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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

#141

Post by CWuestefeld »

lukeschlather wrote: post #120
CWuestefeld wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just begs the question. Where must the line be drawn? Those disagreeing with my point seem to feel that the line should be right between us and whoever is more ruthless than us. But why do we automatically view ourselves on the correct side of that line? I've we're engaged, as a matter of policy, in activities that many or most Americans believe to be evil, doesn't that put the drawing of the line into question?

I don't really care to judge where the line belongs, but if we were to draw the line to include just one country, it would be North Korea as far as my moral compass is concerned. If we drew the line so it included the US, then we would also be including Russia, China, Mexico, and the vast majority of world nations. So yes, lets not go ranking countries by evilness - but North Korea is so beyond that that your equivoc…

If we drew the line so it included the US, then we would also be including Russia, China, Mexico, and the vast majority of world nations.

It's not nearly so simple. If we drew the line according to what portion of our population we imprison, then the USA would be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with North Korea, with the rest of the world nearly an order of magnitude lower.

Consider https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23pr...

The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, ...

China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. ...

The United States comes in first, too, ... in order of the incarceration rates. It has 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. (If you count only adults, one in 100 Americans is locked up.)

The only other major industrialized nation that even comes close is Russia, with 627 prisoners for every 100,000 people. The others have much lower rates. England's rate is 151; Germany's is 88; and Japan's is 63.

The median among all nations is about 125, roughly a sixth of the American rate.

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

#142

Post by gaius »

eru wrote: post #112
Jun8 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airlifting catalogs may be impractical but the gist of your idea is so true! One big factor in USSR's fall, I think, was people's knowledge of the superiority and availability of goods available in the West.

That was even more pronounced in East Germany. (And actually Easterners thought the West to be a much better place, based on all the ads they saw. Everybody watched West German TV.)

And David Hasselhoff singing about freedom, don't forget. He's huge in Germany.

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

#143

Post by maxwin »

The real problem is Communist China. Without China's support, Countries like North Korea and Burma would have changed a long time ago. If China catches up in military power, it can be scary considering its relationship with Japan,Taiwan etc and its support for dictatorship. (Disclaimer:there's a difference between criticizing chinese communist regime and chinese people)

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

#144

Post by spenrose »

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…

Thanks so much for taking the time to write this. Do you have recommended followup resources? Opinions on recent books such as New Jack or When Brute Force Fails?

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

#145

Post by chillax »

michael_dorfman wrote: post #139
pragmatic wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What society/nation has the best prisons overall? Is there a country/region that does it "right"?

My money's on Scandinavia.

This is one started up last year in Norway:

Ten years and 1.5 billion Norwegian kroner ($252 million) in the making, Halden is spread over 75 acres (30 hectares) of gently sloping forest in southeastern Norway. The facility boasts amenities like a sound studio, jogging trails and a freestanding two-bedroom house where inmates can host their families during overnight visits.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1986002,00.... / http://www.good.is/post/halden-prison-who-cares-if-it-coddle...

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

#146

Post by leot »

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…

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]; that it's nicer to believe convenient fictions than be faced with a moral/emotional imperative to "do something". For these and other[2] reasons, America's institutions are more deserving than N.K.'s of American/Western public attention and outrage, proportional to the degree that they violate American values.

[1] e.g. http://bit.ly/mwO0dP

[2] another important reason is that American outrage can actually do something useful in the U.S., but is almost completely impotent w.r.t. N.K.

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

#147

Post by chernevik »

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…

"The difference between American prisons and this one in N.Korea is the size of it and the blatant attempt to keep it secret from the rest of the world."

Right. And the calorie counts, and the min / max temperatures. And the habeas corpus, and the due process prior to incarceration. And the press freedom to investigate. And the public election of legislators making the laws defining criminality, and executives running prisons. Otherwise, no difference.

See, in North Korea, when you start a "push to increase monitoring of prisons", you go _into_ the prison, do not see a judge, do not pass Go. And your family. And you don't come out. This alone strikes me as a really important difference.

Maybe people aren't sufficiently exercised about US prison conditions. But suggesting those are the same as North Korea only flips the "not credible" bit for every further comment you make.

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

#148

Post by patrickyeon »

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.

> Wouldn't it be far more productive to skip threads that might not interest you?

Actually, no. If you ignore all the stories you don't want to see, you allow a site like this one to drift towards the lowest common denominator. Promoting what you like is one part of helping create a community you will enjoy, but actively discouraging the stories/comments you don't want to see is another part. An even more important part, if you want to see your community stay focused and true to the spirit it started out with in the face of an increasing (and increasingly varied/diluted) user base and funny pictures of cats.

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

#149

Post by kmfrk »

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…

Remember how pg outlined grumpiness as one of the biggest problems HN is facing? Yeah.

Flag the thread like the rest of us and don't be an internet martyr about it.

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

#150

Post by gyardley »

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…

Anyone pondering Zed's comment on eliminating rape in prison should consider a donation to Just Detention International, formerly Stop Prisoner Rape: http://justdetention.org/

There are prisons in the United States where a significant percentage of the population are raped, and there are prisons in the United States where no inmates are raped. Prisoner sexual abuse isn't an inevitable consequence of incarceration, and we need to stop assuming it is.

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