North Korea Threatens to Use Nukes

[chegitz guevara]

http://tinyurl.com/2c66nkd

North Korea threatens nuclear retaliation
PUBLISHED : -13 HOURS -50 MINUTES AGO | UPDATED: -13 HOURS -58 MINUTES AGO

North Korea on Saturday threatened to use a “powerful nuclear deterrence” in response to a South Korea-US joint naval exercise, state media said.

North Korea was prepared for a “retaliatory war”, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, quoting Pyongyang’s National Defense Commission.

The United States and South Korea have announced Korea joint naval exercises, beginning on Sunday, in what they said is a bid to deter North Korea’s “aggressive” behavior.

“All these “war maneuvers are nothing but outright provocations aimed to stifle the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea by force of arms to all intents and purposes, ”KCNA said, using North Korea’s official name.

“The army and people of the DPRK will legitimately counter States with their powerful nuclear deterrence the largest-ever nuclear war exercises to be staged by the US and South Korean puppet forces.”

[Os Cangaceiros]

Saber rattling.

I think that the DPRK has a enough of a self-preservation instinct that it won't use nuclear weapons on the South and U.S. forces there. I don't think that they want to be turned into a smoking crater. (By the way, it looks like your OP is kind of garbled.)

[The Vegan Marxist]

I hope the SKorean & US regimes burn because of the bullshit they're pulling against the DPRK.

[this is an invasion]

Fuck anyone who threatens to use nuclear weapons for anything. Period.

[CleverTitle]

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

[Walt]

I hope the SKorean & US regimes burn because of the bullshit they're pulling against the DPRK.
to put it simply, this is just a response against the actions the DPRK took when they killed 50 korean navymen by sinking one of their ships. i don't see how these military exercises are "bullshit against the DPRK" when the proactive actions of north korea ultimately caused these drills to occur.

[Palestine]

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Asia/Story/STIStory_557304.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-10736538

it looks like a real threat to me

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

to put it simply, this is just a response against the actions the DPRK took when they killed 50 korean navymen by sinking one of their ships. i don't see how these military exercises are "bullshit against the DPRK" when the proactive actions of north korea ultimately caused these drills to occur.

Oh no not this shit again. :rolleyes: Poor South Korean navy warship running aground. ;(((((

[Communist]

.
Saber-rattling, I agree.
.

[Soviet dude]

There is nothing distinguishable between US war games and preparation for an invasion by the US. The DPRK has the right to defend themselves with whatever weapons available against an imperialist attack on their nation.

[Optiow]

Just leave North Korea alone. This is just another act to provoke them.

[Invincible Summer]

Fuck anyone who threatens to use nuclear weapons for anything. Period.

Why?

[Walt]

Oh no not this shit again. :rolleyes: Poor South Korean navy warship running aground. ;(((((
North Korea is threatening NUKES for military exercises that barely effect the country at all. This is just general rhetoric the DPRK has been spouting out for the last 30 years and it's not surprising at all. Not shit will happen.

[Rusty Shackleford]

North Korea is threatening NUKES for military exercises that barely effect the country at all. This is just general rhetoric the DPRK has been spouting out for the last 30 years and it's not surprising at all. Not shit will happen.


The naval drill was labelled as a "deterrence to DPRK aggression/aggressive behavior." but in reality its a huge provocation. they(US, SK, Japan) are very fucking well aware of it.

The sanctions are killing many koreans and now the US wants to flex its muscles and kick korea while its down. this also comes at a time when the leadership of the PLA decided not to cooperate with Sec. of DoD Robert Gates.

the DPRK is facing extinction because it is almost completely on its own in the face of US imperialism. put yourself in their shoes. what would you do? just let them trample all over you?

[Os Cangaceiros]

it is almost completely on its own in the face of US imperialism.

Well, yeah, if you exclude the most powerful economic engine on Earth (China). The same nation who's support the DPRK depends on for survival.

[Invincible Summer]

Fuck anyone who threatens to use nuclear weapons for anything. Period.

To elaborate further on my previous post, you don't think that nuclear weapons are ever useful? Even for defense? What if an alien race came with the intent to destroy earth, but nukes were the only weapon that were effective against them? Would you say "No! Fuck nukes!"


I mean, I understand that nuclear weapons are pretty heinous, but to say that anyone even voicing a threat of nuclear defense should fuck off is a tad silly.

Please explain your position rather than make yourself out to be some sort of anti-nuclear energy hippie

[Rusty Shackleford]

Well, yeah, if you exclude the most powerful economic engine on Earth (China). The same nation who's support the DPRK depends on for survival.

even then, china has turned their back on the DPRK on several occasions. China has even voted in favor of sanctions against DPRK when it was testing out rockets.

[chegitz guevara]

The maneuvers are meant to be a threat to the DPRK after the sinking of the Cheonan, since they can't really do anything else, with forty thousand artillery pieces pointed at Seoul. Any other country would have been bombed.

[Soviet dude]

The DPRK did not sink the Cheonan. It is almost certainly the result of an accident involving a mine, to be used for these very war games. The South Koreans even knew this, and the conservative party even waited until they thought they could use this politically in their elections (in fact, it worked against them, as South Koreans aren't stupid enough to believe their government). The Japanese also used it as an excuse regarding the extreme pressure to remove US bases. The Americans will lie for any reason to bully other nations as a matter of policy.

[Lyev]

The first thought that came to mind is that bombing another country in such a way can't be particularly conducive to forging internationalist ties with the global proletarian movement. I'm not sure the US working class -- because, I assume, that's who would be hurt most by a nuclear bomb attack on their country -- are exactly going to rush to give support to the DPRK after being attacked by them. Surely they wouldn't nuke the US? Would it not escalate into a full blown world war three?

[Chimurenga.]

Surely they wouldn't nuke the US?

..Have they yet?

[this is an invasion]

To elaborate further on my previous post, you don't think that nuclear weapons are ever useful? Even for defense? What if an alien race came with the intent to destroy earth, but nukes were the only weapon that were effective against them? Would you say "No! Fuck nukes!"
Let's try to be at least a little realistic, yeah?


I mean, I understand that nuclear weapons are pretty heinous, but to say that anyone even voicing a threat of nuclear defense should fuck off is a tad silly.

Please explain your position rather than make yourself out to be some sort of anti-nuclear energy hippie

Mainly because of backlash and the possible events that could happen if the US were to be attacked by nuclear weapons. Do you honestly think the US will fuck off out of the Korean peninsula if they are attacked by nukes? Best case scenario is that North Korea gets pretty much destroyed. How many working people do you think will die if that happens?

Not to mention the possible civilian lives effected by a nuclear attack on anyone. And of course the negative effects it has on the immediate eco-system. If you want to label me a hippie because I don't want innocent working people to die and because I see the importance in at least trying to have a healthy planet, then go for it.

[Lyev]

..Have they yet?Sorry, I'm missing your point...? What do you mean?

[The Vegan Marxist]

Let's try to be at least a little realistic, yeah?


Mainly because of backlash and the possible events that could happen if the US were to be attacked by nuclear weapons. Do you honestly think the US will fuck off out of the Korean peninsula if they are attacked by nukes? Best case scenario is that North Korea gets pretty much destroyed. How many working people do you think will die if that happens?

Not to mention the possible civilian lives effected by a nuclear attack on anyone. And of course the negative effects it has on the immediate eco-system. If you want to label me a hippie because I don't want innocent working people to die and because I see the importance in at least trying to have a healthy planet, then go for it.

The US may not attack though if threatened with a Nuclear bomb. It's being used as a defensive weapon, not an offensive weapon. We're not saying that if the DPRK attacks the US with one then the US wouldn't attack them back, surely they will! But the threats of defending themselves with nuclear weapons may make the US think twice on their actions. This is what's defended their country for so many years now successfully. It's a necessary tactical maneuver.

[chegitz guevara]

Surely they wouldn't nuke the US?

They don't have the capacity to hit us ... maybe Honolulu, but their ICBMs aren't very accurate and they tend to explode well before they get near their target.

South Korea and Japan, on the other hand, could easily be hit.

[Sendo]

The DPRK did not sink the Cheonan. It is almost certainly the result of an accident involving a mine, to be used for these very war games. The South Koreans even knew this, and the conservative party even waited until they thought they could use this politically in their elections (in fact, it worked against them, as South Koreans aren't stupid enough to believe their government). The Japanese also used it as an excuse regarding the extreme pressure to remove US bases. The Americans will lie for any reason to bully other nations as a matter of policy.

i don't know if you were around for my postings, but I'm glad someone else considers the possibility is wasn't NK self-defense, but rather, SK friendly fire or some other accident. (some writing on the weapon shrapnel was in SK dialect)

And yeah, 2mb' gang got whupped in the local and provincial elections

I feel like too many otherwise good comrades are having one of those Che moments (like during the Missile Crisis). I don't know how many posters here are Korea-based journalists, but um, a good number of people here have the story that SK was surely attacking NK and got shot down (though NK itself denies this story). I respect NK's right to get nukes the same as anyone, especially since everyone else has them, but I don't get a hard-on for war and pray for war to break out so our glorious leader can smite the Yank and Seoul imperialists. I sure as hell don't want any nukes on SK or US soil or any soil. All that will happen is the US will respond with an attack that will probably send the whole peninsula back to the Stone Age (for the third time in the past 100 years).

[AK]

Watch as the heroic anti-imperialists support the use of nuclear weapons that will only serve to again defame communism :lol:

[soyonstout]

To elaborate further on my previous post, you don't think that nuclear weapons are ever useful? Even for defense? What if an alien race came with the intent to destroy earth, but nukes were the only weapon that were effective against them? Would you say "No! Fuck nukes!"

I mean, I understand that nuclear weapons are pretty heinous, but to say that anyone even voicing a threat of nuclear defense should fuck off is a tad silly.

Why?

Defense of what? Against whom? To me "workers of the world, unite!" and the idea of a weapon that cannot be targeted at all are antitheses. Even in the middle of a world revolution, the strength of the working class is that they are everywhere and that the ruling class needs them for its society to continue to exist. However violent the insurrection became, when do you see a good tactical use for nuclear weaponry? What would be the result?

More to the point, the poster did not oppose nuclear energy but nuclear weaponry.

Lastly, unless you're nitpicking over grammar or something, I think bringing space aliens into the argument, as opposed to the possibly debatable issue of the use of nuclear threats by the insurgent world working class, I don't know what you're trying to say.

[Sendo]

Well, let's not be anti nuclear arms capability comrades. The only way to get rid of nukes is if every single nation has them. Then all can come to the discussion table on fair terms. The threat of nukes is key (but hopefully never used!)

The US alone has enough nukes to fry the planet a 100 times over. If anyone else gets a nuke it doesn't need to make anymore. The only way to get the US to disarm is if every nation is on an equal footing.

[Nachie]

Please explain your position rather than make yourself out to be some sort of anti-nuclear energy hippie

Why is it considered trolling on this site when it comes to not wanting to deal with authoritarian Bolsheviks, yet this kind of blind subservience to the relentless march of anything "technological" is taken as canon?

[soyonstout]

Well, let's not be anti nuclear arms capability comrades. The only way to get rid of nukes is if every single nation has them. Then all can come to the discussion table on fair terms. The threat of nukes is key (but hopefully never used!)

The US alone has enough nukes to fry the planet a 100 times over. If anyone else gets a nuke it doesn't need to make anymore. The only way to get the US to disarm is if every nation is on an equal footing.

OR the overthrow of the US state by the US working class (which it exploits and sacrifices in wars), combined with the overthrow of other nuclear-armed states by their working classes. Also, "every nation on an equal footing" is not possible in the competitive world market of the capitalist system--so it's down to the revolution.

[Chimurenga.]

Watch as the heroic anti-imperialists support the use of nuclear weapons that will only serve to again defame communism :lol:

Yeah! Fuck a country that is trying to protect themselves from imperialist attack, sanctions, and embargoes. Those lunatics don't need to arm themselves. They just need to overthrow their insane totalitarian dictator and instill a stateless Anarchist structure.

Smash the state, bro!

[this is an invasion]

Yeah! Fuck a country

I agree!

[Chimurenga.]

I agree!

How infantile can you get..

[gorillafuck]

The US may not attack though if threatened with a Nuclear bomb. It's being used as a defensive weapon, not an offensive weapon. We're not saying that if the DPRK attacks the US with one then the US wouldn't attack them back, surely they will! But the threats of defending themselves with nuclear weapons may make the US think twice on their actions. This is what's defended their country for so many years now successfully. It's a necessary tactical maneuver.
I made a short skit.

US: "Let's attack, they didn't say they'd use their nuclear weapons!"

DPRK: "Wait no, what? Yeah we will use them!"

US: "Oh, nevermind. Don't attack. They said they'd use them."


Seriously, do you honestly think that a statement saying they'll use the nukes that the US already knows they possess will have any bearing on whether the US attacks the DPRK?

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

I don't think anyone has said that we can support the use of nuclear weapons, but rather support the notion of self-defence. NK shouldn't be expected to bow down to the US or SK when they come knocking at their door, armed to the teeth, ready to blow them off of the map. America wouldn't back down, neither would SK if we looked at this as NK being the aggressors. In fact there would be international outcry if NK was acting in the kind of hostility that its enemies have acted in.

That is what people forget. NK do have the right to defend themselves against the attacks of SK and western imperialism, in an international context. NK has been strangled by economic sanctions for years, and this has only strengthened their Juche system. It can even be said that the behaviour of SK and the US can justify Juche in the minds of North Koreans. Most leftists would not support their ideology, we would hope anyway, but we have to understand the conditions that it arises from, and we have to understand the mechanics of international war that directly strengthen the oppressive measures of NK. We also have to understand that these mechanics of international war, as they stand, can only strengthen imperialism. There would be no real freedom from oppression in NK until imperialism stopped pushing their country into a corner.

If NK nuked SK, it would be a terrible tragedy, but it would also be a serious act of self-defence on an international level. The nature of the North Korean system only exists because of international hostility, you don't have to be a "juchebag" to see this.

[AK]

How infantile can you get..
Well, on a scale of 0 to proletarianrevolution...

[this is an invasion]

How infantile can you get..

Do you really want to find out?

[KC]

Yeah! Fuck a country that is trying to protect themselves from imperialist attack, sanctions, and embargoes. Those lunatics don't need to arm themselves. They just need to overthrow their insane totalitarian dictator and instill a stateless Anarchist structure.

The US isn't going to attack North Korea, even if it didn't have a nuclear program. Iraq and Afghanistan prove this.

We don't live in 1900 anymore.

[gorillafuck]

The US isn't going to attack North Korea, even if it didn't have a nuclear program. Iraq and Afghanistan prove this.

We don't live in 1900 anymore.
Just because it's very unlikely now doesn't mean it can't ever happen. I agree the US will definitely not attack the DPRK now, but we do not know what the situation will be like in 5 or 8 years. The US may not be tied up in both Afghanistan and Iraq anymore, and while the US won't go to actual war right now it is obviously still very hostile to North Korea.

[KC]

Just because it doesn't seem so now doesn't mean it cannot happen. I agree the US will definitely not attack the DPRK now, but we do not know what the situation will be like in 5 years.Iraq and Afghanistan were the first major conventional military mobilizations in the post-Soviet era, and they have proven to be a complete and abysmal failure for the precise reason that conventional military warfare on such a scale is incredibly impractical nowadays, based on how closely tied each country is to one another and to the world economy as a whole.

So I think it's pretty safe to say that all of the "anti-imperialists" calling for defense against "imperialist attack" in this thread are just alarmists that have an unrealistic view of how capitalism works today (primarily based on a century-old pamphlet that has little relevance today).

[PilesOfDeadNazis]

No one is saying that it would be a good thing if NK used uclear weapons against anyone. But what are they supposed to do with the US, SK, and Japan on their ass all the time?

Granted, jumping to nuclear assault is more than just a little much, but no one sould expect NK to just sit back and let themselves get shat on by Imperialists.

'But...but...Kim Jong Il is an asshole and he isn't an Anarchist!' The point isn't whether North Korea is the perfect little, ultra-Left nation, the point is Imperialism isn't helping shit and it must be combatted. Again, not with something like nuclear assault, but in at least some way.

However, there will always be those people who just want to complain about how NK doesn't follow their preferred ideology and therefore deserves to have America rip them a brand new ashole every once in a while.

[gorillafuck]

Iraq and Afghanistan were the first major conventional military mobilizations in the post-Soviet era, and they have proven to be a complete and abysmal failure for the precise reason that conventional military warfare on such a scale is incredibly impractical nowadays, based on how closely tied each country is to one another and to the world economy as a whole.

So I think it's pretty safe to say that all of the "anti-imperialists" calling for defense against "imperialist attack" in this thread are just alarmists that have an unrealistic view of how capitalism works today (primarily based on a century-old pamphlet that has little relevance today).
The US has been in engaging in warfare in the Korean peninsula in much less than a century ago, though obviously you know that.

I don't really understand what makes you so sure that they will no longer engage in large scale conventional warfare? Iraq and Afghanistan have been failures for US imperialism, but so was Vietnam and while it did make them rethink their strategies it didn't prevent them from ever engaging in large scale warfare again.

[Chimurenga.]

The US isn't going to attack North Korea, even if it didn't have a nuclear program. Iraq and Afghanistan prove this.

