Propaganda

As i drove into to work listening to Nick Ferrari on L.B.C. i felt compelled to research the current media furore surrounding North Korea and the impending Nuclear holocaust. The narrative created by Nick and from what i can see most of the main stream media is a myopic, simplistic and short time line of events that betrays the history and players of the situation we find ourselves in today. There is no doubt that Kim Jong Un   the current and hereditary supreme leader of North Korea is a despot, a ruthless dictator that subjugates his people, A dictator that uses the constant fear of a foreign enemy to justify the diversion of the countries funds from essential public necessities like, food, education, housing, health etc into military armament massively over weighed against its countries actual means and population included in this arsenal is of course the nuclear threat. The great western enemy of course is America, the case for the propaganda is so easily put together when you look at the long term historical relationship between America and North Korea, Between 1910 and 1945 Korea was occupied by Japan after the  2nd world war and the defeat of Japan by the allied forces the soviet Union and America divided Korea along the 38th parallel  The North being occupied by the soviet Union and the South by America, the first leader of North Korea was Kim II- Sung, the communist guerrilla leader of the fight against Japanese occupation. The first leader of South Korea was Syngman Rhee, the U.S.-installed ultra-right wing South Korean dictator who massacred tens of thousands of South Koreans. North Korea invaded south Korea in 1950 under the false impression that America was uninterested in their little corner of the world, at first there was no outside involvement and North Korea quickly secured most of the country, at the last minute America intervened and and via bombings and napalm killed 20% of the North Korean population, this equated to 3 million people, 75% of the country was flattened. 

Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later secretary of state, said the United States bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” Obviously with that onslaught and that number of deaths civilians took a heavy toll. As North Korea was on the verge of obliteration China stepped in (mainly because America was nearing its border) and an armistice was called, the war never officially ended and North and South Korea are officially still at war. As you can see North Korea has every reason to see America as the bad guy and because of the past history its an easy sell to the people. But even if you ignore history and look at the two countries in isolation its not too hard to cast the Americans as the imperial enemy. Look at the stats, America has been in near perpetual conflict since its inception as a country, it spends more on its defence budget than the next eight countries combined, yes that includes Russia, China and the UK.

It has military bases in more countries outside its own borders than any other country it has 800 bases in 70 different countries.

Of the 1900 nuclear tests carried out since the invention of the nuclear bomb America has carried out more than any other country by a long shot something in the region of 1200. America has also had the opportunity to nip the problem in the bud, in 1994 North Korea agreed to a non nuclear proliferation agreement, a change of political party from democrat to republican put paid to that in 2002. And of course there is Gadaffi who America convinced to give up his nuclear proliferation and look where that got him.

There is an obvious similarity that can be drawn between North Korea and America, two countries who have to constantly justify their exorbitant military spending by constantly ratcheting up the fear of an enemy, the fear is created using propaganda, in North Korea it is obvious, in America and the west it is more nuanced but none the less persuasive, the propaganda machine in the west and the east are two sides of the same coin but in the west we are apathetic, ambivalent or unwilling to look on the other side

Keep calm I have a cunning plan

The west seems to be a little unhappy with certain parts of the middle east, one part it certainly isn't unhappy with is Saudi Arabia, Is there any reason why some western governments have a love affair with a country that is well on its way to smashing its own personal best in beheading. The obvious answer is the black viscous umbilical chord that is oil, another reason can be seen by firstly looking at the world banks data on countries military expenditure as a % of their gross domestic product or in leymans terms how much of their total countries wealth production is spent on their military, scrolling down the list you will see one of these is not like the others, in fact Saudi Arabia spends a whopping 9% of its G.D.P. on its military (the U.K. spends 2% as a gauge) when you consider Saudi Arabia's gross domestic product estimate in 2015 will be 805 billion  You can appreciate that is a lot of cap guns. So Saudi Arabia has a lot of oil to sell, some countries in the west would like this oil, coincidentally these very same countries are very good at building weapons of war and as I alluded to earlier Saudi Arabia wants to spend spend spend on weaponry. At this point I imagine someone somewhere in the west muttered the immortal words of balderick "I have a cunning plan, buy the oil from the Saudis and then sell them loads of weapons to recoup some of that cost.......genius"