Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

The Il wind of the Norks

Vaclav Havel:

It has been 60 years since the world first heard of Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler's successful escape from Auschwitz, an escape that brought to light accounts of Adolf Hitler's extermination camps. Their testimony forced representatives of the democratic world to face truths that many did not want to believe, even after the war. Thanks to Vrba, Wetzler and countless other witnesses, the horrors and extent of the Nazis' Final Solution are universally known.

Like the Holocaust, the crimes and brutal reality of Soviet communism were also outlined and understood, thanks to the writings of Arthur Koestler, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and others. Fortunately, people who use eyewitness testimony in attempts to expose the greatest crimes against humanity can be found in each era and all over the world.

Rithy Panh described the terror of the Khmer Rouge, Kanan Makiya detailed the brutal prisons of Saddam Hussein and Harry Wu has tried to show the perversion of the Laogai system of Chinese forced-labor camps.

Today, the testimony of thousands of North Korean refugees who have survived the miserable journey through Communist China to free South Korea tells of the criminal nature of the North Korean dictatorship. Accounts of repression are supported and verified by modern satellite images, and they clearly illustrate that North Korea has a functioning system of concentration camps. The kwan-li-so, or "political penal labor colony," holds as many as 200,000 prisoners who are barely surviving day to day, or are dying in the same conditions as the millions of prisoners in the Soviet gulag system did.

...

Kim Jong Il is able to blackmail the world with the help of his huge army, nuclear weapons, long-range missiles, and the export of weaponry and military technology to like-minded dictators around the world. He wants to be respected and feared abroad and to be recognized as one of the world's most powerful leaders.

He is willing to let his own people die of hunger, and he uses famine to liquidate those who show any sign of wavering loyalty to his rule. Through blackmail, he receives food and oil, which he distributes among those loyal to him (first in line being the army).

Regime change is the only way to free these people.