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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

#201

Post by leot »

ajkessler wrote: post #151
leot wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that we're better than most but not as great as we could be is a cop out. The implication of your comment appears to be "let's be upset about N.K., but you're holding the U.S. to too high a standard. The institutions of the U.S. are not nearly as deserving of public outrage as those of N.K." It's been my experience that most of the wealthy/privileged in the U.S. are simply unaware of how horrible things are[1]…

The implication is absolutely that the institutions of the U.S. are not nearly as deserving of public outrage as those of NK. I simply don't understand how you could come to any other conclusion. Death camps and executions for those who speak out against leaders are aren't worse than three strikes laws? Come on. I thoroughly agree with the first sentence of your second point. I would go further to say that, since alm…

Don't get me wrong -- I'm definitely concerned about the suffering that happens in foreign countries, and I think that people should be aware of it.

Say every American was upset at N.K.'s horrible treatment of prisoners. So what? What's going to happen -- the U.S. would need to go through China before it could touch N.K. And bombing a country on humanitarian grounds is a little absurd.

But if every American were upset about the penal system, or about "3 strikes laws", or prison rape, the problem would be solved almost right away (indeed, American complacency and populism caused some of these problems in the first place).

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

#202

Post by etherael »

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.

By the way, it's actually only 4.7%, not 10%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta...

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

#203

Post by grandalf »

ellyagg wrote: post #181
zedshaw wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having actually worked for the penal system collecting and analyzing statistics on prisoner abuses and policy enforcement, I can easily tell you that you are wrong (assuming your confusing deconstructionist prose means what I think it means). In general, Europe has some of the best prisons, and some of the worst prisons. France, Italy, Turkey, and Russia have horrendous prisons where in many cases prisoners don't sur…

It's so frustrating and terrible to see the situation in NK trivialized by comparing the US's prison systems unfavorably to it. No initiative, no activism, no outcry can be raised because its wind is immediately sucked out by foolish people screaming moral equivalence. How do you think refugees from these gulags would feel to hear you compare the average US prison inmate's experience to their own? Do you acknowledge…

You seem to have missed the way that so many stories about horrific things happening in other countries are supposed to make Americans feel superior.

Just spend some time listening to NPR. Constant propaganda telling the listener to respect our government, its institutions, its parties, etc. Why does anyone take American political parties seriously? There is a lot of energy spent propagandizing us about their greatness.

Why should any American care about any foreign prison when rape is used as an unofficial form of punishment in US prisons?

The only purpose of this sort of story is to feed Americans' appetite for feelings of superiority and to allow us to ignore the horrific conditions facing American prisoners.

So unless you think that conditions for North Koreans would be improved by American bombs, I suggest you spend your energy worrying about problems that you can actually make an impact on, such as US prisons, and stop being self-righteous about problems in other countries.

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

#204

Post by carussell »

aw3c2 wrote: post #31
yequalsx wrote: post #10

What I can't understand is how people can visit North Korea and not feel disgusted by giving support for that regime. I believe North Korea is facing another famine this year. Given the conditions in North Korea and the apparent iron grip its regime has on power is it better not to provide food aid? I can't decide for myself if it's better, for the long term, to let the nation starve and not help the people out or to…

And so is our lifestyle. We rely on the exploitation of the rest of the world but close our eyes and pretend everything is fine. After all, the bad things happen in far-far-away to people of different races and cultures.

Assuming there's legitimate reasoning behind them, and not just "I don't like it", could someone explain to me why this comment got so many downvotes?

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

#205

Post by carussell »

lwat wrote: post #197
mml wrote: post #187

Nobody seems to be mentioning that in NK, you go to prison, and your entire extended family, for 3 generations (yes, your great grandkids) will all die there. Comparison to us prisons is laughably pathetic.

Source?

