#RememberOtto
Contradicting Trump, Otto Warmbier’s parents blame North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for the death of their son
The parents of Otto Warmbier, the American student who died shortly after being released from North Korean custody, said that the Kim Jong Un regime is “responsible” for their son’s death, contradicting a statement made by President Donald Trump who believes that Kim did not know about Warmbier’s treatment.
The parents of Otto Warmbier issued a blistering statement on Friday saying Kim Jong Un and his government “are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity” after President Donald Trump asserted that the North Korean dictator had been unaware of the harrowing treatment the student endured while detained there.
“We have been respectful during this summit process. Now we must speak out. Kim and his evil regime are responsible for the death of our son Otto,” Fred and Cindy Warmbier said in a statement. “Kim and his evil regime are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity. No excuses or lavish praise can change that.”
Warmbier was arrested for taking a propaganda banner from a hotel while on a visit to Pyongyang in January 2016. The University of Virginia student from Ohio was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor, but was released after 17 months.
Warmbier, 22, died shortly after he returned to the U.S.
His parents were told he had been in a coma since not long after he was sentenced. When he was brought back to Cincinnati after his release, his father said he “was jerking violently, making these inhuman sounds.”
“He was blind, he was deaf,” Fred Warmbier had said.
Trump said Thursday that Kim was not responsible for and had no knowledge of the of the horrific treatment Warmbier suffered while he was detained in the country for 17 months.
“Some really bad things happened to Otto — some really, really bad things. But he tells me that he didn’t know about it, and I will take him at his word,” Trump said, referring to Kim.
“I really don’t think it was in his interest at all,” he added at a press conference following the collapse of a nuclear summit in Hanoi.
Kim “knew the case very well, but he knew it later,” Trump said.
Trump’s comments were a glaring reversal from those he made during his first State of the Union address in 2018, which the Warmbiers attended.
“After a shameful trial, the dictatorship sentenced Otto to 15 years of hard labor before returning him to America last June, horribly injured and on the verge of death,” Trump said at the time. He asked the emotional Warmbiers to stand up for applause, and called them “incredible people.”
“You are powerful witnesses to a menace that threatens our world, and your strength truly inspires us all. Thank you,” he said to them.
Trump’s Thursday remarks were met with backlash from both sides of the aisle.
Last year, an American judge ruled Warmbier’s parents were entitled to more than $500 million in damages from North Korea’s government.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It is beyond belief how far Trump will go to dominate the headlines and yet it is happening on a daily basis and when the media reports what he says and tweets, no matter how dishonest it is and how outrages it is, they continue to feed the trollish monster living inside Trump’s skin and head.
It is really hard to understand why people believe Trump and refuse to see that he is a pathological liar. Cohen’s testimony was damning and people don’t believe him. Something is terribly wrong with this country.
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The Washington Post’s Fact Checker team has documented 8,718 false or misleading claims by the president since he took office, as of Feb. 17, his 759th day in office.
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Poll finds 37 percent found Cohen testimony credible
Less than half of those surveyed in a new Hill-HarrisX poll found Michael Cohen’s public testimony to Congress credible.
While more respondents said they found Cohen’s testimony to be credible than those who said it was not, the overall results suggest the high-profile appearance by President Trump’s former personal attorney is unlikely to be a political game-changer.
We will only know the fallout from Trump after the 2020 election.
I hope Trump survives (because it looks like the GOP in the Senate will protect him no matter his crimes and the evidence) and runs for a 2nd term and then he loses all but a handful of states ending up with one of the largest Electoral College and popular vote loses in the history of the United States.
The only states Trump wins in 2020: Alabama (9), Mississippi (6), South Carolina (9), and Montana (3).
Trump ends up with 26 Electoral College Votes
The Democrat running against him ends up with 512.
Popular vote:
Trump 35 million
The Democrat 163 million
Other 2 million
Before the sun rises the next day, Trump tweets that the election was rigged and calls on his base of support to start a civil war.
After his loss, and when Trump is out of the White House, I want justice and the IRS to catch up with him until he ends up losing everything, even his freedom. I want him to live long enough to see most of his family also behind bars (except for maybe Tiffany and Baron) and living in poverty (except maybe Tiffany).
And his youngest son Baron ends up working for McDonald’s at the counter taking orders for the rest of his life. An honest life but one lived in poverty with food stamps.
Disagree!
Trump could lose Montana, which has a Democratic Governor, Steve Bullock.
Trump could,one Alabama, which elected a Democratic Senator, Doug Jones.
I concede him only Mississippi, maybe South Carolina.
I concede, but I wonder if Trump will “concede” when he only wins Mississippi and maybe South Carolina.
He may foment a civil uprising. Or he may run to Mar-a-Lago and escape as fast as possible.
Lloyd Lofthouse: 26 Electoral College votes for Trump sounds perfect to me. I want to see him and his corrupt family in a for-profit prison. They don’t have enough money to provide healthcare or decent food. It’s just right for the Orange Pussy-Liar-Incompetent-in-Chief.
