North Korea: Abduction Policy Netted Thousands

North Korea’s practice of abducting foreigners may have been wider in scope than previously thought.

North Korea may have abducted up to 180,000 foreigners from 14 countries over the last six decades, much more than what has been reported, according to a new report by a U.S.-based human rights watchdog.

Hundreds of foreign abductees whose identities are unknown may remain in closely-monitored detention in the reclusive Stalinist nation, said the report released by The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) on Thursday.

The report, entitled “Taken! North Korea’s Criminal Abduction of Citizens of Other Countries,” said North Korea’s history of abducting foreigners is not restricted to Japan and limited to a small group of people as the regime would have the international community believe.

HRNK unveiled the report at a press briefing in Washington that was attended by the Japanese ambassador and diplomats from South Korea, Thailand, and the Netherlands.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il admitted the existence of an abduction program to then-Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi during the latter’s visit to Pyongyang in September 2002, but sought to downplay its scale.

The report said that while Kim eventually disclosed the abduction of 13 Japanese nationals, his admission “did not tell the whole story” and left “misleading impressions.”

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May Day Toast to the Workers of the World by Gary Snyder

"Let's drink a toast to all those farmers, workers, artists and intellectuals of the last 100 years who without thought of fame and profit . . . worked tirelessly in their dream of a worldwide socialist revolution, who believed and hoped that a new world was dawning and that their work would contribute to a society where one class does not exploit another, where one ethnic group or one nation does not try to expand itself over another, and where men and women live as equals. The people who nourished these hopes and dreams were sometimes foolishly blind to the opportunism of their own leadership, and many were led to ideological absurdities, but the great majority of them selflessly worked for socialism with the best of hearts. . . . The failure of socialism is the tragedy of the 20th century and . . . we should honor the memory of those who struggled for the dream of what socialism might have been. And begin a new way again."

-- Gary Snyder, 2000

~ Via Monthly Review ~

Greek Riot Dog Strikes Again

At a recent protest (at 2:51 in the video)

He is also the subject of a song by David Rovics:

A song about a dog called Loukanikos who according to Rovics, "has been photographed at every riot in Athens over the past two years, always right up in the faces of the police, impervious to tear gas, smoke grenades, and whatever else the cops throw at him."

Loukanikos has achieved international cult status.

He is the successor of the late Kanellos, for whom this song was written:

Mind Control, Brainwashing and Subliminal Subversion

Explains various techniques of brainwashing, subliminal suggestion and subliminal subversion; and gives examples of how we are unwittingly and constantly bombarded with it. As with so many other things, the most effective way to diminish your susceptibility to it is to simply recognize it and see it for what it is.

~ Watch here ~

Toxic Justice: 20,000 gas leak murder unpunished in India

Seven Indian officials responsible for the worst technological disaster in history, have been released on bail after a court refused to give them stronger punishments. They were found guilty of a huge gas leak in 1984 at a U.S. owned plant, which resulted in the deaths of up to 20 thousand people. And as RT's Priya Sridhar reports from New Delhi - survivors of the disaster feel that justice still hasn't been done.

Gaddafi gold-for-oil, dollar-doom plans behind Libya 'mission'?

More speculation has been raised on the reasons for NATO's intervention in Libya. As RT's Laura Emmett reports, the organisation may have been trying to prevent Gaddafi from burying the American buck.

'Syria regime marked for death as US, UK move swiftly to split Libya'

Eric Margolis, a columnist, author and war correspondent, says he got the impression that Gaddafi had the strength of character to survive challenges back in the 1980s, when he interviewed the Libyan leader in person. Margolis also stated the US has been behind the assault on Libya all along.

Uruguay rules state killings not human rights crimes

Uruguay's Supreme Court said on Thursday that state-sponsored killings committed during the 1973-1985 dictatorship should be classed as murders rather than human rights crimes, drawing sharp criticism from rights activists.

The ruling, issued in the case of two former military officers jailed for 28 killings, is significant because prosecutions for murder can only be brought within 20 years of the alleged crime. In human rights cases, there is no statute of limitations.

About 200 Uruguayans were kidnapped and killed during military rule and the South American nation of 3.4 million people remains split over how to deal with former military officers accused of rights crimes.

The Memory and Justice Assembly, a human rights group, condemned the court ruling, which could serve as a precedent in other cases.

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Mysterium Iniquitatis - The mystery of evil

Abstract: Shadow projection, as the transference of personal inferiority, and the related concept of sin transference, lie at the heart of the mystery of evil. Destructive projection does not depend on "misunderstandings" in the micro-social context, nor on instinctual predatory instincts. It is an archaic method of ego emancipation by which the transgressor's unconscious suffering is transferred to the victim. It aims at maintaining ego firmness. Intellectuals often become subjects of shadow projection as they are capable of questioning the established order, due to their ability to think freely. It is analysed as the projection of Promethean guilt. An answer to the machinations of evil has been formulated in Christian theology. The ego's suffering is laid on the shoulders of Christ, who carries the sins of the world. The Christ figure is understood as the spiritual awareness of the inner self ("Christ liveth in me"). A regress to a pre-Christian cultural mentality implies the massive return of scapegoat psychology, as exemplified by the collective shadow psychology of the Third Reich. The Western world is undergoing transitions that undermine our notion of, and our awareness of, the spiritual self. If the sins aren't carried by Christ anymore, then they must be carried by other human beings, with foreseeable consequences.

