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Thread: The West Through the Eyes of North Korea [LEAKED PROPAGANDA]

  1. #1

    The West Through the Eyes of North Korea [LEAKED PROPAGANDA]




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  3. #2
    Tagged. I've gotta go to work

    Thanks. I watched a few minutes and it's interesting. I've gotta go to work, but having lived in South Korea, the North has always interested me.

  4. #3

  5. #4
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  6. #5
    I have no doubt I'm propagandized. I also have no doubt the North Koreans are, too. I wish there was a version where the soft spoken woman translator isn't talking over the man. I can barely make out what she's saying with all the background gibberish.

    Earlier this year (2012), North Korea released a film titled "Propaganda". We are brainwashed by our overmasters to have certain perception of North Korea so naturally, you may assume from the title that it's a propaganda piece about the glorious nation. It is not. What the film does is describe how propaganda is abused outside of North Korea and how the lot of us who live in the vest are victims of it. It's kind of scary how it takes the most isolated country in the world to break our society down to the most inconvenient detail and remain bang on.

    In simple terms, Propaganda is a film that lays down what we all know, but are afraid to admit. It is a film about how minds of the lot of us who live in what we are told is the "free world" are manipulated into dancing to the song our great leaders have chosen for us. It is a film which says it like it is and does it so directly, that unless you have removed the rose colored shades from your nose, you will become defensive.

    None of us knows what North Korea is really like. As such, all we know about North Korea is what our great leaders tell us. Or what traitors who deserted their home land feed us with to feed their own pockets with manipulated sympathy. The amount of $#@! they're full of only compares to the amount of $#@! Sunni murderers who escaped prosecution for crimes against humanity by getting asylum in western countries overflow with, or the amount of utter $#@! piece of $#@! Cubans who have nothing good to say about their country stink of.

    The Propaganda film gets it right by calling the western sheep "consumers" for this is precisely who they are. The film also gets it right by calling the western sheep "compliant slaves" for this is also precisely who they are. Wanna know how much of a sheep you are? Watch the video and see how it makes you feel
    Quote Originally Posted by Ron Paul View Post
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    This intellectually stimulating conversation is the reason I keep coming here.

  7. #6
    "Let it not be said that we did nothing." - Dr. Ron Paul. "Stand up for what you believe in, even if you are standing alone." - Sophie Magdalena Scholl
    "War is the health of the State." - Randolph Bourne "Freedom is the answer. ... Now, what's the question?" - Ernie Hancock.

  8. #7
    Koreans Remember the "Forgotten War"

    Yes, the Korean War. Remember that? ... Forgotten despite the fact that this particular war isn’t even over ... and despite the fact that the conflict saw the United States engage in numerous war crimes which, perhaps unsurprisingly, continue to shape the way North Koreans view the United States, even if the residents of the United States remain blissfully ignorant ...

    “What hardly any Americans know or remember,” University of Chicago historian Bruce Cumings writes in his book “The Korean War: A History,” “is that we carpet-bombed the north for three years with next to no concern for civilian casualties.” ... the fact that U.S. planes dropped on the Korean peninsula more bombs — 635,000 tons — and napalm — 32,557 tons — than during the entire Pacific campaign against the Japanese during World War II? ... “over a period of three years or so,” to quote Air Force General Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, “we killed off … 20 percent of the population ... and eventually burned down every town in North Korea.” ...

    Secretary of State Dean Rusk ... would later admit that the United States bombed “every brick that was standing on top of another, everything that moved.” .. U.S. warplanes, having run out of military targets, had bombed farms, dams, factories and hospitals. “I had seen the war-battered cities of Europe,” the Supreme Court justice [Douglas] confessed, “but I had not seen devastation until I had seen Korea.”
    How many Americans have ever come across General Douglas MacArthur’s unhinged plan to ... drop “between 30 and 50 atomic bombs … strung across the neck of Manchuria” ...

    How many Americans have heard of the No Gun Ri massacre, ... interviews ... “The hell with all those people,” one American veteran recalled his captain as saying. “Let’s get rid of all of them.”

