Out of curiousity, Chumpsky, would you happen to have a cite quoting a North Korean offical denying the existence of their nuclear program? Don’t you think that if the U.S. government lied and told the public that North Korea had admitted to having a nuclear program when in fact they don’t, that the North Koreans would have rapidly come out and said that the U.S. was lying?
Really, are any of you yankee lemmings surprised that you’re government would lie, outright and blantantly, to you? If so, I have a bridge to Brooklyn and some swampland in Florida you might be interested in buying…
I just love your sig line, Space Cadet. Remember, they laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Einstein. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. Just because you are mocked and derided for your ridiculous political beliefs doesn’t necessarily make those beliefs wrong, but it doesn’t necessarily make them right, either.
And I have to question a person who would quote Gandhi while at the same time defending Stalinist North Korea, the country that wins the award for having most closely duplicated George Orwell’s 1984 in real life.
Not defending DPRK here, just questioning American sources, as we in my country are trained to do from an early age. And Orwell would be spinning in his grave more from TIA / Homeland / PATRIOT than any other source, even North Korea.
No. They are fountains of lies, half-truths, misrepresentations and distortions.
All three sources have this quote, basically:
“North Korea’s Pyongyang Radio said Sunday the country “has come to have nuclear and other strong military weapons to deal with increased nuclear threats by the U.S. imperialists,” according to the Yonhap news agency which monitors North Korean broadcasts.”
The CNN report further stated:
“South Korean officials Monday reacted to the reports with skepticism, saying such radio reports are usually followed up with an official statement and as yet no such statement has been issued.”
So, basically, you have an alleged statement issued on a radio broadcast, but as yet no official statement. One should react with skepticism, in light of this, from the third of your sources:
“In December, Pyongyang announced that it had no choice but to reactivate its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon because the U.S. was planning a pre-emptive strike.”
If Pyongyang has no choice but to re-activate its nuclear facilities (which has not yet happened), how, then, can they already have nuclear weapons?
In reality, what has happened was that, due to U.S. threats and refusals to abide by the 1994 treaty, NK is being forced to re-activate its nuclear reactors. These reactors have the potential to manufacture enough material to manufacture maybe a few nuclear bombs after several years. Even if this were to happen, though, the North Koreans would still have a long way to go before developing the means to actually deliver these bombs. The reality is far from the fantasy accepted by such people as Brutus.
You have all been lied to.
Of course our Govt. lies to us they probably have a Division of lying and Disinformation. But that does not mean that everything they tell us is false. You need to use your head and decide to what makes more sense
How do you make the leap from “The U.S. is lying about North Korea” to “I support the North Korean dictatorship”?
Really, I want to know.
Honestly, I think it is the left-wing media that is to blame.
Okay, so how about those denials from the North Koreans, then?
You got some?
Just to keep the ball sort of rolling here, there are plenty of other lies that are repeated endlessly in the mainstream mass media. Another one of these lies is that there is a general strike going on in Venezuela. Pretty much every day you can hear reports, such as this one about this alleged “strike” in Venezuela.
A strike is when the workers withhold their labour power from the management in order to try to force some concessions. This is not what is happening in Venezuela. On the contrary, the workers want to go to work, and it is the management that is not allowing them to work. What is going on in Venezuela is a lock-out. A lock-out occurs when the management shuts down the factory in order to win some concessions from the workers. A strike is virtually the opposite of a lock-out, engaged in for almost symmetrically opposite reasons. A strike is done for the cause of the workers, a lock-out is for the management.
So, in effect, what we have is a reversal of reality. Instead of a lock-out, which is what is happening, the lock-out is presented as its opposite–a strike. And, this is presented so often that it becomes reality just by sheer force of repitition. The political uses of this reversal of reality are obvious. If the lock-out was presented for what it was, Chavez and the working poor of Venezuela would win much more support than they are currently getting. Since the privileged elites both in Venezuela and in the imperialist countries are opposed to Chavez’ program, they do whatever they can to sabotage it and portray him as anti-democratic. They do this by lying.