How about sending Trump to a prison in one of the countries he called a “shithole”?
Regardless o& public opinion, Cohen provided new leads about Trump’s criminal behavior, and its up to the House to follow up and investigate.
The Senate is a collection of GOP robots. Bobble heads. They will allow this con artist to revise the Constitution and diminish the power of Congress.itwill beironic when the next Democratic president declares climate change to be a national emergency and transfers funds from the military without Congressional approval.
Utah’s 6 electoral votes will almost certainly go to Trump, as slimy as he is, because he’s a Republican and claims to oppose abortion. I know a ton of people in the state who agree that Trump is awful, but voted for him anyway, all because of abortion.
Threatened Out West: I have a friend who says [by email] that abortion is all about butchering babies. She is a Fox watcher. When we meet in person we never discuss politics.
How someone educated can still think Trump is the greatest thing since chocolate is way beyond me. Don’t these people care about the environment and that millions have no healthcare? Don’t they care about children who have been taken from their parents and will most likely never see them again? [Nope, those are brown babies. Only the fetuses of white people count.]
“Thirty-seven percent of registered voters contacted Feb. 28 and March 1 for The Hill-HarrisX poll said they found Cohen’s testimony credible, compared to 25 percent who said they did not find him credible.”
“Thirty-nine percent said they had not yet formed an opinion of Cohen’s testimony.”
Another way of saying that is they don’t know who Cohen is no less their own Congressional Reps.
I will take that 12 point spread any day. Interesting how we manufacture consent. Assuming that the undecideds break the same way as the decided which if the Democrats do their job they will. That rounds up to 68 %.
Lofgren did point out in 2011 that Democrats do not know how to use language.
Now how does the story sound when you say 68% of the American people found Cohen’s testimony credible vs 32 % who did not.
Let’s phrase that another way. More than twice the viewers who had an opinion felt that Cohen’s testimony was credible.
Or if you prefer only a small fraction of Americans did not find Cohen’s testimony credible.
So what would the motive be? Perhaps if you wanted “the Democrats to fight with pillows. ” You would urge them to tread lightly and not take the “headshots ” required to bring a tyrant down. It is a recipe for running the status quo candidates who are afraid to rock the boat.
Make no mistake if the situation were reversed the word traitor would be reverberating through the halls of the capital; without any hesitation.
The myth that the Republicans suffered terribly for their impeachment of Clinton is meant to keep Democrats fighting with pillows. .The Republicans maintained the Senate, lost a whopping 2 seats in the House and sort of won the Presidency in 2000. In spite of a booming economy far stronger than todays; as the prime age worker participation rate was 2% higher through the 90s.
It certainly will not be a game changer if you don’t turn it into one.
Trump once again is sticking up for a dictator. Nothing happens in a N. Korean prison involving an American that Kim wouldn’t know about. But then, Trump also ‘knew’ that Putin wasn’t involved in US politics because he told the truth.
Trump said, “Those prisons are rough, rough places, and bad things happened, but I really don’t believe [Kim] knew about it… he felt badly about it, he felt very badly, he knew the case very well but he knew it later.” Trump, speaking at a press conference after talks aimed at persuading Kim to give up his nuclear weapons collapsed, added: “You have a lot of people. And some really bad things happened to Otto. Some really, really bad things. But [Kim] tells me that he didn’t know about it, and I will take him at his word.”
[About Putin.] “He said he didn’t meddle. He said he didn’t meddle,” Trump told reporters from Air Force One. “I asked him again. You can only ask so many times. I just asked him again. He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did.”
Trump supporters don’t mind because they’re ignorant. They’re ignorant because we don’t teach enough about evil regimes (or any other important facts). We just teach “skills” because we think facts just aren’t that important.
I live around lots of right wing Trump supporters. We cannot blame education alone for the rise of Trump. We have to consider that students spend far more time in the company of their families. Some of these Trump supporters are highly educated like DeSantis in Florida and lots of the officers in the military. I think many of Trump’s people are threatened by the changing demographics in this country. They want to return to the time when the white male dominated everything. Black, brown people and women “knew their place.”
I think many of Trump’s people are threatened by the changing demographics in this country. They want to return to the time when the white male dominated everything. Black, brown people and women “knew their place.”
Yes, and there were prayers in schools. And that list goes on. Kentuck’s legislature has just mandated that every public school have signage: In God we trust.
I think many of Trump’s people are threatened by the changing demographics in this country. They want to return to the time when the white male dominated everything. Black, brown people and women “knew their place.”
Yes, and there were prayers in schools. And that list goes on. The Kentucky legislature has just mandated that every public school have this signage: In God we trust.
