Thursday, December 25, 2008

The Three Big Lies and Opera Bouffe

Seven Years later
June 15, 2007

The Three Big Lies

The following article, written some years ago, still aptly summarizes the ongoing North-South Korean détente that the Korean aspiration of the national unification remains as a fallacy, deception, prevarication, machination, Machiavellianism, illusion or delusion under the ever-lasting claws of the half-century-long and no-end-in-sight US Occupation Forces. You pick one.

There are Three Big Lies in the world that people are endlessly ingested and entertained by the mainstream media in cahoots with and in concert with a gaggle of sleazy and money-grubbing politicians around the globe:
1. The US Government withdraws completely its invading forces from Iraq in near future and, Americans never intended to remain in Iraq forever, from the inception of the war.
2. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be settled with either the one or two-state solution eventually, and Jews will give up all territories occupying since 1967 War.
3. The North-South Korean issues could be hammered out peacefully while the South ride piggyback on Yankee imperialism.

The facts of matters are:
1. The Americans (either Democrats or Republicans) will never cut and run from Iraq as they did from Vietnam in 1975 and remain there as they have been occupying in the South Korean peninsular.
2. The Zionist Jews will never allow a viable independent Palestinian State in the region and keep finding some ways of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian Arabs without cease.
3. The South Korea remains a puppet regime for the New Rome, USA, for another century or more until the North Koreans starve to surrender under the altar of global capitalism.

I dare to declare that you are at least a dumb fool and idiot, if you ever anticipate the above-mentioned three big lies becoming the reality during your life-span.
I also dare to challenge that you are a sycophant dittohead and pig-headed dimwit if you ever anticipate the above-mentioned facts of matters going the antipodal ways during your lifetime on the earth. (I will elaborate it later in details in other essay.)

Now you are entering the Theater of Opera bouffe, “A Feel-Good North-South Summit Talk” in 2000


Five years later
June 15 2005

It has been passed 5 years since DJ Kim, the comprador-par-excellence, had returned from a “historical” summit talk with Chairman Kim Jong-il at Pyongyang for the North-South détente.
After his retirement from the presidency, DJ Kim was accused of
1. Bribing the North with billions of taxpayer’s money to have a summit talk,
2. Snatching the Nobel Prize for Peace with a sleight of hand,
3. Betraying ultimately South Koreans with a delusional fantasy that the North-South unification is achievable under his “Sunshine Policy”, which sanctions the permanent occupation of the nation by the US imperial forces.

In one of the famous Korean folklore, “Bong-yee, Kim Sundal” has conned his foolish neighbors by selling the water from “the River of Daidong” in the City of Pyongyang, convincing them that he is the owner of the River.
As a modern Kim Sundal, DJ Kim robbed the public coffer of billions and presented the money to his Northern brother as if the money came from his own pocket in return for getting invitation card from the North.
And voila! He became the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize!

Since his con game of the North-South Summit, DJ Kim has cooped up in his 7-room, 8-bath, and sunken garden palace that was built with the Prize money, contemplating another con game that betrays the South Koreans, and suggested he wants to be a special envoy to go to the North if the South Koreans are ready to pay his trip.
After all, he was a money-grubbing con man during his presidency that sold a lot of public facilities and financial institution to the Wall Street robber barons as if he owns the national properties.

At any rate, as fools outnumber the wise in very country in the world, only Korean fools still believe that the national unification could be achieved under the occupational thumbs of Uncle Sam whose hegemonic and imperialistic endeavor knows no bound and spans around the globe.

Pity the Koreans!

One year after the North-South Summit Talk
June 14 2001

The following article was written by Dale Han, a.k.a. Pepe Sojourner at the time of North-South Summit meeting last year in Pyongyang and posted the same day in various Internet forum sites and other zines.
At that time, Sojourner criticized the summit nothing more than a feel-good meeting that dine, wine, hug, cry, and banzai with lots of sentiment under the close watchful eyes of their mentor and colonial governor-general, USA.
In retrospect, Sojourner was correctly analyzing a year ago that DJ Kim’s engagement policy on North would hit the red-scare wall of new Republican government in the US, accurately predicting the election of George W. Bush as a new emperor.

A year later, the South Koreans are still in an illusion that Chairman Kim’s return visit to Seoul would somewhat bring the peace in the region, without realizing that George holds all the cards and obsequious DJ Kim is leashed on the US demarche.
Sojourner assures again that the second summit, if it ever occurs, would not produce anything substantial development with regard to easing half-a-century conflict in the peninsular, as far as the US maintains its imperial forces in the region no matter how many times two Koreans meet, wine, dine, and holler banzai with lots of tears.


A Feel-Good Summit Talk
June 15, 2000


1. Banzai mentality

Koreans are characterized generally with the tendency to display an unfettered and emotive feeling in public when they are either extremely sorrowful or pleased with the events, such as in the funeral process they openly cry loudly and shed tons of tears or in greeting their political leaders they shriek banzai with abandon.
When DJ Kim returned from the North-South meeting, there have been an explosion of rapturous emotion and delusory euphoria among the South Koreans that only appear in the society where nincompoops, hypocrites, and sellouts have an upper hand and coolheaded, logic-minded, and sagacious people slump in an awkward atmosphere.

A TV anchorman has put on a smiley face and ducktalks DJ’s bromide: we, Koreans, can settle our dispute on the issues of the reunification without any interference from anyone, a grandiose delusion of self-indulgence.
DJ has assured his people that the threat of the war on the peninsula has disappeared since his visit to the North, the same braggadocio when he told a lie the South has graduated from IMF bailout a few months ago. It was an amazing and blatant chicanery that one stroke of signature could eliminate the menace to peace that every souls of live and dead Koreans desperately have sought after for 50 years and he did it with a single visit to the North!
Oh, please give me a break!

There couldn’t have been such an apropos occasion for DJ Kim, who was dumped by his people at the recent parliamentary election and humiliated with an unsavory pursuit for his erstwhile bedfellow JP Kim in order to obtain the majority in the national assembly.
He appears to shed an image of the treacherous and Machiavellian political hack as if a duck sheds water off its back.
However, it is a matte of time when the people become sober, cool headed, and realize that the so-called formulas he proposed to the North are not the officially sanctioned one but his own personal opinion that was formulated during his untoward political life in the early 90s.
His people and the national assembly have never mandated him to proceed with his personal formulas that smell stink in a way to cut corner in achieving his personal popularity.

2. Reality Check

In reality, the North-South Talk is a non sequitur and the proposed three-phased formula for the reunification has a close similarity with an inverted form of Pyramid scheme that would give birth to a multi-headed chimera.

In the first place, DJ’s proposal for the unification process that promotes a confederation of two independent states was to avoid the thorniest issues of US presence in the South and the nuclear armament in the North, stipulating that the each state has the intrinsic rights with regard to the foreign affairs and military capabilities. These issues are sine qua non of many other agendas that have to be dealt with the South Koreans who have not been told of what the official formula would be.
DJ should call for the referendum, seek for the approval from the parliament, or at least put his personal formula on the public forums to debate prior to his departure to the North.

Secondly, DJ Kim should be charged with the violations of the National Security Acts (NSA) and other 20-some statutes that punish anyone to praise or promote the ideology of the North. Since his inauguration, DJ has arrested over 700 people for breaking the NSA and many of them are still in jail for the same offense that DJ himself is ipso facto committing with impunity.
He seems to become more cunning, arrogant, and tyrannical dictator than any other oppressive general-turned-presidents in disregarding the violation of the constitution and other statutory laws.
His attempt to revise the NSA has been stalled in the parliament since last year and his people have refused to give him the absolute majority mandate in recent election. And he still has the gall and arrogance to pledge some pies in the sky to his first-met blood brother in the North.

Thirdly, one of the investment firms in the United States has calculated that the North requires to have over $1 trillion to revitalize its economic infrastructures that have been devastated and moribund for last few years, and the South does neither have the financial capacities nor willingness to help out their pariah brothers.
The South has its own financial problems, and one of pivotal industrial giant Hyundai has been limping around due to the lack of cash flows that was partially caused by annual infusion of over $1 billion into the North.
On the other hand, the North is not ready to accommodate the massive inroads of the investment capitals, materiel, and greedy carpetbaggers.

Finally, the issue of the unification has always been internationalized and placed on the cutting boards of the Super powers since 1945, and China and Uncle Sam have been breathing heavily on the necks of the North and the South that Koreans just dine, wine, and shoot the shits.
That’s why there has been a train of meetings before the summit between the North Korea and China, and the South Korea and the United State.
Since Koreans have been sitting by the peg leashed around their necks for centuries, it is the natural corollary that they have no sensation of restraining tug until they stray from the pegs of China, Russia, Japan and the United States.
Only a fool believes that Koreans are capable of minding their shop while Chinese and Uncle Sam suck their fingers.

