.
(China started liberalizing their economy in the early 80's, but they still have a lot of catching up to do.)
How did this happen? By leaving people the hell alone as much as possible. There were no calls for government to "do something" every time the stock market blipped or someone's puppy ran away.
Here's P.J., from Eat The Rich:
How a peaceful, uncrowded place with ample wherewithal stays poor is hard to explain. How a conflict-ridden, grossly overpopulated place with no resources whatsoever gets rich is simple. The British colonial government turned Hong Kong into an economic miracle by doing nothing.
Hong Kong is the best contemporary example of laissez-faire. The economic theory of "allow to do" holds that all sorts of doings ought, indeed, to be allowed, and that government should interfere only to keep the peace, ensure legal rights, and protect property.
The people of Hong Kong have been free to do what they wanted, and what they wanted was, apparently, to create a stewing pandemonium: crowded, striving, ugly, and the most fabulous city on earth. It is a metropolis of amazing mess, an apparent stranger to zoning, a tumbling fuddle of streets too narrow and vendor chocked to walk along, slashed through with avenues too busy and broad to cross. It is a vertical city, rising 1,800 feet from Central District to Victoria Peak in less than a mile; so vertical that escalators run in place of sidewalks, and neighborhoods are named by altitude: Mid-Levels. Hong Kong is vertical in its buildings, too, and not just with glossy skyscrapers. Every tenement house and stack of commercial lofts sends an erection into the sky. Picture Wall Street on a Kilimanjaro slope, or, when it rains, picture a downhill Venice.
And rain it does for months. Hong Kong in monsoon season has a climate like boiled Ireland. Violent air-conditioning wars with humid heat in every home and place of business, producing a world with two temperatures: sauna and meat locker. The rainwater overwhelms the outgrown sewer system, which fumes and gurgles beneath streets ranged with limitless shopping. All the opulent goods of mankind are on display in an air of shit and Chanel.
It is a filled-in city, turgid with buildings. The Sham Shui Po district of Kowloon claims a population density of more than 425,000 people per square mile-eighteen times as crowded as New York. Landing at Kai Tak Airport, down one thin skid of Kowloon Bay landfill, you can watch women at bathroom mirrors putting on their makeup. You can tell them that their lipstick's crooked.
There is no space in Hong Kong for love or money, at least not for ordinary kinds of either. A three-bedroom apartment in Central rents for 1,000 $/month, but there isn't room in any of these bedrooms to even have sex with yourself. The whole home will be 700 square feet less than ten yards long by eight yards wide, with windows papered over because, outside those windows, a hand grab away, are the windows of the apartment next door. And anything you're going to fix in the kitchen had better be something that can be stood on end-like a banana. This is how middle-class people live. Poor people in public housing will have three generations in a fifteen-by-twenty-foot room.
But when they come out of that room, they'll be wearing Versace and Dior-some of it even real. Hong Kong is a styling city, up on the trends. Truly up, in the case of platform sneakers. You can spend an entertaining afternoon on Hollywood Road watching teens fall off their shoes. Over the grinding hills, in the blood-clot traffic, men nonetheless drive their Turbo 911s.The S-class Mercedes is the Honda Civic of Hong Kong, and for the soccer-mom set, a Rolls and a driver is a minivan.
Jesus, it's a rich city. Except where it's Christ-almighty poor. Hong Kong is full of that "poverty midst plenty" stuff beloved of foreign correspondents such as myself who, when doing a Hong Kong piece, rush from interviews with day-laboring "cage men" in barred flophouse partitions to dinners in the blandly exclusive confines of Happy Valley's Jockey Club, where I could sample the one true Hong Kong luxury-distance between tables. But, those poor are going to get rich. Just ask them. You can call the old lady selling dried fish on the street on her cell phone.
The bippity-beep of cell phones all but drowns the air-conditioner racket. And each time a cell phone rings, everyone within earshot goes into a self-administered frisk, patting himself down to find the wee gadget. You can go weeks without talking to an answering machine, because you're not really dialing a telephone, you're dialing an armpit, purse, shirt pocket, or bikini top.
The cell-phone has to be there, or somebody might miss a deal. Everything is a deal. In a store you ask: "What's your best price?" then "What 's your Chinese price?" and on from there. I was trying to buy a bottle of cognac in a restaurant. The owner produced a brand I'd never heard of for 100$ and a brand nobody's heard of for 80$. I got my friend Annie, who let fly in Cantonese, and we had a bottle of Remy for one dead U.S Grant. I didn't know you were going to bring my sister in here", said the owner. "Hwa-aaah!"
It is a Cantonese exclamation halfway between oi vey and fuhgedaboutit. Which is Hong Kong in a nutshell-a completely foreign city that's utterly comprehensible. It's a modern place, deaf to charm, dumb in the language of aesthetics, caught up in a wild, romantic passion for the plain utilitarian. The only traditional touches are the catawampus walls and whichaway entrances dictated by feng shui, the art of placing things so as to ensure luck and not to disturb spirits. One building in Repulse Bay has an enormous square hole in its middle so that a certain invisible dragon can get from the mountain to the sea. Knowing Hong Kong, it was probably a scam with a paid-off fortune-teller helping architects and construction companies boost their fees. Some of Hong Kong may believe in geomancy, but it was my local bookstore in New Hamphire that had thirteen feng shui titles.
Everything else quaint within reach in Hong Kong has been torn down. Just a few poky colonial government buildings are left. Landfill has pushed the waterfront a thousand feet into Victoria Harbor. Ferry terminals block the water views, and tides are cramped into a raging flume between Central and Kowloon.
The statue in Statue Square is of a business manager, the nineteenth century chief executive of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. Behind the square, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Building itself rises. Here the local taste for functionalism has been carried to an extreme that arrives at rococo: a massy, looming, steel Tinkertoy of a thing with its whole construction hanging, suspension-bridge fashion, from eight enormous towers. Very functional, indeed, whatever that function is. Maybe to be expensive. It cost a billion dollars to build.
To the west is Jardine House, an aluminium-skinned monolith covered with circular pothole windows-Thousand Assholes, as it's known. To the east is the I.M.Pei-designed Bank of China Tower-all big diagonals and tricky, skinny angles. Its purpose was to be the tallest building in Asia, which it was for about five minutes before being overtopped by Central Plaza a few miles away, and then by twin towers-the tallest enclosed structures in the world-being built at Kuala Lumpur.
