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WHO’S THE REAL AGGRESSOR? RUSSIA OR THE US? Vince Dhimos answered a question at Quora.
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-chances-of-Russia-invading-any-neighbouring-country-in-the-next-10-years-Which-country-is-most-likely-to-be-attacked/answer/Vince-Dhimos
WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF RUSSIA INVADING ANY NEIGHBOURING COUNTRY IN THE NEXT 10 YEARS? WHICH COUNTRY IS MOST LIKELY TO BE ATTACKED?
Vince Dhimos, Editor-in-Chief at New Silk Strategies (2016-present)
This question obviously arises from the Western media and political class constantly calling Russia an aggressor and from the Democrat party’s witch hunt that is cynically called an election campaign. I recently checked out the platforms of each of the Democratic candidates – that is all of those that the Democrats are allowing to gain popularity – and found that they all think the US should support Ukraine in order to “contain Russia.” Of course, need I mention that sites listing Democrat candidates generally omit any reference to Tulsi Gabbard, who is an embarrassment to the US Establishment because she has the cheek to state that US wars are unjustified and are waged for “regime change,” not for defence. She has the strongest statement against US wars while Bernie, who sometimes pretends to oppose war, gingerly dances around the issue. It can be said without any exaggeration that the US political Establishment, on both sides of the aisle, is almost all willing to provoke a democratic nuclear-armed country to the brink of war.
Unlike the US government, which has been almost constantly at war since WWII, the Russian Federation has never been the aggressor in any standard, acceptable sense of the word.
The corporate media keep constantly shrieking that Russia is an aggressor, and their arguments are centred about two main issues, namely, the Georgian war and the post-coup Ukrainian events since the violent Maidan coup in 2014, which these media portray as “Russian aggression.”
However, let’s look at the known facts.
In the Georgian war, for example, Russia was named a peace keeper and its intent was to protect its neighbours S. Ossetia and Abkhazia, which were attacked by Georgia under the mentally unstable Saakashvili, acting on behalf of the US-dominated West.
In retrospect it appears that Saakashvili was baiting Russia by invading these small provinces. At any rate, reacting to the murder of civilians, Russia attacked the invaders and drove them deep into Georgian territory. Although some Western analysts accuse Russia of aggression for not stopping closer to the border, an EU tribunal found in favour of Russia overall, and it is generally acknowledged even among Western scholars, that Georgia – not Russia – was the aggressor.
In Ukraine, the instigators of the illegal Maidan coup were not Russian, they were the US and allies, who entered via State Department reps (notably Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland), members of European governments and agencies (eg, the German NGO Konrad Adenauer Stiftung) and NGOs such as a Soros Open Society foundation, the NED and USAID to start and actively participate in the illegal and violent coup that ousted the legitimately elected president of Ukraine. These were the real violators of international law, acting in the open, but virtually the entire Western media still insist that Russia “invaded” Ukraine in the aftermath of this coup. Russia did no such thing. What really happened was that the new US-installed Kiev government made laws outlawing the official use of Russian, even though Russia was until then one of the official languages, and BTW, before the coup, most Ukrainians spoke Russian at least as a second language, though many deemed it their mother tongue. It was and is the lingua franca in ex Soviet Bloc countries, who would be hard put to communicate with each other without it. It is vastly easier to learn than English for a Ukrainian because it is a very closely related Slavic language. In fact it makes no sense to artificially ram English down the throats of the countries at Russia’s border, though this is what Washington wants to do.
This draconian law triggered a backlash particularly in the Donbass where Russian was the mother tongue of most residents, and in Crimea, where almost everyone considered himself Russian. Recall for background that Russian author Anton Chekhov had written the short story The Lady with the Little Dog (Дамассобачкой), which was set in Crimean Yalta, then considered a Russian resort area, and all the characters in the story spoke their native Russian (when I visited Yalta in the early 70s, everyone I spoke with spoke perfect Russian. I heard no one speaking Ukrainian). Recall also that Yalta was the site of the signing of the peace accord by Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt at the close of WW II. Stalin chose this town because it was a Russian site comfortably accessible to Europe and was an attractive tourist site that he perhaps wished to promote.
