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[Before we all get caught up the euphoria over the coming Vilsack juggernaut in his drive to to raise his profile enough so that Hillary will consider him for cabinet post...I mean to win his party's nomination. Let's review the reality of the situation: 1) He's Tom Vilsack 2) He narrowly defeated a real weirdo to get the job 3) He defeated a lobbyist from Des Moines that didn't have full party support for his re-election and 4) He's Tom Vilsack. But hey, if Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan can run for President why not right? and of course Tom has his long list of notable acheivements to tout....(cue cricket noise). Apparently the bar to run for Presisent is as low as your self-respect can go. Besides on the bright-side maybe there will be less media a-holes trooping around Iowa for the very overrated Iowa Caucus.]Vilsack plans trip to N.H. fundraiser
By TIM HIGGINSREGISTER STAFF WRITERJuly 30, 2005
Gov. Tom Vilsack's Labor Day weekend plans include a trip to a state frequented by presidential hopefuls: New Hampshire.In a move that furthers speculation that he will run for president in 2008, Vilsack will headline a New Hampshire Democratic Party fundraiser Sept. 4.New Hampshire traditionally plays an important role in determining who wins a political party's nomination for president. The state's primaries are held just days after Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucuses.
Vilsack, who says he won't run for a third term as Iowa governor, has been taking more and more steps seen as signaling a possible 2008 presidential bid. Earlier this week, he became chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, a job held by Bill Clinton before his successful bid for White House.But Vilsack shies away from such talk. Vilsack spokesman Matt Paul said, "We were invited to the event. We accepted the invitation." Paul stressed that the trip was to support New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch.
Vilsack was invited to speak at the Seacoast Democratic Coalition's summer picnic at Hampton Falls, 40 miles north of Boston. Up to 125 Democrats are expected to attend the event to raise money for the local political party.Gary Patton, town Democratic committee chairman for Hampton Falls, said local folks are excited to hear from Vilsack."If you name six people who are likely candidates for the Democratic nomination, (Vilsack) is going to be among those people," said Patton. ". . . Anybody who crosses over the borders of New Hampshire 31/2 years before the next presidential election has that in mind."
Gasp! "Underwear Bandit" has priors[It appears that the aptly named Rusty Wayne Sills has had a history of stealing unmentionables/delicates going back to the Carter Administration. Young Rusty had his first arrested for this back in 1979. To be followed up with another arrest in 1983 and 1999 for the same offense. Although we was "well known" to Des Moines Police and he had these priors through the years Rusty was still able to gain employment in the area as a Apartment maintenance man "who used master keys to enter apartments".Wait! did you hear that.....it's the collective ewwwwwwwwww! going around Des Moines from apartment dwelling women from 1979 to Present.Best line from the story: "Police had so many potential victims at the station in October 1979 that one detective observed: "This looks like a tryout for 'Charlie's Angels.' " Of course if something similar was said today like "It's looks like an "Entourage" audition that Detective would face dismissal and have to consent to years of re-education from the Leftist Mother Hens to keep his job.]D.M. man charged yet again in theft of panties
Rusty Sills has been linked to a series of such pilferings dating to 1979.
By REGISTER STAFF WRITERJuly 30, 2005
Rusty Wayne Sills is known in police circles less as a career thief and more for what he likes to steal.Sills, 46, was arrested by West Des Moines police this week for allegedly stealing hundreds of pairs of women's underwear and shoes.It's not the first time Sills has been accused of pilfering panties and filching footwear.It was 1979 when police first explained to a nervous public that Sills had an apparent fetish that he satisfied through burglary.
Police had so many potential victims at the station in October 1979 that one detective observed: "This looks like a tryout for 'Charlie's Angels.' "Sills was convicted of burglary in Polk County in 1980 and again in 1983. In the spring of 1999, he was charged with stealing shoes from female students at Iowa State University. ISU police found 185 pairs of shoes and more than 30 single shoes in Sills' Des Moines apartment. He was convicted of theft.
