I stumbled across a fascinating account of a man who spent a year in North Korea. His job:
His name was David Richardson, and he worked as a reviser for the Foreign Languages Publishing House. If you ever wondered how the works of the Great Leader and other North Korean propaganda at least end up in decent English (or French, German, et al), it's thanks to people like David. The job is sometimes called polishing. First, armies of locals toil to translate the Leader's obiter dicta into what they fondly imagine is English. But then they need a native speaker to check that it's right. So at any given time FLPH usually has half a dozen assorted foreigners doing this job for the major languages.
(the story is actually about David's replacement, but whatever, it's the best description of the job. Anyway, North Korea is legendary for keeping information about itself hidden, so I was very interested in this story. I can't really describe it here, so I'll just put in a few quotes to hopefully pique your interest.
Armed with such sketchy information, when I eventually arrived in Pyongyang, I found myself immeasurably better informed that the average North Korean citizen, who has been conditioned to believe that the Japanese capitulation in World War Two was precipitated not by what happened at Hiroshima but by the unstoppable advance of the Korean People's Revolutionary Army under its brilliant, iron-willed, ever-victorious commander, General Kim Il Sung, sun of the nation and lodestar of liberation, and that in 1950 they were not driven headlong to the northern border by the UN forces. They were merely making a temporary strategic retreat as a result of which they quickly recovered the lost ground again, thanks to the outstanding military genius of the aforesaid commander. Certainly a number of Chinese volunteers did cross the border to lend comradely assistance, but this figure of one million must clearly be dismissed as US imperialist propaganda designed to cover up the ignominy of the mighty imperialist military machine being unequal to the confrontation with the valiant Korean people under the inspired leadership of Great General Comrade Kim Il Sung. As for South Korea today, everyone knows about the distressed living conditions of the working masses who long for the great leader's fatherly embrace, but are brutally suppressed by the US imperialists and the military fascist puppet dictatorship.
Mangyondae is situated a couple of miles outside Pyongyang on the banks of the Taedong River. It is said to be the place where the great leader was born into a humble peasant family and where he grew up until he left home at the age of thirteen to join up with the anti-Japanese guerrilla fighters in Manchuria. It should be noted that although his family were humble peasants, they were at the same time great patriots, thinkers and revolutionaries. Kim Il Sung's father, Kim Hyong Jik, is supposed to have been an influential leader of the national liberation movement against the Japanese occupation. It was none other than the great leaders great-grandfather, Kim Ung U, who led the successful assault on the predatory US battleship, the General Sherman, that infiltrated Korea up the Taedong River in 1866. We in the West do tend to forget just how far back US imperialist designs on the Korean peninsula actually go.
As any North Korean will tell you, you can't beat an outing to historic Mangyondae for a fun-packed day out for all the family. Set in several acres of lovely parkland, it offers first and foremost the original medieval thatched cottage where President Kim Il Sung spent his formative years. Why is it the only house left in the village? How did it escape the American bombing? Why does it look so much like a recently built model of an old-style Korean dwelling? It's a miracle. Miracles sit easily with some people.
The Korean public has no access to the popular music of the outside world. When Koreans purchase a radio, they have to take it to a special place to be adjusted so that the dial cannot be tuned to switch stations. It is not only forbidden to listen to anything other than state radio. It is rendered a practical impossibility. As for foreign records and tapes, like foreign books and magazines, they are not even available in the dollar shops.
At the beginning of each November, each household is issued with several kilos of cabbage to which the people then add spices to make their revolting national dish called kimchi, which supplements their grain ration. Refrigerators are a luxury. The households that do have one do not have large enough ones to store a whole winter's supply of kimchi. Everyone therefore stores it out of doors in earthenware jars, relying on the sub-zero temperatures to keep it fresh. When temperatures in December 1987 rose as high as eight degrees centigrade, this had a most deleterious effect on the quality of their diet.
Very interesting stuff, I recommend that you give it a try.
At the beginning of each November, each household is issued with several kilos of cabbage to which the people then add spices to make their revolting national dish called kimchi
At the beginning of each November, each household is issued with several kilos of cabbage to which the people then add spices to make their revolting national dish called kimchi
"Once they were all up, they squatted in a row with their backs against the wall of the factory and did nothing except chatter and giggle and touch one another - North Korean girls are very physical in displaying their affection towards each other." "It was a typical North Korean scene; sweet, endearing, innocent people, without a clue what they are doing." "I can honestly say that the citizens of sinister, Stalinist North Korea are the nicest people I have ever met in my life. They were nice to me, and they are nice to each other. The comradeship of the girls on the roof was touching to see and it was the sort of thing I saw all the time." rofl=[]
It is perhaps a little unfair to dismiss Korean television as nothing but an endless stream of propaganda, but only a little. During my two weeks in hospital I watched quite a lot of television. It made a change from reading and it was something I could do standing up. For some reason I found it much less painful at that time to stand than to sit. By the end of a week I could endure to stand up for half an hour at a time, whereas I could not sit for more than five minutes before the pain drove me back into bed. An astonishing amount of viewing time is given over to documentary-style celebrations of the great leader, the glorious achievements of the Juche revolution, and also to the architectural splendours of Pyongyang and the natural beauty of the Korean countryside. The people are encouraged to take a great pride in their country's natural beauty. But they do have dramas and light entertainment. Every week there is an amateur song contest, when the workers and peasants get the chance to put on their finery and step into the spotlight. Koreans, as mentioned before, love to sing and these amateurs turn in very stirring performances. Their eyes shine and they make impassioned gestures as they perform the well-loved revolutionary ditties that extol the virtues of the great leader and the victories of the socialist revolution, to the accompaniment of accordion and guitar. When they have poured their hearts out, impassive judges press buttons. A red light comes on if their performance has gained the judge's approval. A green lights denotes failure. Then the performer has to stand and listen to the judge's criticism before departing the stage. The performers do not mind. Public criticism has become a standard part of daily life in their culture. It is considered good for people. Before they pour their hearts out, the performers announce their names and occupations. They have exciting jobs like fitter at the Kum Song General Tractor Plant, electrician at the February 8th Vindon Factory, or sub-work-team leader on a co-operative farm. At any rate they perceive their jobs as exciting. For this is a society where the highest honour is not to be made a knight of the realm, but to be decorated as a Labour Hero. Outstanding sportsmen and entertainers enjoy a modest celebrity but the quintessential heroes of the Juche Korea are the workers and peasants and men of the Korean People's Army, who exceed annual production quotas, grow record crop yields, or build the West Sea barrage, and the media do not let people forget this. There are no chat shows where glittering celebrities offer tantalising glimpses into their personal lives on North Korean television. Instead there are images of determined men up to their waists in foaming, icy water laying pipes or building factories in the snow. These are the activities that are portrayed as glamorous in North Korea.
A few months back there was a 19 GB torrent on Demonoid of documentaries on North Korea. I'm not sure if people are still seeding it. Most fascinating stuff I've ever seen. Highly recommend checking out A State of Mind and Crossing the Line.
There was another piece, I think it was North Korean Junket, but maybe not. It talked about the Korean Friendship Association, which is apparently an organization for foreigners who, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, think the DPRK isn't all that bad and want to participate in their propaganda. You can join too! Although if you're planning on boarding an airplane any time soon, I wouldn't recommend it.
edit: thanks for the link--bookmarking for when I have more time ;<
At any rate they perceive their jobs as exciting. For this is a society where the highest honour is not to be made a knight of the realm, but to be decorated as a Labour Hero. Outstanding sportsmen and entertainers enjoy a modest celebrity but the quintessential heroes of the Juche Korea are the workers and peasants and men of the Korean People's Army, who exceed annual production quotas, grow record crop yields, or build the West Sea barrage, and the media do not let people forget this. There are no chat shows where glittering celebrities offer tantalising glimpses into their personal lives on North Korean television. Instead there are images of determined men up to their waists in foaming, icy water laying pipes or building factories in the snow. These are the activities that are portrayed as glamorous in North Korea.
