Human rights racket of US and West denounced

An article from the Pyongyang times, this one really amazed me.

Ignoring the fact that we have North Korean newspaper writing about human rights issues, the article itself looks like something that came straight out of the Cold War period.

It talks about how China argued that it is unfair for them to be under fire for human rights issues when the accusers have so many issues to deal with themselves, urging the UN to pay attention to it too.

The article them proceeds to explain how the west is always judged in a biased standard compared to other countries and how they have no respect for other foreign countries and cultures.

It feels a bit crazy too say it, but if you disconsider the hypocrisy and the lack of additional context in the article, the argument they make is somewhat true, even if it’s presented from a biased and opinionated point of view.

But what impressed me the most is the amount of Cold War terms they used in this small article, things like: ‘Non-Aligned Movement’, ‘Western Values’, or just labeling the west the way they do, is like you’re reading a letter from the past.

Why South Korea Has So Many Protests, and What That Means

This news article really got me interested, because it does a great job explaining South Korea’s political situation, and made me realize how similar it is now to what Brazil was a couple years ago.

It begins by talking about a right wing protest that happened, in support of the current president, Yoon Suk Yeol, then continuing to give examples of many other rallies and protests that happened in the country recently.

As I continued reading, I was astonished by how similar things were to Brazil; they also have some weird right-wing supporters that keep waving American flags and saying they’re “Anti-Communism”. Or that churches keep using they’re reach to support conservative movements and candidates, making absurd arguments and spreading them to its followers, exactly like it happened in Brazil, or that Mr. Yoon has a strong opposition movement asking for his impeachment and that South Korea had an impeachment in 2017, just like Brazil did in 2016.

They made it sound like South Korea has its own Bolsonaro/Trump to deal with, as most of the examples of political movements they gave really made me instantly compare it to what was happening back home a couple years ago, putting into perspective how this extreme far-right wave of politics is a worldwide thing and not a exclusive one.

If I had to criticize one aspect of the article is that it doesn’t really puts into perspective the history of South Koreans protesting, such as the Gwangju Massacre in 1980 for example, they really have a extensive history of fighting for their rights.

But overall the article did a great job explaining the situation and making me realize how similar some things are, even if in the other side of the world.

Sioux city is clearly designed for cars, but is there any real alternative for those who aren’t able to afford one?

“Living in Sioux City is difficult as it’s a city made for cars and everywhere you need to go is 5 to 10 minutes driving, but it takes an hour to walk” — “Calling for an Uber can be expensive so if you don’t have a car you’re screwed.” Said Maron Guimaraes, a Brazilian sophomore from Morningside University.

Today, it seems that walking is a thing of the past, everyone’s busy in their gigantuous trucks that have no business in being as big as they are, public transportation is basically no more, roads occupy 80% of public space in a street and sidewalks are decaying, so what other options does someone who doesn’t own a car have?

Not many it seems. Sioux City, as many other cities in the US, has close to zero alternatives to driving, and it doesn’t seem like that’s going to change anytime soon. This car centered society comes as a shock to many international students around campus, who are not used to being so dependent on only one way of traversal.

Oliver Melander is a senior who originally arrived from Sweden, he spent his 4 years here at Morningside, here is what he had to say about it:

“When I first arrived in Sioux City it marked the first time in my life where I felt totally dependent on having access to a car. At no point before had I ever struggled to get around; Got to get downtown? Take the bus. Meeting up with friends in a different town? Catch a train. Get to school? Bike there. Nothing had ever felt too far away.” 

The roots of the problem are more complicated than they appear, as they can be traced back to the way the United States was built as a society, during its development into the modern day, cars always came first. We can contribute that to a variety of reasons, such as the economic growth of the post WWII years that lead to massive car ownership, the boom of superstores where you can find all of your needs without needing to go somewhere else, or the growth of fast-food chains, which made places where you sit down and eat almost obsolete, especially in rural America. All of these factors made it so walking and public transportation were left as a second thought instead of being a priority for the American lifestyle.

It surely makes it so life in a small city is way harder for someone in no condition to buy a car, sometimes to points where it can even affect your mental health and social life, as pointed out by Melander:

“During my first year living in a city designed for cars I felt isolated, not only geographically but as much socially. Having access to a car was essential in order to meet up with friends, to attend social gatherings or events. Designing a city for cars rather than public transport or non-fuel dependent transportation prompts social segregation by making social mobility a monetary, and subsequently also class, issue. It shapes social interaction and construct in ways that needs to be acknowledged and compensated for within such a community.”

The search for solutions also leads nowhere, as buses barely pass by, the city has no infrastructure for other forms of transportation.