A competitive place, Southeast Asia. And it attracts some types that can compete with anything I've seen. I sat at dinner one night between a tough-as-lug-nuts young woman from the mainland who lives in New York and deals in used motor oil-sparkling table talk-and a large and equally adamantine chick from the wrong side of somewhere's tracks in America. I turned to the suicide blond.
"I'm uh arht cunsultunt," she said.
"Come again?"
"Un arht cunsultant."
"That's interesting. Who do you art-consult for?"
She named a large Saudi prince.
"What kind of art does the prince like?" I asked.
"Nineteen-cenchury reuhlist-you know, Uhmerican"
"Any particular artist?"
"Andrew Wyeth"
I'd been under the impression that Andrew Wyeth was still alive-rare in a nineteenth-century artist. And you'd think Hong Kong would be a strange place to look for one of his paintings. But who knows? They shop hard in Hong Kong. Buy hard. Sell hard. They drink hard, too. On Friday nights, police are posted in the Lan Kwai Fong bar district because people have actually been crushed to death during happy hour. Nobody takes it easy in Hong Kong. The only idleness visible is on Sundays, when thousands of the city's overworked Filipino maids come to Central, spread cloths and plastic sheets up and down the sidewalks, and picnic in the least attractive and most heat-baked part of town.
The Filipino maids are Hong Kongese, too. They are in Central because it is practical to get there on the subways, trams, and buses. Hong Kong is a practical place, down to earth, or, rather, down to concrete. The complimentary city guide in my hotel room gave advice on pricing whores and noted, "Some of the conservative hotels don't allow a man to toddle in with a rent-in-bird in the middle of the night. But, as you can imagine there are plenty of 'cheap guest houses'."
In the window of an antique shop, I saw an ivory carving of the familiar row of monkeys:" see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil; but this one had a fourth monkey with his hands over his balls: fuck no evil.
City of hardheads. City of rough tongues. You are a gweilo right to your face, meaning a white goblin or foreign ghost or old devil or any number of other things, according to how it is said (none of the meanings being complimentary)You can give back as good as you get, however(or try to, since gweilos are famously dim).For instance, the Cantonese really cant distinguish ls from rs.
"Ah,you ordered flied lice," said Annie's gweilo husband, Hugh. "That's fried rice, you plick," said Annie.
I met two women who seemed barely into their twenties but were the publisher and the sales manager of a prominent Hong Kong business magazine.
Publisher: "You are really well-dressed."
Sales manager: "For a journalist. We understand you are a popular writer."
Publisher: "In Japan."
City of straight faces. I was looking at some animal figurines representing Chinese astrological signs. The ancient woman behind the shop counter asked, "What year you born?"
"1947"
"Hwa-aaah. Year of pig! Good luck!"
"Oh, 'Good luck! Good luck!'" I said. "That's what Chinese always say to shopping gweilos. Stolen Ming dynasty grave offerings: 'Good luck!' Can of tuna fish: 'Good luck!' Lacoste shirt: Good luck!'"
"Not so!" she said. "Some years bad luck."
"Such as?"
"Year of buffalo."
"Which year is that?"
"This one."
"This one" being 1997.
I had come to Hong Kong to watch the best contemporary example of laissez-faire be surrendered to the biggest remaining example of socialist totalitarianism.
Hong Kong was (and to be fair to its new commie rulers, remains for the moment) socialism's perfect opposite. Hong Kong does not have import or export duties, or restrictions on investments coming in, or limits on profits going out. There is no capital-gains tax, no interest tax, no sales tax, and no tax breaks for muddle-butt companies that can't make it on their own.
The corporate tax in Hong Kong is 16.5 percent of profits. The individual tax rate is 15 percent of gross income. Hong Kong's government runs a permanent budget surplus and consumes only 6.9 percent of gross domestic product (compared with the 20.8 percent of GDP spent just by the federal government in the U.S) The people of Hong Kong have not been paylings of the state. They are owned their own. They have been able to blow it, Dow Jones it, start a sweater factory, hire, fire, sell, retire, or buy a farm (And there actually are some little-bitty farms in the New Territories).
Hong Kong has never had democracy, but its wallet-size liberties, its Rights-of-Man-in-a-purse, have been so important to individualism and self-governance that in 1995 an international group of libertarian think tanks was moved to perhaps overstate the case and claim, "Hong Kong is the freest nation in the world."
Free because there's been freedom to screw up, too. Hong Kong has no minimum wage, no unemployment benefits, no union-boosting legislation, no Social Security, no national health program, and hardly enough welfare to keep one U.S trailer park in satellite dishes and Marlboro Lights. Just 1.2 percent of GDP goes in transfers to the helplessly poor or subsidies to the hopelessly profitless.
Living without a safety net, people in Hong Kong have kept a grip on the trapeze. The unemployment rate is below 3 percent. In America, a shooting war is usually needed to get unemployment that low. The "natural rate" of unemployment is considered to be about 5 percent in the U.S., which rate would cause natural death from starvation in Hong Kong. But they are not dying. Although smoking is the city's principal indoor athletic activity, life expectancy in Hong Kong is about seventy-nine years, compared with seventy-six in the States. And the infant-mortality rate is comparable to our own. This from people who consider crushed pearls, dried sea horses, and horns from the dead rhinos of Tanzania to be efficacious medicine. Even the babies are too busy to die. Economic growth in Hong Kong has averaged 7.5 percent per year for the past twenty years, causing gross domestic product to quadruple since 1975.With barely one-tenth of 1 percent of the world's population, Hong Kong is the world's eighth-largest international trader and tenth-largest exporter of services.
I'm not exactly sure what "exporter of services" means, unless its fly-by dim sum, but, anyway, it's a fine statistic and helped make dinky, terrifying Kai Tai Airport the third-busiest passenger terminal in the world and the second-busiest air-cargo center. And Kai Tak's solitary runway sticks out into a container port that is the world's most busy of all. Hong Kong's per capita GDP is $26,000.Average individual wealth is greater than in Japan or Germany. It is $5,600 greater than what Hong Kong's ex-colonial masters back in Britain have, and is creeping up on the U.S per capita GDP of $28,600.
