Tea at Trianon: The Madness of North Korea

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, May 29, 2014

The Madness of North Korea

From The Guardian:

There is no way of checking on the narrative, but Jang's account looks like the most telling yet of the madness of North Korea. Jang fled the country in 2004, ending up in South Korea, after a series of events sparked by a friend, to whom he had given a book purloined from Office 101, leaving it on a train where it was found by police. So this book is, in a sense, 10 years out of date. But there is no reason not to think that the system Jang describes remains in place today including the harrowing details of public executions, his own escape story via China and the North Korean women sold there "as pigs", plus an important and convincing account of how the Dear Leader conspired to wrest power from his ageing father, Kim Il-sung, and the score settling that followed. This seems to have been replicated by recent events with fresh executions at the top, including that of Jang Song-Thaek, the uncle of Kim Jong-un, and his entire extended family. (Read more.)