DPRK documentaries and propaganda

http://songun-blog.blogspot.com/
A great patriot, comrade Banner of Songun successfully uses the evil capitalist site YouTube to spread the word about our Dear Leader. Comrade Songun deserves a medal for bringing sunshine into our lives. Seriously, thanks. This is priceless.

The moving song "We rely on the General as our god", or words to that effect.


This is the 3rd part of a propaganda documentary called "Always Working Together for the People", the story of the amazing Father and Son. Surprisingly, their relation is not mentioned. I thought they would have used it extensively in propaganda. On second thought: both being of divine origin it might be best to not highlight the carnal truth.

In the news lately

Just a note if you do stumble across my blog more than once: my posts live. I go back to recent posts and change them frequently. I use the blog as a kind of a note pad and diary in which i simply jot down ideas. They do not always make up a coherent whole. I'm not sure I'll be continuing this post anymore tonight, but I'll publish it regardless.

The focus of world politics has been on Asia lately. Four stories in particular stand out:
1. The election of ROK's Ban as the new General Secretary of the UN
2. The developing situation between DPRK and the rest of the world. Although this has been a slow burner for years cropping up frequently, the DPRK's alleged detonation of a (and possibly their only) nuclear bomb has heated up the situation again.
3. Japan's new PM Shinzo Abe's dead end diplomacy in the aforementioned debacle,
and last but not least, 4: The acknowledgment by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee of Grameen Bank's valuable grass roots work in South East Asia and elsewhere.

I have been an admirer of micro-loans for a long time. The individual success stories show that a very small sum can make an enormous difference in helping people out of desperate poverty, one by one. In my opinion, this is a far more sensible and realistic approach to poverty than the sensationalist save-the-world hubris that especially some western celebrities are revelling in. Economic superpowers, the G8, the World Bank and the IMU cannot use the enforcement of macro-economical change in poor countries as a strategy to eradicate poverty (I find it not only immoral and chauvinist, but possibly detrimental to the target country. It also almost necessarily involves the backing of certain types of government and ideologies). Micro-loans help people make their lives better in the prevailing circumstances and political system they happen to live in, without enforcing systemic change from the ouside.
I am a great believer in that political change has to start with the people within; not through mere external pressure. George Orwell describes well in Down and Out in London and Paris the effects of poverty and hunger on the political consciousness of the individual. When desperately poor and hungry, you cannot and will not think about a picture any bigger than your grumbling stomach. The hopelessness of poverty and hunger will dominate the mind and body so as to overrule the social and political (and the humane) potential in the individual. It is yet again a sign of Orwell's deep understanding of the human condition. Even though he was talking about the poor and hungry in London and Paris and not a Third World country, the sensation and effects of poverty are universal. Material poverty is the main cause of the poverty of both soul and mind. Truly hungry and deprived people have, as far as I know, never staged a successful revolution. It is only when a slightly better fed middle class emerges and protests, either on their own behalf or on the behalf of the deprived, that radical and sudden political change can ever take place. This is why Grameen Bank's work is important.
(continues soon)

Whoa, it's good to be back!

Aah, the familiar feeling of keys beneath my fingers, the rhytmical patter so pacifying and soothing.
I had broadband installed today and my life has meaning again. I am finally home after a bewildering and lonely existence in what those in the know call the 'real world'. Writing letters by hand and having to walk around town just to find information about things has done my head in for the last few months. It's time consuming and you never find all the information you need, and usually they tell you to go to their website. Really helpful, that.
And I have had to rely on just the papers and tv news for my news fix - how inconvenient to have to be home at a certain time just to catch the news. Blink and you'll miss 'em, and then where will you be information wise? In a place called NOWHERE, that's where you'll be. I'm not saying that 'real' reality is synonymous to 'nowhere' (I'm not crazy enough to believe in the Matrix just yet), but if you're used to having all the public information in the world at your fingertips, then plain reality is a really restrictive and annoying place to live in. You're enslaved by general closing times, people not answering their phones even though they should because it's their job, tv, and so on. Over the 'net, everything happens in your own time, not in someone elses.
I have tons and tons of emails to reply to, so I'll write a longer post later, maybe on Friday.
I have really missed my blog *embarrassed*.

17.39 p.m GAAH!! Something evil has happened to my hotmail account! I have no messages, and I can't find my saved ones! Is it because I haven't logged in for 30 days? How can they do this? It's not my primary address, but I seem to have lost some really important stuff!! Someone basically just torched my old correspondence, including letters I kept for their great sentimental value. A part of me just died. I desperately hope it's just some blip in the server...