While alot of those quotes are pretty damn frightening, I totally approve of this one :3.
koreans have kimchi (nutritious and cheap) americans have mcdonalds (no nutrional value, cheap).
its funny because americans are just as much slaves to propaganda as they say "pitiful" Nkoreans and Chinese are. american public relations and advertising is the mesmerizing magic that goads you into spending your debt on garbage. professional sports is the new religion that numbs the masses before sleep. "politics" is the marginalizing cleave that keeps everyone simultaneously powerless and diluted to the fact that "their vote counts". and we "pity" poor north korea and their Stalinist regime. americans think they are "free" because they have money to buy whatever they want... that is slavery. i live in "REd China" there are no guns, no drugs. there is no crime. there is no "free press"... that means there is no fearTV. what is the western press? it is "propaganda" and ideology-feeding vomit.
in beijing girls hold hands when talking around together. families dont have hummers but they have love. parks are full of elderly people do synchronized taiji and exercising. "oppressed" children go to school 6 days a week and wear uniforms. they dont play 10 hours of video games a day but go to chess and Go practice and learn more in middle school than I did with my "liberal and free" american public education. There are "propaganda" posters like "a prosperous community starts with you" . I havent seen a gun in 5 years. when i visited america last xmas i was nervous the whole time amid obese grazing cows and cops with guns.
On March 11 2009 11:45 omninmo wrote: its funny because americans are just as much slaves to propaganda as they say "pitiful" Nkoreans and Chinese are. american idol? sounds like the korean singsong show... what crisis?
Yes because America stole the idea for a singing show, we are all the same as North Korea
On March 11 2009 11:45 omninmo wrote: its funny because americans are just as much slaves to propaganda as they say "pitiful" Nkoreans and Chinese are. american idol? sounds like the korean singsong show... what crisis?
Yes because America stole the idea for a singing show, we are all the same as North Korea
Its painfully obvious you didnt understand a word he said.
On March 11 2009 11:45 omninmo wrote: koreans have kimchi (nutritious and cheap) americans have mcdonalds (no nutrional value, cheap).
its funny because americans are just as much slaves to propaganda as they say "pitiful" Nkoreans and Chinese are. american public relations and advertising is the mesmerizing magic that goads you into spending your debt on garbage. professional sports is the new religion that numbs the masses before sleep. "politics" is the marginalizing cleave that keeps everyone simultaneously powerless and diluted to the fact that "their vote counts". and we "pity" poor north korea and their Stalinist regime. americans think they are "free" because they have money to buy whatever they want... that is slavery. i live in "REd China" there are no guns, no drugs. there is no crime. there is no "free press"... that means there is no fearTV. what is the western press? it is "propaganda" and ideology-feeding vomit.
in beijing girls hold hands when talking around together. families dont have hummers but they have love. parks are full of elderly people do synchronized taiji and exercising. "oppressed" children go to school 6 days a week and wear uniforms. they dont play 10 hours of video games a day but go to chess and Go practice and learn more in middle school than I did with my "liberal and free" american public education. There are "propaganda" posters like "a prosperous community starts with you" . I havent seen a gun in 5 years. when i visited america last xmas i was nervous the whole time amid obese grazing cows and cops with guns.
On March 11 2009 11:45 omninmo wrote: koreans have kimchi (nutritious and cheap) americans have mcdonalds (no nutrional value, cheap).
its funny because americans are just as much slaves to propaganda as they say "pitiful" Nkoreans and Chinese are. american public relations and advertising is the mesmerizing magic that goads you into spending your debt on garbage. professional sports is the new religion that numbs the masses before sleep. "politics" is the marginalizing cleave that keeps everyone simultaneously powerless and diluted to the fact that "their vote counts". and we "pity" poor north korea and their Stalinist regime. americans think they are "free" because they have money to buy whatever they want... that is slavery. i live in "REd China" there are no guns, no drugs. there is no crime. there is no "free press"... that means there is no fearTV. what is the western press? it is "propaganda" and ideology-feeding vomit.
in beijing girls hold hands when talking around together. families dont have hummers but they have love. parks are full of elderly people do synchronized taiji and exercising. "oppressed" children go to school 6 days a week and wear uniforms. they dont play 10 hours of video games a day but go to chess and Go practice and learn more in middle school than I did with my "liberal and free" american public education. There are "propaganda" posters like "a prosperous community starts with you" . I havent seen a gun in 5 years. when i visited america last xmas i was nervous the whole time amid obese grazing cows and cops with guns.
you're a faggot shut the fuck up
Having spent a fair amount of time in China and the US, I feel like omninmo makes a lot of valid points. Our western press is really full of a lot of vomit, although I don't know that it's necessarily propaganda or ideology-feeting. A lot of what is said about 'lack of freedom' in places like North Korea or China really overstates things, but at the same time, there are definitely some kinds of lack of freedom, so you see what you want to, depending on where you come from (Just like the guy in the story). I really don't think having a broader view of the world makes omninmo a faggot though, I'll leave it up to you to decide.
On March 11 2009 11:45 omninmo wrote: koreans have kimchi (nutritious and cheap) americans have mcdonalds (no nutrional value, cheap).
its funny because americans are just as much slaves to propaganda as they say "pitiful" Nkoreans and Chinese are. american public relations and advertising is the mesmerizing magic that goads you into spending your debt on garbage. professional sports is the new religion that numbs the masses before sleep. "politics" is the marginalizing cleave that keeps everyone simultaneously powerless and diluted to the fact that "their vote counts". and we "pity" poor north korea and their Stalinist regime. americans think they are "free" because they have money to buy whatever they want... that is slavery. i live in "REd China" there are no guns, no drugs. there is no crime. there is no "free press"... that means there is no fearTV. what is the western press? it is "propaganda" and ideology-feeding vomit.
in beijing girls hold hands when talking around together. families dont have hummers but they have love. parks are full of elderly people do synchronized taiji and exercising. "oppressed" children go to school 6 days a week and wear uniforms. they dont play 10 hours of video games a day but go to chess and Go practice and learn more in middle school than I did with my "liberal and free" american public education. There are "propaganda" posters like "a prosperous community starts with you" . I havent seen a gun in 5 years. when i visited america last xmas i was nervous the whole time amid obese grazing cows and cops with guns.
I would systematically refute every "point" you tried to make, but you're just going to go on believe what you've been conditioned to believe. I honestly didn't realize there was so much propaganda in China until I read your post.
On March 11 2009 11:45 omninmo wrote: a lot about beijing
What the hell does China have to do with this? You are the only person here talking about China. If you want to argue against the propaganda in North Korea, I suggest actually talking about North Korea.
That being said, the ideas that having money to buy what we [Americans] want is slavery, (Seems like the opposite.) that everyone is both powerless and thinks they are not, (The 2000 presidential election was decided by some 300 votes.) and that western free press is ideology-feeding vomit, (What the hell do you call government controlled press?) are very interesting and, IMO, require significant elaboration.
