Walk me through your thoughts process. Are you denying reality because it is just so crushing that we live in a fascist dictatorship, or are you denying reality because you think fascism will help you and you’re one of the good ones?
We've had plenty of examples of what happens when you let autocrats take power. It's not like Trump didn't tell us who he was. For that matter, it's not like the Republican Party hasn't been obvious about who they are since Reagan.
And yet we keep electing them.
Maybe we do so because it's macho, and voting for anyone else is effeminate. Or we do so to punish the Democrats when they're wishy-washy. Or we do so to own the libs (and in 2026, to return non-whites and women to non-citizen status.)
It's a fine mess we've gotten ourselves into, and I'm unsure we can't get ourselves out without a whole lot of people suffering and dying.
IIRC some experts said that most likely his state was causes by reaction to medicine or something. North Korea prefers to exchange American prisoners for something rather than simply kill them.
It's bizarre to see somebody believe that not only will a former Olympic athlete be sentenced for touching paint but to honestly believe he could be beaten into brain damage and die from it.
Chances are the guy walks away scot free and then sues the US Government.
We took his name off the Kennedy building, we're suing comanies for AI racial bias, we blocked his DOJ from collecting trans medical records, and we just told his ICE to fuck off from immigration hearing locations.
The courts aren't completely corrupted yet and they are still in charge.
He wasn't literally surgically lobotomized no - but he did have extremely severe neurological damage from an unknown source which put him in a vegetative state that he never regained consciousness from. If it was done by DPRK intentionally or not isn't known, but he did suffer those injuries during his time imprisoned under their supervision, and generally it's held that harm to a prisoner is the fault of the captor.
Yes, that's not "North Korea lobotomising him". Hence fake news. A lobotomy cuts off the front of the brain
It would be the first time North Korea has harmed an American in this context and it's pretty likely to be unintentional if they wanted to trade prisoners
What a tedious semantic argument. An inaccurate use of a term in an informal setting that nonetheless quite accurately describes the symptoms he experienced, is not fake news - it's not even news, it's an internet comment. It's been corrected now.
it’s pretty likely to be unintentional
It's generally unintentional to beat someone and have them wind up in a vegetative state.
Three-time U.S. Olympian David Hearn told ABC News that police arrested him on Friday after he touched a piece of blue coating that was partially detached from the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
You don't know that, though. Nobody (except maybe the DPRK) knows what the cause of his brain damage was, but injuries from torture could easily have healed in the 16 (maybe) months after he suffered the injury. It does not have to be a severe beating to cause severe brain injury, unfortunately, just an unlucky strike.
Firstly, he wasn't in jail for years. He was in jail for 17 months, largely due to the chill relations between the Obama government and North Korea during that time. It is common for US expats to receive special release with a bit of glad handing and brown nosing from a US diplomat, and the fact that Bill Richardson wasn't able to secure Otto's release was the exception rather than the rule.
But secondly, and much more curiously, the story spun up after his release looked more and more like a fabrication the deeper journalists probed.
The previously unreported detail of when Otto was admitted to the Friendship Hospital changes the narrative of what could have happened to him. If Otto was “repeatedly beaten,” as the intel reports suggested, it would logically have been during the two to six weeks between his sentencing, when videos of him showed no signs of physical damage, and “April,” as the North Korean brain scan was dated. But Otto was apparently unconscious by the next morning. The coroner found no evidence of bludgeoning on Otto's body. And when one takes into account that the entire sourced public case that Otto was beaten derives from that single anonymous official who spoke to The New York Times, the theory begins to crack.
It is for this paucity of evidence that, though the public discourse about Otto's death has long been dominated by talk of beatings, there have been doubts among North Korea experts that the intelligence reports were correct. Of the dozen experts I spoke to, only a single one thought there was even a remote likelihood that he had been beaten. “I don't believe Otto was physically tortured,” Andrei Lankov said in his office in Seoul. “The campaign to make Otto a symbol of North Korea's cruelty was psychological preparation to justify military operations.”
Many experts pointed out that though North Korea is often portrayed as irrational, the Kim family had to be “both brutal and smart,” as Lankov said, to maintain its relative power on the world stage, especially for such a small, impoverished country. What incentive would they have to lose a valuable bargaining chip, especially when they had never been so thoughtless before? To these experts, it made much more sense that Otto was treated like all other detained Americans and that an unexpected catastrophe occurred. But despite the experts' doubts, none of them could disprove the intelligence reports indicating that Otto had been beaten.