I’m not blaming education alone, but education matters (it’s striking to me how many on this blog discount the power of education. Knowledge is power). How many Trump supporters, even the “educated” ones like DeSantis, have a deep, visceral grasp of the horrors of the gulags? Or of the fragility of democracy and rule of law? I would guess very few. Would such understanding lead them to fear Trump’s authoritarian tendencies more than they fear black and brown people? I bet it would, for some at least. Knowledge is the best fumigant for demagogues. Sadly our education experts don’t believe in transmitting knowledge anymore. Ignorance is fine –even a plus, because facts burden the brain –so long as we “teach” fake “21st Century Skills”. This is the fatal flaw of American education.
Dude. I teach about evil regimes all the time. Tired of education being blamed for everything.
TOW: you believe in teaching knowledge is at least as important as teaching “skills”. Do most of your colleagues?
I’m happy to hear you’re teaching about evil regimes. I’d be interested to hear more details. But do you think most kids emerge from HS with a solid education in evil regimes? I was lucky to have had a full 6 months devoted to learning about the Soviet Union in 9th grade. It was not a scintillating class, but as it plodded along I got a solid treatment of the Five Year Plans, Pravda, the gulags, the KGB, etc. A vivid and comprehensive picture of a rotten state built on lies emerged. And because the course was slow and systematic, it took its time, the learning stuck. It sunk in. Later on in a HS English class we read both Animal Farm and 1984. Slow and thorough treatment of both. I think every American HS student should get at least this much exposure to evil regimes. Do you think this is happening?
The authors of the new CA history frameworks blithely tell us to omit content (“You can’t teach all the standards. Don’t even try.”) What matters to them is not that kids learn particular content, but that they engage in “inquiry”, thereby presumably building up some sort of mental muscle that will more than compensate for their ignorance of important subjects. This is a mistake.
This is off topic, but important since the GOP’ers insist that passing Medicare for All will destroy the US since it is a turn to socialism. We certainly don’t want to become Venezuela. Denmark’s people are happier than people in the US. Social safety nets are needed to help people when they are down. The US system rewards the wealthy and screw everyone else. Can’t have social democracy or any version with that dirty word. Free healthcare. Free schooling. Nah. The US would much rather put money in the military so we can ‘save the world’.
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Bernie Asks Danish Politician: Why Is Denmark So Happy?
Senator Bernie Sanders
Published on Dec 17, 2018
The people of Denmark are some of the happiest on earth. I met with Dan Jørgensen of Denmark’s Socialdemokratiet Party to learn why.
Pence likens Democratic health-care and energy agenda to socialism
Addressing CPAC, the vice president ties 2020 Democrats to policies he blamed for economic collapse in Venezuela.
By Anne Gearan
This is the new Trump-Pence narrative. Either you are with them or you are a socialist who wants to turn the country into Cuba.
Almost all the other 35 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have some form of universal, single-payer healthcare. Their healthcare costs, per capita, are HALF what our are, and their outcomes (with regard to longevity, infant mortality, all the diseases of affluence such as diabetes, cancer, and heart disease) are better. Why? Our system siphons off enormous resources into the profits of insurance companies and other healthcare cartels here in the US. I call ours the healthcare RICO system. It is long, long past time for Americans to wise up about this. Denmark is not the Soviet Union under Stalin or Germany under Hitler. LOL. Only an idiot or someone on the payroll of the corrupt organizations would confuse national socialism and democratic socialism.
Trump probably isn’t entirely wrong. National leaders are often kept in the dark (by their own decree) about such matters, especially the specifics, so that they can have plausible deniability of what was happening. Bush, for instance, didn’t “know” what was happening at GITMO and Abu Ghraib (although I’m sure he knew). None of that excuses either Kim or Bush for being responsible for what happens under and committed by members of their administrations.
HW Bush was not a dictator. He was not in charge of a totalitarian state.
Kim is a dictator of a totalitarian state. No one below him would make a decision of such importance—to torture and kill an American college student—without Kim’s approval.
Torture is torture, Diane. It’s wrong no matter who does it – we can agree on that, no?
Yes, torture is wrong, but what about Donald Trump?
BTW, if you’re trying to make the “rogue agent” claim in defense of Bush, it won’t fly. There’s way too much documented evidence that the Bush administration knew and approved what was going on, not only at GITMO and Abu Ghraib, but at hundreds of black sites – that kind of widespread activity couldn’t be the result of a handful of rogue agents going outside the bounds of their orders.
Also, BTW, I don’t know if “HW” was a typo, but I’m speaking of GW Bush.
What about Donald Trump? It’s wrong if he does it too. Did I imply otherwise?
The question I wrote wasn’t detailed enough?
If Donald Trump is found guilty of treason, what would you think of torture for someone like him?
What I mean when I say torture is if Trump ends up in prison for his crimes, he doesn’t go to a white collar country club prison but one of the most dangerous prisons in the country where most of the working class that ends up in prison goes.
Are you a real human being or just a caricature of one?
