If as the new comprehensive UN report claims, North Korea's regime is a criminal one, regularly committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and based partly on the Nazi model, complete with death camps, mass starvation, sadistic torture, and other sinister brutalities, what are we to do in The West? Going by past actions, nothing, sadly. There has long been a law for Europe, and a law for the Asian world - a double-standard, where the West either inflicts cruelties and crimes in that theatre of war it would not elsewhere, or tolerates them there when it would not elsewhere. No atomic bomb was dropped on Germany; no Napalm used on enemies of European descent. A subtle racism continues - people of Asia, Africa and the Middle East are treated as sub-human, or, more bluntly, sub-American. If France, Italy, or Greece were doing what North Korea was doing, it would be defeated militarily, as to stand by would be seen as an impossible moral failing; however, the assumption is North Korea has a nuclear potential and the madness to use it. That seems true, but we must hold themselves and ourselves to the highest historical, non-hypocritical standards. If NK is the new Nazi Germany, in terms of organised mass evil towards millions of its own people, then it must be defeated. How? Well, China should withdraw all support, for a start. The next steps are not so pleasant to contemplate. But, though I am not a warmonger, and am a Catholic opposed to unjust wars, this may just be a just one. But as said above, this is all hypothetical. NK will continue, likely for a decade or more, killing and torturing millions upon millions of trapped souls.
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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