The North Korea Crisis Is Made in USA

Pyongyang, North Korea, after firebombing by the United States in the early 1950s

Those memes equating Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un might make people feel better, but this crisis is strictly Made In USA.

Sure, I have misgivings about the nature of the regime in North Korea, but it must be said that most of what passes for news about the DPRK in the US is transparent and frankly racist nonsense. My general policy is, to quote somebody famous, no investigation no right to speak, which means when confronted by dubious propaganda about North Korea meant to desensitize Americans to the genocidal and aggressive foreign policy of our own government, I choose my words carefully. What most of us need to know about the DPRK is that it is a tiny and relatively poor country that has been deliberately isolated from the world economy for over sixty years. It spent forty years as a brutally enslaved colony of Japan, and half the country has been occupied by American troops ever since. The US and its allies murdered millions of people as they flattened it in a war, actually a thinly disguised war against China, that they couldn't actually win, which is testimony to the resilience of the Korean people. Whether the government in North Korea is something North Koreans like is frankly beside the point. The bottom line must be that Americans don't get to choose how other countries are governed. Now is not really the time to be debating the nature of a society under Washington's lethal sights: now is the time to understand where the real enemies of peace and humanity lie.

The truth is that the US government doesn't care about what kind of government exists in North Korea (and tbh, though Trump's rhetoric is raw and frightening, it's not substantively different than threats made by every single US president since Truman). They don't care about the people in North Korea. Certainly a government that constantly renews blank checks to Saudi Arabia and apartheid Israel, and was the last major international ally of racist white minority ruled South Africa, couldn't be too worried about the people of North Korea. A country that threatens to incinerate an entire population is actually concerned about that population? You BELIEVE that?

This is the thing we must all be clear on: there is no equation between Trump and Kim; there is no equation of "threat" between the tiny DPRK and the massively armed USA. I read a statistic that said DPRK's military budget was less than that of the NYPD. The only actual threat is the one made by the United States. What has actually happened is that the DPRK has "threatened" to defend itself from aggression. The DPRK's posture is entirely provoked by the existential threat that the US's military machine, right on its borders, poses to its right of self-determination. I don't like nukes, but I will not condemn a nation for choosing a desperate option to stop a global bully.

Remember what happened to "crazy" Saddam Hussein, or more importantly, his country after US invasion. To "crazy" Gaddafi or more importantly, his country after US bombing. When you call Kim Jong Un "crazy," you're participating in a racist charade. Tell me the name of another North Korean person why don't you?

There is a country where people are in prison camps, even slave labor camps. There is a country where people are forced to eat garbage, where unemployment is chronic. There is a country where people are killed with total impunity by law enforcement. There is a country where dissent is demonized by the political castes, where dissenters are blacklisted from employment. There is a country which threatens its neighbors, that attacks sovereign nations unprovoked, that sends its armies across the world in blood-orgies of murder. There is a country that steals from others. There is a country whose elections are farces. There is a country where family and financial connections ensure political and social influence. There is a country where warlike mobs can be pushed to bloodlust through chants and manipulation. There is a country whose residents routinely fantasize about how they should "take out" anybody they choose on the world stage. That country is not North Korea, it's the USA.

Let's recognize the real threat and deal with it. We're running out of time. No, Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump are not equal in any way, and your oh-so-funny Kim Jong Un memes are the equivalent of making ching-chong faces; to call them racist is to be making an understatement.
It is without contest. The main threat to humanity is the one in Washington.

---

(Crossposted from my personal Facebook. I have had plenty to say in the months since the election, none of which involves me changing my mind about my abstention, but for various reasons have decided to cut back on blogging here. But this seemed like a good milestone to add here for the record. I'm not abandoning this blog, I actually refer to it myself a lot, but especially until I finish my book project I can't commit here to return to a regular schedule. Comments always welcome. See you next time!)

Anti-Americana: Anti-Imperialist Spectacle

This is a tourist postcard from Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic Republic of Korea. While tourism is not a major industry in North Korea, it does serve a public relations role in attempting to counteract the dominant western propaganda narrative built on standard anti-communist tropes of drudges walking around in a gray slave society. As a resident of the United States, which specializes in the manufacture of such tropes, I find it hard to accurately speculate on the actual nature of North Korean society; I suspect it's a country like any other, full of people just trying to live their lives in peace. I would reject out of hand both the giant prison narrative and the competing official rainbows and unicorns one.

Back to our postcard, this seems to be a shot of a stage spectacular. There's a projection of a spinning globe and a choir bearing red flags; actors gather in clusters around the stage posed in composed vignettes that suggest the dynamic groupings of people shown on propaganda posters. What's going on here?
 

