From MSNBC.com
SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea has begun fueling a long-range rocket, U.S. officials told NBC News on Thursday, as President Barack Obama warned that launching the missile would be a "provocative act" that would generate a U.N. Security Council response.
The three-stage Taepodong 2 rocket is sitting on a launchpad, the sources said, adding that "final checkouts and preparations" are under way for an "imminent launch" — meaning North Korea appeared to be on track to launch the missile sometime over the weekend.
And, at the same time North Korea is attempting to successfully launch their Taepodong 2 missile, they are still holding CurrentTV (aka Al Gore T.V.) journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling prisoner and threatening to put Lee and Ling on trial for "hostile acts" which are punishable by Fifteen years in a labor camp.
Echoing Phil Bronstein's colum today, I've got to ask, Where is the Outrage? The Traditional Media has said nary a peep about the imprisonment of Euna Lee and Laura Ling, and CurrentTV, according to reports on Gawker, appears to be actively suppressing any mention of their situation and scrubbing the story from CurrentTV's website.
Even on Daily Kos there has been only a handful of diaries on the topic. None of them getting anywhere near the rec list. We've got buckets of outrage to spare when President Obama does something we deem as "un-progressive" but we can barely muster up a drop of the stuff to help draw attention to the plight of two American Reporters being held in a North Korean gulag.
Shame on us.
I fear that when Phil Bronstein writes:
That silence has raised the notion that perhaps old liberals just sit back and let the young impressionables do their dirty work. Prison is hard.
He may be speaking a hard truth.
Euna Lee and Laura Ling deserve better from the U.S. Government, better from their employers and colleagues, and better from each and every blogger who is fortunate enough to sit behind a desk without fear of being hauled off to prison.
Crossposted at larrymadill.com