Isn't it funny?

[skmo]

Then there is the thought police. Can I knowingly send my son to ride his bike around the block without worrying about the neighbors calling cps on me?

One of the nice things about living in a place like the Uintah Basin is the freedom to still be a person. It's Utah, but it's not UTAH!!!

[skmo]

I thought Russia (USSR) was able to get plenty of Nazi scientists to build its high tech military and space programs, just like the USA did with Nazi scientists after the war.

The Soviets got more of the plans, papers, and prototypes. The U.S. got more of the scientists. We got the better end of the deal.

[harakim]

Isn't it funny how so little of America's foreign policy for the past 60 years has worked and yet there are still flag-bearers here who cheer on another immoral and unconstitutional attack on a weak and tiny country. Warmongers to the core.

I hope you're an immensely strong person. That anti-American chip you seem to bear on your shoulder must weigh more than those obese people you're talking about. Honestly, if all Americans you know are as bad as you say, don't you think it'd be in your best interest to move to a part you despise less? Try San Franpsycho. A lot of the people I know from there hate our country even more than you appear to.

Oh, don't tell them you believe in God, though. That'd send them over the edge.

There's a difference between anti-American and anti-American-government, a fact you learn quickly when you go to third world countries.

[skmo]

There's a difference between anti-American and anti-American-government, a fact you learn quickly when you go to third world countries.

Oh, absolutely. As a teacher who served in rural Alaska, I saw a Third-World country here within our own borders. That is not hyperbole, it is an accurate description:

Ice and Logs.jpg (110.48 KiB) Viewed 1254 times

Houses.JPG (18.97 KiB) Viewed 1254 times

As a conservative libertarian, I am vehemently anti-American government. I believe the OP's words in numerous topics (including this one) demonstrate plain, rabid anti-Americanism, touched at times with closeted racism and the associated guilt.

[BeNotDeceived]

Obesity is also bad for the environment as it takes a lot more fuel to transport people today than if they were on average the same weight structure as people in 1970.

It also takes a lot of food production to grow those waistlines.

Another reason that fat inducing foods should be taxed to pay public transportation. :ymsmug:

Encourage better choices and make those that choose poorly pay the price of their bad choice. =p~

Food producers will also innovate, making food healthier over time as UK is beginning to see due to SSB incentives. :ymapplause:

[eddie]

Obesity is also bad for the environment as it takes a lot more fuel to transport people today than if they were on average the same weight structure as people in 1970.

It also takes a lot of food production to grow those waistlines.

Another reason that fat inducing foods should be taxed to pay public transportation. :ymsmug:

Encourage better choices and make those that choose poorly pay the price of their bad choice. =p~

Food producers will also innovate, making food healthier over time as UK is beginning to see due to SSB incentives. :ymapplause:

Benotdeceived, I agree with most everything
you post, but this post is messed up.

I have a sister who got a totally different set of genetics than we brothers and sisters.( The home teacher?)

I have watched her try to be thin, it's not going to happen, so should she be punished for it?

[harakim]

There's a difference between anti-American and anti-American-government, a fact you learn quickly when you go to third world countries.

Oh, absolutely. As a teacher who served in rural Alaska, I saw a Third-World country here within our own borders. That is not hyperbole, it is an accurate description:

Ice and Logs.jpg

Houses.JPG

As a conservative libertarian, I am vehemently anti-American government. I believe the OP's words in numerous topics (including this one) demonstrate plain, rabid anti-Americanism, touched at times with closeted racism and the associated guilt.

I understand your last point. I should have clarified that low quality of life isn't what I meant by third world. I was talking about countries with no freedoms.

[Silver]

I see. Merely pointing out how far off course the Gadiantons have steered the good ship America makes me anti-American or a hater.

If I ask, pretty please, that we take care of our own domestic issues before we make others die or starve to death, would that really be such a bad thing. It's not in my book, The Book of Mormon, which says wars of aggression are wrong. Wrong then, wrong now.

The Church hasn't been able to ship food to North Korea because of US sanctions, not because the North Koreans told the Church to stop.

What would Jesus do? He would feed them. Let's be like Jesus.

[BeNotDeceived]

Obesity is also bad for the environment as it takes a lot more fuel to transport people today than if they were on average the same weight structure as people in 1970.

It also takes a lot of food production to grow those waistlines.

