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Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

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Re: Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

#121

Post by abrown28 »

sedachv wrote: post #81
jhamburger wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which would you rather be? Is it a close decision?

If I was a black male in the United States, I would have a 1 in 10 chance of being in prison at this moment. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta... ) Amnesty International estimates there's around 200,000 "political prisoners" in North Korea, out of a population of 25 million. I think I'd rather be in North Korea.

I will literally buy you a ticket to move there if you really want to. I'm not even joking in the least bit. I do feel a twinge of guilt at the thought of your "reeducation" in NK but I'm still willing to help you find out on your own.

Re: Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

#122

Post by davidw »

elliottcarlson wrote: post #117
tptacek wrote: post #106

157 votes so we can have an amateur North Korea/US comparative studies class. Respite from 3-year-old LKML security flame war, also on the front page? Maybe. Still sad. See you in a week or so. My "minaway" is 10,000 again. Old timer? Have you tried this yet? It's a revelation. You will thank for me this advice. Noprocrast=yes, minaway 10000+. You might code instead, or drink whiskey and read a good book, or find som…

I respect most of what you post on HN - you have great insights and offer a lot of knowledgeable information to most of the threads you participate in - but I can't say this post was one of them. Wouldn't it be far more productive to skip threads that might not interest you? Otherwise you are, IMHO, adding a rant just like everyone you are criticizing.

It's way easier to post stories about current events and politics than it is to find genuine, high quality, on-topic material. The possibilities for rants are endless. They need to be ostracized, lest a trickle develop into a stream, river and then flood.

Re: Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

#123

Post by bluekeybox »

jacoblyles wrote: post #97

It's interesting to see reddit's America-hatred spread here. We can't condemn atrocities anywhere in the world without first holding America up as a paragon of all that is evil. The failure to recognize the good in America, indeed the many ways in which it still leads the world, and see the difference between a free country with perhaps too-strict sentencing guidelines and one which enslaves and kills its people for…

There is a particular sentiment (I call it politics of resentment) that aims to portray anyone who is in power as evil, disregarding the question of whether a power change would really be productive. Those in power (whether good or bad) unavoidably have to play a power game to maintain said power, and the politics of resentment will always try to portray any such game as being played for an evil/unjust/immoral purpose.

Such politics of resentment lead Soviets in the 1910s-20s to hate the upper class and the "imperialist" West, Nazis in the 1930s to hate the British and the Jews, certain Islamist elements from the 1980s and onward to hate the U.S., and so on. I don't mind a sound criticism of power, but I cannot stand resentment. Because those who resent those in power the most are often those who unscrupulously desire said power for themselves the most.

TL;DR: stop resenting and get back to hacking.

Re: Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

#124

Post by mortenjorck »

jacoblyles wrote: post #97

It's interesting to see reddit's America-hatred spread here. We can't condemn atrocities anywhere in the world without first holding America up as a paragon of all that is evil. The failure to recognize the good in America, indeed the many ways in which it still leads the world, and see the difference between a free country with perhaps too-strict sentencing guidelines and one which enslaves and kills its people for…

I don't see anyone in the discussion here "holding America up as a paragon of all that is evil." I do see people holding the US to account for its own practices and patterns of incarceration.

Few would dispute that there are still many ways in which America leads the world, but let's not delude ourselves here: the prison system is not one of them. DPRK is an extreme case compared to the US, but the US is an extreme case compared to much of the industrialized world, and invoking "America-hatred" trivializes an important dialogue.

Re: Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

#125

Post by kwis »

elliottcarlson wrote: post #117
tptacek wrote: post #106

157 votes so we can have an amateur North Korea/US comparative studies class. Respite from 3-year-old LKML security flame war, also on the front page? Maybe. Still sad. See you in a week or so. My "minaway" is 10,000 again. Old timer? Have you tried this yet? It's a revelation. You will thank for me this advice. Noprocrast=yes, minaway 10000+. You might code instead, or drink whiskey and read a good book, or find som…

I respect most of what you post on HN - you have great insights and offer a lot of knowledgeable information to most of the threads you participate in - but I can't say this post was one of them. Wouldn't it be far more productive to skip threads that might not interest you? Otherwise you are, IMHO, adding a rant just like everyone you are criticizing.

HN Guidelines:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

This is off-topic. There is essentially no chance that anything useful will shake out from the ensuing discussion. It's noise, and it crowds out the signal.

I'm glad that tptacek's post is currently the #1 post.

Re: Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

#126

Post by api »

North Korea is effectively an abusive cult in the form of an entire nation.

It's amazing that such a thing can exist, and when I really think about it the existence of something like North Korea raises disturbing questions about the nature of human consciousness.

How can we claim to have free will or to even have consciousness at all if something like North Korea can actually exist?

Re: Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

#127

Post by brandong »

metatronscube wrote: post #102

Well America, are you going to spread "Freedom and Democracy" there? It sure needs it.

Not until there is the political will to accept millions of US losses. Our current engagements are a walk in the park compared to what "bringing regime change" to North Korea entail. I'd wager that there hasn't been another large populace so thoroughly brainwashed in modern history- Nazi Germany isn't even comparable to "the hermit kingdom."

Re: Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

#128

Post by jerfelix »

elliottcarlson wrote: post #18
josefresco wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll answer for him, it's your last suggestion It's hypocritical for someone in the US to criticize other nations about their prison systems when we're leading the world in locking people up for crazy shit. That's not to say we can't have an opinion, just not a holier-than-thou attitude about it.

Not arguing whether people should be locked up or not for certain crimes - there is obviously an issue with that - but when it comes down to numbers - are we really leading the world in that area: North Koran Population: 23,906,070 Estimated "Prisoners": 200,000 Percentage in Custody: 0.83% United States Population: 307,006,550 Estimated Prisoners: 2,292,133 Percentage in Custody: 0.74% (Both numbers for US populatio…

The percent of North Korean prisoners may be much higher, if you include those imprisoned that are not in concentration camps.

Re: Satellite Images of North Korea Prison Camps Find 200,000 Living as Slaves

#130

Post by metatronscube »

brandong wrote: post #127
metatronscube wrote: post #102

Well America, are you going to spread "Freedom and Democracy" there? It sure needs it.

Not until there is the political will to accept millions of US losses. Our current engagements are a walk in the park compared to what "bringing regime change" to North Korea entail. I'd wager that there hasn't been another large populace so thoroughly brainwashed in modern history- Nazi Germany isn't even comparable to "the hermit kingdom."

Perhaps, however I think its hard to brainwash starving masses turning to cannibalism fleeing the country in thousands across the border to China. The German Nazi regime was well fed and well equipped.
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