Korean Government Overreach

The Korean government is persecuting a university teacher for "impure lectures" in a misguided attempt at interference that mocks & undermines professional freedoms. Higher education institutions & professors worldwide should vigorously protest Korean government censorship in university education.

Prof. Yoo So-hee (영남대 사회학과 강사였던 유소희; link), was accused of violating Article 85 of the Public Official Election Act. In a Yeungnam University class on "Understanding Contemporary Popular Culture" she reportedly distributed & discussed newspaper clippings, including some that were critical of Park Geun-hye, then a candidate for President of Korea. After Park was elected, Prof. Yoo was charged as a criminal; her students testified she'd not tried to dissuade them from voting for Park Geun-hye, nor had she sought to persuade them to vote for another candidate (link). But she was found guilty. No longer lecturing, she's appealing her conviction.

Meanwhile, the right-wing government of Korean President Park Geun-hye owes it's very existence to orchestrated interference in the democratic process. In late 2013, Korea's National Intelligence Service worked systematically and officially (but secretly) to create massive internet support for presidential hopeful Park Geun-hye, and to vilify and smear her rival. Korea's Cyber Warfare Command, Psychological Warfare Division of the National Intelligence Service, performed shamefully (link). Government operatives should have refused to conduct such blatantly illegal operations, even when commanded by higher-ranked officials. Mass conformity & indifference to injustice weaken Korea.

In Israel, they use hasbara ("explaining"  הַסְבָּרָה in Hebrew) for national goals. Korea has studied hasbara methods, good, bad & ugly. The Korean right-wing has perhaps gone far beyond in underhandedly promoting partisan politics and one favored political party. This is bad news for Korea, where anti-democratic repression by the authoritarian right-wing is ultimately unsustainable. The eventual housecleaning will bring about unwelcome repercussions and dangerous political & economic instability. 

Japan Forgives BadBoy?

Scientist Shuji Nakamura (中村 修二) did his best work in Japan, at Nichia Corporation. His groundbreaking research on blue LED was today honored with the 2014 Nobel Prize for Physics.

Nakamura now works in the USA, and on becoming a US citizen would have been typically forced by Japanese law to drop his Japanese citizenship.

What led one of Japan's star scientists to abandon his home?  Nakamura was working for Nichia Corporation of Tokushima when in 1993 he developed & patented his key nitride LED technology. Nichia Corp. was estimated to have benefited 60.4 billion yen (US$600 million) from Nakamura's contribution by 2004. They kindly offered him a bonus of 20,000 yen (US$200).  Nakamura ultimately left the company, sued for additional compensation, and won a sum of approximately a third of the calculated benefits.  But the corporation appealed, and ultimately Nakamura accepted a court-mediated settlement only some 4% of the original judgement. Nakamura was quoted in LEDs Magazine (link) as being "totally dissatisfied"...

Prof. Shuji Nakamura is now based at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Discussion on Japanese television the day of the Nobel announcement gave no hint of past struggles and frictions, simply and proudly stating "three Japanese" won the Nobel Prize for Physics.

Spammers Thank Politicians

Neo-conservatives tell us government is BAD. We should & must do everything ourselves. Free choice and more choices.

This is bullshit. We need protection from sharks & thieving cheating scoundrels. Otherwise, one-by-one we're weakened by parasites & scavengers, before a Social-Darwinist Republican predator executes each final slaughter.

The goddamned TARP program gave hundreds of billions of dollars to politico friends. You, dear reader, likely got nothing. You continue to pay usurious interest on debts; thieves sap your life. Others were unjustly gifted with huge wealth by Democratic & Republican Congressional bloodsuckers.

Every time you see spam mail, remember: in the eyes of both marketers & politicians, you're a schmuck. Dupe, patsy, victim, target...

Core Industry? WAR

On Tuesday the new one-day-old puppet government of Afghanistan was corralled into signing an agreement with the USA offering their nation as a battlefield for ten more years to 2024.

US Field Marshal Barack Obama, elected president on pledges to end America's wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, did not attend the signing ceremony.

The US military meanwhile continues bombing Iraq (and now Syria), in a war stretching back to the late 1980s.

America's military provides jobs, but it's a filthy business. Bring our troops home!

Abe the Fool Boy

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has shown he's not only a fool, but a danger to people in Japan.

Abe & Co. are working hard to get Japan's nuclear reactors back online, and beefing-up Japanese military efforts overseas. Politicians politicians pushing policies both unpopular & dangerously foolish.

Japan's nuclear industry is a bastard offspring from decades of LDP rule, and Japan's Liberal Democratic Party continues to poison the nation with feeble leadership. Abe is like George W. Bush: privileged thin-blooded child of a mediocre politician; more concerned with media & image than with the well-being & survival of his constituents.

Meanwhile, a volcano erupts in the center of Japan, killing dozens of day hikers. The government had offered no warning, provides minimal assistance, and now merely states Japan has lots of volcanoes...



We see twenty people lined-up holding blankets to screen victims being carried from helicopters to ambulances. At the same time, an unknown number of people remain trapped & unhelped on the mountainside.

We hear reports over many days of people found with no heartbeat and not breathing - but not considered dead (Days have passed - where are the Japanese government-licensed medical practitioners who can formally declare death?)  Japan has a huge "self-defense" or military budget, but we see minimal rescue effort using mobile breathing systems & infrared goggles to find living victims. Why is robotic monitoring wholly beyond Japan's capability? And the people trapped would be thankful of rescue from any source - why not utilize the U.S. military, with many thousands of troops in Japan?

