He has like three sons. The older seems to be discarded due to an incident involving Disney and other stuff … People seems to be suggesting that the chosen one may be the younger. The current dictator is the son of the previous dictator and WW2 mythical war liberation hero. So that would be the second succession in the their communist imperial dinasty so I guess they already have some practice on the matter. In any case there is a lot of extended family and other people from the elite that would take over one way or another. It’s not the one at the top that really matters but the system. Same in the US or in NK. NK dynastic system seem pretty well installed up to now.

Posted by: ThePaper | May 27 2009 17:37 utc | 4

Kim Song Il is it? Has at least two sons if I am not mistaken. I’ve heard some discussion that the #2 son may be better poised to take over. Perhaps daddy is trying to keep them divided and have them both jointly rule. Who knows?
As to self reliance, I think this is one of the most compelling questions going. It seems there is much that is good and economically sensible in such a policy.
The policies extolled by the IMF certainly aren’t unequivocal successes. Debt and most trade policies are pernicious toward the lesser players.
Is there a middle ground? If you’re a resource rich country like so many in Africa and Southern Asia can you find a fair trade policy? Would a leader be allowed to advocate fiercely yet fairly for his own countrymen against the G8, G20, GATT and the IMF?
Would it be easier for the West to shoot another Sand Nigger and find some obsequious sycophant who’d be all to willing to accept the terms offered?
I ran into an old friend who was lobbying for medical savings accounts. He had become a good conservative. I challenged him a bit, only to be disappointed when I lamented the absence of a fair discussion of policy. He replied, “I don’t know anyone interested in that.”
Fuck, the West, the very notion of the nation state is in real jeopardy. Never have we faced this level of debt, total betrayal by both media and politicians. Is there any doubt that we will default on our debt? What happens then?

Posted by: scott | May 27 2009 17:44 utc | 6

This talk of succession reminds of this. Interesting how irrelevant it all is now, isn’t it. Just goes to show you how quickly things can change in a rather short period of time.

At first glance, a statement of religious intent by a man like Uday Hussein seems startlingly out of character.
Uday, 38, is widely regarded as the most-feared individual in Iraq and is described by defectors from Baghdad’s ruling elite as a serial killer and rapist. He is also known as a sadist who, as the head of the Iraqi football federation, is famous for ordering under-performing players to kick a concrete ball around the field, if they are not jailed and beaten.
So, when news leaked from Uday’s inner circle to Saudi and Kuwaiti papers last month that Uday plans to convert from Sunni to Shi’a Islam, few analysts believed the move was out of religious conviction. Instead, speculation as to Uday’s motives has focused on politics and, more specifically, the long-standing contest between him and his younger brother, Qusay, over who will become Saddam’s heir.
The brothers’ rivalry has become heated in recent years as Saddam has promoted Qusay, 35, to progressively more powerful posts — including naming him last year as caretaker of the presidency should Saddam be incapacitated.
Over the same period, there have been almost no signs that Uday, who was badly crippled in an assassination attempt in 1996 but has since largely recovered, is being groomed for the succession. But the older brother has continued to be a powerful political force as the head of a number of Iraq’s state-controlled newspapers, as well as television and radio stations.
Now, Uday appears to be seeking a broad base of popular support by announcing he will convert to Shi’a Islam, the sect to which some 60 percent of Iraqis belong. The move opens an unexpected new front in the brothers’ contest because Saddam’s family traditionally belongs to Iraq’s Sunni Muslim minority, which regards the Shi’a with suspicion. The regime brutally suppressed a Shi’a revolt in southern Iraq in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War and excludes Shi’a from top positions in the government and military.
Falih Abdul Jabbar, an Iraqi sociologist who is a visiting fellow at London University, told RFE/RL recently that he views Uday’s statement about conversion as an effort to appear as a champion of the people. That would build on his image as a public figure compared to his more reclusive brother.
At the same time, Jabbar says that by espousing Shi’a Islam — which historically is a revolt against established Sunni Islam — Uday is sending a clear message that he is rebelling against his brother’s promotions and will fight with arms if necessary for his rights to succeed Saddam:
“This is a symbolic declaration of civil war against his brother. This is a symbolic presentation of his own case that he has been denied. It is his own way of saying ‘I am the righteous heir of my father, not my younger brother.'”
Shi’a Islam dates back to the decades immediately following Prophet Mohammad’s death when a dispute erupted over his line of succession. Shi’a Muslims revere Ali, the son-in-law of the prophet, who they say was unjustly deprived of the position of spiritual leader by other rivals. Ali was later assassinated and his son Hussein — regarded by the Shi’a as a martyr — died while leading a revolt despite hopeless odds. The events created the schism in Islam between Sunni and Shi’a, which continues today.
Jabbar says Uday’s announcing he will adopt Shi’a Islam — with its origins of refusing to accept a perceived injustice — is a shrewd way to send a defiant message to his brother, which he would not be permitted to do if he used more direct language:
“The whole thing is a political statement camouflaged or worded in, embedded in, religious idiom. The political establishment cannot tell him not to do it because that would be a very delicate [religious] issue in Iraq. They cannot oppose him even in a roundabout way on this matter. This is a very shrewd [political stroke]. He must have some good and shrewd advisers.”
Uday himself on Wednesday denied what he called Western reports he had converted to Shi’a Islam in order to win the support of the country’s Shi’a population.
In comments published by his newspaper, “Babel”, he said: “I will not change my sect. [The] good thing is to follow the sect of my father and my relatives, although there is nothing to disgrace the Shi’ite sect”.
Analysts say that if Uday did indeed announce an intention to convert, as originally reported, it would be a message of defiance in line with a series of quid-pro-quo actions he has taken in response to each promotion of his younger brother over the past year.
Qusay’s promotions include rising from minister without portfolio to being appointed in 1998 as commander of the so-called “Army of the Mother of All Battles”, which includes half of the regular army and most of the Republican Guard units. After objections from military leaders, that appointment was subsequently modified to a vaguer position of “supervisor”.
Last year, Saddam named Qusay, who also heads the president’s security service, as his caretaker? Then this year, Saddam named Qusay to the ruling Baath Party’s Regional Command and made him one of two deputies in charge of the party’s military branch. Saddam also brought Qusay together with the regular army’s leaders to try to build better ties between them.
Uday, who in addition to his media titles heads the regime’s oil-smuggling operations and is one of the richest men in Iraq, has sought to match each of these promotions with initiatives of his own. Jabbar says these steps have included creating his own paramilitary organization and, last year, being elected to the National Assembly, Iraq’s parliament:
“At every one of these promotions, Uday has reacted. When his brother was entrusted with reorganizing and commanding the Army of the Mother of All Battles, he made a move to create the paramilitary organization “Saddam’s Martyrs.” When his brother was made caretaker, he nominated himself for the assembly. Now when his brother was elected to the regional command he made this statement about converting to Shi’ism.”
Uday was elected to the National Assembly but was not permitted by Saddam to take the post of speaker, which Uday is believed to have sought.
The rivalry between the two brothers officially does not exist, and the two sat side-by-side exchanging smiles at a conference of the Baath Party in May.
But their competition has raised expectations that the death of Saddam, who is 64 and officially in good health, could spark an armed conflict between them.
Analysts say that Uday’s paramilitary organization has 30,000 to 35,000 well-equipped and trained fighters who could likely match the firepower of Qusay’s intelligence services, so long as regular military units stayed out of the fray.