So when the government not of Russia but of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (you see it was never a regular Ukrainian province) held a referendum and over 90% of the voters said they wanted to accede to the Russian Federation, it was no surprise to knowledgeable folks. But alas, there are precious few knowledgeable folks in the Western world, so the majority just swallows the media’s swill and dutifully parrot the line that Russia is a dangerous aggressor that must be held in check by NATO (after all, what would the alliance’s overpaid bureaucrats do if they didn’t have an enemy? They’ have to find real jobs, poor things!).
The decision of Crimea to accede to Russia was made by ordinary Crimeans, not the Russians. How is that “Russian aggression”? only Western politicians and media reps “know” that. They have already called presidential candidate and Iraq veteran Tulsi Gabbard a Kremlin stooge for suggesting the US should work with Russia instead of treating it like a pariah.
As long as the Western grassroots keep believing that Russia is the enemy, the Democratic Party leaders, certain Republican politicians, the Pentagon and NATO will proceed with their machinations and the spectre of nuclear war will continue to hover over us.
Russian Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov has said that an armed conflict could start this spring. Yet none of the viable candidates for the presidency in 2020 has hinted that they will work toward peace negotiations with Russia. So far, the US has pulled out of two important arms control treaties, blaming Russia in one case but without real evidence of a violation. Russia has declared itself ready to negotiate on arms control but the US government is lukewarm to cold on the idea. Meanwhile NATO is planning another massive military drill as close as possible to the Russian border. Russia and China have never held such a drill off the US coast.
So who is the aggressor? 30-12-19 |
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A bad day for the Pentagon: triple failure in Syria http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/news--analysis/a-bad-day-for-the-pentagon-triple-failure-in-syria MOSCOW, Dec 28 - RIA Novosti. The Russian anti-aircraft missile system (SAM) S-300V4 deployed in Syria has repeatedly radar-locked onto reconnaissance planes and bombers of the US Air Force, said Army Lieutenant-General Alexander Leonov, commander of the Russian Armed Forces Air Defence, in an interview with the newspaper Izvestia.
29-12-17
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10/14/2017
By Vince Dhimos
I will be like the most high. Isaiah 14:14
The core mission of New Silk Strategies is to explain the reasons for the Western world’s increasingly conspicuous social, economic, financial, military and foreign policy failures. We have already provided comprehensive reference material for understanding the petrodollar agreement with the Saudis (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) that all but guaranteed a steady series of wars unrelated to the protection of US interests; a comprehensive outline of the US’s designs on Middle Eastern oil along with Chinas’s plans to help Syria protect its own resources (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), and the contribution of Israel to the motivation for US-waged wars, including the irrational antagonism to Iran (here and here), and we have exposed (here) the almost unnoticed role of Christian Zionism in the unquestioned support of Israeli policies that help promote these wars (without most Christians knowing they are part of Zionism).
But we had not yet elaborated on the deeper lying cause, ie, the mentality that makes US and European policy makers and their popular supporters put aside all moral considerations that might give the war makers and their popular base pause. For example, why would most Western officials and the grass roots find it acceptable that Israel should occupy for years a large swath of Syrian territory, the Golen Heights, with no challenge from the US or European governments or the UN?
Why in heaven’s name did the US and Britain declare war on Afghanistan and then Iraq and destroy so much infrastructure in these countries, making a living hell for the lives of the inhabitants, when it was the Saudis and their GCC allies who had founded and sponsored Al-Qaeda, with the tacit support of the US, and the invaded countries had virtually nothing to do with the 9-11 attacks?