Turning the card over, we get to the crux of the matter. The caption reads: "The revolutionary peoples of the world, unite more firmly under the banner of anti-imperialist, anti-U.S. struggle, and mutilate the U.S. imperialists in all parts!" Ouch!

The card doesn't say which, but this is clearly some kind of revolutionary theater production. As in cultural-revolution-era China, in North Korea there are a number of officially sanctioned revolutionary plays, operas, dances and films. One of them, "Sea of Blood," a story of resistance to the Japanese occupation, has apparently been running continuously since 1971. Another, "The Flower Girl," also about the years of resistance to Japan, is attributed to Great Leader Kim Il Sung himself. Sadly, I can't tell what work is represented on this postcard. But I'd sure like to see the show! I'm guessing this card is from the 1970s.

Anti-Americana: Kids Do the Darnedest Things

 

An Anti-Americana twofer today, with two North Korean images of unknown provenance. Both show cartoonish militarized children — an airman, a nurse, a soldier, and a seaman — using the tools of their trade to stick it to the man, in the form of a helmeted U.S. soldier. In the top image, the U.S. imperialist is joined by a Japanese imperialist: the North Koreans have long memories, not easily forgiving the brutal, forty year occupation of Korea in the first half of the 20th century.

I recognize these classically composed propaganda images cross the line from archetype to stereotype; still, I can't get enough of 'em. Frankly, with all the hypocritical sabre-rattling against Syria, I can't think of a nicer target for derision than U.S. imperialism.

If you enjoy these images, Anti-Americana is a regular feature here on the Cahokian; see old entries here. You can also subscribe to my pinterest feed of Anti-Americana by going here and clicking "follow." Also, check out the "Anti-Imperialist League" on facebook, in which I'll be trying to contextualize and historicize today's struggles in the long annals of organized popular resistance.

Anti-Americana: Common Interests

Dating from the 1960s, when the Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) was a little more self-identified with the socialist camp, this poster shows an armed Korean and and a very Che-looking armed Cuban bayoneting a cowering American figure in the corner who seems to look a lot like U.S. President Lyndon Baynes Johnson (LBJ). The flags are those of North Korea and Cuba, and sadly, once again my ignorance of Korean means I have no idea what the caption says. It's a classic distillation of the North Korean anti-American propaganda style.

North Korea and Cuba have of course both defied the presence of the strongest anti-Communist military power camped out right on their borders for decades. The threat to the Cuban and North Korean governments is evident every day still in 2013. Solidarity apparently actually helps!

In 1960, Che Guevara actually visited the DPRK on behalf of revolutionary Cuba, and here is a brief clip of him sitting down with DPRK leader Kim Il Sung. 

Anti-Americana: Take That, Redux

As it has done regularly since the 1950s, the DPRK (North Korea) has issued a new propaganda postage stamp depicting Korean resistance to US aggression. In the familiar "Take That" tableaux used on dozens of similar North Korean images, a soldier in a helmet labelled "US" cringes with his nuclear weapons in the corner of the design, while an angry Korean soldier towers above him. While previous images have shown workers with sledgehammers or clubs, or soldiers with bayonets, this one shows a soldier gripping the barrel of his rifle about to slam the unlucky American with the gun's stock.

I'm guessing the design is based on a a street poster, but I'm not sure, and sadly I don't read Korean so I can't guess at what specifically the slogans on the images say. The release of these stamps obviously corresponds to the current heightened tension between the DPRK and the United States.

Similarly-themed DPRK stamps from 1971 and 1969

Click on the "stamps" link here to see many more examples of how postage stamps have been transformed into tiny propaganda statements.  Here's two more from decades past.

Previous propaganda poster issue from 2010

In 2010 the DPRK reminded us not only of resistance to US imperialism (right) but also the long history of resistance to Japanese imperialism (left). It's not widely remembered here, but Japan colonized Korea in 1905, doing its utmost to destroy indigenous Korean culture and turn Korea into a source of cheap labor for the rising Japanese military-industrial complex. Though Korean communist forces and the Russian Army brought an end to Japanese occupation in 1945, many have accused Japan of continuing to cast a covetous eye on the peninsula.

Click on the images to see them larger. For more in the "Anti-Americana" series of propaganda images click here.

Anti-Americana: We'll Sink Your Battleship

2013 stamp and postcard from the DPRK

Fresh off the presses in February of this year, this new stamp and postcard from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (that's North Korea in popular parlance) honoring the vigilance of the DPRK military. Just in time for this year's Spring sabre-rattling, it shows a hypothetical artillery blow against an attacking American battleship. Designed in glorious North Korean agitprop posterese, this bright and colorful design is part of a series of four, though the only one to visually note whom the Korean military is defending itself against.