http://www.iran-press-service.com/articles_2001/aug_2001/saddam_sons_fight_3801.htm

Posted by: Obamageddon | May 27 2009 18:48 utc | 8

What must be done?
The Empire’s supply routes must be cut!

Posted by: slothrop | May 27 2009 20:45 utc | 10

China has to take the lead in engagement, and their best angle might be the persistent cultural undercurrent in Korea North and South, of being more Confucian than Confucius, more Chinese than China. The implications for aid are more stylistic than strategic, but elite cultural and technical exchange could complement commercial ties. A long process is right. Short term this commenter is having difficulty giving a crap about these tensions. We shall see.

Posted by: …—… | May 27 2009 21:43 utc | 12

North Korea has been under siege for a long time. In such conditions experiments in government are very unlikely to occur. As is open-ness, free debate and frank discussion of alternatives.
The US, which has kept this very intense pressure on North Korea, knows this: isolation is the first weapon in the imperial armoury. It worked against the Soviet Union, where, after 1945, it was widely held that a ‘thaw’ in relations with the outside world would lead to a more open, democratic society. It was that hope of a ‘thaw’ that motivated the Red Army to fight with such determination and tactical subtlety.
But the US wanted no part of a Europe in which there was cross fertilisation between East and West. It wanted an Iron Curtain and a crusade against anything smacking of socialism. And that is what it got.
Leave North Korea alone, stop forcing it to spend every nickel of surplus on self defence weaponry, take off the pressure by offering non-aggression pacts and let it develop its own economy. Self reliance is a very good idea: it worked for Germany and America, in the current economic crisis it is the most sensible course to pursue. Take the pressure off and North Koreans will, relieved of the fears of renewed aggresion and of the perceived justification of dictatorial rule, quickly set their own society in order.
But they will insist on independence. And, if they trade with the world it will not be on the exploitative terms the west prefers. As to whether the grandson of the founder of the regime succeeds it matters very little: half the countries in the world have these, effectively hereditary, successions: Jordan, Syria it is a very long list. Monarchies are the least of our problems. Our problem is a corporatist oligarchy which dreams of exploiting the entire world so none of its members, and none of the members of any of its families will ever have to do a days work. Or to come up with an original idea. Greedy narcissists they just want to have fun.
To protect that. they’d burn North Korea without a thought- they already did once. And, though they seem to have forgotten all about it (they still, ludicrously,claim the war was a defence of ‘democracy’ against a North Korean attack) nobody in North Korea has forgotten.

Posted by: ellis | May 28 2009 1:47 utc | 14

Some renegade US general challenged this weekend, “Americans should be scared as hell of the whole world!” [and pass DoDs solid gold offering plate ‘for Bejeebus’].
It’s a con! A swindle. PRNK is a shake-down. Pay me a million tons of fuel oil, and a fat credit line at Disney World, or I’ll shoot some more tactical missiles at air.
Now “Defense” has 2M Pakistani’s in refugee status, adding to the 2.3M Afghani’s in refugee status, pouring $100Bs on the bonfire of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan and fixin’ to steal over $1,000Bs of natural resources from the Afghan people in secret bid tenders now in play, that haven’t received a word of MSM press coverage.
The answer is sustained pressure. Sustained pressure like death by rock pressing.
Just say no. Don’t report it, don’t comment on it. Refuse to pay for it, fight to
bring our troops home before they come back in body bags. Dismantle the TRILLION$ a year bleed-fest, at a time when USA is clearly going the way of GM into bankruptcy.
Defense USA is an evil military dictatorship mafia. Whatever you do, stop shopping!

Posted by: Solero Puiliani | May 28 2009 3:16 utc | 16