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WebWord Weblog Posting Posting Date: January 15, 2003 WebWord Comment -- (Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with usability.) The friction between the United States and North Korea is very serious. However, I'm terribly bothered when "news" like this shows up. It is much too wag the dog for my liking. Are we supposed to believe that this hasn't been known for a very long time? MSNBC makes it sound like this is something new. Don't be fooled! These "concentration camps" are certainly not new. When I see stories like this I guess that I feel that the United States government is working with the media to manipulate public opinion. Perhaps I'm too paranoid. But, if nothing else, MSNBC is acting as a willing puppet for the government to generate more page views. Listen folks, please think about why this is news now, and think about how reporting like this impacts the public, and how it benefits the media (increase profits) and the current administration (shape public opinion).
Reader Comments...
At least this was part of the article: "President Bush told author and Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward last year that he was well aware of the camps and the atrocities. That, officials say, partly explains why Bush insisted on North Korea’s inclusion in the “axis of evil” in his 2002 State of the Union address." So, at least they aren't trying to say that they didn't have any knowledge of this activity. That makes me feel a little bit better. The one thing I need to keep in mind for all of this stuff, is that I only know about 1% of the whole story. Perhaps much less. I'm an ignorant little monkey. I try to objectively observe but that just doesn't work. Not. Enough. Data. Oh well, what can I do? I'm still worried and curious and cautious and skeptical.
"I feel that the United States government is working with the media to manipulate public opinion." Well, duh! And NBC's Today Show is in Saudia Arabia all week talking about how SA is USA's friend because why? Anyone who takes corporate media at face value probably believes politicians, too.
In many rural areas of North America, in remote locations not far from the borders with Mexico and Canada, gulags not unlike some camps built by Mao and Stalin in the last century holds some 2,000,000 men, women and children accused of crimes. Whilst the crime rate falls a new camp is being built every week. There are even reports that prisoners in these camps are murdered by the authorities on a regular basis. A network of concentration camps has been re-activated to deal with the new threat from the "enemy within".
A few hours after Stuttgart was captured by the French army, a Belgian journalist and myself entered the town, which was still in some disorder. The Belgian had been broadcasting throughout the war for the European Service of the BBC, and, like nearly all Frenchmen or Belgians, he had a very much tougher attitude towards "the Boche" than an Englishman or an American would have. All the main bridges into town had been blown up, and we had to enter by a small footbridge which the Germans had evidently mad efforts to defend. A dead German soldier was lying supine at the foot of the steps. His face was a waxy yellow. On his breast someone had laid a bunch of the lilac which was blooming everywhere. The Belgian averted his face as we went past. When we were well over the bridge he confided to me that this was the first time he had seen a dead man. I suppose he was thirty five years old, and for four years he had been doing war propaganda over the radio. For several days after this, his attitude was quite different from what it had been earlier. He looked with disgust at the bomb-wrecked town and the humiliation the Germans were undergoing, and even on one occasion intervened to prevent a particularly bad bit of looting. When he left, he gave the residue of the coffee we had brought with us to the Germans on whom we were billeted. A week earlier he would probably have been scandalized at the idea of giving coffee to a "Boche." But his feelings, he told me, had undergone a change at the sight of ce pauvre mort beside the bridge: it had suddenly brought home to him the meaning of war. And yet, if we had happened to enter the town by another route, he might have been spared the experience of seeing one corpse out of the -- perhaps -- twenty million that the war has produced. Revenge Is Sour by George Orwell Posted by: Mac on January 17, 2003 09:08 AM
Unfortunatley and sadly not new, BUT worth reporting nonetheless (independant of the motive). People are suffering! The more tragic part to this is that perhaps "humans" have not learnt anything. Only 50 years ago - http://www.remember.org (I recall Mac posting something similar) Right Mac? Always remember. Posted by: Daniel Szuc on January 18, 2003 07:51 PM
Daniel, I did post a link to that site, and I still think that it is very important to try and learn from our past. But the most important thing is to remember that each and every one of us can make a difference, positively or negatively. Posted by: Mac on January 19, 2003 11:17 AM
(actual protest signs)
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