We don't live in 1900 anymore.

The US has been attacking North Korea for sixty years now. Where have you been?

[Hiratsuka]

The naval drill was labelled as a "deterrence to DPRK aggression/aggressive behavior." but in reality its a huge provocation. they(US, SK, Japan) are very fucking well aware of it.

The sanctions are killing many koreans and now the US wants to flex its muscles and kick korea while its down. this also comes at a time when the leadership of the PLA decided not to cooperate with Sec. of DoD Robert Gates.

the DPRK is facing extinction because it is almost completely on its own in the face of US imperialism. put yourself in their shoes. what would you do? just let them trample all over you?

I wouldn't exterminate millions of people, no. Plus, to be honest, I don't give two damns about the DPRK's government. If the North ended up like the South it would only be good for her people.

I swear, if North Korea nuked Seattle some people here would be chearing.

[KC]

I don't really understand what makes you so sure that they will no longer engage in large scale conventional warfare? Iraq and Afghanistan have been failures for US imperialism, but so was Vietnam and while it did make them rethink their strategies it didn't prevent them from ever engaging in large scale warfare again.The difference is the state of global capitalism. With the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the "success" of anti-colonial movements, countries have become heavily integrated into a global economy upon which they have become dependent.

Wars today are fought by other means - proxies, economic warfare, small scale incursions, etc... Even the great "military-industrial complex" of the 20th century has transitioned largely from the production of conventional military supplies to the information industry.

Finally, with regards to North Korea specifically, the US will not invade because it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The DPRK government is heavily consolidated, the country is highly militarized, and even if it managed to topple the government and defeat the North Korean military it would be left with another Iraq/Afghanistan.

This would have profound consequences not only regionally but globally. It would severely damage relations between the US and China, of which the US is heavily dependent, and ultimately would be disastrous to US interests in the large scheme of things.

Besides, whose interests does it serve? What would be the point of expending so many resources? What is the benefit?


The US has been attacking North Korea for sixty years now. Where have you been?I'm referring to "imperialist attack" not embargoes or small scale incursions which has comprised the entirety of American policy towards North Korea in the post-Soviet era.

[Jazzhands]

If anything, Iraq and Afghanistan prove that the US has it in it to attack North Korea. They've done it before. But nuclear weapons or not, the DPRK is not going to actually commit to war. They have absolutely no infrastructure whatsoever. Kim Jong Il wants to maintain control and starting a war against the US and South Korea will not do anything for him. He's smarter than this. There is absolutely nothing to gain from starting a war. The DPRK has no allies. I wouldn't really consider China an ally even though they're the only reason the DPRK still exists. The USA and South Korea will join up to fight the North if it happens. China might, but they won't continue to support the North. Otherwise they would risk losing a huge chunk of their consumers in the US. Japan will because they're probably upset about all the kidnappings.

[Chimurenga.]

I'm referring to "imperialist attack" not embargoes or small scale incursions.

Those embargoes and incursions are still imperialist attacks whether you want to acknowledge them as so or not. The US is still at war with North Korea. A country that should be granted their independence and self determination isn't and are suffering because of that. They cannot fully develop and they cannot trade with as many nations as they would like. If you cannot see this and you are against them arming themselves in self-defense, you have no business being on this forum and you can go get fucked.

[Hiratsuka]

Let's be clear, since you mangled this thread's theme. We are not talking about being armed but actually using nuclear weapons. Is total war a socialist endeavor?

[KC]

If anything, Iraq and Afghanistan prove that the US has it in it to attack North Korea.

This was believable back in 2005, when the occupations were still labeled either a "success" or "possibly a success". Now, with the massive drain of funds they have caused and the incredible effect it has had on the US economy, I don't think anyone with a reasonable disposition could believe this.

To put it simply, to believe this, you have to presume that the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are "successes" and to do that you have to be completely insane.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

If the North ended up like the South it would only be good for her people.

Enjoy Capitalism! At long last, advertisement billboards on the motorway to Kaesong. Neon sparkles and night clubs. Oh, how the place has improved, now there's some insane psychopath Myung-bak instead of Kim Jong-il, wonderful!

[gorillafuck]

Besides, whose interests does it serve? What would be the point of expending so many resources? What is the benefit?
What was the point of trying to overthrow the Sandanistas, though? The US companies could get coffee elsewhere, they don't need specifically Nicaraguan coffee beans. Wars today are not necessarily only about material resources, it is about maintaining the overall economic domination of the world.

The rest of your post I can't really respond to though, I'll think about that.

[Chimurenga.]

Let's be clear, since you mangled this thread's theme. We are not talking about being armed but actually using nuclear weapons. Is total war a socialist endeavor?

This doesn't mean that it will fucking happen. From what I'm seeing on North Korean News is no threats being reported, only contracts being negotiated. This being posted a few hours ago: http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2010/201007/news23/20100723-15ee.html

This only tells me that maybe the American Financial Review probably isn't the best place to look for whats going on with the US/SK-DPRK situation. I remember a few years back, the news blew a missile testing way out of proportion and said shit like "IT'S GOING TO HIT CALIFORNIA ON FOURTH OF JULY. WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO? AHHHHH".

No one's advocating "total war". Stop being fucking stupid.


Edit: Oh yeah, thanks Takayuki..

This post coming from the same idiot that wrote this:


If the North ended up like the South it would only be good for her people.

[Jazzhands]

Those embargoes and incursions are still imperialist attacks whether you want to acknowledge them as so or not. The US is still at war with North Korea. A country that should be granted their independence and self determination isn't and are suffering because of that. They cannot fully develop and they cannot trade with as many nations as they would like. If you cannot see this and you are against them arming themselves in self-defense, you have no business being on this forum and you can go get fucked.

"independence and self-determination?" Korea is a nation. Koreans are a people. North Korea is not. There are no physical differences between North and South Korea...except that North Koreans are about 3 inches shorter on average. Not kidding.

The reason North Korea is not developing is because of the gross income inequality between the North Korean who makes 900-1000 USD per year and Kim Jong Il, who makes six figure sums and lives in a palace. Not to mention the Songun system has destroyed the economy. Trade would help, but this stuff only makes it worse. Besides, they don't even WANT to trade. That goes against Juche.

Nuclear weapons are a threat to all humanity and cannot be used for self-defense. It doesn't work. Evidence: the Cuban Missile Crisis. Good luck achieving proletarian revolution in a nuclear wasteland. Thyroid cancer is real revolutionary.

[KC]

What was the point of trying to overthrow the Sandanistas, though? The US companies could get coffee elsewhere, they don't need specifically Nicaraguan coffee beans. Wars today are not necessarily only about material resources, it is about maintaining the overall economic domination of the world.The overthrow of the Sandanistas had to do with a much broader power struggle during the Cold War. It was a battle in a war whose outcome contributed to the determination of the balance of power between both the US and the USSR in the region. It was linked to a much larger struggle.

My point, and why I keep making a distinction between the Cold War era and the post-Soviet era, is that with regards to North Korea such an incentive doesn't exist. Which is why I very explicitly asked you what purpose it would serve and whose interests it would advance.

Certainly it can't have anything to do with geopolitical influence: North Korea is surrounded by Japan, China and South Korea, two of which are very close allies of the US and the other is its largest trading partner. It can't have much if anything to do with economic influence, either: North Korea has almost nothing to offer in terms of resources or trading prospects.

So, again, you didn't answer my question, and I really am genuinely interested in hearing what you have to say.

[FINAL EDIT: The interest in North Korea during the Cold War was precisely because of geopolitical influence. The US was attempting to protect its allies - North Korea and Japan - against both Chinese and Soviet invasion. Once the Cold War ended and China became buddy-buddy with the US, North Korea lost nearly all of its strategic significance. The only reason it is still significant is because of its proximity to South Korea and because of its nuclear weapons program which it will probably use (or probably is using) as a bargaining chip for aid, among other things.]

EDIT: I also want to say that all of this Marcyist "anti-imperialism" garbage is really fogging a lot of people's minds to the point where they don't understand whatsoever what is going on with regards to North Korea and their relations either with their regional neighbors or the US.


Not to mention the Songun system has destroyed the economy. Trade would help, but this stuff only makes it worse. Besides, they don't even WANT to trade. That goes against Juche.

Blasphemy! Capitalist! Send this man to be reeducated!

[Chimurenga.]

"independence and self-determination?" Korea is a nation. Koreans are a people. North Korea is not. There are no physical differences between North and South Korea...

North Korea won their independence, jackass.


The reason North Korea is not developing is because of the gross income inequality between the North Korean who makes 900-1000 USD per year and Kim Jong Il who makes six figure sums and lives in a palace.

Once again, you've never been able to prove this. Oh yeah, every tour guide carries a gun too, right? Remember that one? :laugh:


Not to mention the Songun system has destroyed the economy.

Prove it. Although, you probably wont. You've been wrong about everything you've claimed about the DPRK thus far.


Nuclear weapons are a threat to all humanity and cannot be used for self-defense. It doesn't work.

It's working now.


Evidence: the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Yeah, the US invaded and got their asses handed to them by the Cubans. The same would happen if the US militarily invaded in North Korea. This doesn't prove anything.

[KC]

It's working now.

#1: "You want to buy some elephant repellent?"
#2: "But there are no elephants around here!"
#1: "That just proves that it is working!"

[gorillafuck]

The overthrow of the Sandanistas had to do with a much broader power struggle during the Cold War. It was a battle in a war whose outcome contributed to the determination of the balance of power between both the US and the USSR in the region. It was linked to a much larger struggle.
That is true.


My point, and why I keep making a distinction between the Cold War era and the post-Soviet era, is that with regards to North Korea such an incentive doesn't exist. Which is why I very explicitly asked you what purpose it would serve and whose interests it would advance.The United States obviously sees it in their interest to get rid of North Korea, regardless of what reasons we can come up with. It is clear judging by the sanctions and threats.


Certainly it can't have anything to do with geopolitical influence: North Korea is surrounded by Japan, China and South Korea, two of which are very close allies of the US and the other is its largest trading partner. It can't have much if anything to do with economic influence, either: North Korea has almost nothing to offer in terms of resources or trading prospects.I would not rule out it being about geopolitical influence, the DPRK and the ROK are constantly threatening eachother and the DPRK is a country that has no obedience to the United States. I really do not buy into the idea that the existence of the Soviet Union was the sole reason for US policy being geared towards domination, the US has continued it's domination even after the USSR.

[The Vegan Marxist]

The reason North Korea is not developing is because of the gross income inequality between the North Korean who makes 900-1000 USD per year and Kim Jong Il, who makes six figure sums and lives in a palace. Not to mention the Songun system has destroyed the economy. Trade would help, but this stuff only makes it worse. Besides, they don't even WANT to trade. That goes against Juche.


Yeah, you're absolutely right! Forget all those sanction rulings (http://gowans.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/amnesty-international-botches-blame-for-north-korea%E2%80%99s-crumbling-healthcare/) over DPRK by those that oppose them. What a childish thing to think of, right? :rolleyes:

[KC]

The United States obviously sees it in their interest to get rid of North Korea, regardless of what reasons we can come up with. It is clear judging by the sanctions and threats.

Well, we know that they have put sanctions on North Korea, but their position has wavered over the years from that of open negotiations to that of the Bush administration putting them on the "axis of evil". I don't think that you can conclude that because the US has put sanctions on North Korea that they want to "eliminate" them (whatever that means).


I would not rule out it being about geopolitical influence, the DPRK and the ROK are constantly threatening eachother and the DPRK is a country that is defying obedience to the United States. I really do not buy into the idea that the existence of the Soviet Union was the sole reason for US policy being geared towards domination.

Well sure, the issues between North and South Korea are a large part of why the US still has troops stationed in the South and why it does a bunch of what it does, but I was specifically referring to an invasion and/or attempted overthrow of the North Korean government, which this would not explain. I thought that I made that clear.

[gorillafuck]

Well, we know that they have put sanctions on North Korea, but their position has wavered over the years from that of open negotiations to that of the Bush administration putting them on the "axis of evil". I don't think that you can conclude that because the US has put sanctions on North Korea that they want to "eliminate" them (whatever that means).
I mean they would like a friendly government in place.


Well sure, the issues between North and South Korea are a large part of why the US still has troops stationed in the South and why it does a bunch of what it does, but I was specifically referring to an invasion and/or attempted overthrow of the North Korean government, which this would not explain. I thought that I made that clear.I misunderstood, then.

Why do you think the US is so hostile towards North Korea if they do not want submission or a new government in place of them, might I ask?

[KC]

I mean they would like a friendly government in place.

Well sure, but this is so obvious it doesn't really mean anything. Every government would like other governments to be friendly.


Why do you think the US is so hostile towards North Korea if they do not want submission or a new government in place of them, might I ask?

My entire point is that the US isn't as hostile towards North Korea as the alarmists are claiming. I think that the only reason that North Korea receives the attention that it does is because of the reasons you laid out regarding South Korea/Japan and also because of its nuclear arsenal.

I think that the US is willing to give assistance to South Korea in the form of both military aid on the border and economic assistance in the form of the sanctions. I also think that the US is interested in negotiating with North Korea on dismantling its nuclear arsenal because that represents a very real threat to the interests of both the US and its allies.

However, I think it's absolute lunacy to claim that the US has any interest in invading North Korea or performing any similar act. Because of that, I don't see the North Korean nuclear program as a "deterrent" of "imperialist attack" in any way aside from being able to use it as a bargaining chip and therefore think it's incredibly stupid to defend.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

I think that the US is willing to give assistance to South Korea in the form of both military aid on the border and economic assistance in the form of the sanctions. I also think that the US is interested in negotiating with North Korea on dismantling its nuclear arsenal because that represents a very real threat to the interests of both the US and its allies.

However, I think it's absolute lunacy to claim that the US has any interest in invading North Korea or performing any similar act. Because of that, I don't see the North Korean nuclear program as a "deterrent" of "imperialist attack" in any way aside from being able to use it as a bargaining chip and therefore think it's incredibly stupid to defend.

I doubt that the U.S. at any time in the past has been willing to live up to the decisions negotiated with North Korea on the nuclear issue. I think even some officials admitted that during the mid-late 90's that they would not fulfil their part of the bargain regarding the agreements that had been made with the provision of the light water reactor and all that.

It's not like the U.S. is interested in global nuclear non-proliferation. The U.S. just wants to as much as possible defend its relative national monopoly on nuclear weapons.

I doubt the U.S. would be willing to initiate direct hostilities against North Korea, and that a land-based invasion would definitely out of the question; but by pushing North Korea further and further they might succeed in triggering hostilities between the Korea's, something that would benefit the U.S. influence in the area.

[Wanted Man]

Of course, the whole thing about invasions and nuclear strikes is crazy talk. When the exercise ends, there won't be a nuclear war going on.

What is problematic about the exercise is that it's simply a matter of the US flexing its muscles, showing its military threat in the region. See also: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/7069743.html

[~Spectre]

Imperialism is a terrible thing, but I don't see how anyone can even begin to argue that North Korea should at any point realistically use its nuclear weaponry.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Total war is not a socialist endeavour. socialism has always been on the recieving end of total war. and to engage in total war, you really need more than a hand full of nukes and a crippled population and industrial base(due to sanctions and counter-revolutions of the late 80s, early 90s)

its out of anyones control wheter or not the DPRK or the imperialists use force. we can only speculate and discuss. if the DPRK is willing to use its arsenal to defend itself, then so be it. it is the nature of any state. but, also look at say a federation of communes or something like that. are they just going to let anyone or any state trample all over them? no. they will use any means to defend themselves. it is the nature of collective society to defend itself.
say that federation happened to have a few nukes, and it was the only way to break the aggressor. i have no doubt that it would be considered and possibly done.

and what i mean about DPRK extinction. any remnants of socialism, self determination and sovreignty would be annihilated in a neo-liberal field day. i have no doubt that there would be fascistic crackdowns on any remaining communists in the north.

the us is the one that is causing these problems. their hostilities to communism or any independant state leads to full economic warfare, especially if those states are small and comparatively weak like oh say... cuba or iran. all you hear about in the west is about their totalitarian undemocratic people hating regimes. any contradicting information is seen as looney or just a plant by those states.

probably the most successful counter-propaganda campaings is the one about cuba. there is the cuban 5 movemen, unicef reports favorably, and if you can, you hear of the selfless doctor exportingto anyone who needs it(haiti, venezuela, africa).

the last few years have been hell for the DPRK and yeah they sabre-rattle a lot. but they are not going to just step down with if even one inch of their land is aggressively and militarily violated.


these next few hours will vaguely let us know the events of the coming weeks. if the US follows through with its drills then all hell could break loose, china could say something, DPRK could shy away, or something i cant think of right now.

all i know is that the US and its imperialist lackeys will push DPRK to its tipping point and like takayuki said, trigger hostilities. and guess what, they are going to try their damndest to make the DPRK look like the aggressor. because no one counts sanctions as war. they only look at physical altercantions as war.

its going to look like, and they are going to say the DPRK started it.


EDIT

Of course, the whole thing about invasions and nuclear strikes is crazy talk. When the exercise ends, there won't be a nuclear war going on.