‘Trump is a sociopath’: Harvard psychiatrist breaks down the president’s ‘severe, continuous, mental disturbance’
…Mr. Trump’s denial of the facts about Mr. Warmbier is consistent with his sociopathy. He ignores reality, is unremorseful about lying and does not hesitate to sacrifice the feelings of others such as Mr. Warmbier’s family. We don’t know exactly why he lied in this case, but one possibility is that Mr. Trump has heavily promoted his relationship with Kim as evidence of his superior ability to manage world tensions and thinks that confronting Kim would interfere with that, hence personally diminishing Mr. Trump. In any case, Mr. Trump’s absence of feelings for Mr. Warmbier or his family is the same as his absence of feelings for the disabled reporter he mocked, for religious and racial minorities, for children separated from their parents at the border and on and on.
Tana Ganeva: What made you first consider that Donald Trump is a sociopath?
Lance Dodes: Mr. Trump has a long history that proves his diagnosis. If you consider the 7 traits that define Antisocial Personality Disorder in the DSM-5, he meets every one of them:
https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/trump-is-a-sociopath-harvard-psychiatrist-breaks-down-the-presidents-severe-continuous-mental-disturbance/#.XHma8_dEYqo.gmail
“And, you know, you got a lot of people — big country, lot of people. And in those prisons and those camps, you have a lot of people. And some really bad things happened to Otto. Some really, really bad things. But he tells me that he didn’t know about it and I will take him at his word.”
Read that a few times and try not to wretch.
“And in those prisons and those camps, you have a lot of people.”
This is the g**d****d president of the US! And he may be the dumbest man in the world.
He accepts whatever any dictator says as truth, but doesn’t believe scientists.
For sure Trump has no idea the size of North Korea and that it only has 25.6 million people.
That “really big country” is the 99th largest country in the world. Size (land area), not population.
https://data.mongabay.com/igapo/world_statistics_by_area.htm
Russia is the largest, Canada is #2 and the US is #3
South Korea had almost 51.3 million people bu is ranked the 109th largest country in the world.
China has 1.4 billion people (That’s big)
For the population, North Korea is ranked 52
South Korea is #28
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/
What about GDP?
North Korea is ranked 118th.
South Korea is #11.
The U.S. is still #1
There is nothing about North Korea that is “really big” unless you count suffering and fear.
If you want to know what Trump thinks is really big just look at the size of his tiny hands but if anyone is curious what is really big about Trump watch him playing tennis in white shorts and a short-sleeved polo shirt.
I bet that Trump stopped wearing shorts after that photo hit the media.
This to me was just the saddest and the lowest. Out of many, many lows … but this was just despicable … how cruel he is.
Otto Warmbier Parents Hit Out at Trump for Backing Kim Jong Un
Fred and Cindy Warmbier issued a damning statement Friday hitting out at President Trump for taking North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s word for it that he knew nothing about the treatment of their son Otto. “We have been respectful during this summit process. Now we must speak out,” the couple said in a statement. “Kim and his evil regime are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity. No excuses or lavish praise can change that.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/otto-warmbier-parents-hit-out-at-trump-for-backing-kim-jong-un?source=email&via=desktop
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Video: Otto Warmbier’s family hits back after Trump sides with Kim Jong Un
President Trump took Kim Jong Un’s word after saying he was unaware that American student Otto Warmbier was tortured in North Korea. NBC’s Bill Neely joins Ali Velshi to discuss what the Warmbier family said about the treatment of their son in North Korea after being returned to the U.S. in a vegetative state.
March 1, 2019
https://www.msnbc.com/velshi-ruhle/watch/otto-warmbier-s-family-hits-back-after-trump-sides-with-kim-jong-un-1450625091757
Once again IQ45 demonstrates his mental prowess.
Add that to the list. LOL.
So, the Republican “leadership” seems to be able to forgive Trump absolutely anything. Ridiculing people with disabilities. Ridiculing highly respected public figures like John McCain and Jim Mattis. Bragging about groping women. Accusations of sexual assault as numerous as those against Harvey Weinstein. Encouraging violence against journalists. Recurrent, casual racism. Lying to the country, in a very big way, about how much wealth he inherited from his father. Business dealings with mobsters. Treating his charity like a private piggy bank. Funding his inauguration festivities with quid pro quos. A history of business scams like Trump University. Not making public his tax returns, as every other president has done. Asking foreign enemies to hack and reveal opponents’ private emails. Refusing to divest his business interests, in violation of the emoluments clauses of the Constitution. Obstruction of justice. Witness intimidation. Referring to Nazis as “good people.” Secret campaign-related payoffs to porn stars and others with whom he had extramarital affairs. Lying about whether he had business in Russia. Appointing a Secretary of Education who wants to end public education. Climate-change denial, in contradiction of his own Defense and Intelligence services, which view climate change as a major national security threat. Unilateral military decisions, over the objections of his senior intelligence and military leaders. Shutting down the government over a wall that every independent study has concluded would be insanely expensive and ineffective. Stating that he trusts the word of the Russian president over that of his senior intelligence officials. Expressing, repeatedly, to staffers his desire to pull the US out of NATO. Alienation of our allies. Supporting murderous, dictatorial autocrats worldwide. Trashing of international agreements. Running an administration with more entrances and exits than the most farcical of stage farces. Violating the civil rights of transgender service personnel. Utter ignorance of economics and world affairs, as attested by such former members of his administration as Tillerson, Yellen, and Mattis. Trashing the INF and creating the conditions for a new, exceedingly dangerous arms race. Protectionist tariffs that they would vehemently oppose if promoted by Democrats. Not reading reports or attending to briefings. Having “executive time” for 60 percent of a given day. Polluting the public discourse. Setting a record for lying by a US public official. Trump has to be reelected. Otherwise, he will be facing , literally, hundreds of criminal and civil prosecutions.
