Ling and Lee Freed

Greetings and salutations of the highest order. RayRay has been on a bit of hiatus lately, and for being remiss during such incredibly moving stories like the birthers, the deathers, and Gatesgate, I humbly apologize.


Back to some witch hunting:


Wonderful news from The Hermit Kingdom, the inaptly named Democractic People's Republic of Korea, aka North Korea, aka The Living Orwellian Nightmare: the two American journalists from Current TV who were captured at or near the Chinese/North Korean border, tried in a kangaroo court, and sentenced to twelve years of hard labor, were freed yesterday.


All it took apparently, was a little ego massaging of the little tyrant, the so called Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il, by former President, Bill Clinton.


Now, you can love ol' Willy Jeff or hate him, but as Americans we can all get behind this one situation and applaud when the innocent are freed. Of course, this little situation wasn't all win-win for the United States; the Dear Leader had to "pardon" Ling and Lee, and therefore the aforementioned ego massage. That is, he was permited to act [as in "pretend"] that there is a viable system of justice in his well armed but not well fed little fiefdom, and that Lee and Ling actually broke laws, and that they were actually convicted of anything remotely like the charges read.


Then maybe it wasn't such a bad thing to have former POTUS Clinton mouth an apology for the sake of rescuing these two earnest and erudite journalists from what are literally the bowels of hell on this green earth. Let there be no misunderstanding: the 12 years sentence to hard labor was tantamount to a death sentence. A long, slow, painful death sentence.


So Big Bill patted Little Kim on his fluffy head, had dinner, maybe rubbed his despotic tummy, and got out of Dodge, err, uh, Pyonyang. Proabably before they turned the electricity off for the night.


Ahh, and this is all reminiscent of another recent run in with a former member of that short lived death metal band, The Axis of Evil, Iran, who had arrested, tried, sentenced and then released journalist Roxana Saberi. You can read about that episode in my May 11, 2009 post.

So for now, here is to Ms. Lee and Ms. Ling; glad they are free; and next time - don't get too close to the closest thing to that nation-sized nightmare we call North Korea.