Also, way to try to sneak in some low blows by combining our supposed hypnotism by advertising with our willingness to go into debt by saying we spend debt, but... you can't spend debt! That doesn't make any fucking sense! The obese cow thing at least wasn't logically flawed, but very uncreative and a little redundant; additionally, if being around fat people makes you nervous, you really do need to escape whatever propaganda has ruined your brain and spend more time at chess practice or whatever. I know some really good fat players.
On March 11 2009 11:45 omninmo wrote: koreans have kimchi (nutritious and cheap) americans have mcdonalds (no nutrional value, cheap).
its funny because americans are just as much slaves to propaganda as they say "pitiful" Nkoreans and Chinese are. american public relations and advertising is the mesmerizing magic that goads you into spending your debt on garbage. professional sports is the new religion that numbs the masses before sleep. "politics" is the marginalizing cleave that keeps everyone simultaneously powerless and diluted to the fact that "their vote counts". and we "pity" poor north korea and their Stalinist regime. americans think they are "free" because they have money to buy whatever they want... that is slavery. i live in "REd China" there are no guns, no drugs. there is no crime. there is no "free press"... that means there is no fearTV. what is the western press? it is "propaganda" and ideology-feeding vomit.
in beijing girls hold hands when talking around together. families dont have hummers but they have love. parks are full of elderly people do synchronized taiji and exercising. "oppressed" children go to school 6 days a week and wear uniforms. they dont play 10 hours of video games a day but go to chess and Go practice and learn more in middle school than I did with my "liberal and free" american public education. There are "propaganda" posters like "a prosperous community starts with you" . I havent seen a gun in 5 years. when i visited america last xmas i was nervous the whole time amid obese grazing cows and cops with guns.
Um, whats your point? You just acknowledged that secluded innocent Communist people full of love are a lot more vulnerable to reality when it hits. If you were scared shitless by merely seeing a gun, then I'd hate to imagine what would happen when China sends its Red Armies to invade. Sure Americans may be exposed to liberalism and the excesses that go with it, but that is why we are constantly putting out the newest technologies and the most creative ways to implement them. Playing Go 10 hours a day will develop a fine logical mind, but playing video games 10 hours a day exposes you to people not in the Go club. It will create opportunities for you to learn a lot of things outside of a Go board. You only have yourself to blame for the failure of your "liberal and free" american public education. By definition, liberalism means you had the choice and the opportunity to do something with it, but you didn't. You failed.
Edit: Oh, and your point about propaganda. You bring up a lot of legitimate points about the propaganda nature of advertisement, democracy and limited press, but this ain't the 1950s, son. If you ever talk to major media company heads or publishing company heads, they will all tell you that the days of oligopolistic media control is coming to an end. The internet has brought widespread access to knowledge which is very rapidly breaking down the control the traditional media companies have. Ironically enough, your beloved China is lagging behind in this respect by banning a lot of information coming into the country.
On March 11 2009 11:45 omninmo wrote: koreans have kimchi (nutritious and cheap) americans have mcdonalds (no nutrional value, cheap).
its funny because americans are just as much slaves to propaganda as they say "pitiful" Nkoreans and Chinese are. american public relations and advertising is the mesmerizing magic that goads you into spending your debt on garbage. professional sports is the new religion that numbs the masses before sleep. "politics" is the marginalizing cleave that keeps everyone simultaneously powerless and diluted to the fact that "their vote counts". and we "pity" poor north korea and their Stalinist regime. americans think they are "free" because they have money to buy whatever they want... that is slavery. i live in "REd China" there are no guns, no drugs. there is no crime. there is no "free press"... that means there is no fearTV. what is the western press? it is "propaganda" and ideology-feeding vomit.
in beijing girls hold hands when talking around together. families dont have hummers but they have love. parks are full of elderly people do synchronized taiji and exercising. "oppressed" children go to school 6 days a week and wear uniforms. they dont play 10 hours of video games a day but go to chess and Go practice and learn more in middle school than I did with my "liberal and free" american public education. There are "propaganda" posters like "a prosperous community starts with you" . I havent seen a gun in 5 years. when i visited america last xmas i was nervous the whole time amid obese grazing cows and cops with guns.
you're a faggot shut the fuck up
Wow, have fun in disneyland. The guy makes a few perfectly valid points and that's the best you can do? Between the two of you it's pretty clear who needs to shut up.
On March 11 2009 13:07 LonelyMargarita wrote: I would systematically refute every "point" you tried to make, but you're just going to go on believe what you've been conditioned to believe. I honestly didn't realize there was so much propaganda in China until I read your post.
No please, I would love to hear it. What exactly makes him brainwashed and you free, self-aware and intelligent?
On March 11 2009 11:45 omninmo wrote: koreans have kimchi (nutritious and cheap) americans have mcdonalds (no nutrional value, cheap).
its funny because americans are just as much slaves to propaganda as they say "pitiful" Nkoreans and Chinese are. american public relations and advertising is the mesmerizing magic that goads you into spending your debt on garbage. professional sports is the new religion that numbs the masses before sleep. "politics" is the marginalizing cleave that keeps everyone simultaneously powerless and diluted to the fact that "their vote counts". and we "pity" poor north korea and their Stalinist regime. americans think they are "free" because they have money to buy whatever they want... that is slavery. i live in "REd China" there are no guns, no drugs. there is no crime. there is no "free press"... that means there is no fearTV. what is the western press? it is "propaganda" and ideology-feeding vomit.
in beijing girls hold hands when talking around together. families dont have hummers but they have love. parks are full of elderly people do synchronized taiji and exercising. "oppressed" children go to school 6 days a week and wear uniforms. they dont play 10 hours of video games a day but go to chess and Go practice and learn more in middle school than I did with my "liberal and free" american public education. There are "propaganda" posters like "a prosperous community starts with you" . I havent seen a gun in 5 years. when i visited america last xmas i was nervous the whole time amid obese grazing cows and cops with guns.
you're a faggot shut the fuck up
This is not an acceptable response, regardless whether you agree with his points or not.
On March 11 2009 11:45 omninmo wrote: koreans have kimchi (nutritious and cheap) americans have mcdonalds (no nutrional value, cheap).
its funny because americans are just as much slaves to propaganda as they say "pitiful" Nkoreans and Chinese are. american public relations and advertising is the mesmerizing magic that goads you into spending your debt on garbage. professional sports is the new religion that numbs the masses before sleep. "politics" is the marginalizing cleave that keeps everyone simultaneously powerless and diluted to the fact that "their vote counts". and we "pity" poor north korea and their Stalinist regime. americans think they are "free" because they have money to buy whatever they want... that is slavery. i live in "REd China" there are no guns, no drugs. there is no crime. there is no "free press"... that means there is no fearTV. what is the western press? it is "propaganda" and ideology-feeding vomit.
in beijing girls hold hands when talking around together. families dont have hummers but they have love. parks are full of elderly people do synchronized taiji and exercising. "oppressed" children go to school 6 days a week and wear uniforms. they dont play 10 hours of video games a day but go to chess and Go practice and learn more in middle school than I did with my "liberal and free" american public education. There are "propaganda" posters like "a prosperous community starts with you" . I havent seen a gun in 5 years. when i visited america last xmas i was nervous the whole time amid obese grazing cows and cops with guns.