Enzo Tagliati, a junior who’s also from Sweden said it was a big shock, mentioning that even when he searched for alternatives, he couldn’t quite find a solution:

“I remember my freshmen year I would often try to bike somewhere, just to for the side walk to suddenly end and I would find myself biking in a highway with cars going at fifty miles per hour right next to me” — “It really made me feel stuck as I couldn’t get anywhere if I didn’t knew any people that had cars and it really made me feel limited about what I could do in my free time”.

Unless an extreme change of mindset happens over the next years, it’s probable that most of these problems will continue to exist for a long time, for now the hope to see a community full of people and life will remain as a dream.

Car prices have seen a massive increase lately, meaning that is increasingly more difficult to buy one, as the cost for everything keeps going up, and with walking and public transportation being so unreliable, people end up in a really tight spot, where they either need to constantly depend on others to move around, or they find themselves needing to walk for hours in a city that looks, dead, post-apocalyptic, and straight-up nonexistent.

Journalism and the media as we know it have changed, but it’s still too early to understand the consequences.

Thomas Ritchie, born In Waterloo Iowa, shared his experience with the new age of journalism we’re entering.

Ritchie worked as a journalist for most of his professional career before making the jump to a career in marketing, he argues that “Journalism is not dead, it’s just a whole other beast”.

He explained that in recent years, opinion-based journalism has taken over, and that the market has not yet adjusted to having so many different sources.  Social media has made it so everyone has the ability to be a source of news, but people tend to treat their opinions as fact, with the line between the two becoming blurrier, journalists today need to be able to tell a story from a perspective.

Ritchie also said that he misses journalism a lot, he liked to affect change in his community and the different stories and people he came across while working. According to him, he left the industry because his newspaper was declining in circulation, and as a door opened in marketing, he didn’t hesitate to walk through it.

It’s important to note that, while journalism has changed, it is not dead. Independent journalism has grown too what is now a very populated market, with something for all sorts of audiences; “independent journalism is good and bad, it gives freedom to what you want to say, but it’s difficult to compete with big newspapers that have infinite resources.”

He Warned Turkey About Earthquakes. Now He Fears for Istanbul.

Another Saturday profile, the article is about a turkish geologist named Naci Gorur, who warned the country about the powerful earthquakes that happened a couple of weeks ago.

While the lead and the title are fine by themselves, it is really the first three paragraphs that pull you into this article. They are all short and quick to read, but their impact is really strong, learning that people called the professor asking to be saved just after the earthquake is really heartbreaking and makes you want to read more.

The rest of the article talks about how he has been working to prevent tragedy from earthquakes, meeting business owners, utility managers and municipal officials, while also showing up on tv and social media to reach turkey’s population.

He also talks about how the government hasn’t really prepared the city for earthquakes, despite of his warnings. He also mentions how people message him all the time about potential quakes, they’re unprepared.

The article then tells us the professors history and what he has done over the years, and while a bit less interesting, it’s a good way to finish it.

Sioux City is clearly designed for cars, but how do those who don’t have one move around?

Believe it or not, Sioux City was once a walkable place, as many other small towns in the U.S. were, people would populate the sidewalks and trams traversed downtown briming with passengers.

Today, it seems that walking is a thing of the past, everyone’s busy their gigantuous trucks that have no business in being as big as they are, public transportation is basically no more, roads occupy 80% of public space in a street and sidewalks are decaying, so what happened?

It’s a mixture of things, after WWII the economy was booming and cars were immensely popular, every family could afford one, which meant that city architecture now catered to the car, you needed more highways, more roads, more gas stations and so on, this resulted in pedestrian space being limited, and since everybody had a car, there wasn’t such a big focus on public transportation anymore, why build a railway when you can have a giant road instead.

Another big contributor to the absence of walking were the so-called superstores and the boom of fast-food brands in the 1960’s. While department stores and shopping malls became popular in the early 1920’s, it wasn’t until the 1960’s in which the big box style of shopping really took off, now all of a sudden you could buy all your different needs in only one, massive place, meaning that you didn’t need to go around a shopping anymore, suddenly there wasn’t a need for small specific stores to exist, and there wasn’t a need for people to walk around them.

Fast-food chains also made it so local restaurants and coffee shops where you sit down and eat were basically useless, so places where you would sit down and spend some time in, maybe even outside, became completely obsolete.

The U.S. also prohibits public drinking for some reason, meaning that you can’t sit down in a bar table and drink with your friends unless you’re tucked inside, removing yet another aspect of social life.

But as mentioned before, what’s the problem about all this car centered stuff? As mentioned before, everybody can afford a car now, so it shouldn’t really be an issue.

I interviewed some students on campus that don’t have a car at their disposal, here is what they had to say about it.