Why do the US and Europe still send vast arms shipments to Saudi Arabia? Why does Freedom House, a wholly owned subsidiary of the US government posing as a NGO, list the democratically administered Syria as the worst offender against freedom when the Syrian people are the victims of ISIS, Al-Qaeda rebrandings and other US-supported terrorists in Syria, and not the Syrian government?
And how is it that Iran, a country that contributes mightily to defeating ISIS in Syria, is called the “biggest state sponsor of terror” in the world?
And on the domestic front, how can a Christian country deny life-saving medical insurance to people with pre-conditions, simply allowing them to die under color of protecting the free market?
Why does the US government, whose “enemies” are almost all the product of US provocation (even North Korea, as Andre Vltchek has shown here) or fabricated in the fantasies of government officials and msm, spend on “defense” enough money to solve most of the social, public health and crime problems of the country and invest in projects that create high-paying jobs (projects analogous to the Chinese bank ACIIB and infrastructure project BRI)?
Why have the central bankers and government allowed disastrous financial bubbles and ponderous debt to threaten their own people and the financial stability of the globe?
And why is Africa becoming poorer and poorer even as the IMF lends increasing amounts to that continent (we hope to explore this in further detail later on)?
Finally, why is the West focused on aiding refugees but not on rebuilding the infrastructures of countries, such as Syria, that have been destroyed by terrorism, so that the refugees can go home?
In other words, what is the origin of the underlying lack of all morality, natural law and common sense in Western public life? Is there an ideological bedrock on which all the inequality, injustice, impoverishment and cruelty against people foreign and domestic rest?
Conversely, why is it that Russia and China are not contributing to these problems?
For example, why is Russia’s debt such a tiny percentage of its GDP?
And why does Russia not invade countries, merely going to the aid of countries or regions that have been invaded or assaulted through regime change?
Why is Chinese aid aimed at raising Africa out of poverty instead of exploiting it?
And why are Russia and China focused on rebuilding Syria even as the West continues to impose grossly unfair and impoverishing sanctions on that war torn country?
In summary, why do Russia and China appear to be the humanitarians while the Exceptional Country once describing itself as Christian, along with its allies in Europe, now appear to be the oppressors?
Yes, there is an ideological bedrock underlying all of this that enables us to answer all of these questoins, and we now come to this most thorny and complex issue, namely, Enlightenment thought, originating in the 17th and 18th Centuries, and its extension into the 21st Century. But as we shall see, in its radical form, the word Enlightenment is a cynical misnomer. Yet in its moderate form, it is true to its name. The moderate school, which is a non-ideological problem-solving approach, has been all but eliminated in the West but thrives in the East.
The Enlightenment is generally defined by historians as a movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that sought to apply reason to solve problems facing mankind. It was supposed to be a humanitarian movement and was supposed to replace religious dogma with rationality and enable the common man to overcome the overbearing influence of the rich and powerful, making everyone equal in an enlightened world.
Typically mentioned by historians as the leaders of this Enlightenment are a number of leading philosophers, such as Rousseau and, most famously, Voltaire, whose more radical school of thought generally taught that there could be no compromise with traditionalists or with the ancient wisdom and common sense that were part of the popular European psyche up until them. We could describe this movement and its extension to the modern age as “perpetual revolution.” The radical Enlightenment in its real world embodiment was marked by a zeal not so much to solve problems but to eradicate old ideas and behaviors and to punish those who clung to them. Their targets were common sense and traditional wisdom, particularly of the kind associated with Christianity. The embodiment of this radical school is best illustrated by the French Revolution, the proving ground for the ideology. Unfortunately, the guinea pigs for this trial were the whole of the French people. Such a test of a matter that would necessarily affect the very core of civilization could be compared to a chef elaborating a new recipe on paper and, without first tasting the product, preparing it and serving it to hundreds of select guests in the finest restaurant in Paris. A risk to say the least.
Ultimately, this revolution led to a blood bath, preceded with much fanfare and propaganda consisting essentially of the words “Liberté, égalité, fraternité,” ie, freedom, equality, brotherhood. It failed tragically.
