Re: [Marxism] The Cranes Are Flying

[Sam B <sam.b.ann.arbor@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 4:27 AM, lara crete <laracrete@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> My friends  from New York  once have visited North Korea and they came
> out glowing.

Glowing? Not due to radioactivity from the North Korean nuclear program, I hope.

Facetiousness aside, we Marxists need to get out of the habit of being
swayed by these kinds of anecdotal, hyper-romanticized narratives of
which this "my friends...glowing" seems a particularly florid example.
We need to base ourselves on hard data and quantitative evidence.

"On May 15 [2001], Choe Su-hon, one of Pyongyang's nine deputy foreign
ministers, quantified the grim truth at a Unicef conference in
Beijing. Almost a quarter of a million people - 220,000 to be exact -
died of famine between 1995 and 1998. As a result, and also due to
medical shortages, average life expectancy fell from 73.2 in 1993 to
66.8 in 1999. Showing who exactly bore the brunt, infant mortality
(under 5s) almost doubled from 27 to 48 per 1,000 people. Choe also
gave data on a related disaster: his country's wider health care
crisis. In 1994, 86 percent of people had access to safe drinking
water; by 1996, only 53 percent did."

<http://www.atimes.com/koreas/CE23Dg02.html>

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