… the OCCUPIERS!
Yes, now that Dear Leader has transitioned to a new, and somewhat cooler style of leadership, I think there is a huge opportunity to make an impact on World Peace.
The Occupiers have been honing and honing and honing their skills… not so much marketable skills… but skills nonetheless.
The Occupiers have been driven to go forth into the streets for the sake of 99%.
Who, I ask, WHO better than those same Occupiers to go to North Korea to help the 99.99%?
What an opportunity! What a noble cause!
Whaddya say, folks? Shall we get some airline tickets for them?
UPDATE 2120 GMT:
They don’t have to be round-trip tickets.
UPDATE 2127 GMT:
The Occupiers could learn a lot from these poor North Koreans. This, folks, is how to make your deepest concerns public.
[wp_youtube]ccsNr9UJeVY[/wp_youtube]
No. Wait! This is North Korea. Perhaps they are actually weeping from HUNGER.
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Do they have to be round-trip tickets?
I’m afraid they’d see it as a causis belli and test out those nukes.
These poor people need Christ.
That’s a very disturbing video. This is what happens in the cult of Man.
Give Obama twenty years in power and I imagine we’d see the same thing.
One little technical question for His Paternity: why do the videos here never go full screen? Am I hitting the wrong button? Is it more expensive to have the full screen option? Just wondering…
Why are you so angry at the Occupy dilettantes?
Wonderful example of grief forced out of fear for the state. Much too organized to be spontaneous….note how at least three of them see the camera and then burst out in wails.
Cigars, cognac and mass starvation: 10 facts that divide North Korea from the world.
A few of those look more like laughter. I’m sure they will be “talked to”.
I….actually meant to ask what movie this clip came out of. Looked awfully over-wrenching and staged to be real…..
They don’t seriously expect us to buy this, do they?
When you mentioned the impact on World Peace, I thought you were going to start talking about Metta World Peace, the Los Angeles Lakers player formerly known as Ron Artest.
Never mind. :)
Blue Henn, well said.
Fr. Z., why are you using this serious event to joke around about the Occupiers? It’s unseemly. Someone is DEAD. People are having to watch their backs. Have you ever been in a nearly-closed Communist country and sensed the fear and oppression? It’s nothing to joke around about.
And, along with Post Catholic, I also wonder why you are so angry about the Occupiers.
“now that Dear Leader has transitioned to a new, and somewhat cooler style of leadership”
I’d think it might well be a somewhat hotter style…
I surmise that the N Korean people are suffering from a collective Stockholm Syndrome.
Kim Jong Il is nothing but a puppet in the hands of China and his successor will be too.
The Chinese leaders are very easy with the situation in North Korea as they are easy with that of Syria and Iran. They don’t care if the people’s sufferings are light or huge, even unbearable like in NK. Those who succeed in escaping the NK Gulag are promptly shipped back if they are caught on the China’s territory.
Their aim is to have a focal point of grievance for the West countries.
The new Leader of North Korea has some really big women’s sunglasses to fill.
Actually, these are members of the North Korean Dickens Society reacting to the first uncensored news of the death of Little Nell.
Seriously though, you do have to feel sorry for these people. Since most of them, the young especially, don’t know anything else about the rest of the world. And how there? brethren in the south are living way better lives, and can actually travel and meet people from other countries. And establish friendships. Rather than living under suppression.
An old friend who was a GI in the Korean War told me that he was in a troop convoy driving on a narrow dangerous twisting mountain road and the truck ahead plunged over the cliff. The Korean soldiers all about him laughed hysterically at the tragedy that befell their fellow soldiers. All my friend could make of it was that maybe it was emotinal relief that it wasn’t their truck that fell. Like a banana peel “joke.”
Makes me think the psychology of what we’re seeing is more complicated than what we call “mourning.”
Perhaps, as Scott Ott quipped, they are mourning because the body has already been embalmed and is therefore no longer edible.
North Korean leader dies, or Catholic Charismatic Mass… You decide.
Makes me wonder a bit… obviously this ‘grief’ is a forced one upon the people by the state. Those who don’t will be put on the ‘watch list’ or worse…
But I recall it might be a reminder of how things were done way back then when a leader or king died. There’d be a public display of mourning. I imagine this is what it was like in Biblical times too. Not that I’m comparing Kim Jong Il to the Old Testament heroes and Patriarchs. I’m just saying this is what it reminded me of…
DisturbedMary ~ our 5 adopted children who lived in poverty or an orphanage till they came here between the ages of 4-8 do the same thing…whenever someone is hurt or killed on TV, they slap their knees & guffaw (we’re pretty vigilant about what they get to watch, but these types of things still come up, even in family fare). They used to do it to each other & their homemade siblings as well, even if they caused the injury themselves. I think it must be a coping mechanism people learn when they are constantly surrounded by pain, death & loss. :o(
If they don’t weep for the “Great Leader”, woe be unto them! Likewise, they better cheer, cry happy-tears for the “Great Succsesor”, or woe betide them!
Seems very put on for the cameras. Exactly as Johnno says. They are afraid if they aren’t seen weeping they will be put on a watch list. Maybe they are hopeful that those who grieve the loudest will be rewarded by the state.
If a million of my fellow countrymen died in a famine and if my civil and human rights were consistently violated, I’d surely have something to cry about. I agree with DisturbedMary – given what we know about how the DPRK controls the media and brainwashes people with the state Juche ideology, there’s got to be more to these displays than a mere fear of punishment.
The Occupy folk are harmless enough. They’re out there making vituperative and overly simplistic statements about how to fix the world (which apparently is going in the wrong direction), being taken seriously only by like-minded adherents to their ideology, and living off of donations. Where’s the harm? I can think of others like that.
Fr. Z has made a connection between North Korea and the Occupy Movement because they share one very prominent thing: Communism. Don’t be fooled by the media’s description of the protesters as frustrated youth finding their way in the economic system. They want to change our system into something North Korea has now. Communist systems are atheistic so Fr. Z is showing concern for our spiritual, material, and psychological welfare.
Funny how Communist countries are safe havens for the last monarchies on earth.
I can think of an absolute monarchy which isn’t communist. It’s in Europe.
Well, if only it were that simple. The “occupy” camps turned into garbage-strewn pestholes where DRTB and other diseases spread, women were raped and other participants encouraged or threatened them not to report, and local businesses were ruined (e.g. Milk Street Cafe closed with a loss of 90 jobs). Doesn’t sound particularly harmless to me. Although it is a demonstration of anarcho-communist philosophy in action.
Yes, if only it were that simple. And you’re of course right, sexual assault is something that ought to be taken very seriously, whether it’s by an Occupy dilettante or a clergyman. But why the anger at their inchoate movement, instead of indifference to it?