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?
Sunday, August 24, 2008
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.
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.
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....................................
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?
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.
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.
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.
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