I think that as it was with the vicious trade and other sanctions waged against VietNam after that war, North Korea, too, will be forced to take the capital road. What we're supposed to conclude at this point is that North Korean socialism is collapsing all by itself without any outside influence as if a closed experiment gone awry. That country which preaches free markets and free trade actually uses trade and finance as weapons of mass destruction for purposes of poltical interference in countries refusing to accept foreign dominance in their economies and governance.
North Korea
Wed, 2010-03-31 00:21
#52
Wed, 2010-03-31 00:58
#53
I worked for three years with a husband and wife from China. And they don't blame Maoists for kicking the US and British-backed nationalists out of the country in 1949 after Chiang Kai-shek and his gangsters murdered ten million Chinese. And Mao offered to step down from power. The people refused his resignation. If you want to see a democratic capitalist hellhole, try India. I've met people from India who've told me that people spend their whole lives in search of justice of any kind in democratic capitalist India. And they never find it. According to economist Amartya Sen's figures, democratic capitalist India continues to produce as many skeletons every eight years as what communist China did in all its years of shame, from 1958-61. China was behind India in 1949 wrt every kind of social statistic. And by 1976, the year of Mao's death, China's infant mortality rate was better than the same rate in India today. Chinese life expectancy was doubled in Mao's time. Yes you can learn a lot from Asian friends for sure.
I've heard nasty stories from a lot of people. But since they don't conform to my exact world view I decided not to listen to experiences and write them off as capitalist wreckers.
How about Pol Pot, Fidel? Or was that just a bit of propoganda by the French imperialist-marketers?
Wed, 2010-03-31 01:04
#54
RevolutionPlease
FFS, did everyone miss reminds post about maysies reminder. whatever.
Wed, 2010-03-31 01:11
#55
How about Pol Pot, Fidel? Or was that just a bit of propoganda by the French imperialist-marketers?
[url=http://www.antiwar.com/orig/pilger.php?articleid=1807]Recalling Pol Pot's Terror, but Forgetting His Backers[/url]
[url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6886726/]"We delivered weapons to the Khmer Rouge on the coastline of Cambodia."[/url] - Sen. John Kerry, Meet the Press
lol
Wed, 2010-03-31 02:03
#56
Maysie
Is this thread over yet?
Wed, 2010-03-31 09:40
#57
Interesting that Fidel is permitted, even encouraged, to derail any discussion of the crimes and victims of brutal, corrupt authoritarian regimes which hypocritically label themselves "socialist", yet anyone attempting the same tactic in a thread about Isreali apartheid, for example, would be immediately and firmly denounced and/or banned. Apparently it's because the plight of "the other" (whatever that means) is best ignored by the Canadian left.
Wed, 2010-03-31 10:46
#58
Snert
I move we get rid of the International News and Politics forum altogether. It's nothing but a tacit invitation for busybodies and Nosey Parkers to pontificate on what other countries ought to do or not do. Israel this and North Korea that! Let's stick to our knitting.
Wed, 2010-03-31 16:25
#59
[url=http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2918020]North Korean port is slipping away[/url]
Another reason why NK is in the crosshairs of our US-friendly newz rags lately. The barbarians are supposed to remain divided and conquered not cooperating economically, and strategically. How can our imperial masters maintain effective medieval siege of NK when they go and do things like this?
Wed, 2010-03-31 16:50
#60
broken record - I mean Fidel
I'm beginning to understand yr defence of the catholic church
You see the world as a former paradise full of nothing but innocent, helpless, historyless, powerless nobodies and the demon is the USA who controls everything - even the bad stuff other people do isn't there fault because the evil USA has corrupted them.
Wed, 2010-03-31 16:58
#61
I think you're a broken record who should try harder to focus on your own topic of discussion instead of posting personal attacks against me. That's what I think.
Wed, 2010-03-31 21:24
#62
I guess yr right
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/31/north-korea-china-paranoid-state
There is no magic bullet to resolve this crisis. But waiting for North Korea to collapse - which seems still to be at the heart of US policy - has little to recommend it. Paranoid garrison states do not collapse easily; nor can dictatorships be relied on to go down without a heavy price in human suffering. We might wish the regime away, but should be careful about how we seek to make it happen
....
