He conceded the point but came up with an analogy about North Korea being the weird trouble-making kid in school who still deserved to cop a beating if for no other reason than to get him to shut up and stop being a dickhead.
Cool. Why don't I run with the analogy?
The fact is that neither my school chum, nor anyone, has ever met the North Korean kid, nor even laid eyes on him. Every single thing we ever heard about him came from the gang of kids who run the school newspaper and the school website where they like to post little quicktimes they make with their handicams and laptops. And for anyone reading the paper or looking at the website it's transparently obvious that that little North Korean kid is a troublemaker who deserves whatever's coming to him. We pay no attention to the fact that the sum total of everything we know about him comes from the tiny cabal of kids who run the paper.
But the thing is that the kids who run the newspaper are buddies with the school bully who extorts everyone's lunch money. Sure enough, this is never mentioned in the school newspaper. The bully, by the way, doesn't actually front up and take your money. He's much more sophisticated than that. What with having compromising pictures of the headmaster, half the teachers, and the people who run the tuck-shop (cavorting with his sister Lolita) he takes a 50% cut of the lunch money after it goes through the tuck shop's till. No one in the school apart from the headmaster even knows that this goes on. Even the tuck-shop lady thinks the money goes into the school's 'general revenue'.
Instead everyone just complains about the high price of the pies and sausage rolls, and about how crummy and run down the school, and the grounds, and the facilities are. The teachers don't complain too much because the bully paid for special catering just for the teacher's room with real espressos and everything.
Whether the North Korean kid had figured any of this out or not, he decided not to participate. Instead he brought his own lunch from home (kimchi bibimbap, I expect) and thus didn't pay any money to the tuck-shop at all. Well that's him fucked. Truth be known the school bully doesn't really need the North Korean kid's money - he's already the richest guy at school. Hell, he's richer than the teachers! Put together! But that's not the point. Such independence cannot be allowed. Everyone must be kept in line and no alternative to the bully's tuck-shop game may be permitted. If everyone brought their own lunch, then where would he be?
At the behest of the bully, the North Korean kid is a constant target of the school newspaper. It's relentless and it's effective and everyone hates him. And of course the footy team hates him. They hate him as much as they hated that Iraqi kid. But even the cool kids hate him too after they saw that crazy puppet show quicktime that the newspaper kids made. It was called Footy Team America and, believe it or not, took the piss out of the jocks. It was as smutty as hell, complete with copulating puppets, and all the naughty rebellious kids thought it was great. "Ha ha ha, look at those stupid footy wankers!" they said. But they failed to notice that the jocks thought it was great as well. And the lot of them, bedazzled by the smut, thought nothing of the fact that the North Korean kid, along with all the Arab kids, were depicted as dickheads who deserved their beating at the hands of the idiotic but otherwise righteous jocks.
Don't forget, none of these kids has actually even met the North Korean kid, nor even heard a peep out of him. But that's how it was for all the foreign kids. If it wasn't for the newspaper no would even have known they were at the school. Take the kid from the CAR for instance. "Kid from the car? What car?" "No dickhead, not the car, the C-A-R, the Central African Replic. He sits at the back of the class, a few seats away from the Zimbabwe kid." Sure enough, since we all read the school newspaper, we know all about the Zimbabwe kid, who is a crazy little bastard. But truth is he's not half as fucked up as the CAR kid, but since the CAR kid eats at the tuck-shop (unlike the Zimbabwe kid), he ain't in the paper and no one knows who he is. Not forgetting of course that there's nothing like being hated by all the other kids to make a crazy kid crazier. Meanwhile the CAR kid hangs out at the tuck-shop and is 'normal', albeit invisible, and then the bell goes, and he's off home for his nightly self-mutilation frenzy, not that anyone cares.
As for the school paper, everyone admits it doesn't always get it right. Like that time when they had that big story about the Iraqi kid having a collection of guns, with his bedroom walls covered in pictures of other school kids with targets drawn on them. They made a little animated quicktime about him too. And yep, the cool kids thought is was funny as hell.
