The Invisible People
Reporter: "President Trump, are you going to kill every man, woman and child in North Korea?"
Trump: "We'll see."
I wonder how it would feel to be a North Korean citizen? Just a regular citizen. Would you feel invisible, like no one can see you, no one will acknowledge that you even exist? Would you feel that maybe you aren't really real? Maybe you'd feel you're from some alternate universe from the rest of planet earth and are being used as pawns in a sick game, and that there's nothing you can do except wait for your fate.
Maybe you'd feel like the children in Iraq, or at least how they did until they died.
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/01/world/iraq-sanctions-kill-children-un-...
[video:https://youtu.be/4iFYaeoE3n4]
Most North Koreans certainly don't have access to all the information we have, so it's hard to tell what they know and how they feel, but it must be an odd feeling. They've literally been throwaway people for over seventy years, killed by the millions, starved, sanctioned and ostracized, to where there are very few alive who have known anything other than the reality that the United States of America wants to kill them all and the rest of the world doesn't seem to care what happens to them.
Now their little tyrant dictator is threatening the evil Empire and our very own little hands tyrant wannabe dictator Donald Trump is threatening to drop nuclear bombs on their heads. Mad Dog Mattis tells them "we" could annihilate their country but "we" really don't want to if "we" don't have to. (WTF, does he have a toad in his pocket?) Half the country could easily be persuaded with the right propaganda to agree, "ya, let's nuke em!" They could literally disappear in an instant, any instant. They have to prepare to die.
What kind of life is that?
Maybe we're all North Koreans and don't know it, or more accurately, won't admit it. To the Deciders, we're all Invisible People.
Sanctions on North Korea:
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Then there's that evil Putin dude, sounding all reasonable and shit. Course it's not hard to sound reasonable next to the whackos controlling our government.
"Putin warns ‘hysteria’ over North Korea threatens ‘global catastrophe’
• Putin thinks that sanctions could lead to large-scale human suffering
• Putin, speaking after a BRICs summit in China, also warned against further ramping up military hysteria around North Korea"
Comments
Looks like we have representational government after all.
You'd get this same response from more than half the American people
And they said democracy was dead….
I said it in another thread at C99%.
"Just call me Hillbilly Dem(exit)."
-H/T to Wavey Davey
Unfortunately you're right.
I've still got a response from Congress woman Herrera Buetler from my district from an email I shot her about the war in Syria. It's chock full of lies and propaganda.
When I run against her next year with the Revolution party, I plan on using it to show what a dupe she is.
@Big Al I don't mean to derail
Under the Revolution party?
I guess I'm curious because you've always wrote about going around the political system.
Or perhaps this is snark or something I don't know.
It's sort of snark, the NSA and CIA wouldn't allow me to run
I'm pushing man, we have to push.
I like it.
I like the name of your party. It's even patriotic.
You got my vote, Big Al
I'll even campaign for you.
Need a Campaign Manager?
Or, how 'bout I run as a Republican as a spoiler against Beutler? I can fake it a well as she can.
Rich hubby, vets, and sick kids is all she's got going for her. A place holder.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Hey, that's my district too!
That is, unfortunately, spot on.
Yes, I truly believe that most Americans really don't care about the wanton slaughter of millions.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
"Yours for the Revolution," C99 comrades. There must be legions
of folks around the world who feel as we do.
All those glorious uprisings around the world in the past 7 years: from the Spanish Indignados to the Arab Spring to the Wisconsin Uprising to Occupy Wall St to the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong to the Gezi Park Uprising in Turkey to the Ferguson and Baltimore BlackLivesMatter uprisings to the massive demonstrations all over South America. Each and every one of those movements touched many people around the globe.
They'reWe're out there.Given that the Economic Terrorists of Wall St can be linked to almost all of it, i.e. predatory practices on municipal and national treasuries resulting in supra-punitive legislative measures, debt slavery and forced austerity, we have to look to one another, around the world, at a unifying, borderless global movement. Nationalism is the enemy, just as much as capitalism.
The Socialists of a hundred years ago understood all this, and it's just as apropos today.
Jack London, "Revolution":
It really is sickening the extent to which we speak about war here in the United States of Amnesia (thanks G. Vidal), as if it's a Hollywood movie or a backyard game for children after school to indulge before their cookies and milk.
The propaganda of American Exceptionalism, and the way we "teach" history here, lays the foundation for the lemmings to be programmed to get highly agitated if they're told someone else is cutting in our profits or standing as Victors of the World.
