Make me gag Michael. Calling China any version of socialist, given its mass unemployment and capitalist expansion, is insane. And any praise of North Korea is just insanely demented. That there are still pockets of the Left that hold out any defense of the current ideologies in China or North Korean is just a blight.
Among other reasons I just couldn't maintain my membership in the National Lawyers Guild any more was their pro-North Korean reports and delegations, such as this one: http://www.nlg.org/korea/2003delegation_report.html, which had inanities like the following:
"We learned that under the Juche principle, a strong leader is necessary to guide the will of the collective as represented in the Workers Party and the Assembly. However, as discussed below, the North Koreans have an elaborate system from the shop or farm level up to receive input on key national issues."
"Labor unions exist but strikes are almost unknown as the government consults with the unions and managers on all aspects of work including wages and work conditions on what seemed to be a consensual basis."
There were a few critical questions raised, but overall the report referred constantly to "the North Koreans" as a collective group, as if there were no tensions between the population and its government.
There are lots of bad aspects to the US approach to the Korean principle, but this kind of delusional uncritical analysis is what makes so many people go screaming from the Left. It's just one more reason why anti-war sentiment in the US is becoming overwhelming, yet support for the left peace movement is so pathetically small.
Nathan Newman