Otto's Woes

[BoSoxGal]

Otto Warmbier has a 'SEVERE neurological injury': Father says there's 'no excuse' for what North Koreans did to his son as he blames the Obama administration for not doing enough to secure his release

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... njury.html

This is a terrible tragedy; I just watched a documentary on coma and recovery from it and so there's little doubt in my mind that this young man is unlikely to ever be functional again, having been in a coma for 15 months with little if any specialized care.

I don't dispute that North Korea is a crazy regime with zero justice for accused persons it wishes to condemn.


That said, this young man voluntarily traveled to North Korea and indisputably stole a propaganda poster from a nonpublic area of his hotel reportedly because he'd been offered $10k by a friend back home to bring the item home.

Whether his actions were a lark or motivated by financial gain, they were clearly insanely stupid. One doesn't break laws whilst visiting the world's most repressive regime. He clearly wasn't mature enough for the trip, even at 22.

I'm frustrated at his father's blaming the Obama administration; obviously the welfare of one irresponsible individual does not rise above the welfare of millions of citizens on whose behalf diplomacy is conducted.

I feel compassion for the family, but I don't feel we are in any way responsible for what happened to that kid.

[rubato]

They deliberately poisoned him while he was in custody with botulinum toxin and then a sedative. The NK government should be charged with attempted murder and mayhem.



yrs,
rubato

[BoSoxGal]

Considering news reports indicate his neurologists here in the USA don't believe that either botulism or a sedative caused his coma, I'll assume you pulled that out your ass as usual.

It's very possible that he was somehow injured by the prison officials following his sentencing. I'm making no defense of North Korea in any way in this post.

It's also very possible given his hysterical appearance in court at sentencing that facing 15 years hard labor for his own idiocy, he went back to his cell and did himself harm - he wouldn't be the first prisoner to intentionally run himself into a brick wall and a serious neurological injury.

[RayThom]

I'm sure pseudo-Ambassador 'The Worm' and his handlers will talk some sense into Kim Jong-un while discussing global politics at Un's barbershop. Not discussing Otto's plight would be sheer diplomatic malfeasance.

[rubato]

Considering news reports indicate his neurologists here in the USA don't believe that either botulism or a sedative caused his coma, I'll assume you pulled that out your ass as usual.

It's very possible that he was somehow injured by the prison officials following his sentencing. I'm making no defense of North Korea in any way in this post.

It's also very possible given his hysterical appearance in court at sentencing that facing 15 years hard labor for his own idiocy, he went back to his cell and did himself harm - he wouldn't be the first prisoner to intentionally run himself into a brick wall and a serious neurological injury.

It was in the original news reports yesterday. you're really in a cuntish tizzy today. You just sort of go off like that periodically with asshole remarks.

posting.php?mode=quote&f=3&p=237089

Fred Warmbier said the family did not believe North Korea's story, that his son had fallen into a coma after contracting botulism and being given a sleeping pill.

They said he 'contracted' botulism which is vanishingly unlikely since adult humans are immune to the organism; we are affected by the toxin. Young infants whose immune systems have not matured are not supposed to be given raw honey because they can contract the disease.

We don't know what happened but my point was that even their story implicates them.


yrs,
rubato

[BoSoxGal]

Try reading the news more than once a week - there is NO evidence of botulinum toxin.

You're the cunt, rubato, going out of your way to start fights with me or anyone else who points out your failure to convey true information. Back on ignore you go, along with your worthless turds.

[Lord Jim]

You just sort of go off like that periodically with asshole remarks.

LMAO

Well rube, you're in luck on that one...

No one will ever accuse you of "going off periodically" with asshole remarks...

"Frequently", "usually", or "most of the time", but never "periodically" ...

[rubato]

Try reading the news more than once a week - there is NO evidence of botulinum toxin.

You're the cunt, rubato, going out of your way to start fights with me or anyone else who points out your failure to convey true information. Back on ignore you go, along with your worthless turds.

Well I didn't really expect an apology. The only 'evidence' was in their statements. Which you were too witless to read and too dishonest now to admit.

And I didn't start this fight with you, you started it with an asshole and uninformed comment and insult.


yrs,
rubato

[BoSoxGal]

Are you really that stupid, Mr. Scientist? The doctors here who have tested him and examined him gave those statements. There is no other evidence to consider other than false information provided by the North Korean regime.

I don't like to make reference to drinking, but something seems to be limiting your comprehension and exacerbating your asshole-ness.