    How many Americans are taught in school about the Bodo League massacre ... Eyewitness accounts suggest “jeeploads” of U.S. military officers were present and “supervised the butchery.”...

    For the residents of the DPRK, writes Columbia University historian Charles Armstrong in his book “Tyranny of the Weak: ” “the American air war left a deep and lasting impression” and “more than any other single factor, gave North Koreans a collective sense of anxiety and fear of outside threats, that would continue long after the war’s end.” ...

    But the fact is that inside North Korea, according to leading Korea scholar Kathryn Weathersby, ... "People in the North feel backed into a corner and threatened.” ...
    "Let it not be said that we did nothing." - Dr. Ron Paul. "Stand up for what you believe in, even if you are standing alone." - Sophie Magdalena Scholl
    "War is the health of the State." - Randolph Bourne "Freedom is the answer. ... Now, what's the question?" - Ernie Hancock.

  9. #8
    General Douglas MacArthur on the Korean War:

    “I shrink – I shrink with a horror that I cannot express in words at this continuous slaughter of men in Korea. The war in Korea has already almost destroyed that nation of 20 million people. I have never seen such devastation. ... I have seen, I guess, as much blood and disaster as any living man, and it just curdled my stomach the last time I was there. After I looked at the wreckage and those thousands of women and children and everything, I vomited … If you go on indefinitely, you are perpetuating a slaughter such as I have never heard of in the history of mankind."
    "Let it not be said that we did nothing." - Dr. Ron Paul. "Stand up for what you believe in, even if you are standing alone." - Sophie Magdalena Scholl
    "War is the health of the State." - Randolph Bourne "Freedom is the answer. ... Now, what's the question?" - Ernie Hancock.



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  11. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by AZJoe View Post
    General Douglas MacArthur on the Korean War:
    “I shrink – I shrink with a horror that I cannot express in words at this continuous slaughter of men in Korea. The war in Korea has already almost destroyed that nation of 20 million people. I have never seen such devastation. ... I have seen, I guess, as much blood and disaster as any living man, and it just curdled my stomach the last time I was there. After I looked at the wreckage and those thousands of women and children and everything, I vomited … If you go on indefinitely, you are perpetuating a slaughter such as I have never heard of in the history of mankind."
    He shared virtually the same words over British, Dutch, Russian, and American sanctions cornering The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere into war through economic ruin. No wonder the FDR and Truman war cabinet hated his guts and tried multiple times to destroy him. He wasn't quite on board, comrade.

  12. #10
    Fire and Fury” was not invented by Donald Trump. It is a concept deeply embedded in US military doctrine. It has characterized US military interventions since the end of World War II. … President Truman was a firm advocate of “Fire and Fury” against the people of both North and South Korea.

    What most people in America do not know –and which is particularly relevant when assessing the alleged “threats” of the DPRK to World peace– is that North Korea lost thirty percent of its population as a result of US led bombings in the 1950s. …

    Pyongyang 1953

    The criminal bombings of Pyongyang in 1951 ordered by president Truman, were opposed by General Douglas MacArthur who was commander of allied forces in Korea:
    A defiant Douglas MacArthur appeared before Congress and spoke of human suffering so horrifying that his parting glimpse of it caused him to vomit.
    “I have never seen such devastation,” the general told members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees. At that time, in May 1951, the Korean War was less than a year old. Casualties, he estimated, were already north of 1 million.
    “I have seen, I guess, as much blood and disaster as any living man,” he added, “and it just curdled my stomach
    .” …


