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'Artificial' earthquake detected in North Korea may be nuclear test

theaustralian.com.au

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Re: 'Artificial' earthquake detected in North Korea may be nuclear test

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WARNING: in this post I am going to be an "asshole", I make no apologies. I am going to make this bold prediction: you are utterly ignorant of North Korean history, even in broad strokes. And this has allowed you to form utterly irrational and indeed insane opinions of that country. Please stop commenting about the subject until you correct your ignorance. Or do you wish to challenge my assumptions by producing exten…

WARNING: The following contents contain "assholic" statistics: http://costsofwar.org/ http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

I don't know what point you're trying to make here but it's lost on me. Are you trying to imply that it's a good idea for North Korea to have nuclear weapons? That it avoids misery in some way? That's pathological.

Go read my other posts in this thread. If I had one wish it would be that the DPRK regime would step down so that the rest of the world would have the "opportunity" to dig the North Korean people out of the positively savage hell-hole they are living in right now. The best case scenario is that that happens and then it costs tens of billions of dollars to fix North Korea and put them on a level of, oh, say Yemen or Bangladesh, let alone South Korea. For that I'll be happy to see an increase in my taxes.

In the meantime millions of North Korean citizens are living in a stalinist police state, many of them a hair's breadth away from conditions of starvation. Oh, and their country is under the tyranny of a megalomaniac who is happy to continue the traditions of squandering his nation's few resources to build weapons to terrorize the rest of the world (to add to the long list of efforts in the same vein using everything from terrorism, such as when they downed Korean Air Flight 858, to espionage to exporting missile technology) rather than try to dig his country out of brutal, crushing poverty.

If there was a way to get rid of the North Korean regime without causing millions of civilian deaths on the Korean peninsula I'd probably be supportive of it, even if it meant an otherwise horrifying number of civilian deaths. Every year an unknown number of North Koreans are killed by the regime, perhaps as many as tens of thousands. Some estimates are that as many as 1.5 million North Koreans were killed in gulags during Kim Il Sung's reign. This is one of those rare cases where bringing up the Nazis and Hitler does not "Godwinize" the thread and is instead a fully apt and sobering point of comparison. A holocaust of North Koreans has happened, and the only reason it hasn't received the attention it deserves is because the country is very closed off and people are more concerned about what horrible thing to the world outside of North Korea the regime is likely to do next.

Re: 'Artificial' earthquake detected in North Korea may be nuclear test

#132
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" his biggest fear was and continues to be North Korea." Can you go into why? The sentiment runs at odds with Bush's obsession with Iraq/Iran.

Because the regime has always been crazy, even as it passes through different rulers. The best case scenario of North Korea is that the world is faced with a humanitarian crises on a shocking scale that will cost tens of billions of dollars to correct. The expected lower limit of the results of foreign action working to take down the North Korean regime would be the deaths of hundreds of thousands or millions of Sout…

> The best case scenario of North Korea is that the world is faced with a humanitarian crises on a shocking scale

True. Reintegration would compare very unfavorably to that of East Germany:

http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/04/09/comparing-north-kore...

Every aspect is much worse. Larger population, lower relative GDP, lower workforce skills...

Re: 'Artificial' earthquake detected in North Korea may be nuclear test

#133
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is an example of why this kind of propaganda works. People start hating another country they've (likely) never been to, and likely have no understanding of their motives.

I assume that you know that the OPer has no personal linkage to, or understanding of, the Korean situation? Or did you make a convenient assumption?

Research the modern North Korean gulag system. Read testimonies of people who escaped.

I hope those murderous fucks blew themselves up.

Re: 'Artificial' earthquake detected in North Korea may be nuclear test

#134
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Axis of Evil included North Korea along with those two countries.

If I recall correctly, the Bush administration's list of countries in the Axis of Evil, sorted by perceived evil from most to least evil, was : 1) Iran 2) Iraq 3) North Korea North Korea was not the top threat at the time.

If I recall correctly, the list was unordered. But practically speaking, it was obvious that Iraq was the easiest target to attack, and North Korea would have been the most difficult. That has nothing to do with perceived evilness, though.

Re: 'Artificial' earthquake detected in North Korea may be nuclear test

#135
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume that you know that the OPer has no personal linkage to, or understanding of, the Korean situation? Or did you make a convenient assumption?

You'll note my use of the word "likely". Happy to be refuted.

"Likely" and unsubstantiated guess aren't the same thing.

Re: 'Artificial' earthquake detected in North Korea may be nuclear test

#136
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you kidding me? The DPRK is one of the most horrific regimes in the last 2 centuries, and that includes the Nazis and the Stalinist Soviet Union. Of all the regimes that can't be trusted with nuclear weapons they are pretty much at the top of the list.

Maybe you should just go google about the nazis, they invaded half the world and killed 10s of millions of people. Talk about Godwin-ing a discussion.

On the contrary, perhaps you should Google the North Korean regime. The difference in scale is not as big as you are implying.

Re: 'Artificial' earthquake detected in North Korea may be nuclear test

#137
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just totally ridiculous. You believe that this view of North Korean belligerence is due to propaganda. Wow. Why don't you tell that to some refugees; that's just incredible. I think you're letting some sort of cultural relativism cloud your judgment. It is unstable not in the sense of "who is going to rule the country." It is unstable in the sense of they behave irrationally, have irrational beliefs and motiva…

> That's just totally ridiculous. You believe that this view of North Korean belligerence is due to propaganda. That isn't what I said. I said that they are no MORE belligerent than the US, I wasn't saying they are not belligerent. Please reread. > It is unstable not in the sense of "who is going to rule the country." It is unstable in the sense of they behave irrationally, have irrational beliefs and motivations. Oh…

I think that's a perfectly fine use of the word "unstable" in the context of government.

Re: 'Artificial' earthquake detected in North Korea may be nuclear test

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WARNING: The following contents contain "assholic" statistics: http://costsofwar.org/ http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

I don't know what point you're trying to make here but it's lost on me. Are you trying to imply that it's a good idea for North Korea to have nuclear weapons? That it avoids misery in some way? That's pathological. Go read my other posts in this thread. If I had one wish it would be that the DPRK regime would step down so that the rest of the world would have the "opportunity" to dig the North Korean people out of th…

I don't know what point you're trying to make here but it's lost on me. Are you trying to imply that it's a good idea for North Korea to have nuclear weapons? That it avoids misery in some way? That's pathological.

Nope. This is pathological:

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

Re: 'Artificial' earthquake detected in North Korea may be nuclear test

#139
post #72

These kinds of "you guys can't have nukes because they're bad, but we'll keep some on hand because we're responsible" disputes that the USA seems to love force me think "where are all the adults?"

Some nations having nukes stops industrial scale war. There is no way to go to before there were nukes... it's necessary for enough of the power players to have control of them but not all of the players. The adults are the non-nationalist people who see the world as a global community. These people are rare in politics it seems.

Rare indeed.
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