You are missing the one key difference. though americans are conditioned to be a part of the ignorant, money loving, and morally corrupt masses, they have the choice not to succumb, unlike N.Koreans. I can, in the USA, openly say "fuck the president he sucks nuts, and i hope he burns in hell" without heavy consequences and by heavy i mean legal action against me.
also kimchi, may be nutritional, and mcdonalds not, but i have the choice to expand my palette and experience the various flavors of so many other cultures, all a short drive away.
of course a lot of americans cannot name a country that starts with U, and i completely agree that it is a disgrace upon humanity, but they are not all like that, and they have the choice not to be, who am I to tell anyone what they should or should not know, be and eat.
On March 11 2009 11:45 omninmo wrote: i live in "REd China" there are no guns, no drugs. there is no crime. there is no "free press"... that means there is no fearTV. what is the western press? it is "propaganda" and ideology-feeding vomit.
TL is not suitable for a debate about Communist propaganda. You have some smart posters, and then you have the 14 year old dipshits like Symphony who come in and ruin everything with their "AMERICA, FUCK YEAH" attitude.
That said, the select quotes in the OP and some of the posts on the first page are quite interesting, I'll definitely read this later when I have the time.
On March 11 2009 12:52 sMi.SyMPhOnY wrote: you're a faggot shut the fuck up
my point is displayed by this typical angry youth 's sentiment. you see. the world is doomed because simpletons do not have the mental framework to understand their predicament. you tell them that their boat is full of holes and they just ask for more buckets.
thanks for the positive reinforcement and illustration.
Stamped in small font but unmistakable plain English is a caveat that upon contemplation of seems to be implying that our dollar bills, our system of money, currency at that, $1s, $5s, $10s, $20s, $50s, and $100s, all of them alike, represent debt. Compare this to a previous era when the statement engraved on our currency stated that the bearer of said note could exchange the note for equivalent value in gold or silver, on demand. In the current era, the clue is that these bills are designed to point out that they are to be accepted for all debts public and private. This still does not explain how or why debt collectors generally seem to be okay with accepting bills for payments of bills. I'm not making this up. Look it up! I'm just thinking otu loud, trying to make some sense out of all of this currency system. These dollar bills are also referred to as notes. Many years ago, if I showed up late for school or left early, teachers might get upset unless I handed them a note from somebody else, after which the teachers were then seemingly okay with this. The power of notes, eh?
In the old Christmas movie there is the famous line "every time a bell rings, an angel gets it's wings". There is another line that says that every time a dollar bill is exchanged for all debts private or public, the Federal Reserve earns a royalty. Since they own the patent to federal reserve notes, they exact a usage fee each and every time one of their dollar bills is officially recorded as having been exchanged for all debts private and public. It eventually becomes more clear that these notes have since there inception been intended to manifest as debt. The system that puts these notes into circulation requires that the production of these notes incur a debt, in the form of interest, for services rendered, you see? This guarantees that the amount of debt attached to the notes will always be more than the face value of the total notes in circulation; debt. There is a related mystery; the notion of a nation so saddled with debt from the long term habitual use of exchanging patented money notes that it can spend it's way out of debt and back into prosperity by way of circulating more and more of these notes which of course necessitates more and more debt being generated in order to manufacture more and more of these notes for circulation. From where or how, theoretically, comes the money to pay the interest on these loans, I may never know, but this kind of interest is interesting to me. It is even more interesting that I may never know how or where the additional money is to come from to pay for the additional royalties racked up each and every time a FRN is officially registered as having been used "spent" for all debts public and private. While the people at large can no longer exhange these notes for silver or gold on demand, the Federal reserve bank requires that the interest paid to it for having produced these notes must be paid in gold. So, on the one hand, dollar bills are seemingly okay to be exchanged for paying certain kinds of debts, light bills... "lite bills", if you will, just not okay for paying the kind of heavy bills racked up through the many years of having created the dollar bills themselves. Isn't that something? The producers, the very copyright patent owners of these dollar bills allow these bills to be exchanged with pretty much the entire spectrum of debt collectors .... EXCEPT themselves. By implication this seems to be the FRB's way of saying that it does not have much faith in it's own dollar bill product. -oh407
FYI I will be keeping an eye on this thread. I think there is some potential for this topic, but some of you, on both sides, need to get your heads out of your asses. Keep it objective folks.
On March 11 2009 14:41 koreasilver wrote: But you're failing to realize that your own boat is full of holes as well.
Both of you are just pointing out the flaws in the other's ship when both of you are failing to mend your own leaks.
yes this was my point. the difference is i see the holes in my ship and symPHONY is just full of negative energy for reasons unknowable to him.
i didnt mean to posit China's or Korea's current status as objectively "better" than any other nation's. for this confusion i must apologize. I am a Caucasian citizen of the united states with ancestry from sweden and italy. i am not a chinese nationalist or communist sympathizer. I am merely pointing out my experiences living in what is called capital of the "free world" (US) and capital of the "central planning" (PRC). I very much appreciate all the opportunities afforded me while growing up in the US and do not mean to slander said nation. that being said, america's double edged sword, which is at once a blessing and a curse, is her free-loving heterogeneous lack of historical sense. asian nations are just the opposite, i.e. homogeneous and full of historical sense. neither position is "better". but different perspective lead to different ways of interpreting sense experience.
The OP about "poor stalinist korea" which was written in a fashionably sarcastic tone by an expatriot seemed to imply that american culture, with its ostensible "freedoms" is absent of oppressive fascism. my point is just what you said. america is just as rotten and in a state of decadence as another other nation which trades debt for services and which relies on interest as a monetary policy. "freedom to choose" between two of the same thing is not freedom. freedom to choose between mcdonalds and burger king (now available on every corner in beijing, along with subway, pizza hut...) or between foxnews or cnn or between donkey president or elephant president is specious and a false sense of liberty. it is a sort of freedom that is shrouded in oppression since in the end you are still eating fast food, still subscribing to advertisers' brainwashing and still participating in charade elections of "presidents" who are but PR reps for multinational conglomerates seeking maintainence of the status quo class divisions. if i force you to play starcraft but allow you to choose your race. you are free in one sense but overall what are you? + Show Spoiler +
my starcraft-playing-monkey, shackled in broodwar bondage.
better tone it down just got a warning bot message + Show Spoiler +
Please tone down the nationalistic, self-righteous bulltshit. It's borderline troll material.
If you have a point to make, feel free to make an objective, factual post. Not the garbage you've been spewing so far.
Thanks in advance for your cooperation, EvilTeletubby
i dont expect anyone who has lived their entire life amongst one culture to be able to process any of the above. in this world there are no individuals. consciousness is collective. humanity is a substrate from which personalities grow. ideology is brain fire-wall.
EDIT: i look at the exchange we have had here and it is all quite ridiculous. including what i have written. to judge others in relation to ourselves without proper understanding of either is disingenuous. sorry. lets just play SC and wait for the bombs. glhf.
You know, omninmo, I'll admit I'm surprised that you gave such a cordial response. I'm not sure what the debt post was in response to, but as for your second post, I do agree with you in that the American system is a double edged sword. People can flourish like nowhere else in the world, but that comes at the consequence of people do fall through the cracks. It is the nature of the capitalist system and it is the nature of liberalism. Both of these Western ideas give the opportunity for individuals to choose what they want to do and historicaly (arguably), this has resulted in a Western dominated society. Heterogeneity gives rise to diversity which in turn gives rise to adaptability. This, IMO, has been the defining trait of Western civilization which has allowed it to become dominant.
