lo yeeOn
2018-02-05 07:27:59 UTC
So Mike Pence gave his assessment about North Korea:
. . . everything the North Koreans do at the Olympics is a charade
to cover up the fact that they are the most tyrannical and
oppressive regime on the planet, . . . We will not allow North
Korea's propaganda to hijack the messaging of the Olympics.
At best, whatever he will say, such as what his aides have told the
press on his behalf, is just a rather one-sided story. At worst, he
is warmongering and propagandizing. See, for example, Michelle
Goldberg's NYT article of Jan. 30, 2018:
Trump's Boring, Utterly Terrifying Warmongering
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/30/opinion/trump-boring-warmongering-sotu.html
Do other people agree with Washington about the North Koreans?
About 15 years ago, G W Bush made this type of statement about Iraq
and the whole purpose was to prepare the American people for a frontal
assault on the country, paying no regard to the lives of millions of
Iraqis.
Trump and Pence now make the statement that "No regime has oppressed
its own citizens more totally or brutally than the cruel dictatorship
in North Korea," to justify their warmongering, using Otto Warmbier
and Ji Seong-ho as their excuses.
Michelle Goldberg wrote:
Trump had in the audience the parents and siblings of Otto Warmbier,
an American student who was sentenced to 15 years in a North Korean
forced-labor camp, and who died after being sent back to the United
States with severe injuries. He seemed to be using Warmbier's death
to propagandize for war: "Tonight we pledge to honor Otto's memory
with total American resolve."
Also in the audience was Ji Seong-ho, a heroic North Korean defector
who lost his left hand and foot during the country's famine in the
mid- 1990s, and who was cheered as he held his crutches aloft. A
Christian convert, Ji has argued that believers have a duty to
destroy the regime. A 2010 profile of Ji in The Christian Post, an
evangelical publication, said, "Despite North Korea's cruel
imprisonment and murder of anyone who advocates religion in the
country, there is a Christian responsibility to tear down North
Korea's wall against Christianity and religion so that North Koreans
may begin to worship and find joy," he stressed. Ji's presence
could signal that Trump is trying to enlist his evangelical base in
a crusade.
"No regime has oppressed its own citizens more totally or brutally
than the cruel dictatorship in North Korea," Trump said Tuesday
night during the annual address to Congress. "North Korea's
reckless pursuit of nuclear missiles could very soon threaten our
homeland."
Trump and Pence blissfully ignore the will of the Korean people, North
or South, who would rather switch than fight.
South Korea has repeatedly made known to Washington its stand of
**no-war-on-the-Korean peninsula** and its people are frightened to
death about their inability to stop the war from happening.
No doubt, we cannot ignore Ji's feelings. Ji lost his father, in
addition to losing a foot and a hand as a result of an accident that
occurred during North Korea's famine in the 1990s. Ji's loss of his
father is a very emotional as well as traumatic experience because the
latter died at the NK government's hand due to his own defection and
the defections of his mother and sister.
The West likes to blame the NK government for the famine. It may or
may not be the government's responsibility for the famine to have
happened. But there is simply no evidence to support the accusation
that the famine is evidence that the NK government was cruel and
brutal, much less "No regime has oppressed its own citizens more
totally or brutally than the cruel dictatorship in North Korea", as
team Trump likes to say these days.
Isn't this kind of talk, quite plainly, a part of the war machine's
propagandizing or warmongering?
Modern China also had famines and during the Great Leap Forward during
Mao's reign, millions died. And when Washington felt up to it, they
liked to put out how evil a country China was.
Today, however, Washington talks about Russian and Chinese threats in
the background, but the warmongers reserve the most of any accusation
of threat or any accusation of evil to its current target of regime
change --- which was Iraq yesterday and North Korea today! And maybe
Iran tomorrow, too?
According to the Wikipedia,
a 2011 US Census Bureau report [about North Korea] put the excess
death figure during 1993-2000 between five to six hundred thousands.
