By Jerry Seper–The Washington Times

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit Thursday against “America’s toughest sheriff,” Joe Arpaio in Phoenix, accusing him, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and the county of refusing to fully cooperate in a federal investigation into allegations that he and his deputies are guilty of racial discrimination.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, is the latest chapter in a bitter feud between Justice and Sheriff Arpaio, who is accused of failing to turn over documents sought since March 2009 that federal prosecutors say comply with its probe of alleged discrimination, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and English-only policies in his jails that discriminate against those with limited English skills.

Sheriff Arpaio, during a press conference in Phoenix, described the lawsuit as “harassment,” saying thousands of pages of documents have already been turned over by his office to federal prosecutors.

“These actions make it abundantly clear that Arizona, including this sheriff, is Washington’s new whipping boy. Now it’s time to take the gloves off,” he said.

“As for today’s lawsuit against my office: These people in Washington met with my attorneys only a few days ago. And in that meeting, Washington got our cooperation; they admitted they already have thousands of pages of the requested documents; and they were given access to interview my staff and get into my jails. They smiled in our faces and then stabbed us in the back with this lawsuit.”

Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez, who heads the Civil Rights Division for the Obama administration, said the sheriff’s office declined repeated requests to turn over documents or meet with investigators.

“The actions of the sheriff’s office are unprecedented,” Mr. Perez said. “It is unfortunate that the department was forced to resort to litigation to gain access to public documents and facilities.”

But Sheriff Arpaio’s attorneys, Robert Driscoll and Asheesh Agarwal, both former deputy attorneys general in the Civil Rights Division at Justice during the Bush administration, said federal investigators were politically motivated, citing a news conference in March at which Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was quoted as saying he expected the Justice inquiry to “produce results.”

“While we have no quarrel with the assistant U.S. attorneys handling the investigation, the attorney general’s comments appear to violate federal regulations, departmental policy and state ethical rules designed to ensure the fairness of criminal investigations,” Mr. Agarwal said.

Mr. Driscoll said the DOJ suit speaks loudly by what it does not say.

“It does not allege that Sheriff Arpaio or the MCSO have discriminated against anyone because the DOJ, after 18 months of soliciting allegations against Sheriff Arpaio, has come up empty,” he said.

The lawsuit is the newest twist in a continuing battle involving Arizona officials and the federal government. The Justice Department already has filed a suit challenging a law passed in Arizona giving state and local police the right to arrest anyone reasonably suspected of being an illegal immigrant, claiming the legislation is pre-empted by federal law.

The Justice Department, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, has maintained that immigration laws are a federal responsibility.

In a statement, the Justice Department said Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in programs that receive federal funds and also requires grant recipients to cooperate with investigations of discrimination by providing access to documents, facilities and staff.

The department said the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office signed contractual assurance agreements as a condition of receiving federal funds and promised it would cooperate with investigations of alleged discrimination. It said the lawsuit was filed after the department exhausted all cooperative measures to gain access to the documents and facilities, as part of its investigation.

“Since March 2009, the department has attempted to secure voluntary compliance with the department’s investigation,” it said. “MCSO’s refusal to cooperate with the investigation makes it an extreme outlier, and the department is unaware of any other police department or sheriff’s office that has refused to cooperate in the last 30 years.”

The sheriff, first elected in 1992 and re-elected four times since, said the Obama administration “intended to sue us all along, no matter what we did to try to avert it,” adding that “it’s time Americans everywhere wake up and see this administration for what it really is: calculating, underhanded at times and certainly not looking out for the best interests of the legal citizens residing in this country.”

State Sen. Russell Pearce, the Republican lawmaker who authored the immigration bill, called the Justice Department’s actions a “witch hunt.”

“This is the game that’s played,” he said. “They couldn’t find any violations … that’s why it’s broad, that’s why they’re very vague about what they want. It doesn’t take a very high IQ to figure out what’s going on with these folks.”

The Justice Department investigation has focused on allegations that Sheriff Arpaio and his deputies engaged in “discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures,” along with allegations that his jail discriminated against Hispanic inmates. The inquiry also has targeted allegations that bilingual jail guards were required to speak to inmates only in English.

