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Kiarell
Joined: 29 Mar 2008
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 Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 12:29 am Post subject: |
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traxxe:
Listen to Mugabe sometime or how about Musharraf...you sound EXACTLY like them. "Protecting" their nations from "insanity." Who are you to say which struggles are good and which are bad.
A struggle for civil rights is just and so is one over concerns for public health. You don't give a damn about democratic ideals unless you support popular opinion. you can't choose which popular struggles are good and bad.
And pray for them? Superstitious nonsense. If there is anything spiritual to this world it's not some fucking genie on a rain cloud waiting to do the bidding of his goody-two shoe followers. |
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wanamin
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
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| Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 12:37 am Post subject: |
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| Kiarell wrote: |
Do you think I'm an idiot?
GEE! Who was Hitler?
Tell me, were people clamoring for the Holocaust, or was it sold to them after Hitler came to power in a BACKROOM deal. Once in control he whipped up frenzy for the Holocaust much like Bush whipped up frenzy for the Iraq invasion and occupation.
Mob rule? The very term is a anti-democratic slur?
The KKK....hmmmm. So we're talking post-Civil War racism. Well, you know the Civil War actually prolonged racism and racist policies were propped up by the Dems and Repubs. Oh sure, they put on a grand show by putting some blacks in office for a few decades during Reconstruction but after that, no such luck. It is no secret they coordinated a process of exclusion of third parties and weakned the Farmer's Alliance and many unions to boost their own power. These populist groups opposed racism. I suggest reading Howard Zinn's A People's History. Had we left the South alone a revolution would have happened and erased racism. The vast majority of whites were being slowly being lowered on the social/economic ladder, more and more whites being forced into wage-slavery on farms under conditions very similar to those of the blacks. The North was also very unstable and a revolution could have swept the whole country. Lincoln could not allow that. |
When you compare the civil rights movement to the irrational beef riots against a DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED LEADER... you sound like an idiot. I don't know you, so all I say is you sound like one.
I've read just about everything Zinn has wrote, and I agree with most of what he has to say.
In fact that's what makes me so angry about these riots...
the fact that there are real things to be upset about, both in the ROK (60 hour workweek, anti-union laws etc), the the rest of the world.
Protest against some policy that actually hurts people, and you will have my FULL support.
But the rioters are rioting against American beef that has HIGHER safety standards than their own and that makes them idiotic.
The fact that they are assaulting police officers that had nothing to do with the implementation of this policy (a policy will hurt NO ONE AT ALL, save a few Korean beef farmers) makes them criminal. |
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nateium
Joined: 21 Aug 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 12:44 am Post subject: |
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| Kiarell wrote: |
Nateium:
Democracy is not running through the motions like voting for "representatives." Is your understanding of democracy so infantile that you think democracy is merely selecting WHICH ruling class member fills the throne for half a decade?? Or maybe you forget that most Koreans DID'T VOTE in the PM elections because none of the parties represent their interests and never will. It is a wholly bourgeois system.
How did Vietnam end? The ballot poll??
No! It ended with mass protests, NLF resistance, GI disobedience.
Democracy is popular will, it's local assemblies, worker's councils, etc. not a rotation of dictators
And for *beep*'s sake don't cite your high school propaganda (aka Social Studies). I graduated high school, I know the same fascist bullshit arguments that democracy doesn't exist fully and never should. I'm far learned than that. Do you think I'm some moron who's never heard these arguments??? MAybe I realize what hogwash they are and have an understanding of real history, the kind they never teach you. The times when people's power succeeded and worked nearly flawlessly until imperialist armies wasted them (Paris Commune, Aragon/Catalon federations of 1936-37, East Timor, Pre-Colombian North Americans, Zapatistas) |
Your right in that technically, The ROK, the USA and many other "democratic" nations are Republics and not democracies. The system however, is democratic in nature, and this is what people commonly refer to. Elected officials represent the interests of the people.
Your socialist idealism has been tried before with variable results in different situations, and massive failure in the modern nation/state. So what?
The point here is that 2MB was elected fairly, and that the "focal point" of the entire controversy is a non-issue fed to an irrational, emotional, public totally ignorant of the real basic science needed to understand the issue.
These people don't appear to the world to be freedom fighters standing for the people rights, but violent xenophobic morons. |
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Kiarell
Joined: 29 Mar 2008
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| Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 12:49 am Post subject: |
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He was not democratically elected. Where was the real choice? People vote for the other guy hoping he can't be much worse than the last guy. They have no political education so they only hear promises and personalities and give it a go by going to the polls.
