Huffington post defends North Korea!

[Zomis]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/la-sha...b_9531122.html

North Korea Proves Your White Male Privilege Is Not Universal

On the Revocation of White Privilege in North Korea
“That’s what the hell he gets. Good for him!” My mother had uttered those words in her typical matter-of-fact tone one morning as she watched the news. “He” was Michael Fay, an 18-year-old from Ohio who had confessed to vandalizing cars in Singapore, and was subsequently sentence to six lashes from a rattan cane. I was in sixth grade and all I could imagine was how horrible the pain would be. My mother was unmoved at the thought, remarking, “He earned that.”

I thought about my mother’s words a few days ago while watching video of 21-year-old Otto Warmbier, another man from Ohio who last week was convicted of subversion for stealing a propaganda banner in North Korea, and sentenced to 15 years hard labor. Just as in Fay’s case, I was shocked by the severity of the punishment. I’ve tried to imagine spending a decade and a half performing what the North Korean state deems hard labor and I can’t. But I’m not 11 anymore, and now, my mother’s callous reaction to Micahel Fay’s sentence is my reaction to another young white man who went to an Asian country and violated their laws, and learned that the shield his cis white male identity provides here in America is not teflon abroad.

As shocked as I am by the sentence handed down to Warmbier, I am even more shocked that a grown man, an American citizen, would not only voluntarily enter North Korea but also commit what’s been described a “college-style prank.” That kind of reckless gall is an unfortunate side effect of being socialized first as a white boy, and then as a white man in this country. Every economic, academic, legal and social system in this country has for more than three centuries functioned with the implicit purpose of ensuring that white men are the primary benefactors of all privilege. The kind of arrogance bred by that kind of conditioning is pathogenic, causing its host to develop a subconscious yet no less obnoxious perception that the rules do not apply to him, or at least that their application is negotiable.

Headline after headline has highlighted that Otto Warmbier is a student. His LinkedIn profile states that he is majoring Economics with a minor in Global Sustainability and is a Managing Director of an “alternative investment fund.” A man reared in this country who studies the globe as a part of his higher education curriculum must have been at least passingly aware of the notoriously strained relationship between the United States and North Korea. Surely he had read the stories of Jeffrey Fowle and Matthew Miller, other white American men arrested in North Korea for “petty crimes” who were subsequently sentenced to hard labor.

Yeah, I’m willing to bet my last dollar that he was aware of the political climate in that country, but privilege is a hell of a drug. The high of privilege told him that North Korea’s history of making examples out of American citizens who dare challenge their rigid legal system in any way was no match for his alabaster American privilege. When you can watch a white man who entered a theatre and killed a dozen people come out unscathed, you start to believe you’re invincible. When you see a white man taken to Burger King in a bulletproof vest after he killed nine people in a church, you learn that the world will always protect you.

Coming from a country filled with citizens who lambaste black victims of state sanctioned violence by telling us that if we obey the law, we wouldn’t have to face the consequences, Warmbier should’ve listened. If he had obeyed North Korea’s laws, he would be home now. In fact, if he had heeded the U.S. Department of State’s strong advisement against travel to North Korea, he would be home right now. And if Eric Garner is to be blamed for his own death for selling loose cigarettes or if Sandra Bland is dead because she failed to signal when changing lanes, then Otto Warmbier is now facing a decade and a half of hard labor because he lacked both good judgment and respect for the national autonomy of a country which has made its hatred for and vendetta against America unequivocally clear.

And while I don’t blame his parents for pressuring the State Department to negotiate his release, I wonder where they were when their son was planning a trip to the DPRK. Didn’t they impress upon him the hostile climate that awaited him? Didn’t they rear him to respect law and order? Did they not teach him the importance of obeying authority?

What a mind-blowing moment it must be to realize after 21 years of being pedestaled by the world simply because your DNA coding produced the favorable phenotype that such favor is not absolute. What a bummer to realize that even the State Department with all its influence and power cannot assure your pardon. What a wake-up call it is to realize that your tears are met with indifference.

As I’ve said, living 15 years performing manual labor in North Korea is unimaginable, but so is going to a place I know I’m unwelcome and violating their laws. I’m a black woman though. The hopeless fear Warmbier is now experiencing is my daily reality living in a country where white men like him are willfully oblivious to my suffering even as they are complicit in maintaining the power structures which ensure their supremacy at my expense. He is now an outsider at the mercy of a government unfazed by his cries for help. I get it.

