I'm OK, you're not

Professor Bainbridge quotes an email from Eric Muller:

The reluctance of bloggers to note the blogospheric take-down of Malkin's work while allowing her to join the post-Rather blogospheric self-congratulation is a story on its own, and you don't need to be an internment expert to see it. For more on this, see [this post]. And in the meantime, the call for Arab internment now spreads upward into the pages of US News & World Report.

Too right. Last night NBC noted the role of the bloggers in exposing Rather's fraud and also mentioned their role in Trent Lott's takedown (check out my search: bloggers "senate majority leader" hairpiece), but nothing on Malkin.

Death rates among the elite are rising

China Study: City Dwellers in Poor Health By ELAINE KURTENBACH

Up to 75 percent of all urban Chinese suffer from ill health, and life expectancies are declining for skilled and educated workers as modern lifestyles exact a deadly toll, according to a study by the Chinese Red Cross.

The survey of 16 Chinese cities with more than 1 million people found that 75 percent of Beijing residents were in poor health, along with 73 percent of those in Shanghai and the southern city of Guangzhou, the state-run newspaper Shanghai Daily reported Monday.

The findings illustrate a darker side of China's economic success story: deteriorating public health and a decline in well-being for many Chinese, even in the country's richest cities.

The Red Cross study defined poor health or "sub health" as illness causing reduced levels of energy and fitness but with no specific diagnosis of a disease...

The Chinese Academy of Sciences reports that the average life span of an educated person is 58, more than 10 years lower than the national average of 72 years.

A separate study found that among the 380,000 information technology professionals working in Zhongguancun, Beijing's equivalent of Silicon Valley, the average life expectancy was only 53 years - five years lower than a decade ago, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Monday...

Urban Chinese are getting gaining weight as they switch from diets heavy in vegetables and staple grains to much higher consumption of fats, meats and sugar. Physical labor has given way to more sedentary work, and stress levels are rising as workers lose cradle-to-grave employment and struggle to make ends meet in a competitive job market.

Meanwhile, China's industrial boom and soaring number of vehicles have spoiled water and air to the point where its cities are among the worst polluted in the world, and respiratory diseases are the No. 1 cause of early death.

Although Shanghai has claimed progress in cleaning up its notoriously noxious Suzhou Creek, upstream canals remain heavily polluted. Most waterways are unsafe for drinking, and some are not fit even for agricultural use.

The population of cities is also aging quickly, raising the percentage of people more likely to be suffering from chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart problems...

The government once touted the country's broad provision of basic services, such as medical care and education, as obvious benefits of Communist Party rule. But for many, those services have been dismantled.

Farm families in the countryside can no longer count on "barefoot
doctors" for basic health services. And although city dwellers have
access to the country's best medical facilities, the lack of a
comprehensive health insurance system means that many cannot afford
medical care.

I'm skeptical that rural people are quite as healthy as this article suggests. With virtually no insurance, are they really that much healthier than urbanites? Still, it's ironic that the elite is so unhealthy.

Asian parents

I heard the moderator on the Justice Talking program about school desegregation ask something about how Asian parents pushed their kids to study hard, but I missed it if either speaker felt that had anything to do with the education of black or hispanic students. In other words, people don't feel it's the parents' job to push their children to study. Unbelievable.

Litchi

In China, Farmers' Labor Bears Too Much Fruit By KEITH BRADSHER

As in many industries, from television sets to washing machines and now to cars, early success by a few producers led to a flood of investment, overproduction and the evaporation of profits.

While business success often draws new competitors in Western countries, the effect is outsize in China.

Each state-owned bank branch tends to funnel huge loans at very low interest rates to investors in any industry that seems profitable, almost regardless of whether other lenders are doing the same, bankers said. And with a long tradition of news media censorship and a distrust of official pronouncements, business executives and peasants alike tend to barrel ahead, leery of believing admonitions against over-investment - until prices plunge.

Among litchi producers, the problem was not so much loans, though these played a role, but rather a kind of folk wisdom that litchi trees would always be a good investment for families' savings...

After three years, the trees were three feet tall and producing five or six pounds of fruit apiece. After six years, the trees are expected to be double that height and would yield 35 pounds of fruit apiece if all the litchi were allowed to mature, Mr. Zhao said.

In another decade, his trees will be fully grown, more than 10 feet tall and each producing up to 170 pounds of litchis, swelling the oversupply.