3. The talk between China and the North Korea before the summit:
tutor (Jiang Zemin) vs. urchin (Kim JI)

Tutor: Long time no see, son. I gather that you have not forgotten that we saved you during the Korean War.
Urchin: No sir. How could we forget you? I am here to ask some helpful directives in dealing with the South and the imperialist Uncle Sam.
DJ Kim has been pestering me constantly for tete-a-tete, sending tons of fertilizers, US dollars, and tourists. I know he desperately wants a Nobel Prize, but he won’t get it without me.
Tutor: Son, watch out that bastard. He is a sellout who can somersault and pirouette in tune with any music if it gives him an upperhand.
Urchin: Should I up the ante for another talk with him, such as another one billion dollars for the exchange of the special envoy, reunion between the lost families etc?
Tutor: Of course, you should note that you wouldn’t expect too much from Uncle Sam when the new guy, Governor Death, comes into the White House next year armed with TMD and NMD systems. You should milk DJ Kim as much as possible until he drops dead.
Urchin: Should I barter nuclear bombs with foods?
Tutor: What a naïve son! Do you think DJ and Uncle Sam fetch a bucket of food because they commiserate you so much? You are a dead man if you did not have the tool of Mutually Assured Destruction.
But don’t be too stupid to pour the cold water on the eager guest. In a Confucian culture, the manners matter. Give him a bear hug. Show the world you are not a moody and irascible playboy tyrant as the Western media has been brainwashing the people, but a smiling, affable, happy-go-lucky and talkative leader. You don’t have the complexion of a horrible terrorist like a kaffiyehed Arab but rather an amiable dunce like Ronald Reagan. I know you have a knack to make your counterpart loose in the chess game.
Urchin: Sir, can I rely on your help when Uncle Sam ever launches the preemptive nuclear strike against us?
Tutor: My poor son, don’t succumb to the Yankee bluffs. They have too many problems in their backyard to engage in an all-out attack. Be sure to continue working on the ICBM and nuclear capability. The Samson Option on Americans in the peninsula and Japan can be an effective deterrent against the US attack.
Urchin: Thank you for your advice. I will call you back soon.
Tutor: Wait a minute. I’ve heard that the Russian bear wants to see you in July. What does he have to do with you?
Urchin: Don’t worry my dear teacher. The Russians are broke and I don’t trust them because they are already in Uncle Sam’s back pocket. They don’t want to be left out in the power game of the Far East. I need as many supporters as possible to show our enemy that we are not as hapless as pariah.
Tutor: Good luck, son. We, Chinese, would thank you very much, if you’d be able to make a deal with the South that deprives the American military of a pretext for its forward bases in the South right on our doorstep.


4. The talk between the United States and the South Korea before the summit talk:
Master (Bill Clinton) vs. servant (DJ Kim)

Master: Nice to see you again, boy. I’ve seen you on television frequently these days and you must have been a good poster boy for globalization.
Servant: Dear master, thank you very much for your benevolence that allows me to play ball with the North.
Master: Boy, you know who the boss is and it’s good for you not to forget it. But I want you to tell your counterpart that we mean business when we talk about the north’s nuclear and missile stuffs. On the other hand, you should not give any hint or suggestion about the presence of US forces in the South. Simply ignore him and tell him that it is none of their business.
Servant: But my revered master, I can’t raise the missile and nuclear issues without responding for their inquiry about your presence in the peninsula. It is a well-known fact that both issues remain to be settled as symbiotic as body and soul in order to achieve the reunification of the country.
Master: Don’t play dumb, boy. I know you have a lot of sleazy and cunning ways to escape the embarrassing occasions like telling your people full of white lies about your horse tradings and financial difficulties. I know you have made treachery and duplicity your bywords.
Servant: Please be generous and pity with me, my master. I will serve you obediently and loyally, forever. Look at what I have done for you. I have placed whole land, banks, factories, and even my people on the shelf of the international flea market for fire sale as you have instructed me. I have even eaten the humiliating crow when I told my people that you could keep occupying my country even after the unification. Who would believe that Koreas could be united with the American occupation remain intact? Only stupid and dumb people like the South Koreans buy it.
Master: Bottom line is that the hegemonic foreign policies of the United States have never predicated on the logical, moral, humanistic, altruistic and democratic principles since its birth.
Do you think that we have lost over 30,000 young American lives in the Korean War and have kept over 37,000 GIs in order solely for the democracy? What do you take me for, a fool?
Wake up boys! The hegemonic control in the region is sole and ultimate raison detre for the US occupation forces in the Korean peninsula. I find that you South Koreans have been going too far…like SOFA revision, abolition of the bombing range, and Nogun-ri massacre.
How do you servant demand a right to prosecute your master under your own barbaric and unreliable judicial system? (Shh…. frankly speaking, I don’t trust our system neither. I shuddered when one of the governors released 13 convicts among 56 inmates waiting to be executed because they were wrongfully sentenced to die. Imagine what if you, as innocent as a god, were one of other inmates who still sits in the deathrow waiting to be executed. But most of my people are untoward to believe the principle of justice for all as your people do.)
Servant: master, your wishes are my command, and I will do whatever you ask me to do. But please give us mercy of Lord. Thank you for your advice. Thank you, thank you, and thank you…


5. The North and the South Summit:
Comprador (DJ Kim) vs. Hermit (Kim JI)

DJ Kim, a superb Machiavellian comprador, duck-walks in with rictus smile of a bowing undertaker and shakes hand with JI Kim, a recently spelunked-out hermit, and they waltz together for the inspection of the People’s Army at the airport where the national flags of the North flutter in the breeze with no sign of the South’s flag.
The mise-en-scene are carefully choreographed and staged with pomposity and dignity in order to show the world that they are two heads of each fully sovereign countries and are serious in dealing with their own fate by themselves without any interference form the super powers.

. During his three-day stay, DJ has been strangely reticent and short-versed in responding with his gregarious counterpart who has been bad-mouthed as an eccentric recluse by the Western media. It seems that DJ walked on the eggshells as a loyal comprador for Uncle Sam, and also become dumfounded when he realizes that his counterpart is not that stupid to be duped as his opponents in the South.
However, he did not hesitate to expose his treacherous and cunning characters when a high-ranking official of the North has challenged him about the intent and purpose of three alliances (US, Japan and South Korea) talk.
DJ replied that the alliances are to benefit both the South and the North as a sort of win-win policy and it is not aimed at harming the North.
What a Bull Shit! He has been a pathological liar to cheat his people, and now in the historical meeting of the Koreans he did not feel sorry to tell the Northern brothers a white lie.
Surprisingly, the alleged hermit has danced jubilantly as an artificially propped-up debutante on the international spotlight and showed the sharp awareness with full strength of testosterone and courtesy, quite contrary to what DJ was briefed as a rude and tyrannical curmudgeon by his NIS men and the CIA agents of his Uncle Sam.

During a limousine ride to the guesthouse, it is anybody’s guess what they talk and exchange something under the table.
Comprador: Thank you for car-pooling with me. You are an ultimate gentleman.
Hermit: Never mind, but I’d like to make sure that your car is not bugged.
Comprador; Frankly speaking, I myself can not be 100 percent sure even though my people fumigated thoroughly the entire car to find the bugs.
Hermit: I know Yankees are poor in Humint (intelligence gathered by katsa (agents) in the field), but pretty good for Comint (Acronym for communications intelligence). My people already employed for ECM (electronic countermeasure).

Day One

Comprador: Comrade, it is my honor to meet you, and I come along a long way to meet my blood brother.
Hermit: Well, happy to see you with so much freebies and a sack of greenbacks. Thanks for help upgrading me from terrorist, womanizer, drunkard, recluse, psycho, and dictator to instant CNN celebrity.
Comprador: Oh, well, don’t thank me. Just thank my revered master, Mr. Clinton.
Hermit: Wait a minute, are you here to market a philandering capitalist who fucked 20-something wench?
Comprador: Oh no, no, no…I am just pulling your leg. You know, I am the people’s president of the Republic of Korea, very independent and totally unfettered representative of the South Koreans.
Hermit: Really? Then how come you have lost popularity in last April election and how dare your uncle dictates what we can or we can’t talk here?
Comprador: Shhhh. I might be wired for taping by CIA, I don’t know if my entourage was tampered with a katsa from the National Security Agency. You never know what my master would do to check my integrity.
Hermit: I will break their neck if I catch them.
Comprador: By the way, my Big Daddy wants me to ask you about your intention that you would put off your nuclear projects indefinitely and stop selling your missile technology to other rogue states like Iran, Iraq, and Syria.
Hermit: Here goes again, you never stop being a factotum of the imperialist Yankee. Your Big Daddy was not faithful to implement the provisions of the Agreed Framework I had signed with, and I am ready to go along with the agreement if Americans fulfill their promises.
By the way, I believe it is my turn to ask you: what about the 37,000 Yankee soldiers in the South? You said it’s okay to stay in the peninsula permanently…how thick face you have to come to see me to talk about the unification without recanting this two-bit and oxymoronic double-talk?
Comprador: I’m sorry I can’t respond with your inquiry…I have to consult with my master before I can give some suggestion because I was not allowed to talk about it, otherwise my master would raise Cain over me.
Instead, let us deal with the family reunion issue. I think that we can at least settle this matter once and for all.
Hermit: I am with you on this matter if you are ready to release my people in your prison and repatriate them to the North. They have been incarcerated over 30 years for the violation of the National Security Acts that only are comparable in its cruelty and heinous penalty with the Israeli administrative detention act, and they were denied of liberty only because they refuse to sign the release form that infringes the basic rights of freedom of thought. You have released and pardoned many treacherous generals who committed the atrocious massacre of your own people for the sake of your own political convenience, and now you can’t ask me the humanitarian reunion of separate families while ignoring the plea from the North. These people have already served longest jail term and deserve to be reunited with their family in the North.
Comprador: I am sorry I can’t give you an answer about this matter. I am afraid of being accused as a red sympathizer. Let us talk about the economic cooperation. Would you guarantee the repatriation of the profit from the North if South Korean businessmen invest in the North?
Hermit: I’ve heard that the South Korean businessmen are characterized as greedy and money-grubbing carpetbaggers…wherever they go, they leave a pile of refuse, a devastation of environment, and exploitation of human workers including children and women. Innocent Koreans have got beaten up during overseas trips by the disgruntled foreign workers who were maltreated in the South. I am afraid that you Southerners gobble up everything in the North like a school of piranhas and leave a pile of junks in order to make profits. We are at a crossroads which way to go…to keep the country under the present communal system that fails to feed my people or to allow your market economy that brings eventual demise of the North.
Comprador: are there any agenda that we missed to talk about it?
Hermit: Yea, how about cold noodle soup? Have you enjoyed it?
Comprador: Have we agreed any item up to now? I can’t go home without any gift for my people. Would you give me anything, anything that we can tell the people that we have achieved something in addition to the agreement for the taste of cold noodle?
Hermit: You have come here with full bag of shits and you ask for something. How could I have a talk with someone who can’t commit himself for anything. I don’t need to see my tutor for his approval every and each time as you have to with your master. The only thing I can suggest you is I might see you again in the future, if you promise me more freebies and a sack of greenbacks.
And for the reunion of separated families, you release my people in your jail first and send some more fertilizers and let Hyundai have more investment here, then I am with you to have “a party of tears and cries” for CNN consumption. Have a good sleep and come to see me again tomorrow.

