How The Chinese Do It

[AluminumHaste]

It's all a game anyway.

 

I love that site, thank you for posting it, I had forgotten what it was called.

[Severus]

About North Korea: the U.S. seriously underestimated their capabilities. I sometimes don't think that the country is as impoverished and unstable as the American media portrays her. North Korea is an enigma, for her oppressive regime is very secretive.

 

On the video of Chinese soldiers kiling the Tibetan pilgrims: that is unfortunate, and is a heinous and immoral act. However, is it illegal? No, it is not, for those soldiers are acting on the orders of their government. That is the problem with statist regimes: if they are doing something that should be illegal, there is nothing you can really do about it, for the man who makes the laws can also make himself immune from them.

[Komag]

I don't think anyone is saying "That's illegal!!!". It's more like "That's horribly evil and wrong!!!" which any good person will agree with.

[Vadrosaul]

There are more American's living below the poverty line, than there are North Koreans.

[sophisticatedZombie]

The threat of North Korean nukes has nothing to do with missiles. It has more to do with shipping. Container shipping is largely untracked and it would be easy to deliver a nuke in a shipping container, or a truck, or an airplane. It also has alot to do with proliferation. North Korea tends to get involved a great deal with any enterprise that might bring in money to support its unsustainably sized army. Personally I don't think there is alot anyone can do about North Korea other than slowly win the trust of the Chinese. Once China no longer feels the need for a buffer state between itself and South Korea, North Korea will become part of China. While not a wonderful outcome, it would be better than the current situation for the people of North Korea.

 

On the subject of Iraq, as to why people tend to want to fight the US army, I agree with some of the other comments written. Ultimately, it would be in the Iraqis peoples best interest to let the infrastructure be rebuilt, but there are too many hurt feelings all around for people to behaive rationally. However, it is also important not to overlook that much of the activity is sponsored by various other regional powers with deep pockets. There are elements within Iraq that want a strict Shia state, and they see this as a golden opportunity. In their minds, once the US leaves, they will easily be able to topple any multi-party government and set up a cleric run state like in Iran. Also, on the Sunni side you have the Bath party of Syria, which, surrounded by Lebanon on one side which it recently lost control of, and Iraq on the other, desperately doesn't want to wind up surrounded by Shia governments. So, Syria funds the Sunni insurgency. Iraq is currently more about a war between Syria (with funding by Saudi Arabia) vs Iran.

 

Why US policymakers thought they could avoid such an outcome is beyond me. Well, actually not entirely beyond me. It has turned out that many of the "Iraqi dissidents" that were lobbying in Washington for the past 15 years, and the ones who convinced the neocons that they would be greeted as liberators, were really Iranian intelligence agents. Basically we got suckered into creating the nation of West Iran. Its amazing how stupid greedy oil executives can be when someone tells them what they want to hear.

 

Anyway, so the question now is what to do. We can pull out, or we can stay. Which is best for the Iraqi people and which is best for our own soldiers in harms way. Obviously coming home is best for our own people, but is it best for the people of Iraq? I'm still unsure on that angle. Anyone who has so far stood up and tried to create a consensus state with freedom of religion would probably be executed by Al Saudr and the Iranians on one side or Syria on the other.. We would basically be sentencing many brave Iraqis to death. Then again, if we stay, other civilians will die due to the insurgent actions our presence provokes. So which people get to live and which die? No clear decision as far as I can see.

[sophisticatedZombie]

There are more American's living below the poverty line, than there are North Koreans.

 

Living below the poverty line in America is a LOT different than living in North Korea. At least, that's what refugees have told me. Here, there are people like myself who give money and offer a hand to help. There, there is often no food for anyone who is not in the millitary or government.

[Komag]

The US poverty line for a single person is around $9,000/yr, for a family of four about $20,000. The AVERAGE North Korea GNP per capita is $1000-$2000/yr. If they had a "poverty line" it would probably be around $500/yr or less. The poor here are not poor by NK standards, just by US standards.