Even if it was a very open and perfect election, it would still be okay to protest. Bush 1 was democratically elected (if youwant those terms) but people were justified to protest the first Gulf "war" (massacre) which killed 250,000 people. The cops don't have to block the protesters, they have the option to put down their shields. That's what happened in the Bolshevik revolution, many armed guards simply surrendered to the revolutionaries for being sympathetic.
You have to obey public opinion if you want to have a semblance of being a democratic leader. Look at Chavez, he holds confidence votes and referendum votes. And guess what?? When he lost a referendum vote on constitutional amendments recently he obeyed the polls and did not implement them. (b/c he botched the delivery of it in part, but also it was a rush job) |
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matthews_world
Joined: 15 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 12:53 am Post subject: |
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Someone tell me how are these rounds of public protest any different than what we've seen before in recent times.
BEXCO 2006 comes to mind during Bush' visit support the FTA.
Anyone else remember last year or so, poor Paris Hilton being delayed at an appearance the same day a major anti-FTA rally was being held in Seoul.
Pyungtaek base relocation also rings a bell.
As far as methods used, it's nothing new. This round might be more magnified than the FTA ones. There could have been much bigger in the past, minus Gwangju. |
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Kiarell
Joined: 29 Mar 2008
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| Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 12:57 am Post subject: |
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Socialist idealism?
Anything but!
Capitalism is idealist: A system based on exponential growth will function without massive failure. Sorry but there's two contradictions inherent, the first of overproduction and the second of a lack of physical materials and a suitable environment (see Marx, and the writings of James O''Connor)
This is anything but idealism. This is not some benevolent bureaucracy with a "pretty please everyone work together" Socialism is the ownership of factories by factory workers and so forth (worked phenomenally well in Argentina see Sin Patron or the video "The Take"). The worker councils work with a federation of local people's assemblies. These are not ideals, these are strategies for a society and they are natural impulses that have worked. When they fail it is due to the interference of outside forces.
Capitalism and liberal democracies are the ones who seem to collapse from within. And don't cite the Soviet Union, please. The USSR in 1989 had some of the benefits of a social democracy but with very authoritarian and centralized methods of governance. Still, though, it was better than Yeltsin's nightmare (drugs, suicide, homelessness, etc) |
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nateium
Joined: 21 Aug 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 1:12 am Post subject: |
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| Kiarell wrote: |
| He was not democratically elected. . |
Yes he was.
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| Where was the real choice? People vote for the other guy hoping he can't be much worse than the last guy. They have no political education so they only hear promises and personalities and give it a go by going to the polls |
yes. no political education, and no scientific education (or they wouldn't even be there). It's a good thing you're so well educated though.
Real Choice?
Same could be said about the elections and candidates in any "democratic" (republic) country in the world. Sure, business runs everything.
Do you have an alternative? A red revolution to wash us clean of the fat cat industrialists?  Maybe a new great leader named Kiarell will come along to save us from the capitalist pigs and lead us into a shining new era of peoples power!  |
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Gollywog
Joined: 14 Jun 2008
Location: Debussy's brain
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| Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 1:19 am Post subject: |
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traxxe wrote:
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| You insult every person who worked hard in American for Civil Rights. These people did not take up arms and bring weapons to get their rights. They were assaulted and fought back mostly peacefully. The ones that did fight back had justification in doing so. |
One of the saddest parts of these comments is that they are attempting to justify organizers who are promoting Korean racism and hatred of other countries by comparing themselves to those who fought racism and hatred with nonviolence, sometimes with their lives.
These protests are based on so many lies that Koreans seem to have totally lost track of the truth.
Here is the truth. American racism was wrong. It was not eliminated with lies and hatred, but with the leadership of courageous individuals who were willing to be leaders, and thousands of blacks and whites in the North and South who were willing to stand up and support this movement.
I am proud that America faced up to its problems and corrected them.
Korea lacks courage, it lacks leaders, it lacks individuals willing to stand up to the mob when it is wrong. Without real leadership and courage, Korea will never correct any of its problems.
But if Korea learns, really learns, from the history of other countries, and takes strength from the example others have provided, it can change.