The Chinese government has banned the planting of any more litchi trees, and banks have stopped lending to litchi farms. But the current glut is not only going to grow worse as more trees mature, but is also likely to last a long time.

Once a tree reaches full size, it can continue producing litchis for centuries, although the poundage does decrease somewhat with age. Detailed production records show that a few litchi trees in western Guangdong Province are 1,200 years old, and they are still bearing fruit, [according to a professor of horticulture]...

A lack of a futures markets for commodities in China has made it hard for farmers to foresee the long-term direction of prices. Some litchi growers associations now allow the trading of rights to future deliveries, but only up to six months ahead, and the availability of these trading rights comes too late to stop the soaring output now.

Fresh litchis are something of an acquired taste in any case, as they are time-consuming to peel for the modest fruit they contain, especially in the case of heiye litchis. [hence the name black leaf litchis; they bear fruit with a blackish-red peel, and the seed is so large that there is little flesh. The meager flesh is watery and nearly transparent, and has a weak flavor.]

Yet the litchi, long a symbol of China, is in danger of becoming passé in its home country. A canned litchi-flavored drink sold across the nation for many years has been losing sales lately, as young people choose newer and more fashionable drinks, like Coca-Cola.

An acquired taste? That means he doesn't like them. And as for cola, I suspect that's a temporary phenomenon exacerbated by the lack of marketing know-how. In Japan and Taiwan, it hardly has the market for drinks cornered. Anyway, what he means by a symbol of China may have something to do with the Emperor's concubine Yang Guifei 杨贵妃 (719-756) and her legendary fondess for litchi 荔枝 from Lingnan 岭南.

No worries about sounding middle of the road

Yesterday on NPR the teaser sounded something like "Dead on the Campaign Trail". The segment was Before Bush Speaks, Partisans Preach to Faithful and the summary goes:

When President Bush makes a campaign appearance, neither he nor his media entourage arrive in time to hear the opening act. But those who do hear speakers and entertainers with a strong point of view and no worries about sounding middle of the road. NPR's Don Gonyea reports.

It's certainly not the kind of stuff I support, but there was no word on whether Kerry does the same thing.

Update
On the other hand, there was the first segment (by Melissa Block) of a series on gross anatomy and body donation. Speaking of organs...

Organ concert

It was the annual organ concert (free because of the endowment by Marianne Webb and David Bateman). Last night it was Peter Conte. It was better than I expected, given that he was promoted as the organist of the Wanamaker Organ in a Philadelphia department store now owned by Lord & Taylor. He claimed that that is the largest pipe organ in the world, and explained that originally the boss of Wanamaker was a music lover, so I guess it's not as strange as it sounds. He was also promoted as a transcriptor, and for some reason I've got a prejudice against those, even though last year's was OK. He did a good job with those. However, it wasn't as exciting as last year's, speaking of which it also included Guilmant & Vierne.

• Grand Choeur in D (alla Handel) (Alexandre Guilmant)--light but engaging



• Concert variations on The Last Rose of Summer (Dudley Buck)--not bad



• Pieces de Fantasie; Dedicace & Tocatta (Vierne)--the first was awfully gloomy and meandering, but the Tocatta was nice



• Concerto in G Major (Johann Ernst, transcribed by Bach)



• Variations on a Theme by Haydn (Brahms, transcribed by Conte)--not bad



• A silly improvisation. I think he was tired.

How dreadfully bourgeois once again!

Update
I didn't mention one peculiarlity: we were not allowed to sit in the balcony rows nearer the organist, supposedly at his request, but people who arrived just before the concert started were. Worse, one young man was allowed to enter shortly after the concert started; a few minutes after the intermission was over he came in again after the organist had started playing and then left before he had finished.

There were a couple of other annoyances: the man in front of us who kept his keys on a clip on his belt, permitting them to clash against the metal seats twice; and the woman behind us who not only failed to turn off her cell phone before it started ringing, but also had to whisper to her companion.

Money, money, money

In Lewis Lapham Phones It In: Figuring out what's wrong with Harper's magazine by Jack Shafer, the most interesting part to me was not the Lapham stuff, but the money talk:

[Democratic Party operative Rob Stein] and Lapham would have you believe that conservative foundations both outweigh liberal foundations and suppress the liberal message with their big spending. But that's not the case. Stein estimates assets of $2 billion for the eight major conservative family foundations in 2001, which sounds gargantuan. But that's chump change compared to the holdings of liberal foundations. Writing in the American Prospect in 1998, Karen Paget notes that none of these conservative foundations rank in the top 10 American foundations measured by assets, and most don't even break into the top 50.