Sills was arrested again in August 1999 after a series of West Des Moines break-ins. Police said he was an apartment building maintenance worker who used master keys to enter apartments.Police confiscated about 500 pairs of shoes, as well as underwear, negligees and magazines. Sills pleaded guilty of burglary. He served two years and nine months of a 10-year sentence and was released in 2002.Sills was booked Thursday at the Polk County Jail on charges of fifth-degree theft. Police said he was recorded on a surveillance camera in January as he took undergarments from the laundry room at Sun Prairie Apartments, 6699 Vista Drive, West Des Moines.
Police searched Sills' residence, 1426 York St., in Des Moines and confiscated hundreds of women's undergarments, plus socks and shoes.West Des Moines Police Lt. Jeff Miller said potential victims will be shown photographs of seized items. If they see something familiar, a detective will show them the articles."We have bags and bags of these items," Miller said.
[Why am not surprised that Des Moines "Redstar" Alumnus Dennis Ryerson is involved in this? Lest you have any doubt about the Register/Gannet's commitment to "tolerance" and diversity of opinion here's the ironic hypocracy for all to see. I will remember this the next time I have to see the next banal piece in the Register by one of their incompetent, college paper-level "journalists" chastising Iowans for their lack of diversity and acceptance of others (which is almost daily) or the astute analysis of the racial breakdown of State Fair attendees]
Christians Need Not Apply By Patrick J. Ashby
James Patterson never thought he would lose his job for expressing his opinion. As an editorial writer for The Indianapolis Star, his job was precisely that writing what he thought. Over the past 16 years, Patterson voiced his opinion through editorials in The Star on a wide array of topics, ranging from politics and elections to business and education. But when he added a dash of religious sentiment to a recent editorial concerning U.S. troops in Iraq, the message proved to be a recipe for his termination.
The incident began in March 2003 when The Star, formerly a conservative, Christian-leaning paper, was bought by Gannet, America's biggest newspaper group in terms of circulation. Gannet, which also owns USA Today, is now trying to "provide more balance to [the] opinion page columns in The Star [to] reflect a strong and consistent philosophical view without being overtly partisan," according to the new executive editor, Dennis Ryerson.
As such, Patterson believes he was on Ryerson's hit list as the result of an editorial in which he urged readers to "pray for the safety of our soldiers" After the editorial, titled "Pray for peace in this time of war," was published, Ryerson handed Patterson sub-par performance ratings, dissected his writing, and forced him to receive pre-approval for future editorial topics. Patterson was eventually fired and escorted from the building, simply for asking Americans to keep U.S. soldiers in their thoughts.
Patterson, who is a Christian, did not ask the people of Indianapolis to pray to any specific deity, nor did he stipulate the manner in which the praying should take place. With no specific religion identified in the article, any number of readers could interpret the invocation in a variety of ways, rendering the column harmless and appropriate.
Even though the editorial is not overtly Christian, a closer look at common threads at The Star reveals an anti-Christian trend.
Lisa Coffey, who also wrote editorials for The Star, was removed from the editorial board and demoted to the copy desk after Ryerson refused to run a series of pieces she wrote about the dangers of sodomy. (The series was not an open outcry against homosexuality, but an analysis of the dangers associated with sodomy.) After 14 years with the paper, Coffey resigned in October 2003 following a heated e-mail exchange in which she and Ryerson engaged in a debate over Christianity.
This past June, Patterson and Coffey filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Indianapolis against The Star, alleging, among other things, religious discrimination. They claim they were terminated because of their views on Christianity, including a Biblical stance on homosexuality.