TFA

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

#206

Post by vacri »

ajkessler wrote: post #136
zedshaw wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having actually worked for the penal system collecting and analyzing statistics on prisoner abuses and policy enforcement, I can easily tell you that you are wrong (assuming your confusing deconstructionist prose means what I think it means). In general, Europe has some of the best prisons, and some of the worst prisons. France, Italy, Turkey, and Russia have horrendous prisons where in many cases prisoners don't sur…

Very interesting take. I think one of the most useful things to ask, in many situations, is "compared to what?" To those who say things like "we shouldn't point fingers, look how bad we are", I ask, "compared to what?" Compared to utopia, sure, America is a shithole. But compared to just about any other real place, on just about any other metric, we're doing pretty well. To argue that we somehow don't have the right…

No, you're not. Compared to your first-world contemporaries, the US imprisons 5-10 times as many people per capita. Far from 'just about any other place', the US is an outlier when it comes to incarceration. First world nations are all pretty much bunched in the 50-150/100k range, while the US incarcerates 750/100k (that includes kids - for just adults it's up around 1% currently incarcerated. 1%!). It's not 'utopia', but 'contemporary nations'. And it's not like it's always been like this - the US's insane level of incarceration was always a little high, but it started going way off the deep end around 1990.

There's also the rape angle as discussed above. Here in Australia, there's no real mindset about rape in prisons, but when I see Americans discuss it, it's either joked about or implicitly/explicitly declared to be 'part of the prison experience' and that you somehow deserve it if you go to jail... and it seems no-one is interested in wondering if it really is justice for a person imprisoned due to carrying a small amount of personal drugs to be raped as part of their 'debt to society'.

I guess it's the old 'glass houses' situation.

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

#207

Post by nandemo »

Wickk wrote: post #190
sedachv wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The problem is that a lot of those people belong in prison." Why do you think the situation is different in North Korea?

You have got to be kidding me.

Well, for me sedachv's comment sums up all the "but in the US..." comments in this thread. It's just bizarre.

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

#208

Post by buyx »

zedshaw wrote: post #131
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…

Having actually worked for the penal system collecting and analyzing statistics on prisoner abuses and policy enforcement, I can easily tell you that you are wrong (assuming your confusing deconstructionist prose means what I think it means). In general, Europe has some of the best prisons, and some of the worst prisons. France, Italy, Turkey, and Russia have horrendous prisons where in many cases prisoners don't sur…

In Africa, if you remove countries that just don't even have working governments, you find the prisons are also horrible, with the exception of maybe South Africa, but even they've had a history of nasty evil and torture (read about Steve Biko). It's improved a lot, but not nearly as much as it should.

Rape seems to be very prevalent in South Africa's overcrowded prisons, and South African society seems to actively condone prison rape.

Regarding your Biko point, he was murdered before he was sentenced. Although political prisoners under Apartheid were kept under harsh conditions, after visiting Robben Island, I got the impression that conditions for them, overall, were better than those of general prisoners (especially by the mid-late 1980's).

Overall, I think that prison conditions, for general criminal suspects/convicts, have not gotten much better, although there is greater transparency, than in the past.

See this article on a UK extradition request, where prison conditions are being used as an argument to block extradition of a murder suspect to SA: http://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/shrien-s-gay-risk-defence-1.1...

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

#209

Post by gscott »

ksolanki wrote: post #157
amackera wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about just dropping food?

How about just not interfering? Edit: To all downvoters: Perhaps this statement is at a wrong place, but yes, these countries (in the Middle East or Africa) might be much better off if the developed countries and China would not be after their natural resources.

It is just hard to not watch the abuse of the population, mass rapes, mass killings, starvation, and so forth and not wish that things could be different then donating $10 via text message to some organization who offers to do something about it. If we could just build a giant wall around North Korea and all of Africa then spend that money on cars, hot wings, and hookers.

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

#210

Post by pessimizer »

AJ007 wrote: post #108
ajkessler wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I've learned anything, it's that we can't judge. Nope. Regime that interns its people in death camps? A system that engenders such poverty that people are forced into cannibalism ? ( http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1875007335054132657# ) Couldn't possibly judge. Nope, not with all the similar problems here in the evil ol' US of A.

North Korea: Homeless and those with homes starve to death. USA: Morbidly obese homeless chatting on cell phones

Simply a lie.
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