What is problematic about the exercise is that it's simply a matter of the US flexing its muscles, showing its military threat in the region. See also: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90780/91342/7069743.html

i had not read this because i took a bit of time writing this response but as i said this does not have a clear ending and solely look at the use of nuclear weapons is short sighted. this is really a discussion about defense.
i want to thank you for the article you posted by the way.

and theres a 95% chance there wont be war in a few days. looking at that article is also a very articulated way of saying "US, get out of here."
though, unsurprisingly it talks of nothing about solidareity with the DPRK.
anyone who thinks that china, vietnam, laos, cuba, and venezuelawill come to the DPRKs defense in a final showdown epic battle deal are just... well... crazy.

[DunyaGongrenKomRevolyutsi]

to put it simply, this is just a response against the actions the DPRK took when they killed 50 korean navymen by sinking one of their ships. i don't see how these military exercises are "bullshit against the DPRK" when the proactive actions of north korea ultimately caused these drills to occur.

What makes you think it was NK? Wouldn't be the first time the USA have provoked tension between their 'best pal' and NK, they have every reason to provoke NK, China may also have reasons to provoke tension between the two nations despite playing the friend to NK. I am not sure, but it doesn't seem as if NK would have had much reason to torpedo an SK vessel, not now anyway.

[Rusty Shackleford]

The US isn't going to attack North Korea, even if it didn't have a nuclear program. Iraq and Afghanistan prove this.

We don't live in 1900 anymore.

we also dont live in 1+1=2 land either, unfortunately.

just because the us is defeated doenst mean they wont try to do what they want. and act militarily if they are able to drum up support, whether or not they will win.

imperialists act irrationaly, and self-servingly. if they want to, they will move to do it.

the political scene wont really support it right now. but i bet that in november we will see a large right wing shift in politics. 2012 is still up in the air though...

[~Spectre]

imperialists act irrationaly


Really?

[The Vegan Marxist]

Really?

They are of contradiction from us. So if you feel they are rational thinkers, what does that make you, or better yet, the entirety of our way of thinking?

[Rusty Shackleford]

Really?
imperialism today is tied to financial institutions/finance capital. the industrial capitalist is not as powerful as the finance capitalist. when looking at numbers, they really look at the quickest way to maximize profit. it can bite them in the ass easily.
it is not rational. if it were, they would plan it out more carefully.

what acts as a guage for the strength of finace capital is the stockmarket. and that shit is pure anarchy. all based on emotion and all of these predictions and lead nowhere because it fulfils its own prophecy sometmes. it also reacts to any news. that is not rational when it just has reacitons.

[~Spectre]

They are of contradiction from us. So if you feel they are rational thinkers, what does that make you, or better yet, the entirety of our way of thinking?

WTF does the bolded mean?

If anything I think this idea that they are "irrational" is nothing more than just a talking point borrowed from them. It's a convenient bit of rhetoric to say that an official state enemy is irrational because it allows governments to spin their imperialism as "self-defense".

For example, saying that Iran can't be deterred because they are irrational (something not taken seriously by informed people), allows the U.S. to pursue imperial goals of regional hegemony while telling the population it is "self defense" against a threat that can't be deterred.

Imperialism has a definite set of rational motives from the perspective of the ruling bourgeoisie interests.

[this is an invasion]

They are of contradiction from us. So if you feel they are rational thinkers, what does that make you, or better yet, the entirety of our way of thinking?

Every time you post is lol

[~Spectre]

imperialism today is tied to financial institutions/finance capital. the industrial capitalist is not as powerful as the finance capitalist. when looking at numbers, they really look at the quickest way to maximize profit. it can bite them in the ass easily.
it is not rational. if it were, they would plan it out more carefully.

what acts as a guage for the strength of finace capital is the stockmarket. and that shit is pure anarchy. all based on emotion and all of these predictions and lead nowhere because it fulfils its own prophecy sometmes. it also reacts to any news. that is not rational when it just has reacitons.

And what does finance capital gain by engaging with a nuclear state?

[Nachie]

they are of contradiction from us. So if you feel they are rational thinkers, what does that make you, or better yet, the entirety of our way of thinking?

well then, SEND HIM TO THE GULAG!

[Rusty Shackleford]

And what does finance capital gain by engaging with a nuclear state?
what did finance capital gain with the counter-revolutions of 89-91?

fun fact: finance capital was openly engaging with the socialist states of the soviet union and the warsaw pact.

hint: markets.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Every time you post is lol

Says the one who's posted nothing relevantly logical to say throughout this entire thread.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Imperialism has a definite set of rational motives from the perspective of the ruling bourgeoisie interests.

this is true. it has rational motives, and in the poitical arena(which this is) it is rational. even then though it fails to make certain conclusions. iraq and afghanistan were rationally thought out, but with the rationality of a 6th grader.
they thought that since they were so bad ass they could just use small numbers of well armed dudes and bomb everything with their world class airforce.

that failed.

they nearly started a civil war in iraq at their will.
and the same is coming for afghanistan.

economically it is irrational as i made my case earlier.

[~Spectre]

what did finance capital gain with the counter-revolutions of 89-91?

fun fact: finance capital was openly engaging with the socialist states of the soviet union and the warsaw pact.

hint: markets.

They gain no markets through nuclear war. In fact they actually lose quite a bit of them.

Which nuclear states did the U.S. attack?

[this is an invasion]

Says the one who's posted nothing relevantly logical to say throughout this entire thread.

Your ability to construct sentences is breathtaking.

[Rusty Shackleford]

They gain no markets through nuclear war. In fact they actually lose quite a bit of them.

Which nuclear states did the U.S. attack?

i higly doubt there will be a nuclear war. and even then, openly engaging with a state is not just military. a running theme of this discussion is that economic sanctions are a form of warfare.



also, japan is doing quite alright economically for being the only place to have ever been nuked. 2 times...

[~Spectre]

this is true. it has rational motives, and in the poitical arena(which this is) it is rational. even then though it fails to make certain conclusions. iraq and afghanistan were rationally thought out, but with the rationality of a 6th grader.
they thought that since they were so bad ass they could just use small numbers of well armed dudes and bomb everything with their world class airforce.

that failed.

they nearly started a civil war in iraq at their will.
and the same is coming for afghanistan.

economically it is irrational as i made my case earlier.

Iraq turned out very profitable for a large section of the bourgeoisie, and even if it didn't meet their goals, it certainly had a clear cost-benefit. For starters, as a state it was completely defenseless. Same with Afghanistan.

I don't see how you can draw that they will attack North Korea from this.

[it_ain't_me]

Fuck anyone who threatens to use nuclear weapons for anything. Period.

i'm going to nuke you if you don't cut the liberal crap

[Rusty Shackleford]

Iraq turned out very profitable for a large section of the bourgeoisie, and even if it didn't meet their goals, it certainly had a clear cost-benefit. For starters, as a state it was completely defenseless. Same with Afghanistan.

I don't see how you can draw that they will attack North Korea from this.
who was it that made the point that since iraq and afghanistan were political and military blunders that DPRK would not be invaded?
(im not saying it was you, i just dont remember)
anyways. you provided the answe why they have incentive to invade.

i have no idea what they are going to do. no one here knows 100%(well, unless they are an intelligence agent and had the right clearance or whatever:lol:)

just because they were not militarily strong doesnt mean anything when a sizeable portion of the population of each of those countries were still taking up arms.

[this is an invasion]

i'm going to nuke you if you don't cut the liberal crap

Do it. I'll sock you in your throat so quick...

[~Spectre]

i higly doubt there will be a nuclear war. and even then, openly engaging with a state is not just military. a running theme of this discussion is that economic sanctions are a form of warfare.

Sure. That has nothing to do with an actual military attack though, which is the relevant issue when discussing nuclear weaponry.




also, japan is doing quite alright economically for being the only place to have ever been nuked. 2 times...

Japan survived two nuclear bombs that are but tiny fractions of modern bombs, this is true. I'm not sure what that has to do with the desirability for U.S. interests to engage in nuclear war.

I.E. I can shoot a person several times and they can go on to be successful. That doesn't disprove that people will still go out of their way to avoid being shot.

[Q]

To elaborate further on my previous post, you don't think that nuclear weapons are ever useful? Even for defense? What if an alien race came with the intent to destroy earth, but nukes were the only weapon that were effective against them? Would you say "No! Fuck nukes!"


... to say that ... is a tad silly.
Yes, yes I agree.

[~Spectre]

anyways. you provided the answe why they have incentive to invade.




No I didn't. I said that Iraq and Afghanistan were still profitable and that the two nations were virtually defenseless.

North Korea has nuclear weaponry and a shit ton of artillery. I don't see the incentive to attack.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Sure. That has nothing to do with an actual military attack though, which is the relevant issue when discussing nuclear weaponry.




Japan survived two nuclear bombs that are but tiny fractions of modern bombs, this is true. I'm not sure what that has to do with the desirability for U.S. interests to engage in nuclear war.

I.E. I can shoot a person several times and they can go on to be successful. That doesn't disprove that people will still go out of their way to avoid being shot.
it would be extremely unpopular for either side to use a nuclear weapon. the onlly one who has any legitimacy in using one though is the DPRK in this situation.

and yes, i know that those bombs wer ebut a fraction of the power of a modern nuke. but when looking at the amount of money to be made(or lost) in rebuilding a city, it is an enormous sum. and disaster capitalism can find some way to profit from it. but that is not that large of a point to make a case...

the bourgeoisie does not only have economic motives though. they also have political motives. if they didnt, they would be irrelevant right now.
they still maitain a nuclear first strike policy in korea which goes to show they still could use a nuclear weapon aggressively.


also, i apologize for my worse than normal spelling tonight. im on a lap top. these keyboards are atrocious :mad:

[Rusty Shackleford]

No I didn't. I said that Iraq and Afghanistan were still profitable and that the two nations were virtually defenseless.

North Korea has nuclear weaponry and a shit ton of artillery. I don't see the incentive to attack.

WWI was one hell of a war but the capitalists still managed to get a profit from it.
and those werent defenseless nations involved. ohbut this isnt 1900.

the bourgeoisie, like i said, has political motives as well. so long as any semblance or socialism, and unconquered markets(which is very political as well) exist. they will seek to destroy and subjugate it.


EDIT: sorry for double post

[~Spectre]

it would be extremely unpopular for either side to use a nuclear weapon. the onlly one who has any legitimacy in using one though is the DPRK in this situation.

Neither party has any legitimate reason to use a nuclear weapon.



and yes, i know that those bombs wer ebut a fraction of the power of a modern nuke. but when looking at the amount of money to be made(or lost) in rebuilding a city, it is an enormous sum. and disaster capitalism can find some way to profit from it. but that is not that large of a point to make a case...I think you'll actually find that having one of your cities nuked is not very desirable. Just sayin'

[~Spectre]

WWI was one hell of a war but the capitalists still managed to get a profit from it.
and those werent defenseless nations involved. ohbut this isnt 1900.

It was so beneficial to capitalism that the first world nations have rushed back into full scale war with each other? Oh wait they haven't. No nuclear armed state has ever been attacked. There is a reason for this.



the bourgeoisie, like i said, has political motives as well. so long as any semblance or socialism, and unconquered markets(which is very political as well) exist. they will seek to destroy and subjugate it.


North Korea is neither socialist nor in any way a successful model. They have no reason to crush it. In fact, if they can still try to convince people that it is socialist, they have every reason to let it stand, so as to further defame socialism.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Neither party has any legitimate reason to use a nuclear weapon.
im not going to get into this one.



I think you'll actually find that having one of your cities nuked is not very desirable. Just sayin'

the bourgeoisie is not about international solidarity. nations still exist because of this. they are against each other. the bourgeoisie of japan probably didnt want to be nuked, but the american bourgeoisie wanted to nuke japan to end the war. the american bourgeoisie had dominance over the japanese bourgeoisie(how many times do i have to type that damn word) post-war. those two cities are now more populated than before and the economy is still going strong.

a socialist or independent bourgeois nation sure doesnt want its cities to be nuked, but any aggressor wouldnt mind doing it so long as it can dominate it quicker.

[~Spectre]

im not going to get into this one.

No please do.




a socialist or independent bourgeois nation sure doesnt want its cities to be nuked, but any aggressor wouldnt mind doing it so long as it can dominate it quicker.Right but the part that you seem to be missing is that North Korea has nuclear weaponry. Besides every other possible disincentive for attacking North Korea, the possibility of a U.S. ally, or more importantly the U.S. being hit by a nuclear strike, FAR outweighs every other possible consideration.

The idea that a cabal of financiers are down with the fact that several allied nations and possibly the United States would get nuked, is the type of looney shit that people like to satirize the left for.

[Sasha]

Kim jong ill and his clique might be batshit crazy but they are anything but suicidal. Their only intrest is staying in power, nuking or even convientaly atacking south korea/US = war they are going to loose = losing power.
they wont do it unless an full scale invasion in north korea is lauched.

[Jazzhands]

The reason I brought up the Cuban Missile Crisis for those of you who don't know how to read is how close we came to nuclear war. Cuba and the US almost got themselves wiped off the map. The nukes didn't work as a deterrent because we almost blew ourselves up. I've only ever seen batshit reactionary military officials from the US ever argue in favor of nuclear war. I can't believe some of you people.

[mountainfire]

Kim jong ill and his clique might be batshit crazy

I don't think it's very helpful to try and understand the internal politics or foreign relations of the DPRK in terms of the alleged psychological problems of the national leadership. At best, it entails a liberal conception of politics which places emphasis on the thoughts and desires of individuals as the determining factor rather than the nature of class interests, and at worst, it signifies a combination of ableism and racism, drawing on the orientalist notion that "Western" countries are uniquely rational and pragmatic, and that "non-Western" nations are liable to act in ways that cannot be predicted or subject to rational scrutiny. If you seek to understand the activity of the government in terms of the interests of the ruling bureaucracy, then things become a lot easier to grasp - the rhetoric we see being produced by the DPRK at the moment needs to be understood in the context of a renewed economic crisis and growing symptoms of social unrest (whilst always accounting for the problems associated with refugee reports, which constitute the main source of non-official information from inside the country, and, for a number of reasons, cannot be uncritically accepted as an accurate picture of the current state of North Korean society) not least in the wake of the recent currency reform, and as a series of attempts to retain ideological hegemony over the population when confronted with challenges from below.

[Stand Your Ground]

To elaborate further on my previous post, you don't think that nuclear weapons are ever useful? Even for defense? What if an alien race came with the intent to destroy earth, but nukes were the only weapon that were effective against them? Would you say "No! Fuck nukes!"


I mean, I understand that nuclear weapons are pretty heinous, but to say that anyone even voicing a threat of nuclear defense should fuck off is a tad silly.

Please explain your position rather than make yourself out to be some sort of anti-nuclear energy hippie
Civilian casualties should be avoided as much as possible, nukes would kill hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. Call us hippies if you like but nukes are NO GOOD.

[Hiratsuka]

Enjoy Capitalism! At long last, advertisement billboards on the motorway to Kaesong. Neon sparkles and night clubs. Oh, how the place has improved, now there's some insane psychopath Myung-bak instead of Kim Jong-il, wonderful!

It always amazes me how some leftists will defend a shitty existance for other peoples just because the government these other peoples live under identifies itself as socialist. Don't act pedantic about what I said.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

It always amazes me how some leftists will defend a shitty existance for other peoples just because the government these other peoples live under identifies itself as socialist. Don't act pedantic about what I said.

One shitty existence and another shitty existence. Big difference.

[empiredestoryer]

the north korea needs to get rid of the dear leader and south korea needs to get rid of the usa and problem solved

[scarletghoul]

Oh no a country threatens to defend itself :rolleyes:

[scarletghoul]

the north korea needs to get rid of the dear leader and south korea needs to get rid of the usa and problem solved
Sure, probably many Koreans would also agree with that. But the question is how to do it. By far the primary contradiction is that between US capitalism-imperialism and the Korean people. Defeating the US must be the focus right now. Only after the imperialist pigs are driven out of Korea and the country reunified should we start talking about the overthrow of the DPRK leaders.. DPRK is already socialist if you look at the economic structure and general workers' control, its just the leadership is a little off.. A coup with the correct ideology is all it would take to get the country on the right course. But for now the main problem is the fight against imperialism, and we should all support the DPRK as the only independent government of the Korean people.

[Wanted Man]

Some more about the Cheonan case: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/23/world/la-fg-korea-torpedo-20100724

[Hiratsuka]

One shitty existence and another shitty existence. Big difference.


Because South Koreans are clearly living at the same level as North Koreans. There's just more flashy billboards in the South. And something called food.

States like Cuba and Iran, who are just as hostile to the US, don't spend near as much on their military. The North Korean leadership is atrocious if it's unwilling to recognize that almost all of their people could use that money for basic necessities. Imperialism is not an excuse for neglecting your own people when it's possible to do better. South Korea and the United States should also be ashamed for their large military expenditures, and I'm not excusing imperialism, but both sides have something to learn.

[Comrade Wolfie's Very Nearly Banned Adventures]

I really don't get people who defend the North Korean state on Revleft, always seems really odd to me.

[Chimurenga.]

I really don't get people who defend the North Korean state on Revleft, always seems really odd to me.

Because they are a Socialist state constantly getting attacked by Western imperialism. I mean, HELLO? It's fucking funny how "internationalism" quickly turns to siding with imperialism at the drop of a goddamn hat. It's fucking funny to see "Leftists" swallow a simple news article from the American Financial Review. Some of the posts in here, I would've thought that I've been talking to an American nut at the height of the Cold War.