What sort of media do liberal foundations fund? The liberal John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which reported assets of $4.2 billion in 2003, made grants of $7.5 million to various liberal media projects, including Public Radio International ($2.5 million), WNET documentary films ($800,000), WGBH documentary film ($400,000), and other TV, documentary, and radio initiatives, according to the foundation's annual report.

The Schumann Center for Media and Democracy (assets of $60 million in 2002) gave money to liberal media organizations in 2003 at rates that would make a Scaife faint. The group's federal Form 990 records it giving $4.3 million away to TomPaine.com/the Florence Fund ($2 million), Sojourners magazine ($500,000), an investigative fund for Salon.com ($277,785), the Nation Institute ($115,000), and various radio, film, and magazine projects (the Washington Monthly and the American Prospect got piddly amounts). It also paid Bill Moyers, host of PBS's Now, $200,000 to serve as its president.

Paget argues persuasively that conservative foundations are more effective than liberal foundations because they're better at giving money away, not because they give more of it away. Conservatives tend to 1) give general support, letting the grantee decide how to spend the money; and 2) they tend to renew those gifts year after year, letting the grantee take root as an institution and freeing it from running in circles on the fund-raising wheel. Conservative magazines such as Commentary, the American Spectator, the National Interest, the Public Interest, the New Criterion, and Policy Review have flourished because of steady funding by benefactors.

Liberal foundations, on the other hand, tend to limit their donations to specific projects and don't make multiple deposits over the years. In other words, a liberal propaganda mill exists; it just operates under different philanthropic principles than the conservative one.

Still, the "persuasive" claim here is that conservative foundations are more effective. I still think the media has a slight liberal tilt. Do they cancel each other out? (via Nick Gillespie)

I'm a minority, too!

Speaking out in favor of immigration in Go Ahead, Leave the Door Open, Brian Doherty mentions a

Samuel Huntington-style concern for "cultural integrity" and "national identity," the protection of which is not among the granted powers in the Constitution, as near as I can tell.

In his article, Huntington claims "America is becoming a dangerously Balkanized country." This is the other side of identity politics. The more one insists on one's cultural identity, which is usually minority and in contrast to a perceived majority, the more the majority is going to feel threatened, and react with this kind of idiocy. I say this as one of the intelligent minority (oops...).

Eat Your Vegetables

Don't Play a Numbers Game, Experts Say, Just Eat Your Vegetables By MARY DUENWALD

...the gathering evidence in support of low-glycemic index eating has lent new validity to a bit of age-old nutritional wisdom: a healthy diet includes plenty of vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains and nuts, and relatively few sugary foods and drinks and refined starches.

...for the average person wishing to eat a lower index diet, it is best to ignore the index numbers and simply aim to eat less refined starches. "Just eat abundant quantities of fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts, and reduce your consumption of white bread, prepared breakfast cereals, white rice and potato products...

Danish researchers who tried to predict the glycemic index of entire breakfasts based on the glycemic index values of the carbohydrates in them were unsuccessful. The only way to predict the glycemic response prompted by the various breakfasts was to consider the total calories.

Don't forget to exercise.

Euthanasia, anyone?

Alzheimer's in the Living Room: How One Family Rallies to Cope By JANE GROSS says,

a substantial majority of Alzheimer's patients are cared for at home by family members; estimates range from two-thirds to 95 percent. This growing army of caregivers props up the nation's health care system with free labor, worth, economists and researchers say, more than $100 billion a year, or more than twice the cost of nursing home and paid home care combined.

But these largely invisible caregivers, who buttress the nation's health care system, pay a terrible price. The architecture of the family is turned upside down, turning children into parents and parents into children. Emotional bonds and financial resources are strained, even in the most resilient households. Caregivers get sick from the stress.

But the rest of the article is about a single family's problems, and I didn't notice any tips on how to vote in their stead.

