[ElFlaco]

(06-19-2017 10:03 PM)Seadog Wrote:  

A friend of a friend was mowed down by a drunk driver jogging late at night a few years back in Canada. Guess that teaches her for being out late at night? Obviously that's when the majority of drunk drivers will be out. Everyone knows that. Clearly her own fault/no sympathy/guess she learned a harsh but deserved lesson?

I knew someone who was on the sidewalk (with a curb) when a car accidentally jumped the curb and killed her. And someone actually said to me, "well, it's her fault for being on the sidewalk of a busy road." I think some people find it hard to accept that accidents happen. In order to feel secure in their world, they need to tell themselves that everything happens for a reason and that all problems can be avoided. It's a form of denial about the fragility of life and the fact that our circumstances are not totally within our control.

[Vicious]

I'm going to repeat something from the North Korea thread.

I've had my reservations about Trump but if he reacts with the kind of force that is entirely justified in this situation then I'll sing his praises from the top of every building. If he turns Pyongyang into a parking lot I'll myself chisel his likeness out of Mount Rushmore. There is no action, counted in sheer number of human lives saved, that would be greater than toppling the sick North Korean regime. The country is nothing but a prison with 25 million convicts innocently imprisoned at birth.

[brick tamland]

It's tragic, so r.i.p. He was a young man about to start his life
Whatever happened, it seems there's more to this. If North Korea was making a point and using this as a showcase, it was absolutely one of the MESSIEST ways to go about it. But then again, maybe that was the point - to have a saga? If so, what does that say about NK? I'm also wondering why NK kept him alive? As it is, Western doctors can't say for sure what led to his condition. Did NK know that there wouldn't be enough warm leads to investigate? Being comatose already, whether he'd died in the USA or he'd died in North Korea, there'd be speculation either way. A few things don't add up here.

[Luvianka]

(06-20-2017 01:40 PM)Vicious Wrote:  

I'm going to repeat something from the North Korea thread.

I've had my reservations about Trump but if he reacts with the kind of force that is entirely justified in this situation then I'll sing his praises from the top of every building. If he turns Pyongyang into a parking lot I'll myself chisel his likeness out of Mount Rushmore. There is no action, counted in sheer number of human lives saved, that would be greater than toppling the sick North Korean regime. The country is nothing but a prison with 25 million convicts innocently imprisoned at birth.

Unfortunately since the Trump Admin surrendered to the Neocons since the very beginning, right now has no moral grounds to claim and hoard international support to act against North Korea. Even more, this tragedy is to be blamed entirely on the American Government.
Just what exactly is the US strategy about North Korea and what exactly wants to get?
Regime change? Stop dreaming. The only regime change that can operate in NK is that China will allow to happen, since NK is a buffer state for China against the US (and South Korea and Japan) the very moment the US tries a significant diplomatic or military move against NK it will be stopped by China (and Russia if things go really awful).
And I want to stress the fact about the US is in the only interested in a change in NK. Nor Japan neither South Korea have the slighlest interest in engaging in a hot war with the Kim regime.
To use the NK issue combined with the South China Sea issue in a proxy war against China? Well, if such it’s the case, American strategists should do the math carefully, because China holds all the logistics cards in North Korea. and is getting stronger around those sorry ass disputed atollons somewhere in the Pacific. Besides, can someone explain to me what was the action course the US followed to liberate Otto? To send that bi-sexual, travestive, certified clown Dennis Rodman to do the talking with the Dear Leader? What a great job!

[Scoundrel]

If Otto Warmbier wanted the North Korea experience, he certainly got it.

On the off-chance that it needs to be said, Otto Warmbier did not steal a political propaganda poster. He likely committed no crime, and did nothing wrong whatsoever. His arrest was arbitrary, his "confession" and "testimony" Communist theater performed at the point of a gun. The fact that the N. Korean government sentenced him to fifteen years of hard labor for what could as best be considered a petty offense ought to clue anyone in as to what's really going on here.

But then, many people are clueless as to the nature of regimes such as North Korea. Yes, they are completely, totally evil. In fact, they are more evil — and more insane — than you, or I, or for that matter even their own people, have the power to fathom.

