Simon does a wonderful, and incredibly painstaking, job of linking to all blogs Asian. I have always thought, though, that he didn't report enough from the dark side of the moon, the lunatic fringe, the countries too poor and censored to have blogs. So little information comes from these places, that it's just bound to lead to misperceptions, slick generalizations, and outright abuse. In short, perfect material for the blogosphere!

Fortunately, The New Republic's T.A.Frank, and his Today in Despotism column (subscription-required), is not bound by the blogoshere's rigid, majoritarian code of conduct. North Korea and Burma are such wacky places, and since I can't access the KCNA in South Korea, I appreciate the chance to subvert the censors, with and without a proxy.

First of all, the 15th volume of the Dear Leader's Collected Works is due soon. God, Kim is a phenom, ain't he? Why doesn't he just blog? Oh well, some of us get Blogger and others become despots!

This week's KCNA bashed Japan and its pretensions to world-leader status. According to a column quote,

Japan's attempt to buy a responsible position at the UN is little short of a clumsy bid of an illiterate country peddler bereft of any reason and people's mindset. Japan would be well advised to properly know where it stands and liquidate its crime-woven past as early as possible so as to be trusted by the international community.

the KCNA's version of legal behavior stops at ofensive militarism, as opposed to the nukes, drugs, and counterfeiting Pyongyang markets. No mealy-mouthed diplomatic-speak about imperialism and expansionism; Japan is a crook! Speaking of Allied revanchist policies at Versailles, J.M. Keynes, in "The Capacity of Germany to Repay Reparations" (1919), argued, "In the great events of man's history, in the unwinding of the complex fates of nations Justice is not so simple. And, if it were, nations are not authorized, by religion or natural morals, to visit on the children of their enemies the misdoings of parents or of rulers." It's a long time past just to get over the Japan WW2 reparations issue. Millions of North Koreans will be thankful for the precedent when, after unification, vengeful South Koreans, hunt down ideological foes and property-holders to settle generations-old scores.

In Burma (Myanmar, whatever), there's a real need for spare parts and poets. And, just to punctuate how some governments feel about the IAEA's new Peace Prize, there's this ditty by Byan Hlwar:

The bestowing of the Peace Prize Is not the granting of licence To scheme to interfere In enclaves and communities of others Or to act untowardly. The possession of that Nobel Peace Prize Is not to be interpreted As whatever the receipient does To be accepted by the world as all fair. If receipients of the Nobel Peace Prize Are discovered as working to destroy a nation And clearly discerned by Alfred He surely will turn in his grave Remorseful that what he had Initiated and established Had gone wrong He would only lament regretfully.

Who said political poetry can't rock?

Cross-Posted at Barbarian Envoy