Besides Americans, only the people of Luxembourg and Switzerland are richer than those of Hong Kong. And these are two other places where capital is allowed to move and earn freely.
True, there has been an "Asian crisis" since the above statistics were compiled. The Hong Kong stock market has flopped. Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, and maybe Japan are experiencing depressions. The entire business world of Asia is supposed to be in ruins. But a mere continent wide financial collapse is unlikely to faze the people of Hong Kong.
Hong Kong's economy was destroyed by the Japanese occupation of World War 2, destroyed again by the UN embargo on trade with the Communists in 1951,and almost destroyed a third time by worry about the 1997 handover to China. The territory has been squeegeed by ty-phoons, squished by mudslides, toasted by enormous squatter-camp fires, and mashed by repeated refugee influxes. Hong Kong has no forests, mines, or oil wells, no large-scale agriculture, and definitely no places to park. Hong Kong even has to import water. So in Hong Kong they drink cognac instead, more per person than anywhere else in the world. They own more Rolls-Royces per person, too. So what if there is no space at the curb? They'll hire somebody fresh from the mainland to drive around the block all night.
Why did the British allow this marvel of free enterprise? Why did Britain do so little to interfere with Hong Kong's economic liberty? This is especially hard to answer because, back in London, an ultrainterfering socialist Parliament had taken charge after World War 2.This government would bring the U.K's own economy to a halt like a hippo dropped on a handcart.
Actually, the British did piss in the colonial soup when they could. The crown government held the title to almost all the land in the Hong Kong and the New Territories, and dealt it our slowly to keep sales revenues high. Thus the crowding in a place which, in fact, comprises some 402 square miles of dry ground-enough, in theory, to give everybody a bean-sprout garden. Instead, half the population is stuck in claustrophobic government housing. Then in the 70's,one of Hong Kong's thicker governors, Sir Murray Maclehose, set aside 40 percent of the colony as parkland - cramped comfort to the fellow living in 300 square feet with his wife. Mother, kids, and their Tamagotchi pets.
But the British never tried to install a European-style Pampers-to-June Allyson welfare system in Hong Kong. Maybe the Labour M.P.s were unwilling to invest vast quantities of groundnut scheme-type pinko planning geniuses across the border. Maybe the colonial administrators were overwhelmed by the number of refugees from pinko planning jamming into town. Maybe the mother country was too broke from ruining its own economy in the British Isles. Or maybe the Brits just did not care about pushing social justice down the throats of people who were, after all, only Chinese.
On the other hand, the British were not irresponsible. The "doing nothing" system mentioned at the beginning of this chapter is a relative term. Laissez-faire is not Tanzanian administrative sloth or Albanian popular anarchy.
Quite a bit of government effort is required to create a system in which government leaves people alone. Hong Kong's colonial administration provided courts, contract enforcement, laws that applied to everyone, some measure of national defense (although the Red Chinese People's Liberation Army probably could have lazed its way across the border anytime it wanted), an effective police force (Hong Kong's crime rate is lower than Tokyo's), and bureaucracy that was efficient and uncorrupt but not so hideously uncorrupt that it would not turn a blind eye on an occasional palm-greasing illegal refugee or unlicensed street vendor.
The Brits built schools and roads. And the kids went to school because they knew if they did not, they'd have to hit that road. And the U.K gave Hong Kong a stable currency, which it did totally by cheating-first pegging the Hong Kong currency to the British pound and then, when everyone got done laughing at that, pegging to the U.S dollar at a rate of 7.8:1.Now when there are any money-supply dirty work to be done, Hong Kong can blame everything on Alan Greenspan.
Hong Kong was also fortunate in having a colonial government which included some real British heroes, men who helped of these the place stay as good as it was for a s long as it did.
The most heroic of these was John Cowperthwaite, a young colonial officer sent to Hong Kong in 1945 to oversee the colony's economic recovery. "Upon arrival, however," said a Far Eastern Economic Review article about Cowperthwaite, "he found it recovering quite nicely without him."
Cowperthwaite took the lesson to heart, and while he was in charge, he strictly limited bureaucratic interference in the economy growth or the size of GDP.
(Sorry for the interruption, but I've gotta throw this in....Cowperthwaite famously refused to collect economic statistics, "for fear that I might be forced to do something about them")
The Cubans wont let anyone get those figures, either. But Cowperthwaite forbade it for an opposite reason. He felt that these numbers were nobody's business and would only be misused by policy fools.
Cowperthwaite has said of his role in Hong Kong's astounding growth: "I did very little. All I did was to try to prevent some of the things that might undo it."
He served as the colony's financial secretary from 1961 to 1971.In the debate over the 1961 budget, he spoke words that should be engraved over the portals of every legislature worldwide; no, tattooed on the legislators' faces:
"....in the long run the aggregate of decisions of individual businessmen, exercising individual judgment in a free economy, even if often mistaken, is less likely to do harm than the centralized decisions of a government; and, certainly the harm is likely to be counteracted faster." Even Newsweek has been forced into admiration: "While Britain continued to build a welfare state, Cowperthwaite was saying 'no': no export subsidies, no tariffs. No personal taxes higher than 15 percent, red tape so thin a one-page form can launch a company."
During Cowperthwaite's "nothing doing" tenure, Hong Kong's exports grew by an average of 13.8 percent a year, industrial wages doubled, and the number of households in extreme poverty shrank from more than half to 16 percent.
"It would be hard to overestimate the debt Hong Kong owes to Cowperthwaite," said economist Milton Friedman. And it would be hard to overestimate the debt Hong Kong owes to the Chinese people who sanctioned and supported what Cowperthwaite was doing or, rather, doing not.
Because Hong Kong did not get rich simply as a result of freedom and law. Economics is easier than economists claim, but its not as easy as that. Chinese culture was a factor in Hong Kong;s success. And yet, almost by definition, Chinese culture must have been a factor in mainland China's failure. Culture is complex. Complexities are fun to talk about, but, when it comes to action, simplicities are often more effective. John Cowperthwaite was a master of simplicities.
Yeung Way Hong, publisher of Hong Kong's most popular Chinese language magazine, Next, has suggested erecting an heroic-scale statue of John Cowperthwaite (To be paid for by private subscription, thank you).