This incident might help to shine a spotlight on the nature of totalitarian societies, and wake some people up to the reality of what goes on inside them. 1984 was not just a novel; for the people in North Korea and other similar dictatorships, Orwell's nightmare vision is a daily reality.

[Engineer]

(06-19-2017 07:51 PM)Quintus Curtius Wrote:  

I'm going to be following this story...

I'm going to talk to some doctors I know and ask their opinion on what could have caused the massive brain tissue loss in this case. I don't think blunt force trauma does that. His captors may have experimented on him with bacteriological weapons, nerve agents, psychotropic drugs...we just don't know.

This looks like a message. This was a clear message from Pyongyang: don't push us too far. Just like Kim Jong Un sent a message when he murdered his half-brother with sarin. He actually wants the world to know he's capable of atrocities.

snip

.

Ask the doctors if this could come from long term exposure (days/weeks) to low O2 environments in a hypobaric chamber. For obvious reasons I doubt there is any research on this, except perhaps in animals. The idea came to me from remembering the torture scene in the Deadpool movie. Perhaps the norks are expanding and fine-tuning their murderous skills as you suggest. Disgusting.

[Mercenary]

(06-20-2017 02:55 PM)Engineer Wrote:  

(06-19-2017 07:51 PM)Quintus Curtius Wrote:  

I'm going to be following this story...

I'm going to talk to some doctors I know and ask their opinion on what could have caused the massive brain tissue loss in this case. I don't think blunt force trauma does that. His captors may have experimented on him with bacteriological weapons, nerve agents, psychotropic drugs...we just don't know.

This looks like a message. This was a clear message from Pyongyang: don't push us too far. Just like Kim Jong Un sent a message when he murdered his half-brother with sarin. He actually wants the world to know he's capable of atrocities.

snip

.

Ask the doctors if this could come from long term exposure (days/weeks) to low O2 environments in a hypobaric chamber. For obvious reasons I doubt there is any research on this, except perhaps in animals. The idea came to me from remembering the torture scene in the Deadpool movie. Perhaps the norks are expanding and fine-tuning their murderous skills as you suggest. Disgusting.

That kind of brain damage can also happen if you try to commit suicide by oxygen deprivation (such as by self hanging with bedsheets) and fail.

I'm not saying that's what happened, but the fact that he died before he got to tell his version of the story and official US sources are keeping real quiet makes the whole thing even more suspicious.

We are not getting the whole story of what really happened from either side and probably never will.

[Vicious]

(06-20-2017 03:02 PM)Mercenary Wrote:  

That kind of brain damage can also happen if you try to commit suicide by oxygen deprivation (such as by self hanging with bedsheets) and fail.

I'm not saying that's what happened, but the fact that he died before he got to tell his version of the story and official US sources are keeping real quiet makes the whole thing even more suspicious.

We are not getting the whole story of what really happened from either side and probably never will.

Yeah being in a coma might be an obstacle to that.

[churros]

So what if one of us got abducted by las FARC in Colombia? Or beheaded by ISIS in the Phillipines? Or takes a crack at Venezuela, but never gets to write that data sheet?

Would RVF weep for their own, or get a rage boner for just moral outcomes?

[Scoundrel]

Interesting clip of Henry Rollins on Joe Rogan's podcast, talking about his experiences visiting North Korea and Iran:

[Aurini]

I may have said something harsh on this thread a year ago, before this tragic end became known; if so, I regret those words. This is far worse than even the greatest fool deserves.

This won't be the event that triggers World War 3 - but future historians will mark it as a significant precursor. Suddenly, the diplomatic situation becomes more rigid. Flexibility and options are reduced. The rising tensions lead to yet another incident. Then it all starts.

2018 is going to be an interesting year.

[Sebastian]

Before this happening, people were talking about he might do something with north korea because his supporters are declining by the fact and it was a great way to gain popularity by declaring a war. (Like George Bush did)

It's a great excuse for him to do something about it and I am sure he will be very Happy this happened.