How silly of me to think that this was a Leftist forum..:laugh:

[scarletghoul]

I really don't get people who defend the North Korean state on Revleft, always seems really odd to me.
I remember the first time I read an article with a pro-North Korea slant, and I was kinda shocked. "Wow, this is really weird. Didn't know anyone actually defended that regime o_O" That was a few years ago. Since then Ive read some stuff on the history of Korea, its current situation, and North Korean society/economy/ideology, from a variety of sources. I evaluated the info, the sources, and so on, and now I am a supporter of North Korea.

In other words, to understand why we support DPRK it is important to understand Korea itself, to get the objective facts, and to seek truth from facts.

[Sasha]

"objective facts, seek truth from facts"

:blink:

the ability of anti-impies to self delusion never seizes to amaze me.

[mountainfire]

By far the primary contradiction is that between US capitalism-imperialism and the Korean people

What is "the Korean people" meant to signify here? The implication behind that statement seems to be that there is something called the Korean people, which could mean anything from all the people who share a Korean cultural identity to all the people who are citizens of one of the two governments on the Korean peninsula, and that all the individuals who belong to that category have certain basic interests in common, including an interest in resisting US imperialism. In other words, you seem to be suggesting that you can treat the question of imperialism in isolation from the class divisions and antagonisms that exist within the ROK and DPRK.

A close examination of recent history shows that this is not the case and that a persistent struggle against imperialism is bound up with the so-called domestic class struggle, because even the ruling class of the DPRK has been making concessions to imperialism under the pressure of international isolation and is threatening to open up the whole of the peninsula to imperialist penetration - consider the fact that, on its own website, under the business section, the government boasts of having the lower labour costs in Asia, and that, in practical terms, there have been moves towards the setting up of SEZs, which paved the way for the elimination of the gains of the Chinese Revolution in the PRC. What this means is that the gains of the Korean Revolution are being eroded as the ruling class seeks to strengthen its privileges and that the strength of imperialism in the region depends at least in part on the ability of the working class to challenge the ruling bureaucracy. The situation in the southern half of the peninsula is even more stark, as the ruling class has never maintained an anti-imperialist posture of any kind for any length of time and the presence of US imperialism is almost total, as represented by the number of troops stationed there and the military exercises that are currently being conducted.

There is no "primary contradiction", class struggle within Korea is inseparable from the struggle against imperialism. The inability of capitalist ruling classes to defend the historic gains of bourgeois-democratic revolutions and resist imperialism is one of the basic lessons of the twentieth century and the theory of permanent revolution.


the ability of anti-impies to self delusion never seizes to amaze me.

Are you going to defend your allegation that the behavior of the North Korean ruling class can be explained entirely or primarily in terms of its leaders having mental illnesses, and that they are actually suffering from dementia, as you believe? I would think that, as socialists, we would find class interests more important as explanatory variables, not the psychology of individuals.

[Comrade Wolfie's Very Nearly Banned Adventures]

Because they are a Socialist state constantly getting attacked by Western imperialism. I mean, HELLO? It's fucking funny how "internationalism" quickly turns to siding with imperialism at the drop of a goddamn hat. It's fucking funny to see "Leftists" swallow a simple news article from the American Financial Review. Some of the posts in here, I would've thought that I've been talking to an American nut at the height of the Cold War.

How silly of me to think that this was a Leftist forum..:laugh:

I doubt DPRK is 'Socalist', unless by that you mean something very diffrent to me, also, by using 'I mean, HELLO?' my brain read your post as if you were somekind of tween Bieber fan.


Since then Ive read some stuff on the history of Korea, its current situation, and North Korean society/economy/ideology, from a variety of sources. I evaluated the info, the sources, and so on, and now I am a supporter of North Korea.

In other words, to understand why we support DPRK it is important to understand Korea itself, to get the objective facts, and to seek truth from facts.

You cannot find objective sources, and any facts about the DPRK would be dubious due to its isolationist nature.

[Delenda Carthago]

Can anyone tell me why are you supporting the socialfascists of North Korea?

[Chimurenga.]

I doubt DPRK is 'Socalist', unless by that you mean something very diffrent to me, also, by using 'I mean, HELLO?' my brain read your post as if you were somekind of tween Bieber fan.

The DPRK is very much Socialist. From economy to their unions to their practice of democratic centralism.

I'll just ignore the last bit.


You cannot find objective sources, and any facts about the DPRK would be dubious due to its isolationist nature.

This is absolute bullshit.


Can anyone tell me why are you supporting the socialfascists of North Korea?

:lol:

'Splain, Lucy. 'Splain.

[Comrade Wolfie's Very Nearly Banned Adventures]

The DPRK is very much Socialist. From economy to their unions to their practice of democratic centralism.

Could I have some sources?




This is absolute bullshit.

No, I doubt you can be objective unless you are a vulcan.

[Chimurenga.]

Could I have some sources?

Sure. You got it.

http://www.nlg.org/korea/2003delegation_report.html


As in Cuba and other one party socialist societies, North Korea has a system of direct democracy in which elections are held for local peoples committees, district and provincial committees and to the Supreme People’s Assembly. The absence of other parties is not considered a failing, as the entire society is socialist. The question of multiple parties did not even seem understandable to those we spoke to. The delegation questioned whether within that system, there is in fact more participatory democracy than in the American federal system or the parliamentary system in which democracy ceases to operate once the elections are over. It is more circular, with local committees sending up to the next level requests, complaints and so on and so on up to the national level with discussion, at least in theory at these levels and then feedback to the local level until an agreement is reached based on resources available and circumstances.
Labor unions exist but strikes are almost unknown as the government consults with the unions and managers on all aspects of work including wages and work conditions on what seemed to be a consensual basis.
Miners and steel factory workers—those whose labor is most dangerous and difficult -- earn more than lawyers or doctors. The professionals take their reward out of the mental satisfaction of the job itself and the prestige which comes with it. So, unlike our society, it is those who work the hardest physically who make the most. Workers are encouraged to speak out if they have ideas on improving things and committees exist at the shop levels for input.http://www.kcckp.net/en/great/


In the DPRK the rights and duties of citizens are based on the collectivist principle, “One for all and all for one.” The Socialist Constitution of the DPRK specifies that the state effectively guarantees all the conditions for the democratic rights and liberties as well as the material and cultural well-being of the citizens.
All the citizens who have reached 17 years of age have the right to elect and to be elected, irrespective of sex, race, occupation, length of residence, property status, education, party affiliation, political views and religion. They also have freedom of speech, the press, assembly, demonstration and association, freedom of religious beliefs and they are entitled to submit complaints and petitions.
The workers, peasants and other working people, as masters of power, participate in state administration and freely engage in socio-political activities in political parties and public organizations. The working people have the right to work and rest, the right to education and free medical care and freedom of scientific, literary and artistic pursuits. Women are accorded equal social status and rights with men. The state affords special privilege to mothers and children.
The state property and property of social and cooperative organizations of the means of production are the economic foundation of the Republic. The state property belongs to the entire people. The state increases the role of the property of the entire people in leading the cooperative property so as to combine the two forms of property in an organic way, consolidates and develops the socialist cooperative economic system by improving the guidance and management of the cooperative economy and gradually transforms the property of cooperative organizations into the property of the entire people on the voluntary will of all their members.
In the DPRK the steadily increasing material wealth of society is geared entirely to promoting the well-being of the working people. Under the socialist system where the people are the masters of power and the means of production, it is the supreme principle of the state activities to steadily improve their material and cultural standards. The Republic provides all working people with every opportunity to obtain food, clothing and housing.
The Republic firmly adheres to the principle of properly combining political guidance with economic and technological guidance, the unified guidance of the state with the creativeness of each unit, the unified direction with democracy, and political and moral incentives with material incentive in the guidance and management of the socialist economy.http://www.kcckp.net/en/great/political.php <- For Organizations; Parties, unions, etc.

The elected chairman of the main trade union, The General Federation of Trade Unions of Korea, is a member of the Supreme Peoples Assembly, the highest organ of state power. So any complaints, any needs whatsoever are taken to the top and addressed.

Need anymore?

[mountainfire]

The DPRK is very much Socialist

In what respects?


This is absolute bullshit.

Actually, this is an important issue. Most of the narratives that are presented of North Korea to the general public in Europe and North America take the form of refugee accounts which are often given a highly sensationalist form in order to satisfy their demands of the audiences, but within academia there is a recognition that these accounts suffer from serious defects, considered in terms of their usefulness as sources - it is recognized in a recent article, for example, entitled 'Rhetoric versus Reality for the Women of North Korea: Mothers of the Revolution', that a disproportionate number of refugees come from North Hamgyong province, which suffered particularly harshly during the period following the collapse of the Soviet Union, that refugees are by definition only those dissatisfied enough to leave the country, that accounts in the South Korean and international media have often been given cash in exchange for their stories, and that this may have led refugees to embellish their stories in order to sustain demand, and that many refugees being illegal immigrants in northern China also impacts how they relay their experiences, due to a desire to avoid attracting the authorities. These observations have also been made by other academics and what they mean is that it really is difficult to study North Korea in an objective way, especially when the additional and distinct defects of other sources, such as government documents and the accounts of visiting supporters, are considered, and insofar as any period of history or contemporary society can ever be studied objectively, due to the need for historians to limit their sources, and the potential for sources to be interpreted in different ways.

To say that facts concerning North Korea are contested or non-existent is not an excuse for not having a firm stand against imperialism, it's a warning against uncritical support.

EDIT: 'proletarianrevolution', don't you think there's the potential for government and supporter accounts to present some facts but not others and to make claims that are highly rhetorical in nature? I don't see what you're trying to say with the sources you just posted.

[Chimurenga.]

Most of the narratives that are presented of North Korea to the general public in Europe and North America take the form of refugee accounts which are often given a highly sensationalist form in order to satisfy their demands of the audiences, but within academia there is a recognition that these accounts suffer from serious defects, considered in terms of their usefulness as sources - it is recognized in a recent article, for example, entitled 'Rhetoric versus Reality for the Women of North Korea: Mothers of the Revolution', that a disproportionate number of refugees come from North Hamgyong province, which suffered particularly harshly during the period following the collapse of the Soviet Union, that refugees are by definition only those dissatisfied enough to leave the country, that accounts in the South Korean and international media have often been given cash in exchange for their stories, and that this may have led refugees to embellish their stories in order to sustain demand, and that many refugees being illegal immigrants in northern China also impacts how they relay their experiences, due to a desire to avoid attracting the authorities.

Most, if not all, of this certainly seems to be true as I'm finding out.


These observations have also been made by other academics and what they mean is that it really is difficult to study North Korea in an objective way, especially when the additional and distinct defects of other sources, such as government documents and the accounts of visiting supporters, are considered, and insofar as any period of history or contemporary society can ever be studied objectively, due to the need for historians to limit their sources, and the potential for sources to be interpreted in different ways.

Yet authors like Bruce Cumings (who I'm reading right now actually) or Tim Beal continue to produce objective accounts about their experiences and knowledge about the DPRK. I'm pretty sure after you hear the same story a thousand times, you develop the ability to sift through the bullshit.


'proletarianrevolution', don't you think there's the potential for government and supporter accounts to present some facts but not others and to make claims that are highly rhetorical in nature? I don't see what you're trying to say with the sources you just posted.

From Anna Louise Strong's pamphlet, titled "In North Korea: First Eye-Witness Report" from 1949:


"Few facts about Korea are allowed to reach the American people. Information from South Korea is heavily censored by General MacArthur's Tokyo headquarters, while facts from North Korea never appear at all."It's not that the North Korean government has NEVER given facts, it's just that the rest of the world will probably never hear about it. This conscious silencing of the DPRK existed in 1949 and it still exists in 2010.

[Soviet dude]

The two best books I suggest everyone read about the DPRK are Bruce Cumings' "North Korea: Another Country" and Martin Hart-Landsberg's "Korea: Division, Reunification, and U.S. Foreign Policy." These books, while not written by people who are Marxist-Leninists, nonetheless contain a high amount of truth. If people want to begin their journey of seeking truth from facts regarding the DPRK, I would suggest you begin there. What you will find is a shockingly different view of this society than what is spewed in the mass media (which is, frankly, a racist, cartoonish image only fit for children to believe).

North Korea is very much a socialist country, and one which has probably more faithfully held to the traditional images of what socialism is all about than any other country that has gone down that road. Millions of their people were wiped out in a monstrous imperialist onslaught. They navigated the tricky waters of the Sino-Soviet split (which promoted them to develop the idea of Juche in the first place), and helped in liberation struggles like the Cubans did. The Cubans actually modeled their political system after the North Koreans, and this is when they were more than familiar with both China and the USSR's way of interacting with the masses.

In my mind, the DPRK unquestionably deserves not only our full-fledged support against imperialist aggression, but is deserves our admiration as well. I honestly think that most of the so-called Left displays a horrendous and ugly racism when it comes to Asian socialism in general, and in particular the DPRK. It doesn't appear to me opposition is based on any set of coherent ideological orientation or historical knowledge of Korean socialism, but is instead based on a Tray Parker and Matt Stone understanding of reality; that is to say, a thoroughly racist and reactionary caricature of a leader.

The bourgeoisie has long understood the usefulness of demonization of leaders. Probably the most clear articulation of this strategy by a bourgeois thinktank I've ever read comes from the Hoover Institute. The essay "Personalizing Crises" talks about the success of this particular strategy in regards to the destruction of Yugoslavia via the demonization of Milosevic.

http://www.hoover.org/publications/monographs/27152

It is a fascinating and clear articulation of what it means to the imperialist interests of the US to demonize a leader.

I would further stipulate that those on the Left who participated in this with Yugoslavia, the Cruise Missile Left, actually played a significant role in aiding the destruction of that country. The Left that also partook in or were passive against the demonization of Saddam Hussein also must take responsibility for the barbaric devastation that has destroyed that country. You will also be guilty if and when the US tries to bring the people of Korea to their knees by force, and whatever aftermath this creates.

Even if you're not a Marxist, I think most of on the Left understand the masses make history, and not "Great Men." The people of Korea have made their own history, a history stained in blood at the hands of US and Japanese imperialism. The South Korean Left are some of the most militant Left in the world, and the masses of South Korea basically reject the vast majority of propaganda aimed at their brothers and sisters in the North. The masses of South Korea overwhelmingly rejected the idea that the DPRK sank the Cheonan, which is what caused the electoral defeat of the US puppet regime there. The people of Korea overwhelmingly want Reunification of their country, and not one like happened with Germany.

MacArthur once commented that out of any people on Earth, Koreans would take to communism more naturally than any other. This was a reflection of the vast support of the masses towards the communist guerrilla fighters, and their need for self-determination against US and Japanese imperialism. MacArthur's comments are just as true today as they were 60 years ago. The RoK is terrified of their own people and terrified of what would happen to them if Korea was unified. Supporting the DPRK is supporting the hopes and aspirations the vast majority of Koreans.

I hope one day the Left in America will see the racist, cartoonish picture of the DPRK painted by the media for what is really is: crass propaganda. I fear for the world if we do not.

[LimitedIdeology]

Ah, well, what a lovely thread to come back to.

First, people who believe that the sinking of the South Korean warship was due to some type of "mine" have their heads stuck up so far up their asses it's incredible. Have any of you actually talked to anyone with any expertise on the subject? It wasn't a mine. Either actually get training in that sort of thing or talk to someone who does, but don't spout bullshit just so it goes along with your preconceptions.

Second, just like it floors me that some people still champion Stalin, it makes my mouth hang to know that not only people support NK, but think it's some type of socialist paradise. For those who do, one can buy a NK passport from a Chinese Embassy for a few hundred dollars. Visit and give me your impressions. Tell me what you find appealing in millions of people starving while their "Dear Leader" has opulence beyond imagining? Isn't that the very opposite of socialism? The workers don't run North Korea. Their own oligarchy does.

[Chimurenga.]

Second, just like it floors me that some people still champion Stalin, it makes my mouth hang to know that not only people support NK, but think it's some type of socialist paradise.

Stalin has never been mentioned once, nice strawman. Also no one has said ANYTHING about the DPRK being a "socialist paradise".


For those who do, one can buy a NK passport from a Chinese Embassy for a few hundred dollars. Visit and give me your impressions.

Self indulgent trip vs dedicating my money (that I don't even have for such a trip) to build a movement in my area. Hmm.. I choose the latter.


Tell me what you find appealing in millions of people starving while their "Dear Leader" has opulence beyond imagining? Isn't that the very opposite of socialism? The workers don't run North Korea. Their own oligarchy does.

I've given sources that prove the contrary on all of this.

[Wanted Man]

Second, just like it floors me that some people still champion Stalin, it makes my mouth hang to know that not only people support NK, but think it's some type of socialist paradise.

Well, then I'm sure you can give links to the dozens of posts where people supposedly say this.

[Rusty Shackleford]

the DPRK has nukes. get used to it. The Soviet Union had nukes. get used to it. China has nukes. get used to it. the US has nukes. get used to it. Fucking Israel has nukes... get used to it. we have no power to take those nukes from them. when the political climate is in favor of disarmament can we snatch these weapons from their hands. yes, im against nuke. i find them to be terrible weapons but they are a reality. im not championing their use at all.