Another reason that fat inducing foods should be taxed to pay public transportation. :ymsmug:

Encourage better choices and make those that choose poorly pay the price of their bad choice. =p~

Food producers will also innovate, making food healthier over time as UK is beginning to see due to SSB incentives. :ymapplause:

Benotdeceived, I agree with most everything
you post, but this post is messed up.

I have a sister who got a totally different set of genetics than we brothers and sisters.( The home teacher?)

I have watched her try to be thin, it's not going to happen, so should she be punished for it?

Economy of Scale is one concept key to how much stuff costs, and I am happy to read that Stevia is finally becoming viable. :ymapplause:

... As supply volumes and customer take-up increase, stevia companies will realise greater economies of scale – and prices for stevia-derived sweeteners will come down accordingly.

Even now, he said the price of steviol glycosides is today is below the price of sugar. “Steviol glycosides can be seen immediately as a cost effective complement to sugar.”

To illustrate the savings, he gave a price for sugar in the US at $0.77 per kilo. Steviol glycosides, meanwhile, which are 15 times sweeter than sugar, are $0.40 per kilo on an equivalent basis. ... http://www.foodnavigator.com/Market-Tre ... r-replacer



Above are my latest acquisitions via ebay.

The price came down once the demand was high enough and now I pay less for a better product. Just last year I was paying exorbitant prices for "Stevia in the Raw" which was mostly Dextrose. X(

Some people have slow metabolism which means their the ones that really need the greater availability of healthy foods. There are many articles written by experts in the field of nutrition and the consensus is that excise taxes on detrimental products is the best way to bring about needed change.

Excise tax one-penny per net-carb is a simple formula that may be a good place to go next as benefits become tangible from the few pioneers taxing SSBs in places like Mexico, Berkeley, Boulder & Seattle, with the biggest player being all of the UK whose tax goes into effect in 2018. Philly and Chicago err by taxing all beverages in there quest for funding. Funding is needed, but lets go about collecting it in ways that stimulate good things while letting those making bad choices shoulder the burden of their own bad choices.

This isn't a punishment as many have proposed penalizing people rather than shifting the marketplace by reducing the price of good stuff relative to the price of bad stuff. How to fast track health reform is a thread I made in the Political/Economic Secret Combinations sub-forum which exposes how Big Soda and others attempt to thwart efforts to bring about positive change.

Should Sugar Loaded Soda even be considered food that we foist on the poor; does Church Welfare supply these fluids that are better described as poison than food, and why do we as tax payers tolerate such nonsense. :-\

[shadow]

What would Jesus do? He would feed them. Let's be like Jesus.

Christ wouldn't be allowed in North Korea.

What would Jesus do? He would free them. Let's be like Jesus.

Why do you hate the North Koreans so much? They aren't even allowed to worship Christ. Why do you approve of such terrible treatment of Gods children? You even make fun of the large ones in the USA. So heartless.

[skmo]

Christ wouldn't be allowed in North Korea.

Oh, it's more than just that. If you tried to take food into N. Korea and just happened to mention Jesus Christ, you'd likely be charged with trying to steal a paper towel from a bathroom, get sentenced to 15 years hard labor in Camp 14, and come home a few years later with a non-functioning brain.

[Silver]

The condemning of the lives of North Koreans to starvation and horror has been going on for a long time by the well-fed so-called Christians in America.

https://www.libertarianinstitute.org/da ... rth-korea/

Trump’s “Fire and Fury” Wouldn’t Be the First for North Korea
By Sheldon Richman - August 11, 2017

Leave it to Donald Trump to threaten to rain “fire and fury” on the North Korean people the same week the world observed the 72nd anniversary of the U.S. government’s vindictive atomic bombings of Japanese civilians. In case anyone missed the message, Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis warned that the Kim Jong-un regime’s actions risk the “destruction of its people.” He wasn’t talking about Kim’s cruel communism.

We know what Trump and Mattis mean, even if many conservatives twist themselves like pretzels to transform the threatened savagery into something more benign. Trump and Mattis were referring to America’s nuclear arsenal.

Trump promised “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” No one would expect him to know this, but the North Korean people have seen their share of fire and fury at the hands of the U.S military. It happened almost 70 years ago, when Harry Truman, another president who went ga-ga over generals, unleashed America’s savage vengeance during the Korean War. It’s called the “forgotten war,” but even when it wasn’t forgotten, few Americans realized how brutally the United States treated people that posed no threat whatever to Americans.