Corporate profits for the Mainstream Media seal the whole deal. Otherwise in a functioning democracy, the media would function as a checks and balance on power. It's a multifaceted, well-lubricated propaganda machine that continues to dupe the masses.
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
That Evil Putin Dude
Putin hysteria at Newsweek:
Because America is just trying to help bring peace to The Middle East and Putin keeps screwing up all our carefully crafted peaceful initiatives. Right?
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/09/putins-hand-can-clearly-be-seen-in-the-w...
Speaking of Albright, from a Politico Playbook newsletter I signed up for:
Just an innocent girl's night out.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Heh, figures.
"Russia must share responsibility for the Syria civil war". What a load of crock. First off, it's not and never was a civil war, that's the biggest propaganda load we've been fed about the war in Syria. And to say Russia had anything to do with instigating that war is flat out lies.
That's exactly what we get from the corporate media monopoly and it sinks in to the people who don't bother to check the facts.
Absolutely
"Nuke them all and let gawd sort it out " I see this type of comment on various websites that have a comment option.
This was why so many people (70%) were in favor of the Iraq war. And anyone that they feel is threatening us needs to be taken out. They will never understand the term. blowback
In their minds they don't think that anyone whose country was invaded has the right to fight back against us. And they don't mind how many innocent civilians are killed just because they live in the countries that our government wants to control.
Maybe Harvey and Irma are gawd's way of punishing our country because of our march to global hegemony.
Great essay and great commentary.
I've had the same thought about Harvey and Irma.
Here's hoping Mar A Lago goes down.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Or maybe God and Gaia
are quarreling over who gets to keep the children. A mighty battle in the stratosphere ensues. All watched over by machines of loving grace.
native
Collateral damage.
That's what they are. We must dehumanize them to justify the action. We're Americans, after all. That's what we do.
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
American Keyhole
The "invisible people" line is frighteningly on point in the American discourse and perspective.
Americans view the world through a keyhole, in it exists:
China
Russia
Iran
North Korea
Flavor-of-the-month Middle East country
Other countries don't exist. Sure they exist on a map but they don't...exist. The people, the language, the culture, the actual blood and network of a nation are invisible.
I mean these are people. Human beings. They wake up, do mundane morning rituals, go to their jobs, and live their lives. They have dreams, values, hopes, love, connection.
But we just want to nuke them because that is what the TV told me to accept and/or my government.
Rescind OPCOM now! Resist and rescind OPCOM
Thanks Big Al, I am sticking to my banned list of websites for inspiration, not reading any NY Times poo. LA Times is bad enough. Owner Tronc, rhymes with PLONK! Now they have Introducing Verrit: Media for the 65.8 Million. OMFG Dear Leader, it just goes on and on and on ...
Goebbels much? @Vomit
Anyway, there is The Candle Light Movement in Korea, how they got rid of a bad president and the new one wants peace:
Article on Global Research site, good history for me, good knowledge:
Political Transition in the Republic of Korea, Sunshine 2.0, Demilitarization and the Peace Process
Ends with:
Right on! Rescind OPCOM, re-purpose 28,000 troops and equipment to disaster relief right now! Recovery is coming.
Peace with Korea
Troops Home Now
STFU bellicose bullies!
Answer why SK talks peace & acts as war provocateur
An opinion peace I read within the last 12 months stated the US window for military action against China was rapidly closing and estimated it was only 10 years. Been wondering why the timeline. Did not bookmark, am oblivious to the source and have been trying to solve the puzzle. Why? This is a major piece of the puzzle provided by your link.
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
Glad to hear some folks speaking out
I've become a fan of Larry Wilkerson, C. Powell's ex-aide. He is speaking truth to power lately.
http://therealnews.com/t2/story:19926:Larry-Wilkerson%3A-North-Korea-is-...
(34 min and text)
Good to see you Al. Let us know how we can help in your run (if you aren't joking).
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
That would be great if North and South Korea can agree
on terms for their own reunification. Korea has been a victim of, first Japanese imperialism in the early 1900s and then enforced partition by the US and USSR at the end of WWII. I guess the problem has been letting everybody in Korea decide what kind of government they want. Stalin didn't want that to happen.
Beware the bullshit factories.
They came close during the '90s
There was even one Olympics where North and South Korean athletes marched hand in hand.
Then Shrub happened, and declared the "Axis of Evil", and that was the end of that.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Does anyone else here remember
How comic Lewis Black determined that North Koreans were evil?
He reminded us that the film footage of their political parades showed a world of only black and white and sepia tones.
I mean, this nation has its problems, be we do have color, right?
Believing in the improbable can make your life a miracle.