Snooty is as snooty does

In I'm Cooking as Fast as I Can By WILLIAM GRIMES, he states that his goal is "putting a respectable meal on the table in 30 minutes or less". He admits,

is worth stating at the outset that there is good fast food and bad fast food, and speed has nothing to do with the difference between the two. Canned onion rings over canned green beans, a casserole dish I recall from childhood, may be the bad fast dish par excellence. At the opposite end of the scale I might place veal chops in sage-butter sauce spiked with a little vermouth, a simple Italian entree I have made many times. Both dishes take about 10 minutes to prepare. One is satisfying and delicious. The other is a crime against nature. No one should ever dine at a quality level lower than veal in sage-butter sauce. At least not at my house.

I am happy to report that Betty Crocker does not call for canned onion rings in her "Quick and Easy Cookbook," but the recipes do cater to a middlebrow concept of fine cooking that leaves me cold. Betty takes a nonjudgmental attitude toward margarine versus butter. Frozen or canned ingredients she accepts as a fact of life and frozen fish, too. If you don't want to mince garlic, it is O.K. to buy it minced in a bottle.

Betty has a new look and a new hairdo. She knows about couscous, chipotles and salsa. But her heart belongs to the 1950's. How else to explain dishes like cheesy tuna broccoli skillet casserole or maple-mustard syrup as a sauce for asparagus? The recipes have a train-wreck fascination to them, and some of the photographs seem almost forensic. Fudge pudding cake, for example, looks like a heaping helping of Alpo.

All very amusing, no doubt. But the Chinese meals my wife prepares often take an hour or more to prepare. Sometimes there's a price to pay for eating something good. Why must he sneer at people who are willing to sacrifice time to taste? I guess it makes him feel better about himself. (That's why I'm sneering at him, of course.)

Truth not allowed in China

China has internet blacklist By Richard Spencer

Chinese computer hackers have discovered a list of officially banned words and topics, casting new light on the shadowy world of the country's 30,000 internet police...

Some topics were predictable: human rights, democracy and phrases used to describe the Tiananmen Square massacre.

But others showed the full sensitivity of the authorities, The list included the name of President Hu Jintao and the words liberty, Christian, truth, sex and brassiere.

Here's a similar list: Hu Jintao 胡锦涛、democracy 民主、liberty 自由、Christian 基督教、truth 真理、sex 性、brassiere 奶罩、June 4th 六四、human rights 人权、and Jiang Zemin's personal favorite, Falungong 法轮功。

I suppose the 性 that's disallowed is 性 as a single word, for as Lin Yutang's dictionary points out, 性 is

1. the equivalent of -ness, -ity for expressing abstract notions: 可能性 possibility, from 可能 possible, etc.
   
2. Nature, inborn nature: 天命之謂性，率性之謂道，修道之謂教 (中庸) "What is God-given is called nature; to follow that nature is called the way; to cultivate the way is called culture",
   
3. What is instinctive, inherent...天性，本性 man's inborn nature, also original nature of man.
   
4. Sex, sexual desire or impulse: 兩性 the two sexes
   
5. Gender: 陰性，陽性，中性 feminine, masculine, neuter gender
   
6. Personal temperament, character, personality: 性情
   

It's not until (4) that we get to sex.

No tenure???

The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education has an interesting new report: Measuring Up 2004: The National Report Card on Higher Education. Their analysis concludes bleakly that

There have been real but modest gains in rates of associate and baccalaureate degree completion, but participation in college and completion of degrees remain among the weakest aspects of performance. In addition, far too many students still do not graduate from high school on time or at all. Without a high school diploma, most of these young people will face sadly diminished prospects of getting additional training or of ever finding employment that will support a middle-class standard of living. Communities and the nation lose as well, for having a pool of educated workers is the greatest asset in today's knowledge-based global economy.

Pervasively dismal grades in affordability show that for most American families college is less affordable now than it was a decade ago. The rising cost of attending college has outpaced the growth in family income. Although financial aid has increased, it has not kept pace with the cost of attendance. Every state should reexamine college tuition and financial aid policies, and each should formally link future tuition increases to gains in family income. In the meantime, the conclusion from Measuring Up 2004 is clear: The vast majority of states have failed to keep college affordable for most families.

I feel that tuition is going up too fast, but what's the solution? I can't say how to make people finish high school. As for holding down tuition, John M. McCardell Jr., president emeritus of Middlebury College, wrote that tenure is an outmoded concept:

tenure is a great solution to the problems of the 1940's, when the faculty was mostly male and academic freedom was at genuine risk. Why must institutions make a judgment that has lifetime consequences after a mere six or seven years? Publication may take longer in some fields than in others, and familial obligations frequently interrupt careers. Why not a system of contracts of varying length, including lifetime for the most valuable colleagues, that acknowledges the realities of academic life in the 21st century?