In less than one lifetime, Hong Kong created the environment of comfort and hope that every place on earth has been trying to achieve since the days of homo erectus in the Olduvai Gorge. And Hong Kong's reward? It has been made a "Special administrative Region" of the People's Republic of China.
At midnight on June 30,1997,the British sold six million five hundred thousand souls. No,gave them away. Nearly a Londonful of individuals, supposed citizens of the realm that invented rights, equity, and the rule of law, got Christmas-goosed in July. Hong Kong was on the cuffo, a gimme, an Annie Oakley for the mainland Communists. At the stroke of 12, I was watching TV in my Hong Kong hotel room. The handover ceremony was being broadcast from the hideous new convention center three-quarters of a mile away.
A British military band wearing hats made from Yogi and Smokey and Poo played: "God save the Queen." The Union Jack went south. Prince Charles had just given a little speech. "We shall not forget you, and we shall watch with closest interest as you embark on this new era of your remarkable history." In other words, "Goodbye and bolt the door, bugger you."
Outside, on my hotel-room balcony, the floodlit convention center was all too visible on the harbor front, looking like somebody sat on the Sydney Opera House. Directly below the balcony, a couple thousand not very noisy protesters stood in the rain in Statue Square, looking like somebody was about to sit on them. They were listening to democracy advocate Martin Lee. Mr. Lee was a member of the first freely elected legislature in the history of Hong Kong. And the last. It was unelected at midnight. Mr. Lee was speaking without a police permit. And speaking. And speaking. Every now and then a disconsolate chant of agreement rose from the crowd. Mr. Lee kept speaking. No one bothered to stop him.
Back inside, on the TV, president of China Jiang Zemin was speaking, too-introducing himself to his instant, involuntary fellow countrymen with a poker-faced hollering of banalities in Mandarin.
"We owe all our achievements most fundamentally! To the road of building socialism! With Chinese characteristics! Which we have taken!!!" he said, interrupting his speech with episodes of self-applause, done in the official politburo manner by holding the hands sideways and moving the fingers and palms as if to make quacky-quacky shadow puppets.
The big men on the convention-center podium-Jiang, Prime Minister Li Peng, and Foreign Minister Qian Qichen-seemed to have made their own suit jackets at home. Tung Chee-hwa, the Beijing-appointed chief executive of the new Hong Kong Special Administration Region, came to the microphone next, making pronouncements that combined a political-reeducation-camp lecture ("Our thoughts and remembrance go, with great reverence, to the late Deng Xiaoping)"with a Dick Gephardt speech ("We respect minority views but also shoulder collective responsibility. We value plurality but discourage open confrontation. We strive for liberty but not at the expense of blah,blah,blah.").
This also was said in Mandarin, which is not the native tongue in Hong Kong. In fact, no one uses it there, and having the HK chief executive lipping away in an alien lingo was like hearing an American politician speaking meaningless, bizarre...it was like hearing an American politician speak.
Outside on the balcony again (covering the Hong Kong handover required a journalist to give his utmost-what with AC-chilled binocs fogging in the tropical heat and a minibar running low on ice)? I watched the HMS Britannia pull away from the convention-center dock. A non-descript, freighter-shaped vessel painted white, Brittania looked to be more an unfortunate cruise-ship choice than a royal yacht. It steamed through Victoria Harbour, hauling butt from now foreign waters. On board were the last British governor of Hong Kong, the aristocrat currently known as Prince of Wales, any number of other dignitaries, and, I hope, a large cargo of guilt.
Would the limeys have skipped town if Hong Kong was full of 6.5 million big, pink, freckled, hay-haired, kipper-tucking, pint-sloshing, work-shy, layabout, Labour-voting¡Well, in that case¡
Maybe Hong Kong just was not one of those vital, strategic places worth fighting for-like the Falklands. Maybe the Poms only intervene militarily where there's enough sheep to keep the troops entertained.
Why did not the British give back some other island to China. Britain, for example. This would get the U.K. back on a capitalist course-Beijing being more interested in moneymaking than Tony Blair. Plus, the Chinese have extensive experience settling royal-family problems.
Or why did not Britain sell England to Hong Kong? Hong Kong can afford it, and that way anyone who was worried about the fate of democracy in the Special Administrative Region could go live in Sloane Square, and the rest of England could be turned into a theme park.
There's quaint scenery, lots of amusements for the kiddies ("Changing of the Wives") at Buckingham Palace is good), and plenty of souvenirs, such as, if you donate enough money to the right political party, a knighthood.
But, this didn't happen. And the people of Hong Kong (unless they were very rich) were stuck in Hong Kong. Sure, they had British passports. But, these were "starter passports"-good for travel to...Macao.
Of course, they could have gotten passport upgrades. For a million Hong Kong dollars, they could have gone to Toronto. Very fun.
Oh, lets give the limeys a break. It's not as if we Americans gave a damn, either. We could have threatened to stealth-bomber the Red Chinese or, for that matter, Margaret Thatcher when she started gift-wrapping Hong Kong for Deng Xiaoping. We could have told China to go kiss Boris Yeltsin's ass if it wanted to be a most-favoured nation. And we could have handed out 6.5 million green cards.
Imagine 6.5 million savvy, hardworking citizens-to-be with a great cuisine. What a blessing for America. And how we would hate them. Pat Buchanan would hate their race. The AFL-CIO would hate their wage rate. The NAACP would hate their failure to fail as a minority. And, Al Gore would hate 6.5 million campaign contributors who didn't have to sneak pro-free-trade money to the Democratic National Committee anymore but could go right into polling booths and vote Republican.
The surrender of Hong Kong was a shameful moment. But if you missed Martin Lee's soggy peroratition in Statue Square, you might never have known it.
The stock market was still on a swell, up 30 percent from a year before, with bulging, steroidal gains in the so-called red chips, the mainland holding companies promoted by the ChiComs. Trade and foreign investment were at unexampled heights. No one was running from the real-estate market. Tiny condominiums in unglamorous districts were going for $500,000.
A five-day weekend was declared, though no one closed shop. Retail sales were 30 percent to 40 percent above the usual. Important people had flown in from all over the globe. I saw the back of Margaret Thatcher's head in my hotel lobby.