Day two

During the sleepless night, DJ Kim instructed his communication officer to establish a secured line with the South and made a coded call to his master for the instruction, and has received the go-ahead signal for his formulas that has been under the scrutiny of the National Security Agency of the United States.

Hermit: How was the bed? Is it too soft for you and your wife?
Comprador: No, no, no…I have had a good sleep last night.
Hermit: You must have received a positive answer from your master, I guess.
Comprador: Here is the synopsis of my proposals.
First, I’ll repatriate your people in jail and abolish the NSA when I go home and we let the separated families have reunion party on August.
Second, I’ll send Hyundai boss with a bag of cash and aid plan right away and announce that the South would build the cross-country railroad and allow the cultural exchange of the artists, musicians and writers immediately.
Third, we should make our unification formula as vague and nebulous as possible, so no one knows what it really means at all.
Hermit: You are a smart Alec really. I accept your offers and let us have a signing party.
Comprador: Thank you my brother comrade, you have saved my life. Thank you. Thank you.

Day Three

Comprador: The Pope told me he is interested in seeing you if you invite him.
Hermit: You must be kidding… A Satan holding hand with a God? Heh, heh, heh, good for the Photo-Ops. What the heck, let him know I allow him to have an audience with me. It’s really worthwhile to live longer to see a god coming to see me, an archenemy of religion.
Comprador; also I would like to invite you to the South in very near future. We should not let our people mired into the post-summit fatigue. I think it is very important that various forms of fool’s parades are vital to make people feel good about the prospect of our talk.
Hermit: I totally agree with you. But, are you sure you can guarantee my safety from the marauding band of the Delta Forces in the US Army who are happy to snatch and ship me out on Apache helicopters for the international tribunal?
Comprador: Oh, come on, I can give you my assurance.
Hermit: Let me put it this way. Tell your people I accepted your invitation in some appropriate time, if it fits your propaganda scheme.
Comprador; Thanks again. You are really a courteous, Confucian-loving yangban (a man of the upper caste who prides oneself in aloof position beyond the reaches of hoi polloi).

Finally, DJ Kim wants to exploit the summit event for his faltering popularity in the South and asked Hermit if he would be allowed to go home on a motorcade through the country road crossing the DMZ.
Hermit was gaped with disbelief that his guest tries to give him the coup de grace…a motorcade escorted by his palace guards for hour-long drive on CNN with Larry King? What the fuck this bastard takes me for? A sucker? Or a dumb imbecile? He was furious of his guest’s sinister and manipulative character, but his anger subsided when he was reminded of his Chinese mentor that manners matter in a Confucian society.
So Hermit gave Comprador a bear hug and said adios.

Monday, December 15, 2008

This is a farewell kiss, you dog!

Finally, A Journalist We Can Look Up To!
A Hero of Our Time: Muntadar al-Zaidi

To watch a video, please copy/paste the following website.
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2008/12/14/if-the-shoe-fits-duck/

When Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi heaved his two shoes at the head of President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad, he did something that the White House press corps should have done years ago.

Al-Zaidi listened to Bush blather that the half-decade of war he had initiated with the illegal invasion of Iraq had been “necessary for US security, Iraqi stability (sic) and world peace” and something just snapped.

The television correspondent, who had been kidnapped and held for a while last year by Shiite militants, pulled off a shoe and threw it at Bush—a serious insult in Iraqi culture—and shouted “This is a farewell kiss, you dog!”

When the first shoe missed its target, he grabbed a second shoe and heaved it too, causing the president to duck a second time as al-Zaidi shouted, “This is from the widows, the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq!”

I’ll admit, listening to Bush lie his way through eight years of press conferences, while pre-selected reporters played along and pretended to get his attention so they could ask questions which had been submitted and vetted in advance, I have felt like throwing my shoes at the television set.

Al-Zaidi, who paid for his courageous act of protest by being brutally beaten by security guards, is a hero of the profession.

He stopped taking the president’s BS and called him what he is: a murderer and a criminal, with the blood of perhaps upwards of a million Iraqis on his hands.
Al-Zaidi used what was supposed to be a staged photo-op for the president as an opportunity to speak up for those whose lives have been ruined by this president—the ones our suck-up journalists routinely ignore.

I’m not suggesting that journalists should routinely leave presidential press conferences in their stocking feet.

We have different ways of expressing our sentiments to people we feel have insulted our intelligence than throwing shoes at them, but it would be nice to see a journalist or two flip the president the bird when he lies so blatantly to them.

Or they could all get up and just walk out, leaving him standing alone at the presidential lectern.

It’s time for the press corps to stop treating presidents like royalty.
If he accomplished anything at all in eight years in office, President Bush has demonstrated that, to the contrary, the president is a very ordinary—and in his case a rather less than ordinary—man.

The office of president deserves no more respect than that of the mayor of Detroit, or of Wasilla.

My suggestion is that the press corps use the remaining five weeks of the Bush administration to develop a new relationship with the presidency—one in which they drop all the phony propriety and tradition and start acting like boisterous newshounds of old, barking questions, laughing cruelly at inane answers, demanding follow-ups when they are given the run-around, and, where necessary, walking out, or perhaps tossing the occasional shoe.

The journalism profession was a full-blown disaster and an utter disgrace during the Bush administration, and with all the crises facing the country and the world, in part because of that failure on their part, we cannot afford to have them continue that failure into the Obama administration.

With the Bush administration reduced to a running joke at this point, it gives the journalism profession a chance to redeem itself by using these few remaining weeks to establish a new tradition for presidential press conferences and photo-ops—one that can continue on into the new presidency.

Meanwhile, I’m suggesting that my alma mater, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, hire al-Zaidi to teach a class in press conference journalism techniques.
They should make it a multi-year appointment, because if he left after just one year, his would be difficult shoes to fill.

NOTE: Speaking of shoes and the White House, Skip Mendler of Honesdale, PA has a great idea.
He suggests that everyone who is disgusted with the outgoing Bush/Cheney administration send a shoe to the White House.
Just imagine a pile up of a million smelly old running shoes in the White House mailroom! I think he's got something. Spread the word!

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

America the Illiterate

By Chris Hedges
We live in two Americas.

One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world.
It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth.

The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system.
This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture.

It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. I
t is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés.
It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection.

This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities.


There are over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level.

Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate or barely literate. And their numbers are growing by an estimated 2 million a year.

But even those who are supposedly literate retreat in huge numbers into this image-based existence.
A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school.
Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book.

The illiterate rarely vote, and when they do vote they do so without the ability to make decisions based on textual information.

American political campaigns, which have learned to speak in the comforting epistemology of images, eschew real ideas and policy for cheap slogans and reassuring personal narratives.

Political propaganda now masquerades as ideology.
Political campaigns have become an experience.
They do not require cognitive or self-critical skills.
They are designed to ignite pseudo-religious feelings of euphoria, empowerment and collective salvation.

Campaigns that succeed are carefully constructed psychological instruments that manipulate fickle public moods, emotions and impulses, many of which are subliminal.

They create a public ecstasy that annuls individuality and fosters a state of mindlessness.
They thrust us into an eternal present.
They cater to a nation that now lives in a state of permanent amnesia.

It is style and story, not content or history or reality, which inform our politics and our lives.
We prefer happy illusions.
And it works because so much of the American electorate, including those who should know better, blindly cast ballots for slogans, smiles, the cheerful family tableaux, narratives and the perceived sincerity and the attractiveness of candidates.
We confuse how we feel with knowledge.

The illiterate and semi-literate, once the campaigns are over, remain powerless.
They still cannot protect their children from dysfunctional public schools. They still cannot understand predatory loan deals, the intricacies of mortgage papers, credit card agreements and equity lines of credit that drive them into foreclosures and bankruptcies.

They still struggle with the most basic chores of daily life from reading instructions on medicine bottles to filling out bank forms, car loan documents and unemployment benefit and insurance papers. T

hey watch helplessly and without comprehension as hundreds of thousands of jobs are shed.
They are hostages to brands.
Brands come with images and slogans.
Images and slogans are all they understand.

Many eat at fast food restaurants not only because it is cheap but because they can order from pictures rather than menus.
And those who serve them, also semi-literate or illiterate, punch in orders on cash registers whose keys are marked with symbols and pictures.
This is our brave new world.

Political leaders in our post-literate society no longer need to be competent, sincere or honest.
They only need to appear to have these qualities.
Most of all they need a story, a narrative.

The reality of the narrative is irrelevant.
It can be completely at odds with the facts.
The consistency and emotional appeal of the story are paramount.

The most essential skill in political theater and the consumer culture is artifice.
Those who are best at artifice succeed.
Those who have not mastered the art of artifice fail.

