![]() |
If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#21
|
|||
|
|||
![]() Jay Honeck wrote: The best thing about President H. Clinton is that only a Democrat will get any cooperation from the rest of the world. I haven't checked lately, but I think Hillary skews more negative with most voters than even Bush did at his lowest point. Hilary has no chance. Zip, zero, nada. |
#22
|
|||
|
|||
![]()
Jay Honeck wrote:
- That tiny country (smaller than the state of Mississippi) has an air force comprised of 1,620 combat aircraft, and 274 helicopters! You know Jay, since neither Petersen or EAA can sell them the autogas STC due to the U.N. sanction, most of their airforce are kind of grounded because they can afford the fuel anymore! |
#23
|
|||
|
|||
![]()
-------------
We starved, he called it paradise My God, that is heart-breaking. -- Jay Honeck Iowa City, IA Pathfinder N56993 www.AlexisParkInn.com "Your Aviation Destination" |
#24
|
|||
|
|||
![]()
You can only say "get your hand out of the cookie jar" so
many times before your kids loose all respect too. "Sylvain" wrote in message t... | Jay Honeck wrote: | | This is why I'm surprised that we've done nothing -- this is a "clear | and present danger" and should be dealt with in some way. | | you can cry wolf only so many times... | | --Sylvain |
#25
|
|||
|
|||
![]()
Thank you and welcome to the world. My father was born in
Nan King in 1904. He left when WWI started. He had many stories about starvation and Chinese life. Food was in short supply for everyone. Oldest boys were valued and girls were not. He told us that during a famine the youngest girl could go into the pot so the male children could eat. Today, famine is caused by politics, food can be and is transported anywhere and it is blocked by politicians trying to purge or control their people. The English would not import grain from America when the potato crop failed and the Irish starved. It still goes on today in Asia and Africa. Soylent Green IS people. Its not just for movies, never was. "Richard Riley" wrote in message ... | On 15 Oct 2006 17:23:47 -0700, "Jay Honeck" | wrote: | | Since I'm tired of reading questions about the development of | anti-matter-powered Beechcraft ejection seats, I thought I'd toss this | topic onto the newsgroup's platter: North Korea. | | I came across this a few days ago. It's from | http://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Paradis.../dp/0316729663 | | ------------- | We starved, he called it paradise | Growing up in North Korea, Hyok Kang was surrounded by desperate | people who ate grass and bark before they died. Yet pervasive | propaganda made them feel lucky to be there. | ---- | | The first time I ate chocolate was when I was five years old. My | grandfather had relatives in Japan who were given exceptional | permission to visit us. They came like extraterrestrials with their | arms full of presents and food. I remember waving tins of condensed | milk and chocolate bars under my friends.. noses. I was a horrid | little boy. It was 1990 and I didn..t yet know what famine was. I | wouldn..t taste chocolate again until we escaped to China when I was | 13. | | In 1994, shortly before the death of Kim Il-sung, the Great Leader, | the state food distribution system began to break down. Eventually, | there was no more rice, no more potatoes. We moved on to vile food | substitutes. Weeds, of whatever kind, were boiled up and swallowed in | the form of soup. We picked these inedible leaves on the edges of the | fields or the banks of the river. The soup was so bitter that we could | barely keep it down. | | Our neighbours collected grass and tree bark .. usually pine, or | various shrubs. They grated the bark and boiled it up before eating | it. And much good it did them: their faces swelled from day to day | until they finally perished. | | Not only food was scarce. Our teachers gave each of us collection | quotas: maize leaves (for paper mills), copper and other metals .. | and, during the winter, dung for fertiliser. We had to take six whole | carts of faecal matter to the school, and not any old excrement: it | had to be human. As it was frozen .. the temperature fell to -20C or | -30C .. we used a pick or a hatchet to hack it from the back of the | rudimentary outdoor toilets by each dwelling. In extremis, dog poo was | tolerated as well. | | My mother started selling buns and pancakes in the market. She was | shattered by the sight of dozens of ragged urchins (some of them | little more than toddlers) avidly watching the customers as they ate | their pancakes just in case they accidentally dropped some. Then they | would dart forwards to pick up scraps and stuff them into their | mouths. Some adults, racked with hunger, beat the children and stole | from them. | | International food aid began to arrive in Onsong, our city, near the | border with China. For