On July 1("Dependence Day," I guess) people who should have known better sent messages of cheer, fulsomely printed in the South China Morning Post:
"China has made important commitments to maintain Hong Kong's freedom and autonomy".-- Bill Clinton
"Hong Kong can be an ever better place in which to live and work."-- Madeleine Albright
"I feel pretty relaxed about it."-- George Bush
Skyrockets splattered in the evening skies. The British Farewell Ceremony for 10,000 invited guests had featured not only bands from the Scots Guards, Black Watch, and various other men without pants, but also from Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and (I saw this) a dance troupe with performers dressed as giant deutsche marks, enormous circuit boards, and huge powdered wigs. At the other end of the lifestyle continuum, there was a One Nation Under a Groove 11 p.m to 9 a.m rave.
In between were thousands of parties, from impromptu expat booze-ups in the Wan Chai lap-dancing district to dinners with courses incalculable by abacus at Hong Kong mogul David Tang's China Club.
Here the whole food chain was ravaged, from depth of sea slug to bird's nest height. The China Club is decorated colonial style in big-wallah mahogany, except the walls are covered with Mao-era socialist-realism art, and the waiters and waitresses are dressed as Red Guards. Meaning? I have no idea.
I also have no idea why my hotel kept giving me handover gifts: a bottle of champagne, a coffee-table book about Hong Kong titled Return to the heart of the Dragon (less ominous-sounding in Chinese, I gather), and a silver mug bearing crossed British and Chinese flags, and inscribed:
Resumption of Sovereignty
To China
1 July 1977
Hong Kong
To which I intend to have added:
Bowling Tournament
2nd place Whimsical handover T-shirts, many making hangover puns, were for sale around the city, as such humorous novelties as "Canned Colonial Air-Sealed before June 30th." I suppose the same sort of things were being marketed in Vienna in 1938: "Last Yarmulke before Anschluss," and so on. Maybe in occupied France, too: "Vichy Water," ha-ha.
There were grumbles in Hong Kong, of course, such as dissidentish shows by artists objecting to censorship, in case there was going to be any.
Martin Lee and his fellow Democratic Party members gave a glum press conference, at which they promised to keep representing their electoral districts, even if they didn't anymore. And a certain amount of fretting in the press was seen, but mostly of the affectless editorial page kind that mixes After Genocide-Wither Rwanda? With After Gretzky-Wither Hockey? Hong Kong on the whole, was awfully darn cheerful.
Why weren't 6.5 million people more upset about being palmed off to an ideology-impaired dictatorship that has the H-bomb? Even one of Taiwan's top representatives in Hong Kong was quoted saying, "As a Chinese person, I think it is a good thing that Hong Kong is coming back to China." Chiang-Kai-shek, please.
There is the colonialism issue.
How did the Chinese of Hong Kong really feel about being ruled by England? It's a complex question. Or, as a number of Chinese people said to me, "no, it isn't." Being an American, an Irish-American to boot, I was maybe, told certain things that the English did not hear. "We hate the English," for instance.
When a Chinese friend said that, I said, "wait a minute was in Vietnam not long ago, and nobody seemed to hate Americans. If the Vietnamese can forgive the Americans for napalm, carpet bombing, agent orange, and what-all, surely you can forgive the English for the odd opium war and some 'Land of Hope and Glory' karaoke"
"It's a different thing," said my friend. "You just killed the Vietnamese; you never snubbed them."
Hong Kong's people are also realists. Calling in to complain on the Larry King Show wasn't going to do much. Thus the tepid response to the handover's endless television and newspaper "streeters", the interviews with random locals: "Excuse me, I understand you're about to get secret police in your neighbourhood. Would you care to tell the world how much you hate Jiang Zemin?"
There are real reasons for Hong Kong's realism. In 1945 the population of the territory was only 1.2 million. Today, the whole city is filled with refugees and children of refugees. Until 1981,Hong Kong had a "touch base" asylum policy where, basically, anyone from the mainland who made it to downtown could stay.
The Chinese who fled the civil war, the communist takeover on the mainland, and the lunatic deprivations and slaughters that followed know that there's only one real safe haven: money.
And they are serious about making it.
I've spent a pleasant weekend (so far) with The Aggie at Chilifest, the two-day country music event in College Station.
Haven't seen a single Che Fashion Victim in two days.
I found it on Samizdata:
"And, make no mistake, Marxists did lose a big argument, one we now know as 'the 20th century'."
- Will Wilkinson
Poster came from here.
Marvel Variants descended from his corporate Valhalla a few days ago and visited my office.
He noticed this book on one of the shelves:
I mentioned that it's a useful corrective to anyone still enthralled with the idea that the State can be all, provide all, and cure all. The book nails down the Marxist Body Count at 100 million. Mr. Variants opined that he generally doesn't give Marxist apologists the time of day. But I seem to be surrounded by them. And hell, I occasionally need somebody to talk to.
There are living, breathing people on this planet, individuals who can feed themselves without making a mess, who still believe in the legend of a benevolent Fidel Castro. I've been in homes that have copies of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book on the shelf, a relic from the owner's "hippie days". My little brother, a history perfesser, has casually mentioned that he worked with a couple of Marxist academics at a Methodist university in Tennessee. Yeah, you expect to encounter some tweedy academics floundering around in the post-Marxist mist within some Ivy League Hot Houses and Reservations, but at Methodist schools in Tennessee? In the year 2011? WTF??? What color are the skies in their worlds?
I've never understood why Nazi sympathizer idiots were treated with far more scorn than Marxist idiots. The Commie Death Camps achieved ten times the death rate as their fascist competitors. What gives?
Here's a partial listing of the worst of the Marxist Apologists and their output, along with the work of a few others who've documented their delusions. I'm posting this mostly so I can find this stuff later. We owe this guy for putting it all together.
The pieces with an asterisk are the "denial" works. The rest are commentary.
*************************************************
General
Leopold Labedz, Of Myths and Horrors [PDF]
In the aftermath of the Cambodian killing fields, a leading Sovietologist shows how the “progressive” left supported totalitarian terror and mass slaughter while cultivating a self-image of pristine innocence. Wojciech Roszkowski, In the House of the Hanged Man [PDF]
A leading Polish intellectual addresses the standard excuses offered by apologists for communist crimes.
