I first saw word about this from an on-line article of the Czech daily Lidové noviny (North Korea tests weapons on handicapped children, claim refugees), but that article in turn refers to a report by the Arabic TV network Al-Jazeera, which you can read in English here. A quote from one defector: “If you are born mentally or physically deficient, the government says your best contribution to society . . . is as a guinea pig for biological and chemical weapons testing.” As they say, Dulce et decorum est . . .

While I appreciate Petr Pešek’s item there in LN for spreading the word more widely about this – which indeed is my own intended function here, although I daresay my circulation is somewhat smaller than LN’s – I can assure you that it includes little that you can’t read in English over at Al-Jazeera. (All I could find was an additional reference Pešek makes to how it has already been known that North Korea was willing to sacrifice prisoners for these purposes.) Note however that he is notably more journalistically cautious, scattering his piece thickly with “alleged” (údajný) and “it is said” (prý) and pointed references to the Al-Jazeera account.

                          

Pauline Michgelsen is a writer who has been dispatched to the States by the excellent Dutch daily Trouw, and while she doesn’t seem to be road-trippin’ through the highways and by-ways in some caravan, in her recent piece Learning to vote she makes a bolder move: she deliberately infiltrates a gathering held by that band of subversives famously sworn to undermine the functioning of American elections in particular, and the American Way in general. I’m talking here about ACORN, of course, and Michgelsen somehow manages both to learn of the secret handshake required to gain access to a “Know your rights” evening held inside a Lutheran church in Lansing, MI and even make her way out of there at the end intact.

All joking aside, though, she is hardly the only media representative there. There’s even a camera-team from Al-Jazeera, together with a local TV news-team and radio correspondent. Indeed, the media outnumber the members of the general public for whom this instructional assembly is attended, who number five (although they are joined by “six community workers from various social organizations”).

Anyway, the show must of course go on, and does so for a good two hours, dealing with vital electoral questions like “When is the date of this year’s General Election?” Don’t laugh: it’s a time-honored ploy to try to fool people to go vote only after the polls have permanently closed, and it’s been seen already this year. The ACORN representative goes on to treat more nuanced questions like “Is photo ID required to go vote” (answer: no) and the like, and then yields the floor to the Lansing city clerk to read out and explain the actual ballot. That is particularly long this year – in fact, “the Michigan ballot is the longest of all the states” the clerk declares, with what Michgelsen detects as a hint of pride in his voice – since it’s not just president but also senator, congressmen, local officials, and a whole list of ballot-initiatives that will be presented to be voted upon.

The local TV news-team does not stick around until the end to hear all the delicious voting information; it has to leave in the middle because it turns out that it has got something else to do. What that is, is what our Dutch correspondent Pauline Michgelsen sees later upon returning to her hotel room and turning on the TV: the local-news anchorwoman declares “many people show up at these sorts of evenings,” and somehow the accompanying TV-picture shows a hall full of people. Montage: just one of the magic-tricks of American television technology!

                          

Yep, it’s apparently for real. I first got word of “n.A.T.o.” from Belgium’s De Standaard, whose De Kleine Parade feature always has short but noteworthy, even believe-it-or-not pieces of which I have made mention in this space before. But in this case there is thankfully even more extensive coverage available from an English-language source, namely Elizabeth Day’s article in Britain’s Telegraph.

The format behind the name “n.A.T.o.” might ring a bell among some of you; if it reminds you of t.A.T.u., another pop act out of Russia, but one which was built around two young Lolita-type singers who were apt to show rather too much affection for each other while performing on-stage, then you win the prize. Both acts share the same manager, Ivan Shapovalov, who at least is compiling an impressive portfolio of, shall we say, “noteworthy” musical acts formed under his direction.

De Standaard’s coverage concentrates on the shock and consternation n.A.T.o. has understandably caused in the Islamic world, mainly via appearances on Al-Jazeera. (Although the catty among us might ascribe much of that Muslim consternation to the very idea of a women appearing in public to sing in the first place; relatively new-fangled concepts like this have indeed caused loud complaints and furious gnashing of teeth among the audience on Afghan TV, for instance. You might even appraise Muslim elder opinion about n.A.T.o. along the lines that a woman has no business appearing in public like that, whether to sing or to do anything else – but, if she absolutely must, then at least with her burqa and her veil n.A.T.o. has got the dress code right.) Elizabeth Day’s article, on the other hand, mainly depicts the rather cool reception already being met by n.A.T.o. and her managers for their plans to come give one of this singer’s trademark “terror concerts” somewhere in England in the month of November. The kick-off “terror concert” occurred in Moscow last September 11 (of course!) and featured invitations printed to look like airline tickets, to accompany n.A.T.o.’s standard repertoire of songs sung in Arabic, delivered “in front of screens broadcasting images from al-Jazeera . . . interspersed with flashing words such as ‘al-Qaeda’, ‘Iraq’ and ‘Nasdaq’.”

“Nasdaq”?

Anyway, it’s the Muslim Council of Britain that has already termed such plans “highly tasteless” and urged people simply to ignore November’s event. Talk about favorable publicity! Such a judgment would have a better potential to drive up ticket sales were it to come from a bit more of a well-known source than the Muslim Council – from a member of the Royal Family, say – but still, Mr. Shapovalov already reports “a lot of interest from UK record companies” in n.A.T.o.

Oh, and that name “n.A.T.o.,” in whatever capitalization scheme you like, is certainly in the public domain. Ms. Day is thorough enough in her reporting to cite this statement from a spokesman for the real (i.e. military-political) NATO: “the name Nato has no copyright. In fact anyone who wishes to call themselves or their child Nato is free to do so.”