Now, in a situation like that of Korea, the chance of the use of nukes is pretty high. get used to it. they are there for a reason. not just deterrence but for actual use if necessary. if you say "oh its ok if people bomb each other and shoot each other, but heaven forbid they use a nuke!" is liberal and stupid. idealizing warfare is foolish. im not saying i dont care if civilians get killed(who are workers and i care about just as much) but people die. when war happens, idealism dies.

also, that crap about the DPRK not being able to feed its people. well sure, what the fuck do you think happens in a colder climate and with almost 6 decades of hostilities with the strongest imperial nation. Cuba managed to feed its people but at serious cost. during its special period, there was a shortage of almost everything. but they also were on a very very fertile island. without that centralized government, i have no doubt wed be hearing about starvation across the island.

War is something that the imperialists and the DPRK will think very hard about. it is a huge political gamble. The imperialists are trying their best to topple the DPRK without actually bombing it. but it will come to bombing. maybe in a decade, or maybe in a year.

As for the DPRK being socialist, well... let me just say i will defend them like i will defend Iran a nearly isolated nation seeking an independent course apart from imperialism. i have not studied enough to have a discussion about socialism in the DPRK.

Korea is an example of strong self defense, and also the result of strong imperialist maneuvers. they still exist. but all these attacks by the imperialists have caused real social and economic problems in the country. and no, they are not ideal.

[Soviet dude]

First, people who believe that the sinking of the South Korean warship was due to some type of "mine" have their heads stuck up so far up their asses it's incredible. Have any of you actually talked to anyone with any expertise on the subject? It wasn't a mine. Either actually get training in that sort of thing or talk to someone who does, but don't spout bullshit just so it goes along with your preconceptions.

This is not helpful in the slightest. Independent Russian investigators concluded that there was no definitive proof that the Cheonan was sunk by a a North Korean bubble jet torpedo (of which there is no proof they even have this technology). Source (http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/429769.html).

In fact, the Chinese have basically said they also believe it was an American mine, of the rising mine variety. This theory actually makes a whole lot more sense than mysterious, undetectable North Korean submarines firing undetectable torpedos that have technology that no one ever speculated they could have until now.


Second, just like it floors me that some people still champion Stalin, it makes my mouth hang to know that not only people support NK, but think it's some type of socialist paradise. For those who do, one can buy a NK passport from a Chinese Embassy for a few hundred dollars. Visit and give me your impressions.

I plan to go one day, and I'll make a report. In the mean time, we can all read the most recent reports I know of, that of Nepalese Maoists.

http://marxistleninist.wordpress.com/2008/11/30/cpn-maoist-on-juche-in-dprk


Tell me what you find appealing in millions of people starving while their "Dear Leader" has opulence beyond imagining?

Millions of people are not starving in the DPRK and there isn't any credible evidence Kim Jong-Il lives a life a luxury. This is a racist media caricature and nothing more.

[LimitedIdeology]

Stalin has never been mentioned once, nice strawman. Also no one has said ANYTHING about the DPRK being a "socialist paradise".



Self indulgent trip vs dedicating my money (that I don't even have for such a trip) to build a movement in my area. Hmm.. I choose the latter.



I've given sources that prove the contrary on all of this.
I never used Stalin as a strawman. I was drawing a comparison with my reactions to the two subject. Nowhere was I seeking to do anything else.

What do you call this:
"North Korea is very much a socialist country, and one which has probably more faithfully held to the traditional images of what socialism is all about than any other country that has gone down that road. Millions of their people were wiped out in a monstrous imperialist onslaught. They navigated the tricky waters of the Sino-Soviet split (which promoted them to develop the idea of Juche in the first place), and helped in liberation struggles like the Cubans did. The Cubans actually modeled their political system after the North Koreans, and this is when they were more than familiar with both China and the USSR's way of interacting with the masses.

In my mind, the DPRK unquestionably deserves not only our full-fledged support against imperialist aggression, but is deserves our admiration as well. "

I won't deny to using hyperbole, but it isn't an extreme hyperbole.

Your sources consist of an official organ of the North Korean government and a laughably biased account of a group of lawyers. Sorry if I remain unconvinced.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

The argument about starving Koreans is ridiculous. The reason we Brits and Americans aren't starving is because we have raped and pillaged nations for hundreds of years, taking their resources and controlling them into the hands of a few, while the people in these countries live without water.

NK is a tiny country that does not have imperialistic interests, they aren't starving because Kim Jong-Il eats all of the food, they starve because they are completely isolated and shunned away as some joke nation.

It is a sad truth that the left also shun the people of NK as some kind of joke. The people there are oppressed more by imperialistic powers than they are by "dear leader".

[LimitedIdeology]

Again, using a marxist-leninist group as proof of the luxuries of Korean existence isn't all that convincing. I'm reminded of Sarte's visit to the USSR and flat out lying about what he saw in order to support his ideology.

Do you realize North Korea asked for aid from the UN during the great famine at the end of the 20th century? Pretty damning to me.

In the case of the Mine, it gets into a "he said she said" type deal. I presume that you have no expertise in naval munitions, so why are you so eager to believe Russian and Chinese accounts and discard US accounts?

*Had to delete your post in order to reply. No idea why :/

[LimitedIdeology]

The argument about starving Koreans is ridiculous. The reason we Brits and Americans aren't starving is because we have raped and pillaged nations for hundreds of years, taking their resources and controlling them into the hands of a few, while the people in these countries live without water.

NK is a tiny country that does not have imperialistic interests, they aren't starving because Kim Jong-Il eats all of the food, they starve because they are completely isolated and shunned away as some joke nation.

It is a sad truth that the left also shun the people of NK as some kind of joke. The people there are oppressed more by imperialistic powers than they are by "dear leader".

It isn't imperial interest that sends people to political internment camps, now is it?

[Rusty Shackleford]

On the subject of the Cheonan
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/23/world/la-fg-korea-torpedo-20100724


But challenges to the official version of events are coming from an unlikely place: within South Korea.
Armed with dossiers of their own scientific studies and bolstered by conspiracy theories, critics dispute the findings announced May 20 by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, which pointed a finger at Pyongyang.
They also question why Lee made the announcement nearly two months after the ship's sinking, on the very day campaigning opened for fiercely contested local elections. Many accuse the conservative leader of using the deaths of 46 sailors to stir up anti-communist sentiment and sway the vote.
The critics, mostly but not all from the opposition, say it is unlikely that the impoverished North Korean regime could have pulled off a perfectly executed hit against a superior military power, sneaking a submarine into the area and slipping away without detection. They also wonder whether the evidence of a torpedo attack was misinterpreted, or even fabricated.
"I couldn't find the slightest sign of an explosion," said Shin Sang-chul, a former shipbuilding executive-turned-investigative journalist. "The sailors drowned to death. Their bodies were clean. We didn't even find dead fish in the sea."
Shin, who was appointed to the joint investigative panel by the opposition Democratic Party, inspected the damaged ship with other experts April 30. He was removed from the panel shortly afterward, he says, because he had voiced a contrary opinion: that the Cheonan hit ground in the shallow water off the Korean peninsula and then damaged its hull trying to get off a reef.
"It was the equivalent of a simple traffic accident at sea," Shin said.
The Defense Ministry said in a statement that Shin was removed because of "limited expertise, a lack of objectivity and scientific logic," and that he was "intentionally creating public mistrust" in the investigation.


now in this article its not pro DPRK at all. it is actually insulting them as an inferior power. but it shows that even in the ROK there is not 100% support for the report by the "international" commission that did the research on the incident.


it even goest so far to claim it was a "traffic accident at sea"

[Soviet dude]

Again, using a marxist-leninist group as proof of the luxuries of Korean existence isn't all that convincing.As I said in my original post, if you want to seek truth from facts on the DPRK, the best place to start is the Cumings and Hart-Landsberg books I mentioned. They are scholars who are not Marxist-Leninists, but do strive hard to be as objective as possible about the DPRK. They also paint a completely different image of the DPRK than the one painted by the propaganda organs of the imperialist nations.


Do you realize North Korea asked for aid from the UN during the great famine at the end of the 20th century? Pretty damning to meWhy? It says to me the leadership of the DPRK was aware they had a massive crisis on their hands, and did the only responsible thing they could do for their people; reach out to the international community for help. The organizations that were there on ground were surprised just how seriously the government took the mid-90s crisis, which is vastly different than you typically found in colonial countries.


Do you realize North Korea asked for aid from the UN during the great famine at the end of the 20th century? Pretty damning to me.For one, the US government basically lies about anything like this for their own political purposes. An example that is also currently in the news is the frameup of Lockerbie bomber. The US government has always basically known who the real culprit is, but they lied to scapegoat Libya for political purposes. The US simply made up the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and has admitted as much in recent years. The government knowingly went along with Iraqi Incubator Hoax to go after Saddam, made up all kinds of lies regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction the second time around, etc. The list goes on and on, and I'm sure anyone here could endlessly add to this list.

A better question is, why does the Left even for a second believe anything that comes out of mouths of our leaders, who are mass murderers who would gladly lie about anything and everything to further the imperialist ambitions of the capitalist class?

[Chimurenga.]

Your sources consist of an official organ of the North Korean government and a laughably biased account of a group of lawyers. Sorry if I remain unconvinced.

That's your choice. Maybe you're better off siding with The New York Times, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, or The Seoul Times. I mean, these publications have done great things for the Left and in no way tailor to a ruling class bias.

I'll continue to source the government of a socialist country and a legitimate report done by non-Marxist lawyers without a single care in this world of what "convinces" you or not.

[danyboy27]

pretty usual thing going on.

1.the us make an agressive move

2.North korea make a solid threat.

3.if us is affraid, go to 4, if not, go to 5.

4.the U.S governement stop it exercise and start to negociate some bullshit deal about Oil or wheat trade. go to step 6

5. north korea ask for bullshit negociation about Oil and wheat. go to step 7

6. some deal are made, tension lower for a couple of month, go to step 1.

7.the us refuse and tell north korea is a bully, go to step 2.

[Outinleftfield]

Kim Jung Il knows if he bombs the US he'll get bombed right back. This is posturing.

I doubt that N Korea sunk the boat. This same story's happened before. The Maine, the Gulf of Tonkin. I doubt in this case this will lead to war. War with N Korea would mean the US would get bombed for sure. The US would win but the damage would destroy the president's reputation.

In the end this is just more fuel for N Korea, S Korea, and the US to feed their people as propaganda.

[LimitedIdeology]

As I said in my original post, if you want to seek truth from facts on the DPRK, the best place to start is the Cumings and Hart-Landsberg books I mentioned. They are scholars who are not Marxist-Leninists, but do strive hard to be as objective as possible about the DPRK. They also paint a completely different image of the DPRK than the one painted by the propaganda organs of the imperialist nations.

Why? It says to me the leadership of the DPRK was aware they had a massive crisis on their hands, and did the only responsible thing they could do for their people; reach out to the international community for help. The organizations that were there on ground were surprised just how seriously the government took the mid-90s crisis, which is vastly different than you typically found in colonial countries.

For one, the US government basically lies about anything like this for their own political purposes. An example that is also currently in the news is the frameup of Lockerbie bomber. The US government has always basically known who the real culprit is, but they lied to scapegoat Libya for political purposes. The US simply made up the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and has admitted as much in recent years. The government knowingly went along with Iraqi Incubator Hoax to go after Saddam, made up all kinds of lies regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction the second time around, etc. The list goes on and on, and I'm sure anyone here could endlessly add to this list.

A better question is, why does the Left even for a second believe anything that comes out of mouths of our leaders, who are mass murderers who would gladly lie about anything and everything to further the imperialist ambitions of the capitalist class?

So finally, someone admits NK did have a massive famine on their hands, despite people saying "OMG THEY HAD NO FAMINE".

Also, if everything that comes out of the US is crap, what makes anyone think that North Korea, or China, or Russia are any better?

[danyboy27]

well, its still plausible that the north korean did it, this zone is somehow contested, and there are regular patrol on both side, accidental fuck up can and will happen again.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

So finally, someone admits NK did have a massive famine on their hands, despite people saying "OMG THEY HAD NO FAMINE".

Also, if everything that comes out of the US is crap, what makes anyone think that North Korea, or China, or Russia are any better?
I think you're pulling a lot of this out of your ass for the sake of argument. I haven't seen one post that says that there wasn't a famine in NK, and if there are one or two, they don't represent the bulk of the views of people on this forum. There was a famine in NK, but was that completely the fault of Kim Jong-Il and his little clique?

As for your second point, that is nothing but childish. No one is using purely NK, Russian or Chinese sources. You have ignored one poster's reference to books by objective scholars, that have no political leanings. Its not as if everyone here is quoting straight from the Nk news sources. But it is worth pointing out that China have been very critical of NK as have the Russian press, but they do defend NK in some instances. The US and SK right wing media outlets have only had the harshest criticisms of NK, never objective in any way. How can we, as leftists, seriously take all of that into account?

[LimitedIdeology]

I think you're pulling a lot of this out of your ass for the sake of argument. I haven't seen one post that says that there wasn't a famine in NK, and if there are one or two, they don't represent the bulk of the views of people on this forum. There was a famine in NK, but was that completely the fault of Kim Jong-Il and his little clique?

As for your second point, that is nothing but childish. No one is using purely NK, Russian or Chinese sources. You have ignored one poster's reference to books by objective scholars, that have no political leanings. Its not as if everyone here is quoting straight from the Nk news sources. But it is worth pointing out that China have been very critical of NK as have the Russian press, but they do defend NK in some instances. The US and SK right wing media outlets have only had the harshest criticisms of NK, never objective in any way. How can we, as leftists, seriously take all of that into account?
proletarianrevolution said he could dispute NK having a famine while it's "Dear Leader" lived in wealth.

I never understood how one could call a nation where a select elite live in enormous wealth and the rest in poverty and starvation "socialist".

My point is, some people on here seem to ignore legitimate criticisms of North Korea while accepting any positive (whether valid or not) attributes anyone lays upon them.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

proletarianrevolution said he could dispute NK having a famine while it's "Dear Leader" lived in wealth.

I never understood how one could call a nation where a select elite live in enormous wealth and the rest in poverty and starvation "socialist".

My point is, some people on here seem to ignore legitimate criticisms of North Korea while accepting any positive (whether valid or not) attributes anyone lays upon them.
I haven't seen that post, most people on here are very well aware of the famine in NK.

Some people call Obama a socialist, coincidently enough, a lot of the people who use this claim as a derogatory one also spread a lot of the propaganda that make NK look like hell. NK is not socialist by my definition, but you could argue that the means of production are commonly owned to an extent, I have seen examples of this even in right-wing documentaries about NK. I have seen examples of worker control in documentaries that are designed to make NK look like a terrible "socialist nightmare" - there is little or no private interest in NK, people work for the state, and it is highly unlikely to say that Kim Jong-Il sits in a room with a few guys planning the production of every single factory in NK, there is some level of democracy in decision making. Also, it is worth noting that the reason NK is starving can be put more down to international isolation than its leadership. The rightist argument is that if sanctions etc were lifted from NK, and resources were allowed to move in, then the people would remain as hungry as they are now and the leadership would merely get more stuffed. I don't accept that. I accept that the leadership live better than many NK citizens, but I think that the citizens' well-being would improve greatly if resources could move into NK. The NK government does feed its people, that is a truth, otherwise there would be no NK people. NK has some elements of a socialist society, but one which is strangled by the tight grips of imperialism - it will never be a socialist country when it is isolated in such a way. This is not to say that it doesn't have socialistic intentions, whether we agree with their practise or not.

I think many of these "legitimate criticisms" are used without any form of analysis behind them. It is simply "they are bad so I don't like them". That is what people are rejecting; people's tendency to swallow western propaganda about countries that America doesn't like without looking further,

[Soviet dude]

proletarianrevolution said he could dispute NK having a famine while it's "Dear Leader" lived in wealth.

I never understood how one could call a nation where a select elite live in enormous wealth and the rest in poverty and starvation "socialist".

My point is, some people on here seem to ignore legitimate criticisms of North Korea while accepting any positive (whether valid or not) attributes anyone lays upon them.

Do you have any credible evidence Kim Jong-Il (or anyone else in the government) lives in "enormous wealth" at all? You have not presented any evidence (credible or otherwise), you just somehow expect us to assume this as a basis to even have a discussion.

In fact, I completely reject the notion. I've seen it repeated over and over again, and the few people who can even be bothered to present any evidence never even bother to check the sources of these claims.

For instance, the belief that Kim Jong-Il drinks cognac is based on a Japanese book wrote by someone who uses the pen name Kenji Fujimoto (that is, it is a fake name and the author's real identity is unknown). His "memoirs" contain a bunch of claims that seem unbelievable on their face, like Mr. Fujimoto debating with Kim Jong-Il about building nuclear weapons. The book is probably deliberate propaganda created by Japanese intelligence agencies, or just a money-making hoax. In addition, the publisher of the book, Fuso Publishing Inc., is ultra-nationalistic and publishes school books that deny Japanese atrocities in China and Korea.

This bogus claim and others like it are the basis for claiming the government lives in wealth. In fact, there is no credible evidence this is the case, and I challenge you to try and produce it. I suspect you can not.