The world watches & wonders at Japan's bureaucracy & the inhumanity of government.

Japan looks uncaring, slow and foolish; politician Abe is poster boy.

Overdose

Many people around the world have experienced overdose with alcohol consumption. It's odd that in English we rarely use that term overdose in such circumstances, even when drunkenness results in death.

Alcohol is a dangerous drug. What level of consumption amounts to overdose?

Surely someone who drinks alcohol, falls down and injures themselves can be considered to have overdosed? Or vomits from drink? What of the case when a drinker feels slightly nauseous the following day?

More carefully designating OD (overdose) might put a damper on partying. Would you modify your alcohol intake behavior to avoid admitting to overdose? There are many ways to have fun without Bacchus at center stage (Stockholm's alcohol-free club made news today). Dig deep and be more creative when partying... I'm personally unwilling to say booze is always bad, yet I try to design drinking patterns to limit my own consumption.

Welfare Profiteering?

Swedish Social Democrat leader Stefan Löfven and the Green Party (Miljöpartiet) never promised to bring Vänsterpartiet (the Left Party) into government, but they all collaborated in opposition prior to this last election day. Now that the Moderate Alliance is defeated, Löfven and the Greenies have fully rejected the Left, which attracted 5.7% or 355,576 votes. Vänsterpartiet's main platform criticized social welfare profiteering as supported by more mainstream parties.

With a hobbled minority government, the crafty Social Democrats & Greens should have the Left inside their tent pissing out, rather than outside pissing in.

Löfven's government, starting badly, may not last long...

Ghost of Gary Webb

Garry Webb was a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter from California who linked the CIA, the Contras, and crack cocaine trafficking in a "Dark Alliance" series of articles for the San Jose Mercury News.

Webb's work reportedly greatly upset both the CIA and bigger mainstream media (link). These establishment forces largely managed to crush both the story and the reporter, as described in the book (now also a film) Kill the Messenger.

Did Gary Webb himself contrive to bring further suspicion on his (now largely admitted) persecutors? Is he a vengeful ghost? Webb was found dead in December 2004. His death was ruled a suicide, and the bullets that killed him were fired from a .38 caliber pistol recovered near his body. Cause of death unusual for suicide: two shots to the head.

A French website (link) published this photo as "webb.jpg"

 

Was Webb suicided? The French ask, American big media don't...

Does Webb's drastic downfall discourage investigative reporters?

Carl Bildt Fails

Carl Bildt, Sweden's outgoing Foreign Minister, was reportedly behind efforts to bully the Swedish Right Livelihood Award foundation for choosing to award the 2014 prize to Edward Snowden. The prize announcement, traditionally held at the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in central Stockholm, was hurriedly banned. National broadcaster SVT was uncommonly blunt to report criticism of Bildt's interference (link; although this report itself has been toned down & edited subsequent to first publication, dropping mention of unattributed comments by Bildt's colleagues).

Yet not all Swedes are butt-buddies of the USA and keen on secretive government.

Snowden, the American whistle-blower who exposed global mass surveillance, is joint honorary laureate with Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian. Edward Snowden will hopefully accept his prize this December in Sweden's Parliament.

Right Livelihood Award Laureates (link) have often been under personal threat. Many patriotically call attention to illegal operations by rogue elements in their own government. Bildt & company's censorship tactics would seem to give Sweden a black eye, but it shows we must struggle to maintain independence & transparency. Surely many Swedes don't grovel  & submit to the USA's New World Order like Carl Bildt.

Karzai Kicks

Hamid Karzai, outgoing President of Afghanistan, declared after 13 years he was done pimping for American military interests in Afghanistan and the wider region: "This is not our war - it is a foreigners' war."

US Ambassador James B. Cunningham proclaimed Karzai "ungracious and ungrateful"...

Yankee highrollers feel their own dog's bitten them. But Karzai is surely correct to warn his successors. "My advice to the next government is to be very careful with America and the West..." 

Bravo Hamid Karzai !

America's held hostage by militarists (as is Afghanistan). Industrialists and their parasites keep America permanently at war. Unnecessary, brutal, costly, and foolish, every American becomes a target of those who survive our repeated tramplings. The US Government has no proper business with distant tribal disputes, and should leave local people to find their own solutions. We're told repeatedly - Get Out ! Yankee Go Home. Let's stop the madness and bring our armies home. We should fully withdraw from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and other killing fields.

Cosigned by Me?

The secret militarism of the USA and allied governments involves us all. We don't know the goings on, but it's done in our name.

We pay for these adventures - not only financially.

We're not really "innocents" when we connive to allow warmaking & massacres. We cosign the checks buying bombs and bullets, bribing foreign officials, and undermining societies overseas.

"Outgoing Afghan President Hamid Karzai will step down next week after a 13-year reign that has seen only limited improvements in infrastructure, health, education and women's rights despite billions of dollars of aid."
"This is not our war, it is a foreigners' war - it is based on their goals," Karzai told government officials as he bid them goodbye at the presidential palace in Kabul on Tuesday." (see related BBC link here)

We bad. ...sure to get hurt again & again.

The dirty, crazed & unwelcome Bull in a china shop, America's wars should stop - now. Bring the troops home!