'Kim Jong-un executes nork-baring ex and pals for love polygon skin flick' North Korea's tubby tyrant Kim Jong-un reportedly had his ex-lover publicly executed by a machine-gun-toting firing squad after accusing her of making a group sex tape. His former girlfriend Hyon Song-wol - also the hermit state's Unhasu Orchestra lead singer - was arrested along with orchestra boss Mun Kyong-jin and a group …
I'm not saying that at all. I don't think that military intervention will fix a thing. Just because another power won't try stop us from intervening in Syria (which isn't quite true anyway because Russia will do their damnedest) doesn't mean that any intervention will be useful.
I'm struggling to think of one useful intervention in a war since World War 2. Perhaps you can tell me otherwise?
I'm struggling to think of one useful intervention in a war since World War 2. Perhaps you can tell me otherwise?
Dr?,
Well let's see, off the top of my head I can think of:
Korea, for starters. Didn't help the North, and was a bloody war, but the people of the South are probably extremely glad not to be starving at the moment. Given that the North lost an estimated 3-5 million in the 90s famine, that cancels out the war dead. Ignoring the ongoing deaths from famine and gulag.
In Africa recently we have Sierra Leone (started by our general on the ground without Blair's permission). He decided he could win the war on his own with not much more than 2 battalions, when he was only there to evacuate foreigners. And did. Shows how little force you sometimes need. Recently we also have Mali. It may not be all over, but the rebels are in disarray and no longer threatening to take over the country. Libya is a bit more contentious I know, but if Ghadaffi had stormed Bengazi it would have been a bloodbath. To be honest, I'm not sure if his army was up to it, as it was a piss poor show compared with say the Syrians. Egypt had a decently trained army, and they ended up kicking their dictator our and taking over from him, so Ghadaffi wasn't risking that. But Libya had decent equipment, and so probably could have managed it. Libya isn't now perfect, but it was much less perfect before, and was also destabilising the whole region.
On to the British empire. We have the Falklands. Killed just over 1,000 troops on both sides, from memory, about half the number of the population at the time. However it was undoubtedly moral to defend their freedom. And Argentina also benefited in the long run, in that the Junta collapsed. The Malaya emergency was a relatively low casualty campaign - although you might call it a colonial war rather than an intervention.
The military intervention in Yugoslavia worked pretty well. And would have saved more lives if done earlier. Serbia were acting relatively rationally, so force, or a convincing threat of it, got them to negotiate. While the peace is by no means perfect, it's far better than the alternative.
The no-fly zones in Iraq in the 90s saved (tens of?) thousands of lives, Kurds and Marsh Arabs. There's even a pretty good argument that the Iraq war cost fewer lives than Saddam would have if he was ruling. And when he died, or his sons took power and fucked everything up, there was going to be some kind of civil war anyway. Something that no Western intervention could stop. Rather like Syria. People talk about maintaining stability, as if these dictatorships are stable. Well in the short to medium term yes, but they do tend to build up massive tension in the system, which often leads to orgies of violence when the regimes inevitably collapse.
Is that enough of a list for you? Obviously we have many unsuccessful examples too. But then there are also many appalling examples of what doing nothing can result in. See Rwanda, maybe Syria, Yugoslavia, Congo. There's a good argument that the Rwanda situation started the Congolese civil war too, so that's nearly a million dead in Rwanda, plus 5 or 6 in Congo - and counting.
Israel has no particular issue with North Korea.
On the flip-side, the Israel Lobby in the U.S do have issue with Syria, Iran & Palestine (and in the past Iraq) to name but a few. And the Israel Lobby controls the hearts & minds of millions of voting Jews in the U.S.
A long but interesting read. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Israel-Lobby-US-Foreign-Policy/dp/0141031239/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377862526&sr=1-2
Sorry, but a "public" execution that we only know about because a dissident flees to another country to tell the tale isn't public. It might not be shown on TV but it would be announced. So it wasn't a public execution.
You -can- make this stuff up, and it's safer and smarter than being there to see it happen.
"Lets be honest about this, an escapee tells all playing right into the hands of those that want to discredit a nutty regime, it's exactly what they want to hear..." Lars, you sound exactly like the kinds of blinkered socialists that refused to believe the Soviet Union was anything but a workers' paradise between the World Wars. Don't worry, far cleverer people than you convinced themselves that they were right and it was all "exaggerated capitalist propaganda". George Bernard Shaw was one who fell for a carefully staged trip to Russia in 1931, writing to then Manchester Guardian to proclaim that Soviet Russia was replete with joy (http://colley.co.uk/garethjones/soviet_articles/bernard_shaw.htm) at exactly the same time as the Soviets were using starvation as a weapon to subjugate the Ukraine, killing over a million unarmed civilians. He carried on insisting it was all lies (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1433323/How-Shaw-defended-Stalins-mass-killings.html) long after other socilaists like Malcolm Muggeridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Muggeridge) had actually exposed the horrors Stalin was ordering. Stalin sent an untold number of people to the Gulags which the Nork camps are closely modeled on, and forcing one prisoner to kill or maim another was a common occurrence in the Gulags, so I do not find it a stretch that they would resort to such an act.