Original: http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/opinion/east-vs-west-who-are-the-enlightened-ones
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Dear America: You already killed 20% of them. Want to go for FULL genocide now? Vince Dhimos http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/news--analysis/dear-america-do-you-really-want-to-kill-the-rest-of-the-north-ltkorans-too Back in the 50s, the US military got mad at the N. Koreans because they refused to give up. They wound up killing at least 1.5 million people, mostly peaceful civilians. No one seems to ever call genocide by its name but that war in the 50s, plus the next war against North Korea that US officials warn about, is nothing short of genocide or at least conspiracy to commit genocide. By the way, for those fond of trivia, it would also be a prelude to WW III, which would no doubt be nuclear. Read more: http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/news--analysis/dear-america-do-you-really-want-to-kill-the-rest-of-the-north-ltkorans-too
Why do losers always seem to win? http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/news--analysis/merkel-and-us-establishment-still-picking-losers-after-all-these-years Despite her incomprehensible popularity in Germany, Merkel contributed mightily to the creation of conditions in the Middle East that made it nearly impossible for many victims of the Western-supported terrorism to stay in their homes. Millions are now in Germany and the Germans are not happy about it. Read more: http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/news--analysis/merkel-and-us-establishment-still-picking-losers-after-all-these-years New Russian combat toy alone in its class http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/military-affairs/sosna-mobile-anti-missile-system A new Russian toy that US defense contractors are rushing to keep up with. While the cash-strapped US struggles to keep up, Russia has this SAM that can not only be mounted on a mobile carrier but can also be launched while moving. It’s unmatched. More: http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/military-affairs/sosna-mobile-anti-missile-system DiCaprio flic shows US no longer land of the free Here is a fun but entertaining flic for you next time you and your family or friends are up for an evening of entertainment. The below-linked is a top notch production funded in part by Leonardo DiCaprio.
http://putlocker.io/watch/pxwnM8vz-cowspiracy-the-sustainability-secret.html
One of the interviewees appearing in the video, a former cattle rancher, was arrested under a law designed to protect Big Ag from the truth about their industry! (Freedom of speech? Not if your speech affects the bottom line of an oligarch). You don’t have to agree with the argument but here is another of many ways in which the US and Western governments rob you of your right to free speech. More: http://putlocker.io/watch/pxwnM8vz-cowspiracy-the-sustainability-secret.html Vince Dhimos
26-09-17 ---------------------------------------------------------- Dear america: do you really want to kill the rest of the north koreans too? 9/11/2017
NOTE: I keep hearing from readers who would like to post comments and can't. It's easy once you discover the secret. It seems like Disqus works differently on different platforms. Here the comments section opens at the top, just to the right of the date. Just click on "Comments" above and you can post whatever you like as long as it is relatively civil. Trolls welcome. Thanks!
One of the things that I like about Andre Vltchek is that he writes about countries that he has lived in and people that he not only knows but loves, to be frank about it. (And love is, BTW, the key to all our ills). But Andre also knows facts and statistics and had reported somewhere how many million North Koreans, mostly civilians, had been bombed to smithereens in the Korean war in the 50s. I no longer remember how many he said it was in that article (which I cannot locate now), but it is estimated conservatively to be at least 1.5 million. No one seems to ever call genocide by its name but that war in the 50s, plus the next war against North Korea that US officials warn about, is nothing short of genocide or at least conspiracy to commit genocide. By the way, for those fond of trivia, it would also be a prelude to WW III, which would no doubt be nuclear.
It’s not a racial issue as the so-called Left likes to cast it. It is the age-old issue of haves vs have-nots. The people vs the oligarchs who lie to them and deceive them in order to bleed them, economically and spiritually, hollowing out their souls.
It is the eternal, ongoing battle that Paul wrote about in Ephesians 6:12.
Before we begin Andre Vltchek’s article, here is what Newsweek recently wrote about the North Korean war.