[ ... ]

Regressive consequences of immigration

The immigration to the Western world has harmful consequences in that it moves the collective psyche in the pre-Christian direction. Terrorism as sacrificial theme is not at all the greatest danger, it is the "psychological terrorism" in the social context which inflicts the greatest harm. Certain ethnicities have recourse to honour cultures, clan structures, and oppression within families, especially victimization and oppression of females, to mitigate the inner urge of sin transference. Victimization of the outgroup also obtains. However, to the extent that these ethnic groups are forced to adjust to a Western cultural context and Western laws, they have no other choice than to subject outside society to their venom, if their own system of regulation of sin transference, and shadow projection, can no longer be upheld. In UK they have big problems with people of certain ethnicities who uninhibitedly prey on schoolgirls:

Police 'hid' abuse of 60 girls by Asian takeaway workers linked to murder of 14-year-old (here)

Mother of murdered girl 'put into kebabs' runs from court after gruesome testimony (here)

Today, Western intellectuals choose not to relate to this problem and instead put the lid on. They know that they will infallibly be appointed "Hitler personality" if they attempt to grasp it and opine in the matter. Perhaps, if they contemplate their own daughter being put into a kebab, they will pluck up courage. Otherwise, the consequence is that it will come to violent ethnic clashes in the future, and to new ethnic cleansings. In accordance with the scapegoat principle, innocent immigrants will be chosen as victims for retributive actions. That's how it works. Inferior personalities on both sides will have their heyday, as in the Balkan wars.

Intellectuals who raise the problem of evil risk being publicly flogged, as they are accused of casting suspicion on ethnic groups, in this case those gangs of immigrants who victimize schoolgirls. But my argument is that we have no other choice than to grapple with these issues. To repress the problems will only lead to yet bigger problems in the future. It is better to dirty oneself a little than let our grandchildren suffer pandemonium. Prevention is better than cure. It is a question of taking responsibility for the future. A mature man should be capable of this if he hasn't been poisoned by all the hormonal active chemicals in the environment, and his testicles have shrivelled up.

Shadow projection and "sin transference" lie at the heart of the Mysterium Iniquitatis, the mystery of evil. It does not depend on "misunderstandings" in the micro-social context, nor on instinctual predatory instincts. It is predicated on an archaic psychic economy that demands transference of internal suffering onto others. The personality with a weak ego structure, deprived of the spiritual experience of the 'inner self', lacks the moral strength to carry its own weaknesses and failures. The ego at the brink of dissolution imagines itself the subject of constant offences and insults, always prone to a fit of 'narcissistic rage'. It creates a dark cloud of revengeful evil in the soul, which must sooner or later find expression, if the personality is going to feel a little relief.

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Activists Confront Condoleeza Rice at Stanford University

Bin Laden's special complaint with the World Trade Center

From The Mosque to Commerce by Laurie Kerr, Slate

We all know the basic reasons why Osama Bin Laden chose to attack the World Trade Center, out of all the buildings in New York. Its towers were the two tallest in the city, synonymous with its skyline. They were richly stocked with potential victims. And as the complex's name declared, it was designed to be a center of American and global commerce. But Bin Laden may have had another, more personal motivation. The World Trade Center's architect, Minoru Yamasaki, was a favorite designer of the Binladin family's patrons—the Saudi royal family—and a leading practitioner of an architectural style that merged modernism with Islamic influences.

The story starts in the late 1950s, when Yamasaki, a second-generation Japanese-American, won the commission to design the King Fahd Dhahran Air Terminal in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. His design had a rectilinear, modular plan with pointed arches, interweaving tracery of prefabricated concrete, and even a minaret of a flight tower. In other words, it was an impressive melding of modern technology and traditional Islamic form. The Saudis admired it so much that they put a picture of it on one of their banknotes.

For Yamasaki, an architect with a keen mathematical mind and a taste for ornamental pattern-work, this brush with the intricate geometries of Islamic architecture was inspiring, and he began to incorporate arabesques and arches into his work. For the next 12 to 15 years he played with Islamic forms in projects as diverse as the Federal Science Pavilion at the Seattle World's Fair, the Eastern Airlines Terminal at Logan Airport, and even the North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe, Ill.

Yamasaki received the World Trade Center commission the year after the Dhahran Airport was completed. Yamasaki described its plaza as "a mecca, a great relief from the narrow streets and sidewalks of the surrounding Wall Street area." True to his word, Yamasaki replicated the plan of Mecca's courtyard by creating a vast delineated square, isolated from the city's bustle by low colonnaded structures and capped by two enormous, perfectly square towers—minarets, really. Yamasaki's courtyard mimicked Mecca's assemblage of holy sites—the Qa'ba (a cube) containing the sacred stone, what some believe is the burial site of Hagar and Ishmael, and the holy spring—by including several sculptural features, including a fountain, and he anchored the composition in a radial circular pattern, similar to Mecca's.

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Superman threatens to renounce U.S. citizenship

Superman, citizen of the world?

The Man of Steel, in the latest issue of Action Comics which hit newsstands on Wednesday, said he intends to renounce his U.S. citizenship in a speech before the United Nations.

"I'm tired of having my actions construed as instruments of U.S. policy," Superman said in a short story in the issue, Action Comics No. 900 from the Time Warner Inc unit DC Comics.

In the comic, Superman never actually renounces his citizenship, he only talks about his plans to do that.

But conservative commentators reacted with disgust to the new storyline, given that the fictional superhero has long proclaimed he stood for "Truth, Justice and the American way."

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~ See also: The 99: the Islamic superheroes fighting side by side with Batman ~