Minor correction.
While other communist theocracies were at least trying to pretend that they are not theocracies, Nork does not even do that. One Kim reincarnating as another Kim to lead the nation to the glory of communism. Atheism my a***... This is something from the days of the pharaons waving the atheist banner.
As far as Bible being a heinous crime... Well, what do you expect. "Other" religions are always a heinous crime in a theocracy.
Quote - "ALL communist regimes have been aggressively anti-religion."
Almost correct. That is because they had an existing religion integrated into the state already so they were aggressively anti-other-religions.
A lot of people in this thread quote the cult of personality as an example of the religion. It is not quite correct - it is the theocratic artefact of religion in the ex-Soviet States. The religion itself was what the Soviet States referred to as "communism". It was a state religion same as in ancient Egypt and other theocracies. Anyone questioning it and not believing it was dealt with swiftly once and for all.
The Manifest is a wonderful piece of Utopia, but fundamentally there is nothing wrong with it. Das Kapital builds on it and while its first part makes sense, towards the 3rd it its total drivel, bollocks and unjustified conjectures. Lenin's scribblings on top of that are complete and utter bollocks (and uncomprehensible towards the end which is normal for someone with 3rd stage syphilis). I am not going to even characterise the "development" of these during the 70 years of soviet rules by paid philosophers. The only way to accept all of these as a fundament to society was to believe (usually in a very simplified "layman" form). Nobody in his sane mind would have accepted these rationally and logically.
So rather unsurprisingly, 90%+ of signage, posters, slogans, etc in the ex-Soviet block were about belief or belief based. We believe in the Bright Future under Communism. We believe in the victory of the people. We believe... believe... believe... period. Whoever does not believe, the holy inquisition will deal with him (insert appropriate local name for it here).
The personality cult was just a topup on that - the pharaon as a manifestation of the single state religion merged into the state in a theocracy. They were not the religion per se. The religion was "communism" (quotes intended as it has nothing to do with what Marx and Engels wrote in the Manifest). This religion treated all other religions the way all state religions usually do.
"Ah yes, the ongoing militant atheist propaganda that only the religious are capable of genocide
ALL communist regimes have been aggressively anti-religion"
Hmm. Not quite. Those are usually called "political religions". Wiki has an article about it.
In essence, they are pseudoreligions - actively exploiting religious feelings, using rituals and symbols, but lacking a supernatural deity. Agression against other religions, pseudo or not, is a natural part of it.
it’s a wikipedia article and a disputed wikipedia article at that!
What you have described there are the tricks that religions use but they are the tricks and propaganda that are used by many ideologies, marketing departments and oppressive regimes. To then call them a pseudoreligion is to twist the language to suit your purposes.
Have a look at some of the “atheist” pages on facebook. The propogation of meme’s, the use of language (sky fairies, imaginary friends etc…), the ridiculing of anyone of faith or not in “the atheist gang” and spreading of lies and half-truths are all signs of religion.
Atheism is simply the lack of belief in a God. Just because you don’t happen to like a certain atheist political system does not mean it’s not atheist.
That's how they refer to Stalin's religion. Odd coincidence of the day: I'm in the middle of Gorky Park, which heavily features the peculiarities of the Soviet Union, though some years after Stalin. In the recovery phase? However, I have some reservations since it seems the author (Martin Cruz Smith) doesn't actually speak any Russian. Notwithstanding questions about its historical or sociological accuracy, he does write well, and it's certainly been quite entertaining so far.
"That's how they refer to Stalin's religion. "
Well not really. Stalin did not maintain his power via force of personality and charisma. He did it by controlling the bureaucracies - especially the ones that disposed of armed force (secret police, military, etc).
It was called a "cult of personality" as an attempt to divert attention from the fact that Stalin was able to accumulate and unrestrainedly exercise virtually unlimited power because of the essentially totalitarian political structure of Soviet Union. Stalin's successors wanted to condemn Stalin's "errors" while changing the system as little as possible, the underlying idea being that the Party needed (or rather, wanted and intended to continue to have) such power, but could henceforth be trusted not to abuse it.
@ Turtle
Agree. And the spell was only broken by the limited freedom of the press at the beginning of perestrojka. Suddenly the mirror the party had used for decades to confirm their beliefs and actions was showing something completely different. And the system imploded from within.