a while the children started to get their | strength back. But then the cadres reduced the rations. First the | children had to make do with soup, then with nothing. Their faces were | terribly thin, their cheeks were hollow and their eyes bulged with | hunger. | | The United Nations must have heard that the aid was not being | distributed, because an inspection was organised. The party cadres, | who had been alerted in advance, had rice delivered to the schools | from state storehouses, which were apparently far from empty. The | children were told to tell the UN inspectors that this diet was | perfectly normal. On the day of the visit there were all kinds of | dishes on the menu: noodles, maize soufflé. Once the UN team set off | again, the cadres took back everything, including all the uneaten food | from the tables where the children were still sitting. | | Hunger engulfed my little universe. The poorest children lived on | nothing but grass, and during class their stomachs rumbled. After a | few weeks their faces began to swell, making them look well nourished. | Then their faces went on growing until they looked as though they had | been inflated. Their cheeks were so puffy that they couldn..t see the | blackboard. Some of them were covered with impetigo and flaking skin. | | My classmates started dying during the summer of 1996. One girl spent | her days by her dying brother..s bedside, going short herself so that | he would have more to eat. She died before he did. | | As time passed there were fewer and fewer of us sitting at the school | desks. Sometimes there were only about 10 in a class of 35. The | teachers themselves no longer had enough energy to take their classes. | They sat shapelessly in their chairs, cane in hand, while we repeated | by heart lessons we had already learnt about the childhoods of Kim | Il-sung and his son and successor Kim Jong-il, the Dear Leader. | | The famine encouraged the most selfish kinds of behaviour. My | grandmother sold soya dishes and soups at home, a little trade that | helped her to survive. I remember one father who regularly came to my | grandmother..s house in secret to eat his fill far from the eyes of | his family. Many parents left their homes in search of food, and most | didn..t come back. | | People generally died at night, and every morning we counted five or | six deaths in our neighbourhood. Most of them were ordinary people, | because neither party cadres nor policemen nor high-ranking military | officers suffered as a result of the famine. My father calculated that | the district where we lived had shrunk from 4,000 to 2,000 | inhabitants. | | There were empty houses everywhere. We felt as though we were living | in a ghost town. Nonetheless, with my boy..s eyes, I found it all | relatively normal. It was all I had ever known, and I thought that | things abroad must be pretty much the same, or worse, as our leaders | told us, assuring us that North Korea was ..paradise.. compared with | other states. My belief in Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il remained | unshakeable. | | The party cadres blamed ..natural disasters.., the US and South Korea | for the shortages. My friends and I caught frogs and cooked them | skewered on bicycle spokes. We also ate grasshoppers, which are | delicious fried, as are dragonflies. Grilled, the flesh of fat | dragonflies tastes a bit like pork; but you can eat them raw, once the | head and wings have been removed. Sparrows and quails ended up in the | pot. We caught them with nets set in wooden frames. Other birds, like | crows, we fried on a brazier. | | The railway station was a hideout for abandoned children. The shortage | of petrol and electricity had reduced the daily rail service to one | departure every two weeks. So the station was filled with people | waiting for trains that never came. Destitute crowds slept there night | and day. Skeletal children wandered through the waiting room. Some of | them were very young: I remember kids of one or two who couldn..t even | stand upright. They crawled on all fours on the filthy floor, picking | up whatever they could with their black fingers. | | People gathered for a few minutes around the body of a child who had | just died, but lost interest almost immediately. A friend of my | father..s was in a unit responsible for their collection and burial. | He told us he never rushed to pick up dead children. He waited until | at least three had died before collecting their bodies because that | way he only had to dig a single grave. He dug rather shallow graves so | as not to tire himself, and then laid the little skeletons in the | holes, sometimes without so much as a shroud. | | By 1997 my school had ceased to function. I ended up joining the gangs | of children who stole from the market stalls. I would distract a | well-padded person..s attention and then my gang of