Finally when the footy team went to his house and absolutely kicked the living shit out of him, the school newspaper had a daily report about how we'd find those guns and pictures with targets any day now. The student president even appeared in the school paper to announce that they had found them: but it wasn't true and eventually the paper dropped the whole topic. "Anyway he's a spastic, look at the way he walks, and we're helping him to be normal." And each day the footy players dutifully drag him down to the tuck-shop so he can be normal and stop being such a fucking retard. And rotten ingrate that he is, he doesn't even thank them. Typical.
Mind you, no one had ever met the Iraqi kid face to face before they took to him with baseball bats, and it never occurred to them that before his kneecaps were smashed that he could walk just fine. Whatever. Astoundingly, a few kids actually wondered at it all and wondered if perhaps the gun story was bullshit and that really the whole thing was about something else? Perhaps the Iraqi kid made a pass at that Olive Oil chick? Who knows? We recall some vague thing hinting at something or other in the school newspaper. Anyway at least the little Iraqi spazmo is hanging out at the tuck-shop and being normal now.
And down at the tuck shop, pies in hand, the kids talk about the latest story about some other kid they never met - "Did you see that thing in the paper about that North Korean-Iranian-Russian-Chinese-Venezuelan kid? He has a basement full of crossbows! And his bedroom wall is covered in pix of kids with arrows through their heads! And he's a freak who dresses up as a lesbian! And he tortures cats with a Fisher-Price Play-Doh Factory! And, And, And..."
And were a kid in school to stand up and say that the school paper is bullshit and that no one has even met these kids, and that it's all about the tuck-shop lunches, everyone would laugh their arses off. "Tuck-shop lunches! Huh? What are you talking about? Like lunches have anything to do with anything?! You're just some vego poof who doesn't like pies! ♬Erh-oo-erh♫ Have some salad! Besides if there was a some crazy scam like this, we'd see it in the school paper! Duh!"
"Fookin' brilliant mate", as my Glaswegian friend Davy would say.
ReplyDeleteBut will your schoolmate get the drift? Or even read it all the way through? Just curious.
And scary too, when you think about the actual level of resemblance to daily reality so craftily displayed within a little lunchbox allegory.
F.cking brilliant!!!
ReplyDeleteFrom Belgium
ReplyDeleteWell here’s a little inside info from some of the Korean kids real schoolmates who he did actually have. One day the Korean kids parents bought him a new pair of shoes which he proudly wore since they were very expensive and his parents had saved up a long time for them. When he went out with his real mates it started raining and the ground was covered with puddles. The Korean kid rushed home and changed into his old shoes which leaked in water, not so he wouldn’t get his shiny new ones wet and dirty but so that he wouldn’t be elitist amongst his mates. So how can dirty rumours of him having dirty bombs, possibly get into the school rag when he is so demonstrably selfless? It must be those pinkoes spreading rumours – hang on a minute he is a pinko. Time this selfless bastard was taught a lesson in democracy.
That's the problem with propoganda that is consistently repeated ad nauseum from all angles . . . no matter how badly you don't want to believe it, no matter that you know better, and no matter how badly the deliverer has been tarnished . . . eventually, you can't help but believe some of it.
ReplyDeleteAnybody who works in the advertising industry knows this very well. They are professional propogandists and brainwashers.
You want a real mindfuck? Have some bacon and eggs for breakfast . . . and then wonder why that is specifically a breakfast food. Google 'Edward Bernays' and see how brainwashing (sorry, mind manipulation for the masses) is really what modern advertising is all about.
Newspapers, cable tv . . . it's all advertising, as most of you know.
I know some people who got to visit North Korea, btw . . . heard it was very strange, although who wouldn't think so going into it. Perception is reality, after all ;)
Hey Boys and Girls,
ReplyDeleteGallier and Mir, separated at birth! Or the expletive-deleted part of their brain, that is...
