Kim Jong Il is dead. UPDATES. Extraordinary public grief.

The BBC reports, North Korea's sickly Supreme Leader is dead.  Dear Leader's son hasn't won enough respect to govern.  China wants NK to follow China's economic path.  People are starving again.  Watch  for developments.  Remember Bush labeled Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the axis of evil? Before that, Libya was on the list.  I call it progress when the bottom of the barrel is less dangerous.
Recent background reports on conditions inside Stalinist NK:
Strategy Page December 15th and Strategy Page-October 20th
Bulletin just received from Stratfor.  Key point is the NK military hasn't been put on alert.
National Post adds picture of putative heir, a son "in his twenties" who is fat in a starving land, and mocked with wall graffiti.  Stephen Green reviews eight scenarios and says: The Chinese People’s Liberation Army might be the best hope for the people of North Korea.







Drudge celebrates the death of the wicked witch of the east: 

Collapse scenario: "Up until tonight, if anybody had asked you what would be the most likely scenario under which the North Korean regime could collapse, the answer would be the sudden death of Kim Jong-il," said Victor Cha, a Korea expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank in Washington.
Oil slips below $93 
Don't cry for Kim:  Any show of respect would only help to preserve Kim’s monstrous system. (Claudia Rosett).
Tweet of the year award: “I’d like to think God let Havel and Hitchens pick the third.”
Walter Russell Mead:  Don’t hold your breath waiting for change

Extraordinary display of public grief for their dead slave master:   “North Koreans weeping hysterically over the death of Kim Jong-il.”, falling to their knees in the streets of Pyongyang.


Lastly some robots-on-parade (Diogenes Borealis):