    The DPRK’s Foreign Minister’s Cable to the United Nations Security Council confirms the nature of the atrocities committed by the US against the people of North Korea under the banner of the United Nations:
    See original below.
    “ON JANUARY 3 AT 10:30 AM, AN ARMADE OF 82 FLYING FORTRESSES LOOSED THEIR DEATH-DEALING LOAD ON THE CITY OF PYONGYANG. …
    HUNDREDS OF TONS OF BOMBS AND INCENDIARY COMPOUND WERE SIMULTANEOUSLY DROPPED THROUGHOUT THE CITY, CAUSING ANNIHILATING FIRES. IN ORDER TO PREVENT THE EXTINCTION OF THESE FIRES, THE TRANS-ATLANTIC BARBARIANS BOMBED THE CITY WITH DELAYED-ACTION HIGH-EXPLOSIVE BOMBS WHICH EXPLODED AT INTERVALS THROUGHOUT FOR A WHOLE DAY, MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE PEOPLE TO COME OUT ONTO THE STREETS. THE ENTIRE CITY HAS NOW BEEN BURNING, ENVELOPED IN FLAMES, FOR TWO DAYS. BY THE SECOND DAY 7,812 CIVILIANS’ HOUSES HAD BEEN BURNT DOWN. THE AMERICANS WERE WELL AWARE THAT THERE WERE NO MILITARY OBJECTIVES LEFT IN PYONGYANG. …
    THE NUMBER OF INHABITANTS OF PYONGYANG KILLED BY BOMB SPLINTERS, BURNT ALIVE AND SUFFOCATED BY SMOKE IS INCALCULABLE, SINCE NO COMPUTATION IS POSSIBLE. SOME FIFTY THOUSAND INHABITANTS REMAIN IN THE CITY, WHICH BEFORE THE WAR HAD A POPULATION OF FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND.”
    "Let it not be said that we did nothing." - Dr. Ron Paul. "Stand up for what you believe in, even if you are standing alone." - Sophie Magdalena Scholl
    "War is the health of the State." - Randolph Bourne "Freedom is the answer. ... Now, what's the question?" - Ernie Hancock.

  13. #11
    Forgotten History

    With tension ever mounting in the Korean peninsular, all the higher every year with US bombers conducting annual drills over South Korea within direct strike range of North Korea, it is notable and deeply regrettable the West has lost all sight and memory of the enormous destruction inflicted on the Korean people in the Korean War 1950-53.

    How can we ever in the West begin to understand the large scale militarization of North Korea if … political assessment and judgement takes no account of Korean history?

    North Korea was as a matter of historical fact through the Korean war carpet bombed for three years by US bombers. … US B29s bombing was for most of the war free-range over the whole peninsular. …
    “The US airforce destroyed every town and village in north Korea”. “The destruction was enormous”.
    In the words of Air Force General Curtis LeMay:
    We burned down every town in North Korea …. over a period of three years or so we killed – what – 20 percent of the population”.

    And this including the very worst of it large scale use of napalm. To quote Senator John Glenn, then a major in the US air force before becoming an astronaut:
    “We did a lot of napalm work dropping fuel tanks loaded with napalm, flying in low, called a Nape Scrape”. ..
    In all some 600,000 tons of bombs were dropped on the towns and villages and cities of the country. That is well over a million concussion bombs, along with 40 million gallons of high octane napalm. And to add to this, in the final stages of the war, mass bombing (1,514 sorties) of Sui-ho hydro-electric and irrigation dams (the world’s fourth largest) on the Yalu River then flooding and destroying huge areas of northern farmland and crops. …

    In the words of Professor Charles Armstrong, Director of the Centre for Korean Research, Columbia University:
    “The physical destruction and loss of life on both sides was almost beyond comprehension, but the North suffered the greater damage, due to American saturation bombing and the scorched-earth policy of the retreating UN forces”.

    That then is the horror of the brutal Korean war. Over two million Korean civilians … destruction was “indiscriminate”.
    Is it then any wonder North Korea turns out a highly militarized state, deeply loathing the “Yankees”, raining bombs and death and destruction on their towns and villages for three years? …

    we surely have to ask how much of this huge militarization has been created by the horrors of warfare, all the more so large scale bombing impacting on civilian populations. As also not to forget, until the end of WW2, Korea suffered 35 long years of brutal occupation by the Japanese. Over one million forced deportations, suppression of Korean culture and identity, deaths in Japanese labor camps estimated at over half a million. …

    Trauma is not forgotten.
    The US, and New York in particular, were devastated by the attack on the Trade Centre towers in 2001 … with 2,996 deaths … living on to this day … and indeed in the consciousness of the whole of the US, and the world. But the West forgets and is oblivious or indifferent to the suffering inflicted on the Korean people 1950-53. And that is bombing and destruction and loss of life of many thousands of Trade Centre attacks. …

    It is then impossible to see how it could be clearer, for those who will look … three years of carpet bombing, following 35 years of repression under Japanese occupation, surely provides an understandable rationale why any country would become formidably militarized. Defense of the country the all-consuming priority.

