usinkorea

usinkorea

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14 years ago @ Big Peace - North Korea Announces ... · 0 replies · +13 points

I'm in Seoul and have watched NK since the mid-1990s. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out, and any given analyst could give you any give guess - in either extreme - and have reasonable grounds for it. Nobody knows what is going to happen next. It could be trivial. It could be another war. And I'm within artillery range.....and slated to go home in a couple of months...

...interesting times...

14 years ago @ Breitbart.com - Hollywood shies away f... · 0 replies · +1 points

It was a "sensitive" topic for them, because the audience would get pissed if they pumped out the usual fair of "the CIA" did it or "who are WE to criticize anybody" stuff.

It is similar with war movies: They tried churing out Vietnam-era fair, but they saw the time was too "sensitive" and Americans didn't want to see the troops and nation dragged through the mud.

They couldn't make another The Siege (1998) given the American mood after 9/11. But, they couldn't live with themselves if viewed as supporting the troops or being "racist" against Muslims. So, they decided to ignore it.

Patriotic movies about 9/11 or the war in Afghanistan or Iraq would have sold well.

Hollywood just couldn't stomach doing them.

15 years ago @ Big Hollywood - Hipster Irony Alert Pa... · 0 replies · +12 points

Where back? We have balls now? This is one of the lamest Stewart pieces I've seen --- (but I don't watch him).

We toppled the Taliban and got rid of the terrorist training camps and have kept the terrorist infrastructure on the run for years. We did in Afghanistan what the Soviets failed to do.

We also took out Hussein's government in short order then stuck it out through the roughest part of the insurgence to evolve into a situation where troops can be withdrawn or a small footprint kept in a country that now has a shot at democracy.

We were and are the only indespensible military power - as Libya has shown.

We're back?

The only way you could possibly say we are back is if you mean we went away somewhere those months during the first year in office when Pres. Obama spent time travelling the world apologizing for us and telling the world we'd never do this kind of thing again...only to follow up the next year by basically breaking every foreign policy promise he made to the progressives.

....

15 years ago @ Big Hollywood - Two Hunt For Bin Laden... · 0 replies · +3 points

I think they will show the troops and show them in a good light. I predict Hollywood will milk this every bit as much as they went out of their way to avoid patriotic films post-9/11 while Bush was in the White House. I think we will start to see things rolling out of the pipeline within months. I think before the next election, we'll applie pie shoved down our throats.

Kennedy was a Cold War warrior who also liked black ops. and they made him a saint. Obama has not rolled back the nuts and bolts of Bush's foreign and anti-terror policies, and only a sliver of his progressive core has squawked.

Now, Hollywood is going to sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell Obama as THE commander in chief. They are going to crank out all those patriotic military and CIA and covert ops and anti-terror material they can - centered all around Obama's time in office - as they feverously watch the tracking polls among independants.

I'll take bets on this...

15 years ago @ Big Hollywood - Open Thread: This One ... · 1 reply · +2 points

Let me put it this way - If Hollywood makes a Behind Enemy Lines for NATO's involvment in Libya before Obama leaves the White House, I'll think about renouncing my citizenship (or stop my Netflix subscription either one)...

15 years ago @ Big Hollywood - Open Thread: This One ... · 0 replies · +4 points

The reason I speak politics on this event is the bitterness I feel about the politics Hollywood played after 9/11. They buried a Pearl Harbor-like event because a "Bushie" was in the White House. I knew the vast majority of them were not holding back patriotic productions due to some set of ideological beliefs. I knew the shallow-thinking partisans who could lionize JFK would ultimately support something like an Obama.

Obama has not fundamentally rolled back US foreign policy actions since taking office. Military action in Libya has actually expanded a US military committment whether it is being run through NATO or not. A few Bush-haters are squawking at Obama. The vast majority are sticking with the team. And that team was not about to benefit Bush post-9/11 with the type of Hollywood productions you would think Pearl Harbor II would elicit. I'm still pissed off about that.

15 years ago @ Big Hollywood - Open Thread: This One ... · 0 replies · +2 points

In the later half of this year and throughout 2012, Hollywood will not be able to get enough of this. We might even see patrioticism coming out their ears. You'll have to pinch yourself not to think Sean Penn and George Clooney wish they were young enough to join Seal Team 6 -- that covert, black bag assassinations aren't the newest, coolest things on earth.

Seriously, I do think we should keep a chart and talley of pro-military-like, pro-CIA, pro-special forces film and TV productions come out from now until election day 2012. Maybe we'll get a new version of 24 dramatizing what happened leading up to bin Laden's burial at sea -- all that happened within the past 2 years...

It's perfect for Hollywood. It is a great story. It can be told again and again in ways to please most Americans. The fact they would have shot themselves in the head rather than do it while Bush was in office will never come up. The media won't let it. If you mention it, you'll be nothing more than a racist birther.

15 years ago @ Big Hollywood - Open Thread: This One ... · 0 replies · +7 points

Within 1 to 1 1/2 years, Hollywood will turn out a blockbuster-budgeted film with big named stars celebrating this - including tense scenes of the White House war-room. (Maybe Obama will play himself?) Maybe they'll get it out before the election?

9/11 was every bit as historic a moment for American society as Pearl Harbor, but back then, the nation (and patrioticism) trumped party politics - and even ideology. In the years after 9/11, Hollywood went blind, deaf, and dumb. I give an educated guess they felt it was too risky making patriotic movies with a neocon like the evil Bush in the White House.

Now, with Obama there, it will be safe to fly the flag with this news about bin Laden, and in fact, with the election next year, they might even think it the most crucial thing in the world to do...Tom Hanks is too old. I don't know the new crop of young actors. Who will Hollywood make into the next John Wayne for this film? Hanks can play Peneta. Again, Obama can play himself. It's probably cross his mind...

15 years ago @ Big Hollywood - EXCLUSIVE: 'Red Dawn' ... · 1 reply · +1 points

Possible Problem - Think about the 1970s oil embargoes and the Arab League.

China has financial leverage and rapidly increasing military capabilities, and certainly the man-power, to make the above strategy Hollywood-plausible, but in reality, you'd also have to consider what a collapse of the United States would do to China itself...

The US fuels China's rapid rise. A US in chaos would greatly damage China's economic and financial position and thus greatly degrade it's military capability.

The Middle East had the US in a stranglehold with its oil in the 1970s. As much or more of a stranglehold than China's US debt. But the oil embargo hurt them about as much as it hurt America, and given the fact that economic prosperity was key to their authoritarian regimes keeping their stranglehold on their own people, trying to harm the US threatened their own survival.

15 years ago @ Big Hollywood - EXCLUSIVE: 'Red Dawn' ... · 0 replies · +7 points

the film’s set-up is based on suggestions and input from some of the country’s leading think tanks in the intelligence, military and foreign relations community. The elements surrounding the global forces and events resulting in the invasion of US territory— while fictional— are absolutely viable, and in truth, are as realistic if not more so than any version or cut of Red Dawn.

If China is the leading multinational, then this statement can be taken without a single grain of salt. If it were North Korea, it would be a flat out lie. NO think tank person is EVER going to say that North Korea leading an invasion of the US is REMOTELY possible.

Making Russia and Cuba the primary invaders would make more realistic sense than North Korea. Making Japan a radicalized, newly-communized or even converted-to-Islamism nation invading the US would be more plausible than North Korea.

Aliens from Mars would be more plausible than North Korea.

The South leading a 2nd Civil War would be more plausible.

Mexico invading the US would be more plausible.