Fear and Loathing in North Korea

Or more to the point: Bow or Die!

A report by Donald Kirk of East-Asia-Intel.com seems to explain the current environment in the post Kim Jong-il, new Kim Jung-un North Korea fairly well.

The rise of the son as "supreme commander" of North Korea's armed forces gives
rise to nostalgia. Already the reign of the father is beginning to seem like the
good old days.

At least as long as Kim Jong-Il was around a certain sense of security
prevailed. South Koreans could be sure, despite "incidents", that North Korea
was not going to stage more than isolated attacks. And North Koreans could be
sure, as long as they suffered in silent acceptance of their fates, they would
not be consigned to the country's vast gulag system or some lesser form of
torture and imprisonment.

Now, as Kim Jong-Un begins to throw his considerable weight around, that sense
of security is gone. The rules are tightening. Families are subject to execution
unto the third generation if one of their members is caught sneaking across the
Yalu or Tumen River borders into China. Authorities are cracking down on private
markets, the lifelines for millions in the starving countryside.

More than anything else, the specter of purge hangs over the populace.

It's begun with confessions and punishment for those who did not mourn
convincingly over Kim Jong-Il's death; those who missed mass weeping and wailing
in cities and towns around the country or who did not seem sufficiently sincere . . .

>>Read more

2012: A Whale in Time

Dreams of new beginnings or great moments, particularly, on occasions of certain mathematical confluences have arisen throughout the few known centuries of man's brief existence.

Augustine's, City of God, Nostradamus' quatrains, the Mayan calendar, various so-called new religious and political movements as well as modern movie manufactured magic have all in some way left either temporary or indelible marks upon the human psyche that both motivate and mystify.

Sadly, on the human level, at least, it would appear that real insight into patterns, principles and guidelines for the purpose of possible better outcomes have remained elusive, despite various individual best efforts whether collectively co-opted or simply, cleverly marketed.

It is hard to be fully human while also being totally happy.
Perhaps it is impossible.

However, as even our animal cousins somehow know, instinctively, inherently, social interaction generates ever more interaction leading to creative adaptations that often astound as well as excite.

Some call such things "love" or even "God" while most organic organisms simply move along their excited way within the greater whole presently enveloping it.

Witness the history of our mammalian cousin, the large whales (cetaceans), as one example of intelligent design and/or creative adaptation gone both forward and backwards.

How to explain such apparently logical, yet epochal and monumental change, except that it happened?

Meanwhile, some say the challenges of adaptation (or "evolution") are so few these days that human beings have simply stopped "evolving" (or put another way: growing).

I hope and pray that such declarations are simply foolhardy hyperbole.

In any case, onward and forward.

Ghastly Protocol

Perhaps it should come as no surprise, since North Korea is, after all, a FULL member of the 193-nation organization, but U.N. offices around the world have lowered their flags to half-staff in commemoration of the funeral of North Korea's dictator [Dear] leader Kim Jong-il.

U.N. headquarters spokesman Eduardo del Buey said the gesture had been requested by Pyongyang’s U.N. mission and was normal for the funeral of any head of state.

"It’s a matter of protocol," said he.

So which was it, really?

A request or protocol?

And well, "normal" should surprise no one anymore.

Meanwhile, UN Watch, the Geneva-based advocacy group, made note that the U.N. human rights message was "at serious risk of being blurred today" because of the honoring of Kim, who died on Dec. 17.

[Blurred? How about totally irrelevant?]

"Today should be a time for the U.N. to show solidarity with the victims - the millions of North Koreans brutalized by Kim’s merciless policies of starvation, torture and oppression - and not with the perpetrator," the group’s executive director, Hillel Neuer, said in a statement.

Last Thursday, the U.N. General Assembly granted a request from North Korea and held a few moments of silence for Kim, although Western delegations boycotted it.

North Korea’s U.N. mission made a similar request to the 15-nation Security Council, but Western diplomats rejected it. “We didn’t think it would be appropriate,” one diplomat said.

Pyongyang is under Security Council sanctions due to Kim’s nuclear weapons program, which Western officials say ate up huge sums of money that could have been used to help feed North Korea’s starving population.

Historically, the U.N. General Assembly and its Security Council have often been at odds.

Of some ghastly irony (along with the aforementioned protocol) the newest council of the United Nations (under the General Assembly) is the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which replaced the UNCHR in March 2006.

May it forever rest in peace.

Natural Religion and Revealed Religion

Digging once again into the topic of origins, particularly as mankind is concerned, found myself contemplating the dichotomy of religion today. With so many of us (including myself) having grown up or simply "lived within" a culture formed or at least framed by a "revealed" religion, it might be important, to consider the alternative(s) as well as some historical perspective.

To start with, here is Thomas Paine on the matter of revealed religion:

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest
miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing
called revelation, or revealed religion. ... Whence arose all the horrid
assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the Bible
is filled; and the bloody persecutions, and tortures unto death and religious
wars, that since that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose
they, but from this impious thing called revealed religion, and this monstrous
belief that God has spoken to man?...

And on the impossibility of "Natural Religion" according to (a very young)
William Blake comes this bit of aphoristic poetry:

The Argument [a]

Man has no notion of moral
fitness but from Education.
Naturally he is only a natu-
ral organ subject to Sense.


I
Man cannot naturally Per-
ceive, but through his natural
or bodily organs


II
Man by his reason-
ing power. can only
compare & judge of
what he has already
perceiv'd.