    For the people of North Korea the mass killing and destruction of civilians a holocaust against their people. For them, United States enormous war crimes and atrocities never brought to any court of justice. … No condemnation from the US public (as arose in the Vietnam war) but celebration. But then the general US public of that time new very little of the real consequences of the war …

    History Repeating …
    And now we have history on the brink of repeating yet again. The whole situation enormously high risk and dangerous with Secretary of State Tillerson indicating in his view … over Crimea and Syria, “history is not the issue”. What matters, as Tillerson said, is dealing with “current threats”. In a stroke Mr Tillerson excluding all relevance of historical causes and motivations …

    Since then the Secretary of State has made clear … “the time for strategic patience is over … telling the Council there will be “no negotiations” until North Korea “first” takes “concrete steps” … For Tillerson, and UK Foreign Secretary Johnson … the reasons why North Korea has become one of the most militarized states in the world are not relevant. The Korean War with 3 million dead not counted in contemporary political calculus. …

    The West makes no effort to understand another nation’s history then history repeats. … Horror for civilian population, horror for combatant troops. … in denial of a war that is very distant “long ago” but then, for the Koreans, as alive today as terror and fear of the US … for the huge numbers of civilian casualties from bombing of Korean towns and cities … the self same charges the West brought against the Nazi regime after WW2: Crimes against Humanity. War crimes against civilian populations. …

    The US has repeatedly turned down North Korea offers to end nuclear weapon development. That will come as a shock to many but negotiation records show that offers have been put forward by North Korea back to the Clinton administration in the 1990s but then rejected by the US as, in return, North Korea asks that the US and South Korea end annual large-scale “warfare exercises” on their borders. The most recent offer 2015:
    North Korea announces offer to suspend nuclear testing …in exchange for the United States and South Korea calling off annual joint-military exercises slated for spring 2015. The United States rejects the offer.” [Arms Control Association] …

    US military build-up as of May 2017 in warfare exercises includes the newly installed US anti-missile THAAD system, low flying bombers within minutes’ strike range of North Korea, together with an aircraft carrier battle fleet, including who knows how many nuclear strike submarines, in Korean off-shore waters.

    North Korea finds all this US “menace” … hugely threatening … And one would think, if it was our own country, terrifying. … do not forget … missiles on Cuba in the early ’60s and that very nearly leading to world nuclear war. But on the North Korean offers to de-nuclearize the US repeatedly refuses quid pro quo de-escalation …

    On scores for belligerence the US, and others in the West including the UK, could surely not be higher. … 1) enormous destruction of North Korean civilian population by vastly superior US air forces 1950-53 … 2) repeated US refusal of North Korea’s offers of quid pro quo de-escalation … 3) US bringing even more over-whelming military force into South Korea and off-shore seas ; 4) US and UK calling for and indeed demanding … more and more powerful sanctions, 5) most crippling closing international access to sources of financial exchange. 6) This then closing off (blockading) routes for trade driving North Korea into deeper isolation and poverty. …
    "Let it not be said that we did nothing." - Dr. Ron Paul. "Stand up for what you believe in, even if you are standing alone." - Sophie Magdalena Scholl
    "War is the health of the State." - Randolph Bourne "Freedom is the answer. ... Now, what's the question?" - Ernie Hancock.

  14. #12

    Escaping North Korea: Grace Jo's Story

    http://www.bushcenter.org/publicatio...o-q-and-a.html

    NOVEMBER 28, 2016 by Christopher Walsh


    Grace Jo shared her story with us, detailing the struggles of North Korean refugees living in the United States and explaining how refugees contribute to freedom in North Korea.