There are many examples of authoritarian dictatorships that evolved into more humane systems through contact, trade, cultural exchange and normalisation: South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam all had decades of authoritarianism. China, the biggest of all, was at its most paranoid and repressive from the late 50s to the mid-70s. They changed through growth, development, and domestic - not external - pressure.
These seem like contradictary ideas from the same article but they do seem like esential questions. I don't think a military option is needed and the NKDR doesn't pose any danger to me unless Kim Jung Il wanted to sell nukes to someone or some group - who would and could use them - who is that? I don't know. So the very dea is hazy but the reason I mention it is because since don't want to see any humans killed by a nuke, I especially don't want myself killed.
So much talk about nukes but unless you're already in an all out, all or nothing war and even then, it only works when only one side has them. That only worked once. A nuclear war is a lose/lose situation as brilliantly illustrated in Dr Strangelove.
Wed, 2010-03-31 22:04
#63
Yes, they have been paranoid for good reasons. Nuclear weapons can have no legitimate purpose. I'm equally and probably more afraid of rogue elements in US government selling nuclear weapons tech to the highest bidders. There were several countries friendly to the west that obtained nuclear weapons capabilities at the close of the cold war era. I'm afraid the nuclear genie has been let out of the bottle, and it seems that the lesson for resource-rich countries now seems to be that they are vulnerable to unprovoked attacks and especially if they are not armed with nuclear weapons.
Thu, 2010-04-01 11:01
#64
I hear that the North demanded that the South stop tours of the DMZ. Really too bad.
Thu, 2010-04-01 12:57
#65
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2010/feb/14/northkorea
type "North Korea" and "tourism" into Google, and you'll find Koryo Tours, a British-run, Beijing-based travel firm. A couple of clicks and a certain amount of cash later, and you, too, could find yourself on a vintage Russian jetliner heading towards the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
...
barely 1,500 people a year visit North Korea. Or, to put this in context, several thousand fewer than make it to the British Lawnmower Museum.
Thu, 2010-04-01 14:11
#66
North Korea is roughly the size of [url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56070-2004Jul16.html]the state of Mississippi[/url] and with eight times the population. The North is a mainly mountainous part of the peninsula with the most arable farmlands in low lying areas by the sea, which makes croplands vulnerable to flooding during typhoon seasons.
Thu, 2010-04-01 14:52
#67
Snert
That's enough to make any dictator go a little kookoo in the coconut.
Thu, 2010-04-01 15:02
#68
And our corrupt stooges in Ottawa and Oilberta were loco crazy decades ago.
Thu, 2010-04-01 15:06
#69
in loco parentis
Thu, 2010-04-01 15:29
#70
It never ceases to amaze me as to how many pro-USSA whackos there are in the Northern Puerto Rico. Our newzies are never embarrassed about smearing Hershey's chocolate all over their little square black moustaches. It's a wonder they can breathe half the time. Yes Uncle Sam, we trust and obey your every word. Of course, it doesn't help things when we have such corrupt colonial administrators paying Yanqui corporations to take valuable resources off our hands, the sniveling and groveling marionettes that they are. It's sickening.
Thu, 2010-04-01 20:00
#71
Yr calling other people whackos?
Cons against the USA
they had slavery and then segregation, fought some agressive wars, have overly harsh drugs laws
Pros for the USA
Jazz, the Blues, Jack Kerouak, the thousands who died fighting the Nazis, New York City - the greatest most multi-cultural city in the world and more.
North Korea
Cons - They'll put someone and their entire extended family in a hard labour camp for life for making a comment critical of the government. Not even anything harsh like what is said on here about Harper or Bush or Obama but even slightly critical.
Thu, 2010-04-01 20:32
#72
The US is bankrupt. It was once a great country with lots of promise, and especially after bringing many brilliant European scientists to the states before, during and after the war. I think that the one good thing Ronald Reagan did was to commit a billion dollars to high energy physics in the US. They dug a big hole in the ground in Texas, and then spent another billion dollars backfilling it. The Europeans have been busy with large hadron collider while the Yanks were busy spending billions of dollars on waging phony wars.
