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Schadow Vice Admiral
Joined: 30 Sep 2004 Posts: 936 Location: Huntsville, Alabama
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Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 4:52 pm Post subject: Harvard grads journey to bow at tomb of Kim Il Sung |
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Deborah Orin writes in the New York Post of an upcoming Harvard alumni trip to North Korea to experience the 'culture' of that country and to recognize it's problems. How sensitive. How multicultural. How Ivy League typical.
Quote: | HARVARD LOVES A THUG
By DEBORAH ORIN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
May 1, 2006 -- HARVARD University has a bizarre idea of how to advance the education of its grads: Instruct them to bow down to North Korea's paranoid dictators and show proper "respect" for the Axis of Evil.
It's the ultimate in radical Stalinist chic - the Harvard Alumni Association's $636-a-night totalitarian luxury tour of a rogue nation where thousands are deliberately starved to death.
"Demonstrations of respect for the country's late leader, Kim Il Sung, and for the current leader, Kim Jong Il, are important," instructs the Harvard Alumni Association's tour memo.
"You will be expected to bow as a gesture of respect at the statue of Kim Il Sung and at his mausoleum."
Harvard even tries to pretend that bowing down to thugs is perfectly normal - explaining that it's because "North Korea, like every country, has its own unique protocols."
Well, yes, that certainly is a charming use of euphemism to cover up an ugly and unique reality - since North Korea is not "like every country."
North Korea's "protocols" feature massive human-rights abuses, deliberate famine, concentration camps, religious persecution, gas chambers, likely genocide and trafficking in women and children.
Plus sending body snatchers to Japan and South Korea to kidnap children and force them to train North Korean spies.
Satie Yokota, the mother of a Japanese girl kidnapped in 1977 at age 13 while clutching her racket on the way home from school badminton practice, calls North Korea "enemies of humanity." Now 70, she fears she'll die before she ever sees her daughter again.
Then there's the Stalinist personality cult - when the Harvard alums bow down, they'll be joining the national worship that requires every North Korean to wear a Kim Il Sung lapel pin or else.
Not surprisingly, the Harvard alums are also instructed to carefully censor their reading matter because "certain types of literature may not be allowed into North Korea."
The reason the rooms are so expensive is that North Korea controls all costs - and is in desperate need of foreign currency. The visits effectively subsidize Kim Jong Il's rule.
The ostensible excuse for granting visas to Americans this summer is so they can see the spectacle known as the Arirang games or the Grand Mass Gymnastic and Artistic Performance.
Walter Keats, Harvard '67, whose travel agency is helping to set up the trip, gushed to USA Today that the spectacle is like seeing "Aida" at the Great Pyramids or "Turandot" in Beijing's Forbidden City.
Never mind that the athletes are really slave labor performing under extreme duress - imagine the punishment that awaits anyone who spoils the spectacle by tripping.
At High Country Passage, a tourist agency handling Harvard bookings, agent Tamara Starkes said the alums will stay in "very nice four-star hotels that are tourist-only. The locals cannot go."
High Country's chief, Chris Springer, says he's also packaging North Korea tours for Columbia, Princeton, Duke, the National Trust, MIT, and the University of California-Berkeley.
Asked if he's uncomfortable about totalitarian tourism, Springer says "it's a good question" but argues that outside visits could help open up North Korea. Maybe. But something is very wrong when Harvard - whose motto is "veritas," Latin for "truth" - feels comfortable instructing its alums to bow down to evil thugs. |
Source with hattip to Powerline blog.
Schadow _________________ Capt, 8th U.S. Army, Korea '53 - '54 |
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AMOS Senior Chief Petty Officer
Joined: 30 Jul 2004 Posts: 558 Location: IOWA
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Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 5:41 pm Post subject: Madelaine |
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Send Madeleine Not-At-Albright with them. Maybe they could stay. |
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GenrXr Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 05 Aug 2004 Posts: 1720 Location: Houston
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Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 2:48 am Post subject: |
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These young and dumb kids will see nothing of the true North Korea on their tour. They will all have minders who will make sure no locals below party rank come into contact with them and will be confined to the party areas, which are forbidden to the serf class.
After a few days of seeing how the Communist leaders live while being told this is the Korean way the kids will come home believing fully how beautiful the communist ideal is.
It is sad how our once great institutions of higher learning have become slaughter houses to the truth. _________________ "An activist is the person who cleans up the water, not the one claiming its dirty."
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Founder of Conservative Philosophy |
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