(06-20-2017 01:40 PM)Vicious Wrote:  

I'm going to repeat something from the North Korea thread.

I've had my reservations about Trump but if he reacts with the kind of force that is entirely justified in this situation then I'll sing his praises from the top of every building. If he turns Pyongyang into a parking lot I'll myself chisel his likeness out of Mount Rushmore. There is no action, counted in sheer number of human lives saved, that would be greater than toppling the sick North Korean regime. The country is nothing but a prison with 25 million convicts innocently imprisoned at birth.

[Suits]

(06-20-2017 02:42 PM)Scoundrel Wrote:  

If Otto Warmbier wanted the North Korea experience, he certainly got it.

On the off-chance that it needs to be said, Otto Warmbier did not steal a political propaganda poster. He likely committed no crime, and did nothing wrong whatsoever. His arrest was arbitrary, his "confession" and "testimony" Communist theater performed at the point of a gun. The fact that the N. Korean government sentenced him to fifteen years of hard labor for what could as best be considered a petty offense ought to clue anyone in as to what's really going on here.

But then, many people are clueless as to the nature of regimes such as North Korea. Yes, they are completely, totally evil. In fact, they are more evil — and more insane — than you, or I, or for that matter even their own people, have the power to fathom.

This incident might help to shine a spotlight on the nature of totalitarian societies, and wake some people up to the reality of what goes on inside them. 1984 was not just a novel; for the people in North Korea and other similar dictatorships, Orwell's nightmare vision is a daily reality.

If they were going to completely invent a crime, don't you think they would have invented something more impressive?

[Scoundrel]

(06-21-2017 05:35 AM)Suits Wrote:  

If they were going to completely invent a crime, don't you think they would have invented something more impressive?

You could just as easily ask: If Warmbier did in fact commit this relatively minor "crime," why would the NK government sentence him to such outrageously harsh punishment?

The answer to both questions is: Nothing about this is supposed to make sense. This is a show of force, intended to strike (or reinforce) fear in people.

In the clip with Henry Rollins I posted above, Rollins sums up his impression of NK as "poor people who are scared of their government." He likely understates the case.

If you haven't already, I urge you to watch the "press conference" with Warmbier. It is Orwell's 1984 come to life:

At 12:30, after concluding his prepared speech, Warmbier takes "questions" from reporters. His responses are obviously scripted and memorized, written by someone who is both completely committed to the NK regime, and not especially proficient in English.

Incredibly, there seems to be no written transcripts of this "press conference" online. Here then is Warmbier's response to the first question he is asked, about why the Friendship United Methodist Church assigned him the task of stealing the poster:

Quote:

Thank you for your question. I will now address why the Friendship United Methodist Church gave me this task.

The Friendship United Methodist Church is located in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. I have known about this church since my childhood, because I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. You can easily find detailed information on this church from the Internet.

The Friendship United Methodist Church is not a typical church. It is very wealthy, with 42 million dollars. That is why the United States administration has very close ties with this church.

This church made a plan to enter into anti-Christian countries which . . . uh . . . the United States administration dislikes, and it is currently implementing this plan.

Several Democratic congressmen regularly visit this church to collect political fund donations and to assure their continued support of this church's policy.

It is said that in 2008, around ten million dollars — around . . . um . . . two to three percent of President Barack Obama's total election cost — was collected from this church. That is one of the reasons why the United States administration works closely with the Friendship United Methodist Church, and connives at all acts, including my crime.

The United States administration and the politicians use the Friendship United Methodist Church to harm the DPR Korea by all dirty ways and means. The Friendship United Methodist Church gave me my crimetask, which is closely matched to the United States administration's hostile policy against the DPR Korea, in order to spread Christianity in the DPR Korea, and to increase the church's support from the United States administration.

Therefore, my crime is the expected output of the United States administration's consistent hostile policy against the DPR Korea, and its implementation by the Friendship United Methodist Church.

I was easily manipulated because of my family's severe financial difficulties. And because I am a non-believer, the church knew that it could deny its involvement if my crime were to become public news.