"Religious discrimination in the workplace" usually does not invoke notions of prejudice against Christians. Most often, the phrase summons thoughts of a Jewish employee scheduled to work on Saturdays, a Muslim kept from breaks for prayer, or a Sikh banned from wearing his turban. Since Christianity is the most popular religion in America, and because Christian beliefs were used to create the nation's founding documents, it is widely assumed Christians are free from discrimination. After all, non-Christians are confronted with Christian phrases each time the President ends a speech, the "Pledge of Allegiance" is recited, or American currency passes hands. Even when someone sneezes.
But Christians are often subjected to occupational religious discrimination in America. Christianity, the most widely held belief in the country, is often discouraged and suppressed in the workplace, motivating some employees to take legal action.
Employees like AT&T Broadband's Albert Buonanno. In January 2001, Buonanno refused to sign a "certificate of understanding," in which each employee would agree to "respect and value the differences among all of us."
In accordance with his Christian faith, Buonanno believed he could not respect or value homosexuality, which he sees as a sin. After deciding the employee certificate contradicted his religion, Buonanno snubbed the document and was fired.
In April 2004, Buonanno sued, and defeated, his employer in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado for $146,269 in lost salary, benefits, and punitive damages. While a spokesperson for AT&T said the court ruling undermined the company's effort "to foster diversity and nondiscrimination in the workplace," Judge Marcia Krieger decided that AT&T could have better respected Buonanno's beliefs in accordance with the Civil Rights Act.
Since Buonanno's religion prevents him from respecting or valuing homosexuality, he should have been asked to simply tolerate the lifestyle of his co-workers and refrain from infringing upon their rights. In this scenario, no employee is forced to forego his religion or lifestyle for another.
But the anti-Christian sentiments do not end there.
The University of Colorado at Boulder may not invite Professor Phil Mitchell to teach next year because he is an evangelical Christian. Mitchell has been at the university for more than 20 years and was named "Teacher of the Year" in 1998. His required reading, "In His Steps" by Charles Sheldon, has received the most ardent criticism from his colleagues. Mitchell assigns the 1897 book to his students to "reveal Protestant liberal values at the turn of the century."
This trend should come as no surprise to regular TAE readers. In the September 2002 issue, which discusses a lack of political diversity on college campuses, TAE reported that 28 professors at the University of ColoradoÂ’s history department were registered with a political party of the Left, as opposed to one professor on the Right. (The campus-wide total for professors at the university was 116 on the Left, five on the Right.)
TAE also reported, in the June 2003 issue, the story of Patrick Cubbage, an honor guard at a New Jersey veterans cemetery, who was fired for offering blessings to a widow as he handed her the folded U.S. flag. Cubbage, a Vietnam veteran, was told by his supervisor that saying "God bless you and your family" would offend people of a non-Christian faith. On October 31, 2002, Cubbage offered those blessings to a widow—after he cleared the phrase with a member of the funeral procession—and was let go. While state officials ordered Cubbage reinstated, he had to reapply for his job as a rookie and promise to refrain from offering blessings at future ceremonies.
While each minority religion should be tolerated in the workplace, let us not undermine the Christian majority. Trampling on the rights of Christians in the workplace does not secure rights for non-Christians.
Editorials invoking prayer for troops are reasonable. Columns discussing the dangers of sodomy are reasonable. Refusing to respect and value, but agreeing to tolerate, homosexuality is reasonable. Assigning Christian books and offering political diversity is reasonable. And thanking a family for the ultimate sacrifice to their country with a blessing is certainly reasonable.
What is unreasonable is that any American should lose his job simply for practicing the Christian faith.
