WTF?
That is all.
The recent news that North Korea had been caught red-handed indulging in some not-so-light hovercraft cloning, led our beloved Reg commenters to ponder just what software Pyongyang uses to big up its military capabilities. One initial suggestion was that the communist state's Illustrious Father and Leader, Kim Jong-Un, had …
We of the No Badge club laugh as you all try to outdo yourselves ingratiating yourselves with the Imperialist Running Dogs. We True Followers care not for such shiny trappings. We are content to remain silent, safe in the knowledge that our strength encourages Mother Vulture.
Chairo,
No he's got his lovely bronze badge already, for posting over 100 times in a year. As you say, he's got just shy of 1,000 posts.
The 2k refers to combined upvotes. Which you can tell from looking, but only if you're sad enough to read through all 998 posts and count the upvotes... That's what gets you your silver badge. I saw a comment from someone else who should have a bronze by now but hasn't, so it looks like El Reg's badgey-script ain't up to muster.
All Hail Me! I posted links to this in the bug thread, and El Reg beat their badge-script lackeys a bit harder, and now there are badgers for all! I shall award myself a virtuous halo of smugness.
Of course someone in a basement in Register Towers did all the actual work, but like pointy haloed bosses everywhere, I'm going to claim the credit anyway... Nice quick work for El Reg to fix something minor like this.
If we're going to have badges though, we ought to have one that celebrates how many downvotes you've achieved. Perhaps a poo-brown one, or something. 'I may comment lots, with my shiny badge, but actually everyone hates what I say.'
so you keep lapping up the koolaid your overlords have been spilling. just pathetic how people gang up on whatever target their overlords point them to for the blame or as a scapegoat, be it former eastern block countries, cuba, vietnam, iraq, iran, north korea and so on.
propaganda at its worst. you will have no one else to blame but yourself when the crap hits your own fan. you know, "what goes around comes around", or less poetic "karma is a bitch"
I don't know if you've been to North Korea or not, Grave, but if you have any shred of human decency about you I'd say you most likely haven't, because if you have and can still post that with a clean conscience, I'd sincerely hope you aren't going to get anywhere near any political power any time soon.
I haven't visited North Korea myself; but one of our clients had, some years back, and over a nice half-day business lunch she told us all about her 3-week stay there. Like you, she had cause to doubt "Western propaganda", and decided to go see for herself what life in North Korea was like.
During that time she was micromanaged beyond belief; she could not go anywhere without her "guide", who carefully ensured any photos she took reflected well upon North Korea, she could only go to designated areas obviously designed to dupe tourists into thinking everything was absolutely wonderful there, and the guide even dictated to which of the carefully selected locals she was allowed to speak to - and even what she was and was not allowed to say to them.
This, all the while constantly insisting that the freedoms, luxuries and privileges enjoyed by the people of North Korea under the benevolent, prosperous and enlightened Kim rule far surpassed anything granted to us poor victims of greedy capitalism here in the West. And the guide gave every indication of absolutely believing everything she said.
One thing our client made very clear was that the rule of the Kim dictators goes way beyond mere totalitarianism and deep into the worst bowels of fundamentalist religion, with a fervour, zealotry and abhorrence of heresy that makes even the Inquisition or Hezbollah look like libertarians in comparison. Children are systematically taught in schools that Kim Il-Sung is to all intents and purposes God, that all good things in the world come from him, and all bad things come from disobeying him. It is dinned into them, every lesson, every day, at school and at home. Even the childrens' games involve adulation of the "Dear Guide."
And it is all done in such a convincing and manipulative manner - and my client described this as the worst horror she experienced - that she even started believing it herself within a week or so of staying there, so insidious was the constant propaganda bombardment. That was the real eye-opener. If they could come that close to convincing a skeptical western tourist in the time of a 3 week stay, of Kim's "kindness and love for his people", imagine what a lifetime of it must do to the poor sods who live there.
Now this hyper-religious despotism ruled by insanely egotistical nutjobs is threatening to murder millions of innocent people with nuclear weapons and fanatical warfare. It is not the USA, or Europe, or South Korea making these threats. It is North Korea's rulers themselves making these threats. And you have the gall to have a go at the Reg for taking the piss out of these bastards, simply to show us all how edgy and anti-establishment you are. Hooray. What a marvellous freedom-fighting hero. Clap, clap.