It is nonsense to use the famine to frame North Korea as Trump and
Pence would like us to believe:
"No regime has oppressed its own citizens more totally or brutally
than the cruel dictatorship in North Korea",
for these simple reasons.
1) My former colleague Tom always told me that Mao killed millions of
Chinese, more than Stalin had killed Russians and all the people
Hitler had killed. So, according to Tom, Mao was a worse dictator
than Stalin or Hitler.
Well, obviously, had Washington actively been planning a war against
China, and got Tom to sell it, it would be very unfortunate for many
people. But North Korea was nowhere in Tom's list of evildoers in
human history. So, by Occam's razor, to use NK's famine in the 1990s
to convince the American people that we must destroy it, even at the
expense of tens of thousands, if not millions, of South Koreans, isn't
very persuasive.
2) Think of a frightened man or woman or simply a frightened animal.
A frightened man or woman would insist on keeping their guns rather
than a dozen cans of Campbell soup. And likewise, the animal would
always be ready to jump at you and bite, instead of turning up its
belly for you to scrath in return for a little biscuit. So, why was
it so surprising for North Korea to decide to allocate its meager
national means on defense, if we are honest enough to look at how many
Koreans American bombs killed in the 1950s --- many more than the
famine?
Surely, you can say all day that they made a mistake; but just as
surely, you can't attribute cruelty to their motive while ignoring the
context that might have spurred the policymakers of that country in
the particular direction that you condemn them of.
Ji believes in bringing down North korea due his own personal tragedy.
It's a case of personal revanche. But even as his Korean patriots are
shaking in their boots about an impending war they don't wish and even
though they will forgive him --- like all true Christians and good
human beings will --- because he apparently did not grasp what he just
did in Washington on behalf of the warmongers, they are naturally
afriad of what is coming to them, even though they are totally
innocent of the acts that led to the split of the country today.
Nevertheless, it is unfortunate that a minority of resentful
individuals can be so useful to help drive a policy that will kill a
vast number of people.
That's not a case of God is justice or in God we trust, but rather, it
is a case that insensitive human beings have hijacked vast public
resources to do the bidding of a small minority of people.
This, unfortunately, is what's happening in these small hours of the
new millennium. If you are worried about people getting killed en
masse, you may have more compassion for Korean lives.
Korean lives matter!
lo yeeOn
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/04/politics/mike-pence-north-korea-olympics-axios/index.html
Vice President Mike Pence will deride any notion of normalizing North
Korea's relationships with the outside world while he leads the US
delegation at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, this
week, a Pence aide told Axios on Sunday.
"The Vice President will remind the world that everything the North
Koreans do at the Olympics is a charade to cover up the fact that they
are the most tyrannical and oppressive regime on the planet," the aide
told Axios, adding that "at every opportunity, the VP will point out
the reality of the oppression in North Korea by a regime that has
enslaved its people. We will not allow North Korea's propaganda to
hijack the messaging of the Olympics."
North and South Korea agreed to send a North Korean delegation to the
Olympics.
Both countries' athletes will march under a unified flag during the
opening ceremony on Friday, athletes from the two countries will train
together before the Olympics begin, and a joint North and South Korean
women's ice hockey team will compete during the games.
But amid the renewed relations between both Koreas during the games,
North Korea still plans to send a message to Americans ahead of the
ceremonies.
North Korea is planning to show off dozens of long-range missiles at a
February 8 parade, the day before the Winter Olympics is set to begin
in South Korea, two diplomatic sources with deep knowledge of North
Korea's intentions told CNN last week.
The display of "hundreds" of missiles and rockets would be an attempt
"to scare the hell out of the Americans," one of the sources said.
President Donald Trump has taken some credit for the renewed relations
between North and South Korea.
"If I weren't involved, they wouldn't be talking about Olympics right
now. They'd be doing no talking or it would be much more serious,"
Trump said last month.
But in a more recent move this past Friday, Trump hosted North Korean
defectors in the Oval Office, potentially meant to anger North Korean
Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un.
"These are just great people that have suffered incredibly," Trump
told the press during the meeting.