Speaking of sabre-rattling, this year's episode is marked by unprecedented amounts of bullshit from the US government and its media parrots. Every news report in the American media is full of talk of "threats" from North Korea. I'm amazed that the US can send high-tech bombers to actually practice dropping bombs over North Korea right in neighboring South Korea, and the North Korean response is called a "threat" with a straight face. I call that self-defense.

The repulsive neoliberal New York Times has even run an OpEd piece called "Bomb North Korea, Before It's Too Late," which calls for going ahead and starting a way. Never mind the genocide. Never mind the previous time, 60 years ago, when the USA literally flattened every city in North Korea and still couldn't defeat the North. What the heck, what's another 3 million lives lost?

Counterpunch recently ran an interview with some unnamed North Koreans. It should be required reading for all the Americans buying into the narrative of North Korea as some kind of crazed renegade bully. (As if a tiny poor country could bully the largest military power on earth). Here's a few choice extracts, quotations from DPRK citizens:

"The DPRK negotiated with the U.S., but the U.S. broke agreements, and increased sanctions five times. When the DPRK would agree to some terms, the U.S. would raise the ante. The U.S. had said we cannot have nuclear power, because we could use it for bombs. We cannot have satellites because the missiles we send them into space with can be used as military missiles. These they these things can have dual purpose, one civilian, one military.  They deny us food because they say it can be used to feed the military. If we kept going along with this, they would say we cannot have kitchen knives because we could use them for fighting.
There are slave states and noble states. Noble states develop their own technological infrastructure, GPS, weather reporting, etc., so need satellites. These days satellites are used for many things. If your country doesn’t have your own technology, you end up a slave state, dependent on other countries.  Noble countries are in control of their own development and have a future.
Maybe without nuclear weapons we could already have been attacked by the US in a war. Now our people can live more peacefully. The people of the DPRK are proud we have nuclear weapons, they are a guarantee of peace.  Only we on our own can safeguard the peace.
The US has over 1000 nuclear weapons in South Korea – nuclear artillery, nuclear missiles, nuclear bombs, nuclear landmines.
The DPRK has called for a nuclear free Korean peninsula, but this call has been ignored. Now that we saw no choice but to develop nuclear weapons to defend ourselves, we are sanctioned. This is a double standard insulting to our people."

Once again, the issue is not whether or not the government of the DPRK is more or less repressive than our own; the issue is whether North Korea has the right to stand up, as a sovereign nation, to provocation from the U.S. To me, the answer is clear, and an unqualified yes. 

Defend North Korea against imperialist attack!
 

Anti-Americana: Picasso's "Other" Massacre Memorial

Pablo Picasso's "Massacre in Korea," 1951

Mention Spanish artist Pablo Picasso in the context of political art and everybody thinks of "Guernica," right? His brilliant, massive canvas memorializing the bombing of the civilians of Guernica during the Spanish civil war by Nationalist forces is justifiably famous. Its haunting, angularly abstract imagery depicts the cruel murderous chaotic intensity of a bombed village in ways that are immediately affecting and unforgettable. "Guernica" is a painting that is rightfully taught to students (at least it was when I was in school), and rightfully holds a central position in the annals of 20th-century political art.

Turns out there is another work by Picasso that is not so widely taught or recognized, hanging in the Picasso museum in Paris. It's called "Massacre in Korea," dates from 1951, and depicts the massacre of Korean civilians at Sinchon by American forces early in what is misleadingly called in the United States "the Korean War."

I confess to having seen photographs of this painting before, but never questioned its subject matter until I read its title. I suspect that's no accident. Although it's acknowledged that Picasso was a leftist for much of his life, it's obvious that Picasso's truth-telling about the uncomfortable comparison between the murderous forces of Spanish fascism and US imperialism is anathema to popular art critics. How coldly hypocritical that this painting brilliantly depicting the murder of civilians by a robotized, dehumanized military machine would be quietly ignored because it runs counter to the official myths about what US imperialism was up to in Korea.

I've written repeatedly that North Korea's government is hardly the model of an egalitarian, forward-thinking socialist society. But whenever you hear the DPRK demonized on American TV, or read some fearful screed about the threat posed by the North Korean nuclear program, remember this painting. Remember who did what to whom. Guernica, Sinchon: Exactly the same things. Don't be fooled by the whining of bullies.