five or six would | jump on them and grab their money. The misfortune of others, even your | own family, leaves you completely indifferent when you have nothing in | your belly. You rob ruthlessly; you would even kill. | | My father worked in the local lignite mine. In the autumn of 1997 he | asked the cadres for a change of employment. This was a legitimate | request, because he had worked in the mine for more than 15 years, and | the labour had been very hard. The cadres refused. Exasperated, my | father hurled an ashtray through a window, and started insulting them. | He ended up breaking all of the cadres.. office windows, calling them | fat pigs. | | He was summoned to the penal labour colony in Onsong the following | week for ..re-education.., but instead he escaped to China. After | three months, and after saving some money, he came back to get me and | my mother. But he was caught, laden with sausages and other | foodstuffs, by border guards who wolfed down the food in front of him | and then beat him up. Within days he was in an overcrowded cell in | Onsong prison. | | Eventually, after contracting typhus from infected lice, my father was | granted provisional release on condition that he would go back to | prison if he recovered from the illness. Depressed, he hit the bottle | and one evening he suddenly started shouting at the top of his voice: | ..Kim Jong-il, son of a bitch . . . *******, swine!.. My mother, in a | panic, jammed both hands over his mouth. Our house was under constant | surveillance from neighbourhood informers, and this sort of outburst | could get us all shot. | | He made up his mind to smuggle us to China. For more than a month he | tried everything he could think of to persuade us, but my mother | wasn..t convinced. ..In spite of the shortages,.. she insisted, | ..North Korea is without a doubt one of the most prosperous countries | in the world!.. I told him I would rather be a beggar in North Korea | than follow him to China. I spouted phrases that I had learnt at | school: ..Let us safeguard socialism . . . I will fight to the death | to protect socialism and the Great Leader Kim Il-sung!.. My father | went on insulting Kim Jong-il in the worst possible terms. My mother | finally yielded. In turn she tried to persuade me, the confused | 13-year-old. She said we would spend a year in China, no more, and we | would earn money and come back to North Korea. | | Reluctantly, I agreed. We made our getaway from home on March 19, | 1998, at 4am, because that was the time when my father was under the | least amount of surveillance. We had only the clothes on our backs, | because even the smallest bundle of clothing would have looked | suspicious. Needless to say, we did not return after a year .. nor | have we ever. | ---------------------------- | |
#26
|
|||
|
|||
![]() "randall g" wrote in message ... On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 18:56:58 -0700, "NW_Pilot" wrote: I will not believe anything the news media and government tells me about how bad another country is untill I see it for myself. The U.S. government said Beirut Lebanon is a bad place and that the "Muslims" all want to kill all Americans hahahahaha... You must have been hallucinating. Nobody in the government said anything of the sort. In fact your President has gone out of his way to praise Islam as a peaceful religion, which it most certainly is not. But what do I know!!! I just keep my eyes open look, I wonder and I think for Myself. You also make **** up. randall g =%^) PPASEL+Night 1974 Cardinal RG http://www.telemark.net/randallg Lots of aerial photographs of British Columbia at: http://www.telemark.net/randallg/photos.htm Vancouver's famous Kat Kam: http://www.katkam.ca Take a look at they changed the travel Warning sine I was there in September. http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_p...w/tw_1764.html |
#27
|
|||
|
|||
![]()
On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 00:42:03 GMT, "Crash Lander" wrote:
"Jay Honeck" wrote in message ps.com... They have suffered 11 straight years of food shortages, and are able to feed themselves only because of outside aid -- Haven't really kept up on this as I know I should, but to me, the foreign aid should be the first thing to stop! Well, you're posting in the wrong language, then. China is still NK's primary supporter. The recent UN resolution basically eliminates luxury items. And...nuclear weapons aside...all local nations want to maintain the status quo. No one wants the repression in North Korea to end. South Korea doesn't want to have to take care 23 million starving North Koreans nor erect a modern infrastructure from scratch, nor does China, nor Japan, nor even the US. You can take a look at: http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita.../dprk-dark.htm ....and see what the challenge would be. The country that invades NK is stuck with moving them out of the 19th Century. The UN will wring its hands, it'll eventually figure out a way to bribe Kim to supress the nukes, but you won't find any serious effort to oust Kim and the Party. Ron Wanttaja |
