MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE
(DON'T MENTION THE WAR... CRIMES)
By contributing editor-at-large Tess Lawrence
BEAUTY IS in the eye of the beholden...
It is why President Donald Trump's and Chairman Kim Jong-un's perfidious hand-in-glovefest is a near perfect example of the New World Disorder.
The joint statement they produced at the end of the summit is a tenuous start and a chance for international back room personnel to get stuck into some further heavy lifting. Both leaders have proved capable of breaking their word and promises.
It was a suprisingly brilliant strategy by the White House to produce its own politicorporate propaganda video portraying Trump and Kim as potential Masters of the Universe. Heroes of history, if they seized the day for the greater good.
Cleverly scripted and aspirational, the narrator sounds like he's the same chap who does those remashed compilations of ancient Egypt or Rome, where the extras don't speak because they'd have to be paid more money for talking.
CHAIRMAN TRUMP-UN AND PRESIDENT DONALD KIM
Chairman Trump-un and President Donald Kim are presented as sole saviours, almost deified on whom the destiny of the world depends. They don't talk either. It is made clear that the Chairman and President can reshape the future and do away with the past. Don't mention the war crimes. By either side.
It is grotesquely ego-stroking of course and farcical on several levels and yet it does strike an, albeit lost, chord. It does emit a crude if facile message, a sort of immoraility tale embedded in the seductive lure of material and reputational gain of these two political leaders — rather than a shout-out for peace, humanity, compassion, decency and being part of – and contributing – to the human family.
The implication though is obvious, if these men not only survived but rode upon this surging tide taken at the flood at the critical historical summit on Singapore's Sentosa Island, then together they could pull back the world from its latest brink of accelerated doom, incidentally more latterly of their own making.
The video has been portrayed by some commentators as a "fake movie trailer". Actually, to this commentator, it has strands of fervour drawn from religious productions – possibly scientology and evangelism – and the type of contradictory grandeur and injury of the human condition wantonly utilised by the likes of corporate videos and advertisements produced by mining, insurance, superannuation companies, election campaigns and banks, with something reminiscent of Leni Riefenstahl.
PROPAGANDA AND IMPROPAGANDA — YELLOWCAKE DUST UNTO DUST
Propaganda and impropaganda are siblings and powerful tools.
We see some of the Wonders of the World – the Taj Mahal, Collosseum, the Pyramids and the Great Wall of China – interspliced with images of factory production lines manned by robots.
It is soul-stirring stuff. We see phallic nuclear missiles shooting from the earth into space — and then the footage is reversed and they are sucked back into the earth from whence they came. Yellowcake dust unto dust.
SHARP MOVE: TRUMP SHREWDLY SHOWED KIM VIDEO BEFORE HUDDLE
Trump shrewdly played the video to Kim on his iPad before they got into their huddle. Sharp move. Later he showed it to the assembled media and it was then released by the White House for general exhibition. Very sharp move.
The video has upped the ante for Chairman Kim. It places the onus on him to choose peace with the world and for his people, rather than the bleak reality of life endured by ordinary non-elite North Koreans under his cruel and sef-indulgent despotic dictatorship.
What's not to love with the alternative posed by Trump? There's money to be be made. Skyscrapers and condos are featured in the video. Who knows, maybe a partnership in building luxury hotels and golf courses with the Trump organisation? Perhaps Donald Trump Jnr, or his brother-in-law Jared Kushner, will be appointed special advisers, ambassadors?
TRUMP LOOKS AT KOREA'S EXPLODING CANNONS ON BEACHES — $€€$ ¢ONDO$
There's a bit of a clue in Trump's remarks to the press:
"They have great beaches! You see that whenever they're exploding the cannons into the ocean, right?" Trump said, after he played the dramatic, Hollywood-produced four-minute video for the press corps.
North Korea released dramatic images of "largest ever" live fire drill amid tensions with the United States.
This is what North Korea's largest-ever live fire drill looked like. pic.twitter.com/MyGQ7uYzLE
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) April 30, 2017
"So I said, 'Boy, look at that beach. Wouldn't that make a great condo behind,' and I explained it, the real estate billionaire recalled.”
Good to know what the President of the United States is thinking as he watches North Korea's cannons exploding into the ocean. He keeps his wallet, his heart and brain in the same place.
Cometh the hour, cometh the businessman. Then again, condos are surely better than cannons.
The video opens with a credit to 'A Destiny Pictures production'. At the time of going to press, it seems that this may be a White House signature.
In fact, there is a well known award-winning Los Angeles-based production house with the name of Destiny Pictures and an annoyed company founder Mark Castaldo who found himself bombarded with media enquiries, has disavowed anything to do with the video.
Here is the video, “A Story of Opportunity” that I shared with Kim Jong-un at the #SingaporeSummit
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2018
➡️https://t.co/43oOci4jvo pic.twitter.com/xBKFkDLtj7
The world has a long journey ahead on the unpaved road to peace with North Korea let alone elsewhere.
WE MUST NOT FORGET TORTURE, STARVATION, EXECUTIONS, PRISON CAMPS
If you have the stomach for it, please read the harrowing United Nations Human Rights Council's 2014 Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, chaired by former High Court Justice Michael Kirby, and remind yourself of the depth of depravity, torture and breach of human rights.
The principle findings of the commission deal with:
A. Violations of the freedoms of thought, expression and religion
B. Discrimination
C. Violations of the freedom of movement and residence
D. Violations of the right to food and related aspects of the right to life
E. Arbitrary detention, torture, executions and prison camps
F. Abductions and enforced disappearances from other countries
...
V. Crimes against humanity
There may not have been any animals harmed in the making of this video .
But watching the footage from past black and white film through to contemporary times, one is struck by the awful fact that millions of human beings have been killed, wounded and harmed in the times portrayed that went into making the video.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
“The gravity, scale, duration and nature of the unspeakable atrocities committed in the country reveal a totalitarian state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.”
— Shaggy Dude (@akubot) June 11, 2018
- Michael Kirby, UN human rights commission#resist #totalitarianismhttps://t.co/5ktLvFSFmU
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