Individuals
Neil McInnes, The Long Goodbye
Paul Hollander, A Man of Faith
Communist historian Eric Hobsbawm openly justifies the murder of millions.
Leszek Kolakowski, My Correct Views About Everything
The brilliant philosopher mercilessly exposes New Left guru E. P. Thompson.
Anders Lewis, An Ugly Anti-American
The totalitarian propaganda of New Left historian Gabriel Kolko.
Ian Williams, Ramsey Clark, The War Criminal’s Best Friend
Michelle Malkin, Ramsey Clark’s Bloody Resume
The ultra-leftist former US Attorney-General defends every anti-American mass murderer he can find.
Gerard Jackson, How the Diseased Left See the World
Apt comment on the communist apologetics of Philip Adams.
- Soviet Apologists:
-- Bolshevik Apologists
Richard Pipes, 1917 and the Revisionists
“Revisionist” historians portrayed Lenin’s coup as a popular revolution.
-- Terror-Famine Deniers
James Mace, Letter to the Editor of Ukraine Report
The history of attempts to deny Stalin’s responsibility for the terror-famine.
Roman Serbyn, The Last Stand of the Ukrainian Famine-Genocide Deniers
Robert Conquest, James Mace et al., Replies to Jeff Coplon [PDF]
Taras Kuzio, Denial of Ukrainian Famine and Terror Continues Unabated
David Marples, Debating the Undebatable? Ukraine Famine of 1932-33
Gijs Kessler, Mark Tauger on the 1932-33 Famine
Mark Tauger denies that there was criminal intent – even though Stalin seized grain from the starving, deprived villages of supplies, prevented foreign assistance and deliberately trapped the victims!
-- Sovietologists
* J. Arch Getty, Letter to the London Review of Books [PDF]
Paul Mitchinson, Another Kremlin Apologist?
Gabriel Schoenfeld, Review of The Road to Terror [PDF]
The discredited historian J. Arch Getty once reduced the death toll to thousands.
Misunderstood Stalin “Killed Only 1.3m”
Oxford University Press gives the deniers a platform.
George Walden, Back to the Soviet Future
Moshe Lewin’s attempt to rehabilitate the Soviet dictatorship.
-- Extremists
How Shaw Defended Stalin’s Mass Killings
George Bernard Shaw denied the Great Famine and justified the Great Terror.
Jason Maoz, The Abominable Izzy Stone
Radical journalist I. F. Stone was notorious for his Soviet sympathies.
Rocco DiPippo, A Scholar For Stalin
On the denial propaganda of English professor Grover Furr.
Ronald Radosh, The Left’s Lion
Historian Eric Foner regrets the demise of the USSR.
* William Blum, The Wonderful World of Anti-Communism |
- China Apologists
Alan H. Ryskind,
Red Refugees Refute Old China Hand [PDF]
Edgar Snow was undoubtedly the worst of the Maoist sycophants.
* William Hinton,
On the Role of Mao Zedong
William Hinton was a lifelong champion of the Maoist revolution.
Exchange: What We Know About China and How We Know It [PDF]
Werner Cohn,
Human Rights in China
Keith Windschuttle,
Mao and the Australian Maoists
The role of academics in defending one of history’s bloodiest tyrants.
Bryan Caplan,
China, India, and Maoist Apologists
Answering the arguments of the tyrant’s apologists.
Livingstone Compares Poll Tax Riots to China Massacre
Editorial,
Ditch Livingstone
Far-left London Mayor Ken Livingstone belittles the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Jamyang Norbu,
Acme of Obscenity
Eviscerates Tom Grunfeld’s pseudo-scholarly tract on the Chinese communist record in Tibet.
- North Korea Apologists
Anders Lewis,
Useful Idiot
Historian Bruce Cumings is the premier academic apologist for the North Korean mass murderers.
- North Vietnam/Viet Cong Apologists
-- Pre-War Bloodbath Deniers
Anita Lauve Nutt,
On the Question of Communist Reprisals in Vietnam [PDF]
Refutes various arguments by left-wing deniers of North Vietnam’s
land reform bloodbath.
* Gareth Porter,
The Myth of the Bloodbath: North Vietnam’s Land Reform Reconsidered [PDF]
The key bloodbath-denial work, relying on official communist propaganda sources.
Robert F. Turner,
Expert Punctures “No Bloodbath” Myth: Gareth Porter Refuted [PDF]
Point-by-point refutation of Porter’s thesis. Porter could barely speak the language he accused others of mistranslating!
Hoang Van Chi,
Reply to Gareth Porter [PDF]
An early historian of the land reform rebuts the charge that he was a CIA propagandist.
-- War Crimes Deniers
* Gareth Porter,
The 1968 “Hue Massacre” [PDF]
* Edward Herman and Gareth Porter,
The Myth of the Hue Massacre [PDF]
Porter and Herman denied the Viet Cong massacre of thousands in the South Vietnamese city of Hue - even though the perpetrators
repeatedly admitted their responsibility.
Robert F. Turner,
The Fonda Fallacies
Robert J. Caldwell,
She’s Still Hanoi Jane
On Jane Fonda’s conduct during the Vietnam War.
-- Post-War Bloodbath Deniers
* Sophie and Paul Quinn-Judge,
Viet Nam: Reunification and Reconciliation [PDF]
Far-leftists applaud the North Vietnamese conquest of South Vietnam and paint a glowing picture of the concentration camps.
Stuart Elliott,
Americans Still Traveling Down the Ho Chi Minh Trail
Sickening report on the conduct of Gareth Porter,
Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk and other “apologists engaged in the systematic cover-up of genocide and gross violations of human rights.”
*
Vietnam: A Time For Healing and Compassion [PDF]
Far-leftists deny the post-war
bloodbath and
reprisal policy, urging that the dictatorship “should be hailed for its moderation and for its extraordinary effort to achieve reconciliation among all of its people.”
*
The Truth About Vietnam [PDF]
Far-leftists justify the concentration camps and boast that “Vietnam now enjoys human rights as it has never known in history.”
Gerard Jackson,
The Lies and Hypocrisy of the America-Hating John Pilger
Mark D. Tooley,
Hanoi Lifted Me
On the shameful conduct of the National Council of Churches in present-day Vietnam.