About $113 million the Maricopa County government received from the federal government last year accounted for about 5 percent of the county’s $2 billion budget. The lawsuit listed $16.5 million of funding provided the sheriff’s office through several programs.

Last year, the federal government stripped Sheriff Arpaio of his special power to enforce federal immigration law, although he continued to conduct law enforcement sweeps through the enforcement of state immigration laws.

The sheriff’s office has said half of the 1,032 people arrested in the sweeps have been illegal immigrants.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, President Barack Obama’s controversial former pastor, referred to people who wrongly believe Obama is Muslim as “psychopaths” during a fiery sermon Sunday in Arkansas.

In his sermon at New Millennium Church in Little Rock, Wright criticized supporters of the Iraq war and defended former state Court of Appeals Judge Wendell Griffen for speaking out against it. Griffen serves as the church’s pastor.

Wright’s only reference to Obama came when he compared Griffen’s opponents to those who incorrectly think Obama is Muslim. The president, whose full name is Barack Hussein Obama, is Christian.

“Go after the military mindset … and the enemy will come after you with everything,” Wright told the packed church.

“He will surround you with psychopaths who will criticize you and ostracize you and put you beyond the pale of hope and say ‘you ain’t really a Baptist’ and say ‘the president ain’t really a Christian, he’s a Muslim. There ain’t no American Christian with a name like Barack Hussein,’” he added.

A poll released this month found that nearly one in five people, or 18 percent, said they thought Obama was Muslim, up from the 11 percent in March 2009. The proportion who correctly said he was Christian was 34 percent, down from 48 percent in March of last year. The poll, conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center and its affiliated Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, surveyed 3,003 people.

Obama cut ties with Wright in 2008, after Wright’s more incendiary remarks hit the Internet during the presidential election. At a National Press Club appearance in April 2008, Wright claimed the U.S. government could plant AIDS in the black community, praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrahkan and suggested Obama was putting his pastor at arm’s length for political purposes while privately agreeing with him.

Obama denounced Wright as “divisive and destructive” and left Wright’s church in Chicago.

Griffen lost a re-election bid for the Arkansas Court of Appeals in 2008, after high profile battles with a state judicial panel over the rights of judges to speak out on political issues. Griffen was elected in May to a judicial post in Pulaski County, the state’s most populous county that includes Little Rock.

Griffen said he invited Wright to speak at his church as part of a monthlong focus on the relationship between faith and the community.

Wright defended Griffen’s outspokenness on political issues, saying it showed he was willing to speak out even if it would cost him politically.

Wright’s sermon focused on the Old Testament story of the prophet Elisha thwarting an attack by the Aramean Army. Wright repeatedly made references to the war in Iraq and suggested parallels with the Biblical story.

“What was his motivation? Elisha had embarrassed him, like Saddam had embarrassed George Herbert Walker,” Wright said, referring to the former president.

Wright spoke as Arkansas Republicans hope to capitalize on Obama’s unpopularity in the fall election. Obama has not visited the state since 2006, and lost its six electoral votes in the 2008 election.

Obama’s close comrade Bill Ayers

By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.

WASHINGTON — They are beginning to die out, or at least to retire. So long, suckers. Surely the Clintons, Senator Jean-François Kerry, Al-Gore, and dozens of others who presented themselves as reasonable alternatives to the radicals of the 1960s thought they were suckers. I thought about all of them this week as problems mounted for Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks thief.

Late in June death took Dwight Armstrong, the anti-Vietnam War protester who blew up a building at the University of Wisconsin, killing an innocent graduate student, Robert Fassnacht. I have always wondered about Fassnacht. He supposedly was opposed to the Vietnam war too. I wondered what his life would be like if he had not been in the building at the time the bomb went off. Armstrong and his accomplices were eventually caught. None had much promise, but there was a tremendous legitimacy to them at first, at least in comparison to those of us who favored the war.

Armstrong was sentenced to concurrent seven-year terms in prison and was paroled in 1980. On a less idealistic note he was later apprehended for running a methamphetamine lab in Indiana and sentenced to ten years in prison. He lived his last years driving a cab and caring for his mother. “My life,” he told Madison’s Capital Times,”has not been something to write home about.” Well, maybe at the end the light began to dawn.