With every great scientific discovery has come significant change for humanity. Newton discovered gravity and paved the way for an industrial revolution. Edison, Faraday and Maxwell harnessed electromagnetism giving us radio, radar, TV, microwaves, internet etc. Einstein allowed us to harness two more forces of nature. And Europeans scientists will probably discover new forces of nature in this decade that will launch another age of modernization. Those countries will likely become generators of great wealth and catapulting ahead of the west by a generation or so in technological advancement. The Koreas will unite some day and become another Asian tiger economy, or will continue cooperating with China, Russia and even Japan while the far western world continues its downward spiral into economic crises and irrelevance to the rest of the world.
Thu, 2010-04-01 21:29
#73
I hear that the North demanded that the South stop tours of the DMZ. Really too bad.
It doesn't help the propaganda to have the poor oppressed South Koreans wandering around showing they're wealthy.
Thu, 2010-04-01 21:48
#74
Yes, propaganda. The Nazis were masters of propaganda.
[url=http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~caplabtb/dprk/pyr9_4.mht]Tim Beal and Don Borrie[/url] challenged the view that north Korea’s recent economic difficulties are attributable to mismanagement, pointing to new sanctions as the likely cause of economic contraction after seven consecutive years of growth
One of the advantages of sanctions for US foreign policy, they write, is that its effects, “those malnourished babies - can be blamed on the Koreans, which in turn is produced as evidence that the sanctions are desirable and necessary.
Beal and Borrie on the genocidal trade sanctions waged against North Korea in 2007. And there are more examples where the USSA has waged genocidal sanctions against whole nations of human beings. They waged medieval siege against millions of innocent people in the desert nation of Iraq from 1991 to 2003 and all based on terrible lies. Crazy Georges I&II and Clinton should be arraigned on charges of crimes against humanity.
Thu, 2010-04-01 21:59
#75
Korea has a wonderful history as a united country in which many great things happened that I'm ignorant of and if we looked at the past of many great countries like Mongolia, Spain, Portugal, Germany, England, France, Russia, Japan, Holland for example - we would see great crimes as bad as any the USA has committed and worse.
The USA might be in decline and former president George Bush is a war criminal but I'd still rather live in the USA than North Korea and since you seem to think Kim Jung Il bears no responsiblity for the condtion of the country where he makes all the citizens worship him as a god, I have no choice but to take the defense against your argument that all blame falls on the USA for the current state of North Korea.
Thu, 2010-04-01 22:03
#76
[url=http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1084]Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq:[/url] We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it. --60 Minutes (5/12/96)
Where do they find these assholes anyway? Is there some sort of university for asshole-grandes? May Maddy Alblight's blood scream for all eternity, the miserable witch.
Thu, 2010-04-01 22:04
#77
Fidel you often decry the state of the prison system in the United States but say nothing of the hard labour camps in North Korea, why is that?
Thu, 2010-04-01 22:08
#78
You never go off script Eh? Amazing. Long live Fidel!
Thu, 2010-04-01 22:18
#79
Because the USSA is the largest jailer of its own citizens bar none and at the centre of world controversy and chaos in general in this decade? How many times has North Korea marched into another country and using false pretexts for those sovereign countries having "WMD" or harboring Al-CIA'duh terrorists? Hmm? How many million human beings living in other countries has North Korea murdered since 1953?
This thread was all happy and everything until apologists for the USA had to start backpedaling and denying anything and everything concerning vicious trade sanctions waged against more countries than just North Korea. The world is run as if the mafia were running things. Democracy and free trade theories are just that, good ideas that should be practiced not preached by a gang of nuclear-armed thugs.