[Is it really necessary to have such a quaint nom de guerre for this freak? Allow me to wiki the headline for clarity "Sick Deviant Arrested"]
(the Suspect)Police nab underwear bandit, find hundreds of stolen pairsBy REGISTER STAFF REPORTSJuly 29, 2005
West Des Moines police say a man arrested on theft charges Thursday had hundreds of pairs of stolen women's underwear in his Des Moines apartment.Rusty Wayne Sills, 46, is charged with fifth-degree theft. Police say Sills took undergarments and socks from the laundry area of Sun Prairie Apartments, 6699 Vista Dr., West Des Moines. The alleged theft was caught on videotape. Investigators searched Sills’ residence, 1426 York St., in Des Moines. Confiscated were hundreds of pairs of women’s undergarments, socks and shoes.West Des Moines Police Department want the public’s help in having the items identified by victims.Anyone with information can contact Detective Dan Paulson at 222-3329
[Dr. Hanson is spot on as usual, especially the critique about seeming "unfathomable" To borrow the Navy SEAL's motto- "Never Fight Fair" to the enemy we need to appear to be aggressive and irrational. It frightens them, it puts them on the defensive, it dampens their sprit, which ultimately leads to their defeat. As usual I always end up feeling smarter each time I read his work]
Reformation or Civil War?The jihadists cannot be reasoned with, only defeated.
Remember how shortly after September 11 Mohammed Atta’s lawyer father sounded worried in his cozy apartment? He stammered that his son did not help engineer the deaths of 3,000 Americans. According to him, the videos of the falling towers were doctored. Or maybe the wily Jews did it. Why, in fact, he had only talked to dear Mohammed Junior that very day, September 11. Surely someone other than his son was the killer taped boarding his death plane.
Apparently Mohammed el-Amir was worried of American retaliation — as if a cruise missile might shatter the very window of his upper-middle class Giza apartment on the premise that the father’s hatred had been passed on to the son.
He sings a rather different tune now. Mohammed el-Amir recently boasts that he would like to see more attacks like the July 7 bombings of the London subway.Indeed, he promised to use any future fees from his interviews to fund more of such terrorist killings of the type that his now admittedly deceased son mastered. Apparently in the years since 9/11, el-Amir has lost his worry about an angry America taking out its wrath on the former Muslim Brotherhood member who sired such a monster like Atta.
Yet one wonders at what he is saying now, after the worst terrorist attack in Egyptian history at the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Egypt finally is suffering from the same terror and mayhem that its radical sons like the pampered Atta and Dr. Zawahiri unleashed on so many poorer others. The Mubaracracy may not take kindly to Atta’s father endorsing such carnage from his pleasant apartment that is incinerating those other than Jews and Westerners — and threatens to ruin the nation’s entire tourist industry.
The father of Mohammed Atta is emblematic of this crazy war, and we can learn various lessons from his sad saga.
First, for all their braggadocio, the Islamists are cowardly, fickle, and attuned to the current political pulse.
When the West is angry and liable to expel Middle Eastern zealots from its shores, strike dictators and terrorists abroad, and seems unfathomable in its intentions, the Islamists retreat. Thus a shaky al-Amir once assured us after 9/11 that his son was not capable of such mass murder. But when we seem complacent, they brag of more killing to come. Imagine an American father giving interviews from his apartment in New York, after his son had just blown up a shrine in Mecca, with impunity promising to subsidize further such terrorist attacks. If our government allowed him to rant and rave like that in such advocacy of mass murder, then we would be no better than he.
The other lesson is that the war the Arab autocracies thought was waged against the West by their own zealots has now turned on them. The old calculus of deflecting their failures onto us by entering in an unspoken unholy agreement with the Islamists is coming to an end. George Bush’s “You are either with us or against us” is belatedly arriving to the Middle East’s illegitimate regimes.
And the governments of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other autocracies are in worse shape than we are. At least we are promoting democratic alternatives to their dictatorships, in the hopes that when such strongmen fall, there is another choice besides the jihadists. But the autocrats themselves have nowhere to go. Since they never allowed a loyal democratic opposition, there is only the unsavory choice of either liberalizing while they are in the middle of a bombing war with extremists — or the fate of the shah.
Quite simply, Islam is not in need of a reformation, but of a civil war in the Middle East, since the jihadists cannot be reasoned with, only defeated. Only with their humiliation, will come a climate of tolerance and reform, when berated and beaten-down moderates can come out of the shadows.