Then there was Fritz Teufel, who turned room temperature on July 6. He began his career less spectacularly. Auspicating it as a “fun guerrilla,” the German equivalent of Abbie Hoffman (a suicide) and Jerry Rubin (death by jaywalking) demonstrated against the shah of Iran and planned to ambush Hubert H. Humphrey with cake-mix “bombs.” His politics were one part Maoism and an equal part psychoanalysis. He claimed to resent his parents’ softness toward Nazism. It led him to softness toward Mao. In time he moved to Munich and joined a radical commune, eventually enlisting in the Red Army Faction, which carried out assassinations, bombings, and kidnappings. He spent a couple of years in prison in the 1970. In 1975 he spent another stretch in prison. He devoted his last years giving interviews to journalists nostalgic for the 1960s and 1970s, but first his guests had to play him in table tennis.

Now we are told that Bill Ayers is going to retire from the University of Illinois’ Chicago campus. Ayers was a co-founder of the radical — today we would say terrorist — Weather Underground, which in the late 1960s and early 1970s engaged in quite a lot of political activism that involved bombs, but also street demonstrations and other acts of violence. Ayers was involved in blowing up a statue dedicated to police casualties in the 1886 Haymarket Riot, twice. I take that personally, for my great grandfather was, for many years, the sole survivor of that riot. As a little boy I was chosen by the Chicago Police Department to place a wreath on the monument. Today, I have a splendid picture of the monument in my office.

Ayers went on to other bombings, for instance at the New York City Police Department, the United States Capitol, and the Pentagon. He recalled these acts and others in a spectacularly ill-time memoir, Fugitive Days, which came out on September 10, 2001. We all know what happened a day later. When the New York Times quoted him as saying “I don’t regret setting bombs” and “I feel we didn’t do enough,” he relied on his formidable gifts at obfuscation to argue that he was talking about peaceful ways to end the Vietnam War, though what they might have been is unclear. All we know is that he relied mostly on bombs, and several of his colleagues blew themselves up making them. Perhaps in retirement he will explain.

Which brings me to Assange. He published last month 76,000 documents classified by the U. S. military about the war in Afghanistan. The left views this act as hugely legitimate. Undoubtedly soldiers and other friends of democracy have been killed and will be killed because of it, but Assange promises more documents. Also, he says this talk of him molesting women is a dirty trick and he hints darkly at the Pentagon. Will Assange come out of it looking like a Dwight Armstrong or a Bill Ayers? Will he perhaps manage to appear reasonable and go into legitimate politics? It is too early to tell. All we know is that history works in mysterious ways. Some become footnotes, others presidential candidates.

By Daniel Halper

At Sunday’s Ground Zero mosque protest, I spoke to one guy who had been with the counter-protesters, Joey “Boots” Bassolino, immediately after the police pulled him out from the crowd. What happened, I asked? “There was a guy standing up, a Pakistani guy, who had identified himself as a Pakistani, and he said: ‘We’re not going to sit there and back these Zionist Jews,’” Bassolino recounted, still clearly a little shaken up.

“And I’m like, whoa, wait a minute. What’s up with the racism? And they’re like, ‘what’s racist about that?’” The guy behind Bassolino yelled “f*** you,” reached forward, grabbing his camera and hitting it. “So I kicked him in the shin,” Bassolino said. Bassolino, a disabled U.S. army veteran, claims that he’s an “objective” observer and was in the group of counter-protesters to “document what was going on.”

“These are people that are supposedly protesting racism, yet you get people standing up there on a soap box yelling about ‘Zionist Jews.’ What the hell is that? That’s racism to me, man,” Bassolino explained to me.

Here’s the video Bassolino uploaded to YouTube. The remark about “Jewish Zionist Israel” is at the 3:55 mark:

Surprise! A gaggle of Jew/America haters at a pro-terrorist victory mosque gathering. Who’d a thunk it. Note also the comment about the U.S. dropping bombs in Pakistan.

Melanie Morgan, founder of Move America Forward, the nation’s largest pro-troop organization, led about a dozen conservative activists who protested at the Venice home of Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans at a Saturday afternoon fundraiser for California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown.