Oliver Melander is a senior who originally arrived from Sweden, he spent his 4 years here at Morningside, here is what he had to say about it:

“When I first arrived in Sioux City it marked the first time in my life where I felt totally dependent on having access to a car. At no point before had I ever struggled to get around; Got to get downtown? Take the bus. Meeting up with friends in a different town? Catch a train. Get to school? Bike there. Nothing had ever felt too far away.”  — He continued — “During my first year living in city designed for cars I felt isolated, not only geographically but as much socially. Having access to a car was essential in order to meet up with friends, to attend social gatherings or events. Designing a city for cars rather than public transport or non-fuel dependent transportation prompts social segregation by making social mobility a monetary, and subsequently also class, issue. It shapes social interaction and construct in ways that needs to be acknowledged and compensated for within such a community.”

Enzo Tagliati, a junior who’s also from Sweden said it was a big shock, mentioning that even when he searched for alternatives, he couldn’t quite find a solution:

“I remember my freshmen year I would often try to bike somewhere, just to for the side walk to suddenly end and I would find myself biking in a highway with cars going at fifty miles per hour right next to me” — “It really made me feel stuck as I couldn’t get anywhere if I didn’t knew any people that had cars and it really made me feel limited about what I could do in my free time”.

Maron Guimaraes, a sophomore from Brazil had this to say about the issue:

“Living in Sioux City is difficult as it’s a city made for cars and everywhere you need to go is 5 to 10 minutes driving, but it takes an hour to walk” — “Calling for an Uber can be expensive so if you don’t have a car you’re screwed.”

Car prices have seen a massive increase lately, meaning that is increasingly more difficult to buy one, as prices for everything keep increasing, and with walking and public transportation being so unreliable, people end up in a really tight spot, where they either need to constantly depend on others to move around, or they find themselves needing to walk for hours in a city that looks, dead, post-apocalyptic, and straight-up nonexistent.

Pyongyang Times

This isn’t a comment about a particular news story, but about a newspaper itself.

The Pyongyang Times is a english language version of the Pyongyang Synum, a North Korean newspaper. The Times is published by the Foreign Languages Publishing House, the central North Korean publishing bureau of foreign-language documents.

At first glance, the newspaper’s albeit rudimentary looking website seems just fine, but once you start reading the news titles you notice something’s off, here are some of my favorites:

Autumn Sports Tournament of Aged People Held

Society alive with campaign to overtake and learn from others and exchange experience with each other

Girl assiduously follows her dream

Do not dream a pipe-dream

Kim Jong Un visits various objects in Vladivostok of Russia

Speaking of Kim Jong Un, they have a whole category dedicated to him called: GENERAL SECRETARY KIM JONG UN’S REVOLUTIONARY ACTIVITIES. Where the only topic is North Korea’s ruler.

As you may have noticed, the english grammar here is rough at best, and it’s even weirder when you actually read an article, sometimes they have one paragraph at best, and just the way they’re written ticks you off.

They also have some contact information at the bottom, but the Youtube, Instagram and Facebook buttons just lead to the respective site’s main page. What seems to be interesting though, is the email address and phone-number they have at the bottom, maybe i’ll try writing day someday, it would make for an interesting story.

I plan on commenting on a proper article from them at some point, but I felt that doing a general introduction first was a better idea.

When questioned about what his plans for the future were career wise, Johannes Lang simply answered “I want to make money”.

Lang mentioned that his ideal situation would be to work at a company open to remote work, in a modern office. Or even maybe to start his own company.

He wants to pursue something related to marketing and management, “just something that gives me enough money to live happily and that I enjoy doing” he said.

For the near future Johannes wants to start an internship this spring in order to get experience, and then possibly move to a bigger city.

How to Cool Down a City

This is one of those NY Times articles that are partially animated and I got to say, I really love when they do this, it’s NY Times content at it’s absolute best.

The topic of this particular article is Singapore, and how the city is already planning it’s self-structure to fight global warming.

It was written by three journalists: Pablo Robles, Josh Holder and Jeremy White, they do a terrific job explaining on what exactly Singapore is doing, working flawlessly with the animations to convey exactly what the point is. It’s to the point, attention catching and above all, really important.

As mentioned before, I am sucker for these types of articles, especially with future generations getting shorter and shorter attention spans, It’s a great way to grab someone’s attention and educate people in one of the most creatives solutions to a problem that affects every single one of us.

One day I would really like to learn about how they make these articles, as I feel like it would be a great skill to have.

Yesterday, 8:30 pm, two armed men entered a store at 450 Stanley Street and left with $382 dollars in cash.

The store owner, Mr. Barney Joseph Jr., told Central City News that one off the robbers left a car running in front of the curb, while the other removed the money from the cash register.

Mr. Joseph told local police that he had a gun, but decided not to use it, as it felt unwise. Central City News reporting found out that Mr. Joseph’s father was killed while trying to resist a holdup in the same store, almost 25 years ago.

When asked about the incident the Mr. Joseph replied, “Yes, Dad resisted. They found him shot to death, his own gun in his hand, and a bullet in the store’s ceiling. I’d rather part with my money that my life.”