How many know that, quoting historian Bruce Cumings, “far more napalm was dropped on Korea [than on Vietnam] and with much more devastating effect, since the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) had many more populous cities and urban industrial installations than North Vietnam…. By late August [1950] B-29 formations were dropping 800 tons a day on the North. Much of it was pure napalm. From June to late October 1950, B-29s unloaded 866,914 gallons of napalm.” It was also known as “jellied gasoline.” Regarding its effect on the human body, Cumings quotes the survivor of a “friendly fire” attack on Americans: “Men all around me were burned. They lay rolling in the snow. Men I knew, marched and fought with begged me to shoot them…. It was terrible. Where the napalm had burned the skin to a crisp, it would be peeled back from the face, arms, legs … like fried potato chips.”

Cumings adds:

George Barrett of the New York Times had found “a macabre tribute to the totality of modern war” in a village near Anyang, in South Korea: “The inhabitants throughout the village and in the fields were caught and killed and kept the exact postures they held when the napalm struck — a man about to get on his bicycle, 50 boys and girls playing in an orphanage, a housewife strangely unmarked, holding in her hand a page torn from a Sears-Roebuck catalogue crayoned at Mail Order No 3,811,294 for a $2.98 ‘bewitching bed jacket — coral’.” US Secretary of State Dean Acheson wanted censorship authorities notified about this kind of “sensationalised reporting,” so it could be stopped.

Thus the war that is also known as a “limited police action” was anything but. Cumings writes that “From November 1950, General Douglas MacArthur ordered that a wasteland be created between the fighting front and the Chinese border, destroying from the air every ‘installation, factory, city, and village’ over thousands of square miles of North Korean territory.”

Gen. MacArthur presented his own impressions of the early results at a congressional hearing in May 1951 after Truman fired him:

The war in Korean has already almost destroyed that nation of 20,000,000 people. I have never seen such devastation. I have never seen, I guess, as much blood and disaster as any living man, and it just curdled my stomach, the last time I was there. After I looked at the wreckage and those thousands of women and children and everything, I vomited. If you go on indefinitely, you are perpetuating a slaughter such as I have never heard of in the history of mankind. [Quoted in Napalm: An American Biography by Robert M. Neer, 2013.]

Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay, in an oral history quoted by Cumings, said that “over a period of three years or so … we burned down every town in North Korea and South Korea, too.” (Quoted in Cumings’s preface to the 1988 edition of I.F. Stone’s The Hidden History of the Korean War:1950-1951.)

“To think,” Cumings writes, “that the American Air Force could have dropped oceans of napalm and other incendiaries on cities and towns in North Korea, leaving a legacy of deep bitterness palpable four decades later, and that this was done in the name of a conflict now called ‘the forgotten war’ — as memory confronts amnesia, we ask, who are the sane of this world?”

Americans know nothing of this, but you can bet the people of North Korea know it. They may be ruled in the harshest dehumanizing way by Kim Jong-un, but they still have their humanity.

This devastation was wreaked by so-called conventional weapons. No nuclear weapons were used, as they had been only a few years earlier in nearby Japan. But this is not to say their use was not contemplated.

The Truman war council discussed using atomic bombs just two weeks after the war started, Cumings writes. “At this point, however, the JCS [Joint Chiefs of Staff] rejected use of the bomb because targets large enough to require atomic weapons were lacking; because of concerns about world opinion five years after Hiroshima; and because the JCS expected the tide of battle to be reversed by conventional military means. But that calculation changed when large numbers of Chinese troops entered the war in October and November 1950.”

Then Truman publicly threatened to use all weapons at America’s disposal. “The threat was not the faux pas many assumed it to be,” Cumings writes, “but was based on contingency planning to use the bomb. On that same day, Air Force General George Stratemeyer sent an order to General Hoyt Vandenberg that the Strategic Air Command should be put on warning, ‘to be prepared to dispatch without delay medium bomb groups to the Far East…. [T]his augmentation should include atomic capabilities.'”

Cumings notes:

The US came closest to using atomic weapons in April 1951, when Truman removed MacArthur. Although much related to this episode is still classified, it is now clear that Truman did not remove MacArthur simply because of his repeated insubordination, but because he wanted a reliable commander on the scene should Washington decide to use nuclear weapons.