Tue, 2010-04-06 09:10
#80
Snert
[url=http://technology.canoe.ca/2010/04/06/13480176-reuters.html]North Korea builds own OS[/url]
Sort of an outdated Windows knock off. My favourite part:
Red Star uses the Korean folk song "Arirang", popular on both sides of the peninsula, as its start-up music and numbers years using its its "juche""(self-reliance) calendar, which starts counting from the birth of state founder Kim Il-sung.
That means these computers are currently listing the date as "98". In two years, will it count to "100"? Or will it roll over to "00" with the inevitable subsequent disasters like planes dro... wait a sec, this is North Korea. Nevermind.
Tue, 2010-04-06 10:43
#81
This thread was all happy and everything until apologists for the USA had to start backpedaling and denying anything and everything concerning vicious trade sanctions waged against more countries than just North Korea.
BS Fidel. You use exactly the same schtick (diversion trolling) in any thread about the hyper exploitation of workers in China, which today is carried out jointly by foreign capitalists and the so-called "Communist" Party of China and their cronies.
Ever wonder why no one from China ever posts on this board? I'll give you a clue. My wife is a socialist. She was born and raised in Chinese/Han occupied Mongolia. She and many of our friends lived through the hell of Mao's Cultural Revolution. The entire country was a cult, forced to worship the god Mao while gangs of lawless thugs roamed the country murdering, raping and stealing with his blessing, as long as they did it all in the name of the Great Helmsman. Any real socialist activists (advocating democratic peoples' control of the economy and political institutions) were jailed or murdered. In other words, just like North Korea today. Fidel defends them all in the same manner as long as they call themselves "socialist" or "communist". My wife is literally sickened by the defence of these vicious, corrupt tyrants and refuses to participate in a forum where such morally bankrupt idiocy passes for "progressive". I have a feeling lots of people avoid this place for the same reason.
Tue, 2010-04-06 11:46
#82
Maysie
Thank you Joey.
In post #28 I said:
There's a teensy bit of problematic positioning when people in the West engage in high level abstract intellectual discussions about the plight of "the other". Ya know what I'm sayin'?
We're now at post 81. And, what Joey said.
Knock off the "crazy" jokes, Snert and Caissa.
Must this thread continue?
Tue, 2010-04-06 12:08
#83
Actually, I'm not offended by Snert and Caissa's jokes about the insanity of the North Korean dictatorship. It is bizarre. What is really nauseating is Fidel's suggestion that socialists who condemn these tyrants are "apologists for the USA". That's really twisted, morally bankrupt idiocy.
Tue, 2010-04-06 13:16
#84
Maysie
maybe you could make a list of which people or countries in this world - you classify as "the other" because I've not seen this missive by you in other threads about India, Peru, Mexico, Israel, Uganda - to name a few recent threads
Tue, 2010-04-06 15:10
#85
in loco parentis= means in "place of parents" It wasn't a "crazy" joke.
I was rifting off of Fidel.
Tue, 2010-04-06 15:27
#86
Actually, I'm not offended by Snert and Caissa's jokes about the insanity of the North Korean dictatorship. It is bizarre. What is really nauseating is Fidel's suggestion that socialists who condemn these tyrants are "apologists for the USA". That's really twisted, morally bankrupt idiocy.
Joey, what did you think the US-led medieval siege of Iraq for ten years that led to the deaths of three-quarters of a million children in that desert nation? Oops?
What do you think to the US Military threatening North Koreans with nuclear incineration since the 1950s? Were they idle threats?
Did you realize that blocking humanitarian aid to countries like North Korea, Iraq, Cuba etc is considered illegal by the UN?
Were Chiang Kai-shek and his thugs who murdered 10 million Chinese good guys, too?
Tue, 2010-04-06 15:48
#87
You know Fidel, you really are an asshole. I am a socialist, anti-war activist. I have spent countless hours marching in, and organizing, demonstrations against Canadian complicity in US wars and I have consistently opposed US punitive sanctions against Cuba, Iraq and North Korea. It's beyond me why you think that someone who denounces the corrupt, vicious thugs who rule N. Korea must be a supporter of US imperialism. By the way, wtf have you actually done besides posting your hypocritical drivel on this board?