In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we do not seek or want honesty.
We ask to be indulged and entertained by clichés, stereotypes and mythic narratives that tell us we can be whomever we want to be, that we live in the greatest country on Earth, that we are endowed with superior moral and physical qualities and that our glorious future is preordained, either because of our attributes as Americans or because we are blessed by God or both.

The ability to magnify these simple and childish lies, to repeat them and have surrogates repeat them in endless loops of news cycles, gives these lies the aura of an uncontested truth.

We are repeatedly fed words or phrases like yes we can, maverick, change, pro-life, hope or war on terror.

It feels good not to think.
All we have to do is visualize what we want, believe in ourselves and summon those hidden inner resources, whether divine or national, that make the world conform to our desires.
Reality is never an impediment to our advancement.


The Princeton Review analyzed the transcripts of the Gore-Bush debates, the Clinton-Bush-Perot debates of 1992, the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960 and the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858.

It reviewed these transcripts using a standard vocabulary test that indicates the minimum educational standard needed for a reader to grasp the text.

During the 2000 debates George W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.7) and Al Gore at a seventh-grade level (7.6). In the 1992 debates Bill Clinton spoke at a seventh-grade level (7.6), while George H.W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.8), as did H. Ross Perot (6.3).

In the debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon the candidates spoke in language used by 10th-graders.

In the debates of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas the scores were respectively 11.2 and 12.0. In short, today’s political rhetoric is designed to be comprehensible to a 10-year-old child or an adult with a sixth-grade reading level.

It is fitted to this level of comprehension because most Americans speak, think and are entertained at this level.
This is why serious film and theater and other serious artistic expression, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of American society.

Voltaire was the most famous man of the 18th century.
Today the most famous “person” is Mickey Mouse.

In our post-literate world, because ideas are inaccessible, there is a need for constant stimulus.
News, political debate, theater, art and books are judged not on the power of their ideas but on their ability to entertain.
Cultural products that force us to examine ourselves and our society are condemned as elitist and impenetrable.

Hannah Arendt warned that the marketization of culture leads to its degradation, that this marketization creates a new celebrity class of intellectuals who, although well read and informed themselves, see their role in society as persuading the masses that “Hamlet” can be as entertaining as “The Lion King” and perhaps as educational. “Culture,” she wrote, “is being destroyed in order to yield entertainment.”

“There are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect,” Arendt wrote, “but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say.”

The change from a print-based to an image-based society has transformed our nation.
Huge segments of our population, especially those who live in the embrace of the Christian right and the consumer culture, are completely unmoored from reality.

They lack the capacity to search for truth and cope rationally with our mounting social and economic ills.
They seek clarity, entertainment and order.
They are willing to use force to impose this clarity on others, especially those who do not speak as they speak and think as they think.

All the traditional tools of democracies, including dispassionate scientific and historical truth, facts, news and rational debate, are useless instruments in a world that lacks the capacity to use them.

As we descend into a devastating economic crisis, one that Barack Obama cannot halt, there will be tens of millions of Americans who will be ruthlessly thrust aside.

As their houses are foreclosed, as their jobs are lost, as they are forced to declare bankruptcy and watch their communities collapse, they will retreat even further into irrational fantasy.

They will be led toward glittering and self-destructive illusions by our modern Pied Pipers—our corporate advertisers, our charlatan preachers, our television news celebrities, our self-help gurus, our entertainment industry and our political demagogues—who will offer increasingly absurd forms of escapism.

The core values of our open society, the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense indicate something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to understand historical facts, to separate truth from lies, to advocate for change and to acknowledge that there are other views, different ways of being, that are morally and socially acceptable, are dying.

Obama used hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds to appeal to and manipulate this illiteracy and irrationalism to his advantage, but these forces will prove to be his most deadly nemesis once they collide with the awful reality that awaits us.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

The two cheeks of same derriere (2008)
The Coke vs. Pepsi War

September 28, 2008

Aristotle: “Democracy is the political stage immediately following aristocracy and immediately preceding oligarchy.”

Americans are spouting gaga over their upcoming presidential election and pouring millions of dollars for “the dog and phony shows” in Denver CO and St. Paul MN, as if there has been any difference in policies, domestic or foreign, between the Republican and Democratic Parties: they are dumb enough to argue over a difference between tweedledum and tweedledee.
It’s like a Coke vs. Pepsi contest, in which product is better taste for the American suckers…a senseless and recurring argument in every four years.

Two parties are actually One Big Party representing an imperial corporate America that has been on a warpath since the America-Spanish War to expand its territorial and colonial policies around the globe.

This lust for corporate largesse is as wanton among Democrats as Republicans--right up to the current presidential campaign.

According to the Phoenix Business Journal,
Obama and McCain . . . have accepted a substantial amount of campaign money from Wall Street bankers, investment and securities firms and their executives during this election cycle.
Investment firms have donated $9.9 million to Obama and $6.9 million to McCain this campaign thus far, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Commercial banks have given Obama $2.1 million and McCain $1.9 million. Private equity firms and hedge funds have given Obama $2 million and McCain $1.4 million, according to CFRP.

Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase & Co., UBS and heavyweight law firm DLA Piper are among Obama's top contributors. JP Morgan acquired Bear Stearns with the federal government taking on as much as $30 billion Bear assets as part of the deal. McCain's top donor sources include Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Blank Rome and Greenberg Traurig LLP law firms.

Both conventions are nothing but the masquerading ballrooms that cost each over $100 million paid for by corporate interests.

On an Iraqi quagmire and Afghanistan conflict, McCain and Obama are almost on the same boat: McCain goes further than Bush to do all-out war in Iraq and Afghanistan and Obama fumbles on Iraq withdrawal promise and put more troops in Afghanistan…that is, they both are determined to continue the hegemonic policies of expanding the Pan-American imperialism around the globe.

On the foreign policy, few Americans realize that they have been fighting a proxy war in the Middle East for half a century for the benefit of a tiny state of Israel…US and Israeli policies and actions with respect to Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, other Gulf States and even most recently Georgia are all tied together in a bundle of inter-related linkages, each of which affects all the others.
The theory is that pro-Israeli lobby group and Neo-cons in the US all have worked together to bring more wars, regime changes, and instabilities, specifically breakup of any Middle East Arab states, like Iraq and Iran, that might conceivably threaten the existence of Jewish Israeli State.

Jews got George W Bush’s balls tight for eight years with a gaggle of the Jewish neocons apparatchiks in every corner of his Administration who dictate and execute the pro-Israeli war in the Middle East region.
And McCain simply takes over what George left out in his foreign policies that benefit the interests of Jewish Israeli State.

Obama pledged his loyalty at the Jewish altar of American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), claiming that he would never compromise when it comes to Israeli security and picking Joe Biden who is a crypto Jew and declared Zionist.

On the domestic side, the basic American consensus has been a proposition that government must do for people what people can not do for themselves, in which both parties abandoned since Reagan and Clinton Administration and replaced it with a winner-take-all “free market” virtue, resulting in 45 million Americans with no healthcare, 43millions under the poverty line, and two millions in jail, while the elite upper class (2 percent) enjoy billions of tax-cuts and largesse from the Government subsidies.

Faced with a tsunami wave of financial collapse in Wall Street that metastasizes the whole aspect of the global economy, both Republican and Democrat are scrambling in strong bi-partisan fashion to save the billionaire’s neck with taxpayers’ money…”Let the free market run the economy” slogan disappears and “Let’s socialize the debt” zeitgeist flickers on the mainstream media screen.

Few months ago, Americans were supplied with $145 billion growth package for $800 each family and encouraged to go shopping in order to stimulate the sagging economy…giving people more money to spend—many of whom are already spending beyond their means—is to spend our way out of this mess, it was a fantasy.

Greek philosopher taught that death is inherent to life and transition and impermanence prevail…birth/growth/ contraction/death is nature’s way. All living things follow this natural cycle. Everything that lives perishes.
American economy has been built on a growth-always fiction, a false economy…gravity is a basic law of physics; things go up and then have to come down.
US economy is not nature-based but extremely conflicted with nature’s rhythm and now chickens are coming home to roost.

When Presidential candidates of both parties do engage in the shouting match about the economy, the basic strategy both parties employ is to fight the November election over who has the nicest DREAM plan for what people would like to believe in…

So which one should Americans pick between two Siamese twins joined by the corporate rumps, McCain or Obama?

One school of thought insists: a defeat for a reckless McCain is necessary to show the world that Americans care for the global peace, and with limited option, a vote for Obama is an answer.
But, would Americans care for world peace that impedes their prosperity via imperial colonialism and territorial exploitation?

Finally and critically, what about the racial misgivings the White Americans still carry on the black Americans in their daily life, 143 years after the slavery was abolished…would the whites be comfortable at the family dinner every night to watch a Negro president addressing them at the White House? I guess not!

I would like to bet my ass while the dice is still in the air…they will elect McCain as their next naked Emperor in order to show the world that Americans are always on top, in control, in domination, and remain forever in a super-power status.

From Toronto Canada
dalehan@verizon.net

Monday, September 1, 2008

Barak Hussein Obama II: A Shabbat Goy?

Barak Hussein Obama II: A Shabbat Goy?

Obama as his middle name, Hussein, indicated that he carries a Muslim bloodline (Obama Sr. is a Kenyan Muslim), no matter whether he claims he is a Christian.
Now, Obama declared that he would fight tooth and nail, among the US presidential candidates, for doing Jew’s bidding as a Shabbat Goy.

Jews are prohibited to do certain thing during the Sabbath… for example, Jews are not allowed to drive a car, ride a bike, or ride a carriage, turn the light switches on, light a candle or fire for heat, so on.
To its extremities, a Jewish physician is not allowed to care for a Goy patient during the Sabbath. (excluding a Jewish patient.)