Otherwise Slozo, sure, if it didn't work they wouldn't do it. And nor would they get paid such idiot sums of money. And all that's required is a callous disregard for the welfare of your fellow man.
Waitaminute! Slozo, you're not Belgian! Who let him in here? Bloody non-Belgians! Coming in and swaggering about as if they owned the place! Sheesh!
And apologies for not posting comments and not replying. This new arrangement I have for accessing the net (using the library in the next town over) is just hellacious. The other day the connection was so bad that in two hours I managed to read only a single email. Ha! It's worse than China ten years ago!
Long and short, you may take it as read that if no comments have gone up it's because I effectively have no net access. But never fear I'm in the middle of chopping and changing pretty much everything, and soon enough an equilibrium will be arrived at.
Yoroshiku
Great writing - pretty much is the situation - wish you went far and wide.
ReplyDeleteSlowly but surely reasonable people are getting it.
This is an interesting assessment of the British 'bully'
Only 25,000 traitors versus 60 million - helped by 100,000 useful idiots - http://www.911oz.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=25613#post25613
Because the subversion these traitors have so carefully implemented over the last 50 years has worked: The young have no interest in politics; churches are empty; people have stopped speaking out; the public now just accepts every control, regulation, indignity, injustice and rule without complaint.
I gots to say it nobes, that's the best in awhile, no shit.
ReplyDeleteAnd also NO I'll bet practically no American, even from Paradise Island, will catch any of it. Clean over their heads. Out of the park.
It's why Von Curtis, though he is thoughtful and his heart is pure, mystifies me wtih this bit of negativity:
"...The young have no interest in politics; churches are empty..."
Well, GREAT, Von Curtis! Politics is the great deadend on the road to nowhere. And churches are so compromised, so corrupt, LET the kids steer clear of them, let them instead hear the gods that seek them in honest labor under Nature's sky.
They need the real world, these youngsters. Politics lied them up a tree where religion fed them an invisible banana.
Back to the ground, all of us, back to the real. Nobody's little mind game here shows me IT CAN BE DONE but it needs the work Goethe called the hardest there is: Seeing the world as it is. Seeing what is RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU and knowing what it is.
I like it.
ReplyDeleteand all we know is what we are told, and we are told it so often, we really believe it.
is everything just the big lie ??
Except lately some of us don't believe it at all anymore.
Must be scary to the ptb, maybe that is why they have to try harder and harder to keep us believin'
I think of North Korea as the convenient boogie man, for South Korea and Japan, he keeps them scared and in line,and by extension he is so helpful elsewhere, so he really must be waved around every now and then.
Oh look, look over there see what that crazy person is doing...
From Belgium
ReplyDeleteI am willing to wager that most of you thought that FB had left his senses telling that story about the Korean kid’s new shoes. Especially so since Google, Ask and Bit Torrent didn’t have any mention of it. Lots of mentions of the KK wearing platform heels and a bouffant hair do to appear taller but no mention of his wet sneakers. Well here is where it came from:
http://www.dailymotion.com/related/x2h7gv/video/x2h77e_north-korea-a-day-in-the-life-1-of_news?hmz=746162
This is a 3 x 15 min video and the wet shoes story comes in part 2 at 8.0 min and also 14.30 min.
The KK’s party is labelled as a democracy and I really wonder if this is the sort of democracy which is planned for us even if he is put on by the other kids.
Not to worry, St. Michael has died.
ReplyDeleteMSM is and will cover this 24/7 for weeks, on all channels,
the funeral probably at the capitol rotunda with Obama presiding. QE2, a fan, will loan her gold carriage for the cortege... a great diversion for the plebs as Shock and Awe II commences over Iran!
Great story. This Korean kid avoided the school lunchroom and its bullies entirely by simply not attending... then returning at end of lunch hour and buying all the silver coins the cash lady saved for me, with zogbucks. That was in the mid 60s, as they quit minting silver coins in USSA. Don't get mad, skip some meals, quit being called "fat boy" or "gringo," and get even.