However, a senior-level American official who reviewed the reports told me, “In general, the intel reports were wrong, as the medical examinations have shown. They were apparently not even correct about where Otto was or when he was beaten, for God's sake. Likely, the reports were just hearsay. Someone heard third- or fourth-hand that Otto was sick, and that person decided he was beaten. The North Koreans have never tortured a white guy physically. Never.” The official said he did not know of the Trump administration having other sources of information about Otto being beaten.
So you had a US expat detained for an extended period, only to be released into US custody as an attempt by the NK government to curry favor with Trump. But in the process of being released, Otto falls into a vegetative state with no evidence of physical violence perpetrated against him. The poor state of his health is conveyed to the Trump administration and immediately poisons relations with the new administration.
And over the next several months, Trump begins to ratchet tensions with North Korea as a potential prelude to war.
I have a friend who work at the time for a company that offer tour in weird places, the story running between this type of travel agencies at the time was that the guy refused to listen security instructions, got way more drunk and tried to go, multiple times, in place clearly mark « don’t go there ». After a wile the hotel staff had to call the police
the story running between this type of travel agencies at the time was that the guy refused to listen security instructions, got way more drunk and tried to go, multiple times, in place clearly mark « don’t go there ».
Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. Not unusual for someone to come into the country on a tourist visa and commit a nasty taboo.
It helps to remember that this is a country we are still functionally at war with. Imagine a Ukrainian taking a vacation in Moscow. Or a Palestinian touring Tel Aviv. That's what these Americans are undertaking.
If you're traveling to NK you deserve to be lobotomized.
What kind of lunatic go there for vacation?
Also, just for some context, he was part of Hillel. Which is kind of like a jewish hitler youth. It, like aipac, are part of a large well funded effort to sanitize Israel activities.
Which in many ways raises my suspicions about what was really going on with that whole episode.
I don't know anything about Hillel, I'm just here to say that having been a member of the Hitler Youth tells you nothing about a person other than they were a youth in the 3rd Reich.
Wasn't WarmBeer a spy?
Also 50, 70, and 100 year sentences for people who were protesting against ICE in Texas
Sure they are.
Walk me through your thoughts process. Are you denying reality because it is just so crushing that we live in a fascist dictatorship, or are you denying reality because you think fascism will help you and you’re one of the good ones?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-seen-video-detained-reflecting-pool-faces-disorderly-conduct-obsce-rcna351551
You probably don't realize, but being put through the legal system, even if you're found innocent, is life destroying in many cases.
You've been called out already for your bs so I won't bother.
You're either ignorant or ragebaiting. Either way... Stop. You're not the joker from dark knight.
land of the free, home of the brave
I feel like the guy who got 30 years for picking up a box of zines is a much better example here.
We've had plenty of examples of what happens when you let autocrats take power. It's not like Trump didn't tell us who he was. For that matter, it's not like the Republican Party hasn't been obvious about who they are since Reagan.
And yet we keep electing them.
Maybe we do so because it's macho, and voting for anyone else is effeminate. Or we do so to punish the Democrats when they're wishy-washy. Or we do so to own the libs (and in 2026, to return non-whites and women to non-citizen status.)
It's a fine mess we've gotten ourselves into, and I'm unsure we can't get ourselves out without a whole lot of people suffering and dying.
In the defense of the North Korea outrage, they lobotomised the kid and sent the dying body back to US.
Give the Americans some time.
IIRC some experts said that most likely his state was causes by reaction to medicine or something. North Korea prefers to exchange American prisoners for something rather than simply kill them.
only difference here is that the body will already be on us soil
It's bizarre to see somebody believe that not only will a former Olympic athlete be sentenced for touching paint but to honestly believe he could be beaten into brain damage and die from it.
Chances are the guy walks away scot free and then sues the US Government.
More things that you wouldn't have thought possible in polite society have been happening in recent years.
Since US was a colony.
Yeah because he's white.
Wait until you find out what the current regime and its supporters thinks about being able to sue for violating the constitution.
Frankly, I don't care what the buffoon thinks.
We took his name off the Kennedy building, we're suing comanies for AI racial bias, we blocked his DOJ from collecting trans medical records, and we just told his ICE to fuck off from immigration hearing locations.
The courts aren't completely corrupted yet and they are still in charge.