[Jazzhands]

I think many of these "legitimate criticisms" are used without any form of analysis behind them. It is simply "they are bad so I don't like them". That is what people are rejecting; people's tendency to swallow western propaganda about countries that America doesn't like without looking further,

This is what I don't get about some of you people. You claim that we are somehow swallowing Western propaganda without question because we don't subscribe to your exact view of reality. Of course North Korea is propagandized against but that doesn't explain away every single thing.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

This is what I don't get about some of you people. You claim that we are somehow swallowing Western propaganda without question because we don't subscribe to your exact view of reality. Of course North Korea is propagandized against but that doesn't explain away every single thing.
I'm not asking anybody to subscribe to my exact view. My exact view is dictated by many different sources, I try my hardest to gain an independent view of North Korea, rather than basing all of my views on the western media who are inherently and unapologetically biased against NK or any "commie state"..

The evidence that North Korea has suffered greatly in the face of imperialism's stranglehold outweighs the notion that Kim Jong-Il and his little clique of crazy Korean dictators eat all of the rations and spend all of the money on cognac and have brought on all of North Korea's problems themselves.

All I would ask of anybody is that they try and look at the problems of NK more objectively. I used to brush off NK as some basket case country but I'd never heard anything outside of the BBC.

[Hiero]

“powerful nuclear deterrence”

I would assume deterrance means to "deter" to "discourage".

So no, DPRK did not say "we are going to Nuke you".

[gorillafuck]

if you say "oh its ok if people bomb each other and shoot each other, but heaven forbid they use a nuke!" is liberal and stupid.
No, thinking that there is a situation that could actually happen in reality that justifies the use of a nuclear bomb is stupid. Imagine Hiroshima. Over 80,000 people died immediately upon the explosion (a conservative estimate). That was the first hydrogen bomb dropped. A modern hydrogen bomb would be over ten times as powerful.

Get a grip. There will never be a situation in reality where nuking a country will be acceptable.

[Shokaract]

Linked these articles to online 'papers' like The Proletarian and The Red Phoenix two weeks back:


In May, two months after the sinking of a South Korean warship, the country released a report blaming its northern neighbour. That report soon came under fire from South Korean opposition politicians and an influential South Korean civil liberties group. Now some scientists are lending their weight to the critique.

On 26 March, the Cheonan, a patrol ship that monitored North Korean submarine activity, split in two and sank near the contested maritime boundary between the two countries. In a 20 May report the Joint Investigation Group (JIG), composed of civilian and military experts from Korea and some advisers from the United Kingdom, the United States, Sweden and Australia, concluded that North Korea had torpedoed the ship and was responsible for the deaths of 46 crew members.

The group's evidence included fragments of a torpedo found near the ship which had the same dimensions as torpedoes pictured in North Korean munitions pamphlets and had ink markings identifying it as North Korean.

The controversy started before the report was even released. An expert placed on the JIG by the opposition party — Shin Sang-chul, a former officer in the South Korean navy who had also worked at a shipbuilding company — suggested that an accidental collision with a US warship, and not North Korea, was to blame. The United States and South Korea had been carrying out military exercises in the area at the time.

On 10 June, the People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, a Seoul-based organisation that acts as a watchdog on government authority, sent an open letter to the United Nations Security Council in which it raised eight questions concerning the contents of the JIG's report and six problems concerning the transparency of the investigation. The letter alleged that the report's claim that a torpedo-induced water column sank the Cheonan contradicted earlier testimony from survivors that they did not see a water column or only felt water droplets on the face. The letter also questioned why the supposed torpedo launch was not detected, despite active sonar equipment aboard the Cheonan.


The Joint Investigation Group presented fragments of a torpedo found near the damaged ship.EPA/Photoshot
Seung-Hun Lee, a Korean-born physicist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, says the most problematic part of the JIG's report is the linking of the adsorbed material on the propeller of the torpedo with that found on the ship. In the JIG's report, electron dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) analysis shows the samples to be nearly identical to each other and with those produced in a simulated test explosion: each has similar-sized peaks showing the presence of aluminium, oxygen, carbon and other elements. X-ray diffraction analysis likewise shows the torpedo sample to have the same signature as the ship sample. But on one point, the EDS data and X-ray data are different — the X-ray data lack any sign of aluminium or aluminium oxide.

To explain the discrepancy, the JIG's report suggests that the aluminium had supercooled into amorphous aluminium oxide, rather than a crystalline form. Amorphous aluminium oxides do not produce an X-ray diffraction pattern.

But the supercooling of metals into amorphous forms is a delicate process, says Lee. "It's impossible that 100% of it would be amorphous," he says. Lee's own experiments show that aluminium in such conditions would primarily be crystalline.

Lousy job?

Lee posted his report online on 3 June1. Experiments carried out independently by Panseok Yang, a technician specializing in mass spectrometry at the geological sciences department of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, found that the ratio of oxygen to aluminium in the rapidly cooling aluminium would be much lower than suggested by the JIG. Yang's data, which were added to Lee's online report on 28 June, suggest that the samples analyzed by the JIG could have been from old, corroded aluminium.

Lee also says that the JIG did not explain why the blue ink on the torpedo that apparently identified it as North Korean did not melt, as the temperatures following its detonation were high enough to melt the paint. "They did a lousy job in every sense," says Lee.

Lee admits that they cannot say with any certainty how the ship sank if a North Korean torpedo was not responsible, although they offer alternatives. The Cheonan might have been hit by a mine (probably a South Korean one, according to Jae-Jung Suh, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University working in Washington DC), or it might have been rammed by another ship, as suggested by Shin.

The South Korean government has adamantly denied any fabrication or any major problems with its interpretation of the data.

Many others doubt that there is any alternative interpretation. James Schoff, an expert in Asian regional security mechanisms who heads Asia-Pacific studies at the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis in Washington DC, says, "Aside from the science, it is consistent with North Korea's behaviour in the past. It fits the goal of the conservatives [within the government], which is to try to raise awareness of a security threat."

This doesn't, however, rule out the possibility that North Korea did sink the ship but that South Korea nonetheless fabricated data to make a stronger case to the United Nations, admits Schoff. It's possible, for example, that they added the ink, he says. "It wouldn't surprise me if they added it to make it more convincing. But I have no doubts personally that the conclusion [of the JIG report] is correct."

Lee and Suh have vowed to keep raising awareness of the inconsistencies. On 9 July, they are set to speak at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Tokyo.

"South Korea should reopen an investigation, and the parliament should open an investigation into the JIG on suspicion of fabricated data," Suh told Nature. "They failed in their task of proving that this was done by North Korea, and so it is quite likely that they fabricated data."



US Professors Raise Doubts About Report on South Korean Ship Sinking
A new study by U.S. researchers raises questions about the investigation into the sinking of a South Korean navy ship. International investigators blamed a North Korean torpedo, raising tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Researchers J.J. Suh and Seung-Hun Lee say the South Korean Joint Investigation Group made a weak case when it concluded that North Korea was responsible for sinking the Cheonan.

Speaking in Tokyo Friday, the two said the investigation was riddled with inconsistencies and cast "profound doubt" on the integrity of the investigation. "The only conclusion one can draw on the basis of the evidence is that there was no outside explosion," Suh said. "The JIG completely failed to produce evidence that backs up its claims that there was an outside explosion."

Suh is an associate professor in international relations at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, where he runs the Korean studies program.

International investigators said in May that an external explosion caused the South Korean ship to sink last March, killing 46 sailors. The report said a North Korean-made torpedo caused the explosion.

Suh and Lee the cracked portion of the bottom of the ship does not show the signs of a large shock that are usually associated with outside explosions. They add that all the ship's internal parts remained intact and few fragments were recovered outside the ship.

"Almost all parts and fragments should've been recovered within about three to six meters within where the torpedo part was discovered," Lee says, "The fact that only the propeller and the propulsion part was discovered doesn't make any sense to me."

Lee is a professor of physics at the University of Virginia in the United States. Lee also points to a blue mark on a fragment of the torpedo to question the validity of the study. South Korean scientists say that part of the torpedo was marked "number one" in Korean, with a blue marker.
Suh and Lee say the writing would not have survived the intense heat of an explosion. "This can not be taken as evidence. Because any Korean, North and South, can write this mark," Suh said. "Also, it does not make sense that this blue ink mark could survive so freshly when the paint all around was all burned at the explosion."

Both researchers say their findings do not prove that North Korea did not sink the Cheonan. But they say it is irresponsible for the South Korean government to reach its conclusions based on an inconclusive study.

They are calling for a new international investigation to re-examine the Cheonan's sinking. They also want the United Nations Security Council to pressure the South Korean government and request an "objective and scientific" report before the council deliberates on the incident.


Edit: I wish I could post links. :\

[Chimurenga.]

proletarianrevolution said he could dispute NK having a famine while it's "Dear Leader" lived in wealth.

You're an idiot who didn't read my post. I never ONCE denied that there was a famine. I'm very aware of the famine of 1995-1997. What I said was that no one could prove that Kim Jong-Il lives in wealth while his people suffer. I've actually read that during those years, the SPA (Supreme People's Assembly) made sacrifices with their eating and by that I mean, all members cutting down to a meal a day. Whether this is factual or not, I'd have to research and find out. The point is, I never denied that there was no famine.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Get a grip. There will never be a situation in reality where nuking a country will be acceptable.

its not preferable at all. im not advocating the use of it. but if they use it, so be it. their nukes are probably the quality of the late 40s early 50s anyway. its not like it will be Tsar bomba.

[danyboy27]

its not preferable at all. im not advocating the use of it. but if they use it, so be it. their nukes are probably the quality of the late 40s early 50s anyway. its not like it will be Tsar bomba.

yea i mean, instead of million killed, its gonna be hundred of thousand, really its gonna be all right.

[Rusty Shackleford]

yea i mean, instead of million killed, its gonna be hundred of thousand, really its gonna be all right.

i didnt mean it in that way either. jesus christ. i dont want there to be a war. but the DPRK has the right to defend itself.

[LimitedIdeology]

You're an idiot who didn't read my post. I never ONCE denied that there was a famine. I'm very aware of the famine of 1995-1997. What I said was that no one could prove that Kim Jong-Il lives in wealth while his people suffer. I've actually read that during those years, the SPA (Supreme People's Assembly) made sacrifices with their eating and by that I mean, all members cutting down to a meal a day. Whether this is factual or not, I'd have to research and find out. The point is, I never denied that there was no famine.

I said:

"
Originally Posted by LimitedIdeology
Tell me what you find appealing in millions of people starving while their "Dear Leader" has opulence beyond imagining? Isn't that the very opposite of socialism? The workers don't run North Korea. Their own oligarchy does."

You replied with:

"I've given sources that prove the contrary on all of this. "

The heart of my post was millions of people starving while their leaders are wealthy. You said this wasn't true. So either millions of people weren't starving, or even their leaders were.

Considering that I can't post links to support my views (yet), I'll just list some widely reported facts about him.

In 2005, the Sunday Teligraph reported that Kim Jong Il has $4 Billion dollars of personal accounts stored away in Luxemborg. That money amounts to 10% of North Korea's GDP.

He has a movie collection of over 25,000 western movies.

He drinks Hennessey cognac, which goes for $650 a bottle, and spends upwards of half a million dollars a year on the stuff (Both this and the movie collection were reported by CNN).

He has had South Koreans kidnapped in order to jump start a movie program.

North Korea is known to posses several internment camps for political prisoners.

How do you have the gall to defend these things?

[Chimurenga.]

The heart of my post was millions of people starving while their leaders are wealthy. You said this wasn't true. So either millions of people weren't starving, or even their leaders were.

Considering that I can't post links to support my views (yet), I'll just list some widely reported facts about him.

In 2005, the Sunday Teligraph reported that Kim Jong Il has $4 Billion dollars of personal accounts stored away in Luxemborg. That money amounts to 10% of North Korea's GDP.

He has a movie collection of over 25,000 western movies.

He drinks Hennessey cognac, which goes for $650 a bottle, and spends upwards of half a million dollars a year on the stuff (Both this and the movie collection were reported by CNN).

He has had South Koreans kidnapped in order to jump start a movie program.

North Korea is known to posses several internment camps for political prisoners.

How do you have the gall to defend these things?

I misspoke on that and you took me too literally.

I know what you're refering to here, you're referring to a joke picture that links to nothing but bourgeois sources. It was more than likely made from a complete reactionary and that is what you're defending here.

Forbes did the same thing that the Sunday Telegraph is trying to do except they did it with Fidel Castro. Forbes said that Castro had a few million dollars in some Swiss bank account but they couldn't prove it. Your claims prove nothing but you being submissive to bourgeois sources.

[Soviet dude]

In 2005, the Sunday Teligraph reported that Kim Jong Il has $4 Billion dollars of personal accounts stored away in Luxemborg.There are a lot of things wrong with this claim.

1. It appears it is actually sourced to an article that was wrote in March 2010. I can find no earlier reference to the story. Here is the link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/7442188/Kim-Jong-il-keeps-4bn-emergency-fund-in-European-banks.html

2. The article cites as its source unnamed figures in the South Korean intelligence community.


South Korean intelligence officials told The Daily Telegraph that much of the money was held in Swiss banks until authorities there began to tighten regulations on money launderingSo the only source for this claim are anonymous people who work for the most hostile government in the world to the DPRK.

3. This actually makes zero sense, considering what we actually know about North Korea's bank accounts in other countries. To quote from a recent article in Counterpunch:


With the exception of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Levey is the highest-ranking George W Bush administration holdover in the Barack Obama administration. The retention of the architect of financial sanctions against North Korea was a signal that Obama was much enamored of them as the "smart power" alternative to military force as a coercive instrument of American policy. Hopefully, the results for the US this time will not be as dire as North Korea's rush to the atomic bomb occasioned by the sanctions campaign of the Bush administration...

During the second Bush administration, the peripatetic Levey roamed the globe, chivvying the huge European financial institutions but also venturing into backwaters like Mongolia and Bulgaria to threaten local banks that dared take Iranian and North Korean deposits and offer the two pariahs access to the international financial system.


In one significant instance, the Treasury Department moved beyond threats to actually institute sanctions against a targeted bank. This was the case of Banco Delta Asia - BDA - a small bank in Macau that accepted North Korean deposits.


In September 2005, alleging that BDA was laundering North Korean counterfeit money, the department announced it was investigating BDA as a "bank of money laundering concern".



There was a prompt run on the bank, the Macau authorities took BDA over, and $24 million or so in North Korea-related funds in 51 accounts were frozen at American insistence. That represented the highwater mark of America's success in quarantining BDAhttp://www.counterpunch.org/lee07022010.html


So we know the Americans have been aggressively targeting funds stored in banks (in China!) that have any money from the DPRK in them. The US government went after a bank that had as little as $24 million dollars in it. The very idea that the government wouldn't have long ago made moves to freeze the DPRK's assets in a European bank, assets totaling $4 billion dollars, is ludicrous.


This claim has no credible source, no documentation, no evidence of any kind, and goes against what we actually know about the DPRK's assets. Any rational person would reject this claim.



He has a movie collection of over 25,000 western movies.The source of this claim, which I looked into long ago, appears to be former CIA agent Dr. Jerold Post. His evidence, in turn, seems to based on claims of Kenji Fujimoto, who, again, is almost certainly a fraud.



He drinks Hennessey cognac, which goes for $650 a bottle, and spends upwards of half a million dollars a year on the stuff (Both this and the movie collection were reported by CNN).Already dealt with before you even brought it up.



He has had South Koreans kidnapped in order to jump start a movie program.This claim is also certainly fraudulent. Shin Sang Ok was a known Leftist who had a failing movie career, and the military dictatorship of General Park Chung Hee was extremely hostile to him, going so far as to close his film studio (before his "abduction" that same year). He almost certainly fled to the North on his own free will, and later when he got tired of living in the DPRK, made up a bunch of lies to the US embassy (while he was out of the country going to a film festival, something he did multiple times). Indeed, he and his wife, who was also "abducted," traveled to received awards in Moscow in 1985, a year before they went to the US embassy in Vienna.


What actually happened? Shin Sang Ok hated the military dictatorship, had his studio forcibly shut down, and fled the country to continue his movie career in the DPRK. He and his wife evidently didn't like things after awhile, and left to America, to make such great movies like 3 Ninjas Kick Back. They fled to America because going back to South Korea would have got them a prison sentence.


There is a good article that goes into a lot more detail about this great hoax, but I can't seem to find it at the moment.



North Korea is known to posses several internment camps for political prisoners.All countries have prisons, and most have political prisoners. The ones that sit in the jails of socialist countries are typically there for very serious crimes. I fail to see how this is something we should be concerned about.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Sanctions by US = Famine in DPRK

simple as that

[gorillafuck]

yea i mean, instead of million killed, its gonna be hundred of thousand, really its gonna be all right.
It would still be in the millions. Seoul nowadays is far, far bigger than Hiroshima was in 1945.

[Revy]

Sanctions by US = Famine in DPRK

simple as that

Simply wrong. Sanctions were imposed on North Korea in 2006 (because of the nuclear tests) long after the famine began. Furthermore, the sanctions imposed in 2006 apply to military, high-tech products and luxury items, not food. Large amounts of food aid have been donated to the DPRK by various countries and NGOs, including China, South Korea, and the US.



