North Korea is a giant concentation camp where hunger and repression reign supreme under megalomaniac Kim Jong-il

North Korea is a one party state led by megalomaniac Kim Jong-il and the Korean Workers Party. It is essentially a Stalinist dictatorship underpinned by a most extreme form of Marxist-Leninism.
There is no freedom of assembly or speech. Freedom of religion is outlawed. It has been replaced by worship of a mad man. Human rights have been trampled upon. There are thousands of public executions annually. Murder, rape, forced abortions and medical experimentation are other tools of repression used by the regime. Millions have fled, and thousands have died trying to escape North Korea.It is estimated that there are at least 150,000 people held in prison and detention camps.

Aid agencies estimate that 13 million people in North Korea — more than half the population — are malnourished. Two million people have starved to death.

The North Korean government has claimed that military expenditure for 2009 will amount to 15.8% of GNP. This is a gross underestimate. The real level of military expenditure is believed to be at least 25% of GNP. The country has the fifth largest army in the world. The regime has assembled a massive surveillance network within the country-similar to that operated by the Stasis in East Germany- designed to cow its citizenry. The Communist regime pursues an ambitious missile and nuclear programme designed to blackmail its neighbours whilst its citizens undergo the most intolerable privations. The giant military machine mops up scarce financial resources whilst millions suffer hunger and malnutrition. This is the legacy of the world's newest Stalin.

Russian invasion of Georgia is a PR disaster-Has a new Cold War begun?

Today Russian forces overran the strategic Georgian city of Gori and are attacking on two fronts. Georgian forces have have fallen back and are preparing to defend the capital Tbilisi.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the original conflict Russia is now seen as an agressor by many political observers.

Russia's ambassador to Nato declared that Mr Saakashvili "is no longer a man that we can deal with". Dmitri Rogozin said: "He must be punished for breaching international law. He is responsible for many war crimes." Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, said that Russia would continue its military operation until "its logical end".

Obviously Russia wishes to topple the democratically elected leader of Georgia. This has very serious implications for world peace. Will Ukraine and Poland now face similar punishment? If so the West cannot stand idly by. Russia is bitterly opposed to closer links between the US and many former Communist East European countries. Putin wishes to send a threatening message to the leaders of those countries: You can have closer links with the US at your peril. Russia could quite easily sleep walk into a world war. Is that what Putin wants?

This invasion of Georgia brings to mind Russian tanks crushing the Dubcek regime in Czechoslovakia. Of course the Hungarian uprising and the workers uprising in East Berlin were also smashed by Russian tanks.
The invasion reawakens memories of the worst excesses of Stalinism. Russia has scored a huge PR own goal. Grave doubt must exist about the durability of Russian democracy.
Western European countries which had been moving towards closer economic links with Russia will now take stock.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline which is operated by BP and which transports one million barrels a day from Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean was targeted by Russian bombers. The £2 billion pipeline running through Georgia is the only major conduit for Central Asian resources not under Russian control and is of vital importance to Western Europe.

The Kremlin under Vladimir Putin, Russia's former president and now prime minister, has used gas exports to Europe as a tool of foreign policy. In 2007 Russia cut off oil supplies to Belarus therby affecting supplies to Germany and Poland amongst other neighbouring countries. In 2006 Russia demanded a hike in gas prices from Ukraine. Western Europe gets 25 percent of its gas from Russia with 80 percent of that coming via the pipeline through the Ukraine.
Thus Russia has the ability to blackmail Western Europe using energy as a tool. Increasingly Russia is seen as untrustworthy.

The invasion of Georgia further cements this view. Russian leaders need to rethink their strategy. Of course a newly confident Russia buoyed up by huge oil revenues may choose to ignore world opinion.
If so it is on a course to political isolation. A new Cold War may already have commenced.

Implacable opponent of Stalinism and Nobel Prize Winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn dies

Sadly today has seen the death Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who exposed Stalin's prison camp system in his novels and spent 20 years in exile. He has died at 89. Solzhenitsyn, Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi have been especially courageous in their opposition to repressive regimes.

Born in Kislovodsk, Russia, in 1918, Solzhenitsyn was the son of an army officer. The Nobel laureate studied Mathematics at Rostov State University. He also studied at Moscow Institute of Philosophy Literature and History.
During World War Two he saw action with the Red Army and was involved in major action at the front, and was twice decorated. He was arrested and found guilty of anti-Soviet propaganda for criticising Joseph Stalin in a letter to a friend. In 1945 he was sentenced to eight years in prison camps and later exiled from Russia to Kazakhstan. He was struck down by cancer but recovered.

Eventually reprieved he returned to European Russia.
Solzhenitsyn taught at a secondary school during the day, but spent his nights secretly engaged in writing. He described his labour camp experience in the 1962 novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Clandestine copying had seen the distribution of copies of A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich among Moscow's intellectuals for months when Anna Akhmatova, Russia's greatest living poet at the time, called Solzhenitsyn. "You know that in a month you will be the most famous person on earth?" she said. "I know," he replied. The First Circle was released in 1968. The novel details the life of the occupants of a gulag prison camp located in the suburbs of Moscow. He also wrote the Cancer Ward.

Despite winning the 1970 Nobel prize for literature, Soviet authorities stripped him of his citizenship and exiled him in 1974 after his novel The Gulag Archipelago was printed in the West. This exposed the horrors of the Soviet gulag system (Soviet forced labour and concentration camp system). Solzhenitsyn eventually settled in the United States, returning to Russia in 1994 following the collapse of the Soviet Communist system. In 2007, the one-time exile received the highest Russian government award for his work in the humanities - the Russian State Prize.

Obama wants to be like FDR, Truman and Kennedy and shows his ignorance of history

Obama should return to school and study history before stating that he wished to be like FDR and Truman. FDR did not meet with Hitler and Hideki Tojo Prime Minister of Japan. Both men ended up having to conduct massive wars that outlasted their Presidencies. In the case of FDR it was World War Two. Truman pursued World War Two with vigour. He authorized the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki . The Korean War was Truman's War . It outlasted his Presidency. He failed to seek Congressional approval for the War. JFK escalated US involvement in Vietnam. And had Kennedy lived he would have had the Iron Curtain to contend with.