Of course, what were then called “novel weapons” were not used in Korea. Yet, Cumings writes, “without even using such novel weapons — although napalm was very new — the air war levelled North Korea and killed millions of civilians. North Koreans tell you that for three years they faced a daily threat of being burned with napalm: ‘You couldn’t escape it,’ one told me in 1981. By 1952 just about everything in northern and central Korea had been completely levelled. What was left of the population survived in caves.'”

Let’s remember that the war never formally ended, and repeated calls by the North Korean government for a peace treaty and nonaggression pact have largely fallen on deaf American ears.

We don’t know if victims would be able to tell if they’d been nuked or napalmed. What we do know is that Trump seems willing to commit the most monstrous crime in our names. Let’s hope it’s empty bluster.

[freedomforall]

No, it isn't funny;

Obesity runs in my family, it's the only thing that runs in my family. Except on my first day of school, I ran after the school bus, I thought it was a giant Twinkie.

I'm obese because I dreamed one night that I ate a very large marshmallow, only to find my pillow missing next morning.

[freedomforall]

Obesity is also bad for the environment as it takes a lot more fuel to transport people today than if they were on average the same weight structure as people in 1970.

It also takes a lot of food production to grow those waistlines.

Lol is that fact?

In his brain, is it? But don't forget to mention sex as being the culprit for increased global warming. Only the Eskimos have cured the problem by rubbing noses instead. Less energy and friction applied. The only downside is that by rubbing noses, over time, one gets sniff---less. :((

[freedomforall]

:)) =)) :)) =)) :)) =)) :)) =)) :)) =)) Yup, real funny, it is.

[skmo]

Only the Eskimos have cured the problem by rubbing noses instead.

What did the Eskimo man say when his wife refused to kiss him?

Oh well. It's no skin off my nose.

[freedomforall]

Only the Eskimos have cured the problem by rubbing noses instead.

What did the Eskimo man say when his wife refused to kiss him?

Oh well. It's no skin off my nose.

:))

[skmo]

Only the Eskimos have cured the problem by rubbing noses instead.

What did the Eskimo man say when his wife refused to kiss him?

Oh well. It's no skin off my nose.

:))

:YMSMUG:

It's also ironic since I spent most of my career teaching in small Native villages in Alaska, and I'm half-blood Athabascan.

[Silver]

For some historical perspective.

http://original.antiwar.com/john-feffer ... rth-korea/

Infantilizing North Korea
by John Feffer Posted on May 13, 2013
Political Cartoonists love to portray North Korea as an irrational and infantile force. It’s either a baby with a nuclear rattle or a little truant in need of a timeout. The relative youth of the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, encourages such representations, but the practice predates his ascension to power. According to the dictates of their profession, cartoonists must exaggerate to make their points. But these exaggerations also frequently show up in the comments of pundits and politicians, who need not resort to caricature.

So, for instance, observers describe North Koreans as “childlike” and their leader as a “spoiled child.” Chinese leaders, according to Wikileaks, have viewed North Korean behavior as an attempt to get the attention of the “adult.” Even top U.S. politicians fall prey to these stereotypes. In 2009, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton accused North Korea of “acting out” like an unruly child. And President Barack Obama said during the latest crisis, “You don’t get to bang … your spoon on the table and somehow you get your way.”

As we slowly step back from the edge of the current conflict, it’s important to revisit these characterizations of North Korea as a fundamentally immature creature. There are many problems with U.S. policy toward the country, including lack of information, a limited number of policy options, and a preference to ignore the situation in favor of other hotspots around the world.

But we also have a metaphor problem with North Korea. We commonly treat the country as if it were a donkey that responds only to carrots or sticks and doesn’t have an independent thought inside its equine head (not even horse sense). Or we view North Korea as a criminal that breaks every agreement it signs and whose recidivism rate is off the charts.

But the metaphor that dominates our thinking about North Korea is even more insulting. Donkeys and criminals at least make calculations based on costs and benefits. Infants are nothing but unbridled ids whose pre-lingual motivations are largely opaque to the adult world. They go on crying jags and knock cereal bowls off trays for no apparently good reason. That North Korea is often cast as the “younger brother” in its relationships with both South Korea and China means that Pyongyang is acutely sensitive to any such infantilizing metaphors.