You should be writing for Harper’s Index. Excellent.
One suggested correction, however: “in a very big way” should be “bigly.”
An old truism holds that if you don’t have anything good to say about a person, you shouldn’t say anything at all. So, here, my latest on Donald Trump, in which I adhere to that dictum:
Yes, Greg, ofc, bigly. Sorry about the unpresidented confefe.
cx: the last line should read, “Otherwise, he well be facing, literally, hundreds of criminal prosecutions and civil proceedings.”
Bob–that is COfefe (no n)—sounds sillier, doesn’t it?
Anyway, re-watch the Randy Rainbow video. A favorite of mine.
Thank you. I have trouble keeping up with the president’s ideolectual innovations.
yikes. That should be “idiolectual”
This was sent to me by a Canadian friend. It is long but shows the truly frightening thing that could happen if monsters like Trump, but much smarter, take hold of government. Most of us on this site ‘speak ill of the government’.
“In effect, the SCS is designed to completely eliminate mobility – social, class, or travel – for those who do not agree with the government’s definition of a model citizen.”
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March 1, 2019
China’s Terrifying New World Has Arrived – And It’s Coming to the United States
By Katusa Research
In 2015, a 16-year-old student from Jiangsu, China, tried to board a train.
She couldn’t even purchase a ticket.
The student, Zhong Pei, tried enrolling in classes at her university. But she was not allowed to do that either.
Zhong had committed a serious crime: She was guilty of being related to someone else.
Her father had killed two people and died in a car accident. So the Chinese government blacklisted her as “dishonest.”
It took her four months before she was able to overturn the decision and go to her university.
China’s Social Credit System – America’s New Nightmare?
What Zhong experienced was the result of testing for China’s new “Social Credit System.”
The SCS aims to be a unified program that provides a “social credit score” for every one of China’s 1.3 billion citizens.
But the Chinese government needed help develop the algorithms that determine social credit scores. So it enlisted its two largest, trusted social media companies: Tencent and Alibaba. Together, they created “Sesame Credit.”
Both Alibaba and Tencent own enormous Chinese payments systems. They also own the largest Chinese marketplaces.
So Sesame can easily measure how much, how often, and what is bought online in China… and more importantly, when it is paid for.
It’s a seemingly innocent system that could help bring order to the chaos of Chinese commerce.
The plan, however, does not stop there. And the Chinese government has already laid the framework for the dystopian future.
Laws from 2012 and 2016 require internet companies to retain customers’ real names and information.
There will be no opting out from this future.
In 2020, the system will become the Social Credit System (SCS). And it will be owned and operated entirely by the Chinese state government.
The SCS will take into account not only purchases, but also hobbies, your lifestyle, and even who you hang out with.
If you raise a child, attend government events, or do well at your job – things considered ideal for a model citizen – your social credit score will go up.
However…
If you drink too much, play too many video games, or speak ill of the government – your social credit score will go down.
It’s a national database that will hold information on every citizen.
It will assess information as innocent as whether an academic degree was actually earned. And as personal as if a female is supposed to be taking birth control.
In short, the SCS will not be a measurement of how regularly you pay your bills.
It will show the government precisely how well you toe the party line.
Social Credit – Obedience to an Authoritarian State
It’s a great idea, right?
There are a lot of people in China. And it’s hard to prevent crime.
Just think of all the great things it will do for the country:
Citizens know exactly how trustworthy someone is before they befriend them.
Bad driving gets punished (if you have ever driven in Vancouver, Canada-this would be a welcomed feature). While good driving gets rewarded.
People become more confident in public institutions.
If your social credit is high, you’ll reap huge benefits…
You’ll be able to rent better cars and homes, without a deposit.
Your children will have access to the best schools in your area.
You’ll get access to better health insurance.
Prospective employers will be more likely to hire you.
It’ll be easier to get the paperwork to travel or to get a loan.
Chinese officials say that by 2020, the SCS will “allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven…”
But that’s only looking at the benefits for people with a high score.
Here’s the end of that quote: “while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.”
If your credit score drops too low, you’re basically ejected from society.
You’ll be rejected for housing and loans.
Your children won’t be able to attend good schools – even if their grades say otherwise.
