John Oliver on Laibach in the DPRK

Should have known I suppose that John Oliver would address Laibach in the DPRK.  Though I do wonder if Oliver personally is genuinely ignorant of Laibach's music as the piece would seem to purport.  Laibach are way cooler than might seem to anyone whose only exposure to them was this bit.


Oh, and I guess this is the DPRK's official Twitter account ?  Tempted to follow them, if they are consistently this awesome.  Not so sure about the CIA & Dawkins...

Laibach To Perform in an Actual Old-School Totalitarian Shithole

North Korea allows 'first foreign band to perform'

Controversial Slovenian pop group Laibach will be the first foreign band to perform in North Korea, director Morten Traavik has told the BBC.

Mr Traavik has arranged for the group to play two concerts in Pyongyang in August in front of 2,000 people.

The concert programme will include some of Laibach's hits over their 35-year career and North Korean folk songs.

The band has been slated by some critics because of its ambiguous use of political and nationalist imagery.

But admirers say that their tendency to wear military uniforms on stage is a critique of totalitarian ideology.

Norwegian director Mr Traavik says that in North Korea they will be uncontroversial - even performing songs from The Sound of Music.

Brilliant.  And the kicker is that Kim Jong Loon probably doesn't even see through the schtick, and thinks that Laibach are for real.  Fan-fuckin'-tastic.

Apologies to Ukraine

My apologies to the people of Ukraine.  Our leaders continue to rant and rave as if they are going to risk military confrontation with Russia over the conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk, as if Russia can be forced to hand back Crimea.  It's cruel, the false hopes they persist in encouraging.  They're liars, and they can't admit the truth.

Sorry to have to say it, but the Ukraine you knew is gone...forever, and no amount of bluster or outrage will bring it back.  No, it isn't fair, but as parents say to their children, life isn't either.  And we tolerate plenty of unfairness we could do something about, never mind the things we can't.  Men earning more than women isn't fair, or whites earning more than minorities, or CEO's earning multiples in the hundreds of what their lowest paid employees get.  We tolerate income inequality, just as we tolerate homelessness, poor families going hungry, disproportionate incarceration of minorities, businesses colluding against consumers, politicians selling their office to the highest bidder.  We imprison whistleblowers pointing out the crimes of our governments, whilst war criminals go free.  We have an exceptionally high tolerance for unfairness generally.

And as for unfair territorial disputes or questions of sovereignty ?  We allow our greatest trading partner to bully its neighbours, and persistently threaten one of them (a peaceful democratic ally of ours) with use of military force up to and including nuclear weapons.  We've allowed an entire population in the West Bank and Gaza to be held hostage as political pawns, to be kept in amber as a perpetual 'refugee' population, decades after the wars that made them refugees.  We allow a population of twenty-five million in North Korea to be imprisoned under an insane radical dictatorship that threatens us with nuclear war because it suits the People's Republic of China to have it there between them and US-ally South Korea as a buffer state.  We won't be waging any 'wars of liberation' in North Korea anytime soon, will we ?  An entire state sacrificed for the realpolitik concerns of China, and we won't do anything about it...because we can't.