On March 11 2009 15:58 gchan wrote: You know, omninmo, I'll admit I'm surprised that you gave such a cordial response. + Show Spoiler +
I'm not sure what the debt post was in response to, but as for your second post, I do agree with you in that the American system is a double edged sword. People can flourish like nowhere else in the world, but that comes at the consequence of people do fall through the cracks. It is the nature of the capitalist system and it is the nature of liberalism. Both of these Western ideas give the opportunity for individuals to choose what they want to do and historicaly (arguably), this has resulted in a Western dominated society. Heterogeneity gives rise to diversity which in turn gives rise to adaptability. This, IMO, has been the defining trait of Western civilization which has allowed it to become dominant.
yea bro, thats cuz i dont have an agenda and im not scared of being shown to be in error like PHONY. i love being proved wrong cuz then im not wrong anymore. the american system is admittedly modeled after Rome's which is the same as Great Britain when it was... Imperialism has the aggressor's advantage. Homogeneity does not breed innovation but it does allow for peace. As history illustrates, peace and capitalism are mutually exclusive since war and much arbitrage are too profitable. there is a third path which accepts this contradiction but history has no examples of such a society. + Show Spoiler +
Has there ever been an invasion exercised on a foreign country by Communists?
On March 11 2009 15:03 omninmo wrote: The OP about "poor stalinist korea" which was written in a fashionably sarcastic tone by an expatriot seemed to imply that american culture...
Just want to point out that I tried to pick out some of the more controversial posts, mostly because I thought it would interest more people. When you point it out like that, I realize that I misrepresented the overall tone of the work, which is rarely that sarcastic. Also, the guy who wrote it is a Brit.
Has there ever been an invasion exercised on a foreign country by Communists?
Afghanistan, invaded by the soviets?
On March 11 2009 14:49 EvilTeletubby wrote: FYI I will be keeping an eye on this thread. I think there is some potential for this topic, but some of you, on both sides, need to get your heads out of your asses. Keep it objective folks.
Sorry, I didn't see this coming. I thought people would mostly be interested in actually reading an account of living in North Korea, rather than arguing about stuff. Apparently I forgot that this is the internet.
That said, this should make for an interesting discussion, provided all parties behave themselves.
Took me 2 minutes using our excellent Western propaganda tools. With about an hour of research you will probably find more communist engaged conflicts than you'd like.
To the OP I read the first two chapters and it is indeed fascinating. I don't like the author's political opinion to most of what he describes but reading up on NK is really interesting.
FFS what kind of ridiculous question was that haha. I mean all those countries behind the iron curtain, they just all decided to become communist at the same time right after WW2? Even if Soviet troops moved there in the process of fighting the Nazis they sort of stayed there and imposed a political system. Invasion enough for me. Not to mention the examples mentions in zatic's post. How can I take anything you say seriously?
On March 11 2009 11:45 omninmo wrote: in beijing girls hold hands when talking around together. families dont have hummers but they have love. parks are full of elderly people do synchronized taiji and exercising. "oppressed" children go to school 6 days a week and wear uniforms. they dont play 10 hours of video games a day but go to chess and Go practice and learn more in middle school than I did with my "liberal and free" american public education. There are "propaganda" posters like "a prosperous community starts with you" . I havent seen a gun in 5 years. when i visited america last xmas i was nervous the whole time amid obese grazing cows and cops with guns.
This is actually pretty true as far as I'm concerned. The parks have like people singing and choruses and stuff it's pretty cool. I don't know about Beijing, but yeah my cousin from HK always says that he already learned everything that the high schools here try to teach when he moved here.
But really if you live in Beijing it's unfair to say there's no crime in China because of how many fucking cops there are in Beijing. There's cops everywhere there so I really wouldn't expect there to be crime. That definitely isn't the same for the rest of China, and I've been to the cities in Guangdong around Hong Kong like Shenzhen and Hoiping where there are practically no cops at all compared to Beijing.
If there is one country in the world I support invading, its north korea. How much you try to sugar coat it, the fact remains that the entire country is a huge violation to human rights. The lack of health care is disturbing, people are blinded for the majority of their lives because they cant even fix cataract, which is an extremely easy thing to cure.
Ignorance is bliss comes to mind, if the people of north korea knew how bad they had it compared to the rest of the world, I still dont think there would be any kind of protests, since they're scared to death of being sent to consentration camps and tortured for the rest of their lives.
Even if it means that the brain washed population would hate being invaded, you have to think of future generations. Something has to happen eventually, and unless some outside contry decides to do something about it, north korea is doomed to shit infidently .
On March 12 2009 05:11 Epicfailguy wrote: If there is one country in the world I support invading, its north korea. How much you try to sugar coat it, the fact remains that the entire country is a huge violation to human rights. The lack of health care is disturbing, people are blinded for the majority of their lives because they cant even fix cataract, which is an extremely easy thing to cure.
Ignorance is bliss comes to mind, if the people of north korea knew how bad they had it compared to the rest of the world, I still dont think there would be any kind of protests, since they're scared to death of being sent to consentration camps and tortured for the rest of their lives.
Even if it means that the brain washed population would hate being invaded, you have to think of future generations. Something has to happen eventually, and unless some outside contry decides to do something about it, north korea is doomed to shit infidently .
The linked article in the OP mentions that their medical care is pretty good, the only reason that they can't fix a lot of things is because they can't get the medical supplies from the capitalist countries that have embargoes against them. I really think you should read a lot of the article, it might change your opinions. Who's to say what brainwashed happiness really is? Would I be happy if I become wealthy? The reason for happiness is not as important as the state of happiness itself.
On March 11 2009 11:45 omninmo wrote: in beijing girls hold hands when talking around together. families dont have hummers but they have love. parks are full of elderly people do synchronized taiji and exercising. "oppressed" children go to school 6 days a week and wear uniforms. they dont play 10 hours of video games a day but go to chess and Go practice and learn more in middle school than I did with my "liberal and free" american public education. There are "propaganda" posters like "a prosperous community starts with you" . I havent seen a gun in 5 years. when i visited america last xmas i was nervous the whole time amid obese grazing cows and cops with guns.
This is actually pretty true as far as I'm concerned. The parks have like people singing and choruses and stuff it's pretty cool. I don't know about Beijing, but yeah my cousin from HK always says that he already learned everything that the high schools here try to teach when he moved here.
But really if you live in Beijing it's unfair to say there's no crime in China because of how many fucking cops there are in Beijing. There's cops everywhere there so I really wouldn't expect there to be crime. That definitely isn't the same for the rest of China, and I've been to the cities in Guangdong around Hong Kong like Shenzhen and Hoiping where there are practically no cops at all compared to Beijing.
cops in beijing drink tea, smoke cigs, sleep, fill out paper work, chat with locals and direct heaps of traffic. they dont carry guns. they are just government bureaucrats who live in the police station or nearby apartment complex and less than 1% has ever witnessed or been a part of any brutalization. there is crime in china.. of course. but its not publicized and sensationalized, packaged and sold.
Kinda ties in with the whole matrix thing. Yeah you're a slave but you don't know that, you think you're hooking up with this girl from school and having a tender steak dinner and life rocks. Even if the NKs are in fact brainwashed (and yes the evidence is pointing that way) they might be the happiest smurfs you could ever hope to find, so is there really a reason to inform them about how much their lives suck? I mean if Morpheus wasn't so cool, swinging that secret truth carrot back and forth with his sweet conversational skills, I would totally have taken the blue pill.
That aside, I myself think that yeah, according to my own values about human rights and the waste of brainwashing, I'd forcefeed them the red pill. But I would totally second guess myself as a villain, seeing as how I just totally imposed my will upon them and telling them what's right and wrong and true and false and shit.
Do I really know better? Maybe north korea is the last outpost of truth and all that I think I know about Hiroshima and stuff is actually propaganda? Omg WHO AM I?!?!