So Jews need a Shabbat Goy, a gentile who performs tasks for Jews in the home or Synagogue on the Sabbath or holy day that are forbidden Jews on such occasions as mentioned above.
Someone calls the US President as Israel’s US Governor as if Jews calls Mahmoud Abbas as their West Bank Governor.
In this perspective, Obama is more a Head Negro to serve his massa than a Good Black

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Obama picks a crypto Jew as his running mate

Obama picks a crypto Jew as his running mate
August 23 2008

Just before the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Barak Husssein Obama picked Joseph Biden as his Vice President candidate.

Joseph Biden is a stalwart of Corporate Capitalism in support of the Multi-national Corporation and an ardent Zionist for the interests of Zionist Israeli State for his entire career of 30-some years in politics as a Washington insider.

Most importantly, Delaware Senator Biden, unbeknownst to many Americans, is of Iraqi Jewish descent… his great-grand father was an Iraqi Jew. (publicly, he claimed he is an Irish Catholic as other many former US Presidents deliberately hid their ethnicity of Jewishness. For example, Dwight Eisenhower, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon B Johnson were of Jewish descent.)

On behalf of money power, Senator Biden leaves his fingerprints on most of the bills that benefit the wealthy corporations…the Bankruptcy Act of 2005 was just one of his devotion to serve the money power in order to protect the credit card company.

For the Zionist Israeli State that seeks the hegemonic dominance in the Middle East region, Senator Biden in 2006 unveiled his plan to divide Iraq into a federation of autonomous Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish regions while keeping a weak central government in control of border defense and foreign affairs.

In other words, Senator Biden wants Iraq remaining a helpless, weak and divided Arab nation compared with the Saddam regime that once threatened the existence of the Jewish State.

Obviously, Obama desperately sought after someone that the Israeli lobby group inside and outside of the Democratic Party endorses the candidate… like Gen. Wesley Clark, another hidden Jew.
And Obama found Biden who has proved himself Israel’s unwavering acolyte in the Senate.

Obama also picked Biden for the same reason both Michael Dukakis and John F Kennedy picked their running mates, Senator Lloyd Bentsen in 1988 and Lyndon Johnson in 1960 for marriage of youth and experience, reassuring the elites that he would not do any harm to the status quo politically and financially. (for the black African Americans, Obama is nothing but a Pied Piper… either they can sit out without voting for him or follow him for oblivion.)

Obama initially opposed the launching of the US attack on Iraq in 2003 when he was not yet in the US Senate, but he has voted unhesitantly for all the war bills after he was in Senate.
Biden himself voted enthusiastically for the attack and supported George Bush.

The following is what Biden said in the Senate debate in October 2002.

"I do not believe this is a rush to war.
I believe it is a march to peace and security.
I believe that failure to overwhelmingly support this resolution is likely to enhance the prospects that war will occur… Saddam Hussein possesses…
For four years now, he has prevented United Nations inspectors from uncovering those weapons…"

"The terms of surrender dictated by the United Nations require him to declare and destroy his weapons of mass destruction programs. He has not done so…
Many predicted the administration would refuse to give the weapons inspectors one last chance to disarm…"

"Mr. President, President Bush did not lash out precipitously after 9/11.
He did not snub the U.N. or our allies.
He did not dismiss a new inspection regime.
He did not ignore the Congress. At each pivotal moment, he has chosen a course of moderation and deliberation…"

"For two decades, Saddam Hussein has relentlessly pursued weapons of mass destruction.
There is a broad agreement that he retains chemical and biological weapons, the means to manufacture those weapons and modified Scud missiles, and that he is actively seeking a nuclear capability…"

"We must be clear with the American people that we are committing to Iraq for the long haul; not just the day after, but the decade after…(Biden confided to his colleagues that this would be a long fight, but he was still for it.)
I am absolutely confident we will enhance his (Bush) ability to get the world to be with us by us voting for this resolution."

Now, to the poor American folks, would you still believe what Obama said “Change” and “Hope” would follow suit if you elect him and Biden?

My answer is: Democrats and Republicans, they both are two cheeks of the same derriere, as I said so often whenever they have had a dog and pony show every four years apart.

What’s your thought?

Saturday, June 21, 2008

A Good Black man grovels on all fours at the Jewish Altar

A Good Black grovels on all fours at the Jewish Altar
June 20, 2008

“Before there were good blacks, there were model Negroes. And before there were model Negroes, there were Head Negroes in charge (HNIC).

A Head Negro In Charge has its origins in the American slavery where white plantation boss (Ole Massa) handpicked a Negro to lead and watch the field slaves: these contemptible creatures (a sellout) have many sobriquets… Uncle Tom, hat-in-hand Negro, bootlicking Negro, yessa massa Negro, howdy boss Negro, Aunty Jemima.

A Model Negro has a defining trait of mild-mannered “Tom” and civilized servant of early era: when he is insulted or badgered, he stands and takes it with less anger.
Sidney Poitier on the silver screen and Jackie Robinson on the ballpark were good example for this group of Negroes in the 60s.

A Good Black does not look or sound typically black in the first place… that is, he or she is “non-black” in appearance (read lighter or fair-skinned) and speaks a dialect white people are familiar with. In other words, a Good Black ain’t that black generally.
Unlike “uppity niggers” like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, Cornel West, and “pet niggers” like Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, who all display a dark-skinned faces, Barak Hussein Obama II and Colin Powell belong to the shining example of Good Blacks.

However, all of Good, Model or Head Negroes carry the common denominator: they are charismatic, rhetorical, stylish and visceral, but unaccountable to the very people they claim to speak for, namely Black Americans…in other words, they all are good only for posture or symbolism but no substance to their own race. (Because they know that they would pay no political price for not delivering goods to their people, African Americans.)


In front of the Jewish crowd of 7,000 at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) just 12 hours after he claimed the Democratic Presidential nomination, Barak Hussein Obama II, a Good Black, prostrated on all fours, genuflected, and cried “yessa massa” evoking an old image of a Head Negro In Charge in the slave plantation.

And his Jewish massas gave him the 13 standing ovations over his pledges that
1. As president I will never compromise when it comes to Israel’s security.
2. Any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders.
3. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided.
4. I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything in my power. Everything.

First, since it is the reality in the US that every politician, if he or she wants to be elected for the public office, is supposed to wear kneepads in front of the AIPAC and to kowtow profusely for Jewish money and media, Obama is no exception to lick the Jewish spittoon in order to convince some Jews that he is kosher.

Second, he conveniently ignored the fact that one fifth of Israeli citizens are Palestinian to the bone and Arab to the marrow… that is, if Israel remains as a Jewish state, these 1.3 million of non-Jewish Israeli population should either be removed from the Israeli proper or live as a second class citizen indefinitely in their own home.
Regarding the Israeli border, it is Israel, not Palestinian or Arab countries that has refused to define its borders… Jews claim that God has given them the real estate territories reaching far beyond the borders of Egypt, Iraq and Iran.

Third, his nonsense that Jerusalem should remaining an undivided capital of Israel goes beyond the pale… Jerusalem has never been the capital of Israel and Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem is illegal under the international law.
No Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim will make peace with the Jewish State of Israel, if the Haram-al-Sharif compound (Temple Mount), one of the holiest places of Islam is ever absorbed within the jurisdiction under the Israeli sovereignty.
Even the Israeli government understands that this mantra, “Undivided Jerusalem, the Capital of Israel for all Eternity”, is not attainable in any peace treaty with Arabs.

Fourth, it’s bizarre to see ga-gaing over the nuclear development in Iran in the first place… world knows well that Israel has stockpiled over 500 nuclear bombs and equipped with many squadrons of airplanes that can deliver the bombs anywhere in the region without the US military support. (Recently, the Israeli Air Forces had an aerial dry run to bomb Iran.)
Iran is simply no match to Israel as far as the WMD is concerned.
And also Israel simply does not need the security guarantees from the US… rather the US need Israeli help to expand their hegemony in the Middle East.

It is true that Obama’s nomination has improved America’s image around the world, showing that everyone, even a Negro, has a chance becoming a President in America.
However, after seeing that a Good Black wearing an Israeli flag-pin on his lapel made the final round robin of pandering to AIPAC, his pandering is more painful to the African Americans than other obsequious politicians, McCain and Clinton, lose their dignity before the Israeli lobby.

The AIPAC is a major force shaping the US foreign policy in the Middle East, and its president hold lots of US Senators, House representatives, poobahs and jurists in his back pocket as if he carries nickel and dime changes.
When President George Sr. tried to block the US loans to Israel, he was called into the woodshed at the AIPAC and eventually led out to a cold hinterland losing his second term.
And most, if not all, of US politicians shudder with a fear of losing their job when the AIPAC determines them either a good or bad friend of Israel.

Aristotle put it squarely: “If there is menial and servile work to be done, there must be menial and servile people to do it.”
Obama, a Good Black, takes a marching order from the AIPAC as if a Head Negro snaps to attention “yessa massa” to the order of his Ole Massa, and rumor is abound that he would pick Wesley Kanne Clark, a hidden Jew and retired General, for his Vice President.
Obama keeps his campaign staffs and advisers of 90 percent whites daisy-chained with the Wall Street (neo-liberal free-market teams) and Jewish background.
Of course, some token Negroes dot the staff rooms sparsely.
In short, anything ever changes and nothing changes in America, no matter a Good Black man keeps chanting “Change!”
If America ever changes, it’s just a symbol not a substance.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

The President's Henchmen

The President’s Henchmen
June 10 2008

In memory of the 41st Birthday of Torture Professor John C Yoo

John C Yoo’s legal opinions

“ It is NOT torture unless the interrogator was inflicting pain associated with a sufficiently serious physical condition or injury, such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment to body functions.”