The challenge for the Middle East is analogous to our own prior war with Hitler who sought to redefine Western culture along some racial notion of a pure Volk long ago unspoiled by Romanizing civilization. Proving the West was not about race or some notion of an ubermenschen ruling class did not require an “internal dialogue,” much less another religious reformation, but the complete annihilation of Nazism.
So it must be with the latest fad of radical Islamicism. Contrary to popular opinion, there has not been a single standard doctrine of hatred in the Middle East. Radical Islam is just the most recent brand of many successive pathologies, not necessarily any more embraced by a billion people than Hitler’s Nazism was characteristic of the entire West. In the 1940s the raging -ism in the Middle East was anti-Semitic secular fascism, copycatting Hitler and Mussolini — who seemed by 1942 ascendant and victorious. Between the 1950s and 1970s Soviet-style atheistic Baathism and tribal Pan-Arabism were deemed the waves of the future and unstoppable. By the 1980s Islamism was the new antidote for the old bacillus of failure and inadequacy. Each time an -ism was defeated, it was only to be followed by another — as it always is in the absence of free markets and constitutional government. Saddam started out as a pro-Soviet Communist puppet, then fancied himself a fascistic dictator and pan-Arabist nationalist, and ended up building mosques, always in search of the most resonant strain of hatred. Arafat was once a left-wing atheistic thug. When the Soviet Union waned, he dropped the boutique socialism, and became a South-American-style caudillo. At the end of his days, he too got religion as the Arab Street turned to fundamentalism and Hamas threatened to eat away his support.The common theme is not the Koran, but the constant pathology of the Middle East — gender apartheid, polygamy, religious intolerance, tribalism, no freedom, a censored press, an educational system of brainwashing rather than free inquiry — that lends itself to the next cult to explain away failure and blame the West, which always looms as both whore and Madonna to the Arab Street.Iraq has inadvertently become the battleground of a long overdue reckoning, a bellwether of the future of the Middle East. If the constitutionalists win, then the jihadists will be in retreat and there will be at last a third way between radical Islam and dictatorship.
We must now step up our efforts. At home we should no more tolerate the expression of Islamic fascism on the shores of the West than Churchill would have allowed Hitler Youth to teach Aryan global racial superiority in London while it was under the Blitz.
When the extremists are repatriated to the Middle East, and understand they are never again welcome in Europe and America, millions of others will know the reason why — and decide by their own attitudes to the killers in their midst whether they themselves wish ever again to visit, work, or be educated in the West.If the terrorists are not isolated and ostracized at home, then any Western government would have to be suicidal to admit any more young males from the Islamic Middle East. Indeed, if the Iranian public or the Saudis, or Egyptian citizenry do not begin creating a climate hostile to radical Islam, then they de facto can only become the enemies of the United States in a war that they can only lose.
To fathom our success abroad, read what the Islamic websites — or Mohammed Atta’s own father — now say about the evil Americans and George Bush, who, they lament, have set Muslim against Muslim in Lebanon, Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine. The foreign contagion of democracy and reform, despite the best efforts of both the mullah and the strongman, now infects the Arab Street and it seems to be driving bin Laden and Bashar Assad alike crazy.
