Pen/Insular_Notes Comments

by: buddha statue

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 07:11:35 +0100

Great,I have never seen that.

by: kotaji

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:06:32 +0000

To be honest, I was quite suspicious when I first read this since it almost looks as though someone at the KCNA has taken it from somewhere on the internet and adapted it. But then, as you say, there are some typical NK turns of phrase and some NKonglish that suggest it is an original piece.

by: jay

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 04:57:29 +0000

Thanks. I don’t look at KCNA often, I can’t be bothered to use an anonymous proxy.

Their writers appear to be getting better, but I see they still have a penchant for those old colloquialisms.

by: Won

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 18:45:36 +0000

Beautiful to see one oppressed people stand up for another.

by: Mark

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 11:12:59 +0000

The police raided and searched All Together’s offices without a proper warrant. Plain clothes police are staked out in front of the office and have placed All Together’s internet homepage and other activities on constantly surveillance.

by: kotaji

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:19:00 +0000

Yawn yawn…

by: King Baeksu

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:35:52 +0000

“anti-democratic and pro-imperialist policies”

What does this all mean exactly? There is more “democracy” in South Korea than ever before. The protesters were allowed to have over 100 candlelight protests in a row, and were able to publish all sorts of nonsense in a variety of media here.

What does “pro-imperialist policies” mean? Is South Korea an imperial power? Or is this a critique of US imperialist influence in Korea by a protest leader whose adherents always claimed that this movement was “not anti-American”?

If find these people utterly disingenuous, to put it charitably. They seem in the grips of an outdated 1980s Minjung ideology that is incapable of effectively addressing present realities.

These 386 deadenders really need to update their program. The “movement” did not end because of “suppression.” It ended when the common people realized how full of BS this “movement” actually was.

by: King Baeksu

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:46:55 +0000

“the majority of social movement forces were bewildered when the candlelight protest movement first erupted on 2 May, and just stood back and watched.”

“It is true that there is a lull in the movement at the moment, though small protests are continuing. The biggest reason for this is the repression.”

Nice snow job there!

Owen, for an academic you are surprisingly unwilling to use your critical abilities here, preferring instead to give these dubious con artists a free pass!

All for a good cause, eh?

by: Jonathan E. Tipton

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:49:42 +0100

‘Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of motives, will somehow work for the benefit of all’

John Maynard Keynes (apparently).

…However, was also said to be a good friend of Ayn Rand - who most certainly would not have agreed with the above (just take a glance at ‘The Fountainhead’ and ‘Atlas Shrugged’,) so maybe his tongue was firmly in his cheek.

…But apparently Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek both hated his guts, so maybe it wasn’t!

by: Juvenile Dwarf

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:10:24 +0100

There’s a little bit of destroying capitalism to save capitalism about Keynes, I suppose: calls for “euthanasia of the rentier” and “socialisation of investment” and all that.

Have a look: http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch24.htm

(Not that any of this justifies banning the book, hem hem, less anyone think otherwise.)