What kind of monster would defend them, and they edited recently because it was even worse!

[purebalance]

Huffington Post has been a trash rag for a good while now. They're basically the worse version of Breitbart but on the left just slightly above "The Root" which is borderline racist propaganda from the left.

[Garnier Fructis]

That's not a defense of North Korea. At most it's victim blaming.

The article is simply pointing out that if you go to one of the most dangerous countries in the world and commit vandalism, then you are a stupid motherfucker.

[Elegiac]

What kind of monster would defend them, and they edited recently because it was even worse!

She isn't 'defending' North Korea. Reading is hard, apparently.

[Rennadrel]

Whoever wrote this did it for clickbait and is clearly mentally unstable. No shit the guy got in trouble, but we in the west don't have ass backwards laws that punish people for trivial shit.

[KrazyK923]

Huffington Post is retarded, however that article is a year and a half old and all they've done is remove the particular damning things that it once said since the guy has died.

Yes, its shady. And yes, Huffington Post still sucks.

None of that changes the insane editorialized title and presentation of the article as current.

[Underverse]

Let's be very clear here. Taking a propaganda poster as a souvenir does not warrant death or 15 years of hard labor. In no way did this guy deserve what came to him. And neither should we be celebrating his death as justice.

[Very Tired]

Ahhhh... nothing like an article from the company that brags about their gender diversity with a tweet showing only white woman. Willing to bet even Breitbart isn't that bad.

[Elegiac]

Let's be very clear here. Taking a propaganda poster as a souvenir does not warrant death or 15 years of hard labor. In no way did this guy deserve what came to him. And neither should we be celebrating his death as justice.

Neither does retrieving your concealed carry license or failing to signal a lane change. Which was the entire point of the article.

[Sorshen]

I generally smile while reading dumb articles from them, but in this case... never go full Huff Post.

[Garnier Fructis]

Let's be very clear here. Taking a propaganda poster as a souvenir does not warrant death or 15 years of hard labor. In no way did this guy deserve what came to him. And neither should we be celebrating his death as justice.

You're absolutely right. But none of this is the point of the article.

[Elegiac]

Whoever wrote this did it for clickbait and is clearly mentally unstable. No shit the guy got in trouble, but we in the west don't have ass backwards laws that punish people for trivial shit.

Yeah, imagine if we passed down years worth of maximum security prison sentences for trivial shit like smoking cannabis. Wouldn't that be a riot.

[Coombs]

I mean... I slightly, kind of sort of, might agree, a tad bit. To go to North Korea and act like a fool is just earning what you get. I go to North Korea and Kim walks in the room, you bet your ass I bow lower and better than any North Korean. I just saw Christ walking in front of me as far as I'm concerned. However, the second I read "cis white male identity", it made me realize that the author is an appalling piece of shit writing about white hate, and not about the stupidity of someone going somewhere exceedingly dangerous and fucking around. Had it been someone who wasn't white they'd be launching a battle cry for minority injustice.

[Elegiac]

Had it been someone who wasn't white they'd be launching a battle cry for minority injustice.

Which should be easy for you to prove, right?

[Noomz]

What kind of monster would defend them, and they edited recently because it was even worse!

They're competing with Salon for shittiest company in the world right now, I think.

[The Oblivion]

she sounds like a lunatic.

[PACOX]

If he didnt break the law then...yeah...

Police in the US kill US over trivial shit. That man went half way across the world and decided to break the law in a country technically still at war with no regards for prison rights.

GTFO of here with your fake concerns of injustice.

[Zomis]

If he didnt break the law then...yeah...

Police in the US kill US over trivial shit. That man went half way across the world and decided to break the law in a country technically still at war with no regards for prison rights.

GTFO of here with your fake concerns of injustice.

Did you see the video of him taking it? You couldn't even see who it was! Not only that 15 years?!

[PACOX]

Did you see the video of him taking it? You couldn't even see who it was! Not only that 15 years?!

Must have been his North Korean twin.

[Deleted]

Why any one would want to visit North Korea, especially as an American, I'll never know.
Also, Huffington post.... One of the trashiest media sites out there, does anyone really care what they post?