You’ll have a harder time finding a date (dating sites and apps in China allow people to advertise their social credit score).
You’ll be turned away from good job opportunities.
Your internet speed could be cut.
Or, like Zhang, you’ll be locked out of being able to buy train tickets and plane tickets.
You won’t be able to leave the country.
In effect, the SCS is designed to completely eliminate mobility – social, class, or travel – for those who do not agree with the government’s definition of a model citizen.
If the punishments are so severe, surely it must be hard to get a low score. Only for horrific crimes, right?
Wrong.
The common slogan in China is: “whoever violates the rules somewhere shall be restricted everywhere.”
Punishment is already happening on a broad scale. Chinese authorities have already banned more than 10 million people deemed “untrustworthy” from boarding flights and high-speed trains.
It’s actually really easy to watch your SCS drop. Hang out with someone with a low score, and your own will go down.
You can lose points based on spending time with your family and friends.
By the way, that’s how North Korea keeps its citizens in line.
It gets worse. When you check your score, you can see precisely who is dragging it down. So you know instantly who to avoid in your life.
In a speech, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence described the SCS as:
“…an Orwellian system premised on controlling virtually every facet of human life.”
Every Move You Make, Every Step You Take… China’s Watching You
Here’s the kicker: The Chinese people seem to want this system.
It’s perfectly gamified, after all. People want to participate in the system to watch their score go up. They’re also unknowingly participating in a system of ostracism and social pressure.
The social credit system is a tool to get people to fall perfectly in line.
It’s not mandatory yet. Which means that all the people who want to do it – the ones who willingly toe the party line – are going to get in early to get super high scores. It will seem innocent. Fun, even.
The social credit system is not scheduled to reach full nation-wide implementation until next year. But parts of it have already been put into play.
Many communities around China are already running their own versions of the social credit system…
Last year, 17 million flights and 5.4 million high-speed rail trips were denied to would-be travelers who found themselves on the government’s blacklist.
It’s said that most of the people on the blacklist are debtors. These are people who have defaulted on loans.
And some of the current implementations of the social credit system only deduct social credit points when you break the law. Like getting a speeding ticket.
Again, there’s a Sesame Credit app, which encourages users to compare their credit scores to those of their friends. It’s an obvious push to get people to share their ratings as a status symbol.
More than 100,000 Chinese people have “tweeted” their SCS scores on the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.
Above: A billboard in a Chinese community displays citizens with the highest social credit score.
The madness has not yet begun.
The logical implications of the system are horrifying to think about.
You can literally die a death by a thousand paper cuts. Buy the wrong thing on Alibaba too many times, and you can no longer even get a job.
Hang out with the wrong friends too many times, and you can’t get a loan or trade in the stock market.
And once you’re out of society, you’re out for good. There’s virtually no way to get back in. You’re muted and invisible. Persona non grata.
It’s an appalling return to the caste system of India. If your credit score is too low, you’re untouchable.
People will turn on each other. China’s elite State Council published a planning document on the SCS that says that the “new system will reward those who report acts of breach of trust.”
That’s a page straight from Soviet Russia’s KGB – only more effective.
Accurate information on China is hard to obtain. It’s likely the current reality is already far worse than we know.
The Land of the Decree, and the Home of the Slave
The majority of the elements are in place for the Social Credit System to be implemented.
Not in China.
In the United States.
We have:
The databases
The digital surveillance
The national credit score system
The systems of reward and punishment
The government-knows-best attitude
The electronic purchasing data
The ubiquitous social networks
Think about it. China started with Alibaba and Tencent.
In the United States, we have Amazon and Facebook and Google.
They know everything you read, see, search, buy, and say.
Your Android or iPhone already tracks your location and reports it hundreds of times per day.
And that information is already being used for complete censorship.
In 2018, Facebook began a program that assigns every user a reputation score, which predicts their “trustworthiness.” Sound familiar?
Here is how China implemented the Social Credit Score system in just under five years:
They subjected all online behavior to intense study.
They collected, stored and analyzed all social media and banking information.
They began to severely regulate the freedom to travel.
And here’s what’s going on in the United States…
Police threat-scoring algorithms are used to determine who the police should be tracking and surveilling. Social media is already being used in these algorithms.
For the past decade, the NSA has been gathering information on people’s social media, locations, friends, and who they travel with.
The agency can enrich the data with bank information, social media information, voter information and even GPS location information.
The TSA has a rapidly expanding “no-fly” list. The list has no government accountability, and there is no recourse – unless, of course, you’re a powerful government official who ends up on it.
Indeed, a report from the World Privacy Forum indicates that in such a credit score system “error rates and false readings become a big issue.”
Implications on the Yuan and U.S. Dollar
Never underestimate the currency butterfly effect. This has huge implications for the yuan, which is the currency of China. The Social Credit Score will have incredible implications on business, government and ultimately, the strength of the currency.