Morgan reports the pro-American protesters, “blocked the entrance of hundreds of wealthy Democrat liberals, including Sally Kellerman and Cindy Asner, ex-wife of Ed Asner.” Protesters laid down on the sidewalk outside the entrance gate where guests had to step over them. Continue Reading

Bonus:

Lookie here! Is that communist POS Obama with communist POS Jodie Evans? I do believe it is!

Read all about it!

Jodie Evans

Code Pink

IBD Editorials

Defense: A Pentagon report suppressed by the administration describes a massive Chinese military buildup that has only one purpose: to deny us access to the Western Pacific and destroy American forces that try.

The required annual report to Congress on China’s military power was finally released Monday amid questions of why the document, due in March, was delayed five months. With the Ground Zero mosque dominating the news, maybe now was considered a good time to sneak the grim news past the American people.

Perhaps it was to avoid offending the sensibilities of the country helping to finance the Obama administration’s unconscionable debt. Maybe it was delayed to avoid questions as to why, with this growing threat, we are unilaterally disarming, shredding our nuclear inventory and canceling major weapons systems America needs to defend itself.

We have commented extensively on China’s growing threat, and this report, coming alongside news that China has passed Japan as the world’s second largest economy, confirms our worst fears as China builds a military far beyond its legitimate defense needs.

The 2010 report, curiously renamed the “Annual Report on Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China,” speaks of China’s program to deny U.S. forces access to regions it considers critical to its security.

“China is fielding an array of conventionally armed ballistic missiles, ground- and air-launched cruise missiles, special operations forces and cyberwarfare capabilities to hold targets at risk throughout the region,” the report says. These targets would be American bases and carrier battle groups that might be sent to aid Taiwan.

The 74-page Pentagon report also notes that China is “pursuing a variety of air, sea, undersea, space and counterspace” weapons designed specifically to attack U.S. forces. Primary among them is the Dong Feng 21D carrier-killer ballistic missile that can hit moving and heavily defended American carriers with pinpoint accuracy at distances between 900 and 1,000 miles from China’s coasts.

China’s midrange missiles are “designed to target forces at sea, combined with overhead and over-the-horizon targeting systems to locate and track moving ships. At the same time, China’s growing cyberwarfare and anti-satellite capabilities are designed to blind and hinder any U.S. military response.”

For anti-access airstrikes, the Chinese have home-built fighter aircraft as well as Russian Sukhoi SU-30s, all armed with anti-ship cruise missiles. At sea, anti-access weapons include guided missile ships equipped with anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles.

China’s increasingly blue-water navy includes Sovremenny-class guided-missile destroyers purchased from the Russians. They come equipped with supersonic, sea-skimming SS-N-22 Sunburn cruise missiles designed for one purpose: attack American carrier battle groups.

China has six nuclear-powered attack submarines and 54 quiet, diesel-electric submarines, many of them equipped with advanced, anti-ship cruise missiles. In October 2006, a Chinese Song-class attack submarine surfaced within weapons distance of the American carrier Kitty Hawk off Okinawa. China also plans to deploy two aircraft carriers of its own by 2015. It has already acquired four retired carriers.

As Defense Secretary Robert Gates leaves his post, we have more to worry about than our strategy in Afghanistan and the July 2011 target for withdrawal.

China is challenging diminishing American power in the Western Pacific and globally, and Gates’ replacement and the rest of the administration need to be grilled on what they intend to do about it, if anything.

The Washington Times

By Christopher Toothaker

Associated Press

**FILE** Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

CARACAS, Venezuela | Venezuela’s Communist Party has urged the government to seek the repatriation of convicted terrorist “Carlos the Jackal,” who is serving a life sentence in France for murder.

Party representative Pedro Eusse said President Hugo Chavez’s administration should ask France to let “Carlos” serve the remainder of his sentence in his homeland.

The Venezuelan-born prisoner, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, is not getting adequate health care in France, and authorities there are denying his right to communicate with lawyers, Mr. Eusse charged.

“They have violated his human rights, he’s been incommunicado,” he said at a news conference on Monday.