    Grace Jo grew up under North Korea’s communist dictatorship. After witnessing several family members starve to death, she escaped to China with her mother and sister. In 2008, Grace came to the United States where she and her sister, Jinhye, founded a nonprofit that supports North Korean refugees. Grace is in Dallas to participate in the Bush Institute’s Forum on Freedom in North Korea. She sat down with us to answer a few questions about her story, the struggles of North Korean refugees living in the United States, and how refugees contribute to freedom in North Korea.

    Why did you leave North Korea and come to the United States?

    Because I wanted to live like a human being. In my country, we had no food to eat, no freedom, and no opportunities for young people. I could not breathe freely and had to endure threats to my life all the time. I lost my father, grandmother, and two younger brothers to hunger. I almost died of starvation. I also witnessed torture and hardship through imprisonment when I was forcibly sent back to North Korea from China many times. Those prison guards are inhuman and seemed like monsters to me. They don't have any proper laws, justice, or humanitarian concept.

    What challenges do North Korean refugees living in the United States experience? How can the U.S. government and others help them?

    I remember we got 8 months assistance after coming to the United States, such as food stamps and medical care. Even though we had some assistance from the government we still had a lot of difficulties. First, learning a new language, as well as making choices about everything without proper guidance, was very challenging for us.

    Second, as a North Korean refugee I wasn't used to making choices by myself or for the family until I came to the United States. So, it was very difficult to handle all the bills and make decisions about our life. Lastly, because we didn't have a proper education, my sister and I had a hard time finding a job to earn money to help our sick mom and pay all the bills for many years. Our income was very low so we had to work two or three jobs to earn money. Therefore, as a high school student I could not complete my education on time and ended up delaying it. As a result, young North Koreans face difficulties in the United States pursuing their education and goals.

    People might say that immigrants from other countries also face similar difficulties, and they all succeed in resettlement and live freely in the United States. I agree, but I would like to emphasize that North Koreans are brainwashed by the communist regime [in North Korea] and it is very hard to change all at once. Also, people are trained to obey commands since they are able to walk as children. So, from a psychological perspective, North Koreans need more help in guidance and support.

    How do North Korean refugees living in free societies help their people inside North Korea?

    Usually, daughters and sons will send money to their remaining family members in North Korea and help them to survive. In other ways, they will bribe brokers to rescue their family members from North Korea. Not all North Koreans have the opportunity to help family members in North Korea, but most try their best. Those who don't have family members in North Korea such as my sister and myself might try to be human rights advocates and let people around the world know about the tyranny and suffering that goes on there.

    Being an advocate is not easy because some of us get threats from the North Korean government, or they will record our name on their black list, for example. Although we live in a free society, advocates often live in fear and worry. Some of us will be criticized by North Korean refugees and also have friendships with defector groups broken simply because we are public figures and human rights advocates. Other North Korean refugees worry about their family members’ safety in North Korea because of our friendships. It is very sad and heart breaking, but it is a reality for North Korean defectors who are living in free societies.

  15. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by AZJoe View Post
    Forgotten History

    With tension ever mounting in the Korean peninsular, all the higher every year with US bombers conducting annual drills over South Korea within direct strike range of North Korea, it is notable and deeply regrettable the West has lost all sight and memory of the enormous destruction inflicted on the Korean people in the Korean War 1950-53.

    How can we ever in the West begin to understand the large scale militarization of North Korea if … political assessment and judgement takes no account of Korean history?

    North Korea was as a matter of historical fact through the Korean war carpet bombed for three years by US bombers. … US B29s bombing was for most of the war free-range over the whole peninsular. …
    “The US airforce destroyed every town and village in north Korea”. “The destruction was enormous”.
    In the words of Air Force General Curtis LeMay:
    We burned down every town in North Korea …. over a period of three years or so we killed – what – 20 percent of the population”.