“There are no treaties to prohibit for interrogators to crush the testicles of child of terrorist in order for getting information.”


Since the 911 Kamikaze attacks on the United States, there are two University academics that are going down in the US history notoriously dubbed as “The Torture Professor”, Alan Dershowitz and John C (Choon) Yoo.

Dershowitz is a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, who argued that authorities should be permitted to use non-lethal torture in a "ticking bomb" scenario, regardless of international legal prohibitions.

Yoo is currently a tenured Korean-American Professor of Law at UC Berkeley, who was known for his work from 2001 to 2003 in the United States Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General, advising and dispensing his legal opinions to the Bush Administration regarding the Geneva Conventions, the Torture Memos, and the Wire-tappings.

Both are surely belonged to the category of what Hannah Arendt’s “The Banality of Evil” and Ward Churchill’s “Little Eichmanns”, the former’s theory is obviously overwhelmed by the latter’s power that legalizes and enables people to be tortured and quite possibly murdered.
In other words, the memos that Yoo dispensed were not some professor writing a book or submitting a paper at symposium, but the official government documents that “have almost the precedental effect of judicial decisions and lay the groundwork for the commission of war crimes by others, but his legal advice was itself a promotion of crime.”

The OLC where Yoo worked from 2001 to 2003 belongs to the Justice Department that issues legal opinions for the Executive Branches and the OLC opinions are relied on by these offices in order to carry out their jobs: “If OLC says OK, then it must be OK.”
In other words, Yoo’s legal opinions travel beyond a mere file of legalese essays into the interrogation rooms of the CIA, torturing, maiming, harming, and eventually murdering the detainees without the due process that his theory produced to numerous lawless actions by the executive branch.

In this context, torrents of opinions that Yoo churned out during his work at the OLC ended up legalizing the Bush Administration’s war on terror whatever it may be:
1. Yoo redefined the torture and justified the CIA’s waterboarding techniques on the enemy combatants.
2. Yoo reinterpreted the US Constitution that the President has an exclusive right as a Commander-in-Chief to defy the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and other international treaties.
3. in Bybee/Yoo memo, he advised that habeas corpus and other legal protection don’t apply to CIA detainees because Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Prison are not in the US soil.
4. the White House is not bounded by the Federal law prohibiting wireless eavesdroppings on communication.

Though all above legal opinions that the Bush Administration executed by Yoo’s advices were rescinded either in later the OLC memos or voided by the US Supreme Court decisions, Yoo’s opinions that carry the weight of law had already inflicted the irrevocable harms on many people, in some cases, likely led to the deaths of prisoners. (Since his first torture memo in August 2002, hundred detainees died while in US custody, according to the Human Right First, the Watchdog group.)

Yoo and Gonzales, Addington, Haynes II, Delahunty, et al, the other members of “War Counsel”, who hobnobbed and huddled together to plot the legal strategy about the war on terrorism, came to a conclusion that the criminal justice system couldn’t handle the new paradigm of terrorism and no time for interrogations being unduly constrained by international rules.
So the new war paradigm was needed to do away with criminal and international laws approach that opened the door to the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, in which there would be no refuge for the torturer or international criminal, as Chile’s General Pinochet, South Korea’s General Chun DW and Roh TW.
In other words, these political lawyers would be prosecuted in violation of the Geneva Conventions, if they elect to travel certain countries except perhaps Saudi Arabia, Israel, South Korea, and obviously USA.

Then, who are a cabal of these renegade laywyers? What were they motivated to advise the legality to crush the testicles of innocent child ? Were there any idealogical part or personal ambition to it? Are they fanatics or sociopaths who lack the moral, ethical, and social conscience?

They are mostly decent men with no mask of hobgoblin, graduates with summa cum laude from Ivy League, the distinguished bureaucrats with good family background, with lovely wife, adorable kids, and aging parents like ordinary folks living in the quiet suburbs.
The English dictionary refers to a “henchman” an unscrupulous supporter or adherent of a political figure or cause, especially, one motivated by the hope of personal gain.
They only chose to become a pack of henchmen who are expendable adherents of the villan, always ready to do the master’s bidding, to kill or be killed.

Let’s focus on Yoo, a key figure who crafted major legal opinions regarding torture, Geneva, wiretappings, habeas corpus, et al.
As a poster boy for the ultra-right conservative Federalist Society, he was a darling of Republican power house, clerked on Silverman, Thomas, and Hatch, day-dreaming and fantasizing a latter-day nominee for the US Supreme Court Justice. (he fondly quoted later saying that he was a ‘Robert Bork’ of my generation.”)
He was nurtured, tutored, and programmed to be ready to snap to attention and say “Yessir!!” to the President that your wishes are my command.
All the indications have shown that he wanted to be an Asian-American version of Clarence Thomas, a Black Supreme Court Justice who sold his fellow black men and women down the river in every legal judgements rendered.

Yoo crossed the Pacific Ocean in 1967, piggybacked on the back of his affluent physician parents (both were shrinks) from Seoul, South Korea, and settled in Philadelphia.
Born with a silver spoon in his mouth in anti-communist household, he went to private religious school, off to Harvard for college and Yale for Law School, becoming a professor at UC Berkeley Law School.
According to the NY Times, he was massively influenced by his conservative parents who hated the communist North Korea, even though Yoo was saddled on a diaper too young to know what the Commies did to his native country, as if the second generation of the Cuban-Americans in Miami are constantly ga-gaing over Fidel Castro’s regime.

Obviously, Yoo’s ancestry had accommodated and well served the Japanese colonial occupiers in early 1900s and prospered financially sending Yoo’s parent to the medical school…you, as a collaborator to betray your native country, prostitute to serve your master, then you get the personal gain in wealth and status.
During the Japanese colonial occupation, there were hundreds of thousands of Koreans who became the sycophant henchmen to serve the whims of Japanese empire, torturing, exploiting, robbing, and raping their own brothers and sisters in return for their personal success.
And it’s beyond an imagination why Yoo’s parents were otherwise an exception, considering their status quo at that time.

For the most of the first generation of the South Korean-Americans who ran away from their native country immediately after the Korean War and During the Military Dictatorship, the Commies were bogeymen and money is the be-all and end-all of their existence, in which their sons and daughters are taught and indoctrinated accordingly.
This man of “testicle crusher”, antipodal characteristics to his cherubic-faced and mild-mannered in all appearance, Yoo appears to be an quintessential epitome of “banality of evil”, Little Eichmanns, or Pro-Japanese collaborators.

One scholar derided Yoo, a 34-year-old junior adviser at the time of service in the DoJ: “a sorcerer’s apprentice whose half-learned incantations unleash chaos within a few hours of the master’s departure.”
Yoo even showed his reckless audacity with an unusual degree of certainty that he knew the “original intent of the US Constitution Framers”, drawing a derision that “Yoo was right there at the Founding of the USA.”

Just imagine a half-baked, flat-faced Asian-American lad with no on-site experiences whatsoever on the interrogation techniques , unabashedly, held power to draw the line:
You can beat people to a pulp (half-dead), deprive one’s sleep for weeks, leash to one’s neck like a dog, force one to bark like an attack dog, make one stark naked and blindfolded with hood, force one to wear a bra on and to dance with abandon, pour water on one’s mouth, etc. with just a couple of condition: Don’t let him die or Don’t make a mess to his bowls spewing out from the belly.

Man! Yoo must be an animal! How could he think it’s OK to inflict such an atrocious treatments on his fellow humans? Has he ever contemplated a second thought how he would react if he ever were a receiving party to such atrocities?
In his native country, South Korea when he was born, the waterboarding was one of the common interrogation techniques during the Military dictatorship, more enhanced and cruel type than what Yoo subscribed as an legal technique: the suspects (both Commies and common criminals like thieves or robbers) were subject to an “enhanced” water-boarding torture, in which interrogators at the KCIA and National Police Forces add teaspons of finely-ground red pepper into the water in a kettle and pour it directly on the nostrils without a wet towel on mouth.
Would Yoo recommend the CIA to add hot peppers in waterboarding technique if he knew about this “enhanced” additives?
You bet he would !!


Currently, Yoo was sued by the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School on behalf of American enemy combatant, Jose Padilla.
Ironically, Yoo was sued by his alma mater, Yale, and in addition, the Dean of Yale Law School is a Korean-American native of Boston, Mass., Harold Hongju Koh who is prominent as an advocate of human rights and civil rights.
And Professor Koh is a strong candidate for the nominee for US Supreme Court, if the Democratic Party candidate were elected a next President, while Yoo is possibly facing prosecution for masterminding policies in the commission of war crimes, destroying miserably his ambition becoming the FIRST US Supreme Court Justice of Asian-American Descent.

Another irony is that ALL the main architects of laws that affect the minorities in America were henchmen from the minority groups itself: Alberto Gonzales, ex-Attorney General, is a Mexican American, Viet Dinh, ex-Assistant Attorney General who was a chief framer with Yoo of the Patriot Act, is a Vietnamese, and John C Yoo, the Torture Professor, is a Korean American native of Seoul, South Korea.
They were such a bunch of despicable low-lifes that were eager to bury their own brothers and sisters alive, if their kiss-ass actions as a henchman bring a personal gain whatever it may be.

Finally, it is interesting to see how Yoo defends himself at the end of June 2008 when he appears at the House Judiciary Subcommittee regarding CIA interrogation techniques.
Will Yoo ever stand in dock or convicted of war crime?
It is highly unlikely the US court would ever convict him for the war crime, since the Courts are full of political appointees who were Yoo’s co-conspirator, like Jay Bybee, the former boss at the OLC, who is a federal appellate judge in the Ninth Circuit.
However, Yoo would better have a second thought having a ski vacation on Alps, since the Internatonal Criminal Court and other Jurisdictions are not too kind to look other way when they have a chance to grab him on the ski slopes.