Yes, in your case, I really do hope "what goes around comes around", and "karma is a bitch". Hopefully you get to live in North Korea since you love it so much, if you think they're just a scapegoat for Western propaganda. You'd most likely really enjoy life there after a while.
Remember one thing posted re NK which I read some months ago. The bloke writing it had been on some mission to NK during one of the periods of thaw and had been in contact with a group of (I think) engineers or some such. They did have minders, but the atmosphere was genuinely friendly and they swapped stories.
The man said they seemed to take most things in their stride and he'd become very sceptical about the standard accounts of the NK mentality. Then he mentioned the US moon landings and the was total incredulity - everyone simply refused to believe it. If such a thing had happened (a) they would have been told about it and (b) it would have been done by NK. He was sure that these folks genuinely believed that NK was the most technologically advanced country in the world.
There was, from a similar period, a documentary made about a presumably fairly ordinary family living in the suburbs of Peonyang and certainly the children seemed to believe the entire package - including the bit about the American practice of kidnapping and killing innocent South Korean children. I can't remember if they also believed that the people of South Korea were starving under the American yoke.
And the stories about Kim Il Sung (these were in Kim Jong-Il days) made it clear that he was a God Emperor.
What did the man say, if you want to make a lie believable make it a Big Lie.
"Our minders were young men, mostly educated in China, Russia, even Malta, and we never knew exactly which institutions commanded their loyalty.
Over evening drinks they would crack hilarious jokes.
One night, the conversation turned to America and the 1969 moon landing. Despite their differences, our highly intelligent guides became deadly serious, insisting that this historic event had never happened because North Korea would be the first country to send a man to the moon. "
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16252540
i was going to skip any replies, but you've taken the time to post a lengthy one so i'm adding a bit
i've grown up in a former eastern bloc country so you don't have tell me what to like or dislike (without any political affiliation). i most certainly am and always was against any establishments and authority, be it obvious totalitarian regimes, or well obscured western plutarchic capitalist regimes. you're not without guilt when it comes to critical situations in number of former/current totalitarian regimes, allowing psychopaths to raise in power just because the regime they leech off of is different from the one of your overlords, or because they can make a profit from or sabotage competing regimes.
i just have a distaste for subliminal persuasion and propaganda which has been going on for centuries, perpetrated by parasites in power. always finding, or making external scapegoats and enemies, to divert public attention from their pitiful little power games.
"i just have a distaste for subliminal persuasion and propaganda which has been going on for centuries, perpetrated by parasites in power..."
As do I, mate, very definitely. You only need to read my many rants on this forum to see that I also am very against the kind of mass social engineering, "political correctness" and abuses of psychological science used to manipulate and control the public.
Yes, many things about the USA and its allies get my stink on too, so I certainly don't follow them blindly either. And not for nothing do I refer to my own country as "the Nanny State Republic of Ausfailia" when the prissy government of this benighted shithole pisses me off.
Your original post, however, unfortunately came across as sounding very like a typical angsty post-adolescent trying to seem edgy by railing against the West in favour of any regime that is their enemy, no matter how despotic. To me such people lack perspective; the Western regime is corrupt and greedy and seriously needs a big kick up the bum, certainly, but it's nowhere near as evil as the regimes in North Korea or Syria or Congo or the like. Those regimes are far more deadly and oppressive than what we live under. So if that was not your intention, then I apologise for the snarkiness of my response.
At the same time, I agree that what we have to put up with is still completely unacceptable. People who dismiss our political issues as "first world problems" annoy me just as much as those who make overblown comparisons between Western governments and barbaric regimes like those third-world dictatorships referred to. Supporting the likes of North Korea because we're pissed off with greedy bankers and corrupt politicians is not the way to go; there's a saying relating to that mentality that goes, "out of the frying pan into the fire." That's why I jump on those angsty supporters of NK and Iran and so forth, because they're so blinded by their anger at the injustices of the West that they don't see the even greater injustices of the third world - which they would see replace our own!
It comes down to "better the devil you know", I suppose. But it's still a devil.
sorry for not being able to explain it my initial post more clearly.
i'm not sure how to better explain what i meant, by saying "propaganda" i did not mean "what they say about nk" is not true or that i support nk, but about how its repeated over and over to point out the negatives about a preselected group of targets to divert public attention from domestic problems.
karma bit was meant for those in power. they will eventually get whats coming to them. sadly as history goes it ends up with millions of innocent suffering or worse.