    And this including the very worst of it large scale use of napalm. To quote Senator John Glenn, then a major in the US air force before becoming an astronaut:
    “We did a lot of napalm work dropping fuel tanks loaded with napalm, flying in low, called a Nape Scrape”. ..
    In all some 600,000 tons of bombs were dropped on the towns and villages and cities of the country. That is well over a million concussion bombs, along with 40 million gallons of high octane napalm. And to add to this, in the final stages of the war, mass bombing (1,514 sorties) of Sui-ho hydro-electric and irrigation dams (the world’s fourth largest) on the Yalu River then flooding and destroying huge areas of northern farmland and crops. …

    In the words of Professor Charles Armstrong, Director of the Centre for Korean Research, Columbia University:
    “The physical destruction and loss of life on both sides was almost beyond comprehension, but the North suffered the greater damage, due to American saturation bombing and the scorched-earth policy of the retreating UN forces”.

    That then is the horror of the brutal Korean war. Over two million Korean civilians … destruction was “indiscriminate”.
    Is it then any wonder North Korea turns out a highly militarized state, deeply loathing the “Yankees”, raining bombs and death and destruction on their towns and villages for three years? …

    we surely have to ask how much of this huge militarization has been created by the horrors of warfare, all the more so large scale bombing impacting on civilian populations. As also not to forget, until the end of WW2, Korea suffered 35 long years of brutal occupation by the Japanese. Over one million forced deportations, suppression of Korean culture and identity, deaths in Japanese labor camps estimated at over half a million. …

    Trauma is not forgotten.
    The US, and New York in particular, were devastated by the attack on the Trade Centre towers in 2001 … with 2,996 deaths … living on to this day … and indeed in the consciousness of the whole of the US, and the world. But the West forgets and is oblivious or indifferent to the suffering inflicted on the Korean people 1950-53. And that is bombing and destruction and loss of life of many thousands of Trade Centre attacks. …

    It is then impossible to see how it could be clearer, for those who will look … three years of carpet bombing, following 35 years of repression under Japanese occupation, surely provides an understandable rationale why any country would become formidably militarized. Defense of the country the all-consuming priority.

    For the people of North Korea the mass killing and destruction of civilians a holocaust against their people. For them, United States enormous war crimes and atrocities never brought to any court of justice. … No condemnation from the US public (as arose in the Vietnam war) but celebration. But then the general US public of that time new very little of the real consequences of the war …

    History Repeating …
    And now we have history on the brink of repeating yet again. The whole situation enormously high risk and dangerous with Secretary of State Tillerson indicating in his view … over Crimea and Syria, “history is not the issue”. What matters, as Tillerson said, is dealing with “current threats”. In a stroke Mr Tillerson excluding all relevance of historical causes and motivations …

    Since then the Secretary of State has made clear … “the time for strategic patience is over … telling the Council there will be “no negotiations” until North Korea “first” takes “concrete steps” … For Tillerson, and UK Foreign Secretary Johnson … the reasons why North Korea has become one of the most militarized states in the world are not relevant. The Korean War with 3 million dead not counted in contemporary political calculus. …

    The West makes no effort to understand another nation’s history then history repeats. … Horror for civilian population, horror for combatant troops. … in denial of a war that is very distant “long ago” but then, for the Koreans, as alive today as terror and fear of the US … for the huge numbers of civilian casualties from bombing of Korean towns and cities … the self same charges the West brought against the Nazi regime after WW2: Crimes against Humanity. War crimes against civilian populations. …

    The US has repeatedly turned down North Korea offers to end nuclear weapon development. That will come as a shock to many but negotiation records show that offers have been put forward by North Korea back to the Clinton administration in the 1990s but then rejected by the US as, in return, North Korea asks that the US and South Korea end annual large-scale “warfare exercises” on their borders. The most recent offer 2015:
    North Korea announces offer to suspend nuclear testing …in exchange for the United States and South Korea calling off annual joint-military exercises slated for spring 2015. The United States rejects the offer.” [Arms Control Association] …

    US military build-up as of May 2017 in warfare exercises includes the newly installed US anti-missile THAAD system, low flying bombers within minutes’ strike range of North Korea, together with an aircraft carrier battle fleet, including who knows how many nuclear strike submarines, in Korean off-shore waters.