How is this fake news getting such high upvote ratio
He wasn't literally surgically lobotomized no - but he did have extremely severe neurological damage from an unknown source which put him in a vegetative state that he never regained consciousness from. If it was done by DPRK intentionally or not isn't known, but he did suffer those injuries during his time imprisoned under their supervision, and generally it's held that harm to a prisoner is the fault of the captor.
Yes, that's not "North Korea lobotomising him". Hence fake news. A lobotomy cuts off the front of the brain
It would be the first time North Korea has harmed an American in this context and it's pretty likely to be unintentional if they wanted to trade prisoners
Actually shut the fuck up. Please.
What a tedious semantic argument. An inaccurate use of a term in an informal setting that nonetheless quite accurately describes the symptoms he experienced, is not fake news - it's not even news, it's an internet comment. It's been corrected now.
It's generally unintentional to beat someone and have them wind up in a vegetative state.
That's demonstrably false.
Which part?
Edit: apparently the lobotomized part.
Who is facing years for touching floating paint chips? Link to article?
https://abcnews.com/Politics/olympian-arrested-reflecting-pool-damage/story?id=134078925
According to this, the charge is vandalism in DC Superior Court. That would be a misdemeanor, carrying less than 1 year in prison.
I wasn't able to find a case entry in DC Superior Court's docket system.
Didn't they beat the guy so badly he had brain damage and died?
No, but we've given Antifa protestors fifty years plus for conspiring to shoot ICE. Give us time.
Much worse.
He was vegetative. Kept alive by life support.
No.
You don't know that, though. Nobody (except maybe the DPRK) knows what the cause of his brain damage was, but injuries from torture could easily have healed in the 16 (maybe) months after he suffered the injury. It does not have to be a severe beating to cause severe brain injury, unfortunately, just an unlucky strike.
Did you read the article here?
https://lemmy.world/comment/24441550
Yes? I fail to see how it's relevant to your argument, it agrees with exactly what I just said.
The full story of this kid was far crazier than the post implies. (https://archive.is/kyR8h)
Firstly, he wasn't in jail for years. He was in jail for 17 months, largely due to the chill relations between the Obama government and North Korea during that time. It is common for US expats to receive special release with a bit of glad handing and brown nosing from a US diplomat, and the fact that Bill Richardson wasn't able to secure Otto's release was the exception rather than the rule.
But secondly, and much more curiously, the story spun up after his release looked more and more like a fabrication the deeper journalists probed.
So you had a US expat detained for an extended period, only to be released into US custody as an attempt by the NK government to curry favor with Trump. But in the process of being released, Otto falls into a vegetative state with no evidence of physical violence perpetrated against him. The poor state of his health is conveyed to the Trump administration and immediately poisons relations with the new administration.
And over the next several months, Trump begins to ratchet tensions with North Korea as a potential prelude to war.
How did this happen? Who did it benefit?
I have a friend who work at the time for a company that offer tour in weird places, the story running between this type of travel agencies at the time was that the guy refused to listen security instructions, got way more drunk and tried to go, multiple times, in place clearly mark « don’t go there ». After a wile the hotel staff had to call the police
Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. Not unusual for someone to come into the country on a tourist visa and commit a nasty taboo.
It helps to remember that this is a country we are still functionally at war with. Imagine a Ukrainian taking a vacation in Moscow. Or a Palestinian touring Tel Aviv. That's what these Americans are undertaking.
21% of the population of Israel is Palestinian. There's tens of thousands of Palestinians living in the Jaffa neighbourhood of Tel Aviv.
Not for long
As a safety measure the agency of my friends now refuse American when going in North Korea
Didn’t the people arrested for the paint chips turn out to be fake?
WH claims six people have been arrested, last I checked we only have evidence of two being arrested (both misdemeanors)
If you're traveling to NK you deserve to be lobotomized.
What kind of lunatic go there for vacation?
Also, just for some context, he was part of Hillel. Which is kind of like a jewish hitler youth. It, like aipac, are part of a large well funded effort to sanitize Israel activities.
Which in many ways raises my suspicions about what was really going on with that whole episode.
I don't know anything about Hillel, I'm just here to say that having been a member of the Hitler Youth tells you nothing about a person other than they were a youth in the 3rd Reich.
Here in Australia our racist nutbag pollie is pretending a poster that was dropped behind her could have been a bomb.. and now wants police protection