>El Reg has nukes?!
Yeah they do, but for peaceful purposes. The SPB has yet to finish proof-reading their report on their efforts, though:
Having sourced material from smoke alarms processed on a conventional gas hob, they intend to put a plymobilenaut into orbit by launching a succession of bombs behind the launch vehicle.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) for more details of this principle.
They have nuclear devices capable of creating a detonation. That's not the same as a nuclear weapon. They could still be the size of a truck and not in any way weaponised.
Possibly plural ones. Maybe not.
The worrying thing is that they WILL have if left to their own devices, which is precisely the problem.
>They have nuclear devices capable of creating a detonation. That's not the same as a nuclear weapon. They could still be the size of a truck and not in any way weaponised.
An ICBM, it is true, does allow you to place the 'kaboom!' on your enemies and not on yourself (a rough and ready definition of weapon), but a boat would do the trick as well- albeit slower and open to interception.
If a bloody large wooden horse is off-loaded in a US port with a tag reading "To honour our victorious enemies, love and kisses, Kim Jong Un"....
There's more to it than even just putting it on a boat, though. It would need to be ruggedised enough to be slopped up and down on the water, and still potentially miniaturised.
And you've still got to sail it into harbour. Which would have to be done by deceit and is which is against a whole slew of rules of warfare. There's no way that during a real shooting match the South would let a North Korean ship blithly sail up to anything important.
Here's an early US nuke (the first fusion device). Note mention of cryogenics and the sheer scale of it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Mike
Most of the size there is in the monitoring equipment for which there is no need. These days the Norks or anyone else could easily enough get something down to the size of a standard shipping container. Assuming they had no need of additional shielding to prevent it being found i.e was going to be lit off before the container was processed in US dockyards
The hammer and sickle in the screenshots show that this software may not be legit. Any Kim (Il-Sung|Jong-(Il|Un)) fan will know that North Korea's communist symbol is the Hammer, Sickle and the Brush. The former two represent the worker and peasant, while the latter celebrates the intellectual.
Rumour has it the Norks are in negotiation with the Tory party's "Land of Hope & Glory" wing to provide a suitably modified version for use in the press office. The obvious and necessary changes to the "Glorious Leader" plugin have caused some hilarious mix ups as the Norks reported problems properly integrating the Blue Rinse + handbag filters. There were also a few misunderstandings about the role of the proletariat, with the first Nork beta having check boxes only for "Heroic" and "Stoicly heroic in the line of duty under fire" (complete with Bearskins and bagpipes, which Kim Jr rather admires, apparently), but which omitted the "cloven hooves", "scales", "pointy tail", "European" and "16 benefit scrounging dependants" options chosen by a committee of Tory backbenchers. The "unacceptable taxpayer supported lifestyle" texture fill plugin will however be available with the first update, as requested by the Treasury.
There's also reported to be a "Churchillian" auto optimiser which rather cleverly applies an "roseate" airbrushing effect to recent rather than distant history, with development sponsored by the banking industry. A reverse effect was also included at the request of No 10, codename "Boris". The idea for this originated from a failed plugin project intended to make George Osbourne and Michael Gove visually palatable, but which was eventually abandoned as the Cray Titan became unstable after only 45 minutes of of the 12 hours estimated rendering.
Rumour has the Norks are inundated with similar requests from other dictatorships in need of a makeover and view this as potentially more profitable than nuclear blackmail.
You have totally mixed up your "left" and "right" senses. But don't worry, I am sure that if you apply for a political asylum, the Norks will be happy to oblige. They will also cure your left-right confusion PDQ. Oh, and don't wait too long - the fewer raving pseudo-socialist morons this country has at any particular time, the better...
"You have totally mixed up your "left" and "right" senses. But don't worry, I am sure that if you apply for a political asylum, the Norks will be happy to oblige. They will also cure your left-right confusion PDQ. Oh, and don't wait too long - the fewer raving pseudo-socialist morons this country has at any particular time, the better."
The point being made, Shirley, is that governmental idiocy respects no political boundaries. Or are we no longer allowed to criticise our own Glorious Leaders?
Is anyone sure that Lester's Special Projects Bureau isn't actually a front for the North Koreans? We've been worried about ICBMs, but perhaps the Register's very own Werhner von Braun has been working on a burro-bomb that can be sneaked into a perfectly innocent donkey sanctuary on the south coast of England.