From
http://www.newsweek.com/us-forget-korean-war-led-crisis-north-592630
BY TOM O'CONNOR on 5/4/17
“The brutality of the Korean War has largely been overlooked by U.S. history, but the conflict has long shaped Washington's troubled political relationship, or lack thereof, with North Korea. As President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threaten to ignite a new battle in the region, the scars of the past seem to resonate more powerfully in the Korean Peninsula than in the West.
“During the course of the three-year war, which both sides accuse one another of provoking, the U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of explosives on North Korea, including 32,557 tons of napalm, an incendiary liquid that can clear forested areas and cause devastating burns to human skin. (In constrast, the U.S. used 503,000 tons of bombs during the entire Pacific Theater of World War Two, according to a 2009 study by the Asia-Pacific Journal.) In a 1984 interview, Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, claimed U.S. bombs "killed off 20 percent of the population" and "targeted everything that moved in North Korea." These acts, largely ignored by the U.S.' collective memory, have deeply contributed to Pyongyang's contempt for the U.S. and especially its ongoing military presence on the Korean Peninsula.
" ‘Most Americans are completely unaware that we destroyed more cities in the North then we did in Japan or Germany during World War II... Every North Korean knows about this, it's drilled into their minds. We never hear about it," historian and author Bruce Cumings told Newsweek by email Monday'.”
Vince Dhimos
11-09-17 -------------------------------------------------------------
Why Trump is Wrong About North Korea
by ANDRE VLTCHEK
Original article first posted here
When I think about North Korea, what first comes to my mind is a mist over the calm and majestic surface of the Taedong River near Pyongyang. Next I always recall two lovers, locked in a tender and almost desperate embrace, sitting side by side on the shore. I saw them every day, while taking brisk walks at dawn. Now I don’t know for sure whether they were real or just a product of my fantasy; a sad and gentle reminder of all that has been already lost, as well as of all that should have happened but never really materialized.
Currently, as Donald Trump’s “armada” is speeding towards China and DPRK, I keep recalling those moments: the cliff, the lovers and a lone fisherman with his long rod at the other side of the river. Everything in my memory connected to those dawns is now motionless, serene.
Sometimes I wonder whether words still have the power they once used to have. In the past, a beautiful poem, a confession, or a declaration of love, were capable of changing one’s entire life, and sometimes even the entire destiny of a nation. But is this still the case, in this time and age? As a writer I often feel futility, even despair. Still, as an internationalist, I refuse to succumb to pessimism, and I try to use words as my weapons, again and again.
I have already said a lot about North Korea. I have shown images. I have spoken about the unimaginable pain this country has had to endure. I have spoken broadly about its tremendous gesture – of helping to liberate and then to educate so many parts of the world, including the enormous and devastated continent of Africa.
Still the propaganda against the people of DPRK rules.
Let me try again; let me try again and again and again:
North Korea is a beautiful country, inhabited by human beings, with blood circulating through their veins. Despite what you are directly and indirectly told, these people feel pain and they are capable of experiencing great joy. Like others, they often dream, fall in love, and suffer when being insulted or betrayed or abandoned. They laugh and cry, they hold hands, get angry, even desperate. They have great hopes for a better life and they work very hard trying to build their future.
***
So listen well, manager, or supervisor of what you yourself call the “free world”. Or how should I call you, President? Ok, fine, President… If you shoot your Tomahawk missiles at them, at DPRK, (as you recently did at Syria), or if you drop your bloody “Mother of All Bombs” on them (as you just did on some god-forsaken hamlet in Afghanistan, just in order to demonstrate your spite and destructive force), their bodies will be torn to pieces, people will die in tremendous agony; wives will be howling in despair burying their husbands, grandparents will be forced to cover the dead bodies of their tiny grandchildren with white sheets, entire neighborhoods and villages will cease to exist.