[rubato]

Are you really that stupid, Mr. Scientist? The doctors here who have tested him and examined him gave those statements. There is no other evidence to consider other than false information provided by the North Korean regime.

I don't like to make reference to drinking, but something seems to be limiting your comprehension and exacerbating your asshole-ness.

I pointed out that the N. Koreans own explanation of events convicted them. And you were the one, again, who started the nasty shit. Not I. I think it is you who are suffering cognitive impairment whether due to MS or your nasty disposition, I don't care. You periodically go off on one of these bitch-fests with no apparent reason.

yrs,
rubato

[Bicycle Bill]

The only 'evidence' was in their statements.

So an unfounded statement, made with no empirical proof of what is being stated, is now 'evidence'?  Unbelievable.

I've always been willing to take what you post with a grain of salt, rubato, but I'd need the annual production of Morton and Cargill combined to swallow this.

-"BB"-

[dales]

U.S. student who was returned from North Korea in coma has died

Reuters

"Unfortunately, the awful torturous mistreatment our son received at the hands of the North Koreans ensured that no other outcome was possible beyond the sad one we experienced today," the family said in a statement following Warmbier's death at 2:20 p.m. EDT (1820 GMT) at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.

His family has said that Warmbier, 22, had lapsed into a coma in March 2016, shortly after he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in North Korea.

He was arrested, according to North Korean media, for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan.

North Korea released Warmbier last week, saying he was being freed "on humanitarian grounds."

The University of Virginia student's father, Fred Warmbier, said last week that his son had been "brutalized and terrorized by the Pyongyang government and that the family disbelieved North Korea's story that his son had fallen into a coma after contracting botulism and being given a sleeping pill.

Doctors who examined Otto Warmbier after his release said there was no sign of botulism in his system.

Warmbier was freed after the U.S. State Department's special envoy on North Korea, Joseph Yun, traveled to Pyongyang and demanded the student's release on humanitarian grounds, capping a flurry of secret diplomatic contacts, a U.S. official said last week.

Tensions between the United States and North Korea have been heightened by dozens of North Korean missile launches and two nuclear bomb tests since the beginning of last year. Pyongyang has also vowed to develop a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland.

Susan Thornton, the U.S. acting assistant secretary of state for East Asia, said earlier on Monday that the United States was concerned for the welfare of the three other U.S. citizens still held in North Korea - Korean-Americans Tony Kim, Kim Dong Chul and Kim Hak Song.

[Scooter]

As I said in the case of another idiotic frat boy:

The penalties that the PRK imposes in such cases are grotesquely harsh, granted, but should we be expending political and diplomatic capital on saving these idiots from their own stupidity?

[BoSoxGal]

John McCain issued a statement saying Otto was murdered by the North Koreans; people all over the web are screaming that he was beaten to death and the parents claim he was brutalized by NK.

Yet there is zero physical evidence of scarring or any trauma to his body, as declared by his American physicians following extensive evaluation and MRI testing. It appears he had cardiac arrest and prolonged loss of oxygen to his brain which caused extensive brain damage - my aunt died a year ago from the same cause, despite being immediately treated by her daughter, a nurse, and then EMTs and doctors all attempting to resuscitate her, her heart stopped long enough that her brain was irreversibly damaged. It doesn't take long.

I'm guessing that his family removed life support after being told he was incapable of recovery.

I'm not defending NK's crazy dictatorship and clearly the sentence this kid received was out of proportion to the crime he committed in any sane regime - misdemeanor theft, essentially.

But it sounds like he was resuscitated and kept alive by the NK prison officials for over a year. They sent his medical records with him and provided an (incorrect) hypothesis for how he came to become comatose. It will be interesting to hear what his autopsy will show. It is quite possible for a young person, especially in extreme distress, to suffer an MCI - high school athletes, even.

I gather people are outraged because - he should've been subject to American laws & punishments having committed a crime in the most brutal dictatorship on earth which he chose to visit? Talk about American exceptionalism taken to extreme.

Where are all these outraged Americans when the news is constantly (finally) reporting on the brutal injustices of OUR OWN criminal injustice system? The brutality suffered by our own citizens in the prisons our own taxes fund?

The longer I live the more I am deeply disappointed in people. Thank Dog for dogs.

Interesting Atlantic piece on Otto's coma:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatl ... le/530586/

[RayThom]

Obviously a fatal case of "Entitled Rich Kid Syndrome"

Here is one of many articles on Otto plight from over a year ago:
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index ... ny_am.html
The comments are quite interesting.

