Tag: North Korea

Kim Jong Un Dictates to Sony

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The Interview is a satirical work of fiction that apparently so angered the hermit-like Stalinist North Korean regime that it famously unleashed its crack hacking squad on Sony Pictures.

An astonishingly un-American series of reactions took place throughout the day Wednesday when Pyongyang’s hackers invoked 9/11 to threaten moviegoers. First, Sony said it would let cinemas opt out of showing the movie, and major chains including AMC and Regal announced that they would not screen it.

Later in the day, Sony decided to pull the movie altogether and has no plans ever to release it.

What kind of bullshit is this? We’re letting Stalinist hackers dictate what American moviegoers get to see? North Korea – which made no such complaints against Team America : World Police – is now censoring American motion pictures? Are there any other programs or movies that Pyongyang would like me to not watch? Should Kim Jong Un be on retainer with the MPAA to rate movies as “PA” or “Pyongyang Approved”?

Jeff Simon in the Buffalo News is absolutely wrong. The Interview doesn’t “go too far” – it’s a comedy, for God’s sake. It’s satirical. Who will be the arbiter of what does and doesn’t “go too far”? A Stalinist dictator who inherited his post from daddy and grampa?

When a crazed, heavily armed lunatic shot and killed 12 and injured 70 in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater, the studio didn’t pull “Dark Knight Rises” from American cinemas.

We hear a lot about how diplomacy equals appeasement, which isn’t at all true. Appeasement is appeasement – unilaterally pulling a movie (with no quid pro quo),  succumbing to blackmail and threats is appeasement. North Korea wins because Sony is obviously run by idiots, and next time Kim Jong Un gets a diseased bug up his ass about something in America, he’ll make more threats because, apparently, that sort of shit works. Maybe theaters and studios will just pull any movie that receives a vague and anonymous threat. This Esquire piece is spot on: this is simply idiotic and gutless.

All of this has proven Seth Rogen and James Franco right. They clearly saw, from the beginning, what the monster in North Korea fears most: to be ridiculed. They will no doubt soon be venting their rage against the companies that have blocked and delayed their movie, and their rage will be justified. Everyone is ridiculous except them. That may turn out to be the deepest irony of the Ridiculous War of 2014: that Seth Rogen and James Franco, a couple of Hollywood stars in a gross-out comedy, are the only two people involved in the whole affair who have emerged with their dignity intact.

Remember: North Korea didn’t intimidate anyone into killing this movie:

Propaganda 101

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There aren’t a lot of Stalinist dictatorships left in the world, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), or North Korea is the weirdest of all. Led now by a Swiss-educated twentysomething, it is effectively a large jail with its own currency, and the world’s only Communist dynasty. 

This week, North Korea sent a satellite into space. For a country that follows long-discredited communist central planning and considers anyone not in the military or the party to be disposable, launching a rocket seems to be hardly a priority. But for all the tea party dummies, this is communism, and this is communist propaganda. It’s a dying art; one that was once practiced throughout the globe.  Clap in unison, comrades for the “Hot Wind of Kim Jong-Un”, the sun of the nation and the lodestar for unification. 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7N5HJso9e8]

If you want to learn a bit more about the reality of the concentration camps within the national prison that is the DPRK, watch this: 

http://cnettv.cnet.com/av/video/cbsnews/atlantis2/cbsnews_player_embed.swf

Lincolns in North Korea

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As you watch the hysterical, (as in hysteria, not as in funny), funeral procession of Stalinist lodestar of the 21st century, still-dead Kim Jong-il of North Korea today, take a look at the limo on top of which Kim’s coffin is being carried.

It’s a 1975 Lincoln Continental limousine, held over from Kim’s father, the very dead, but eternal President of North Korea, Kim Il-Sung. Even Kim’s mega-portrait gets a limo.

No one does cult of personality like the North Koreans. They are unsurpassed in history at totalitarianism.

Stalinist Propaganda in 2011

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Since the downfall of the Soviet Union and its satellite colonies, the volume and quality of good, old-fashioned communist propaganda has diminished exponentially. I think this may have something to do with how easily and cavalierly people accuse, e.g., centrist Democrats of being “socialists” or similar.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=buffalopundit-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=015665489X&ref=qf_sp_asin_til&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr There are only a small handful of remaining hardcore Stalinist communist dictatorships remaining in the world, and North Korea is the hardcore-iest, Stalinist-iest of them all. Only Hoxha’s Albania and Pol Pot’s Cambodia came close to the psychotic dysfunction of the Kim’s Korea.

So, after the jump, I will reproduce for you the propaganda item that the Korean Central News Agency (the news agency of the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea”) put out in the wake of Kim Jong-il’s death. It’s fascinating to me not only because of the religious terminology it uses to deify the Dear Leader, but the completely false “Juche” self-reliance communism that the Kim dynasty pretends to adhere to (while taking in hundreds of millions in foreign aid) and the attempts to connect an amoral tyrannical communism to an ancient Confucianism. “Songun” is the term the Kim regime uses for its “military first” ideology, as it maintains its revolutionary fervor (as all Communist dictatorships must) through eternal war with the US and South Korea.

This is what passes for public relations and propaganda under Stalinism. Even the title reveals the modern-day caste system that develops under Stalinism; what Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas called “The New Class” after his mid-50s split with Tito. This new class has complete control over the means of production while paying lip service to Marxist workers’ control. Through that control, it amasses wealth and influence which becomes “property” in a propertyless society.

Notice to All Party Members, Servicepersons and People

Pyongyang, December 19 (KCNA) — The Central Committee and the Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea, the National Defence Commission of the DPRK, the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly and the Cabinet of the DPRK on Saturday announced the following notice to all party members, servicepersons and people:

The Central Committee and the Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea, the National Defence Commission of the DPRK, the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly and the Cabinet of the DPRK notify with bitterest grief to all the party members, servicepersons and people of the DPRK that Kim Jong Il, general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, chairman of the National Defence Commission of the DPRK and supreme commander of the Korean People’s Army, passed away of a sudden illness at 08: 30 on December 17, Juche 100 (2011) on his way to field guidance. Read more