I hope that answers your question, and you all now clearly understand The Friendship United Methodist Church's involvement in my crime.

Thank you all for your attention.

Does anyone really believe these are the extemporaneous words of an American college student? Do the North Koreans?

To us, it can seem ludicrous and bizarre, impossible to take seriously. But to those who have grown up with this kind of relentless propaganda, it's one more instance of an omnipotent State flexing its muscle, and announcing itself as the ultimate authority.

[churros]

Interesting article in the Guardian today, from someone who went on the tour. Organised by some chancer off the forums on couchsurfing.com (!)

Quote:

The horrific death of the American student Otto Warmbier after 17 months’ imprisonment in North Korea has put my own years of mischief in the secretive country into sharp focus.

For those with only an arms-length awareness of North Korea, his tale is as terrifying as it is absurd – but for me, having visited the country on more than one occasion, it has been a fearsome reality check that only adds to my understanding of the absolute tragedy of his fate.

I travelled with YPT – Young Pioneer Tours – which was responsible for Warmbier’s visit, on my first trip to the country in 2009, when its founder, Gareth Johnson, was still hustling for business in the travel forums of the Couchsurfing website. At the age of 23 I drank down the sales pitch of “budget trips to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from”, and its logic of intrigue, adventure and daring - with no real sense of the risks.

Over the years of its operation Young Pioneer Tours has developed a reputation for gung ho and unruly alcohol-fuelled youths, propagating an unreal idea of North Korea where safety is an afterthought. Its culture trickles down to their guests – Warmbier was reportedly up drinking until 5am on the night of his “crime”, and YPT says it was unaware he had even been separated from the group by Korean officials until they had boarded the plane home. A quick Google of “young pioneer tours drunk” will bring up plenty of anecdotes of this kind of behaviour, usually from disgruntled non-drinkers, reporting on alcohol-induced bad behaviour by guides, travel companions or both.

I can add to the chorus. Johnson was supposed to lead me and a group of friends on the one-week excursion, but I only ever met him once in the end, in a diplomatic hospital in Pyongyang. He had broken his leg after trying to either board or disembark from a moving train heading towards the capital. The wife of one of his colleagues took his place.

The boozy logic of the company and its trips was fuelled by a bizarre, maladaptive nihilism that, much like the panopticon-like nature of North Korea itself, we were all to some degree forced to engage with. This wasn’t always completely bad. There was a lot of leeway with what we felt we could get away with in the supposedly “hermit” kingdom – and in truth most of the time we had a lot of fun feeling like we were flouting the rules and proving the world wrong. Warmbier’s dash along the “secret floor” of the Yanggakdo International Hotel in Pyongyang was a rite of passage for misbehaving twentysomethings looking for thrills, spills and stories to brag about back home. These games were never discouraged by YPT – and several of us had a go. Warmbier’s simple mistake was to unwittingly overstep the ambiguous boundaries by trying to bring back a forbidden trophy.

The shock of Warmbier’s initial arrest and his wretched, seemingly forced, confession of guilt; his disappearance and reappearance in a coma over a year later, followed by his almost immediate death; the rattling confusion of there being no information on how or why any of this happened – all this triggered memories in me of events that could have plausibly escalated in the same deadly way for me.

The time our bus was held up and our belongings were searched because the North Koreans thought someone might have stolen a towel. No big deal, right? The time I agreed to a North Korean girl’s request to take a love letter back to London (to give to someone I knew who had also visited North Korea), warning me not to let it be found at the border. The time that same visitor was held at the border at the end of his next visit, for ripping his photo out of his visa and giving it to her. OK, maybe that was pushing it a bit. But looking back, any of these things could have kickstarted a similar tragedy had it suited our hosts, and I’m gobsmacked by the naivety under which we all laboured.

A year after that first trip, still feeling naively invincible and hungry for more adventure, I separately returned to the north of the country with two friends and ended up getting held hostage for 24 hours, for my friends’ crime of wanting to go to the Chinese consulate to update their visas. Spying an opportunity to mess with us, the North Koreans in charge confiscated our passports and refused us contact with the British embassy as part of a poorly thought-out extortion attempt.