The metaphor extends, of course, to the “parents” who are tasked with dealing with the problem child. Western governments quarrel among themselves over the best approach. Should they offer the candy of inducement or the spank of sanctions? Although corporal punishment is no longer in vogue for the most part in Western countries, physically (and preemptively) punishing North Korea is still a third option on the table, as unpersuasively argued by Jeremy Suri in The New York Times.

During the most recent escalation in tensions, the Obama administration chose to treat North Korea’s actions as an inexplicable temper tantrum that required a firm parental response. It sent over B-2 and B-52 bombers to conduct mock attacks. It ramped up missile defense (actually an offensive maneuver designed to disable an adversary’s deterrent capability). It indulged in some harsh rhetoric of its own.

This show of force did not cow North Korea. It merely ramped up its already over-the-top rhetoric, told the diplomatic community to leave Pyongyang and foreigners to depart Seoul, and shuttered the jointly administered Kaesong industrial complex. Only when the United States moderated its approach – for instance, cancelling a planned missile launch – did North Korea tone down its own threats and hyperbole.

North Korea’s actions were neither admirable nor defensible. But they were also not infantile. Pyongyang wants to be acknowledged as a member of the adults-only nuclear club. It bridles at any attempt to restrict its sovereign desire to test its missile program. And it takes exception to both economic sanctions and joint U.S.-ROK military maneuvers near its borders. The response to all this was decidedly intemperate. But it was neither irrational nor inexplicable. It should also be noted that babies don’t build nuclear programs or engage in large-scale human rights violations.

Herein lies the real problem with the North-Korea-as-baby metaphor. By treating North Korea as a largely irrational force, pundits fall into the mistake of portraying the “parental units” (United States, South Korea, China) as overly permissive. When the Obama administration was considering a modest food aid package for North Korea, five Republican senators were quick to trot out the standard line that Obama was the appeaser-in-chief (to use Rick Santorum’s line). Any hint of diplomacy produces charges of coddling. An entire class of pundit has staked out its place in the policy world by, in essence, accusing not only Obama but various other governments of sparing the rod and spoiling the child.

One of the more intriguing – and misguided – contributions to this literature is Reagan-era militarist Edward Luttwak’s recent post in Foreign Policy. South Korea is the enabler, he argues, and that’s why all the adult supervision offered by other governments has failed. “The price of continued U.S. protection should be the adoption of a serious defense policy, the closure of the Kaesong racket, and a complete end to cash transfers to the North, whatever the excuse,” he concludes.

This analysis is inaccurate on so many levels. South Korea hasn’t offered cash handouts to North Korea for more than five years. It embarked on a major military modernization even during its era of greatest engagement with Pyongyang. And the Kaesong Industrial Complex, rather than being a racket, has been the only mechanism of bringing North Korea into the global economy and, at the same time, raising the standard of living of more than 50,000 North Koreans and their families. If Luttwak had published this piece during the Kim Dae Jung era, it arguably would have been somewhere in the ballpark but still seriously off-base. These days, after five years of the Lee Myung Bak administration, South Korea has been in serious non-enabling mode.

The third in the supposed trio of appeasers is China, portrayed as an indulgent authority figure who sneaks treats to little North Korea on the side. Target China, many have urged, and even Secretary of State John Kerry has visited Beijing on this mission. But here too the metaphor doesn’t work. North Korea is not subordinate to China (though it is dependent on Chinese energy and food). North Korea rejects Chinese influence out of pride and a fear of greater dependency. And China has its own reasons for providing this assistance – ensuring stability on its border, for instance – which have nothing to do with having a sweet spot for North Korea’s system.

Engaging North Korea – economically, politically, culturally – emerges from this metaphoric understanding of North Korea-as-infant as something between ignorance of the world’s realities and an almost criminal lack of discipline. If North Korea is still banging its spoon on the table, there’s no point in treating it like an equal – in other words, as a state with its own national interests and sovereign concerns. Worse, engagement comes across as endorsing, perhaps even encouraging bad behavior. But negotiating with North Korean in no way implies agreement with its system, its actions, or its rhetoric. And the evidence of negotiations past suggests that North Korea generally acts more peaceably when it’s engaged in these diplomatic endeavors rather than consigned to the “time-out” corner.