Iraqi guardsmen are fighting al Qaedists as Afghans die in firefights with Taliban remnants. Note well that at the loci of American democratizing presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, there are few local Iraqis and Afghans — as there are few Turkish or Indian Muslims — who are eager for global jihad against the West. The killers instead flock from elsewhere to those new nations to stop the experiment before it spreads. Give dictatorial Pakistan or Egypt billions, and we get ever more terrorists; give the Iraqis and Afghans their freedom and their citizens are unlikely to show up in London and Madrid blowing up civilians, but rather busy at home killing jihadists.In this Mexican standoff, the Islamists, dictators, and democratic reformers are waging a struggle for the hearts and minds of the Middle East. We have had our own similar three-way shootout in the West between fascists, Communists, and liberal republics. Backing Communists to stop fascists or helping autocrats fight Communists were stop-gap, wartime exigencies — never solutions in themselves. The Middle East does not need a reformation in Islam as much as a war to eradicate a minority of religious fanatics who are empowered through their blackmail of dictatorships — and to do so in a way that leads to constitutional government rather than buttressing a police state. So far governments have chosen appeasement and bribery — if at times some torture when demands for investigations rise — and so time is running out for the entire region. There are a million Muslims in Israel — the mother of all evils in the radical Islamic mind. Yet very few have turned themselves into global jihadists, and hundreds are not blowing themselves up daily in Tel Aviv, much less in London or New York. Why? Perhaps the twofold knowledge that they have rights in Israel not found in the Arab world that they don’t wish to forfeit, and they are surrounded by people who would not tolerate their terrorism.
For the first time, Afghans and Iraqis have a stake in their own future — and know the United States is at last on the right side of history and intends to stay and win by their side. So we press on.
[I have long maintained that the Jihadists are akin to a violent street gang that takes over the neighborhood, as long as the residents are afraid for their lives and their families lives they (justifiably so) will not speak out. That is why as democratic reforms are enacted in Iraq and Afghanistan the Jihadists must ensure that it spreads no further, their very existance is at stake if other countries would follow. Essentially they now have a 2-front war- against the US and it's allies and against the people. I honestly believe they are accelerating their own death spiral, the more they kill civilians the quicker their demise will come. Mr. Ibrahim's editorial is heartening for those that have supported the Iraq war through it's ups and downs.]
Opinion: The Muslim mind is on fireYoussef M. IbrahimJuly 26, 2005DUBAI -- The world of Islam is on fire. Indeed, the Muslim mind is on fire. Above all, the West is now ready to take both of them on. The latest reliable report confirms that on average 33 Iraqis die every day, executed by Iraqis and foreign jihadis and suicide bombers, not by US or British soldiers. In fact, fewer than ever US or British soldiers are dying since the invasion more than two years ago. Instead, we now watch on television hundreds of innocent Iraqis lying without limbs, bleeding in the streets dead or wounded for life. If this is jihad someone got his religious education completely upside down. Palestine is on fire, too, with Palestinian armed groups fighting one another - Hamas against Fatah and all against the Palestinian Authority. All have rendered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas impotent and have diminished the world's respect and sympathy for Palestinian sufferings. A couple of weeks ago London was on fire as Pakistani and other Muslims with British citizenship blew up tube stations in the name of Islam. Al Qaeda in Europe or one of its franchises proclaimed proudly the killing of 54 and wounding 700 innocent citizens was done to "avenge Islam" and Muslims. Madrid was on fire, too, last year, when Muslim jihadis blew up train stations killing 160 people and wounding a few thousands. The excuse in all the above cases was the war in Iraq, but let us not forget that in September 2001, long before Iraq, Osama Bin Laden proudly announced that he ordered the killing of some 3,000 in the United States, in the name of avenging Islam. Let us not forget that the killing began a long time before the invasion of Iraq. Indeed, jihadis have been killing for a decade in the name of Islam. They killed innocent tourists and natives in Morocco and Egypt, in Africa, in Indonesia and in Yemen, all done in the name of Islam by Muslims who say that they are better than all other Muslims. They killed in India, in Thailand and are now talking of killing in Germany and Denmark and so on. There were attacks with bombs that killed scores inside Shia and Sunni mosques, inside churches and inside synagogues in Turkey and Tunisia, with Muslim preachers saying that it is okay to kill Jews and Christians - the so called infidels. Above all, it is the Muslim mind that is on fire. The