CNN's Will Ripley and Joshua Berlinger contributed to this report
. . . everything the North Koreans do at the Olympics is a charade
to cover up the fact that they are the most tyrannical and
oppressive regime on the planet, . . . We will not allow North
Korea's propaganda to hijack the messaging of the Olympics.
At best, whatever he will say, such as what his aides have told the
press on his behalf, is just a rather one-sided story. At worst, he
is warmongering and propagandizing. See, for example, Michelle
Goldberg's NYT article of Jan. 30, 2018:
Trump's Boring, Utterly Terrifying Warmongering
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/30/opinion/trump-boring-warmongering-sotu.html
Do other people agree with Washington about the North Koreans?
About 15 years ago, G W Bush made this type of statement about Iraq
and the whole purpose was to prepare the American people for a frontal
assault on the country, paying no regard to the lives of millions of
Iraqis.
Trump and Pence now make the statement that "No regime has oppressed
its own citizens more totally or brutally than the cruel dictatorship
in North Korea," to justify their warmongering, using Otto Warmbier
and Ji Seong-ho as their excuses.
Michelle Goldberg wrote:
Trump had in the audience the parents and siblings of Otto Warmbier,
an American student who was sentenced to 15 years in a North Korean
forced-labor camp, and who died after being sent back to the United
States with severe injuries. He seemed to be using Warmbier's death
to propagandize for war: "Tonight we pledge to honor Otto's memory
with total American resolve."
Also in the audience was Ji Seong-ho, a heroic North Korean defector
who lost his left hand and foot during the country's famine in the
mid- 1990s, and who was cheered as he held his crutches aloft. A
Christian convert, Ji has argued that believers have a duty to
destroy the regime. A 2010 profile of Ji in The Christian Post, an
evangelical publication, said, "Despite North Korea's cruel
imprisonment and murder of anyone who advocates religion in the
country, there is a Christian responsibility to tear down North
Korea's wall against Christianity and religion so that North Koreans
may begin to worship and find joy," he stressed. Ji's presence
could signal that Trump is trying to enlist his evangelical base in
a crusade.
"No regime has oppressed its own citizens more totally or brutally
than the cruel dictatorship in North Korea," Trump said Tuesday
night during the annual address to Congress. "North Korea's
reckless pursuit of nuclear missiles could very soon threaten our
homeland."
Trump and Pence blissfully ignore the will of the Korean people, North
or South, who would rather switch than fight.
South Korea has repeatedly made known to Washington its stand of
**no-war-on-the-Korean peninsula** and its people are frightened to
death about their inability to stop the war from happening.
No doubt, we cannot ignore Ji's feelings. Ji lost his father, in
addition to losing a foot and a hand as a result of an accident that
occurred during North Korea's famine in the 1990s. Ji's loss of his
father is a very emotional as well as traumatic experience because the
latter died at the NK government's hand due to his own defection and
the defections of his mother and sister.
The West likes to blame the NK government for the famine. It may or
may not be the government's responsibility for the famine to have
happened. But there is simply no evidence to support the accusation
that the famine is evidence that the NK government was cruel and
brutal, much less "No regime has oppressed its own citizens more
totally or brutally than the cruel dictatorship in North Korea", as
team Trump likes to say these days.
Isn't this kind of talk, quite plainly, a part of the war machine's
propagandizing or warmongering?
Modern China also had famines and during the Great Leap Forward during
Mao's reign, millions died. And when Washington felt up to it, they
liked to put out how evil a country China was.
Today, however, Washington talks about Russian and Chinese threats in
the background, but the warmongers reserve the most of any accusation
of threat or any accusation of evil to its current target of regime
change --- which was Iraq yesterday and North Korea today! And maybe
Iran tomorrow, too?
According to the Wikipedia,
a 2011 US Census Bureau report [about North Korea] put the excess
death figure during 1993-2000 between five to six hundred thousands.
It is nonsense to use the famine to frame North Korea as Trump and
Pence would like us to believe:
"No regime has oppressed its own citizens more totally or brutally
than the cruel dictatorship in North Korea",
for these simple reasons.