    North Korea finds all this US “menace” … hugely threatening … And one would think, if it was our own country, terrifying. … do not forget … missiles on Cuba in the early ’60s and that very nearly leading to world nuclear war. But on the North Korean offers to de-nuclearize the US repeatedly refuses quid pro quo de-escalation …

    On scores for belligerence the US, and others in the West including the UK, could surely not be higher. … 1) enormous destruction of North Korean civilian population by vastly superior US air forces 1950-53 … 2) repeated US refusal of North Korea’s offers of quid pro quo de-escalation … 3) US bringing even more over-whelming military force into South Korea and off-shore seas ; 4) US and UK calling for and indeed demanding … more and more powerful sanctions, 5) most crippling closing international access to sources of financial exchange. 6) This then closing off (blockading) routes for trade driving North Korea into deeper isolation and poverty. …
    The American people need to be reminded of this... since the MSM refuse to do so, we lurch forward toward more unimaginable horror. The media in this country would easily have the potential to turn this all around... but unfortunately they've been bought & sold... they are merely a tool of the state.

    Don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows

  16. #14
    While the U.S. Talks of War, South Korea Shudders

    a few days ago, A man in his 70s accidentally dropped two thick wads of cash in the street. Two people who happened upon this bundle ... were caught by the police, made to give up the money ... But there was a special reason this man was carrying so much cash on him. “I’m worried that a war might be coming,” he told the police, “so I’d just taken my savings out of the bank and was on my way home.” ...

    ... we have witnessed this tension gradually increasing, on the news day after day, and inside our own nervousness. People began to find out where the nearest air-raid shelter from their home and office is. Ahead of Chuseok, our harvest festival, some people even prepared gifts for their family — not the usual box of fruit, but “survival backpacks,” ... In train stations and airports, each time there is a news broadcast related to war, people gather in front of the television, watching the screen with tense faces. That’s how things are with us. We are worried. ...

    One of the many things I realized during my research is that in all wars and massacres there is a critical point at which human beings perceive certain other human beings as “subhuman” ... The last line of defense by which human beings can remain human is the complete and true perception of another’s suffering, ...

    The Korean War was a proxy war enacted on the Korean Peninsula ... Millions of people were butchered ... territory was utterly destroyed. ... in this tragic process were several instances of the American Army, officially our allies, massacring South Korean citizens. ...[in] the No Gun Ri Massacre, American soldiers drove hundreds of citizens, mainly women and children, under a stone bridge, then shot at them from both sides for several days, killing most of them. ... If they did not perceive the South Korean refugees as “subhuman,” if they had perceived the suffering of others completely and truly, as dignified human beings, would such a thing have been possible? ...

    Now, nearly 70 years on, I am listening as hard as I can each day to what is being said on the news from America, ... “We have several scenarios.” “We will win.” “If war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula, 20,000 South Koreans will be killed every day.” “Don’t worry, war won’t happen in America. Only on the Korean Peninsula.” ...

    the president of the United States has said, “They only understand one thing.” ... Koreans really do understand only one thing. We understand that any solution that is not peace is meaningless and that “victory” is just an empty slogan, absurd and impossible. People who absolutely do not want another proxy war are living, here and now, on the Korean Peninsula. ...
    "Let it not be said that we did nothing." - Dr. Ron Paul. "Stand up for what you believe in, even if you are standing alone." - Sophie Magdalena Scholl
    "War is the health of the State." - Randolph Bourne "Freedom is the answer. ... Now, what's the question?" - Ernie Hancock.

  17. #15
    Commentary from Stephen Gowans (from July 2017, but still relevant)

    What makes tiny North Korea, within its miniscule defense budget, and rudimentary nuclear arsenal and missile capability, a threat so menacing that “worry has spread in Washington and the United Nations”? …

    “The fear … is not that [North Korean leader] Mr. Kim would launch a pre-emptive attack on the West Coast; that would be suicidal, and if the North’s 33-year-old leader has demonstrated anything in his five years in office, he is all about survival.”