I still have all the lunchroom silver; the paper dollar's now worthless; the bullies, all black, all
dead in gang fights or drug overdoses since.
I'm glad people liked this one. Me I thought it was a very slight piece. But hell, what would I know? Smiley winky thing!
ReplyDeleteThanks FB, you did have me wondering. I thought I'd let it float and see what happened. And God forbid anyone should think that there are things I don't understand! Perish the thought.
Sadly, things like youtube, which were beyond me even at the cafe, are doubly beyond me now that I'm on this China-of-yesteryear connection.
Frank said: "Politics lied them up a tree where religion fed them an invisible banana."
ReplyDeleteI would be proud -- despite knowing that I should avoid such feelings -- to have conjured this image.
When I do comment here, I tend to stay "on topic" and avoid commenting on the comments, by way of keeping things oriented around the hosts' ideas. As you can see, I'm breaking this little rule today.
On top of wee excursions outside my own lines of respect, I tend to doubly avoid semantic wrangling with those who express religious views of ANY stripe -- even the nested ones that appear to be emanating from a pure heart. If I've learned one thing along the way, it's that there's typically no point going head-to-head with dogma. Unless you enjoy bruises on your forehead.
However, the banana tree analogy is so perfectly grounded that it seemed worth getting in line behind such a courageous offering of wisdom.
Politics have always been, and always will be, a layer of social and physical abstraction -- and distraction. In modern times, it has transmogrified from God-Kings to the puppet show of today, waving limbs and moving wooden lips as commanded by their handlers off-screen.
In other words, yes Penny, politics -- and their media lapdogs -- are practicing the semantic art of the Big Lie full time, steering the mass mind they create out of whole cloth and providing appropriate cover for the actual agenda of those truly calling the shots, including approving candidates for "public" office above the grass roots level.
These roles are public only in the sense that they provide controls for the public space, though the word wranglers would have you see the opposing frame of reference.
As for capital-D democracy, when viewed in clear-headed fashion without the inversion lens of the media lodged firmly between your head and the concept, it's not hard to discern that "majority rule" is essentially formalized mob rule.
Fifty-five percent of the voting population wants the "others" put in camps or shipped home? Make it so. First a consensus is built, followed by an officially sanctioned referendum, effectively a fait accompli enacting the consensus. It's not 100% effective, but they play a patient game.
Public relations? Perception management? What about these terms doesn't give away game? Until this crucial point is digested, individuals have little hope of escaping the discursive borders of the modern media mindframe.
What better example is there to reveal the counter-intuitive nature of the whole mess than the slogan that delivered the latest marionnette into the White House: "Change".
Yes, there are individuals who enter the system from below with pure intentions, and their stories belong to two basic categories: the frustrated public servant, fighting the good fight but always losing when it really matters OR the career politician, who sells their soul for whatever beads and trinkets are necessary to lure them over the line this time.
This is an important point, as it clarifies the nature of systemic control. A true leader will only be allowed to advance in the system so long as they serve the system. Fight it and your days are numbered, one way or another.
Goethe's advice is perfectly sound, as he is simply regurgitating old wisdom with a stylish Renaissance flair: live in the here and now, awake to the moment with a clear and present understanding of the great artifice that is the very foundation of our physical existence. Easier said than done, of course, and downright impossible so long as all your ideas are pre-digested via "official" channels.
As a result, I also tend to agree with the assessment that Mr. N's mate in Moku'aina o Hawai'i, and every other person still suckling the mainstream media teat, will never come 'round. So long as their mental space is built on meat pies from the Tuck Shop and surrounded by imaginary banana trees and their tasteless fruit.
Look! Look at the monkey... =)
It was good wasn't it? Oh, and did somebody say 'Big Lie' just now? That's spooky...
ReplyDeleteStatcounter curiosities -
ReplyDeleteIt's been a while since I had someone from Fort Huachuca pop in. Fort Huachuca, for those who don't know, is the headquarters for US army intelligence. They were all over this blog like stink on shit when I wrote that thing about guns.
