Ive always found this place to be one of the most confounding nightmares on earth. Most people just have no concept of how fucked up humans can get. We are talking about children, thousands of them, whos families are unable to feed them being rounded up in the streets and then brought to empty orphanages in the hills and just left to die. They plow thier fields with poppies so they can bring in money for military spending while the people starve to death. Food aid is confiscated by the military and sold to the people to sap what little they have left. Durring famines thier national television stations advised the people to eat grass. And this is to speak nothing of the prison and torture camps for anyone who complains or tries to escape, thier families and friends. That this can exist in the world is just a sickening madness I cannot comprehend.
What on earth can be done? Obviously Korea is an extreme example, but does this sanction mentality really do any good at all? Doesnt it end up just hurting the people? Or worse bolstering thier support of thier leaders? Is there another option?
XIV
Yes, we are going to suffer, now; the sky
Throbs like a feverish forehead; pain is real;
The groping searchlights suddenly reveal
The little natures that will make us cry,
Who never quite believed they could exist,
Not where we were. They take us by surprise
Like ugly long-forgotten memories,
And like a conscience all the guns resist.
Behind each sociable home-loving eye
The private massacres are taking place;
All Women, Jews, the Rich, the Human Race.
The mountains cannot judge us when we lie:
We dwell upon the earth; the earth obeys
The intelligent and evil till they die.
XV
Engines bear them through the sky: they’re free
And isolated like the very rich;
Remote like savants, they can only see
The breathing city as a target which
Requires their skill; will never see how flying
Is the creation of ideas they hate,
Nor how their own machines are always trying
To push through into life. They chose a fate
The islands where they live did not compel.
Though earth may teach our proper discipline,
At any time it will be possible
To turn away from freedom and become
Bound like the heiress in her mother’s womb,
And helpless as the poor have always been.
XVI
Here war is simple like a monument:
A telephone is speaking to a man;
Flags on a map assert that troops were sent;
A boy brings milk in bowls. There is a plan
For living men in terror of their lives,
Who thirst at nine who were to thirst at noon,
And can be lost and are, and miss their wives,
And, unlike an idea, can die too soon.
But ideas can be true although men die,
And we can watch a thousand faces
Made active by one lie:
And maps can really point to places
Where life is evil now:
Nanking; Dachau.
oe, I'm glad you started this thread. I find N Korea to be completely fascinating. It's almost like a storybook, like the Forest that no one can get through without dying or something. It's just such an enigma and yet what we do know, is all bad. How can a population the size of Iraq survive, living on crumbs like they do? It sounds like a giant prison, except worse.
I heard a haunting piece on N Korea the other day on NPR, about an american woman living in China who went to the border and looked at N Korea through a telescope. Do a search for it on NPR.....
The answer to the question "what can we do" is a difficult one. If we give them money for food, they use it on the military. If we cut them off, all those people starve to death.
It doesn't help that Kim Jong Il is fucking hilarious.
I tried to post a link to this, but it didn't work......apparently Lisa Ling snuck into North Korea acting as a doctor's assistant and was able to take a bunch of footage of the place. It is completely unbelievable. I found it on MSNBC under the "NBC news highlights" section. I highly recommend it, it's only a quick 5 minute interview, the whole National Geographic episode is due out by the end of the year.
Oct 13, 06 3:24 pm ·
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DPRK
Ive always found this place to be one of the most confounding nightmares on earth. Most people just have no concept of how fucked up humans can get. We are talking about children, thousands of them, whos families are unable to feed them being rounded up in the streets and then brought to empty orphanages in the hills and just left to die. They plow thier fields with poppies so they can bring in money for military spending while the people starve to death. Food aid is confiscated by the military and sold to the people to sap what little they have left. Durring famines thier national television stations advised the people to eat grass. And this is to speak nothing of the prison and torture camps for anyone who complains or tries to escape, thier families and friends. That this can exist in the world is just a sickening madness I cannot comprehend.
What on earth can be done? Obviously Korea is an extreme example, but does this sanction mentality really do any good at all? Doesnt it end up just hurting the people? Or worse bolstering thier support of thier leaders? Is there another option?
W. H. Auden
from In Time of War (1939)
XIV
Yes, we are going to suffer, now; the sky
Throbs like a feverish forehead; pain is real;
The groping searchlights suddenly reveal
The little natures that will make us cry,
Who never quite believed they could exist,
Not where we were. They take us by surprise
Like ugly long-forgotten memories,
And like a conscience all the guns resist.
Behind each sociable home-loving eye
The private massacres are taking place;
All Women, Jews, the Rich, the Human Race.
The mountains cannot judge us when we lie:
We dwell upon the earth; the earth obeys
The intelligent and evil till they die.
XV
Engines bear them through the sky: they’re free
And isolated like the very rich;
Remote like savants, they can only see
The breathing city as a target which
Requires their skill; will never see how flying
Is the creation of ideas they hate,
Nor how their own machines are always trying
To push through into life. They chose a fate
The islands where they live did not compel.
Though earth may teach our proper discipline,
At any time it will be possible
To turn away from freedom and become
Bound like the heiress in her mother’s womb,
And helpless as the poor have always been.
XVI
Here war is simple like a monument:
A telephone is speaking to a man;
Flags on a map assert that troops were sent;
A boy brings milk in bowls. There is a plan
For living men in terror of their lives,
Who thirst at nine who were to thirst at noon,
And can be lost and are, and miss their wives,
And, unlike an idea, can die too soon.
But ideas can be true although men die,
And we can watch a thousand faces
Made active by one lie:
And maps can really point to places
Where life is evil now:
Nanking; Dachau.
oe, I'm glad you started this thread. I find N Korea to be completely fascinating. It's almost like a storybook, like the Forest that no one can get through without dying or something. It's just such an enigma and yet what we do know, is all bad. How can a population the size of Iraq survive, living on crumbs like they do? It sounds like a giant prison, except worse.
I heard a haunting piece on N Korea the other day on NPR, about an american woman living in China who went to the border and looked at N Korea through a telescope. Do a search for it on NPR.....
The answer to the question "what can we do" is a difficult one. If we give them money for food, they use it on the military. If we cut them off, all those people starve to death.
It doesn't help that Kim Jong Il is fucking hilarious.
yowza -- let's just leave it to our fearless leader W, he'll do the right thing...
Sounds like Cuba circa 1970. Another round of Cold War anyone?
I tried to post a link to this, but it didn't work......apparently Lisa Ling snuck into North Korea acting as a doctor's assistant and was able to take a bunch of footage of the place. It is completely unbelievable. I found it on MSNBC under the "NBC news highlights" section. I highly recommend it, it's only a quick 5 minute interview, the whole National Geographic episode is due out by the end of the year.
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