[Big RR]

I'm frustrated at his father's blaming the Obama administration; obviously the welfare of one irresponsible individual does not rise above the welfare of millions of citizens on whose behalf diplomacy is conducted.

Indeed, it does not; however, if it were my son or daughter I'd be acting pretty much the same way. Our government can move heaven and earth to bring brutal dictators to our shores for "medical treatment", but couldn't do anything for my kid because they didn't want to waste some sort of diplomatic capital? I'd be mad as hell and casting blame as well--even though I would be just as wrong as him.

As for what caused his death, I hope there is an autopsy and the results are publicized; although the North Koreans have been practicing their form of brutality for many years so they may be as good as hiding its effects as we and our allies are.

[Bicycle Bill]

Anyone who thinks that this will just blow over is more-than-likely correct, but there have been occasions when countries have gone to war over smaller things:

The War of Jenkins' Ear
(from Wikipedia)

The War of Jenkins' Ear (known as Guerra del Asiento in Spain) was a conflict between Britain and Spain lasting from 1739 to 1748, with major operations largely ended by 1742.  Its unusual name, coined by Thomas Carlyle in 1858, refers to an ear severed from Robert Jenkins, a captain of a British merchant ship.  Despite stories to that effect, there is no evidence the severed ear was exhibited before the British Parliament.

The seeds of conflict began with the separation of an ear from Jenkins following the boarding of his vessel by Spanish coast guards in 1731, eight years before the war began.  Popular response to the incident was tepid until several years later when opposition politicians and the British South Sea Company hoped to spur outrage against Spain, believing that a victorious war would improve Britain’s trading opportunities in the Caribbean.  Also ostensibly providing the impetus to war against the Spanish Empire was a desire to pressure the Spanish not to renege on the lucrative asiento contract, which gave British slavers permission to sell slaves in Spanish America.

The war resulted in heavy British casualties in North America.  After 1742, the war was subsumed by the wider War of the Austrian Succession, which involved most of the powers of Europe.  Peace arrived with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748.  From the British perspective, the war was notable because it was the first time that a regiment of colonial American troops was raised and placed "on the Establishment" — i.e., made a part of the regular British Army — and sent to fight outside North America.

The War of Otto's Brain, anyone?

-"BB"-

[MajGenl.Meade]

Perhaps a better analogy?

On June 15, 1859, exactly thirteen years after the adoption of the Oregon Treaty, the ambiguity led to direct conflict. Lyman Cutlar, an American farmer who had moved onto the island claiming rights to live there under the Donation Land Claim Act, found a large black pig rooting in his garden. He had found the pig eating his tubers. This was not the first occurrence. Cutlar was so upset that he took aim and shot the pig, killing it. It turned out that the pig was owned by an Irishman, Charles Griffin, who was employed by the Hudson's Bay Company to run the sheep ranch.

He also owned several pigs that he allowed to roam freely. The two had lived in peace until this incident. Cutlar offered $10 to Griffin to compensate for the pig, but Griffin was unsatisfied with this offer and demanded $100. Following this reply, Cutlar believed he should not have to pay for the pig because the pig had been trespassing on his land.... When British authorities threatened to arrest Cutlar, American settlers called for military protection.

Brigadier General William S. Harney, commanding the Department of Oregon, initially dispatched 66 American soldiers of the 9th Infantry under the command of Captain George Pickett to San Juan Island with orders to prevent the British from landing. Concerned that a squatter population of Americans would begin to occupy San Juan Island if the Americans were not kept in check, the British sent three warships under the command of Captain Geoffrey Hornby to counter the Americans.... By August 10, 1859, 461 Americans with 14 cannon under Colonel Silas Casey were opposed by five British warships mounting 70 guns and carrying 2,140 men. During this time, no shots were fired.

...Local commanding officers on both sides had been given essentially the same orders: defend yourselves, but absolutely do not fire the first shot. For several days, the British and U.S. soldiers exchanged insults, each side attempting to goad the other into firing the first shot, but discipline held on both sides, and thus no shots were fired.

Sanity prevailed and everyone agreed that warfare over a dead pig was stupid.

[Lord Jim]

under the command of Captain George Pickett

That wouldn't be the last foolish mission he was ordered to carry out...

[rubato]

Perhaps a better analogy?
...

Sanity prevailed and everyone agreed that warfare over a dead pig was stupid.

And in the end God's will was done and we kept the island and the English lost it. Pax Porky Americana!


yrs,
rubato