Muslim fundamentalist who attacked the Dutch film director Theo Van Gogh in the Netherlands, stabbed him more than 23 times then cut his throat. He recently proudly proclaimed at his trial: "I did it because my religion - Islam - dictated it and I would do it again if were free." Which preacher told this guy this is Islam? That preacher should be in jail with him. Do the cowardly jihadis who recruit suicide bombers really think that they will force the US Army and British troops out of Iraq by killing hundreds of innocent Iraqis? US troops now have bases and operate in Iraq but also from Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman. The only accomplishment of jihadis is that now they have aroused the great "Western Tiger". There was a time when the United States and Europe welcomed Arab and Muslim immigrants, visitors and students, with open arms. London even allowed all dissidents escaping their countries to preach against those countries under the guise of political refugees. Well, that is all over now. Time has become for the big Western vengeance. Visas for Arab and Muslim young men will be impossible to get for the United States and Western Europe. Those working there will be expelled if they are illegal, and harassed even if their papers are in order. Airlines will have to right to refuse boarding to passengers if their names even resemble names on a prohibited list on all flights heading to Europe and the United States. What is more important to remember is this: When the West did unite after World War II to beat communism, the long Cold War began without pity. They took no prisoners. They all stood together, from the United States to Norway, from Britain to Spain, from Belgium to Switzerland. And they did bring down the biggest empire. Communism collapsed. I fear those naïve Muslims who think that they are beating the West have now achieved their worst crime of all. The West is now going to war against not only Muslims, but also, sadly, Islam as a religion. In this new cold and hot war, car bombs and suicide bombers here and there will be no match for the arsenal that those Westerners are putting together - an arsenal of laws, intelligence pooling, surveillance by satellites, armies of special forces and indeed, allies inside the Arab world who are tired of having their lives disrupted by demented so-called jihadis or those bearded preachers who, under the guise of preaching, do little to teach and much to ignite the fire, those who know little about Islam and nothing about humanity. Youssef M. Ibrahim, a former Middle East correspondent for The New York Times and energy editor of the Wall Street Journal, is managing director of the Dubai-based Strategic Energy Investment Group
Great series of articles on The American Enterprise website about North Korea. Read all of the collected articles at www.taemag.com Dr. Vollertsen has published his harrowing accounts of life inside North Korean a few years ago, I can't imagine it has improved. It is clearly a living hell that has persisted for decades on a large scale. It's more than a little embarrassing that the United States has not confronted these psychos in a serious manner. Remember the affect of bold and unfathomable moves has on your opponent.
A Depraved Society We Can’t Ignore By Norbert VollertsenThe authors in this issue of The American Enterprise paint a sometimes terrifying picture of North Korea. Kim Jong Il’s mad regime has never formally renounced its pledge to swallow up the southern half of the Korean peninsula, even if it takes a devastating conventional war to do it. And its recent nuclear announcements have given citizens of Tokyo—possibly even Los Angeles—cause for serious concern.
It’s clear the United States and the world have to do something to end, or at least control, this potential nuclear nightmare. But the real problem of North Korea goes beyond the crazy bluster of its leaders, the appeasement of the South Koreans, the lack of cooperation from China, and the other subjects discussed on pages 36-45. There’s a human element that sometimes gets lost in the Washington debates. Very few Westerners understand what life is really like for the average North Korean, because the country’s dictatorship keeps all conduits of information and trade sealed as tight as a drum.
I know, because I’ve witnessed the stunning reality of daily existence in the North.
In July 1999, I traveled to North Korea as a member of a German medical aid organization offering humanitarian medical assistance. I remained in North Korea for 18 months, and worked in ten different hospitals around the country.
Early on during my stay, I was summoned to treat a factory worker who had been badly burned by molten iron. A colleague and I volunteered to donate our own skin tissue for a skin graft—in order to help the patient, and also as a gesture of friendship with ordinary North Koreans. For this action, we were nationally acclaimed by the state-run media and awarded the Friendship Medal, making us the only two Westerners ever to receive this high honor. Along with this recognition came two fringe benefits that would later prove very valuable: a “VIP” passport, and a driver’s license. These allowed me to travel to many areas of North Korea inaccessible to foreigners, and even to its ordinary citizens.