Take a look at some historical clips:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=d2oQDo04NTY&feature=related
"I would rather die on the highways of Alabama than make a butchery of my conscience." -- Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=s00-OoZAWno&feature=related
The protesters marched in broad daylight, not cloaked in the anonymity of darkness like the KKK. They did not attack the police, they did not riot, they did not yell chants of hatred. They simply claimed their equal rights.
The press and public responded. Congress responded. And things changed.
Now it is history. And Americans are making an effort to remember and learn from its history.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=wW1i-R39AAk
The lesson is that racism, prejudice, hatred, and a way of life built on lies, are wrong -- regardless of your race or religion.
If Korean youth want to follow the example of the civil rights protesters, they would march peacefully and quietly in daylight in opposition to the hate mongers. All they need carry is a sign with a single word: "Truth."
Might make a good T-shirt.
A footnote:
Many people don't know what happened to Gov. George Wallace later in life. He made a 180 degree about face on civil rights. In his last term in office, Blacks were among his strongest supporters.
Americans don't hold hatred in their hearts like Koreans do.
| Quote: |
| In 1982, he ran for governor a fourth time. In a watershed moment, he admitted that he had been wrong about "race" all along. He was elected by a coalition represented by blacks, organized labor and forces seeking to advance public education. In that race, he carried all 10 of the state's counties with a majority black population, nine of them by a better than two-to-one margin. He retired four years later, an increasingly remote and physically tormented man. |
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/sept98/wallace.htm
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Wallace's final gubernatorial conquest was characterized by an unprecedented amount of black voter support during the general election. For the former advocate an chief spokesman of the state's segregationists, this spelled a complete turnabout in his political career. |
http://www.archives.state.al.us/govs_list/g_wallac.html
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| Wallace became a born-again Christian in the late 1970s and apologized for his earlier segregationist views to black civil rights leaders. He said while he once sought power and glory, he realized he needed to seek love and forgiveness. His term as Governor (1983�1987) saw a record number of black appointments to government positions. |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace
Until Koreans can let go of the hatred in their hearts, until the average Korean is willing to stand up in the truth of daylight to the hate mongers, Korea will never change.
Sometimes I think that is Korea's unofficial motto: "We will never change."
Sound familiar? |
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traxxe
Joined: 21 Feb 2007
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| Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 3:27 am Post subject: |
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Gollywog, good post.
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Some troll wrote:
traxxe:
Listen to Mugabe sometime or how about Musharraf...you sound EXACTLY like them. "Protecting" their nations from "insanity." Who are you to say which struggles are good and which are bad.
A struggle for civil rights is just and so is one over concerns for public health. You don't give a damn about democratic ideals unless you support popular opinion. you can't choose which popular struggles are good and bad.
And pray for them? Superstitious nonsense. If there is anything spiritual to this world it's not some fucking genie on a rain cloud waiting to do the bidding of his goody-two shoe followers. |
I sound nothing like them. I sound like myself. I form my educated opinions with careful thought and consideration.
Who are you to say which struggles are good and which are bad? That goes both ways. We are all entitled to our opinion. I believe Hitler's struggle was bad. I'm sure you would agree. Well, I guess in your world I can have an opinion so long as it lines up with yours. I think you are moronic about this struggle in South Korea.
South Koreans are struggling to find a reason to protest. They are struggling to find the decency to not hit people who are put in place to keep them from assaulting others. Destroying property. All for a cause that is basically bullshit. They are out there protesting U.S. Beef. Not the holocaust. Not Civil Rights. You are an idiot. Don't draw comparisons to struggles that were meaningful to this bullshit. You insult the memory of true revolutionaries.
Your position sounds like you are one of those people who revolts just for the sake of it. Blah Blah Blah. Yet I'm sure you have a bank account. I'm sure you pay taxes on gas on your plane ride over here. You lip-service imbeciles gripe about the system but all hell breaks loose if you don't have your morning starbucks.
I'm about as liberal as it gets. I support equality. I support gay marriage and rights. I support social justice.
I do not support a bunch of idiots who don't have to eat American beef even if it is in this country. Whose position for the safety of said meat is utterly retarded given their own country doesn't even test meat to nearly the standards America does. I do not support such assclowns. They have nothing on the Democracy Movement in Korea, nothing on true Civil Rights Leaders.
This isn't about getting equality. It is about expressing inadequacy, anger, and ignorance in a harmful way. It hurts others. Therein is where the tyranny lies.
Not in your deluded schizoid brain. Take your happy pills, go protest against yourself in the mirror.