The world has never seen anything like this. And it’s only going to grow. China is the first country to implement this and certainly won’t be the last. You know others will do so to maintain power, increase power and manipulate power.
Pay attention to this and it will be very important in the coming years, and will have significant indirect effects to your portfolio.
What could possibly go wrong?
Last year, Chinese authorities said that part of the program would be to freeze the assets of anyone deemed to be “dishonest.”
Imagine all of your assets suddenly disappearing because a red light camera read your license plate wrong.
The infrastructure for this system is already in place in the United States.
It’s just not about train rides or university classes anymore.
Any individual not aligning with the current social and governmental norms will face poverty… homelessness… starvation… or worse.
Under the new system of life by government approval, survival becomes simple:
Obey… or die.
Regards,
Katusa Research
In the months following 9/11, I was traveling weekly for business, and I suddenly found myself being stopped and subjected to intensive search every time I went through airport security. Each time, I asked why? Each time the TSA officers refused to tell me. But then I read that the American Civil Liberties Union, of which I was a member, had had their entire membership placed on a terrorist watchlist by the Bushie Jr. administration. Can it happen here? Of course it can.
This was precisely what Bill Gates’s InBloom would have blossomed into–a command and control mechanism for the oligarchy.
The more China seems to change the more it stays the same. China has lived by “obey or die” for thousands of years.
For instance, a couple of hundred years before the birth of Christ, China was like Europe, divided into seven countries. Then one king conquered the other six countries and did what no one else has ever done before on earth. His name was Qin Shi Huang Di and he was born in 259 BC. Each of the seven countries in what we know as China today had its own language both written and spoken and different measurement systems.
The first emperor decreed there would only be one written language and one measurement system and that all books printed in other languages would be burned.
Scholars from all over the new empire of China traveled to the emperor’s capital to protest to loss of so much poetry, history, and literature.
Qin Shi Huang Di had his army force the scholars to dig a huge pit large enough to hold them all. I’ve read there were about 2,000 of them. The troops tossed in kindling and lit it and burned the scholars alive. The pit was filled in. No one else in the new China complained about that issue again.
Nothing has changed and I doubt if China will ever change because most Chinese were born into a collective culture where harmony and what’s best for most people is the rule of life, and they do not think like people from other countries like the U.S., Canada and the EU where they grow up in an individualistic culture where children are taught that being an individual is more important than the whole.
Someone on Quora asked “Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote this magnificent response:
“A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem.
For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.
So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever.
I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.
And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness. There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface.
Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront.
Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.
And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that.
He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat.
He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.
There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that: Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are. You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.
God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump. And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created? If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.”
To get back to Bob at 7:50 AM up there: Certainly not de-demonizing IQ45 & admin., but this internet surveillance has, indeed, been going on for a looong time including, of course, the Obama Administration (do we have a short memory RE: Snowden & the NSA?).
retiredbutmissthekids: I watched the movie “Snowden” on TV and put a bandaid over my laptop computer camera. That camera was used to monitor Snowden and his girlfriend.
How freaked out should we be? I see all sorts of adds and one that has the name of my town in NW Indiana. I now use DuckDuckGo for searches. Don’t use Google.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/trump-administration-says-north-korea-used-vx-to-kill-kim-jong-uns-half-brother/
Yvonne: Kim Jong Un killed his half brother in Kuala Lumpur because he was a threat to the Kim regime. His half-brother was more liberal and knew exactly what was happening inside N. Korea. Kim also killed his uncle who wasn’t showing enough loyalty. He also had become a threat.
Kim Jong Un is a deadly dictator. He has his own private jet that flies to countries to get the delicacies that he wants to eat from other countries, especially in Europe. He does this while people are starving in the rural areas.
If anyone complains about anything that person and the whole family will be put in a prison area. Don’t ever say that there isn’t enough food and people are starving. Don’t ever say that you don’t like his haircut. Everything has to be great and wonderful due to the hard work of its wonderful Kim family. They are worshiped as gods inside their country. Children are taught to worship the Kim dynasty.
There are roads with no traffic. There are buildings that are empty fronts. There are department stores that sell nothing but have items on display for videos to show how prosperous N. Korea is. It is all false.
N. Korea still believes it is still fighting the US. Propaganda pictures and TV proclaim the greatness of N. Korea and continuously put down the United States as an evil villain.
There are Western movies brought illegally into N. Korea. If caught seeing that, the person will be killed or his whole extended family will be put in a prison. Many don’t know why they are staving in prison and most never leave.
And IDIOT Trump believes this dictator is his friend.
AGREE, carolmalaysia
He sure did KILL his 1/2 brother. 45 likes fascists like himself.
And IMHO, those who want to destroy public education are fascists, too.
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I LOVE Borowitz! [Remember it’s satire.]
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Kim Jong Un Reveals He Is Just Using Trump to Meet Stormy Daniels
“If Kim doesn’t get to meet Stormy, the missile tests resume,” a confidant said.