Of course you people do it everywhere; you think that you are the masters of the world, so used to spreading agony and desolation all over the world, but let me remind you one more time and put it on the record: it may all look like some fun-to-play computer game or a TV show, but it is not; it is all real, when your shit hits the targets, it’s damn real! I have seen plenty of it, and I have had really enough!
I know this is not what you have been told, and this is not what you tell the others.
North Koreans are supposed to look and behave like a nation of brainless robots, lacking all basic emotions and individuality, staring forward without seeing much, unable to feel pain, compassion or love.
You don’t want to see the truth, the reality, and you want others to be blind as well.
Even if you’ll blow the entire DPRK to pieces, you’ll actually not see much anyway, you’ll see almost nothing: just your own missiles shooting from battleships and submarines, your own airplanes taking-off from aircraft carriers, as well as some computer-generated images of powerful explosions. No pain, no reality, and no agony: nothing will get to you; nothing will reach you and your citizens.
It is you who is blind; it is not they.
You actually like it, don’t you? Admit you do. Let’s have it all in the open. And many citizens in the West like it as well – new titillating experiences, free ‘entertainment’, and a welcome break from the dire and empty, grey, loveless and meaningless routine of daily life in both North America and Europe. Hundreds of millions glued to their TV screens. Your popularity is going down, lately, isn’t it? The more missiles you shoot, the more bombs you drop, and the more countries you intimidate and confront, the broader your ‘support base’ gets.
You are a businessman, after all. The trade, the deal is simple, easy to grasp: you give to the majority of your people what they desire, and they give you support and admiration. True, isn’t it, if stripped of all that ‘political correctness’.
The psychologist Jung called this culture ‘pathological’. It has already destroyed basically all continents on Earth. It is now, perhaps, attempting to finish what is left of the world.
Still, you ought to know and understand and should be fully aware of the following: you might now get some generous endorsement from your fellow mentally ill citizens, but if you blow up the DPRK or any other country on Earth, sky-high, and if we as the planet Earth still somehow manage to survive, you and your ‘culture’ will be cursed for centuries and millennia to come! Think about it. Is it really worth it?
Perhaps you don’t give a damn. Most likely you don’t. Still, give it a try, try to think, and try to imagine: you will go down in history as a degenerate mass murderer and a bigot!
***
Three years ago, this is how I described the 60th anniversary of the Victory Day in the DPRK:
“The brass band begins to play yet another military tune. I zoom on an old lady, her chest decorated with medals. As I get ready to press the shutter, two large tears begin rolling down her cheeks. And suddenly I realize that I cannot photograph her. I really cannot. Her face is all wrinkled, and yet it is both youthful and endlessly tender. Here is my face, I think, the face I was looking for all those days. And yet I cannot even press the shutter of my Leica.
Then something squeezes my throat and I have to search in my equipment bag for some tissue, as my glasses get foggy, and for a short time I cannot see anything at all. I sob loudly, just once. Nobody can hear, because of the loud playing of the band.
Later I get closer to her, and I bow, and she reciprocates. We make our separate peace in the middle of the boiling-hot main square. I am suddenly happy to be here. We have both lost something. She lost more. I was certain she lost at least half of her loved-ones in the carnage of those bygone years. I lost something too, and now I also lost all respect and belonging, to the culture that is still ruling the world; the culture that was once mine, but a culture that is still robbing people of their faces, and then burns their bodies with napalm and flames.
It is the 60th Anniversary of Victory Day in the DPRK. An anniversary marked by tears, grey hair, tremendous fireworks, parades, and by the ‘memories of fire’.
That evening, after returning to the capital, I finally made it to the river. It was covered by a gentle but impenetrable fog. There were two lovers sitting by the shore, motionless, in silent embrace. The woman’s hair was gently falling on her lover’s shoulder. He was holding her hand, reverently. I was going to lift my big professional camera, but then I stopped, abruptly, all of a sudden too afraid that what my eyes were seeing or my brain imagining, would not be reflected in the viewfinder.”
This is how I still remember the event.