On March 12 2009 05:11 Epicfailguy wrote: If there is one country in the world I support invading, its north korea. How much you try to sugar coat it, the fact remains that the entire country is a huge violation to human rights. The lack of health care is disturbing, people are blinded for the majority of their lives because they cant even fix cataract, which is an extremely easy thing to cure.
Ignorance is bliss comes to mind, if the people of north korea knew how bad they had it compared to the rest of the world, I still dont think there would be any kind of protests, since they're scared to death of being sent to consentration camps and tortured for the rest of their lives.
Even if it means that the brain washed population would hate being invaded, you have to think of future generations. Something has to happen eventually, and unless some outside contry decides to do something about it, north korea is doomed to shit infidently .
countries with state sponsored concentration camps need to be invaded and liberated? then you support the invasion of the US since we have government sponsored concentration camps too. search FEMA concentration camps. Protests? protests are allowed and only serve to marginalize the population, put us at odds with each other and give a false sense of freedom to the participants. also, most protests end in riots which are started by agent provocateurs. If the US was really trying to help save the world from "evil doers" then NKorea would have been made into a parking lot a long time ago. Wake up man. America needs people like kim jong il. otherwise what would they show on TV and who would buy US made weapons?
Took me 2 minutes using our excellent Western propaganda tools. With about an hour of research you will probably find more communist engaged conflicts than you'd like.
To the OP I read the first two chapters and it is indeed fascinating. I don't like the author's political opinion to most of what he describes but reading up on NK is really interesting.
I agree the article was a good read, and I disagree with his political opinion too. But the bulk of this post will be addressing the tangential debate about Western media skew.
This is not to say that communists have not launched major and unjust offensives, but that we have too, and our media blames the communists for many things that are indeed our fault, even today. To be fair, look a little bit closer into each war mentioned above. Which ones are actually invasions by communism, and which ones are wars that people in the West always allege as an invasion by communism to mask the true fault of the West?
Let’s take a closer look: 1) The Soviet War in Afghanistan happened as a direct result of a request from the Afghan parliamentary government for intervention by the Soviet Union (a measure the Soviet Union delayed for years), as the USSR’s relationship with Afghanistan stems back from their close economic ties in the 20's when the Soviets supported the Afghan insurrection against the Western imperialist powers following WWI (the Soviet Union provided many times more economic assistance in the latter years to the government of Afghanistan than the nascent World Bank ever would). The US and Western allies instead, opted to support the radical extremist Mudhajadeen (spelling?), which had an opportunity to participate in the Afghan Parliamentary government but chose not to due to their status as a fringe minority group. Now look where the West is, fighting the same government that we helped set up of fundamentalist theocracy, in favor for the parliamentary system. And yet, the “Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan” is almost synonymous for aggressive communist expansion, when in fact the parliamentary government actively sought Soviet aid, the same Soviet Union that helped build the parliamentary government in Afghanistan that, thanks to us, is now dead today.
2) The war in Vietnam was hardly a communist expansion (though Western media would portray it this way, feeding back to the point of the post at the beginning of this quote ziggurat). Rather, it was primarily a Civil War; Ho Chi Minh himself, the leader of the Vietnamese war for independence (a popular non-firebrand/demagogue), was one of the primary backbones in the war effort against Japan during the Second World War. Yes he was a “communist”, as he was a founder of the French communist party in the 1920’s, but he in no way was a Stalinist or Soviet. Similar to George Washington, in a way, though the French exploiters of the raw resources and laborers of Vietnam were far more oppressive than the British ever were to the American colonies. At this point, the US funds over 70 percent of the French expenses for suppression of Vietnamese independence, allegedly to keep France economically strong and thereby stifle internal communist movements. Never mind the near-slavery that occurs under French governmental oversights in the colonies. Never mind the exploitation of both human and natural resources in Southeast Asia by Western Imperialism. Never mind the fact that the Vietnamese popular support is behind self-determination. But wait! The self-determiners are communists, and we all know that means that the communists are invading Vietnam.
So basically what happens is that the Geneva Accords get signed, slating for total mobility between North and South Vietnam, and for reunification elections to be held in 1956. Truman gives Geneva a middle finger, sets up a puppet in Noh Zinh Diem and tries to capitalize on his base of support to reject the reunification elections as declared in the Geneva Accords (he specifically mentions in his memoirs that he supports the containment of “communism” over national self-determination, and favors keeping the territorial divisions permanent; Truman recognizes that communist governments such as Tito's Yugoslavia aren't necessarily in support of the Soviet Union, but decides that he'd rather go US military supremacy), and then Kennedy later decides to give Diem the middle finger and supports a corrupted military coup d'etat to establish a ruling junta in South Vietnam. The United States funnels tons of arms and munitions to the South Vietnamese in resistance of the more popular communist movement of the North. The US Navy works with the military junta to launch unprovoked attacks on North Vietnamese settlements years before war breaks out. Then when they fire back, we essentially declare war with the Tonkin gulf resolution. We ravage the Cambodian and Vietnamese countryside, spray Agent Orange all over the place, etc. We send 2 million active duty US troops. But the communists are the aggressors! We just tried defending a military junta that we generated against international mandates to support Western spheres of influence! And yet, in this light, the war is still viewed in the West as communist expansion, and not as a Western imperialist effort? The West instead skews the conflict like hell, as evidenced by the above-quoted post.
3) Spanish Civil War- the Communists won the 1936 elections. And who was essentially the only supporter of the Republic of Spain over the fascist Franco and various other anarchist factions? The Soviet Union. The West remained for the most part neutral (the US entirely isolated while Europe sent incredibly limited munitions) and let the Republic of Spain fall against the direct military support of fascists of Italy and Germany, backed by Mussolini and Hitler. So of course the Soviet Union was the aggressor here. The West sits back and watches as the Soviet Union funds the Republic in an effort to prevent continental Europe from falling under Fascist orbit, a s the West pulls up some popcorn, lemonade, and an easy chair while spectating the conflict. And then Franco wins, we (the West) don’t blame ourselves, and Spain plunges into the dark until 1975. But look! Today this war for the Spanish Republic is painted as an example of communist invasion! (ok, it sortof was part of Stalin’s aim, but supporting the Republic still beats doing nothing any day).
Not much else to say. Everything else in the above quote is a pretty prime example of Communist belligerence (although most of them stem from Stalinism and not necessarily, Communism). But keep in mind, via either soft or hard influence (that is, media and cultural/social influence of ideologies vs actual banning of opposing materials), the Western governments still do swing public opinion with 'propaganda'.
The key difference though between the West and whatevercountrieswithcensorship is that if those living in the West aren’t lazy, they can seek the opposite viewpoints, whereas the peoplelivingundercensorship can't. And that, in general, I can rest easy knowing that I wont be jailed tomorrow. (But do the maintenance of these political freedoms come from the fact that we value freedom, or because we value laziness?)
Took me 2 minutes using our excellent Western propaganda tools. With about an hour of research you will probably find more communist engaged conflicts than you'd like.
To the OP I read the first two chapters and it is indeed fascinating. I don't like the author's political opinion to most of what he describes but reading up on NK is really interesting.
I agree the article was a good read, and I disagree with his political opinion too. But the bulk of this post will be addressing the tangential debate about Western media skew.
This is not to say that communists have not launched major and unjust offensives, but that we have too, and our media blames the communists for many things that are indeed our fault, even today. To be fair, look a little bit closer into each war mentioned above. Which ones are actually invasions by communism, and which ones are wars that people in the West always allege as an invasion by communism to mask the true fault of the West?