Mr. Eusse described Ramirez’s health as “delicate,” without giving any details.

There was no immediate comment from France’s government about Mr. Eusse’s charges or from officials in Mr. Chavez’s administration on the Communist Party’s petition.

Ramirez is serving a life sentence for the 1975 murders in Paris of two French investigators and Michel Moukharbal, a Lebanese man who was an informant for the French government.

He also has been blamed for a series of Cold War-era bombings, assassinations and hostage dramas, including the 1976 hijacking of an Air France jet en route to Uganda.

He has testified that he led a 1975 attack that killed three people at the headquarters of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in Vienna, Austria. Venezuela’s then-Oil Minister Valentin Hernandez Acosta was one of the 70 hostages seized by the attackers and later freed in Algeria.

Ramirez was captured in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1994 and hauled in a sack to Paris by French secret service agents. Venezuela’s government has questioned whether Ramirez’s rights were violated when he was abducted and whisked away to France.

It wasn’t known how Mr. Chavez’s administration would react to the Communist Party’s petition. Telephone calls to Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry seeking comment from government officials went unanswered.

Mr. Chavez has praised Ramirez in the past as a “revolutionary fighter,” saying he selflessly joined the Palestinian struggle as a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The comment raised concerns among Jewish groups such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which said Mr. Chavez condoned terrorism by eulogizing Ramirez.

By Corey Rangel

PHOENIX – A new billboard set up protesting Arizona’s immigration law has a bold message for Phoenix drivers.

The billboard at 3rd Street and Camelback warns: “Have your papers ready – Racial profiling just ahead.”

A California organization, Brave New Foundation, paid for the sign by collecting online donations organized through a Facebook page.

The organization said it put up the billboard because it wants state lawmakers to know the fight against Senate Bill 1070 is not over even though a federal judge put most of the law on hold.

“We know the government and the folks that are behind this law are pushing forward and they’re not gonna stop. We know there are elections around the corner and this is an issue that will have an impact, at least in the discussion, so we believe if they’re continuing to fight, we must continue the fight as well,” said Axel Caballero, who established the fan site for Brave New Foundation.

Caballero said the organization carefully chose the location in Central Phoenix.

“We know the light rail is there, we know there’s tourism in the area, business in the area, and so we specifically targeted the area to make sure our message was available to the most varied and most amount of people,” said Caballero.

The online group, Cuéntame, raised $10,000 for the sign which will be up for about a month.

Caballero said the group will consider putting up more signs in other areas.

——————————————————-

These idjuts want people to boycott Arizona and so they invest ten thousand dollars in the local economy by putting up a billboard that mostly supporters of SB1070 will see. Brilliant!

Part I of “Five Days in Pyongyang” can be read here.
Reggie Gibbs

My minder, Mr. Kim, was, in many ways, what I expected. He was loyal. He adhered to his talking points — in most cases, rigidly. I once posed the question: “What do you like the most about living in the DPRK?” He seemed a little taken aback by this, and his answer was wobbly: “Everyone in the DPRK is equal. There are some small exceptions to this, of course. But no country is perfect. We are all employed. We have health care. We have free education. I think that is why the DPRK is good for me.” I didn’t have a follow-up question, and even on other occasions when I did, I never tried to debate issues. His arguments were too easy to pick apart, and I could tell by the way he answered most questions that he knew this. As importantly, he soon realized that I was experienced enough to see his verbal posturing for what it was: party bluster. Mr. Kim, unlike most North Koreans, had visited both China and the United States (and possibly elsewhere). He had seen and knew the truth, and it affected his mien, and the way in which he interacted with foreigners. He knew that the DPRK, its system, and its leadership were oppressive disasters.

Still, he was likable. We shared a laugh over the silly movements of the attractive but robotic women directing traffic at intersections. And we enjoyed talking about the impending participation of North Korea in the World Cup, for the first time in over 40 years. But through our time together I noticed three distinct emotions in him. First, there was, of course, a lingering suspicion and defensiveness. He would notice when I silently stared at a building or studied a situation. Observing this, he would jump in, perhaps giving a history of the particular architectural monstrosity, or explaining away the relative poverty in Pyongyang by referring to the collapse of the “socialist market” (i.e., the collapse of the Soviet Union and of Communism in Eastern Europe).