Luckily our handlers were either bad gangsters and not experienced in the art of crime or, being at the isolated tip of the country, were not sufficiently plugged into the state’s Kafkaesque matrix of dependency-led mafiadom to let our situation escalate into who knows what. They quickly gave up harassing us when they ran out of a pretty small set of strategic moves and booted us back into China having taken little more than the €300 in cash we had between us, and my friend’s London Transport Museum wristwatch – a small price to pay for freedom.

Looking back now I feel lucky that the ice never broke beneath my feet. YPT made little substantial comment at the time of Warmbier’s arrest and its tours continued – only now, in response to his death, has the company announced that it will no longer be taking US citizens to the country.

But the rest of us are still invited on to the same party-tastic tightrope that I and Otto Warmbier, and thousands of others, danced on during one of YPT’s “18-30s in the danger zone” excursions in the most isolated nation on earth. Now that there are no illusions about just how bad a fall can be, how many will still be willing to accept this as a one-off tragedy – when one is already too many?

[fokker]

The "presser" reads like something roughly translated from Korean to English by some Communist Party official, and cleaned up by a native English speaker. It doesn't read anything like an US college student.

I hope that there can be a peaceful unification of Korea one day, under the SK flag and government and with Seoul as capital.

[Kona]

Now watch this when the poster is stolen:

Is that really the same guy? There's so many analytical things the state department or the CIA or whoever could have done, and should still do now.

Is this just some other bullshit Barack Obama dropped the ball on?

Aloha!

[Phoenix]

(06-21-2017 05:19 PM)fokker Wrote:  

I hope that there can be a peaceful unification of Korea one day, under the SK flag and government and with Seoul as capital.

Fuck that shit. A bunch of sick fuckers need their heads on a spike.

[DChambers]

That a bombastic and pathetic regime like the NK government could get away with even thinking about laying a hand on an American Citizen with little real consequence is disgusting. The consequence of harming an American citizen should carry the the same weight and awe that was once felt when kings were told, "Ille civis romanus est."

[RIslander]

(06-21-2017 05:57 PM)DChambers Wrote:  

That a bombastic and pathetic regime like the NK government could get away with even thinking about laying a hand on an American Citizen with little real consequence is disgusting. The consequence of harming an American citizen should carry the the same weight and awe that was once felt when kings were told, "Ille civis romanus est."

Treating any foreigner in such a way with a state issued tourist visa is disgusting. As an American, if a NK citizen was treated like Warmbier here in the US I would be ashamed.

[churros]

(06-21-2017 09:12 PM)RIslander Wrote:  

(06-21-2017 05:57 PM)DChambers Wrote:  

That a bombastic and pathetic regime like the NK government could get away with even thinking about laying a hand on an American Citizen with little real consequence is disgusting. The consequence of harming an American citizen should carry the the same weight and awe that was once felt when kings were told, "Ille civis romanus est."

Treating any foreigner in such a way with a state issued tourist visa is disgusting. As an American, if a NK citizen was treated like Warmbier here in the US I would be ashamed.

It's a tricky one. The US does torture people, even without due process.

[spokepoker]

For taking down a poster in a hotel?

[WalterBlack]

(06-21-2017 01:22 PM)churros Wrote:  

Interesting article in the Guardian today, from someone who went on the tour. Organised by some chancer off the forums on couchsurfing.com (!)

Quote:

...The time I agreed to a North Korean girl’s request to take a love letter back to London (to give to someone I knew who had also visited North Korea), warning me not to let it be found at the border. The time that same visitor was held at the border at the end of his next visit, for ripping his photo out of his visa and giving it to her....

Looks like somebody got this:

[BortimusPrime]

I wonder if MacArthur had actually been allowed to nuke the Chinese during the Korean War, if it would have ultimately spared far more lives given that millions of people have starved to death in North Korea while the rest live under hellish conditions.

[churros]

(06-21-2017 11:25 PM)spokepoker Wrote:  

For taking down a poster in a hotel?

No due process. So they could make up anything.