Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Dev]

If you want to know what started the economic collapse and great disparity of wealth between the rich and the rapidly disappearing middle class, check out this recent critically acclaimed documentary on You Tube (while it's still there).
http://youtu.be/7iW1SHPgUAQ

[Stout]

The films traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today.

New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, shock and awe warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.

The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas through our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theatres for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet's coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

Substitute the patients in the movie with the Korean Peninsula, and voila, you get a thoroughly dominated and obedient South Korea. Good boy, Hanguk. Fighting!

[comm]

I'm a sucker for documentaries on economics.
This one does a great job of explaining how government corruption and crony capitalism have become the international norm. Politicians create and maintain the appearance of crisis, military-industrial companies get paid to provide the appearance of solutions, and politicians receive funding for their trouble.

Similarly, crony capitalism destroyed the prospects of former Soviet states to rise from the ashes of Communism. One of my favorite economics professors was from the Ukraine and told a lot of stories about how the general population was cheated out of opportunities for owning portions of formerly state-owned enterprises.

The trouble is, the documentary downplays the tragedy of crony capitalism and corruption by laying the blame on the economic philosophies of Friedman and Hayek. These economists fervently opposed government involvement (and preferential treatment) within a market system. The authors go on to promote Keynesian involvement by the government, which (in addition to promoting crony capitalism such as Solyndra) has a record of failing in debt-burdened states.

It gave a lot of good information that most people don't know about, but should. However, it completely fails to support its actual conclusion.

[Stout]

[Stout]

The video also details how the shock therapy experiments of the 1950's have been applied to torture techniques used by the Pentagon at places like Guantanamo Bay, as well as other applications where after the public suffers some type of shock via natural disaster or economic collapse, they are taken advantage of by the government.

Many people accussed of ploting against the US have turned out to be innocent, as were thousands who were massacred here before and during the Korean War. This conditioned people here to simply give up and follow orders, even if it means settling for a life of perpetual study and work around the clock, while the fat cats ball it up with failed actresses and singers in Kangnam room salons.

Below is the witness given by a man incarcerated in Guantanamo for 7 years, then released when his innocence was proven-

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/my-guantanamo-nightmare.html

My Guant�namo Nightmare
By LAKHDAR BOUMEDIENE
Published: January 7, 2012

Opinion: Notes From a Guant�namo Survivor (January 8, 2012) ON Wednesday, America�s detention camp at Guant�namo Bay will have been open for 10 years. For seven of them, I was held there without explanation or charge. During that time my daughters grew up without me. They were toddlers when I was imprisoned, and were never allowed to visit or speak to me by phone. Most of their letters were returned as �undeliverable,� and the few that I received were so thoroughly and thoughtlessly censored that their messages of love and support were lost.

Some American politicians say that people at Guant�namo are terrorists, but I have never been a terrorist. Had I been brought before a court when I was seized, my children�s lives would not have been torn apart, and my family would not have been thrown into poverty. It was only after the United States Supreme Court ordered the government to defend its actions before a federal judge that I was finally able to clear my name and be with them again.

I left Algeria in 1990 to work abroad. In 1997 my family and I moved to Bosnia and Herzegovina at the request of my employer, the Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates. I served in the Sarajevo office as director of humanitarian aid for children who had lost relatives to violence during the Balkan conflicts. In 1998, I became a Bosnian citizen. We had a good life, but all of that changed after 9/11.

When I arrived at work on the morning of Oct. 19, 2001, an intelligence officer was waiting for me. He asked me to accompany him to answer questions. I did so, voluntarily � but afterward I was told that I could not go home. The United States had demanded that local authorities arrest me and five other men. News reports at the time said the United States believed that I was plotting to blow up its embassy in Sarajevo. I had never � for a second � considered this.

The fact that the United States had made a mistake was clear from the beginning. Bosnia�s highest court investigated the American claim, found that there was no evidence against me and ordered my release. But instead, the moment I was released American agents seized me and the five others. We were tied up like animals and flown to Guant�namo, the American naval base in Cuba. I arrived on Jan. 20, 2002.

I still had faith in American justice. I believed my captors would quickly realize their mistake and let me go. But when I would not give the interrogators the answers they wanted � how could I, when I had done nothing wrong? � they became more and more brutal. I was kept awake for many days straight. I was forced to remain in painful positions for hours at a time. These are things I do not want to write about; I want only to forget.

I went on a hunger strike for two years because no one would tell me why I was being imprisoned. Twice each day my captors would shove a tube up my nose, down my throat and into my stomach so they could pour food into me. It was excruciating, but I was innocent and so I kept up my protest.

In 2008, my demand for a fair legal process went all the way to America�s highest court. In a decision that bears my name, the Supreme Court declared that �the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.� It ruled that prisoners like me, no matter how serious the accusations, have a right to a day in court. The Supreme Court recognized a basic truth: the government makes mistakes. And the court said that because �the consequence of error may be detention of persons for the duration of hostilities that may last a generation or more, this is a risk too significant to ignore.�

Five months later, Judge Richard J. Leon, of the Federal District Court in Washington, reviewed all of the reasons offered to justify my imprisonment, including secret information I never saw or heard. The government abandoned its claim of an embassy bomb plot just before the judge could hear it. After the hearing, he ordered the government to free me and four other men who had been arrested in Bosnia.

I will never forget sitting with the four other men in a squalid room at Guant�namo, listening over a fuzzy speaker as Judge Leon read his decision in a Washington courtroom. He implored the government not to appeal his ruling, because �seven years of waiting for our legal system to give them an answer to a question so important is, in my judgment, more than plenty.� I was freed, at last, on May 15, 2009.

Today, I live in Provence with my wife and children. France has given us a home, and a new start. I have experienced the pleasure of reacquainting myself with my daughters and, in August 2010, the joy of welcoming a new son, Yousef. I am learning to drive, attending vocational training and rebuilding my life. I hope to work again serving others, but so far the fact that I spent seven and a half years as a Guant�namo prisoner has meant that only a few human rights organizations have seriously considered hiring me. I do not like to think of Guant�namo. The memories are filled with pain. But I share my story because 171 men remain there. Among them is Belkacem Bensayah, who was seized in Bosnia and sent to Guant�namo with me.

About 90 prisoners have been cleared for transfer out of Guant�namo. Some of them are from countries like Syria or China � where they would face torture if sent home � or Yemen, which the United States considers unstable. And so they sit as captives, with no end in sight � not because they are dangerous, not because they attacked America, but because the stigma of Guant�namo means they have no place to go, and America will not give a home to even one of them.

I�m told that my Supreme Court case is now read in law schools. Perhaps one day that will give me satisfaction, but so long as Guant�namo stays open and innocent men remain there, my thoughts will be with those left behind in that place of suffering and injustice.

Lakhdar Boumediene was the lead plaintiff in Boumediene v. Bush. He was in military custody at Guant�namo Bay from 2002 to 2009. This essay was translated by Felice Bezri from the Arabic.

[comm]

[Stout]

[Fat_Elvis]

[Kuros]

[visitorq]

[Fat_Elvis]

Visitorq, once again you just engage in ad hominems rather than address the substance of what I said. And I am well aware of the difference between Austrian economic theory and monetarism.

[visitorq]

[Kimbop]