    Washington’s alarm … is that “Mr. Kim [now] has the ability to strike back.” In other words, Pyongyang has acquired the means of an effective self-defense. …

    to a world hegemon like the United States, any renitent foreign government that refuses to place itself in the role of vassal becomes “a dangerous regime,” which must be eliminated. … The United States has spent the past 70 years trying to integrate the tiny, plucky, country into its undeclared empire. Now, with North Korea’s having acquired the capability to retaliate … the prospects of those seven-decades of investment bearing fruit appear dim. …

    A three-year US-led war of aggression, from 1950 to 1953, exterminated 20 percent of North Korea’s population and burned to the ground every town in the … General Douglas MacArthur said of the destruction the United States visited upon North Korea that “I have never seen such devastation…After I looked at the wreckage and those thousands of women and children and everything, I vomited.”

    A vicious seven-decades-long campaign of economic warfare … has conferred upon North Korea the unhappy distinction of being the most heavily sanctioned nation on earth. …

    For decades, North Koreans have lived under a US nuclear Sword of Damocles, subjected repeatedly to threats of nuclear annihilation, including being turned into “charcoal briquettes” and “completely destroyed,” so that they “literally cease to exist —and this before they had nuclear weapons and the rudimentary means to deliver them. … threats to vaporize North Koreans …

    We should remind ourselves why North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in the first place. … “By mid-March 1993, tens of thousands of [US] soldiers were carrying out war games in Korea…and in came the B1-B bombers, B-52s from Guam, several naval vessels carrying cruise missiles, and the like: whereupon the North pulled out of the NPT.” …
    Last month, Washington sent not one, but two aircraft carriers … to the waters between Japan and Korea, to conduct “exercises,” “a show of force not seen there for more than two decades,” … At the same time, the Pentagon sent B1-B strategic bombers, not once, but twice last month, to conduct simulated nuclear bombing runs “near the Military Demarcation Line that divides the two Koreas;” in other words, along the North Korean border.

    Understandably, North Korea denounced the simulated bombing missions … grave provocations. If the communist country’s new self-defensive capabilities spurred consternation in Washington, then Washington’s overt display of its offensive might legitimately enkindled alarm in Pyongyang. …

    US-led war games “[may look] like a defensive maneuver for us, [but] from North Korea‘s perspective, they may think we’re preparing an attack when you start bringing B2 fighters.”

    In January, North Korea offered to “sit with the U.S. anytime” to discuss US war games and its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Pyongyang proposed that the United States … temporarily suspending joint military exercises in south Korea and … the DPRK … temporarily suspending the nuclear test … The North Korean proposal was seconded by China and Russia and recently by South Korea’s new president … Washington peremptorily rejected the proposal …US rejection of the China-Russia-South Korea-backed North Korean proposal, however, is only rhetorically related to notions of legitimacy … How are US ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons legitimate and those of North Korea not?

    The real reason Washington rejects the North Korean proposal is explained by Sanger: an agreed freeze … deter[s] Washington from launching a regime change aggression in the manner of wars it perpetrated against Saddam and Gaddafi … which, unlike North Korea, relinquished their means of self-defense, and once defenseless, were toppled by US-instigated aggressions.

    “That is what Mr. Kim believes his nuclear program will prevent,” …

    The United States exercises an international dictatorship, arrogating onto itself the right to intervene in any part of the globe, in order to dictate to others how they should organize their political and economic affairs, to the point, in North Korea, of explicitly waging economic warfare against the country …

    North Korea is calumniated as a bellicose dictatorship, human rights violator and practitioner of cruel and unusual punishment of political dissidents, a description to a tee of Washington’s principal Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, a recipient of almost illimitable military, diplomatic and other favors from the United States, showered on the Arabian tyranny despite its total aversion to democracy, reduction of women to the status of chattel, dissemination of a viciously sectarian Wahhabi ideology, an unprovoked war on Yemen, and the beheading and crucifixion of its political dissidents. …
    "Let it not be said that we did nothing." - Dr. Ron Paul. "Stand up for what you believe in, even if you are standing alone." - Sophie Magdalena Scholl
    "War is the health of the State." - Randolph Bourne "Freedom is the answer. ... Now, what's the question?" - Ernie Hancock.



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