- Khmer Rouge Apologists
Sophal Ear,
The Khmer Rouge Canon 1975-1979: The Standard Total Academic View on Cambodia [PDF]
Important study documenting the far-left academic campaign to defend the Khmer Rouge during the horrors in Cambodia. The intellectual deniers of mass murder included Gareth Porter, George Hildebrand, Malcolm Caldwell,
Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman.
Michael Ezra,
The SWP and the Eichmanns of Cambodia
Stuart Elliott,
From Collective Guilt to Collective Silence
The far left’s early reaction to “one of the most brutal bloodbaths of modern history.”
*
The Thoughts of Ben Kiernan [PDF]
The shocking record of scholar Ben Kiernan, who supported the Khmer Rouge during the slaughter and then defended the brutal dictatorship imposed by the Vietnamese communists. Kiernan has been
described as “poacher-turned-gamekeeper in the field of genocide.”
*
Human Rights in Cambodia: 1-10 11-25 26-40 41-56 57-70 [PDF]
Congressional hearings in which David Chandler expressed agnosticism about the bloodbath reports and Gareth Porter openly denied them. Porter’s performance was considered so disgraceful that one Senator compared him to apologists for Nazism.
Torben Retboll and John Barron,
Exchange: Cambodia [PDF]
A typical example of the far left’s attempt to discredit John Barron and Anthony Paul, the two journalists who published the first full investigation of the slaughter.
Bernard Levin,
The Evil That Men Do and the Men Who Call it Good [PDF]
Michael Ezra,
Malcolm Caldwell: Pol Pot’s Apologist [PDF]
Andrew Anthony
Lost in Cambodia: The Life and Death of Malcolm Caldwell
British academic Malcolm Caldwell, the most notorious intellectual champion of the Khmer Rouge, was murdered while visiting Pol Pot.
* Richard Dudman,
Pol Pot: Brutal, Yes, But No Mass Murderer [PDF]
Radical journalist Richard Dudman, who had accompanied Malcolm Caldwell to Cambodia, was still downplaying the crimes more than a decade later.
- Frelimo Apologists
Paul Bogdanor,
Western Leftists and Third World Sadists
A leading activist in Britain’s Stop the War Coalition celebrates a brutal dictator in Mozambique.
- Cuba Apologists
-- Myths
Norman Luxenburg,
Castro’s Effect on Life in Cuba [PDF]
Alfred G. Cuzan,
The Undisputable Achievement of the Cuban Revolution [PDF]
Kirby Smith and Hugo Llorens,
Renaissance and Decay [PDF]
Refutations of the propaganda fantasies about stunning advances in welfare under the communist dictatorship.
Lawrence Solomon,
Bad Cuban Medicine
Lawrence Solomon,
Fidel Batista!
Lawrence Solomon,
Cuba’s Cruel Joke
Investigative series reporting mass poverty under the communists.
Jay Nordlinger,
The Myth of Cuban Health Care
Humberto Fontova,
Moore’s Pro-Castro Propaganda Hides Cuban Suffering
On the filmmaker-clown’s grotesque propaganda documentary Sicko.
-- Mythmakers
Jeff Jacoby,
Castro’s Cheerleaders
The seemingly endless list of apologists for the Castro dictatorship.
Alvaro Vargas Llosa,
The Killing Machine: Che Guevara, From Communist Firebrand to Capitalist Brand
The absurd distortions of the Guevara cultists.
*
Human Rights and Cuba
Liars pretend that “there has not been a single case of
disappearance,
torture or
extra-judicial execution” in Cuba. Signatories include Harold Pinter, Tariq Ali, José Saramago, Rigoberta Menchu, Nadine Gordimer, Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover and Ramsey Clark.
Michael C. Moynihan,
Still Stuck on Castro
Fawning media coverage of Castro’s retirement.
- Sandinista Apologists
Alfred G. Cuzan,
Tourists Duped by Sandinistas [PDF]
Alfred G. Cuzan,
The Latin American Studies Association vs. the United States: The Verdict of History [PDF]
Radical leftists, having learned nothing, flocked to worship another dictatorship.
Alfred G. Cuzan,
The Nicaraguan Election [PDF]
Robert S. Leiken
et al.,
The Nicaraguan Tangle: Another Exchange
Sandinista apologists fell over themselves to assert the authenticity of the rigged 1984 election.
- Ethnic Cleansing Apologists
Marko Attila Hoare,
Nothing is Left
Marko Attila Hoare,
The Left Revisionists
Marko Attila Hoare,
Srebrenica and the London Bombings: The “Anti-War” Link
On the far-left campaign to whitewash the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia. Deniers discussed include
Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, Michael Parenti, Michel Chossudovsky, Diana Johnstone, John Pilger and Harold Pinter.
Balkan Witness,
Bosnia /
Kosovo
Articles debunking far-left deniers such as
Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, Diana Johnstone, Ramsey Clark, John Pilger and William Blum.
Alan Kocevic,
Proving Genocide in Bosnia
Diana Johnstone’s denial arguments answered.
- Rwanda Genocide Deniers
Oliver Kamm,
After Srebrenica Denial: Where Next?
Gerard Caplan,
The Politics of Denialism: The Strange Case of Rwanda
Marko Attila Hoare,
Srebrenica Deniers Get Their Mucky Paws on Rwanda
Noam Chomsky’s former coauthor Edward Herman and his new sidekick David Peterson have compounded their denials of the Srebrenica massacre by claiming that the Rwanda genocide never happened.
- Baathist Apologists
Charles M. Brown,
Confessions of an Anti-Sanctions Activist
How Western far-leftists became propaganda tools of the Baathist mass murderers.
* John Pilger,
Crime Against Humanity [PDF]
* William Blum,
Great Moments in the History of Imperialism
Respect Watch,
Galloway Backs Saddam’s Bloody Deputy
Far-leftists argue that Iraqis were better off under Saddam Hussein and champion his murderous foreign minister.
Oliver Kamm,
Propagandists For Barbarism
Trotskyists line up to celebrate the terrorist mass murderers in Iraq.
- 9/11 Deniers
Panoply of the Absurd
“Judeosphere,”
Conspiracy Theorists of the World, Unite!