III
From a perception of
only 3 senses or 3 ele
-ments none could de-
-duce a fourth or fifth


IV
None could have other
than natural or organic
thoughts if he had none
but organic perceptions


V
Mans desires are
limited by his percepti
ons. none can de-
-sire what he has not
prceiv'd


VI
The desires & percepti-
-ons of man untaught by
any thing but organs of
sense, must be limited
to objects of sense.


There is No Natural Religion [b]

I
Man's percepti-
-ons are not bound
-ed by organs of
perception. he per-
-ceives more than
sense (tho' ever
so acute) can
discover


II
Reason or the ra-
-tio of all we have
already known is
not the same that
it shall be when
we know more

III. [This proposition is missing.]


IV
The bounded is
loathed by its pos-
-sessor.The same
dull round even
of the univer[s]e, would
soon become a
mill with complica-
-ted wheels.


V
If the many bec-
-ome the same as
the few, when pos-
-sess'd, More! More!
is the cry of a mista-
-ken soul, less than
All cannot satisfy
Man


VI
If any could de-
-sire what he is in-
-capable of posses-
sing, despair must
be his eternal
lot


VII
The desire of
Man being Infi-
-nite the possession
is Infinite and him-
-self Infinite

Application

He who sees the
Infinite in all things
sees God. He who
sees the Ratio only
sees himself only


Conclusion

If it were not for the
Poetic or Prophetic
character,
the Philosophic and Experimental
would soon be
at the ratio of all
things, & stand still,
unable to do other
than repeat the same
dull round over a-
-gain


Therefore
God becomes as
we are, that we
may be as he
is . . .

In other words, infers Blake, God is mostly mystery and becomes [God] as we become [good].

And thank the poet and/or "prophetic character" for ever leading us onward!

For yet more reflection, comes a philosophical work by the noteworthy Scottish philosopher, David Hume, in the form of his "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion."

Modern Year (My) Conclusion:

Perhaps a revealed/natural fusion shall come about - soon - whether through some mysterious or possibly well understood process, whereby the one shall simply disappear and/or become a part of the other - as Thomas Aquinas and so many others have mused throughout the centuries.

So be it.

Willing Recruits

It may seem odd, now, but the fact is that some 25,000 recruits, initially, at least, did go willingly into the Russian wilderness (laying actual and physical cornerstones, ultimately, for the Gulag system) - in obeisance to the V.I. Lenin-Karl Marx vision of a communist utopia.

University of Toronto Professor of History, Lynne Viola, reportedly "the first Western scholar to gain access to the Soviet state archives on collectivization" writes about it here in a 1989 volume entitled, The Best Sons of the Fatherland, Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization.

A rebellion (too late) would come amidst the turmoil of the 1920s and early 1930s.
And that has been documented by the same author/researcher (1998) here.

Lessons learned?

Occupied Requiem

Of course, it all began long, long ago in a little town called Berkeley.

And the internal, at least socio-political roots, truly are very much the same.

[Except, where's Nixon?]

With tacit-explicit approval from the incumbent leadership, what more is there to protest (and redeem) when you also [apparently] claim to have invented the internet?

As spectacle, diversion and unfinished "history lesson," it seems to be working as even this brief account from Wired attests:

"To [Lee] Felsenstein how the participant[s] and witnesses are shaped by this historical moment may be one of the most consequential effects of the movement."

"One of the effects of the Free Speech Movement, and that outbreak of freedom really, was manifested in the development of the internet," Felsenstein said. "We see the structure of the internet being an open structure, and open structure is what we were fighting for."

There is no unified vision of what Occupy wants, besides a general feeling that the system is rigged in favor of the privileged, though for Occupy Cal, there is a special focus on rising tuition, rising student debt, and continually cut-back school services.

Of course, some (enough?) folks have actually wizened up over the years (and are occupied at home, school, even work other than saving the world).

Not sure about this guy either though:

My dad had a faith (though it could be shaken) that a more just world is possible and that such a change can only come about through people working together and caring for one another. He was never a Marxist, but he loved the iconic statement: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." What I have found most moving and most hopeful in the Occupy movement is the embodiment of this sentiment in images and stories of simple communal living and spontaneous caretaking. I believe my father would have been deeply moved simply to see a broad spectrum of people coming together, laying their bodies on the gears and helping each other face an unjust, inhumane machine.

Nadav Savio is the son of Mario Savio, the iconic leader of the Free Speech Movement.

It must be hard being iconic (feeling you, man).

But say, whatever happened to just protesting fur or the whales?

Distant memories, easily googled and brought forth in vivid, easily digested[?] and encapsulated, multimedia life.

Rerunning, over and over again; whatever.

Thank you, internet!

Thank you.

Gulag Cultural Center proposed

A brief blurb on that here with several related links of interest.

Meanwhile, in Chechnya -- Damme!

And near the cold, "ecologically unfortunate," lonely Siberian outpost of Norilsk-- Putin (of course)!

From abstracts of February 9-10, 2011 with pictures by Arsen Tomsky:

“Recently Putin visited Norilsk and he promised 10 billion for moving pensioners, 10 for city development and other 10 for something.”

“People are really good, hospital. It’s easy to find a common language. Economy is active, but no growth is noticed and no declines felt, business works.”

History:

The Norilsk (Norillag) uprising was the first major revolt within the Gulag system in the summer of 1953, shortly after Joseph Stalin's death. Estimates put the total number of its inmates over the history of the camp at 400,000, with about 300,000 being political prisoners. According to the archives of Norillag, 16,806 prisoners died in Norilsk under the conditions of forced labor, starvation, and intense cold throughout the existence of the camp (1935–1956).

May such culture never be forgotten and end very soon.

Finally, it seems, that the end for Vladimir Putin has possibly been predestined.

Remains to be seen . . .