Famine in North Korea (http://asiasociety.org/policy-politics/international-relations/us-asia/famine-north-korea?page=0%2C0)
What are some of the major causes of the famine in North Korea?
The famine in DPRK is the result of the cumulative effects of a fractured economic infrastructure and inadequate food production. Over 22 million people must rely on food produced from the barely 20 per cent of arable land available. This has led, with unfortunate consequences, to planting crops on steep hillsides, destroying the forest cover and causing erosion. While the yield from planting on hillslopes is not great, the effects have been detrimental. Partly related, a cycle of floods (and drought) began in 1995 that led to the current famine-like situation in the country. Further, the country has not been able to earn sufficient foreign exchange to allow it to purchase substantial amounts of food abroad.



It is estimated by the DPRK government that over 40 per cent of children under five are malnourished. A high proportion of pregnant women are also malnourished. Deteriorating social services, along with inadequate food distributions through the government public distribution system have led to the current crisis in the DPRK.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Simply wrong. Sanctions were imposed on North Korea in 2006 (because of the nuclear tests) long after the famine began. Furthermore, the sanctions imposed in 2006 apply to military, high-tech products and luxury items, not food. Large amounts of food aid have been donated to the DPRK by various countries and NGOs, including China, South Korea, and the US.

Nope, absolutely not wrong!

Sixty Years of US Sanctions

Limits on the export of goods and services.
Prohibition of most foreign aid and agricultural sales.
A ban on Export-Import Bank funding.
Denial of favourable trade terms.
Prohibition of imports from North Korea.
Blocking of any loan or funding through international financial institutions.
Limits on export licensing of food and medicine for export to North Korea.
A ban on government financing of food and medicine exports to North Korea.
Prohibition on import and export transactions related to transportation.
A ban on dual-use exports (i.e., civilian goods that could be adapted to military purposes.)
Prohibition on certain commercial banking transactions.


http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/rl31696.pdf

[Revy]

Nope, absolutely not wrong!

Sixty Years of US Sanctions

Limits on the export of goods and services.
Prohibition of most foreign aid and agricultural sales.
A ban on Export-Import Bank funding.
Denial of favourable trade terms.
Prohibition of imports from North Korea.
Blocking of any loan or funding through international financial institutions.
Limits on export licensing of food and medicine for export to North Korea.
A ban on government financing of food and medicine exports to North Korea.
Prohibition on import and export transactions related to transportation.
A ban on dual-use exports (i.e., civilian goods that could be adapted to military purposes.)
Prohibition on certain commercial banking transactions.


http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/rl31696.pdf

I meant the UN sanctions. My mistake. I thought those were the sanctions you were referring to. But the famine didn't start until after the collapse of the USSR and Kim Il-sung's death. Then began the Songun policy.

[The Vegan Marxist]

I meant the UN sanctions. My mistake. I thought those were the sanctions you were referring to. But the famine didn't start until after the collapse of the USSR and Kim Il-sung's death. Then began the Songun policy.

No, I was referring to the US sanctions. The UN has a little more leniency to them, which is great. But the US is whole different ballgame. And yes, you're correct that the famine started after the USSR collapsed. They no longer had any financial support or trade support, along with the sanctions being brought against the DPRK by the US. These lead to economical failures within the DPRK, ranging from lack of medical supplies, eduction supplies, food supplies, etc.

[piet11111]

No, thinking that there is a situation that could actually happen in reality that justifies the use of a nuclear bomb is stupid. Imagine Hiroshima. Over 80,000 people died immediately upon the explosion (a conservative estimate). That was the first hydrogen bomb dropped. A modern hydrogen bomb would be over ten times as powerful.

Get a grip. There will never be a situation in reality where nuking a country will be acceptable.

That was an atomic bomb with a power of 13-18 kiloton modern hydrogen bombs go up to ~40 megaton (the biggest being the tzar bomba at ~50 megatons but it was originally designed to yield 100 Megatons)

a kiloton being equivalent to 1000 tons of TNT
while a megaton is equivalent to 1.000.000 tons of TNT

The tzar bomba was roughly 3000 times as powerful as the hiroshima bomb.
Just to put into perspective what kind of power modern hydrogen bombs have so as you see its worse then just 10x the hiroshima bomb.

[4 Leaf Clover]

well someone got nuclear weapons , and someone cant do anything about it


and someone got trouble to persuade South Korea to be more cheeky when they are only target that can be affected by nukes

[Stand Your Ground]

well someone got nuclear weapons , and someone cant do anything about it


and someone got trouble to persuade South Korea to be more cheeky when they are only target that can be affected by nukes
It would be alot more than SK.

[mountainfire]

Sanctions by US = Famine in DPRK

This isn't very helpful. In light of the fact that US sanctions have been applied for more than half a century, this "analysis" doesn't explain why North Korea suffered famine only in the 1990s, having experienced relatively high levels of economic growth and increasing living standards in previous decades. The famine surely had a lot more to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rest of the Soviet bloc due to the importance of those countries as trading partners, as well as the adverse weather conditions of the decade, such as the floods in July and August of 1995, not to mention the natural topography of the DPRK, which leaves the country vulnerable to food shortages. However, attention also has to be given to some of the government's policies - in large part due to the shortages of arable land throughout the northern half of the peninsula, the government pursued environmentally unsustainable agricultural policies such as continuous cropping and the overuse of nitrogen-based fertilizers, with the drive to bring marginal land into cultivation also resulting in increased deforestation and its attendant problems. The historic use of the Public Distribution System (PDS) to control the distribution of food also impacted the way the famine played out due to just under forty percent of the population not being covered by this system, mainly in the form of workers in cooperative and state-owned farms, and the subsequent failure of this system and its replacement by informal markets meant that many famine victims were members of groups that were vulnerable to begin with - namely those outside the major cities and without links to the ruling bureaucracy.

[The Vegan Marxist]

This isn't very helpful. In light of the fact that US sanctions have been applied for more than half a century, this "analysis" doesn't explain why North Korea suffered famine only in the 1990s, having experienced relatively high levels of economic growth and increasing living standards in previous decades. The famine surely had a lot more to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rest of the Soviet bloc due to the importance of those countries as trading partners, as well as the adverse weather conditions of the decade, such as the floods in July and August of 1995, not to mention the natural topography of the DPRK, which leaves the country vulnerable to food shortages. However, attention also has to be given to some of the government's policies - in large part due to the shortages of arable land throughout the northern half of the peninsula, the government pursued environmentally unsustainable agricultural policies such as continuous cropping and the overuse of nitrogen-based fertilizers, with the drive to bring marginal land into cultivation also resulting in increased deforestation and its attendant problems. The historic use of the Public Distribution System (PDS) to control the distribution of food also impacted the way the famine played out due to just under forty percent of the population not being covered by this system, mainly in the form of workers in cooperative and state-owned farms, and the subsequent failure of this system and its replacement by informal markets meant that many famine victims were members of groups that were vulnerable to begin with - namely those outside the major cities and without links to the ruling bureaucracy.

Again, lack of trade is what led to these problems. Who was the DPRK trading with after they broke off with the Soviet Union? China?! Trade was practically cut in half, which is where we start to see a downfall on the DPRK's economy. Then, when the sanctions were brought against them later on, things got a lot worse.

[danyboy27]

Sanctions by US = Famine in DPRK

simple as that

this is not some dumb two way ethical test, North korea have a lot more option than just bomb the shit out of south korean to save its own citizen, and you know that.

[mountainfire]

Again, lack of trade is what led to these problems. Who was the DPRK trading with after they broke off with the Soviet Union? China?! Trade was practically cut in half, which is where we start to see a downfall on the DPRK's economy. Then, when the sanctions were brought against them later on, things got a lot worse.

You seem to be forgetting that the DPRK has had a long-term ideological commitment to self-sufficiency, as expressed in the form of Juche, and that economic relations cannot suddenly be developed in the event of a change in political circumstances. Now, the actual implementation of the Juche philosophy has been contradictory at best, as the very fact that the DPRK suffered so much during the 1990s shows that it was never able to achieve much in the way of agrarian self-reliance, despite having also been able to develop something resembling an independent industrial base through reverse engineering, but the point here is that even if the US had maintained open economic relations with the DPRK it is still unlikely that the famine could have been averted simply because the government would never have been willing or able to immediately replace its former trading partners with the US and other non-Soviet states - in fact, a further way the government contributed to the famine was denying that there were food shortages during the first half of the decade, only admitting that there was a problem in 1994, at which point the government asked for aid from Japan and began accepting aid from other countries and UN organizations. I should also point out that, due to the existence of a ruling bureaucracy, the cereals that were available were frequently used to produce high-quality foods such as noodles for cadres and other officials, rather than lower-grade food products that could have been used to feed a larger segment of the population.


Then, when the sanctions were brought against them later on, things got a lot worse.

What are you talking about? US sanctions have been in existence since 1950, and have not been fundamentally removed or revised.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm not solely blaming the sanctions on the problems that the DPRK face. It's an element of the problem. The DPRK's Juche system is a problem as well, no one can deny that. But it must be clarified within a scientific basis on the initial problem at hand on the reasons behind the DPRK's economical failures. This is pointed out by WHO, when they debunked Amnesty's biased report against the DPRK:


Quality of North Korean health system upheld
Sunday, July 25, 2010
By: Derek Ford

In brief

The World Health Organization recently debunked a study by Amnesty International that attacked the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s health care system. Amnesty’s report, published July 15, tells a devastating story of famine, inequality, and inadequate medical care exacerbated by government policies.

The problem with the report, according to the WHO, is that it is completely unscientific, based on anecdotal reports from a small group of people, none of whom are currently living in North Korea.

Amnesty’s report alleged that North Koreans are subject to “unofficial payments” and barters for health services. WHO spokesperson Paul Garwood said that such practices have never been uncovered. He affirmed that “people in the country do not have to worry about a lack of financial resources to access care.”

In April, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said that health care in the country was the “envy” of the developing world, a testament to what can be accomplished with socialized management.

http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=14271&news_iv_ctrl=1261

[mountainfire]

Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm not solely blaming the sanctions on the problems that the DPRK face

In which case, it is not as "simple as that", as you originally suggested.


In April, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said that health care in the country was the “envy” of the developing world, a testament to what can be accomplished with socialized management.

In what way is the economy of the DPRK "socialized" or socialist?

[Rusty Shackleford]

so, Cuba and the DPRK have the best health care systems in the developing world. coincidence?

for being countries that are attempting to build socialism against almost insurmountable odds, idsay they are doing a good job of providing what they can. i bet if these embargos were lifted, these two economies would be doing just fine.

what can be taken form this is that both Cuba and the DPRK are not about starving their people because they are sadistic statists.

[The Vegan Marxist]

so, Cuba and the DPRK have the best health care systems in the developing world. coincidence?

for being countries that are attempting to build socialism against almost insurmountable odds, idsay they are doing a good job of providing what they can. i bet if these embargos were lifted, these two economies would be doing just fine.

what can be taken form this is that both Cuba and the DPRK are not about starving their people because they are sadistic statists.

I wouldn't really compare DPRK's healthcare system with Cuba's. Cuba's is essentially a lot better than the DPRK's. There's no hiding that fact. The reason they're both under the US on healthcare statistics is because of the sanctions against them. The DPRK have only one trading parter - China. Cuba has two - China & Venezuela. So it's no coincidence on why Cuba is necessarily better when it comes to healthcare services.

[Rusty Shackleford]

I wouldn't really compare DPRK's healthcare system with Cuba's. Cuba's is essentially a lot better than the DPRK's. There's no hiding that fact. The reason they're both under the US on healthcare statistics is because of the sanctions against them. The DPRK have only one trading parter - China. Cuba has two - China & Venezuela. So it's no coincidence on why Cuba is necessarily better when it comes to healthcare services.
but they still rank higher than most "developing"(im starting to hate that term) nations' health care systems.

[Hasek]

so, Cuba and the DPRK have the best health care systems in the developing world. coincidence?

for being countries that are attempting to build socialism against almost insurmountable odds, idsay they are doing a good job of providing what they can. i bet if these embargos were lifted, these two economies would be doing just fine.

what can be taken form this is that both Cuba and the DPRK are not about starving their people because they are sadistic statists.

Any healthcare system, altough it is good or bad, can't be taken as an excuse to the repression that the proletariat suffers in that territories. I can understand the difficult historical context that have suffered countries like Cuba or North Korea, but the answer to that is not the total support to their leaders, that have turned in an another oppressive class. Our objective is to abolish classes, not supporting new ways of oppression.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Any healthcare system, altough it is good or bad, can't be taken as an excuse to the repression that the proletariat suffers in that territories. I can understand the difficult historical context that have suffered countries like Cuba or North Korea, but the answer to that is not the total support to their leaders, that have turned in an another oppressive class. Our objective is to abolish classes, not supporting new ways of oppression.

I hope you're just talking about the DPRK & not Cuba.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Any healthcare system, altough it is good or bad, can't be taken as an excuse to the repression that the proletariat suffers in that territories. I can understand the difficult historical context that have suffered countries like Cuba or North Korea, but the answer to that is not the total support to their leaders, that have turned in an another oppressive class. Our objective is to abolish classes, not supporting new ways of oppression.
i am in no way saying these countries have perfect and complete support by their respective working classes.
the proletariat suffers all across the globe. and yes, of the two, the DPRK is worse for the proletariat.

[Hasek]

You have misunderstood me, Vegan Marxist. I mean all countries that claim to be socialists, but repress the working class, with no exceptions. There is a huge hole between Cuba and Korea, but in both countries, new leaders to repress the proletariat have erected. Specifically in the case of Cuba, a revolution led by rebel anti-imperialist soldiers that weren't socialists, but magically turned into socialists for getting weapons and political support from the USSR, can't be taken as an example. And personally, I don't believe in any kind of socialism with the presence of perpetual leaders like the Castros (Please, don't talk me again about the democracy in Cuba, the neighborhood councils, and other regime propaganda that only believe people who want to believe that). Cuba has not started a process of socialization of the resources, a task that can only be done by the workers, and is above nacionalizations or privatizations, so it can't be taken as socialist.

[The Vegan Marxist]

You have misunderstood me, Vegan Marxist. I mean all countries that claim to be socialists, but repress the working class, with no exceptions. There is a huge hole between Cuba and Korea, but in both countries, new leaders to repress the proletariat have erected. Specifically in the case of Cuba, a revolution led by rebel anti-imperialist soldiers that weren't socialists, but magically turned into socialists for getting weapons and political support from the USSR, can't be taken as an example. And personally, I don't believe in any kind of socialism with the presence of perpetual leaders like the Castros (Please, don't talk me again about the democracy in Cuba, the neighborhood councils, and other regime propaganda that only believe people who want to believe that). Cuba has not started a process of socialization of the resources, a task that can only be done by the workers, and is above nacionalizations or privatizations, so it can't be taken as socialist.

That's bullshit. Che Guevara helped bring the ideal of Socialism to them in the first place. The help of Raul Castro came as well, from what I understand. And I would argue that democracy in Cuba is essentially greater than the US's style of "democracy".

[Hasek]

Again, talking about leaders like Castro or Guevara, but there is no debate when we talk about the participation of the proletariat in the cuban revolution, conducted by rebel soldiers, not by the working class, so made in a pure blanquist style, one of the principal enemies of socialism. The cuban revolution was an antiimperialist one, not a socialist one. They adopted socialism because of the historical circumstances.

And I have not said anything about burgueois democracy in countries like the US, I think that we all know what is a democracy worn by the interests of a minority and there is no debate about that. So please, talk about specificaly cuban style of democracy (And please, do not bomb me with regime propaganda, I am spanish, so I have watched thousands of videos that talk about the paradisiac democracy in Cuba, blablablah)

[The Vegan Marxist]

Again, talking about leaders like Castro or Guevara, but there is no debate when we talk about the participation of the proletariat in the cuban revolution, conducted by rebel soldiers, not by the working class, so made in a pure blanquist style, one of the principal enemies of socialism. The cuban revolution was an antiimperialist one, not a socialist one. They adopted socialism because of the historical circumstances.

And I have not said anything about burgueois democracy in countries like the US, I think that we all know what is a democracy worn by the interests of a minority and there is no debate about that. So please, talk about specificaly cuban style of democracy (And please, do not bomb me with regime propaganda, I am spanish, so I have watched thousands of videos that talk about the paradisiac democracy in Cuba, blablablah)

Cuba's not perfect, but it makes sure the people are given their needs, which is a lot better than what any "developed" country can say. This was pointed out myself here: http://redantliberationarmy.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/cuban-truth-against-the-lies/

[Rusty Shackleford]

Again, talking about leaders like Castro or Guevara, but there is no debate when we talk about the participation of the proletariat in the cuban revolution, conducted by rebel soldiers, not by the working class, so made in a pure blanquist style, one of the principal enemies of socialism. The cuban revolution was an antiimperialist one, not a socialist one. They adopted socialism because of the historical circumstances.

And I have not said anything about burgueois democracy in countries like the US, I think that we all know what is a democracy worn by the interests of a minority and there is no debate about that. So please, talk about specificaly cuban style of democracy (And please, do not bomb me with regime propaganda, I am spanish, so I have watched thousands of videos that talk about the paradisiac democracy in Cuba, blablablah)
the anti-batista movement was alive and well and the working class and peasants joined the rebel army as soon as they made gains. the rebel army(which employed something called focoism which si not like blanquism) was just the torch held to a sparkling but not completely burning powder keg. it took a rebel army to oust batista, and with the rebel army came land reform. something i would say would be socialist.