PYONGYANG (The Borowitz Report)—Kim Jong Un has revealed to close associates that he has offered to meet Donald J. Trump only as a means of achieving his real goal: meeting the former adult-film star Stormy Daniels…
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/kim-jong-un-reveals-he-is-just-using-trump-to-meet-stormy-daniels
I wonder how many Repubs can stand to hear Trump ramble on and on and on for two hours? Medicare, according to Trump, is a socialist nightmare. He and the Repubs certainly don’t want ‘power for the ruling class’. HUH? The ruling class of the wealthy already have too much power. That is a major problem.
“The future belongs to those who believe in freedom…”. Yep. Freedom from healthcare is a biggie for the GOP. We now get freedom from clean air and water since Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, now runs the EPA.
How about having freedom from Saudi Arabia getting nuclear power? Freedom from oil spills by having solar and wind energy? Freedom from public schools that are perpetually underfunded? Freedom from corporations like Amazon that got millions in tax money back from the government after making billions in profit?
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The top 9 moments from Trump’s two-hour CPAC speech
BY TAL AXELROD – 03/02/19 04:55 PM EST
Trump attacks Democrats over “socialism”
The president excoriated Democrats for what he says is an embrace of socialism, citing new policies like “Medicare for all” and the “Green New Deal,” which is spearheaded by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and seeks to combat climate change by investing in eco-friendly jobs.
“Socialism is not about the environment, it’s not about justice, it’s not about virtue. Socialism is about only one thing: it’s called power for the ruling class,” Trump said. “All of us are here today because we know that the future does not belong to those who believe in socialism.”
“The future belongs to those who believe in freedom … America will never be a socialist country,” he added, sparking “USA!” chants. “We believe in the American dream, not the socialist nightmare.”
Republicans throughout the four-day conference slammed Democrats over policies they said were evidence of an already creeping form of socialism, continuing an effort to open up a new culture war front to gin up its base after a midterm election cycle that saw steep House losses…
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/432341-the-top-9-moments-from-trumps-freewheeling-cpac-speech
Workforce inequality is off topic but important. Are we surprised by the US is not even making the top 60 countries in the world? One liberal friend told me last year that businesses couldn’t afford to pay women equally. Nonsense.
Look at the ‘socialist’ countries that have high taxes and pay women equally. Belgium, Sweden and Denmark are winners in the countries with the highest happiness index. The GOP’ers are again bloviating against socialist ideas like the New Green Deal and Medicare for ALL.
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Too few women get legal workplace equality
A new World Bank report examined 35 indicators of legal equality in 187 countries to understand how easy it is for women to work and earn money.
It rates only six countries as giving women full legal equality: Belgium, Denmark, France, Latvia, Luxembourg and Sweden. By its measures, none did so a decade ago.
America isn’t even in its top 60 countries for legal environments that help promote gender parity in the workplace.
Tony Schwartz obviously wrote this. Trump can’t speak in complete sentences. Trump instincts never made him a successful entrepreneur…just a liar.
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“In his 1987 best seller The Art of the Deal, written for him by Tony Schwartz, [Trump] insists that:
[M]ore than anything else, I think deal-making is an ability you’re born with. It’s in the genes. I don’t say that egotistically. It’s not about being brilliant. It does take a certain intelligence, but mostly it’s about instincts. You can take the smartest kid at Wharton, the one who gets straight A’s and has a 170 IQ, and if he doesn’t have the instincts, he’ll never be a successful entrepreneur.”
How many people in N. Korea can afford the luxury of having a drink? Of course, they have to give Kim Jong Un credit for everything if they want to continue living.
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Video: What A Bar In North Korea Looks Like
INSIDER
Published on May 9, 2016
This is what a bar in North Korea looks like.
My brother just emailed me that I need to watch Rush L to learn the truth. He’s concerned about God’s upcoming judgement of man, babies butchered in the womb and the new world order in which satan will rule the world.
This comes from the WH:
“The North Korean political and military Rubik’s Cube has confounded Democratic and Republican administrations for 70 years,” Army Major General Bob Dees writes in USA Today. “Trump’s courageous decision to walk away from negotiations rather than accept Kim’s demand for sanctions reliefs showed that he will not make the same mistake as his predecessors by offering unreciprocated concessions to the rogue state.”
Trump is Satan’s servant.
This is our ‘great leader’ in action. Did he really complete the fifth grade?
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Video: The most bizarre moments from Donald Trump’s CPAC speech
Guardian News
Published on Mar 3, 2019
Donald Trump gave his longest speech yet at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual gathering of conservative politicians and pundits. It was a chaotic, unscripted oration filled with unflattering impersonations of the president’s opponents. In a speech lasting more than two hours, he took aim at the Green New Deal, Russian collusion, illegal immigrations and investigations into his personal finances. Notably, he made no mention of Michael Cohen, his long-time personal lawyer who gave a testimony to congress last week calling Trump a racist, a con man, and a cheat.
Didn’t you love the visual of Dear Leader hugging the flag?