Metaphors serve as convenient shorthand to condense and enliven our language. But when metaphors get in the way of developing reasonable policies, they should be abandoned. Treating North Korea as a spoiled child is not an accurate description of Pyongyang’s behavior. It prevents us from understanding how our own actions contribute to the crisis, when we are for instance as stubborn as donkeys, as rule-breaking as scofflaws, and as inscrutable as infants. And it generates a false dichotomy – sweets versus sanctions – in terms of policy options. It’s time for us to grow up in our assessments of North Korea. Belittling North Korea, literally and figuratively, ultimately prevents us from developing our own mature alternatives.

[Silver]

More. America needs to repent.

http://www.brianwillson.com/korea-and-the-axis-of-evil/

Korea and the “Axis of Evil”

February 13, 2013
By S. Brian Willson, June 2002, Revised October 2006

USAF Strategic Air Command head General Curtis LeMay remarked, “Over a period of three years or so we killed off – what – twenty percent of the population.” It is now believed that the population north of the imposed 38th Parallel lost nearly a third its population of 8 – 9 million people during the 37-month long “hot” war, 1950 – 1953, perhaps an unprecedented percentage of mortality suffered by one nation due to belligerence of another.

The demonization of North Korea by the United States government continues unrelentlessly. The wealthy oil and baseball man who claims to be president of the United States, used his first State of the Union address on January 29, 2002 to brand perennial enemy North Korea, along with former allies Iran and Iraq, as “the world’s most dangerous regimes” who now form a threatening “axis of evil.” Unbeknown to the public, because it was intended to have remained a secret (whoops!), was the fact that this claimed president presented a “Nuclear Posture Review” report to Congress only three weeks earlier, on January 8, which ordered the Pentagon to prepare contingency plans for use of nuclear weapons. The first designated targets for nuclear attack were his newly identified members of the “axis of evil,” along with four other lucky nations as well – Syria, Libya, Russia, and China. That this is nothing short of a policy of ultimate terror remains unaddressed in the U.S. media.

It has used biological warfare against China, North Korea, and Cuba. The Koreans are quite aware of most of this history. Most U.S. Americans are not. But now the U.S. has declared a unilateral terrorist war on the whole world.5

Two of the interventions in the Nineteenth Century were inflicted against Korea, the first in 1866. The second, larger one, in 1871, witnessed the landing of over 700 marines and sailors on Kanghwa beach on the west side of Korea seeking to establish the first phases of colonization. Destroying several forts while inflicting over 600 casualties on the defending Korean natives, the U.S. withdrew realizing that in order to assure hegemonic success, a much larger, permanent military presence would be necessary. The North Korean people regularly remark about this U.S. invasion, even though most in South Korea do not know of it due to historic censorship. Most in the U.S. don’t know about it either, for similar reasons, even though in all of the Nineteenth Century, this was the largest U.S. military force to land on foreign soil outside of Mexico and Canada until the “Spanish American War” in 1898.

[Silver]

Much like the unrighteous dominion exercised against Japan by America's Commodore Perry, the US used military force against Korea in the 19th century. Warmongers have been in control of America since at least the War of Northern Aggression. One day all the death and destruction and suffering we have exported will come home to roost. Sackcloth and ashes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_C._Perry

[Silver]

Regarding his time in Vietnam, S. Brian Willson said...

https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l= ... tail&p=330

Willson's expanding consciousness also uncovers injustices within his own country, including insights gained through his study and service within the U.S. criminal justice system and personal experiences addressing racial injustices. He discusses coming to terms with his identity as a Viet Nam veteran and the subsequent service he provides to others as director of a veterans outreach center in New England. He draws much inspiration from friends he encounters along the way as he finds himself continually drawn to the path leading to a simpler life that seeks to "do no harm."

Throughout his personal journey Willson struggles with the question, "Why was it so easy for me, a 'good' man, to follow orders to travel 9,000 miles from home to participate in killing people who clearly were not a threat to me or any of my fellow citizens?" He eventually comes to the realization that the "American Way of Life" is AWOL from humanity, and that the only way to recover our humanity is by changing our consciousness, one individual at a time, while striving for collective cultural changes toward "less and local."

[Silver]

We sure didn't get taught any of this stuff in school.

https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2013/03/05 ... tand-down/

Near the end of World War II, as Japan was weakened, Korean “People’s Committees” formed all over the country and Korean exiles returned from China, the US and Russia to prepare for independence and democratic rule. On September 6, 1945, these disparate forces and representatives of the people’s committees proclaimed a Korean People’s Republic (the KPR) with a progressive agenda of land reform, rent control, an eight-hour work day and minimum wage among its 27-point program.