I'm not taking your idiotic bait any longer.
Peace Out Troll,
Traxxe |
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Captain Corea
Joined: 28 Feb 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 4:38 am Post subject: |
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I watched the evening news on MBC tonight and they covered the protests.
I really am fine with them not running a 24/7 feed from the place.
The protest numbers are dwindling, and I believe the vast majority of koreans are getting quite sick of it all. |
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ESL Milk "Everyday
Joined: 12 Sep 2007
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| Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 6:16 am Post subject: |
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Maybe it's just me, but it seems like this shift in the protesters sentiments means they've actually subconsciously realized they were wrong about the threat of Mad Cow and such, and it's all about LMB not listening to them in the first place, even though they were wrong.
So basically, the point is that the people should have a right to make totally stupid decisions rooted in their own ignorance and have their leader carry them out, even if he is smarter and more capable and informed than his people... because that's what democracy means to these Koreans.
So forget about equal rights for all races and genders, forget about ending the exploitation of foreign workers being forced into the sex trade by greedy Korean businessmen, forget about taking down big tobacco, forget about tackling pollution, forget about the wars killing thousands every month, forget about genocide, the AIDS pandemic, and all the other unimportant things in the world... let's fight for our right to make complete asses of ourselves in front of the world based on some media-fueled hysteria and our general overall ignorance and inability to think for ourselves.
Move over, Martin Luther King, take a hike Ghandi, and Rosa Parks you silly black person, why don't you go back to Africa ('Africa! Giggle giggle.)... the Koreans are here and they are ready to fight for the most important cause in the entire world.... namely, their right to be completely and utterly stupid while also telling everyone else what to do.
This really does leave me wondering, though... WHY didn't LMB have an answer right away when the people were first getting upset about it all? How could he have not known what was happening??? He had the truth on his side and he didn't use it... either because he never thought that the people would be so stupid, or the media so vile... or because he just didn't care. It's mind-boggling!!! |
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Beej
Joined: 05 Mar 2005
Location: Eungam Loop
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| Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 6:22 am Post subject: |
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| Koreans are protesting because their lives are shit. Plain and simple. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 7:20 am Post subject: |
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| bacasper wrote: |
| Does anyone have the data on exactly how many cases of BSE (Mad Cow), both fatal and non-fatal, there have been in Korea? |
No thanks to you guys, I found the information myself.
No case of vCJD [disease humans get from cows with BSE] has been reported in Korea.
So all these people are going wild over something that doesn't even exist in Korea? Has anyone told the protesters?
Someone fill me in. I am missing something here. How did it get to this point?
So is this a Korean version of a witchhunt? |
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Captain Corea
Joined: 28 Feb 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 2:19 pm Post subject: |
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| bacasper wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| Does anyone have the data on exactly how many cases of BSE (Mad Cow), both fatal and non-fatal, there have been in Korea? |
No thanks to you guys, I found the information myself.
No case of vCJD [disease humans get from cows with BSE] has been reported in Korea.
So all these people are going wild over something that doesn't even exist in Korea? Has anyone told the protesters?
Someone fill me in. I am missing something here. How did it get to this point?
So is this a Korean version of a witchhunt? |
While I think that the majority of the protester's claims are ridiculous, your point has two flaws:
1. MCD has never been found, yes... but it has not been looked for either.
2. The protesters are worried about the IMPORTATION of infected/tainted beef... not of their own stock. |
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Beej
Joined: 05 Mar 2005
Location: Eungam Loop
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| Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 2:47 pm Post subject: |
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| Captain Corea wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| Does anyone have the data on exactly how many cases of BSE (Mad Cow), both fatal and non-fatal, there have been in Korea? |
No thanks to you guys, I found the information myself.
No case of vCJD [disease humans get from cows with BSE] has been reported in Korea.
So all these people are going wild over something that doesn't even exist in Korea? Has anyone told the protesters?
Someone fill me in. I am missing something here. How did it get to this point?
So is this a Korean version of a witchhunt? |
While I think that the majority of the protester's claims are ridiculous, your point has two flaws:
1. MCD has never been found, yes... but it has not been looked for either.
2. The protesters are worried about the IMPORTATION of infected/tainted beef... not of their own stock. |
Actually despite the ban on US beef in 2003, American beef has hit the Korean market. Go to the basement of namdaemun market. Lots of black market beef off the base. If it was dangerous we would have heard about it by now. |
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