#28
|
|||
|
|||
![]()
On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 22:29:10 -0700, "NW_Pilot"
wrote: "randall g" wrote in message .. . On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 18:56:58 -0700, "NW_Pilot" wrote: I will not believe anything the news media and government tells me about how bad another country is untill I see it for myself. The U.S. government said Beirut Lebanon is a bad place and that the "Muslims" all want to kill all Americans hahahahaha... You must have been hallucinating. Nobody in the government said anything of the sort. In fact your President has gone out of his way to praise Islam as a peaceful religion, which it most certainly is not. But what do I know!!! I just keep my eyes open look, I wonder and I think for Myself. You also make **** up. Take a look at they changed the travel Warning sine I was there in September. http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_p...w/tw_1764.html Hmm. The CIA beaurocracy points out some fairly obvious potential dangers and precautions that American travellers should be aware of, and they would be remiss in their duty not to do so. Where specifically do you disagree? I don't think they are making a value judgement that Beruit is a "bad place" or that "Muslims want to kill all Americans" which are the words you used. As a pilot I think you should be able to use such information to manage your risk in an appropriate fashion. Also, like I said, there have been no public statements by higher officials (such as the President or Secretary of State) that use the language you ascribed to the government. No big deal. You have a fairly large dose of paranoia. Everbody in the universe has that to some extent. randall g =%^) PPASEL+Night 1974 Cardinal RG http://www.telemark.net/randallg Lots of aerial photographs of British Columbia at: http://www.telemark.net/randallg/photos.htm Vancouver's famous Kat Kam: http://www.katkam.ca |
#29
|
|||
|
|||
![]() Jay Honeck wrote: Since I'm tired of reading questions about the development of anti-matter-powered Beechcraft ejection seats, I thought I'd toss this topic onto the newsgroup's platter: North Korea. Well, I am physically a lot closer to North Korea than you guys, and I refuse to worry about it. North Korea has had the bomb since the early '90s. The sixth Pakistan test in 1994 was actually on contract for North Korea and was conducted almost immediately after the US had extracted an agreement (in return for a huge amount of tribute) that North Korea would stop developing nuclear weapons. So, really, all this is about is North Korea demanding more money to prop up its totalitarian regime, "or we won't play nice any more." Actually using a nuke or selling one to a terrorist group to use would immediately result in the whole of North Korea being reduced to slag, and they know it. Neither the US nor any other country attacked in this manner would wait for a UN Security Council resolution. The North Koreans would be gone, and that would be it. As for their flight training, it is said to be awful and there are a lot of accidents. So far, North Korea has a series of rocket tests, with a very high failure rate, and one atomic test that fizzled. Sounds to me like the most North Korea's WMD scientists have to fear is their own government. |
#30
|
|||
|
|||
![]() Jim Macklin wrote: Thank you and welcome to the world. My father was born in Nan King in 1904. He left when WWI started. He had many stories about starvation and Chinese life. Food was in short supply for everyone. Oldest boys were valued and girls were not. He told us that during a famine the youngest girl could go into the pot so the male children could eat. Today, famine is caused by politics, food can be and is transported anywhere and it is blocked by politicians trying to purge or control their people. The English would not import grain from America when the potato crop failed and the Irish starved. It still goes on today in Asia and Africa. Soylent Green IS people. Its not just for movies, never was. One thing I can say about here in the Philippines, at least, is that starvation is relatively rare despite the extreme poverty. Practically every bush and plant here can be eaten. But there are some people who are starving, even here, and some of it is political. The plight of some of the minority tribes can be terrible. Every day when I go into town I am accosted by small children who are begging. These kids are controlled by gangsters who take every centavo the kids get and then some. It is terrible. But I am not currently at liberty to say anything more about it. |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|