Or would the Berkeley where he works kick his ass out from the academia?
The Dean of the Law School already determined that Yoo enjoys academic freedom as others and he was a mere adviser, not a decider, therefore he has the secrurity of employment.
Yoo’s critics argued that Yoo’s actions as the government official are not relevant to academic freedom, and the policies of torture Yoo largely crafted are not academic at all when his legal opinions intend to harm others bodily and mentally.
It seems to be a prima facie case that Yoo is unfortunately an expendable and not reusable henchman to be killed, unlike Dershowitz who is a Jewish and an undisputed mouthpiece for Zionism that carry a heavy weight status in the US Academia.

Pity on Yoo and his South Korea compatriots who work 24/7 and 365days year around to produce hundreds of thousands of henchmen like Yoo for a chance to serve their masters in return for a personal gain, whoever their master be, Chinese, Japanese, American or Mammon.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Syncretism: its colonizing influences and effects on the S Korean Society

Syncretism: its colonizing influences and effects on the Korean Society
December 21, 2007

In this essay, I, a Korean-Canadian, fearlessly take you where no Koreans dare to tread (Koreans breathe vitriolic fire on any naysayer’s neck) …how the Koreans have lost its indigenous culture and unique ethnicity, relying heavily and soaked deeply on the foreign elements of philosophical paradigm, and subsisting in the permanently occupied status by the foreign military forces.
Recently, a mandarin in Bush Administration raised the US occupation in South Korea as a working model for a permanent US occupation in Iraq…that is, the South Koreans are so much oblivious of the US occupation that Americans tried to cloth Iraqis with a Korean garment of obsequiousness and servitude.

There is a historical fact that most Koreans dare not to acknowledge: from the advent of legendary Tangun dynasty to the present Republic, there were or is never a sovereign dynasty or state in the Korean peninsular…for two millennia, all dynasties have remained the tributary one to the Chinese empire until it became a Japanese protectorate and later colonized by the Imperial Japan and lost the independent status in toto.

The soi-disant 8/15 Liberation from the Imperial Japan did not bring about the independent state for Koreans, instead new neo-colonial overlord disguised a democratic liberator moved in to replace old master…the Republic began a puppet state (the regime of Syngman Rhee), then a vassal state (Gen. Park CH), followed by a neo-colonial, satellite, and client state (present Republic) to be palatable to the American Imperialism.

Nowadays, few Koreans appear to be aware of the fact that they have been living under the yoke of neo-colonial status over half a century with no end in sight, longer than what they had endured in the Japanese colonialisation in early 20th century.
Rather, many Koreans have stampeded to emulate the foreign cultural settings for many decades, in which the Western colonial culture has taken root, flourished, grown, and eventually produced a devilish “Han Wave” culture, a hodgepodge of mongrel, ghoulish, risible, and crass slapsticks.

What entails the proud (?) Koreans becoming a gaggle of Apes that worships blindly an imported God, fights greedily over the bowls of rice, jettisons massively its faltering indigenous culture, and emulates an enchilada of Western concepts with abandon?
What snags the fiercely patriotic (?) Koreans remaining in oblivion a victim of perpetual external domination and internal oligarchy (Chaebol) for decades?

I find an answer in “syncretism”, an ultimate and elusive element of colonizing other culture that is an odorless, and tasteless gas likened to carbon monoxide, which has been seeping into Korean cultural atmosphere for two millenniums.
Syncretism refers to the attempted reconciliation or union of different or opposing principles, practices, or parties, as it occurs commonly in philosophy, religion, literature, music, representational arts or other expression of culture.

It all has begun in strong syncretic setting as soon as one of Ural-Altaic tribes settled down in the Korean peninsular where the Tangun legend depicts the marriage between Hwanung or Hanunim and the bear-woman, Kom, a deity widely worshipped by the North Asiatic tribes in Manchuria and Siberia.

To be continued soon....................................

The Self-Censorship of the US Mass Media

The Self-Censorship of the U.S. Mass Media
May 6, 2000

It was an axiom of old-time journalism that the mass media must at least assume to stand for popular causes.
The reporters, announcers, and anchormen…pretend to speak for the people; and the public that read, listen, or watch them expect and believe that they are receiving this service.
And this expectation and confidence have given almost a century of American journalism an illusion of unassailable correctness.

However, the recent poll of 206 reporters and 81 news executives – 150 from local news outlets and 137 from national news organizations- conducted by prestigious research center shows quite different and sometimes opposite results.

Here are some details:

1. There is general agreement about the extent of self-censorship and its principal causes. Market pressures – manifested when newsworthy stories are avoided because they are too boring or complicated – are seen as the most common factor because of lack of average person’s appeal.
2. Significant percentages of respondents report that the stories, which may conflict with organizational interests, or hurt the financial interests of news organization or its parent company, or affect adversarial interests of the advertisers, are not pursued but ignored. Typically, the journalists do not decide on their own to avoid newsworthy stories. More than half of them said they either get signal from their bosses to avoid such stories or ignore them based on how they think their bosses would react.
3. Even investigative journalists, such as the authors of 60 minute, 20-20, 48 hours and some muckrakers, are likely to avoid the impact of business pressures on editorial decisions. Full half of this group says newsworthy stories are often or sometimes ignored because they conflict with the economic interests of a news organization.
4. About one-third of local reporters and 15 percent of those in the national media say that they have soften the tone of a news story on behalf of the interests of their news organization. They were told to drop the story because it was dull or overly complicated, but one-quarter of them suspect the real reason for the decision was the story could harm their company’s financial interests.
5. A majority of journalists believe that corporate owners exert at least a fair amount of influence on decisions about which stories to cover. The survey provides considerable evidence that at least for some journalists, there has been an unmistakable intrusion of commercial interests into newsroom decisions. For instance, about 20 percent local and 17 percent national reporters say they have faced criticism or pressure from their bosses after producing or writing a piece that was seen as damaging to their company’s financial interests.
6. Overall, journalists have a more pessimistic attitude toward their job performance than the poll done previous year, and more local journalists report influence by corporate owners and advertisers in decisions on which stories to cover.
7. Finally, on the question of whether the media does a good job of informing the public, both local and national journalists give themselves poorer marks than last year. In 1999, a majority of journalists said that the news business did a good or excellent job of balancing journalism’s twin goal of telling the public what it wants to know and what it needs to know. Now only one third of them give the professional high mark and with majorities in both groups saying the media does only a fair job at this crucial task.

Perhaps most revolting is that significant portion of the journalists said they have avoided covering a story because it could hurt the financial interests of the news organization’s corporate owners and advertisers, and the assumption by the public of “objectivity” in reporting has been severely compromised
There is an absurd and unacceptable degree of concentration of economic, cultural, and political power into so few hands of media owners who influence on what the public should or need to know...

What does it mean to say we have freedom of speech in democratic society?
Many of us think free speech is a right enjoyed by everyone in our society. In fact, it does not exist as an abstract right. There is no such thing as a freedom as detached from the socio-economic reality in which it might find a place.
Speech is a form of interpersonal behavior. This means it occurs in a social context, in homes, workplaces, schools, before live audiences or vast publics via print and electronic media.
Speech is intended to reach the minds of others. Some kinds of speech are actively propagated before mass audience when the contents are sanctioned officially by the state power and promoted by the wealthy corporate owners, and others are systematically excluded and ignored when the story goes against the interests of the powerful and rich institutions.
In sum, freedom and power are not always antithetical, but frequently symbiotic
.
One of the basic rules of self-censorship is that you do not report news without official confirmation. Thus, for example, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of growing economic woes, the media do not question the Wall Street actions or White House policies until the recession is well under way, because the reporting may cause panic in the stock market.
In addition, the media decline to cover the significant affairs of state that inform the public and slide into the content that entertains frivolous, petulant and pie-in-the-sky dream.

How are the journalists in South Korean mass media?
Are they a bunch of:
1. Docile lapdogs that sit idly on the politician’s lap enjoying a siesta,
2. Sycophant pussycats that curl up with a whimper,
3. Howling wolves that go after vigorously for their meal?

You Are What You Eat

You are what you eat
July 16 2001

“Quod me nutrit me destruit.” Latin tattooed on the stomach of Actress Angelina Jolia, “ What nourishes me destroys me.”

In the month of July when the dog days of summer kick in, most American families are out in their back patio, at the beach, or in the resort mountain, gathering around the barbecue grills to scarf down the huge amount of junk food…hot dogs, hamburgers, and drumsticks that animals were raised, processed, flavored, and packaged through the cruel and immoral practices of industrial ranching.

July is declared “Hot Dog Month” by the US meat industry and every summer Americans wash down more than 5 billion hot dogs with trillion gallons of soda.
On any given day in the US, one in four adult Americans visits a fast food restaurant like McDonald, Burger King, Taco Bells or Pizza Huts and greasy fat food has become a national dish that makes them obese, sick, and invalid in various form of diseases.
Particularly, obesity becomes normal among the young and the poor in dot-com America where one in four all Americans under the age nineteen and half of all poor black women are obese and overweight.

