 Sunday, July 11, 2004
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Admittedly the odds that this is authentic are miniscule, but the family of Charles Jenkins, the husband of Japanese abductee Hitomi Soga who has recently been allowed to leave North Korea, received this on their web site:
"Jong il" Kim KP "Soon I will get Mr.Jenkis back to the United States only your nation promises NOT TO ATTACK to DPRK and to leave US Army, Air force and Navy from South Korea!"
Now - to digress - many are in favor of bringing Jenkins back to the US to face trial for desertion; the Marmot's alternative suggestion ("let him rot in North Korea") are harsh.
I don't agree.
First, it's not at all clear that Jenkins really defected. His family recalls him returning home from leave "proud" of wearing the uniform. And they argue that the notes allegedly left behind (the DoD seems to have misplaced them) were signed "Charles" -- not at all characteristic of how his family called him. There is at least room to suspect that Jenkins, like his wife Soga, was kidnapped into the North. If this is the case then North Korea should answer for it.
Second, if he did defect, it's worth asking why. Jenkins disappeared in 1965, as Park Chung-hee's repressive dictatorship was at its height -- in South Korea -- and as the morally problematic Vietnam war was reaching its own apogee. Did a young Jenkins -- like "Reds" John Reed a half-century before -- naively think that North Korea truly was a workers' paradise?
As I wrote in a comment to the Marmot's entry, as I enter my 50's I find myself more and more tolerant of stupid mistakes made by youngsters in their twenties. (John Walker Lindh is another example.) Jenkins has spent forty years now in North Korea, which ought to be punishment enough -- let's let he and his wife and children be, in peace.
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Miami Herald:
The small circle of senior civilians in the Defense Department who dominated planning for postwar Iraq failed to prepare for the setbacks that have erupted over the past two months.
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I just bought a new Belkin USB 2.0 hub for my home machine. The seven-port baby is practically a featherweight as you might expect.
But the damn power supply! Why is it SO FREAKING HARD to deliver power to these little devices? Why can't we just standardize (yeah, standardize!) on -- oh, I don't know -- 9 volts or 12 volts at 400 milliamps or some such, and call it a day? Then -- oh then! -- we could have power hubs! I wouldn't have a big black heavy box with more wires getting tangled up, one for every damn little gizmo I hook up to my computer.
What the hell is so hard about that? Apple's iPod has an light, easy, internal power supply. Why can't Belkin? Or Linksys. Or Netgear. Or HP with its printers. Or every speaker manufacturer.
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Jun Aug
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