Anti-Americana: Burn, Baby, Burn

Two more stamps from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), from 1971 and apparently produced but withdrawn or not officially issued. These are some kind of rarities; I copped the graphics from ebay. I don't know the theme or circumstances of this issue, but the top value clearly shows the Statue of Liberty and the US Capitol engulfed in flames so it's not hard to guess what these stamps are about. The foreground figure is breaking chains of oppression, and is probably a South Korean revolutionary. The bottom stamp shows a militiaman slamming a US soldier whose helmet has gone flying; in the foreground is an industrial worker. These are all common archetypes in North Korean iconography. World anti-imperialist sentiment was at its height in 1971; the American war against Vietnam having taken a particularly ugly and genocidal turn.

Anti-American art is an irregular feature here at the Cahokian: for more click here.

Kim Jong-Il and the U.S.: Of Tyrants Great & Small

As the whole world knows now, the "Dear Leader" of the self-proclaimed Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Kim Jong-Il, died this weekend.

By all accounts Kim, the son of North Korea's first leader Kim Il Sung and the father of the supposed next leader, was a dictator who didn't stint on his own luxury while his country suffered the effects of international isolation — much of it self-inflicted — in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union. Starvation, malnutrition, poverty, and technologically backward conditions are said to be the rule in the northern half of the Korean peninsula.

With his chubby, gnomish build and his poofy bouffant hairdo, Kim was easily caricatured; the personality cult built on his father that was grafted onto his own relatively gloryless history seemed to outsiders as particularly bizarre and forced. The rule of Kim's Workers Party is by most reports brutal and harsh; while Kim's taste in fine liquors seems corrupt and despotic. Defended politically by a homegrown nationalist ideology with only tenuous links to the Marxist-Leninist ideology that spawned it, the DPRK is big on mass spectacle, dramatic gesture, preposterous claim, and closely guarded secrecy. Once a technological overachiever, North Korea fell behind the South in most areas excluding perhaps weapons technology: under Kim Jong-Il the DPRK seems to have developed working nuclear weapons.

I don't expect history to be particularly kind to Kim Jong-Il. But that said, I'm finding much about the blogosphere's celebration of his passing to be a self-righteous frenzy of pro-imperialist propaganda.

Even satirical website Gawker called out the internet commentariat for its widespread promotion of the song "I'm so Ronery" from the animated film "World Police: Team America" that features a puppetized Kim Jong-il character: "Twitter Relates to Death of Kim Jong-il By Endlessly Referring to Stupid Racist Song."

Amidst all the encomia for a new era in Korea and for freedom for the people of the DPRK, one must ask the question, who exactly will be bringing that freedom to the north?

Because here are truths that should not be overlooked: for the past sixty years North Korea has been parked between the three most powerful military nations in the world. The American military fully occupies South Korea with massive military might including nuclear weapons aimed right at the people of the DPRK. Goaded on by the US the South Korean military has a long history of provocation against the North.

On the radio this morning I heard a government official of the DPRK, distraught over Kim's death, defending his country against its international ill repute. One of the things he said was that the U.S. that threatens his country is one of the worst human rights violators in the world. It came across as a laugh-line, a punchline to show how removed from reality the North Koreans are. But put yourself in their shoes. There is plenty of evidence that the scale of American tyranny dwarfs anything that the DPRK is capable of, especially when you consider how the U.S. treats the world around it as its exclusive reserve.

During the American war on Korea, two million Koreans were killed; including hundreds and hundreds of thousands of civilians. While history doesn't point to any clean hands in that conflict, the U.S. is absolutely guilty of thousands of war crimes against innocent civilians, and the South Korean dictatorship propped up by the U.S. for years after the war ran death squads against suspected Communists in the south.

Consider the wave of repression in this country against #OWS encampments. Students and workers beaten and gassed with chemical weapons? That wasn't in Pyongyang.

Consider this angry OpEd piece in the New York Times this weekend, by a law-abiding, gainfully-employed young African-American man named Nicholas Peart who has been repeatedly stopped, harassed, frisked, and thrown to the ground by the NY city police as part of the "stop and frisk" campaign that sees all young black men as potential criminals: "It feels like an important thing to be part of a community of hundreds of thousands of people who are wrongfully stopped on their way to work, school, church or shopping, and are patted down or worse by the police though they carry no weapon; and searched for no reason other than the color of their skin..."

Consider this fact also reported in the New York Times: "The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners....The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London. China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison.... "Far from serving as a model for the world, contemporary America is viewed with horror," James Whitman, a specialist in comparative law at Yale, wrote last year in Social Research. "Certainly there are no European governments sending delegations to learn from us about how to manage prisons." Prison sentences here have become "vastly harsher than in any other country to which the United States would ordinarily be compared..."

The U.S. has overthrown or helped overthrow the governments of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya in the past decade. It attacks people with utter impunity in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. It supplies weapons to repressive governments around the world: weapons that are actually used, as in Egypt and Palestine. If you were in the DPRK wouldn't you feel threatened?

