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   From: acoustic@panix.com   
      
   Otto's death weighs on everyone.  No one wants to be in his situation   
   and everyone can feel a lot of grief for his loved ones.   
      
   But it's not just grief.  There are warmongers who are busy using the   
   tragedy to sell violence.  E.g.,   
      
     "Trump should rain down hell fire on North Korea" (from Fox News)   
      
   There are over 20 million Koreans living in that country alone.  Did   
   they have any choice in the matter at all, whether their rulers were   
   personally responsible for Otto's death?  And we have to punish them   
   because we hate their leaders?   
      
   And what happened to another 25 million Koreans who are living in the   
   neighborhood of Seoul in the south alone?   
      
   Can we be sure that our hellfire would not trigger hellfire from the   
   north and make some of these 25 million people our collateral damage   
   too?   
      
   And what about our nearly 30 thousand soldiers over the DMZ on the 38   
   parallel?   
      
   Obviously, for a responsible administration, to try to get to the   
   bottom of Otto's tragedy must be a pre-requisite before we would draw   
   any conclusion about culpability.  Remember that it has been written   
   in several media reports that historically NK has been careful about   
   its treatment of foreigners in captivity.  They have nothing to gain   
   by abusing their foreign prisoners when they are in such a state of   
   isolation!   
      
   Here are some of the questions that have bugged me.   
      
   1) What happened to Otto that sent him into a coma in March 2016,   
   shortly after a publicized trial that seemed to greatly traumatize   
   him?   
      
   2) How did Otto remain in a coma for more than a year but was only   
   kept alive until shortly he came home?   
      
   3) How is it that the doctors who examined him in Cinci found no signs   
   of physical abuse to Otto, despite his condition?   
      
   4) Did someone tried to suffocate Otto by force and as a consequence   
   he suffered the brain damage (from deprivation of oxygen) that he had?   
      
   5) Since Otto was a big guy, how could it have been easy for some   
   prison guards to try to suffocate him without leaving any physical   
   sign of struggle?   
      
   6) Why was he taken home by people carrying him by hand instead of on   
   a stretcher?  Wouldn't a stretcher be much more stable and much more   
   part of standard best medical practice?   
      
   7) How was NK able to keep him in a state of "unresponsive   
   wakefulness" for over a year unless the NK medical teams were   
   carefully keeping him alive all that time?  So, they must have been   
   keeping a good medical record of his condition all these months, day   
   by day, at the least.   
      
   . . .   
      
   So, the Trump administration can at least make them cough up those   
   records.  And it would be clear to them that it would not be to their   
   benefit if they didn't comply.  (North Korea reportedly suggested that   
   it might be amenable to a nuclear test moratorium if the US/SK is   
   willing to halt their joint drill in front of the country.  So, the   
   incentive to do anything reasonable to keep itself from being attacked   
   by the United States is quite real and realizable.)   
      
   It is really hard for me to see that President Trump would not explore   
   all avenues of peace before going to war against poor innocent Korean   
   citizens.   
      
   But then maybe something along this line has already happened.  It   
   cannot be purely a coincidence that Dennis Rodman when to Pyongyang   
   the same time that State Department's Joseph Yun did in an official   
   role.  It is possible that in an exchange of gift, a USB stick was   
   among the gifts from the NK government to Rodman.   
      
   But the American people aren't supposed to be more educated about the   
   things only our rulers are supposed to know, are we?  Meanwhile, the   
   politicians must show that we ain't takin' no humiliation gently into   
   that good night, mustn't they?   
      
   And some people are trying to use Otto's tragedy to infer the misery   
   of living in North Korea in order to agitate the American people into   
   thinking that those poor Koreans must be liberated, even if it means   
   killing them with our bombs and missiles in order to liberate them.   
      
   But first strikes never work.  It didn't work in Afghanistan, it   
   didn't work in Iraq.  Nor did it work in Libya.   
      
   The interesting thing is there are not so many North Koreans in jails.   
      
   The reason they don't is a fact.   
      
   In fact, statistics show that more American citizens are incarcerated   
   than citizens of any other country on earth.  And we're talking about   
   incarceration rate - nearly 1% of the general population.   
      
   And the reason why North Koreans don't necessary live a miserable life   
   as the West depicts them to can be as simple as the observation that   
   human beings as well as other living species on earth are   
   evolutionarily adaptive.  They modify their behavior, thinking, as   
   well as attitude to live and prosper.  It makes sense.  It works here   
   in the US and the same in the USSR, in PRC, in feudal China, and did   
   in the medieval ages of Europe.  But the last thing they want is to be   
   massacred.  The way we are treating the North Koreans, using deceit,   
   does not help matter.  We're not helping anybody - not the people on   
   the Korean peninsula, north and south - especially not ourselves.   
      
   We're screaming about a problem but we created that problem in the   
   first place by parking ourselves thousands of miles away from home,   
   meddling in somebody else's business.   
      
   Our rulers may even know that there isn't a solution to the problem   
   they advertise other than a threat for war.  They may know because it   
   has been observed by many people who have thought about it.  In the   
   case of North Korea, it is a problem without a solution for as long as   
   we continue to insist on controlling that part of the world using the   
   threat of violence.  We keep tens of thousands of troops.  We force   
   South Korea to take in our THAAD system that the Koreans there know   
   has nothing to do with protecting them.  The THAAD system does not   
   protect South Korea from any military move from North Korea.   
      
   When they say we've got to do something, they are forcing a solution   
   where there isn't one.   
      
   To illustrate this point, I want to point out that recently, a German   
   cyclist, age 55, was killed in Berlin, by a Saudi diplomat who opened   
   the door of his Porsche suddenly.   
      
   The story is that the Saudi avoided prosecution because of his   
   diplomatic status.   
      
   What could Germany do?  Nothing.  There are problems which have no   
   solutions.  Germany can neither go to bomb Saudi Arabia nor bomb   
   Berlin.  It could not even seize the offending Saudi right in their   
   midst.   
      
   North Korea is kind of like that.   
      
   There is a cooler head approach to Otto's tragedy.  But we choose   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)