But the KPR was prevented from becoming a reality. Instead, after World War II and without Korean representation, the US quite arbitrarily decided with Russia, China and England, to divide Korea into two nations “temporarily” as part of its decolonization. The powers agreed that Japan should lose all of its colonies and that in “due course” Korea would be free. Korea was divided on the 38th parallel. The US made sure to keep the capital, Seoul, and key ports. Essentially, the US took as much of Korea as it thought the Russians would allow. This division planted the seeds of the Korean War, causing a five-year revolution and counter-revolution that escalated into the Korean War.

Initially, the South Koreans welcomed the United States, but US Gen. John Hodge, the military governor of South Korea working under Gen. Douglas MacArthur, quickly brought Koreans who had cooperated with the Japanese during occupation into the government and shut out Koreans seeking democracy. He refused to meet with representatives of the KPR and banned the party, working instead with the right wing Korean Democratic Party – made up of landlords, land owners, business interests and pro-Japanese collaborators.

Shut out of politics, Koreans who sought an independent democratic state took to other methods and a mass uprising occurred. A strike against the railroads in September 1946 by 8,000 railway workers in Pusan quickly grew into a general strike of workers and students in all of the South’s major cities. The US military arrested strike leaders en masse. In Taegu, on Oct. 1, huge riots occurred after police smashed picket lines and fired into a crowd of student demonstrators, killing three and wounding scores. In Yongchon, on Oct. 3, 10,000 people attacked the police station and killed more than 40 police, including the county chief. Some 20 landlords and pro-Japanese officials were also killed. A few days later, the US military declared martial law to crush the uprising. They fired into large crowds of demonstrators in numerous cities and towns, killing and wounding an unknown number of people.

Syngman Rhee, an exile who had lived in the US for 40 years, was returned to Korea on MacArthur’s personal plane. He initially allied with left leaders to form a government approved of by the US. Then in 1947, he dispensed with his “left” allies by assassinating their leaders, Kim Ku and Kim Kyu-Shik. Rhee consolidated power and the US pushed for United Nations-sponsored elections in May 1948 to put a legal imprimatur on the divided Koreas. Rhee was elected at 71 years old in an election boycotted by most parties who saw it as sham. He came to power in the midst of an insurgency.

[Silver]

https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2013/03/05 ... tand-down/

Of course, the North Korean government witnessed the “shock and awe” campaign of bombardments against Iraq and the killing of at least hundreds of thousands (credible research shows more than 1 million Iraqis killed, 4.5 million displaced, 1-2 million widows and 5 million orphans). They saw the brutal killing by hanging of the former US ally, now turned into an enemy, Saddam Hussein.

And, they can look to the experience of Libya. Libya was an enemy but then began to develop positive relations with the US. In 2003, Libya halted its program to build a nuclear bomb in an effort to mend its relations with the US. Then last year Libya was overthrown in a US-supported war and its leader Moammar Gadhafi was brutally killed. As Reuters reports, “‘The tragic consequences in those countries which abandoned halfway their nuclear programs… clearly prove that the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) was very far-sighted and just when it made the (nuclear) option,’ North Korea’s KCNA news agency said.”

[freedomforall]

Only the Eskimos have cured the problem by rubbing noses instead.

What did the Eskimo man say when his wife refused to kiss him?

Oh well. It's no skin off my nose.

:))

:YMSMUG:

It's also ironic since I spent most of my career teaching in small Native villages in Alaska, and I'm half-blood Athabascan.

You may be closer to the lost Ten Tribes than imagined. I have met Indians from differing tribes. Here in Oregon we have, and notice the Athabaskan tribe near the Redwoods in the southwest corner.:



The Alsea tribe
*The Cayuse tribe
*The Chetco tribe
*The Chinook tribe
*The Clatskanie tribe
*The Coos tribe
*The Galice and Applegate tribes
*The Kalapuya tribe
*The Klamath and Modoc tribes
*The Molala tribe
*The Multnomah tribe
*The Nez Perce tribe
*The Paiute tribe
*The Shasta tribe
*The Siuslaw tribe
*The Takelma tribe
*The Tillamook tribe
*The Tolowa tribe
*The Tututni and Coquille tribes
*The Umatilla tribe
*The Umpqua tribe
*The Walla Walla tribe
*The Wasco and Wishram tribes