The U.S. has a habit of portraying the rulers of countries it doesn't like "madmen," or "insane." This as half of our own country prepares to rally around someone like Newt Gingrich? It's easy to call attention to Kim Jong-il's eccentricities. But isn't that just awfully convenient? The U.S. learned long ago that if you dehumanize your enemies you can eliminate them as carelessly as they do with stray kittens at the Humane Society.

The DPRK is a one-party state. Do you feel that our acclaimed two-party state, our supposed democracy, actually represents you? I sure don't.

Life is probably much easier in the United States than in the DPRK. The fact that this is the richest country in the world, courtesy of the exploitation of the world's resources, kind of helps make that so. It's true I can write this blog here while I couldn't in Pyongyang: But we'll see how seriously the government starts applying before the NDAA makes that no longer true. The NDAA is certainly full of repressive laws that Kim Jong-Il would love. Not sure what that makes Barack Obama...are you?

Anyway my point is not to glorify North Korea, nor to lionize the late Kim Jong-Il. He's certainly not my dear leader.

But it's not that simple. Don't believe the hype. The so-called "Free World" is about as accurately named as the "People's Democratic Republic" of Korea. This isn't the occasion for gloating. We in the U.S. have serious work to do before we can be calling the kettles of the world black.

Our enemy is here at home, first.

Image shows a sheet of stamps from the DPRK, 2011, showing achievements of Kim Jong-Il.

Anti-Americana: Don't You Have Anything in a "Love" Stamp?

The United States Postal Service issued its first "Love" stamp in 1973...almost forty years ago now. I'm imagining it wasn't inspired by this stamp issued — but then withdrawn — the previous year by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. I don't know why the North Korean government issued this stamp and then changed its mind, it's certainly no less viscerally rage-filled and violent than the dozens of other Anti-American postage stamps they'd already released. Not being able to read a word of Korean, I can't translate its clearly shouted slogan, and can't spot an error of symbolism that might have embarrassed the political monitors of the North Korean post office.

The design is boilerplate: a pair of American soldiers and a shattered stars-and-stripes are being smooshed by a giant red fist. The nuclear weapon brandished by one of the soldiers lies broken in two. Man, I hope that thing doesn't go off. Ah, 1972. I imagine it's pretty scary to live in a teeny tiny country, even a repressive one like the DPRK, knowing that a whole lot of nukes are pointed at you from right across a DMZ.

Did North Korean sweethearts use this stamp on their love letters?

(Anti-Americana is an ongoing Cahokian series: click here for almost 200 more propaganda images from around the world.)

"Homefront" Video Game: The Bully's Whine

Back in the 1980s in the dying days of the cold war, the right wing had an aggrieved fantasy of the communist threat. In B-movies such as the absolutely hideous "Red Dawn," which depicted homegrown heroes fighting off a Soviet invasion of the United States, the right wing acted out its political paranoia in the cultural sphere. Actually it was more than paranoia: it was a bully's feigned cry of outrage, the bully pretending it was wounded as it laid its jackboot on the neck of its opponent. The end of the cold war revealed what an unequal contest it had been as the Soviet world disappeared into the ether.

A poster in the subway caught my eye this past week; it was a version of the graphic above (click on the image to see it in larger detail). It's a compelling image of a wounded rugged American blindfolded by a North Korean star: in the background North Korean flags hang off the Transamerica building and the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco. It's a poster for a new shoot-em-up video game from Kaos called "Homefront." It turns out this a distopian science-fiction video game about a near future where North Korea (!) has taken over the western half of the United States, resisted by brave rebels like the one shown. The game's story is actually written by right-wing activist John Milius, one of the writers behind the old "Red Dawn." Milius is a board member of the National Rifle Association.

Curious, I browsed the elaborate website for "Homefront." It's a slick production. Interspersed with clips from the ultra-violent game itself are fake news documents and films about the North Korean occupation, its brutal oppression of real America, and the war of resistance. Below is a screenshot from an amusing faux propaganda film showing little blonde children in occupied Des Moines wearing North Korean sashes and reciting a pledge of allegiance to the North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un. In another film a professed liberal explains that his wife has just blown herself up in a suicide bombing against the occupying North Koreans and promises to emulate her shortly. There are faked up pictures of North Korean occupation of the U.S. including walls covered with Kim Jong Un's visage. And lots and lots of violence and explosions.


All in good fun, right?

Not so fast. I was reading an excellent post on the "We Are Respectable Negroes" blog ("The Rotten Heart of White Conservatism or Are White Americans Oppressed?") about how white conservatives have a whole elaborate persecution complex that they are the new victims of racism. The pose acts as a cover for their anger and resentment at the changing world. Something similar is well-documented on gay blogs about how the Christianist right plays the oppressed victim at the hands of advocates of gay civil rights or marriage-equality advocates.