Second, his face would periodically show expressions of longing and of depression. Constant glances to the ground, wistful gazing toward the horizon. Such expressions I had observed before, but only after extended periods in combat zones, or sometimes among the lonely elderly. Mr. Kim was contemplative, not scheming; conscious of the contradictions he experienced, not flippant in defiance of them.

Which leads me to the last emotion I observed: optimism. This is perhaps the most difficult to capture in words because I don’t believe Mr. Kim’s optimism originated with anything intrinsic to the regime, or juche (Kim Il Sung’s homegrown philosophy of national self-reliance), or the so-called equality of socialism he had touted earlier. It was a more personal mission, born perhaps from his duty as a father to produce a better future for his children. I had noticed a similar trait in Iraqis during my time serving on the ground in the Middle East. Most Iraqis, particularly outside the large cities, were adamant that the support they gave Americans was motivated by a desire to see their children lead better, safer lives. Like Iraqis, North Korean fathers had to be optimistic. They had little choice. For Mr. Kim, who was still serving the regime in an official function, the task was even more difficult. Iraqis were now in a position to speak their mind about Saddam Hussein and explore previously unthinkable ventures. Mr. Kim, however, had to find a way to reconcile what he had been taught with what he observed, perhaps believing his situation was permanent. He was smart. He had seen the outside world and was grappling with what it meant for his country and his family’s future. These sentiments became even more apparent one night over dinner.

Having drunk a bit too much, Mr. Kim became relatively excited as our conversation turned suddenly to the state of relations between the U.S. and the DPRK. I attempted to steer him toward safer ground, but it was something he obviously wanted to broach. I let him take the wheel and sat back, continuing to work on the bowl of cold noodles and bottle of soju in front of me.

I am young, Mr. Kim stated. I have a degree in economics, as do many of my friends. Along with my friends, I believe that change, economically speaking, is coming in North Korea. In fact, he said, things have to change. The country had experienced a devastating famine in the 1990s, and in many regions food, medical supplies, and basic subsistence items were still in deathly short supply. He did not elaborate on what economic changes he would embark upon if he had the power, or how they would be achieved, and before I had time to ask him to expand on his thoughts, he was onto another aspect of U.S.-DPRK relations.

His next statement I found shocking. “The U.S. and the DPRK,” Mr. Kim said, “need to move beyond the war. It was 60 years ago. My generation does not remember it.” My mind raced back to the Koryo Hotel book shop, where piles of propaganda accusing the U.S. of war crimes littered the tables and shelves, and to the constant barrage of posters, signs, and slogans that lined Pyongyang’s streets, warning of the American imperialist threat. Forget the war? On the contrary, this was a country obsessed with and built upon victimization.

Mr. Kim continued, “I believe that the DPRK can be a better friend to the U.S. than China.”

I looked up from my noodle bowl and asked, “Why?”

“Because,” he replied, “China has ambitions in the region that are not aligned with the United States. We are a smaller country, and we could help U.S. goals in this regard.”

“That’s an interesting idea,” I said, “One that had never occurred to me.” I leaned closer and said, “But, my friend, what about your government’s nuclear program?” This was the first time I had dared bring up this topic, but I felt this as good a time as any to be blunt about one of the main stumbling blocks to U.S.-DPRK relations.

His semi-drunken face turned sour. Sternly, but controlling his anger, he said, “This program is our right. It is for self-defense and our economy; protection from the Americans. It is not negotiable. But this is something our two countries can get around.” Sensing some building tension, perhaps within himself, he smiled again after a pause and asked me why I had not finished my noodles. I said that in keeping with my habits in the United States, I had let my eyes get the better of my stomach when I ordered. It was delicious, but I was full. He grinned, and we both turned in for the evening.

Mr. Kim’s attitude toward the North Korean nuclear program was consistent with that of every government official we would come in contact with over the next few days. It had become the focal point of North Koreans’ pride, and their ticket to dealing with the world on their own terms. The government officials we met, including a vice chairman and the president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly (formally the second-in-command of the country), were adamant about their right to acquire and develop this technology.