Interesting article about that here:
Price of the liberal news myth
I think the more relevant point of the matter is that with some, if very limited, and very much contested, but sketchy, if maybe plausible, evidence of DPRK having the not only the technology, but the physical capability to deploy nuclear weapons, and in so doing directly threaten the USA; why is this a ‘diplomatic issue’ while the very same allegations, levelled against a muslim, oil-rich, and in terms of conventional forces, quite some weaker state, are a matter of threats of war?
By that I was not trying to be ironic; I simply meant that the left in NA and Europe have truly not been doing their jobs - notable exceptions like Robert Fisk, Tariq Ali, Maude Barlow, Paul Krugman, Naiomi Klien, Jaggi Singh, et al. excluded, of course. But really, the left has no real presence in mainstream media, and I blame the left to some extent, for not pushing hard enough on core issues, and for folding to easily in the face of the right wing pressure, the capitalista-sturm-gruppen-fuhrers.
KCNA blasts U.S. warmongers’ outbursts
Here’s an article from North Korea’s news source. Most of their comments about this “nuclear issue” is phrased as such in other articles. Feel free to peruse these at your leisure. Here’s an excerpt from the above link:
Space Cadet, do you have the cojones to tell us what country you’re from? Obviously yours has a fearless media that always tells the truth about America. I for one would like to learn more about this fascinating place.
Chumpsky doesn’t have the brains or whatever to fill in HIS location, so let’s see if you do.
Oh, and I guess all those VILLAGE VOICE boxes scattered around the largest city in America don’t count as a real presence. It’s getting scarily mainstream–it even has comics and astrologers! Although how you tell which is which is something that’s beyond my poor powers 
Whoops. If you’re really not American, you may not know that the VILLAGE VOICE is a rather venerable leftist periodical published in Greenwich Village, in NYC. They have absolutely no use for Bush, although they do avoid the more radical conspiracy theories. Mostly.
Their latest take on North Korea.
But they “kid because they love”. This cover was on my wall for a year after 9/11.
This seems contradictory to me. If the left has no real presence in mainstream media (a claim I agree with), how can you blame them for not pushing hard enough on core issues? In fact, the left does push hard on core issues, but, as you say, they have no presence in mainstream media, so their voices are not heard.
This problem actually fits nicely with the theme of this thread, namely the deceptions of the corporate media. The corporate media serves a specific function in the capitalist state, namely as propaganda. We should therefore expect the product that comes out to be biased heavily toward the ideology of the ruling class. It would be nothing short of miraculous if it were any different. The left is, naturally, either marginalized or completely ignored.
The most effective means of propaganda in this system is in framing the debate in ways so as to encompass only those views acceptable to the ruling class. Views which run counter to these views are simply excluded from acceptable debate. So, for example, there is a lot of debate about how to deal with Iraq, specifically about whether the U.S. should continue to bomb Iraq on a weekly basis and torture the people of Iraq through economic sanctions, or bomb them more heavily and invade the country. There is some debate about whether the invasion should be preceeded by a U.N. resolution. But, the idea that the U.S. should stop bombing Iraq and end the economic sanctions is out of the bounds of debate.
Likewise, with North Korea, there is debate within certain bounds, but all who enter the debate must accept certain assumptions, among them that it is North Korea and not the U.S. which is the aggressive party, and that it is North Korea and not the U.S. which has violated the 1994 agreement. If you accept those assumptions, then you can enter the debate. Alternative opinions are simply beyond the pale, and exluded categorically.
Chumpsky, does Brutus cite address your concerns or not? If not, please name some international news sources that you deem reliable.
The site says what the North Koreans have always said, that they will be resuming their nuclear program if the U.S. does not abide by its treaty obligations or sign a non-aggression pact.
The lie was in stating that the North Koreans already had a secret nuclear weapons program in progress, and even that they already had some nuclear weapons. The claim made by the U.S. State Department was a clear lie that has been repeated endlessly.
I’ve read & reread that sentence, and for the life of me I can’t torture the word “renewed” into the future tense. How’d you manage that?