Well this game is straight out of those playbooks. It's almost Freudian in what it reveals about right wingers; how they need to justify their worldview in their own minds. And clicking around the slick "Homefront" website, one realizes with some disbelief that the "bad" guys are all Asians and the "good" guys are all white and blonde. It turns out "Homefront" has generated some controversy. It's banned in South Korea, and a Japanese version of the game was scoured of references to North Korea.

Here's the truth: the United States is the most powerful military machine the world has ever known. The world is its playground. Its military budget is larger than that of most of the other world's nations--combined. North Korea, run by an unattractive family dictatorship, is nobody's idea of a real socialist paradise. But it's also a tiny, tiny country. Its posture of militant defiance toward the United States might be bravado or might be foolhardy or might be legitimately necessary: the U.S. war machine has been camped out literal inches away from North Korea for fifty years. If the North Koreans may have developed nuclear weapons, it's guessed that they have a half dozen of these weapons. There's no evidence that their missile systems can accurately target anywhere further away than Japan (which it might be mentioned, brutally occupied Korea for fifty years). On the other hand, thousands of American nuclear weapons might be aimed at North Korea with the flip of a switch. Presumably hundreds of these weapons are already pointed at North Korea from American submarines hovering in international waters. It is absolutely laughable to suggest that North Korea might invade the United States. It's also obscene: the United States is actually, in the real world, the country with a record of invasion of smaller weaker countries including Korea.

So what is this game exactly? It's clearly part of the rightwing's propaganda juggernaut, in this case aimed at young people ill-informed about the real facts of world politics and of convenient military recruitment age. This game comes from the same impulse behind Republican rep. Peter King's witch-hunting congressional hearings against "the radicalization of the Muslim community" that began this week. It comes from the same impulse that has white Teabaggers blaming the economic crisis on ACORN and poor people, or blaming high unemployment on immigrants. These rightwingers have a pathological need to pretend to be the victims. But don't be fooled by this deflection: don't be distracted the flashing lights and pretty colors. This is the work of people trying to rationalize their own brutality, racism, entitlement, privilege and pro-imperialism.

For all these rightwingers' professed fear of brainwashing, here is a real example of a brainwashing tool. Just say CTRL-ALT-DELETE.

Anti-American Art: Traditional Korean Holiday

Repealing healthcare? Constitutional grandstanding? Crazy birther fundamentalists shouting from the gallery of Congress? Supreme Court justices saying women and gays are not legally protected by the Constitution? Let's avert our gaze from the falderol of Washington and return to the golden days of 1953, to the Day of Anti-US Struggle, the occasion of this very first North Korean stamp to trample the stars and stripes. Crudely designed, it shows North Korean soldiers at the front lines, crossing the barbed wire defenses, the ground below them a strange combination of smoke and American flag. This is apparently the traditional way the holiday is celebrated: This stamp was actually issued before the ceasefire that called a halt to the Korean War, so "Day of Anti-US Struggle" was a holiday you could really go out and celebrate the hard way. With a Congress like the one we have now, kinda makes you get back to those traditional holidays. I will try to find out which day exactly the "Day of Anti-US Struggle" is.

To see more stamps trashing America, many of them North Korean, click here.

Anti-American Art: The Fickle Finger of Fate

In honor of the failure of the Korean War to restart today, after provocative live-fire military exercises by South Korea off the coast of North Korea, here's a North Korean stamp from 1973 from a series calling for the reunification of the peninsula. I don't know what the caption on it says, but it's a giant finger (of God? Doubt it!) pointing at an American tank stationed in the barbed-wire no-man's land of the Demiiltarized Zone.

After a month of sabre-rattling, North Korea had threatened to respond to today's military exercises with, well, unspecified violent-sounding retribution. With American prodding the South Korean government went ahead anyway, and fortunately North Korea has responded with...more rhetoric. Everybody should be happy about that.

I read an article on the New York Times about Bill Richardson's peace-making trip to North Korea. Most people in the comments on the web post of this article called North Korea a "bully." I thought that was darkly hilarious....the residents of the most powerful nation in the world, whose military forces are camped out on the border of the tiny nation of North Korea, whose nuclear missiles and spy satellites are pointed at that tiny improverished nation, are callying North Korea the bully. Really, people?

Anti-American Art: Ninja Peek-a-boo

DADT repeal -- on or off? Obama -- sellout or pragmatist? Global warming, hey, it's effing COLD outside! Julian Assange -- hero or rapist? Let's take a break from today's confusing headlines and go back to basics courtesy of the reliable Democratic People's Republic of Korea propaganda machine.

