North Korea...

Hillary did a good job with the 2 female Journalists.


It was Bill Clinton, this is the link.
2009 imprisonment of American journalists by North Korea - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Iran that may be tough. They did release the Americans just before Regan was elected

 

Sad Christian churches for converts not allowed in Iran. Sounds like the Dark Ages

 

Not sure where you get that from. There are lots of churches in Iran. Not as many as other places, but lots. They are in the boonies and they are in the urban centers. Officially Iran denies any detention of that American "just because he is Christian". They say he was handing out Zionist propaganda and converting. Their constitution even provides allowances for Christians to eat non-halal foods, special family services (most family disputes in Islam go through a religious meeting, so that doesn't work for the Christians), and other things.

Now the big kicker is that they do not allow conversions! So if you are Christian, Jewish, whatever, you can remain that way and go to your church down the street with no problems. If you do what they do here in the states and try to convert you, that is illegal. It is punishable by death even. I am in favour of something similar but not quite as drastic personally. If i want to join your club, I will. Don't push me to join, or promise me gifts to join, or anything like that. So if someone wakes up one day and becomes a Christian, they are allowed to under Iranian law. However they are not allowed to under Sharia law.

Closer to home, it is also sad that Muslim mosques here in the states get protested at, vandalized, become neighbours to weekly pig races, and more commonly now get rejected from obtaining the proper zoning permits for no other reason. That is also pretty "dark" for a country where the entire reason it was founded was to escape religious persecution.

Saudi Arabia doesn't even allow public worship of anything but Islam, but we are still buddy buddy with them. Oil is thicker than jewish carpenters apparently.

 

I will Clarify, Converts are not allowed, and converts cannot go to church.

 

delete

 

Specifically converts to... it is the death penalty. He would have already been dead if not for being a US citizen.

 

Converts are allowed as long as they weren't "converted". If they came to the choice by their own free will, no problem. If they came to the choice and have been seen going in and out of church recently, they are probably gonna die.

It is sad how Iran 30 years ago was more open and accepting than the Iran of today. I'm sure there will be another revolution in the future, this time to push the Ayatollah out instead of back in.

 

Just reading wiki.

Anywho this is the issue at hand

 

I heard on the radio in the commute home that NK wants direct talks with the USA. NK wants nukes out of SK, Japan etc, wants sanctions lifted and economic aid. In exchange they will release the prisoner. LOL

No kidding I heard that.

 

There was an interesting article on the propaganda war yesterday.

North Koreans tune in for a glimpse of the outside world | World news | guardian.co.uk

One thing seems to have been accidentally edited out of the article: it mentions people putting the seals back on their radios, but gives no context for this. For those of you who don't know, radios and TVs in NK don't have conventional tuners: they're set to approved stations, and that's all you can listen to. But people who know their way around electronics can adjust them so they can listen to overseas broadcasts.

 

I remember radio free Europe during the Cold War

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

I picked up VOA in Asia occasionally, in English, Mandarin and Cantonese.

It wasn't terribly effective: it was all propaganda, and all thoroughly boring. I think the BBC World Service does a far better job of promoting British interests by not looking like that's what it's doing.

 

They say Twitter is helping bring down the Political boundaries

 

Some things never change, I was in southern Turkey in the mid 1960s when Turkey shot up Northern Cypress. The base I was on was the Turkish AFB that Turkey flew out of to strike Cypress so we could see and count how many TAF aircraft took off to attack Cypress and how many returned from each mission. This was pre-internet, pre sat-TV so there was a serious lack of information for us USAF peons.

The situation was particularly delicate because Turkey, Greece, Great Britain and the US were all NATO members

Our sources of rapid (same day) reporting were:
BBC shortwave: Factual and to the point and unbiased. Their aircraft counts agreed with our counts.
VOA: No lies but nearly useless with propaganda content.
AFRN: Armed Forces Radio Network. Useless, don't remember them even commenting on it.
Radio Moscow North American broadcast: About as useful as VOA with heavier propaganda content.
Radio Moscow North African Broadcast: Vitriolic propaganda

 

Yes, none of that surprises me. It must have been a strange time to be serving in Turkey, though: you and your colleagues must have been in a very awkward situation.

In 1998, during the soccer World Cup in France, the USA played Iran in what was described as "the most politically-charged World Cup match ever" (I assume they're referring only to the finals, as the El Salvador v Honduras qualifying game in 1969 that led to a war is, I reckon, more politically charged).

Anyway, Iran beat America 2-1.

I was in Seoul that week for work, and the only English-language TV in my hotel was AFKN. I waited eagerly for the sports news. They started reading out the results: Germany 2 - Yugoslavia 2; Argentina 5 - Jamaica 0.... And that was it. They didn't read out the America-Iran result! I assumed that this meant Iran had won, and I went down to the hotel reception to ask. They told me that Iran had indeed one.

If AFKN won't even admit it when America loses a match in what was then a minority sport, it's not really going to e a credible news source.

I do generally find the BBC pretty good. Especially its non-news stuff, which I think is great for "soft power". I heard an interesting radio programme recently about Top Gear. You can hear it at BBC World Service - The Fifth Floor, The Persian voice of Jeremy Clarkson (listen from 02:10), or read about it at BBC News - Top Gear in Iran: Why do Iranians love Jeremy Clarkson?. It's talking about the Farsi-dubbed version of Top Gear, which is shown on BBC Persia (which is illegal in Iran, but people pick it up via satellite) - apparently it's just about the most popular programme in Iran. Apparently, the translators are very careful to keep the silliness and rudeness in there. And that makes Britain look real, and fun, and nice. It's hard for the Iranian government to dismiss Britain as "The Little Satan" when everyone is laughing at Top Gear every week. Australia Network does a similarly good job of projecting Australian life and culture across Asia, by just showing the stuff we like rather than dry political propaganda and boring documentaries about Australian culture.

I was asked recently by the Chinese Ministry of Propaganda why people believe the news on al-Jazeera and BBC World, but not on CCTV. I explained that shouting propaganda at people doesn't really work. CCTV has improved, but it's still a long way from being recognised as a credible news source.

 

Turks are cool. There was some tension and we were restricted to base for a while but I never detected any open hostility. There was some loss of warmth from the local populace and the local law enforcement became less forgiving, but still not unreasonable.

Considering the US pressured Turkey to not invade Cypress by threatening to stop aid and military support, the Turkish response to us as individuals was very restrained.

I married my 1/2 El Salvadorean wife 3 weeks after the soccer war started. According to the inlaws, the tipping point was when some El Salvadorean men were castrated at a soccer game in Honduras. No idea if that's what really happened.

 

From what I've heard, it all sounds like a very odd battle. And after years of being the less-well-off half of Cyprus, I'm sure that Northern Cyprus is enjoying being Solvent Cyprus now. It's good that things were OK for you and your colleagues. It's another thing - like the stuff about Top Gear - that shows that it's a lot harder to hate real people than to hate the idea of a country.

That whole soccer war sounded very weird.

 

Castrated! Sounds harsh. Fined would have been more humane.

 

I always thought Turkey and Greece are at odds. Turkey also against Syria and Turkey against Israel at times. But I may be inaccurate

 

After reading this, I had to drive to the bank. I ended up listening to a podcast about Sima Qian, the Chinese ennuch historian, and about how he became one (a eunuch, not a historian - becoming a historian is not that unpleasant an experience). It's castration here, there and everywhere today. I am now sitting with my legs firmly crossed.