Foreign media is a bitch, eh Kim?
Gorky Park was a gripping and exciting read so I bought all his other books. Don't make the same mistake, they are no good.
I thought "Wolves Eat Dogs" was good, and I quite enjoyed the second novel set on a factory ship, "Polar Star". The rest are cobblers though, particularly the most recent one that was more of a plotless novella than a proper novel.
When I first read that I thought you were actually posting from Gorky Park; they do have free public Wi-Fi in the park. Just on the other side of the main road from the park is the Fallen Monument sculpture parke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_Monument_Park
That contains a lot of the old Soviet era statutes, Stalin with his nose broken off for example, very very interesting place.
Stalin seems to have been removed from public places but Lenin is still pretty popular.
(Yes I know this is getting well off the original topic)
It just might be true and people may have died
People die all the time in horrible ways (quite often due to people trying to save them from dying in horrible ways through the expedient and narcissistic way of pushing buttons)
So who you gonna sue? Better make a Monty Python sketch about this.
Could have been worse:
Portly Nork dork's Ex corked after being properly porked.
It's a tragedy, ok, so what do you want to do about it? Invade? Nope, then who really cares. Who there can read this message board? Who is the victim? It's called "Dark Humor", and some of us enjoy dark humor, even if we know that we shouldn't.
NK concentration camps are similar to Dachau or Buchenwald, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_North_Korea
It lasts for 60 years, the World knows but doesn't care.
Around two hundreds of thousands of people are locked in, enduring sufferings beyond imagination, and everyone looks away. Even nuking the entire country would be a blessing, a mercy killing, offering them a final end to the tortures they endure.
I believe cheap DVD players make their way across the border from China. Having something like an unauthorised satellite receiver is liable to get you dead - or shipped off with your family to the gulags - which amounts to pretty much the same thing. But a DVD player can be used to watch imported Chinese films. Which is probably acceptable. I doubt anyone cares about porn, unless they're already after you for something.
However there are also supposed to be news DVDs doing the rounds. It's obviously going to be a bit on the slow side, and I'd imagine more likely to be Chinese news than BBC (though who knows?). Which are very illegal, and again likely to get you shot or sent for re-education. I read a story a while back about the police turning off the power to areas, then searching house to house - and checking what DVDs had got stuck in peoples' players that they now couldn't remove. Don't know if that's true or not, and surely a bent bit of wire will get your DVD out if the power goes anyway.
As Don Jefe says though, some people will get access to porn whatever the circumstances.
Do they really have cameras in their personal possessions ? And tape duplicators ?
And are there enough people over there with VCRs and TVs that can actually view said tapes ?
In other news, one must remember that rulers since the beginning of time have been ordering the deaths of people who crossed them in ways that today would be considered perfectly barbaric next to an execution by firing squad.
I'm reminded of the French Revolution, where some unlucky people were "interrogated" by forcing them to swallow a gallon of cow urine, then beating them on the stomach until it burst.
I'd prefer a bullet or twenty any day.
I love how you got downvoted for your comment. It just illuminates how bad people are at recognizing their own cultures failures. People like to think their society is great and good, but it rarely is.
It's all the same old shit, cultures just use a new vocabulary to describe what they are doing and that makes it better ( or at least makes them feel better about themselves).
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The DPRK has a stunning weapons aimed at Seoul that they could cause far more damage with them, faster, than they can with any nuclear weapon they manage to cobble together. Even low yield 40's era weapons are really, really, really hard to make work.
Artillery pieces though, they pretty much just work and DPRK has a whole lot of them and ammunition always about a 1/2 notch below assault level and they haven't used those. A nuclear attack by the DPRK would instantly involve every major power on Earth whereas a conventional attack would be unfortunate it probably wouldn't have China, Russia or Venezula involved. The DPRK leadership is nuts but not so nuts they want to lose the power and lifestyle they have by being divine beings.
While I understand guns weren't about in the dark ages, this reminds me of something I read about the dark ages.
The only thing that makes sense, is that the ruling family have been inbreeding amongst themselves for so long that they've totally lost the plot. (Hence the comment title)
I bet it was Kim himself that recorded them having sex, and has become jealous or something silly and decided he'd just have them killed.
With the way the news feeds about this fellow are focused I wouldn't be surprised if his dead before long.
Burning at the stake is worse.
As far as barbaric punishments go, the worst I've heard of is the Brazen Bull.
If you ask me, Kim Jong-un should be placed in one of his own missile casings, welded in and the container left out on a hot summer's day until he fries.
Making sure to leave him a few water containers filled with light machine oil.
AC/DC
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