"Don't be deceived by U.S. disguises" reads this atypically dour North Korean poster, more or less. That's a combination Ninja-US Military Policeman failing to hide himself very well behind an olive branch....see the dangling olives? Note the talons, the ruby red ring, the icy blue eyes, the sharp knife, and the lack of a Kim Jong Il pin. Now there's clear messaging. Beware!

Anti-American Art: Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot...

Here's a Cultural-Revolution-era Chinese poster showing a messenger, probably one of the Chinese "volunteers," bravely carrying a parcel through the battlelines, apparently defying a cowering crowd of wounded American GIs. Millions of Chinese turned the tide of the Korean war, rescuing the North from the American counteroffensive: it was de facto war between the new People's Republic of China and the U.S.A., and Korea was the battlefield. The Koreans and Chinese have been best buds ever since, even though their respective allegedly socialist ideologies have substantially diverged.

Or are they actually best buds? Among the speculations in the wake of the recent Wikileaks release of thousands of diplomatic cables are suggestions that elements of the Chinese government might be predisposed to allow the reunification of Korea under South Korean governance. I have to say I'm not sure I buy it. I don't think China feels responsibility for the DPRK regime: clearly the two countries do not share much actual political agreement, but that's not exactly the point. And while South Korea (and the U.S.) might be important trading partners for China's new world economic ambitions, I don't see China switching sides. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Chinese lost their lives in the Korean war.

More likely to me would be something akin to the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea in 1979 to kick out former ally Pol Pot. I could see the Chinese acting to replace Kim Jong Il's (or his son's) regime with one more docile.

Anti-American Art: Promises Promises

It's another sabre-rattling entry in our Anti-Americana series courtesy of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. "Let's Wipe Out the US Invaders Forever" is what this poster reads, as the people's righteous rifle butt smooshes the tiny (except for their noses) U.S. army soldiers and their errant nuke. Though this poster is several years old, the map and the island below it seem like an almost prescient depiction of the current situation...I wonder what the Korean says on the island. I wonder if it's supposed to be Yeonpyeong, which is after all in vaguely disputed waters.

War between North Korea and South Korea or the U.S. would not be a good thing. Frankly, the American decision to send an aircraft carrier to the region, displeasing China, to engage in massive military maneuvers just off the coast of North Korea seems like a really really stupid idea.

Let me take this moment to recommend a post at Brother Peacemaker's blog, "Questions for a Docile Population." Brother describes two populations brainwashed to believe everything their government tells them. One of these peoples is the North Korean. You go figure out the second.

Anti-American Art: Victorious North Korea

In honor of yesterday's shelling of Yeonpyeong Island by the army of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, here's a stamp from North Korea ca. 1993 commemorating the "40th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Liberation War." That's father of the nation Kim Il Sung standing in the wreckage of Pyongyang "on the evening of the day of victory in the war" in 1953, his advisors already rushing up to him with plans to rebuild, watching celebratory fireworks. Click on the image to see this panoramic painting in its full glory.

As for yesterday's military confrontation, as of this writing the shelling hasn't resumed, and most of the Western media is of course suggesting the North Korean attack was unbridled aggression. Which it may have been. Or not. The NY Times does report, "The attack on Yeonpyeong came as 70,000 South Korean troops were beginning an annual nationwide military drill called Safeguarding the Nation. The exercise has been sharply criticized by Pyongyang as “simulating an invasion of the North” and “a means to provoke a war.” The official North Korean news agency said in a brief statement on Tuesday night that the South “recklessly fired into our sea area.”

Thank goodness for our independent media. (That's sarcasm, by the way.) With the earlier sinking of the South Korean warship the Cheonan, the media has assured us that it was the work of the dastardly North Koreans, a cry for help from the deranged family dictatorship of the Kims. So what's next? At the risk of courting conspiracy theory territory, let's take a brief history lesson. (Let me add that while I'm not actually a fan of what appears to be a dictatorship in North Korea, I do think the North Koreans have every right to defend themselves against American provocation. A just peace would be better.)

* Remember the Maine! The FoxNews of its day egged the U.S. into war with Spain after the USS Maine exploded in Havana, Cuba in 1898. While the explosion was blamed on the evil Spanish empire, no cause or claim was found, and one investigation years afterward suggested the Maine exploded because of an onboard coal fire.