Moreover, when most tenure documents were originally adopted, faculty members had little protection. Today, almost every negative tenure decision is appealed. Appeals not upheld internally are taken to court. Few if any of these appeals have as their basis a denial of academic freedom.

I've got to say if I hadn't had the prize of tenure, I wouldn't have spent all that time and money getting a PhD.

The Only Way to Create Jobs

Outer Life writes about the only way to create jobs:

A politician who promises more jobs has as much credibility with me as a politician who promises more sunny days. When it comes to jobs, politicians can either create more government jobs -- something they never brag about -- or interfere with the market's creation of private sector jobs.

Innumerates II

Alex Tabarrok cites research to the effect that the minimum wage is not a good thing

...one of the best ways to get a high-paying job is to get a low-paying job and work your way up. The minimum wage can put the least employable out of work and have permanent negative effects when training and work skills not acquired in youth are difficult to accumulate later on.

...teenagers who grow up in states with a minimum wage that is significantly and consistently higher than the federal minimum have lower earnings and work less a decade or more later when those workers are in their late twenties. The negative effects are larger for blacks, for whom the minimum wage tends to be more binding.

Democrats and unions seem to worry more about trying to help adult minimum wage workers, who are a minority, right? And if one tries to oppose such counterproductive help, the left seems to think one is not being kind enough. It's the feeling that counts, not the numbers.

Alex Tabarrok also links to Robert Musil's discussion of a New York Times' front page weeper full of meaningless numbers and touching anecdotes:

..a New York Times survey comprising scores of detailed interviews exploring the families' [of September 11 World Trade Center victims] emotional, physical and spiritual status. That survey found lives colored by continuing pain. Almost half still have a hard time getting a good night's sleep. A few said they no longer flew on airplanes. About a third have changed jobs or quit. About one in five have moved since 2001, and a fifth of those who still live where they did on Sept. 11 would move if they could. Very few who lost a spouse have remarried.

Musil provides a lesson in statistical thinking.

Innumerates

Ruling Class War by David Brooks:

There are two sorts of people in the information-age elite, spreadsheet people and paragraph people. Spreadsheet people work with numbers, wear loafers and support Republicans. Paragraph people work with prose, don't shine their shoes as often as they should and back Democrats.

C.E.O.'s are classic spreadsheet people. According to a sample gathered by PoliticalMoneyLine in July, the number of C.E.O.'s donating funds to Bush's campaign is five times the number donating to Kerry's.

Professors, on the other hand, are classic paragraph people and lean Democratic. Eleven academics gave to the Kerry campaign for every 1 who gave to Bush's. Actors like paragraphs, too, albeit short ones. Almost 18 actors gave to Kerry for every 1 who gave to Bush. For self-described authors, the ratio was about 36 to 1. Among journalists, there were 93 Kerry donors for every Bush donor. For librarians, who must like Faulknerian, sprawling paragraphs, the ratio of Kerry to Bush donations was a whopping 223 to 1.

Then he comes up with an idiotic theory to explain it. As for myself, according to my "prosaic" background as a paragraph person I'd be expected to back the Democrats. However, I'm fond of humbers. My feeling is that a lot of Democrats are innumerate, and are unwilling or unable to understand explanations involving numbers. Of course, Bush seems to be innumerate as well. There goes that explanation.

Not that bad?

Rivers Run Black, and Chinese Die of Cancer
By JIM YARDLEY reports

The central government promotes big solutions but gives regulators little power to enforce them. Local officials have few incentives to crack down on polluters because their promotion system is based primarily on economic growth, not public health.

It is a game that leaves poorer, rural regions clinging to the worst polluters.

"No doubt there is an economic food chain, and the lower you are, the worse off your environmental problems are likely to be," said Elizabeth C. Economy, author of "The River Runs Black" (Cornell University Press, 2004), a study of China's environment. "One city after the next is offloading its polluting industries outside its city limits, and polluting industries themselves are seeking poorer areas."

However, the Economist says of Economy's book

Until more people get richer, China may not have the resources or the willpower to care much about pollution. Ms Economy more or less ignores this trade-off and concentrates on the negative consequences of economic growth. And at times she uses questionable statistics to support her argument—for example, her assertion that children living in Chinese cities are doing the equivalent of smoking two packets of cigarettes a day is lifted from a local newspaper and is hard to verify.

