Artemii Lebedev, described as one of the leading web designers in Russia, went to North Korea on "vacation" and brought back an impressive array of pictures, which he has thoughtfully annotated with comments.

They are fascinating.

The remarkable thing, both apparent from the pictures and the commentary, is that NK devotes enormous resources to creating the facade of an industrialized economy for foreign eyes. Of course none of it works because the absent details are so glaring--like no cars on the six lane highway.

From my perspective, the place didn't look that bad. Virtually any place in the third world looks the same or worse. Even developed countries like France have the odd mixture of ancient and modern. I recall staying at a modern mid-priced hotel near Brest that had a concrete communal wash basin across the street that women were still using to wash their clothes. It dated from the 19th century.

On the other hand, its missing the typical third world chaos you normally associate with this kind of decrepitude, and perhaps that makes it all the more scary.

You can understand how an absence of any meaningful goverment could result in the typical third world chaos, but NK is just the opposite--very well ordered and yet extremely poor. A society with this kind of discipline should naturally be quite prosperous. The fact that it isn't suggest an extreme dysfunction.

It was only a matter of time.

Navy officials confirmed yesterday that an aircraft carrier battle group failed to detect a Chinese submarine that surfaced within weapons range of the USS Kitty Hawk. Anti-submarine defenses for the carrier battle group will be reviewed as a result, they said.

"It was not detected," said one Navy official of the encounter with a Chinese diesel-powered attack submarine. "And we're concerned about that, obviously."

The Chinese Song-class attack submarine surfaced near the carrier in deep waters off Okinawa on Oct. 26. It was armed with wake-homing torpedos and anti-ship cruise missiles.

I don't know with certainty that the Clinton administration is responsible for vastly improving Chinese military capabilities, so I'll leave it at that.

There are two possibilities here--someone on the Kitty Hawk screwed up and failed to note the proximity of an anomalous acoustic signature near the carrier, or far, far worse, the sub was undetectable by our current level of technology.

If the latter, then the Chinese just rendered the entire U.S. surface navy obsolete.

I think it highly likely that the U.S. will get carved up like a roast in the 21st century. We have no national will to fight and our technological and economic supremacy is old news. Either learn Chinese or convert to Islam, or cover your bets and do both...

Hillary Clinton calls on Bush to boycott Olympic opening ceremonies.

"The violent clashes in Tibet and the failure of the Chinese government to use its full leverage with Sudan to stop the genocide in Darfur are opportunities for Presidential leadership," Clinton said in a written statement.

"These events underscore why I believe the Bush administration has been wrong to downplay human rights in its policy towards China. At this time, and in light of recent events, I believe President Bush should not plan on attending the opening ceremonies in Beijing, absent major changes by the Chinese government."

The woman has chutzpah, that is for sure.