Let’s take a closer look: 1) The Soviet War in Afghanistan happened as a direct result of a request from the Afghan parliamentary government for intervention by the Soviet Union (a measure the Soviet Union delayed for years), as the USSR’s relationship with Afghanistan stems back from their close economic ties in the 20's when the Soviets supported the Afghan insurrection against the Western imperialist powers following WWI (the Soviet Union provided many times more economic assistance in the latter years to the government of Afghanistan than the nascent World Bank ever would). The US and Western allies instead, opted to support the radical extremist Mudhajadeen (spelling?), who had an opportunity to participate in the Parliamentary government but chose not to. Now look where the West is, fighting the same government that we helped to topple the parliament of Afghanistan in favor of fundamentalist theocracy. And yet, the “Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan” is almost synonymous for aggressive communist expansion, when in fact the parliamentary government actively sought Soviet aid, the same Soviet Union that helped build the parliamentary government in Afghanistan that, thanks to us, is now dead today.
2) The war in Vietnam was hardly a communist expansion (though Western media would portray it this way, feeding back to the point of the post at the beginning of this quote ziggurat). Rather, it was primarily a Civil War; Ho Chi Minh himself, the leader of the Vietnamese war for independence (a popular non-firebrand/demagogue), was one of the primary backbones in the war effort against Japan during the Second World War. Yes he was a “communist”, as he was a founder of the French communist party in the 1920’s, but he in no way was a Stalinist or Soviet. Similar to George Washington, in a way, though the French exploiters of the raw resources and laborers of Vietnam were far more oppressive than the British ever were to the American colonies. And yet, in common Western perception, we aren’t the aggressors, communism is!
At this point, the US funds over 70 percent of the French expenses for suppression of Vietnamese independence, allegedly to keep France economically strong and thereby stifle internal communist movements.
So basically what happens is that the Geneva Accords get signed, slating for reunification elections to be held in 1956. Truman gives this a middle finger, sets up a puppet in Noh Zinh Diem (he specifically mentions in his memoirs that he supports the containment of “communism” over national self-determination, in favor of keeping the territorial divisions permanent), and then later decides to give Diem the middle finger and supports a corrupted military junta. The US Navy works with the military junta to launch unprovoked attacks on North Vietnamese settlements. Then when they fire back, we essentially declare war with the Tonkin gulf resolution. We ravage the Cambodian and Vietnamese countryside, spray Agent Orange all over the place, etc. But the communists are the aggressors! We just tried defending a military junta that we generated against international mandates to support Western spheres of influence! And yet, in this light, the war is still viewed in the West as communist expansion, and not as a Western imperialist effort? The West instead skews the conflict like hell, as evidenced by the above-quoted post.
3) Spanish Civil War- the Communists won the 1936 elections. Who was essentially the only supporter of the Republic of Spain over the fascist Franco and various other anarchist factions? The Soviet Union. The West (the United States’ involvement in the conflict was zero, and Britain and France sent very limited aid to the republic) remained neutral and let the republic fall against the direct military support of Mussolini and Hitler. Of *course* the Soviet Union was the aggressor here. So the West sit back and watch as the Soviet Union funds the republic in an effort to prevent continental Europe from falling under Fascist orbit, doing absolutely nothing. And then Franco wins, we don’t blame ourselves, and Spain plunges into the dark until 1975. But look! Today this war is painted as an example of communist invasion (ok, it sortof was part of Stalin’s aim, but supporting the Republic still beats doing nothing any day).
Not much else to say. Everything else in the above quote is a pretty prime example of Communist belligerence (although most of them stem from Stalinism and not necessarily, Communism). But keep in mind, via either soft or hard influence (that is, media and cultural/social influence of ideologies vs actual banning of opposing materials), the Western governments still do swing public opinion with 'propaganda'.
The key difference though between the West and whatevercountrieswithcensorship is that if those living in the West aren’t lazy, they can seek the opposite viewpoints, whereas the peoplelivingundercensorship can't.
Orz
glad to see someone who can read between statistics. great post
On March 11 2009 11:45 omninmo wrote: in beijing girls hold hands when talking around together. families dont have hummers but they have love. parks are full of elderly people do synchronized taiji and exercising. "oppressed" children go to school 6 days a week and wear uniforms. they dont play 10 hours of video games a day but go to chess and Go practice and learn more in middle school than I did with my "liberal and free" american public education. There are "propaganda" posters like "a prosperous community starts with you" . I havent seen a gun in 5 years. when i visited america last xmas i was nervous the whole time amid obese grazing cows and cops with guns.
This is actually pretty true as far as I'm concerned. The parks have like people singing and choruses and stuff it's pretty cool. I don't know about Beijing, but yeah my cousin from HK always says that he already learned everything that the high schools here try to teach when he moved here.
But really if you live in Beijing it's unfair to say there's no crime in China because of how many fucking cops there are in Beijing. There's cops everywhere there so I really wouldn't expect there to be crime. That definitely isn't the same for the rest of China, and I've been to the cities in Guangdong around Hong Kong like Shenzhen and Hoiping where there are practically no cops at all compared to Beijing.
cops in beijing drink tea, smoke cigs, sleep, fill out paper work, chat with locals and direct heaps of traffic. they dont carry guns. they are just government bureaucrats who live in the police station or nearby apartment complex and less than 1% has ever witnessed or been a part of any brutalization. there is crime in china.. of course. but its not publicized and sensationalized, packaged and sold.
Chinese cops definitely carry guns, though not all of them do. And the lack of crime is a benefit of living in a powerful centralized government. Benito Mussolini annihilated the entire all-pervasive Italian Mafia in just two years. Of course, there was a price to pay of freedom.
There's a difference though. Organized crime is still alive and well in China. Illegalization of citizen gun onwership hasn't decreased gun crimes relative to other developed regions of the world, the US included; China remains a hotbed of illegal gun and drug smuggling. Small-time theft, mugging, etc, *were* (this was definitely true 10 years ago, I don't know about now) also definitely prevalent in China.
About the point on Chinese citizenry and life, the quality of Chinese education is debatable (I'm willing to doubt the chess and go point, since most kids have maybe an hour or less of free time every night due to the intensity of Chinese schoolwork), and the relevance of Chinese education compared to the burden it forces is sometimes questionable (required to memorize and learn all sorts of things that you might not even care about or even be relevant to the career due to the one-exam-determines-all style of education, when instead that time could be refocused on a driving passion or deep intellectual pursuit). (source: one of my friends who is a complete genius at physics and math, but felt that the Chinese education system killed his chances. This isn't really a scientifically accepted source, but w/e)
However, the characterization of Beijing as a community of love *that loves eachother more than communities elsewhere in the world* is naive. It may be one built on such, but the idea that it is more loving or w/e than anywhere else in the world is simply ridiculous and unsubstantiated.
Still, how did we get here again? The article in the beginning was about North Korea.
(About North Korea, their GDP is roughly that of Sudan, while the stubbornness of their "dear leader" led to them remaining in an ossified economic system. Countries everywhere around it under similar circumstances boomed ridiculously, such as our beloved Starcraft home of South Korea, as well as China and the other Asian tigers. Yes the west embargoes NK, but for good reason. Even when the United States and other countries sent aid to North Korea as part of an agreement for NK not to pursue nuclear weapons, North Korea still 1) sucked and 2) pursued nukes anyways. There's not much you can say to exonerate this while people are basically eating grass.)