Look what they came here for this time - E Gary Stickel! If you know anything about the Presidio and West Point child-minding scandals, with their impossible-to-avoid implications that paedophile satanists are at the highest levels of the US military, you'd have to say it's hardly surprising.
spk-user.spk.usace.army.mil (Headquarters Usaisc) [Label IP Address]
Arizona, Ft. Huachuca, United States, 0 returning visit
Date Time WebPage
27th June 2009 09:16:25 www.bing.com/search?q=E. Gary Stickel&first=41&FORM=PORE
churchofnobody.blogspot.com/
I just want to tell someone, I've been poking around Antony Loewenstein's blog lately, making a comment here and there, and twice when I've gone to comment my entire Internet Explorer browser has shut down, and afterwards I can't even return to the comment page - his site directs me to an error page about a different post of his.
ReplyDeleteHow do they do that?
http://antonyloewenstein.com/blog/
Lowenstein keeps on posting about "Iran's brave struggle for liberty" and this last time I tried to post a link to the story about Iran's Mexico ambassador pointing to foreign intelligence agencies as the probable killers of Neda Agha-Soltan.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/25/iran.ambassador/
And POOF! The browser shuts down!
Peter D
Colo(u)r Revolution Fails in Iran
ReplyDeleteThierry Meyssan
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/187856-Color-revolution-fails-in-Iran
Peter D
From Belgium
ReplyDeleteSure Frank sometimes pearls of wisdom come in golden nugget sized chunks.
Sure am pleased some of you liked the last song I put up. Here is another for your delectation.
Congratulations Tom Dewey
You won by a landslide today
Through thick and through thin
We knew you would win
‘Cos who’d ever vote Harry Truman back in
Congratulations Tom Dewey
Your Republican dreams have come true
So let’s hear a victory roar
For President no 34
The White House is waiting for you-oo-oo.
It certainly seems the plan is not always 100% effective but as was said, does it really matter so long as the overall strategy keeps moving nicely forward. Obama does very placating sound bites but would the overall situation be different if Ms Palin, the Scary Spice of politics, had been charged with winding McCain’s clockwork up until the spring broke.
Mir wrote “…….OR the career politician, who sells their soul for whatever beads and trinkets are necessary to lure them over the line this time.” But it is only necessary to lure them over the line the first time; after that the curious concept of reverse blackmail sets in. I am sure many of you will have heard this George Bernard Shaw story. He once asked a lady if she would go to bed with him for one million pounds. “Sure would” replied the lady. He then asked her if she would sleep with him for sixpence. “What do you think I am” she blurted out. GBS replied “We have already established what you are, now we are just haggling over the price.” Prostitution is just the same with politicians. I once saw some purported lobbying fees paid into “party funds” and I was really surprised; it was the sort of money that would keep a single parent from going out of the door for a year but it was hardly drop dead money, especially when you consider what the corporations have to gain from the exercise. Having said that I sure am curious to know what was in the brown envelope that was hidden under the cash drawer of the tuck shop till in order to have the genome patented.
I think Mr Paul might have made a real difference but he wouldn’t have stayed the course. He probably would have regrettably gone the same way as Huey Long or Pres K.
Mr N. Have you been listening to too much Dame Edna?
Don’t think you are being selected for special attention; when Cyclone was doing the Real Deal he had visitations from Fort H. I would take it as a compliment that you might have something they want to know or maybe they just want to know what you know. “Just after the facts mam, just the facts”.
G'day, Mr. N.
ReplyDeleteI guess I've decided to start reading these great, great posts more sequentially. So, forgive the belated applause for this particular 'song', but I just recently came to the party.
The attraction of the spook contingent isn't entirely a surprise to me, since you are pretty much telling it like it is.
By the way (can't recall who; such great comments from everyone), whoever speculated that Yanks might not get it, you're probably almost right. However, there are a couple of us who employ critical thinking and also have our eyes open. A couple, anyway. Not to say that I've taken offense. I pretty much feel the same way.
bye-ciao,
Dave