SFist Tonight
Week Around the Ists
SFist Tonight
While many chin-scratching political commentators claim that Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two Current TV journalists who were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in North Korea, are bargaining chips in a high stakes poker game who will be set free once negotiations begin (what, no chess metaphors? oh wait, that's just for the Middle East), you should know that North Korean prisons are no Martha Stewart-insider-trading spa retreats. Lee and Ling will not wax poetic to the media about the taste of lemon or monochromatic home accents during their incarcerations. North Korean hard labor prisons make Midnight Express look like after-school detention. The gulags of North Korea can involve torture, rape, beatings, and much worse. According to San Diego Union Tribune, "Grandsons are condemned to life-long terms as slave laborers alongside their grandfathers, both equally helpless in the brutal surroundings. Prisoners are arbitrarily murdered by security guards. Women suffer from forced abortions at the hands of unlicensed doctors. Newborn babies are beaten to death. And sons and daughters are publicly executed in front of their mothers." If their sentences are carried out, Ling and Lee could face these conditions in North Korea's gulag system. Our hearts go out to the two journos and their families. Seriously.
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That sounds awful. If only they knew this before sneaking across the North Korean border.
the information I've read states that they may not have been in North Korean territory, but just near the border and taken illegally by overzealous N. Korean border guards who crossed into South Korean territory. It has happened before. We can't assume that they "sneaked" over at all.
whoa, when did south korea move to the north of north korea?
First and foremost, I am no defender of North Korea, nor North Korea's prison system, nor their choice to sentence these two journalists to 12 years in prison.
But consider the example we've set in the past decade, during which time the U.S. has has both imprisoned, even killed journalists, from various countries, more or less arbitrarily, and for up to six years at a time, in the course of our War of Terror. This is a matter of public record.
It is also a matter of public record that the prisons in which these and other 'detainees' are kept are veritable hives of human rights abuses, torture, rape - yes, even homicide. Also on the public record - that many, if not most of these detainees are never charged. ...That many, if not most, are guilty of little - or nothing.
If we wish to be in ANY position to criticize the behavior of North Korea, let us lead by example. Not by hypocritical, hyper-critical militaristic enforcement.
I think we're all on the same page here.
Umm we are not on the same page. Sorry your facts aren't even close to correct, but I am not going to waste any electrons trying to convince you otherwise. Just to be clear, you need to work a little bit harder on distinguishing between different situations and actualy look at the fact (don't just rely on the word of those who have every incentive to make the U.S. look bad).
Agreed... count me as not on the same page, either. Rather than just take the "america always bad" line, maybe you should try to learn something about what you're talking about.
Maybe the War on Terror means nothing to you - I mean, who cares about 5,000 people murdered in the Twin Towers anyway, right?
Sorry, but suicide is not a good "example" to show the rest of the world.
Let's be reasonable, guys. I am not trying to 'make America look bad' - this country's policies in the last decade have done more to tarnish its name than I ever could, even if I were trying!
I would be more interested in replying to your comments if they were rational objections to my rational statements - but they are not. They are character attacks, directed at me, someone you do not know. Someone merely stating facts, and offering the opinion that, as Americans, we should lead by example, not by the gun.
For the record, I happen to know a great deal about what I discuss. I am armed with facts, can back them up, and am not shy to admit when I am in unfamiliar territory. I'm curious SFBurke - which of the facts in my comment are you at odds with? I will gladly provide citations.
It is evidenced by the historical record that the War on Terror of which you speak so highly is a fabrication, based on fabricated events. All the way back to, and including, 9/11.
And I do, as should we all, care a GREAT deal about the events of 9/11, the lives lost, and the events it set in motion. But the fact is that those attacks were fabricated and mythologized as a means of whipping the American people into a blood thirsty frenzy so they would back the "hundred years' war" their elected representatives so desperately desired. But the foundation is all lies, and the impetus was domestic - not foreign. How would you, just for example, explain that the U.S. military was gearing up for war in Afghanistan... BEFORE 9/11 had even occurred? What basis did our legislature have for authoring the U.S.A. Patriot Act... BEFORE 9/11?
Listen - if you REALLY want to honor the memories of those murdered on 9/11, you would join the victims' family members themselves in calling for a new, independent, subpoena-powered investigation into the myriad unaddressed questions surrounding this "catastrophic and catalyzing event." Visit www.NYCCAN.org, watch the video they have posted, and reflect. You may even find it to be an eye-opening experience, I don't know. Otherwise, forget I ever tried to enlighten you otherwise, and resume your character attacks against those who present you with facts.
Also, just in wrapping up -- the death toll on 9/11 was closer to 3,000. We have since far surpassed that number in troop casualties (~4,500) and innocent middle eastern civilians murdered in a decade-long war of false retribution (estimates up to 1,300,000 on the books). Who is really waging the terrorism here? If either of you have spent half as much time researching this material as I have, I doubt you would be so quick to disagree.
God bless America - God save it from the sheeple.
i would be scared shitless.