Behind this posturing, however, one could sense the stark reality of what it would truly mean for the DPRK to abandon the nuclear pursuit. The program did indeed allow the Communist government to engage the world on its own terms, however much these terms continued to destabilize the western Pacific Rim. Without it, or at least the credible idea of it, the regime would collapse. The power of nuclear weapons carved out for the North Koreans a unique position in Asia. They do not have the economic might of South Korea, Japan, or China. The few products they produce do not have any appeal outside their own borders. Their army, in terms of manpower, is estimated to be the fourth largest in the world, but, even with the regime’s songun (military first) policy, the army had become a hollow force as the ability to feed and equip its men diminished, and as its weaponry grew obsolete. The North Korean leadership realizes all of this, and to discuss even the possibility of abandoning the nuclear program sparks a particular rage. In asking Mr. Kim about the viability of his country’s nuclear program, I was not just asking about it as a function of international and regional relations. I was questioning the long-term prospects of the regime itself. Hence, the program was sacrosanct.

In the vitriolic reaction, I also sensed another development in the political character of the country. As was the case in most other Communist states (while they still existed), the “internationalist” aspect of their ideology had faded long ago. What remained was an extreme and defiant nationalism that adhered to basic tenets of Marxist economics. In the DPRK this was captured formally in the juche philosophy, which itself was fueled daily by a hatred of the outside world still raging nearly 65 years after the Japanese had sworn pacifism, and 55 years after the Americans had snugly positioned themselves behind the 38th parallel. The Western effort to denuclearize the DPRK had been made to serve as a second Korean War — a battle for “national pride” and “independence.”

My days in North Korea turned long. The uneasy feeling I had had my first morning during breakfast at the Koryo only grew stronger. Usually I warmed up to a country after being there for a few days. I had spent over a year of my life in the Middle East, and had also lived in places that had been part of the Soviet Union for an extended amount of time. I return often to both these regions and feel a sense of belonging, no matter how foreign their languages, customs, and religions are to me. But I look back on my brief time in the DPRK with a sense of bewilderment. In the muddled end, I left with two concrete conclusions.

First, I am convinced the North Koreans will never give up their nuclear program voluntarily. Juche seemed more valid to them than ever before, especially since they had survived three major existential crises over the past 20 years and continued to find a way forward (although given the low level of economic and social development at which they began 20 years ago, this may not seem too large a feat). The first of these crises was the collapse, in 1991, of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of the so-called “socialist market.” Aid and assistance from the Soviet Union made up a significant percentage of the North Korean economy, and being able to receive it from a fellow Communist country helped the regime save ideological face. The cessation of this aid threw the DPRK further into economic crisis, while also posing a significant political threat to its rulers.

The disappearance of the “socialist market” helped lead to the country’s second crisis: the famine of the 1990s. During this tumultuous decade it is estimated that anywhere from 600,000 to 3 million people died from starvation.

Third, in the midst of this hardship, the founder and Great Leader himself, Kim Il Sung, died. To those of us who are used to applying the laws of mortality to every living creature, this may not seem so existential. But consider the vast majority of North Koreans who, for their whole lives, had been instructed to believe in Kim as some sort of deity. The death of Kim, to many North Koreans, did seem to bring into question the validity of the regime itself.
In just about any other similarly structured regime in the world, the near-simultaneous occurrence of such events would have, at the very least, moved the leadership toward a more conciliatory posture (both domestically and internationally) — but would still, in the most likely scenario, have proved violently fatal. In the case of the DPRK, however, neither has happened. The hardest elements of the nation’s leadership remain entrenched at the top, while the most ideologically dedicated appear to remain in control over whatever elements of the population are left at the bottom.

My second conclusion is that Pyongyang is a deceitful city. What is made readily apparent to the foreign observer should always be questioned. Nothing should be taken at face value. But there was certainly an element of truth not hidden. The foreigner, while being shuffled around the city, was witnessing first hand the still-awesome ability of a totalitarian state to control, manipulate, and oppress, all with little or no protest from its inhabitants. Hence, one can only hope that the seemingly impenetrable Pyongyang is itself a national façade for a population more aware and conscious of freedom than what their capital city implies.