In a delightfully creepy bit of propaganda out of North Korea, the makers of this video inadvertently toss Hitchens' line about not being able to escape Pyongyang's totalitarian system until you die on its head.

"Don't worry about us, sister. Our father is still with us."

The Syrian regime's violence against its own people has been horrendous. But the United Nation General Secretary's call for both the regime and those elements of the opposition that are fighting back to simply put down their arms and seek a political resolution is unrealistic.

To be sure, a political resolution must be found. But the regime can't play a part in it. The Bashar Al Assad regime and everyone associated with it need to go. There can be no meaningful discussion with people who pull the fingernails out of children and indiscriminately bombard entire neighborhoods.

Whichever way the regime ultimately crumbles, the United Nations should be taking steps to organize some intervention to prevent the wholesale slaughter of ethnic and religious minorities by members of what we nebulously call the Opposition. As we have seen in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia, when the dictator goes, Islamists rush into the gap, with lethal consequences.

Nadia Khoury is a Contributing Writer for The Propagandist

Vladimir Putin's win in the rigged Russian Presidential election, followed by police cracking down on legitimate protests, is bad enough. It's even more disappointing that the second-place finishers were the Communists, with 18 percent.

Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin speaking to Channel 4 News hours before she was killed in Homs, Syria. The city was under assault by security forces loyal to Dictator Bashar Al Assad.

Escapees from the gulag state that is North Korea ought not to be termed defectors. That would indicate a well-thought out ideological break with the cult of Pyongyang and a betrayal of Communist principles. I'm not convinced that's what's going on. I don't think anyone else is, either.

Certainly, as escaped refugees learn what the real world is like outside of the totalitarian state's borders, any lingering solidarity with the dynasty of Kim Il Sung will disappear. But the reason most people try to get out is because they're desperately hungry and fear being imprisoned and tortured for breaking arbitrary rules like not crying enough at the Dear Leader's recent funeral. They're not traitors; they are refugees hoping to escape with their lives and nothing else.

When China arrests these people and sends them back to meet their lethal fate at the hands of the North Korean prison camp guards, it is violating their human right to life. It's sort of like an escapee from Al Qaeda somehow managing to get to a consulate or airport and authorities deciding to hand them back to their former captors for a scheduled beheading. Or to put it another way, if a starving, scarred and penniless North Korean somehow managed to swim across the Pacific Ocean to the USA, how atrocious would it be for police to send him back?

Protests should not be confined to South Korea. China's leaders should know the world is watching.

Jonathon Narvey is the Editor of The Propagandist

Darn. After that great funereal show for Kim Jong Il, I was looking forward to another display of the totalitarian state's lush pageantry.

It seems Kim Jong Un is still around, very much able to treat himself to five-course meals while his population is reduced further into a civilization of malnourished dwarfs.

With the Russians now threatening to veto any more robust action against one of their biggest weapons-sales customers, it looks like there won't be any chance of a Libya-style intervention in Syria. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? You decide. Take our poll and tell us what you think should happen.

If the only thing North Korea's new dictator Kim Jong Un has to do to consolidate power is improve the economy, that seems to be a very low benchmark.

NORTH KOREAN POLLSTER: How do you think our leader is doing on the economy?

NK CITIZEN: Last year, my family had one bag of rice between us. Now we have a bag of rice and a bottle of ketchup! Things really seem to be looking up. It's soooo much better than when that economic disaster Kim Jong Il was in charge.

NORTH KOREAN POLLSTER: Oh, really.

NK CITIZEN: No, wait!

NORTH KOREAN POLLSTER: Off to the gulag with you. And you can leave your ketchup on the table. You won't be needing it where you're going.

Whatever brief opportunity for North Korea's subject people's freedom existed in the wake of the death of the Dear Leader, the moment appears to have passed. The Great Successor has seized the reigns in Pyongyang with the blessing of the military.

Another generation of starvation, persecution and totalitarian control looms ahead for what may be the most unfree nation in modern history.

From Reason Magazine:

When journalist Christopher Hitchens died on December 15, 2011 he was soon followed in the grave by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, a loathsome figure whose atrocities Hitchens spent a fair amount of time of documenting. Given the proximity in time of their deaths, Reason is happy to re-release this 2007 featuring Hitchens' dramatic reading of Tom Lehrer's "Christmas Song." Taped at Reason's DC headquarters before a crowd of about 150 people, Hitchens begins his performance with a peroration about one-party states in North Korea--and North America.