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

on the comment of 'illegal' vs 'immoral' I find it strange that so many people have an immediate strong emotional response to 'illegal'. It is obviously merely what the current government will punish, and not something 'wrong', 'immoral' or 'against the common good', (although for the last, many common actions are). And yet when people need to justify something they commonly say it's 'not illegal' and likewise when to accuse that something 'is illegal'. Maybe it's the society bringing out children to follow authority like that, but then you can't combine order and thinking-for-yourself in a society with such a large gap people of moral understanding of what's generally good or bad between without introducing some sort of caste system and removing the fundamental emancipation on which it was built.

[Crispy]

but then you can't combine order and thinking-for-yourself in a society with such a large gap people of moral understanding of what's generally good or bad between without introducing some sort of caste system

Why? I'm not sure I understand what you mean here.

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

I tend to condense paragraphs-worth of ideas into one incomprehensible sentence, then everyone complains. And the wording definitely jumbled, either faulty javascript or I give myself too much sanity credit. breakdown: -our society includes a population with a large deviation of moral understanding. (moral: understanding what's generally good or bad in some way that through some process many people can agree on it). -judging by results a hypothesis can be formed that maybe the 'bringing out' processes of our society produce children (or people) who blindly respect authority too much. -argument is that because of the wide discrepancy of morals, if people are not taught to respect authority too much as they are now, but are taught to think for themselves on all issues in life then lots of chaos and disruption will ensue in the society (which is detrimental to society). -analyzing this, i can argue that the only way to give people the right to think for themselves while preserving the integrity of society is to introduce a caste system and give only some people that right, while the rest have to follow the rules. -introducing a caste would destroy the basis of the current society, namely emancipation, the result of all those revolutions when monarchy collapsed in 18th century. Disclaimer: this is not thought through nor supported or researched, random idea that flitted for a second as a reaction to reading, and is generally categorized as nonsensical rambling.

[Crispy]

I disagree that the only way to produce a balance between respecting authority and having an orderly society is to enforce a caste system. In fact, I think most democratic countries are more or less managing to do that; the problem is not that people respect authority too much, it's more that they keep voting in the wrong authority.

[OrbWeaver]

It's very dangerous to say that allowing people to think for themselves "too much" is bad for society, as it leads you very quickly towards 1984. There is also no evidence (that I am aware of) that blind obedience gives rise to a better quality of life for anybody except those at the very top.

 

Besides, people who think for themselves are going to do that, no matter what shackles you try to put on them -- and the more disenfranchised they are with society and the "caste" that they have been given, the more likely they are to conduct a revolution. The only way you could achieve such a system would be through some kind of genetic engineering or mental programming, that prevented people from developing an inquiring mind.

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

I think the educational system through which a person is forced to go successfully to become a P.Eng, does exactly that, prevents, at least some people, from developing an inquiring mind.

[Crispy]

You must have had pretty bad experiences of educational systems then. A good education promotes independent thought, rather than suppressing it.

[Ishtvan]

What is a P.Eng? I'm guessing either a Ph.D. in engineering, or a giant migratory bird that Chaung Tzu mentions?

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

I don't want to get started on how convoluted the system is for people who want to get a PhD, but P.Eng is a license, a right to call yourself an engineer and undertake projects.

[Ishtvan]

I see. I'm not sure if we have that in the U.S. or not. I know you have to get a license for some things like Architecture, but don't recall hearing of a license for EE or something; my friends just got hired and worked. Maybe you only need it if you're self-employed? All I know is that I've got a few more years of living below the poverty line before the PhD comes along.

 

As for proliferation being a problem via NK, no kidding. I've heard that NK uses their diplomats to deal heroin and rake in some more money for the state. For real. A country that does that won't think twice about selling nukes or dirty bomb material to rogue actors.

 

I heard the stuff about NK heroin from a friend, but a quick google search reveals that at least some other crazy people on the intraweb think it's true:

http://www.jamestown.org/publications_deta...rticle_id=23572