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Remember, there will never be a time that everyone agrees with each other. It’s part of life, and it’s quite unnecessary to put someone down just because you have a different view or opinion on the topic that they authored.

Thanks, and I look forward to reading more from you.

Ry

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As for “an immature and cloistered view of the world,” I hardly think that my years of social justice work with international organizations lends itself to that. I won’t even go into the specifics, other than to say I met some of the most oppressed people in this world who were able to fight their way out of the place they had been forced into, and now were helping countless more in the process. They inspired me more than I think anyone else will ever be able to.

My point was that the “psychology” behind “let’s go in there and bomb the shit out of everything” in Afghanistan and having the entirety of the US backing that because we felt threatened instead of looking at the realities of what led to the Taliban to coordinate a mass killing, after we essentially helped both Osama and Saddam–who of course had nothing to do with 9/11, but hey, let’s bomb the shit out of them while we’re at it–come to power (I’m assuming even you would agree it wasn’t just because they “hated our way of life”) is at the base the same as to why a boy born in a gulag camp, and a NK military officer would believe people DESERVED to rot or be murdered in a camp (this belief, or psychological strategy if you will, is one of few reasons that people can carry out terror). Not everyone who does something evil is born that way, but our minds are highly susceptible to messages of what threatens our base fears, the largest of which is our own existence. Therefore, manipulation is ripe for the pickin’.

I like to tackle some of the larger questions in life, because apparently, the way things have been handled for most of time has led to just more and more bloodshed. I refuse to shed blood with you–it’s not worth it to me. So if you need to think of me as naive, immature, and cloistered to make yourself feel better, go ahead. Me, I’m going to keep on focusing on how we might try and stop killing each other.

Peace.

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Kim Jong-Il is the harshest, cruelest, most ruthless dictator since Hitler. Like Hitler and Stalin, Kim uses the government media to portray himself as the God-head of the “Democratic” “People’s” Republic of North Korea (Quotey fingers exaggerated). Absolute power corrupts absolutely. When put into the hands of a stark raving mad lunatic such as Kim, this maxim rings truer than ever. The people in NK don’t know any better because knowledge of anything other than their “Great (formerly Dear) Leader” or “Eternal President”, Kim Il-Sung (Jong-Il’s late father), is outlawed. It’s easy to control an uneducated or miseducated population.

I’d love nothing better than to send the US Navy SEALS in to NK to cleanly chop off the head of this ridiculous dictatorship, but such action would be a PR nightmare for our country, potentially causing more harm than good,, and emboldening similar dictators to mobilize their lemmings against us. (i.e. Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia and Mahmoud Amedinejad, Iran).

Unfortunately, all we can do right now is wait for Kim to give us a good, solid reason to destroy his oppressive regime once and for all. A reason that will be backed by the UN. Either that, or wait for the ultimate eventuality of his regime consuming itself comes to pass. One or the other will happen. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

fishbulb: You’re obviously very naive. I don’t care to explain.

Christine: Great post. People need to know what’s going on out there. I’m sometimes appalled at how little my closest friends and family know about what goes on outside their circle of influence.

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I do not consider myself “incredibly naive,” but rather simply stated the fact that many people in mainstream western societies do not actually know that these incredible atrocities, that are tantamount to the worst of the concentration camps in Nazi Germany, are occurring at this very second. The point is to get people riled up.

As for the wondering how, it is a philosophical question of how at a time when we are supposed to have evolved as a human race, do “normal” people, which most of the guards and those who inflict the most suffering start off as, still participate in such death mongering.

It also would have been helpful if you added a point to your comment, as in “I’ve seen firsthand” or “I’ve read extensively” rather than to simply say something rude and then quote me. Maybe then real dialogue could have commenced.

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“Few of us think that concentration camps could exist in our world today. ”
“As I read through the articles, I couldn’t help but wonder how? How do these camps exist at this point in time?”

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