* The Tonkin Gulf Resolution. From President Johnson's 1964 speech: "Last night I announced to the American people that the North Vietnamese regime had conducted further deliberate attacks against U.S. naval vessels operating in international waters, and I had therefore directed air action against gunboats and supporting facilities used in these hostile operations. This air action has now been carried out with substantial damage to the boats and facilities....America keeps her word. Here as elsewhere, we must and shall honor our commitments.... In recent months, the actions of the North Vietnamese regime have become steadily more threatening...As President of the United States I have concluded that I should now ask the Congress, on its part, to join in affirming the national determination that all such attacks will be met, and that the United States will continue in its basic policy of assisting the free nations of the area to defend their freedom. As I have repeatedly made clear, the United States intends no rashness, and seeks no wider war." Shortly thereafter, the US Congress gave authority to Johnson to begin the Vietnam War. And oh wait, there was no actual North Vietnamese attack on a US ship in the Gulf of Tonkin. The media failed to question the official accounts and urged Americans to back Johnson and Congress's resolve to punish the Vietnamese.

* From Answers.com: "Although war is a time of hardships and usually poverty, World War 2 had many positive effects for America. One point of prosper was economy. Some said that the Second World War put an end to the Great Depression." So since the current small wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have done nothing but drain the U.S. economy, how 'bout a really big war with China to make things right? China has nukes but doesn't have anything like the old Soviet Union's array of ICBMs. It could be the perfect solution!

Stay tuned...

P.S. See my earlier post here for an example of how the NY Times chooses to promote unsubstantiated claims about North Korean "aggression."

Anti-American Art: The Devil in the Details

Above is a souvenir sheet of stamps issued for the 1970 Congress of the Workers Party of Korea, the same august body that just met to annoint a probable successor to the ailing Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader of the People's Democratic Republic of Korea. Back in 1970, North Korea was run by Kim Jong Il's dad, Kim Il Sung; it will be interested to see if Kim Jong Il's son Kim Jong Un actually assumes power. Anyway that's Kim Il Sung in the upper left; the other stamps have themes of agricultural and industrial development, military readiness, scientific advancement, and of course the requisite anti-American sentiment, of the "take that" variety.

Note the logo of the WPK: instead of the hammer and sickle logo of traditional Communism, they've designed a clever hammer, brush and scythe design, adding the writing brush of the intellectual and student to the proletarian hammer and the peasant farm implements.


In the middle on the right is the relevant stamp celebrating the South Korean uprising against dictatorship of 1961 that the North hoped would lead to reunification. On this enlargement of that stamp you can see the armed Korean workers spearing an American soldier while government buildings burn in the background and the American flag lies shredded below.


But wait, there's more! The stamp on the lower right shows another American soldier "taking that!" from an international guerrilla army of Chinese, Vietnamese, Cuban, African and apparently European revolutionaries. But oops! There's a mistake. Comrade stamp designer accidently spelled "US" backwards, "SU." Fearing that the Soviet Union, then bankrolling Korea's development and defense, would take offense at the apparently subversive misspelling, as soon as the error was spotted the North Korean government recalled the sheets of stamps, detached the offending lower right one, and then re-released the redacted survivors. The full sheet shown here and this detail is a rare peek at the full sheet almost never seen. Stamp collectors in Korea and abroad only got the strangely incomplete sheet. One hates to think about what happened to comrade stamp designer...

Anti-American Art: Addressee Unknown

Here's a stamp from North Korea, vintage 1978. It's part of a series marking the thirtieth anniversary of the People's Democratic Republic. It shows hot-pink-colored Koreans at a demonstration bearing placards and banners in Korean about reunification. Peeking out from behind the main banner is a placard in English, partialy obscured, which reads AMERICANS GET OUT OF SOUTH KOREA. It's jarring to see English appear like this. As can be seen from the North Korean propaganda stamps I've featured previously, these tiny posters entirely in Korean seem aimed at a domestic audience. Yet here's this stamp in the language of the "addressee."

And yet it was a completely futile message: in 1978 it was illegal according to U.S. treasury regulation to import North Korean goods including postage stamps into the United States. This embargo was lifted in the 1990s, although numerous other trade sanctions remain. But in 1978, the message the North Koreans were sending was not being received by its intended audience.

Click on the image to see it larger.

Anti-American Art: Teach Your Children Well

See the happy children's playground! See the happy children! See the happy children with the pretty flag! Pretty pretty flag! Pretty pretty People's Democratic Republic! See the swing. See the happy children on the swing. The swing is a horsey, a happy happy horsey! See the happy children ride the happy horsey! Little Kim wants to be a sailor when he grows up. Brave little Kim! Little Chun wants to be a political commissar when he grows up! Smart little Chun! See the wicked American. Wicked wicked American! Little Chun says to crash the horsey into the American! Little Chun says oh what fun! See the brave little happy children crash into the American! Die, wicked American, die! Oh what happy fun! Happy happy fun! Long live Kim Il Sung!

(1970 postcard from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.)