Tue, 2010-04-06 16:03
#88
Boom Boom
It's beyond me why you think that someone who denounces the corrupt, vicious thugs who rule N. Korea must be a supporter of US imperialism.
I've wondered that, too.
Tue, 2010-04-06 16:13
#89
You know Fidel, you really are an asshole.
Same to you. How many of the exact same countries can you and Uncle Sam possibly be at odds with?
Do you support medieval siege and vicious sanctions in order to interfere in the politics of other countries?
Do you agree that surrounding and threatening other countries with nuclear weapons pointed at them is the way legitimate countries act toward other sovereign countries?
Because if you do, then youre not a socialist and don't really believe in democracy. Not really
Tue, 2010-04-06 16:18
#90
Do you support medieval siege and vicious sanctions in order to interfere in the politics of other countries?
Are you unable to read Fidel? I said above that I OPPOSE those sanctions. In fact I have actively opposed every foreign policy of the US that I can think of. As a rule I thoroughly detest name calling and I have never done so on a Rabble post as far as I can recall, but I repeat, you are an asshole, and a completely unprincipled and dishonest one at that.
Tue, 2010-04-06 16:20
#91
Go to hell, shitforbrains.
Tue, 2010-04-06 16:23
#92
Hilarious idiocy.
Tue, 2010-04-06 16:27
#93
Reading between Fidel's non answer - if you criticize Kim Jung Il you're not a socialist - only criticism of the USA will be tolerated -it doesn't matter Joey if you already are critical of the USA's policies - the dear leader is infallible to Fidel's "real socialists"
Tue, 2010-04-06 16:36
#94
I understand Fidel's position. He defends any corrupt dictatorship which appropriates the label "socialist". Although I find that position really dumb, and in fact anti-socialist, I would engage in respectful debate if he were capable of doing so without deliberate, repeated lies and slander, but he can't, so it ends in childish name calling.
I have never criticized the moderators on this board but I do find it interesting that Fidel's abusive, dishonest trolling in thread after thread never seems to attract any concern. Like I said, it's no mystery why the Canadian left remains largely marginal and inneffectual when reactionary shit like his passes for "progressive" thought.
Tue, 2010-04-06 17:12
#95
Here's an idea. Why not reason things out in your mind before posting your grab bag of serious thought on the situation in North Korea?
Tue, 2010-04-06 17:33
#96
Don't worry about it Joey - Democratic socialists and anarchists like George Orwell and Albert Camus were alienated by some on the left for their critical comments of Soviet Communism. You're in good company - intellectual honesty and integrity are most important.
Tue, 2010-04-06 18:04
#97
I've been an activist for around 30 years, so I've met plenty of Fidels, and I've developed a thick skin. I'm not losing any sleep over these guys.
I'm reminded of something I once read by Chomsky. In essence he said that both the interests of US imperialism and the interests of the corrupt dictatorships which Fidel defends are served by calling the latter "socialist". It is slanderous perversion of everything socialism means, but of course it is in the interests of capitalists to have people believe that socialism means brutal, corrupt dictatorship rather than having a favourable view of socialism as being associated with peace, freedom, deep democracy and equality. In my view Fidel and those like him serve the interests of imperialism and capitalism by perpetuating such a sick, distorted view of what socialism is.
And this post will result in the predictable response.
Tue, 2010-04-06 18:21
#98
I think there are US style Trotskyists who feel that socialism can't possibly survive without first condemning the Soviets, Koreans and Cubans as having been the evil empire. They feel obligated to legitimize themselves in the presence of liberals and conservatives. And I find they tend to sound a lot like American and Canadian conservatives at times when regurgitating the rabid anti-communist cold war era rhetoric.
Tue, 2010-04-06 21:56
#99
What a moron.
Tue, 2010-04-06 22:01
#100
Walk away Joey; you're being deliberately wound up.
Tue, 2010-04-06 22:47
#101
[url=http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking.aspx]Lo', here be North Korea[/url] at the bottom of the list of freedom loving countries according to Freedom House, a rightwing propaganda tool for neoconservative ideologues waging a global war on democracy today, and according to Joey, too.