1) My former colleague Tom always told me that Mao killed millions of
Chinese, more than Stalin had killed Russians and all the people
Hitler had killed. So, according to Tom, Mao was a worse dictator
than Stalin or Hitler.
Well, obviously, had Washington actively been planning a war against
China, and got Tom to sell it, it would be very unfortunate for many
people. But North Korea was nowhere in Tom's list of evildoers in
human history. So, by Occam's razor, to use NK's famine in the 1990s
to convince the American people that we must destroy it, even at the
expense of tens of thousands, if not millions, of South Koreans, isn't
very persuasive.
2) Think of a frightened man or woman or simply a frightened animal.
A frightened man or woman would insist on keeping their guns rather
than a dozen cans of Campbell soup. And likewise, the animal would
always be ready to jump at you and bite, instead of turning up its
belly for you to scrath in return for a little biscuit. So, why was
it so surprising for North Korea to decide to allocate its meager
national means on defense, if we are honest enough to look at how many
Koreans American bombs killed in the 1950s --- many more than the
famine?
Surely, you can say all day that they made a mistake; but just as
surely, you can't attribute cruelty to their motive while ignoring the
context that might have spurred the policymakers of that country in
the particular direction that you condemn them of.
Ji believes in bringing down North korea due his own personal tragedy.
It's a case of personal revanche. But even as his Korean patriots are
shaking in their boots about an impending war they don't wish and even
though they will forgive him --- like all true Christians and good
human beings will --- because he apparently did not grasp what he just
did in Washington on behalf of the warmongers, they are naturally
afriad of what is coming to them, even though they are totally
innocent of the acts that led to the split of the country today.
Nevertheless, it is unfortunate that a minority of resentful
individuals can be so useful to help drive a policy that will kill a
vast number of people.
That's not a case of God is justice or in God we trust, but rather, it
is a case that insensitive human beings have hijacked vast public
resources to do the bidding of a small minority of people.
This, unfortunately, is what's happening in these small hours of the
new millennium. If you are worried about people getting killed en
masse, you may have more compassion for Korean lives.
Korean lives matter!
lo yeeOn
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/04/politics/mike-pence-north-korea-olympics-axios/index.html
Vice President Mike Pence will deride any notion of normalizing North
Korea's relationships with the outside world while he leads the US
delegation at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, this
week, a Pence aide told Axios on Sunday.
"The Vice President will remind the world that everything the North
Koreans do at the Olympics is a charade to cover up the fact that they
are the most tyrannical and oppressive regime on the planet," the aide
told Axios, adding that "at every opportunity, the VP will point out
the reality of the oppression in North Korea by a regime that has
enslaved its people. We will not allow North Korea's propaganda to
hijack the messaging of the Olympics."
North and South Korea agreed to send a North Korean delegation to the
Olympics.
Both countries' athletes will march under a unified flag during the
opening ceremony on Friday, athletes from the two countries will train
together before the Olympics begin, and a joint North and South Korean
women's ice hockey team will compete during the games.
But amid the renewed relations between both Koreas during the games,
North Korea still plans to send a message to Americans ahead of the
ceremonies.
North Korea is planning to show off dozens of long-range missiles at a
February 8 parade, the day before the Winter Olympics is set to begin
in South Korea, two diplomatic sources with deep knowledge of North
Korea's intentions told CNN last week.
The display of "hundreds" of missiles and rockets would be an attempt
"to scare the hell out of the Americans," one of the sources said.
President Donald Trump has taken some credit for the renewed relations
between North and South Korea.
"If I weren't involved, they wouldn't be talking about Olympics right
now. They'd be doing no talking or it would be much more serious,"
Trump said last month.
But in a more recent move this past Friday, Trump hosted North Korean
defectors in the Oval Office, potentially meant to anger North Korean
Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un.
"These are just great people that have suffered incredibly," Trump
told the press during the meeting.
CNN's Will Ripley and Joshua Berlinger contributed to this report