In my role as an emergency doctor, I also visited a number of other medical institutions besides the ten hospitals and three orphanages to which I was assigned. In every locale, I witnessed horrific conditions. There were no bandages, no scalpels, no antibiotics, no operating rooms—only ramshackle wooden beds supporting starving children waiting to die. Doctors used empty beer bottles as vessels for intravenous dripping. Safety razors were used as scalpels. I even witnessed an appendectomy performed without anesthesia. Meanwhile I found out, through my own investigations, about government storehouses and diplomatic shops carrying large stocks of bandages and other medical supplies for privileged classes.
There are two worlds in North Korea: One is the world of senior military officers, Communist Party members, and the country’s ruling elite. They enjoy a lavish lifestyle, fancy restaurants, diplomatic shops with European foods, nightclubs, even a casino.
The world for ordinary people in North Korea is completely different. In their world, one can see young children, undersized, undernourished, mute, with sunken eyes and skin stretched tight across their faces, wearing uniform blue-and-white-striped pajamas. Anyone who’s seen pictures of Dachau or Auschwitz would find the scene distressingly familiar.
Most of the patients in the hospitals suffer from psychosomatic illnesses. They’re worn out by compulsory drills, innumerable parades, mandatory assemblies beginning at the crack of dawn, and constant, droning propaganda. They are tired and at the end of their tether. Clinical depression is rampant. Alcoholism is common. Young adults have no hope, no future. Everywhere you look, people are beset by anxiety.
Everyday workers and farmers are starving and dying. Unwarranted arrest and detention are common, and one can only imagine what the conditions are like in the so-called “reform institutions,” where entire families are imprisoned when any member does or says something to offend the regime. These camps are closed to all foreigners, even to stringently non-confrontational organizations like the International Red Cross. If the main “medical” diagnosis of North Korea’s sick society is fear and depression brought about by a horrendous government, what is the cure?
The only way to rescue the people of North Korea from obscene poverty and hardship is to let the world know the real state of this country. In the fall of 2000, using the unprecedented freedom granted me when I was awarded the Friendship Medal, I guided a group of journalists around Pyongyang who had arrived to accompany Madeleine Albright, then Secretary of State. While traveling on a highway north of the capital, we came across a soldier lying dead in the middle of the road. Over the objections of my government minder, we stopped to investigate. The signs that the soldier had been tortured were obvious.
In response, I handed over a statement of humanitarian principles to the North Korean government. My government minder at that time—who had been given the responsibility of controlling my activities closely—was abruptly exchanged. I never saw him or his family again.
My behavior offended the party leaders, who of course prevented me from attending at any more hospitals. My car was sabotaged, and finally I was forced to leave the country. Against the wishes of the North Korean authorities, I went directly to Seoul instead of going home to Germany, where I spoke to international journalists.
I interviewed hundreds of North Korean defectors at the Chinese-North Korean border and elsewhere, in order to learn more about the cruel realities of life in their home country. Former prisoners of North Korean concentration camps told me about mass executions, torture, rape, murder, and other crimes against humanity—all performed as punishment for “anti-state criminal acts.”
The international community, working closely with the media, must put serious pressure on the North Korean regime to open up to the outside world and save the lives of their ordinary citizens. As a German born after World War II, I know all too well the guilt of my grandparents’ generation for remaining silent while the Nazis committed indescribable crimes. I believe it is my duty as a human being to expose the crimes and tyranny of the North Korean regime.
I have visited the United States, Japan, and Europe with my findings, and I will continue to travel the world for the express purpose of exposing the criminality of the secret state of North Korea. My hope is that someday soon I will have much company, and that a resulting wave of international pressure will lead to the reform of this depraved and mad corner of humanity.