Took me 2 minutes using our excellent Western propaganda tools. With about an hour of research you will probably find more communist engaged conflicts than you'd like.
To the OP I read the first two chapters and it is indeed fascinating. I don't like the author's political opinion to most of what he describes but reading up on NK is really interesting.
I agree the article was a good read, and I disagree with his political opinion too. But the bulk of this post will be addressing the tangential debate about Western media skew.
This is not to say that communists have not launched major and unjust offensives, but that we have too, and our media blames the communists for many things that are indeed our fault, even today. To be fair, look a little bit closer into each war mentioned above. Which ones are actually invasions by communism, and which ones are wars that people in the West always allege as an invasion by communism to mask the true fault of the West?
[....]
The reasons for invasion are irrelevant and the morals behind it can be debated. Still, invasion is invasion and that is the question I was trying to answer. You will notice that I also included WW2, which also saw a communist invasion in Germany. Granted, the Spanish civil war was a bad example since it was, well, a civil war, not an invasion.
On March 12 2009 15:07 zatic wrote: The reasons for invasion are irrelevant and the morals behind it can be debated. Still, invasion is invasion and that is the question I was trying to answer. You will notice that I also included WW2, which also saw a communist invasion in Germany. Granted, the Spanish civil war was a bad example since it was, well, a civil war, not an invasion.
Oh and, why the long post about the Vietnam War?
Well I suppose its a matter of connotation vs denotation, since I took "invade" to be used as to have negative connotations surrounding it (didn't catch the WWII part, my bad). In any case, it *sortof* ties back to omino's point and a looser point regarding the article in general about Western skew.
On March 12 2009 10:51 CDRdude wrote: The linked article in the OP mentions that their medical care is pretty good, the only reason that they can't fix a lot of things is because they can't get the medical supplies from the capitalist countries that have embargoes against them.
If they can't get the supplies they need, how can you say their medical health care is good? When you decide not to trade anything with countries outside of north korea, this happens. A direct result of how the country is run.
But honestly, do you really think it would be that hard to aquire these things if they really wanted?
It is estimated that between 500,000 and 3 million people died from famine in the 1990s, and a 1998 United Nations (UN) World Food Program report revealed that 60 percent of children suffered from malnutrition, and 16 percent were acutely malnourished.UN statistics for the period 1999–2001 reveal that North Korea’s daily per capita food supply was one of the lowest in Asia, exceeding only that of Cambodia, Laos, and Tajikistan, and one of the lowest worldwide.Because of continuing economic problems, food shortages and chronic malnutrition prevail in the 2000s.
I really think you should read a lot of the article, it might change your opinions. Who's to say what brainwashed happiness really is? Would I be happy if I become wealthy? The reason for happiness is not as important as the state of happiness itself.
Who's to say that they're actually happy. I havent read the entire article, but as far as I know, he's not from north korea, but he's working there. That itself is reason enough to take everything he says with a grain of salt, considering how north koreans have tried to make their country good to the few who's allowed to visit there.
Huge hotels and cities are left empty, only to be filled with north koreans when there's people from outside the country visiting, to make it look like the country isnt as shitty as everyone knows it is.
When they're gone, the north koreans are being moved back into their homes, leaving the newer and better places to live, empty.
North korean has a lot of natural resources they could trade for food and other shit to make the country a better place to live, but they dont, and the end result is suffering for the general population, while the asshats at the top can do whatever the fuck they want.
countries with state sponsored concentration camps need to be invaded and liberated? then you support the invasion of the US since we have government sponsored concentration camps too.
Yeah, thats the only reason I support an invasion of north korea. Due to the concentration camps. Nothing else at all.
Afghanistan was a colonial war which, apart from legal issues arising from international law, is irrelevant to debate, and whose consequences ultimately argue for themselves. The Soviet Union's intervention in Afghanistan had little to do with communism but was a continuation of the foreign policy of Nicholas I.
Vietnam also had little to with communism, and must be examined through the post-colonial prism.
Spain's case is more complicated.It's not true that Spain fell into the Fascist orbit, or even that Franco was a fascist. The Falangist movement was essentially conservative and reactionary. Fascism and National Socialism were essentially not. The political association of Franco with Hitler and Mussolini during the Spanish civil war has no ethical implication beyond what is pushed by leftist smear propaganda. (Hitler would later on more than one occasion remark in private that he regretted not aiding the reds.)
Furthermore, it would be difficult to call the Moscow-orchestrated popular front a democratic force enacted with the purpose of pre-emptive action against "fascism," given the dynamics of the "popular fronts" orchestrated in the political systems of Eastern Europe in the post-war period. The very universalist connotation of fascism is a product of Soviet propaganda during the 1930's. Hitler, Mussolini and Franco were very different men running very different kinds of states.
It's also a danger drawing any kind of universalist implication from Lenin's initially expansionist idealism as a blueprint for later Soviet actions. As the Soviet Union stablized as a political entity, its actions came to increasingly resemble that of a traditional great power- the successor of the Russian Empire, with the paradoxial encumbrance of being both a champion of anti-colonialism and itself a Slavic empire.
On March 13 2009 03:14 MoltkeWarding wrote: Spain's case is more complicated.It's not true that Spain fell into the Fascist orbit, or even that Franco was a fascist. The Falangist movement was essentially conservative and reactionary. Fascism and National Socialism were essentially not. The political association of Franco with Hitler and Mussolini during the Spanish civil war has no ethical implication beyond what is pushed by leftist smear propaganda. (Hitler would later on more than one occasion remark in private that he regretted not aiding the reds.)
Fascism as in a government in which glory is given to the state, enterprises fall under major government regulation (though they would promote such large corporations), militarism is promoted, and political suppression and etc is rampant. Falangism preserves for the large part many of these ideologies, whether or not Franco had anything beyond a short military alliances with the Nazis or Fascists.
Fascism as in a government in which glory is given to the state, enterprises fall under major government regulation (though they would promote such large corporations), militarism is promoted, and political suppression and etc is rampant.
Unfortunately the 1930s was a more politically dynamic time than today, and political activism of that time occupied a broader spectrum of ideas than what your summary reduces them to.
This summary can describe any modern bureaucracy, including certain examples of social democracy, or people's democracies. The Spanish Civil War was not fought over civil liberties. Franco's Spain was agrarian, clerical, and defended certain feudal social relationships. Mussolini's Fascists took a modern attitude toward social relations and technology, and were anti-monarchist and anti-clerical. During the 1920's Mussolini's Italy was the most modern state in Europe. (Consider the espousal of neo-classical symbolism and autostada in his Italy)This cannot be mentioned of Franco's Spain.
In this, Franco's Falange is more comparable to the nationalist conservatives of the Third Republic, the anti-Dreyfusards, and the Action Francaise.
Moltke made a really good and valid point. There were a lot of differences between facists, and the more "traditional" conservatism in Spain and France. However i would like to say ( because Moltke talked about the Action Française and Mussolini's anti-clerical opinions ) that many in the Action Française were quite anti-clerical. The pope actually condamned the organization and its members ( interdiction of sacraments ) because they considered the religion as a tool for nationalism. Some of the books of Maurras ( one of its most influential member ) were at the Index. So there were many subtilities and "courants" even among those organisations.
Also there were connections between the Action Française, la Cagoule ( an ultra-right terrorist group ) and Italian facist foreigners ( German were considered to be the bad guys even among ultra-right so no love for them lol ). Some of the Cagoule's members killed Mussolini political opponents, on his orders ( for example Nello Rosselli ).