It was a received wisdom that Americans are perhaps most health, diet, and shape-conscious of any people in the history of the world and very sensitive to the treatment of animals. (Americans demonize Koreans often for their voracious appetite in canine food)
On the contrary, almost all Americans will be overweight within a few generations if obesity is left unchecked that causes diabetes followed by kidney failure, heart attack, and stroke.
As in an early 1900 novel “ Jungle”, Upton Sinclair described such a horrible condition in the meat packing industry in Chicago (Theodore Roosevelt, then-President, on hearing about it during his breakfast, threw sausages out of the window in the White House), the industrial ranching today for pigs, cows, and poultry farm inflicts an unimaginable and inhumane cruelties on the animals in the pursuit of profit and efficiency.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than a quarter of the American population suffers a bout of food poisoning each year and about 200,000 people are sickened by a food borne disease every day.
In the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) study, 78 percent of the ground beef contained microbes, pathogenic bacterium, that are spread primarily by fecal material…that is, you are most likely to eat shit when you enjoy a Happy Meal at McDonald’s.
For many poor American consumers of the fast food, hot dogs or hamburgers are not a health hazard but a cheap, convenient and efficient intake of saturated fat, sodium and cholesterol, and in corporate America, the only group that benefit from people being fat are the companies of clothes, food, pharmaceuticals, hospitals, and HMO (Hospital Management Organization).

Obesity, particularly among the young and the poor, is epidemic in the inner-city communities where one of every four hamburgers are sold by McDonald’s, with the market formula that promotes gimmick of “supersizing”, Big MaC, Quarter Pounder, 42 ounce Coke with free refills, and supersize order of french fries.
It is well known that the fast food companies are targeting specifically children through playground, toys, videos, and movies, and kids always bring another customers, their parents or grandparents.
Now Burger King made contract with the school in Colorado to place an ad in the hallways and on the side of its school bus.
The junk food outlets thrive on the poor neighborhood where the indigents are in need of cheap meals for a quick bite before hurrying for their second job.

On the other hand, reports of cruelty to animals through improper livestock production and slaughter practices have reached its apex when the PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) challenged McDonald’s, not so much for serving unhealthy and contaminated meat but for being party to a system of cruelty, and McDonald’s and Burger King agreed to buy meat only from suppliers who promise minimum humane treatment of livestock.
The three fast food giants, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Tricon Global Restaurants (the owner of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC) now operate about sixty thousands outlets worldwide with the enormous purchasing clout that influence heavily on the modus operandi of livestock farms, slaughterhouse, and meat packing factory.

The industrial handling of livestock in America smacks of the corporate culture in Wall Street…efficiency, centralization, uniformity, throughput, control, animal instinct on profit.
In hog farm, thousand pigs are crammed inside the barns living all day on slatted floors above piles of their own waste, discharging toxic ammonia.
According to the PETA video, workers smash pig’s head against the floor to kill them and the farm manager beat pigs to death with metal gate rods and hammers.
Until 1997, three-quarters of the cattle in America were fed with livestock waste, dead cats, and dogs, in which practice were responsible for a widespread outbreak of BSE, known as mad cow disease.
Chicken producers often withhold food from animals for days at a time to increase egg production.

Meanwhile, the United States now has the highest obesity rate of any industrialized nation in the world and obesity is second only to smoking as a cause of mortality in the US, that export its obesity along with Marlboro and Camel to the world through the companies like Philip Morris and McDonald’s, that is, globalization of fat junk food, obesity, a melange of diseases, and eventual death.
The junk food chains were always an avant-garde of American neo-colonialism in conjunction with Hollywood movies, pop songs, and blondie hair, changing the eating habit of native people, as if a bunch of Christian missionaries sneaked into the Asian and African nations on an espionage assignment in an early colonial era.
Instead of dispatching American GIs for gunship diplomacy, the US government actively engages in helping out US fast food corporations to obtain overseas franchise businesses.

As the foot-and-mouth disease in Europe is affecting the sales of hamburgers all across the continent, people around the world should seriously consider returning to their native food and, once and for all, shunning the invasion of junk food that harms and destroys the national health.
Choice is yours: you wanna be a 200-pound chubby boy or a 500-pound human gorilla that suffocates in ones own fat?
You wanna be dependent on insulin injections lifetime, end up in the CCU (Cardiac Care Unit) connected to a ganglia of life-supporting tubes, and succumb to an early death in an oversized coffin?
You decide, because stupid is what stupid does and you are what you eat.

The Malboro Man in McWorld

Globally, the “McWorld” has expanded outside the U.S. from 3,000 restaurants a decade ago to about 15,000 today in 117 countries as an avant-garde of the US foreign domination, causing the enormous impacts on teenage obesity, diabetes type II disease, and other cultural degradation.
Few meat-loving denizens of the McWorld know that a majority of the cattle in the US were fed with millions of dead cats, dogs, horses, and chickens purchased from the animal shelters and other sources (the FDA regulations allow it).

The following is a list of accident reports on the website of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 25 percent of the nation’s 150,000 meatpacking workers are injured or killed on the job each year.
It’s like an almost incarnation of what Upton Sinclair described in his novel, Jungle, that the meatpacking industry is the most dangerous work place in the United States.

You are most likely to eat shit when you enjoy a Happy Meal at McDonald’s.

Employee’s Arm amputated while cleaning meat grinder.
Legs amputated by meat blender blades
Middle finger severed by meat saw.
Finger amputated in Chitlin machine.
Arms severed by knife of meat slicing machine.
Finger amputated in sausage extruder.
Eye injured when struck by hanging hook.
Arm amputated when caught in meat tenderizer.
Cornea lacerated by bacon hook.
Finger amputated by sausage packing machine.

Employee Falls into active meat blending machine.
Committed suicide by jumping into a meat blender.
Killed when arm caught in meat grinder.
Killed when crushed by descending lid of machine.
Hospitalized for neck laceration from flying blade.
Stabs self with 8-inch butcher knife and dies.
Injures backside jumping from platform.
Burned in tallow fire.
Crushed and killed by a blender.
Killed in fall from handrail into blender.
Decapitated by chain of hide-puller machine.
Killed when head crushed in hide-fleshing machine.
Caught and killed by gut-cooker machine.
Killed by stun gun.
Killed when he stabs his heart while boning a hog.
The Marlboro Man: a Merchant of Death
July 28, 2001

“The premature death by tobacco smoking has the positive effects on the countries where we make, sell, and export cigarettes.” Philip Morris Cos.

In the corporate culture, the profit motive easily overrides any other factors, like moral or social responsibility as the corporate citizen, in the process of business activities, and there is no exception for Philip Morris, giant tobacco company that boasts with the profit of $8.5 billion annually.
According to Wall Street Journal, the company told Czech government that smoking is good for the country, because in 1999 Czech government has saved about $30 million on health care, housing, and pensions due to the early deaths of many smokers in the country.

A few years ago, the company commissioned the study by research company Arthur D Little International, in which concluded that the budgetary benefits to the Czech government from duties and taxes paid by smokers, importers and cigarette companies outweighed the costs of health care significantly, in addition to the positive effects of premature deaths by smokers—savings on hospital care, housing and pension for the elderly.
The company said that the government gained over $146 million from the tobacco industry in 1999.
In another words, they said that smoking brings good things to the government ledger, an increase in revenue and a decrease in spending, the win-win situation.

In the United States, the tobacco industry suffered massive financial hemorrhage through the class action law-suits by the smokers and many State Governments won the court battles against the tobacco industry that was forced to pay billions of dollars to cover the health care costs of dying smokers.
However, in a deal the tobacco industry concluded with 40 State-attorneys general in 1997, the merchants of death were able to snatch out, among other things, the international legislative package that denied the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority to regulate tobacco export.
In order to counterbalance the financial loss in the domestic market, the cigarette companies embarked in aggressive marketing strategy heavily on foreign consumers who lack the knowledge of deadly consequence of smoking.
Riding on the wave of open market policy by the IMF and World Bank, the Philip Morris has expanded their market share to almost near monopoly on the manufacture, distribution and sales of cigarette in Czech Republic.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), tobacco will kill some 10 million people per year by 2025—7 million of them in economically poor countries.
Philip Morris and R. J. Reynolds are laying groundwork for this health disaster by aggressively increasing their advertising, promotion, and influence-peddling in key international market, selling about two-thirds of their cigarettes overseas and making nearly half their profit on the foreign markets.
For example, in Africa tobacco is as much an economic and environmental issue as a health issue. Tobacco transnationals have ensured access by offering African governments shares in their companies, providing senior management positions to people closely associated with officials in power, donating to projects supported by leading political figures, giving hand-outs to influential people, and winning support through economies which have become dependent on tobacco.

In South Korea where the government has monopolized the cigarette business for more than half century, foreign cigarettes maintain almost 20 percent market share since it has opened its market to the foreign tobaccos in 1988, and from then on Korean teen smoking rates jumped from 19 percent to 30 percent in a single year.
In their market strategies, the Marlboro Man introduced a host of slick advertisements—free cigarette giveaways, sponsorships of rock concerts and sports events, promotional T-shirts—that make smoking cool and very American as in dying hair and wearing funky attires.
The Korean smokers are dazzled with the portrait of Marlboro Man, a rugged cowboy whose life is already imprinted deeply in their mind through hundreds of the Hollywood movies, and they are lured into enslavement to the new flavor of nicotine addiction that brings disease and early death.

Now the South Korean government in dire straits financially allows foreign tobacco companies to produce cigarettes through the privatization of the state-run Korea Tobacco and Ginseng Corporation.
As in Czech Republic, the US tobacco industry would eventually gobble up the entire market of Korean smokers whose culture recognizes smoking in sync with dignity, seniority, and status symbol, not with health hazard and premature death. When the health care costs of dying smokers are passed to the community, the Marlboro Man is always happy to remind Koreans that smoking is not a health threat but a boon to their economy because the early deaths by smokers save the country on patient care, housing, and pension funds.
For the merchants of death, profit over people is the be-all and end-all that account for the corporate culture in the U.S.