The West has already killed millions of North Koreans. How many more have to vanish, just for not surrendering? What is the price of not agreeing to serve the Empire? Would it be one million more, or ten million? The number, please: you are a businessman; so do define the price truthfully!
***
The DPRK has never attacked anybody. The United States which claims it now ‘feels threatened’, has attacked dozens and dozens of countries, robbed millions of people of life, and raped freedom, democracy and cultures all over the world.
There is one image inside my head, which I want to share with all my readers, even if I will be risking that this time my writing will be bordering on sentimentality. I don’t give a fuck, for once; this is no time for ‘polished and elegant style’. So here it is:
At one point I managed to break free from our delegation. It was in the capital, Pyongyang. I just walked and walked, along the mighty river, through an enormous park alongside ancient fortifications.
I spotted a girl, tiny, with a big ribbon in her hair. She was wearing white shoes. It was sunset. Her mother, a simple but beautiful lady, was talking to her. It was so obvious how much she loved and cherished her daughter. The two of them could not see me; I was observing them from some distance. There was so much tenderness, so much serenity between these two human beings. The mother was caressing her daughter’s face, explaining something, pointing at the trees. Their faces were totally relaxed, no fear, no tension, just love.
I walked further, and still in the park, I saw a couple surrounded by a group of people. It was a family photo session. A man and a woman were obviously getting married; he was wearing a formal suit, she was dressed in a wedding gown. Then I noticed that large black sunglasses were hiding a large part of the man’s face. He was blind. Most likely, he was badly burned behind the dark spectacles. His future wife was younger, and she was attractive. She was happy! She kept chatting, laughing cheerfully. I was stunned. In the West, people have been betraying each other, abandoning one another over the tiniest inconveniences or doubts, for the most egotistic reasons. And here, a young attractive woman was joining, happily, her badly injured man, so they could walk together, side-by-side, for the rest of their life journey.
***
I saw a lot of North Korea after those few hours in the park. I was faced with the most fortified border on Earth. I met and discussed philosophy and how the West tries to de-humanize its enemies, with Yang Hyong Sob, the Vice President of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People’s Committee. I discussed philosophy and existentialism with the great theologian and philosopher John Cobb, on board a bus that was taking us from Pyongyang to the borderline.
There were ‘big moments’ during that trip, great celebrations all around me. There were elaborate performances and speeches, marches and music. Yet, nothing touched me so deeply as those moments in the park. There, I observed enormous tenderness given to a child by her mother. And I witnessed that natural and beautiful, simplicity and joy of love, mixed with serenity and dignity radiating from a young woman marrying her blind and injured partner.
That is North Korea, which I have been privileged enough to have observed with my own eyes. That is North Korea which the manager wants to ‘take care of’, which means ‘to destroy’. And that is North Korea where I realized, as on so many other occasions, in so many countries, that there is still so much love that resides on this Earth, and that no barbarity, no cruelty, would ever be able to defeat it.
***
This essay is not my ‘usual stuff’. It is not a philosophy, or reportage. I don’t know what it is. I don’t care what it is. I just wanted to share something with my readers: something that is inside me right now, something that is breaking and shouting and rebelling against the state of things.
What I am certain of is that at this moment, I want to be there, in Pyongyang. I want to go back, although no one has invited me to return, yet.
If the supervisor, the manager, decides to attack, I want to be on my feet and alert and ready, facing his ships and missiles. Just like that, as always, without any cover or bulletproof vest, just with my cameras, and a pen and a simple notepad, as well as a tiny Asian dragon – a good luck charm – in my pocket.
I will not be afraid. I don’t think most of the people of North Korea would be afraid. only those who are ready to commit mass murder, over and over again, in all corners of the world, are now most likely scared; at least subconsciously, at least in their own essence as well as of their own insanity.
Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are revolutionary novel “Aurora” and two bestselling works of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. View his other books here. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Al-Mayadeen. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo. After having lived in Latin America, Africa and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.
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