242 on 25/11/2010 at 16:00
Quote Posted by Kolya
So where you from, comrade?
From the stinky cesspool which is all post USSR countries except Baltic ones and perhaps Georgia now, in my case Ukraine.
Xenith on 25/11/2010 at 16:19
Been looking at some documentaries about NK and I can't help but think how my country as well as neighboring ones had the chance of ending pretty much the same way, assimilated by an other bigger country or erased completely in a short war sparked at some point. I guess I was lucky the uprising took place when it did (year of my birth) and I didn't really catch any of the old regime days.
I keep wondering how NK will end up though. How much will it be able to go on like this? Will it collapse on it's own? Or broken in a high victim number war? With whom will the war be?
@ 242
Hi neighbor.
:p
SubJeff on 25/11/2010 at 16:32
Let's just say that NK collapses next year and comes under SK rule forming a United Korea. Who will be the world nutjob nation then? And whoever that is imagine they stop being nutjobs and so on for the top 5 nutjob nations.
Would we still find number 6 nutty? Is there a point when it all seems normal or will the goalposts then change and differences always be considered enough that someone, somewhere is the nutjob?
You nutjobs.
demagogue on 25/11/2010 at 17:10
After NK it's Iran. After that, it's pretty much end-game I think because the other arguable rogue regimes and dictatorships (black countries on (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Democracy_Index_2008.png) this map) largely don't have aggression ambitions against other countries ... Syria, Libya, Myanmar, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, Central Africa & the ivory coast region (though Africa still has regional stability issues; since their conflicts are usually connected). And the game plan is what it's been since the Cold War ended; ignore them. Nobody cares about winning hearts and minds anymore and for these countries it doesn't matter. (Then there's the delicate issue of China, but that's always going to be in its own category, and won't get the rogue treatment for its own reasons.)
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in my case Ukraine.
Speaking of N Korean famine, Ukraine is one of the textbook examples of a dick regime pro-actively using famine as a political tool to their advantage.
On that though, what was always interesting to me is that Communism didn't collapse in E. Europe under Stalin but under the reform communists actually trying to give it a human face; like it can really just be all or nothing. Once they give up an inch and ease into a little liberalization they've lost the whole game and are obsolete. I guess it makes sense, but it has an irony to it.
242 on 25/11/2010 at 17:41
Quote Posted by demagogue
Speaking of N Korean famine, Ukraine is one of the textbook examples of a dick regime pro-actively using famine as a political tool to their advantage.
Didn't get it. If you mean the famine in 1932-33 I don't see an advantage one can get from it.
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On that though, what was always interesting to me is that Communism didn't collapse in E. Europe under Stalin but under the reform communists actually trying to give it a human face; like it can really just be all or nothing. Once they give up an inch and ease into a little liberalization they've lost the whole game and are obsolete.
That's true, it shows it was a colossus on straw legs, as NK is now. Powerful nations are those where every citizen is strong, to be strong is to be independent of government (to a degree of course). When it's just a a flock of poor brainwashed sheep it's a fail state even if it gets huge profits of selling natural resources etc.
SubJeff on 25/11/2010 at 18:00
I'm pretty sure Syria has aggressive ambitions against Israel.
Nice map btw.
Swiss Mercenary on 25/11/2010 at 21:04
Quote Posted by demagogue
By the same token, this seems to assume that dropping aid and fucking over the civilian population has any bearing on diplomacy one way or another (experience says it doesn't). The point of being a decent human being to starving people isn't to make "diplomatic headway" to people that don't give a shit; it's because decent humans with an atomic shred of moral scruple give food to starving people. (Anyway it shouldn't be political; but it is in practice. Almost all hum. aid is regularly politicized).
If a hobo on Main Street keeps threatening to shank you, if you don't give him food (A small part of which he will share with his hobo family), the solution to that problem is
not to give him food.
These aren't simply starving people. These are starving people that are cogs in a military machine that has far from the best intentions for the region.
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Why change what isn't broke?
I think that the current system is pretty broke in that we are actively giving in to extortion, and that in the mean-time, the North Koreans are making headway - specifically, headway with their nuclear program.
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I don't like that either (two wrongs don't make a right), and it's punishing the wrong people, but it's a little more understandable on a moral level.
It's not wrong to refuse to help someone who is trying to kill you. Regardless of what he will do to his family if you don't.
Kolya on 25/11/2010 at 23:59
No one's being extorted for humanitarian help and you wouldn't share your own opinion if you had been born in NK and were trying to raise a family there now. No matter what the politics are, there are always normal people just trying to make a living. And these people are not "trying to kill you".
Koki on 27/11/2010 at 08:59
People heard more north korean artillery firing yesterday, but no shells fell on south territory. Wonder what the hell is going on there, seems like the rumors about a leadership struggle are more and more believable.
Another reason for south to attack now.
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In what could be a crucial development, state-owned newspapers in China have blamed North Korea for this week's attack; one even editorialised that North Korea could be a country without a future.
And here's yet another.
Still betting they'll pussy out though.
