North Korea

Most if not all countries don't let their people starve en masse to strengthen a bargaining position.

My point is that N. Korea can still stay plenty inscrutable, unpredictable, mysterious, whatever, toning things down a few notches from where it stands now.

and my point is pretty much every country could stand to tone it down a notch or two, people be aggressive and are hard to reason w/if its working out for them

pretty sure this is all fallout from them not getting out of the group stage in south africa

x-post But again, most countries do not allow their people to starve. Though I'm not sure who is worse on this front, Kim or Mugabe. At least North Koreans gets top-notch security out of the deal!

I feel like Mugabe's as bad as it gets in pretty much every way but I'll cop to knowing a lot less about NK

josh i really have no idea what you are arguing except that n korea has let its people starve and most countries dont do that, if thats all youre saying then yes i agree n korea has let its people starve and most countries dont do that

Most countries also have free public health care.

http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Everyone%20Else/images/kim-jong-il-smiling.jpg

health care? yeah ill give you some health care

n korea still hilarious^

I liked Hitchens' term about North Korea's government: a necrocracy.

x-post I wasn't making an argument. It's just that every time someone said "North Korea is crazy!" you'd say something like "well, lots of countries are crazy." "North Korea is aggressive!" "Well, lots of countries are aggressive." I was trying to demonstrate one way that North Korea is not like other countries, and how its behavior reflects the mindset of a nation that would willfully let its own people starve. That is to say, irrational to the extent that its extreme purported self-preservation has been perverted into a sow form of self-destruction. Not a lot of countries like that (save Zimbabwe, but Zimbabwe does not make military threats).

(Ha, that should be "slow form of self-destruction." Though I imagine the lack of sows in N. Korea hasn't helped the food issue.)

Part of studying history, and exercising the right judgment, I think, is recognizing when examples don't follow the predicted norms of behavior or patterns. North Korea is one.

josh i really have no idea what you are arguing except that n korea has let its people starve and most countries dont do that, if thats all youre saying then yes i agree n korea has let its people starve and most countries dont do that

― ice cr?m, Tuesday, November 23, 2010 11:14 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

off the top of my head:

ussr
china
north korea

idk if that sounds neocon, just saying

josh countries are different in lots of ways

but otherwise it seems like any escalation between the two would result in a swift decimation of NK's forces

Srsly? In a North vs. South scenario ppl think these guys, who could (in fact probably have been) eat dirt to stay alive

http://resources0.news.com.au/images/2009/03/13/1225699/420384-north-korean-soldiers.jpg

are going to beaten by these dudes, who look like they're out of a fruity playstation (PS1 at that) game

http://img.hani.co.kr/imgdb/resize/2006/0926/1159250331_03591928_20060926.JPG

Shit, gbx, I'm pretty sure this will mean little to you, but we are all making decisions about how we regard NK, and those decisions do make a difference in a situation like this. Americans were predisposed to hate commies in 1963, and N. Vietnam was full of commies. We were predisposed to hate Saddam. We're now becoming more and more predisposed to hate on Muslims generally. NK is still in the nasty commies camp. Etc.

Like if the West weren't so predisposed to hatin' commies, we'd all be living in fuckin' Stalinist love harems by now. : )

N. Korea is an enigma. Leave 'em alone? They don't like that. Give them what they want? They like that, as long as you realize they want more. Engage? They break off talks. Suggest talks? They require good faith actions (but don't expect any in return). I mean really, everything we do for N. Korea we essentially do just to keep some semblance of talks going. Meanwhile. N. Korea does whatever it wants.

If you replace 'N. Korea' with 'Apple' and 'we' with the name of any other company the entire passage still works.

man you really hate those dudes

fair enough too

Are you suggesting we should invade Apple?

y

If you guys really wanna feel good about this whole situation, take a few minutes to read the comments beneath the CNN article.

NYT:

President Obama and South Korea’s president agreed to hold joint military exercises as they struggled to keep a North Korean provocation from escalating into war.

Hmm... interesting logic.

NYT follow-up article full of all sorts of Dr. Strangelove LOLs:

As diplomatic responses to the incident were being drafted in Washington, Seoul, Beijing and other capitals, the American and South Korean militaries announced Wednesday that an aircraft carrier strike group would lead a four-day exercise in the western sea beginning on Sunday. The strike group is led by the United States carrier George Washington.

Mr. Breen called it “foolishness.”

“The whole idea is just to give them the bird,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/25/world/asia/25kim.html?_r=1

can't believe shakey mo collier just nuked n korea

nukey mo collier

guys, this is going to be the funniest world war

oh my aching, irradiated sides

someone drag my knee back over here, I need to slap it

America's Funniest Police Actions

Meanwhile, breaking news from the Central News Agency of the DPRK:

Pyongyang, November 23 (KCNA) -- General Secretary Kim Jong Il provided field guidance to the newly built Soy Sauce Shop at the Ryongsong Foodstuff Factory.

After being briefed on the technical features of the newly built shop, he went round various places including the processes equipped with cutting-edge facilities for producing soy sauce, processed salt, powdered meat and ham to learn in detail about its construction and production there.

It is a great success that the workers of the factory and soldier- builders have successfully built the modern shop as big as a food processing factory in a short span of time, he noted, expressing great satisfaction over the construction of a model shop which can represent the era of Songun.

http://www.hockeydrunk.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/kim_jong_ok.jpg

we should call north korea's bluff and send kanye in as our new diplomatic envoy

you wanna act all crazy, we'll show you crazy

― tween-justin-bieber-riot-of-09-pandemonium-arrests-terror+tweeting (Edward III), Wednesday, November 24, 2010 6:22 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

I can't find it now coz I is travelling for work but there's a brilliant photo blog of Kim Jong-il posing in warehouses with various food products.

(by 'posing' I mean 'standing awkwardly and detachedly clutching/surveying')

Palin stands with 'our North Korean allies'

PALIN/IL 2012

KIM u racist

HA

oh my fucking god sarah palin

"There was also a new version of the No-dong ballistic missile, with a tri-conic nosecone, on show." - http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/11/24/north.korea.capability/

If I die because of a no-dong missle ....

I guess Kim gets the Adam & Eve catalog as well…

(that was weak, i know)

It's a new type o' dong: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-february-13-2003/north-korea-s-taepo-dong

Pretty sure it's a term of the ceasefire that N. Korea stop developing and building all state of the art soy sauce factories. Someone should bomb that shit immediately before they sell it to someone savvy enough to weaponize it.

http://www.5cense.com/10/atomization/soy_bomb.jpg

NYT:

It was unclear whether the arrival of a United States aircraft carrier group off North Korea’s coast would be seen as a provocation.

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lcgnyif1Mi1qzamioo1_500.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyongyang_Metro