Ms Economy holds out the hope that local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) will compensate for China's institutional shortcomings. By one count there are now 2m of these, and the book includes profiles of several courageous individuals who are trying to change things. But the vast majority of them are no more than individuals fighting single issues with little funding. The Communist Party immediately outlaws anything more ambitious that could threaten its authority.

The book pays insufficient attention to another influence for change: the positive impact of foreign multinationals. While these may not operate with quite the same clean technology as they do at home, their standards are still far higher than those of their local rivals.

Despite her name, she's less interested in what economists have to say.

Voters are idiots

Dementia and the Voter: Research Raises Ethical, Constitutional Questions By Shankar Vedantam

Florida neurologist Marc Swerdloff was taken aback when one of his patients with advanced dementia voted in the 2000 presidential election. The man thought it was 1942 and Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. The patient's wife revealed that she had escorted her husband into the booth.

"I said 'Did he pick?' and she said 'No, I picked for him,'" Swerdloff said. "I felt bad. She essentially voted twice" in the Florida election, which gave George W. Bush a 537-vote victory and the White House...

Jennifer Mathis, a Washington lawyer at the Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, a disability rights group, said: "Our voting system does not require intelligent voting or informed voting. The Supreme Court has said the idea of informed voting is too susceptible to abuse."..

[Stephen McConnell, of the Alzheimer's Association, a nonprofit science and advocacy group], said a group of experts wrestled with the issue in August 2003 and agreed that patients even partly cognizant of the election should be allowed to vote...

Adam Butler of the Disability Rights Center in Little Rock said such talk holds people with disabilities to a higher standard than the rest of the population. No tests of mental competence are required to stand for office, and no law prevents "competent" voters from choosing candidates for questionable reasons: "People may vote because they like the way George W. Bush looks or because they like Heinz ketchup."

Well, we already know that voters are idiots.

It's not just poor countries

Bad regulations are a huge brake on global growth

Overall, businesses in poor countries shoulder three times the administrative costs and have to struggle through twice as many bureaucratic procedures as their counterparts in rich countries. A popular myth holds that this does not matter, because the rules in poor countries are rarely enforced. Not so. Because it is so hard to obey all the rules, businesses in poor countries tend to remain informal. That is, they remain outside the law and pay no taxes. They stay small to avoid detection. They cannot raise credit from the formal banking system in any case.

Governments often try to make their people richer by fiat, for example by ordering firms to pay their workers more. This rarely works as intended. Minimum-wage laws, if set too high, destroy jobs. Poor countries, which tend to have the most unrealistic labour standards, accordingly suffer the most unintended consequences.

A Korean identity problem

I heard most of this report about this woman's search for identity. She doesn't know who she is? She now seems free to be whoever she wants, so what's the big deal? Typical NPR crap. But this morning they had a great report about Korea by Rob Gifford.

Mrs. KIM YONG SUL: (Through Translator) It's simple. People in the south do not want reunification because it will impinge on their prosperity.

GIFFORD: This accusation is common among North Koreans who've fled here. In addition, they, and NGO workers who help them, say the current South Korean government in its attempts to engage with North Korea and avoid military conflict seems to ignore the horrific human rights abuses in the north. Tim Peters is founder of Helping Hands/Korea, the Christian organization that assists escaping North Koreans to resettle in the south.

Mr. TIM PETERS (Founder, Helping Hands/Korea): The people are starving, the people are utterly bereft of human rights, the right of free speech, the right of assembly. There are disturbing cases of human experimentation, of chemical weapons in the prison system. It's a situation that needs desperate international attention, and it needs it now.

GIFFORD: Peters is extremely critical of the South Korean government's approach. He says while South Korean donations of food and cash to the north have increased, North Korea has conceded nothing. And has not improved the treatment of its people. Activists are especially angry because this South Korean government is made up of many of the progressive activists who fought so hard for democracy and human rights for South Korea when it was run by a military dictatorship in the '70s and '80s. The issue of North Korean human rights has now become a political football in the highly partisan atmosphere of South Korean domestic politics. Each side uses it to score points against the other. The helpless North Koreans sometimes fall between the cracks. So Do Hune(ph) of the South Korean Unification Ministry says its less confrontational approach toward the north is the only way, though it could take time to see results.