The lies of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists.
Mark Roberts,
Loose Change Creators Speak [PDF]
Mark Roberts,
Loose Change Second Edition Viewer Guide
“Internet Detectives,”
Loose Change
“Archontan,”
Michael Moore on Afghanistan
The filmmaker-clown explains his doubts about bin Laden’s guilt.
Media
James Crowl,
Concealing the Famine, 1932-1934 [PDF]
James Mace,
Collaboration in the Suppression of the Ukrainian Famine
Publications such as the
New York Times and
The Nation covered up the worst peacetime mass murder in European history.
Media Research Center,
Back to the “Peaceable” Paradise: Media Soldiers For the Seizure of Elian
The successful campaign to return a child to slavery after his mother gave her life to free him.
- New York Times
Marco Carynnyk,
The New York Times and the Great Famine
James Mace,
A Tale of Two Journalists [PDF]
Jacob Heilbrunn,
The New York Times and the Moscow Show Trials [PDF]
America’s premier newspaper whitewashed the Ukrainian genocide and the Soviet purges.
Carl D. McMurray and Charles W. Dunn,
Castro and the New York Times: An Image in Transition [PDF]
The newspaper’s disastrous misreporting of Cuba.
* Sidney Schanberg,
Indochina Without Americans: For Most a Better Life [PDF]
This infamous commentary was published days before the Khmer Rouge victory.
- The Nation
* Alexander Cockburn,
A Million Here, A Million There
Cockburn’s infamous column claiming that “Stalin did not plan or seek to accomplish genocide.”
* Editorial,
Blood-Bath Talk [PDF]
* Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman,
Distortions at Fourth Hand
The Nation defends the Khmer Rouge.
Abraham H. Foxman,
Letter to The Nation
The Nation is caught running an ad for Holocaust deniers.
- Monthly Review
Oliver Kamm,
Divers Deniers
Michael Ezra,
Leftists For Genocide Denial
This longstanding American Marxist journal has published apologetics for Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Milosevic and the Rwandan mass murderers.
- Z Magazine
Oliver Kamm,
Chomsky’s Outlets
Kamm exposes a Holocaust denier at
Z Magazine.
Balkan Witness,
Debate: The Srebrenica Massacre
Z Magazine contributor Edward Herman denies the Srebrenica massacre, provoking outraged replies.
Balkan Witness,
Edward Herman on the Lists of Missing at Srebrenica
Evidence refuting Z Magazine’s denial of the Srebrenica massacre.
- The Guardian
* Seumas Milne,
Catastroika Has Not Only Been a Disaster For Russia
* Seumas Milne,
The Battle For History
* Seumas Milne,
Communism May Be Dead, But Clearly Not Dead Enough
“Harry’s Place,”
So Goodbye Then, Seumas Milne
Denier stands up for Stalin, laments the demise of the USSR and thanks communist
mass murderers for their “genuine
idealism and
commitment.”
* John Gittings,
A Great Leap Backward?
Denier tries to rehabilitate Mao.
* Seumas Milne,
Why the US Fears Cuba
* Brian Wilson,
Revolution Revisited
* Richard Gott,
The Future of the Revolution in the Hands of Teenage Pump Attendants
Deniers champion the Castro dictatorship.
* Jonathan Steele,
Darfur Wasn’t Genocide and Sudan is Not a Terrorist State
Denial of the genocide in Darfur.
- New Statesman
* Christopher Hitchens,
Iraq Flexes Arab Muscle
The Baathist mass murderers were praised in Britain’s major leftist magazine.
* Neil Clark,
Milosevic: Prisoner of Conscience
Portrays the Serbian ex-dictator as a persecuted socialist dissident.
* James Sparshatt,
The Communist Heaven That is Cuba
* John McDonnell,
Why Cuba is a Beacon
The titles say it all.
Institutions
- Institute for Policy Studies
* Gareth Porter,
Congressional Testimony on Cambodia [PDF]
The IPS defends the Khmer Rouge.
Joshua Muravchik,
“Communophilism” and the Institute for Policy Studies [PDF]
Detailed analysis of the far-left think tank’s disgraceful record of support for totalitarian mass murderers.
- National Lawyers Guild
Jesse Rigsby,
NLG: The Legal Fifth Column
The totalitarian ideology of the National Lawyers Guild.
Shawn Macomber,
North Korean Lawyers Guild
Shawn Macomber,
Real Revelations
Michael P. Tremoglie,
The NLG: Shilling For Stalinists
The NLG’s revolting apologetics for North Korea.
- Amnesty International
Christopher Archangelli,
Amnesty For Iraq
Argues that the leftist “human rights group” suppressed Baathist atrocities so that it could concentrate on denunciations of America and Britain.
* Canon Paul Oestreicher,
A Line Has Been Crossed
The former UK chairman of Amnesty International compares Middle East terrorists to French Resistance heroes and justifies the killing of Israelis, Americans and Britons.
Ted Lapkin,
Defining Terror
The secretary-general of Amnesty International whitewashed jihadist massacres.
Editorial,
“American Gulag”
The secretary-general of Amnesty International asserts that American detention facilities for captured terrorists are no different from the Gulag.
Patrick Devenny,
Amnesty: For North Korea
Amnesty International downplayed the North Korean horrors.
Jamie Weinstein,
Amnesty Irrational
In just one year, “Amnesty produced more country reports on the United States than on Cuba, Syria, North Korea, the Palestinian Authority, China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia combined.”
Does this seem like overkill, to continue throwing up Red Scare warning flags this late in the game? Maybe so. But check out this recent statement by someone named Simon Winchester, remarking on the recent death of Kim Jong-Il:
India’s attempt to go it alone failed. So, it seems, has Burma’s. Perhaps inevitably, North Korea’s attempt appears to be tottering. But seeing how South Korea has turned out - its Koreanness utterly submerged in neon, hip-hop and every imaginable American influence, a romantic can allow himself a small measure of melancholy: North Korea, for all its faults, is undeniably still Korea, a place uniquely representative of an ancient and rather remarkable Asian culture. And that, in a world otherwise rendered so bland, is perhaps no bad thing.
Yeah. They're still out there. Come back, Joe McCarthy!! We still need you !!