[The Guy]

North Korea is all talk, in my opinion. You can make threats all you like, but when push comes to shove, you have to shove. If North Korea were to launch a nuclear missle/the few nuclear missiles they have, the retaliation would be astronomical and no doubt make South Korea an island next to a crater under the sea.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Since the US is defying the warnings by the DPRK, we'll see where this leads. I don't want nuclear war, but if so does happen, my support initially will go to the DPRK.

[danyboy27]

Since the US is defying the warnings by the DPRK, we'll see where this leads. I don't want nuclear war, but if so does happen, my support initially will go to the DPRK.

i think you actually like the prospect of such thing happening.

come on! admit it, it would shake things up! just the perfect timing to start a forklift revolution in america!

[The Vegan Marxist]

i think you actually like the prospect of such thing happening.

come on! admit it, it would shake things up! just the perfect timing to start a forklift revolution in america!

I believe that it may spark anger in the populace, but to be completely honest, I would like for this to happen with as less bloodshed as possible to cause an uplift of revolutionary activities.

[Qayin]

Since the US is defying the warnings by the DPRK, we'll see where this leads. I don't want nuclear war, but if so does happen, my support initially will go to the DPRK.


Loon.

[danyboy27]

I believe that it may spark anger in the populace, but to be completely honest, I would like for this to happen with as less bloodshed as possible to cause an uplift of revolutionary activities.
hahahaha! its war man, a potential nuclear war, and you want it with little casuality? are you for real?

[Qayin]

I would like for this to happen with as less bloodshed as possible to cause an uplift of revolutionary activities.

Yeah I have dreams at night where we all turn to ash for the revolution!
DPRK vs USA in a nuclear war? We both fucking lose.

[The Vegan Marxist]

hahahaha! its war man, a potential nuclear war, and you want it with little casuality? are you for real?

I said I want a revolutionary uplift to come as an effect from an incident that brings as less bloodshed as possible - meaning, I'd rather want an uplift to happen, not from a nuclear attack, but from any other possible reason. You're taking my words out of context.

[LC89]

to put it simply, this is just a response against the actions the DPRK took when they killed 50 korean navymen by sinking one of their ships. i don't see how these military exercises are "bullshit against the DPRK" when the proactive actions of north korea ultimately caused these drills to occur.

Many expert doubt the ship were sink by torpedoes. Since torpedoes will cause mass killing of fish due to shock wave which never happen for this event.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Many expert doubt the ship were sink by torpedoes. Since torpedoes will cause mass killing of fish due to shock wave which never happen for this event.

Let's also include the fragments found from a torpedo, in which was used to justify claims it was an attack by the DPRK, were already corroding in the water.

[danyboy27]

I said I want a revolutionary uplift to come as an effect from an incident that brings as less bloodshed as possible - meaning, I'd rather want an uplift to happen, not from a nuclear attack, but from any other possible reason. You're taking my words out of context.
yea, you want a uplift to come an effect, and if lets say north korea would bomb seoul, even tho you hate violence and shit, you would think it would be a good opportunity to start a forklift revolution.

dosnt change the fact that you would support a genocidal maniac who would have killed thousand of people with an atomic bomb.

[The Vegan Marxist]

yea, you want a uplift to come an effect, and if lets say north korea would bomb seoul, even tho you hate violence and shit, you would think it would be a good opportunity to start a forklift revolution.

dosnt change the fact that you would support a genocidal maniac who would have killed thousand of people with an atomic bomb.

Who said I hate violence? When revolution comes, violence is a necessity. So stop taking my words of context. I said I don't want a nuclear war to happen! Yet you claim that I do, which is bullshit! What I did say was that, if one does happen, my support will go to the DPRK because if the US takes over the DPRK, then we'll have bigger problems to face. It'll be a major blow to all anti-imperialist movements.

[danyboy27]

Who said I hate violence? When revolution comes, violence is a necessity. So stop taking my words of context. I said I don't want a nuclear war to happen! Yet you claim that I do, which is bullshit! What I did say was that, if one does happen, my support will go to the DPRK because if the US takes over the DPRK, then we'll have bigger problems to face. It'll be a major blow to all anti-imperialist movements.

and by taking side in that situation you would necessarly endorse the action of north korea, nuclear war.

[Hexen]

The South Korean warship sinking is obviously a false flag operation in order to go into war with DPRK for regime change to expand South Korea's puppet government there to serve capitalists interests hence their goal of global capitalism.

[danyboy27]

The South Korean warship sinking is obviously a false flag operation in order to get into war with DPRK for regime change to install a puppet government there to serve capitalists interests hence their goal of global capitalism.

welcome in the incredible world of alex jones!

i doubt it, the current us military capability is stretched to its limits, its verry unlikely that the whole thing was made on purpose.

But a possibility remain that the south korean just made a fucking mistake and blew up their own ship and want to cover the enbarassement of their failure.

[Hexen]

welcome in the incredible world of alex jones!

Just passing theories/speculations around.


i doubt it, the current us military capability is stretched to its limits, its verry unlikely that the whole thing was made on purpose.

But a possibility remain that the south korean just made a fucking mistake and blew up their own ship and want to cover the enbarassement of their failure.

...and they blame it on North Korea...never thought that the "NO U" fallacy would reach rather dangerous proportions...Hence one of the reasons why capitalism is so dangerous.

[Shokaract]

Waitwait, if nuclear war is already occurring between the U.S. and North Korea, and you just happen to support one side over another, then it means you support nuclear war? Whaa?

Why the fuck would North Korea nuke the country it's trying to unite with? That's just ensuring that the effects of nuclear radiation fuck themselves over as much as their southern brothers, neither of which it wants.

[danyboy27]

Waitwait, if nuclear war is already occurring between the U.S. and North Korea, and you just happen to support one side over another, then it means you support nuclear war? Whaa?

Why the fuck would North Korea nuke the country it's trying to unite with? That's just ensuring that the effects of nuclear radiation fuck themselves over as much as their southern brothers, neither of which it wants.

well, i agree, the scenario is just fucking absurd, but some people think it could actually happen to avoid famine.

[scarletghoul]

http://japanfocus.org/-Tanaka-Sakai/3361
interesting article on the cheonan sinking, including very very very interesting commonly unreported info, such as the nearby submarine and how the US sent some poor korean down to die there

Who Sank the South Korean Warship Cheonan? A New Stage in the US-Korean War and US-China Relations The original Japanese text is available here (http://www.tanakanews.com/100507korea.htm)

Tanaka Sakai
Translated by Kyoko Selden
Introduction [Updated May 24, 2010]

At 9:22 on the night of March 26, the 1,200 ton ROK Navy corvette Cheonan was on patrol when it was severed in two and sank in the waters off Baengnyeong Island, a contested area twenty kilometers from North Korea, the closest point of South Korean territory to the North and to Pyongyang. Forty-six crew members died and 58 of the 104 member crew were rescued. It was the worst ROK naval disaster since 1974 when a navy landing ship capsized killing 159 sailors.
Nearly two months later, the elaborate political choreography of explanation and blame for the disaster continues on the part of North and South Korea, China and the United States. The stakes are large: ranging from an easing of tensions on the Korean peninsula to a new stage of fighting in the Korean War. With polls in early May showing that 80 percent of ROK citizens believe that the sinking was caused by North Korean attack, tensions have remained high. While segments of the US, European and Japanese mainstream press have exercised caution in jumping to the conclusion that a DPRK ship had attacked the Cheonan, the international media have shown no interest in following the leads opened by South Korean media and citizen researchers. The article that follows does not resolve the case by any means. But it exposes anomalies in official accounts and invites scrutiny of a range of intriguing issues that call for further investigation.

An ROK-sponsored investigation, with technical support from the United Kingdom, the United States, Sweden, Canada and Australia, led to a May 20 ROK government announcement that the submarine was sunk by a DPRK torpedo. Case closed. What is evident, however, is that important issues have been ignored or suppressed by the US and South Korean authorities.
In the article that follows, independent journalist Tanaka Sakai hypothesizes about what may have happened on the night of March 26 and after. Drawing on ROK TV and press reports and photographs, some of which were subsequently suppressed, Tanaka places at center stage a range of factors, some fully documented, others speculative, that have been missing, distorted, or silenced in US and ROK narratives: they include the fact and location of the US-ROK joint military exercise that was in progress at the time of the incident and the possibility that the Cheonan was sunk by friendly fire. Tanaka presents evidence suggesting the possibility that a US nuclear submarine was stationed off Byaengnyong Island and that a US vessel may have been sunk during the incident. He also considers anomalies in the role of US ships in the salvage and rescue operations that followed, including the death of an ROK diver in the attempt to recover that vessel.
At stake are issues that could rock the ROK government on the eve of elections, and could impinge on the US-ROK military relationship as the US moves to transfer authority over command to ROK forces by 2012, and to expand the role of China in the geopolitics of the region. There are implications for tensions between North Korea and the US/ROK on the one hand, and for the permanent stationing of US nuclear, and nuclear-armed, submarines in South Korean waters. Above all, there is the possibility that renewed war may be imminent in the Korean peninsula at a time when the ROK has cut off all trade with the North and is moving toward demanding the imposition of UN sanctions.
Tanaka's analysis, published on May 7, was among the earliest attempts to engage important anomolies in early ROK official accounts. We publish the full original contribution while noting that some of its suppositions were subsequently disproved. This includes the hypothesis that the USS Columbia was sunk, while leaving open the possibility of the loss of anothr US ship. The USS Columbia subsequently returned to Hawaii. Core issues that Tanaka raised, however, remain unresolved and ignored in media accounts. In locating the incident in the context of the US-ROK military exercise Foal Eagle, held provocatively close to North Korea, the author invites readers to consider the plausibility that North Korea's primitive ships could have sunk the radar- and sonar-equipped Cheonan and escaped to North Korea at a moment of maximum ROK-US readiness. And, if it did, that the ROK would remain silent about the event in the immediate aftermath. He reflects on possible motives for an attack by North Korea, but also consider the attractions of claims of a North Korea attack for the ruling ROK party interested in undermining the credibility of the North and exciting nationalist passions among voters on the eve of a major election. These are but a few of the issues raised in the article that follows, and in the investigations of other researchers appended to this article below.
Mark Selden

On 26 March, 2010 near Baengnyeong Island (White Wing, also known as Baekreong) to the South of the northern limit line, the maritime demarcation line between South and North Korea, South Korea’s large patrol boat Cheonan (Heaven’s Peace) exploded and sank. Already, more than one month after the accident, the cause of the sinking has not been confirmed. In early April, the South Korean government announced that either a torpedo struck or an underwater mine exploded, sinking the ship, indicating that it was not destroyed by an explosion or accident inside the boat but by an external cause.


http://japanfocus.org/data/Cheonan.stern.jpg (http://japanfocus.org/data/Cheonan.stern.jpg)

The stern of the Cheonan docked on a barge off Baengnyeong Island on 7 May, 2010. Lee Jung-hoon.
However, it remains an enigma as to who fired or set off a torpedo or underwater mine. The South Korean right, claiming that a North Korean semi-submersible ship fired a torpedo, demands that the South Korean government launch a revenge attack on the North. The left and pacifists in the South suggest that the warship may have touched off an underwater mine installed in the 1970s by the South Korean military to prevent North Korean infiltration and still left there.
136 underwater mines were installed in response to the tensions in the Yellow Sea and, ten years later, fewer than ten percent had been removed (http://www.jrcl.net/frame10053h.html)
Baengnyeong Island is only 20 kilometers from North Korea in an area that the North claims as its maritime territory, except for the South Korean territorial sea around the island. At present there are two demarcation lines on the sea. South Korea and the US (UN) claim that the Northern Limit Line (NLL), which runs just north of Baengnyeong Island, is the demarcation line between North and South. However, since 1999, North Korea has claimed that the Military Demarcation Line further south is the border between North and South. About 5,000 South Koreans live on Baengnyeong Island and regular ferries link it from Inchon. In the reconciliation between North and South in the year 2000, North Korea recognized this ferry route and the sea around the island as an area where South Korean and American boats can navigate freely. At the same time, North Korea has regarded American and South Korean boats entering the sea area beyond that as violating the economic zone of North Korea.

http://japanfocus.org/data/5740_baengnyong.png (http://japanfocus.org/data/5740_baengnyong.png)

Map of Baengnyeong Island (1)

http://japanfocus.org/data/map_2.jpg (http://japanfocus.org/data/map_2.jpg)

Map of Baengnyeong Island (2)
In the vicinity of Baengnyeong Island South Korea constantly confronts the North Korean military. The Cheonan was a patrol boat whose mission was to survey with radar and sonar the enemy’s submarines, torpedoes, and aircraft, and to attack. If North Korean submarines and torpedoes were approaching, the Cheonan should have been able to sense it quickly and take measures to counterattack or evade. Moreover, on the day the Cheonan sank, US and ROK military exercises were under way, so it could be anticipated that North Korean submarines would move south to conduct surveillance. It is hard to imagine that the Cheonan sonar forces were not on alert.
South Korean military spokespersons told the media immediately after the incident that the probability of sensing torpedoes two kilometers away with sonar was over 70 percent. Later the probability was reduced to over 50 percent because the water is only 30 meters deep. This reduction, I believe, is for the purpose of theorizing North Korean responsibility for the attack.
The patrol boat sinking; doubling the area of the search (http://www.chosunonline.com/news/20100419000034)
A US Submarine that sank by the Number 3 Buoy
The sinking of the Cheonan remains unsolved. But around the time of this incident another sinking occurred that has hardly been reported in Japan. Near the site of the sinking of the Cheonan, a colossal object, which appears to be a US submarine, was found to have sunk. An ROK underwater team searched for, and on April 7 South Korea’s KBS TV showed, a US helicopter carrying what seems to be the body of a US soldier. KBS is a public broadcasting station with the highest credibility in South Korea.
Following the sinking of the Cheonan, in the course of conducting an underwater search, a member of the special unit of the ROK Navy, UDT-SEAL (Underwater Demolition Team, Sea Air Land) Han Joo-ho, lost consciousness and later died. This was a secondary disaster. While collecting information on the death of Warrant Officer Han, KBS learned that his memorial took place neither near where the rear of the ship was found (the first buoy), nor near where the head of the ship was found (second buoy). Rather, it was six kilometers away near the third buoy, between the first and second buoy, that is, at a location that had nothing to do with the Cheonan sinking.

http://japanfocus.org/data/buoy_map.gif (http://japanfocus.org/data/buoy_map.gif)

A map provided by KBS TV. The third buoy to the East of Baengnyeong Island is where the head of the Cheonan sank, and the rear of the Cheonan sank to the West.

http://japanfocus.org/data/search_map.jpg (http://japanfocus.org/data/search_map.jpg)

The map of the search generally reported: two black dots to the South of Baengnyong are where the halves of Cheonan reportedly sank. The third buoy is not shown.

http://japanfocus.org/data/US_and_ROK_troops.jpg (http://japanfocus.org/data/US_and_ROK_troops.jpg)

US and ROK troops at work searching the sea several hundred meters from the cliff of the island. The first and second buoys where the Cheonan sank are both separated from the island by about two kilometers, and are not right in front of the cliff as shown in this Yonhap News photo. This is likely to be the place of the third buoy where the US submarine sank. But there South Korean reports claim that this is the location of the search for the Cheonan survivors.
This site (http://johnhoon.sblo.jp/article/36743688.html) is the source of the maps and photo.
(When a boat is discovered on the sea bed, divers connect a buoy with a rope to the sunken boat, so that the location can be specified from above. After the explosion split the Cheonan in two, the two halves separated, drifting on the fast tide. They were discovered 6.5 kilometers apart.)
Warrant Officer Han, who dove at the third buoy, lost consciousness and later died. KBS, while investigating UDT-SEAL and other sources on the sea bed at the location of the third buoy, learned that something like a large submarine had sunk and that the interior of the submarine was quickly searched under US military jurisdiction.
The US military so rushed this search that it did not wait for decompressors necessary for underwater search to arrive before sending ROK troops underwater. Although the safe duration of the time for diving is as short as fifteen minutes, the US military pushed ahead to make the Koreans search the complex interior of the boat so that even skilled UDT-SEAL personnel lost consciousness one after another. And in that situation, the accident involving Warrant Officer Han occurred. Some UDT-SEAL officers claimed that “US divers declined to carry out such a dangerous operation, so they made our ROK team do the work.”
A Suppressed KBS TV Scoop
ROK and US authorities did their best to hide the fact that a US submarine sank at about the same time as the Cheonan. The ROK authorities did not announce the sinking of the US submarine, nor did they call Warrant Officer Han’s death an accident which occurred while searching inside a US submarine. Instead, they announced that he died while searching for Cheonan survivors’ bodies. Warrant Officer Han was honored as a national hero.


http://japanfocus.org/data/Han.Honorguard.jpg (http://japanfocus.org/data/Han.Honorguard.jpg)

South Korean honor guard bearing the coffin of Han Joo-ho
However, the memorial for Warrant Officer Han was performed not at the site of the Cheonan, but at the site of the sunk US submarine. US Ambassador Kathleen Stevens and Commander-in-Chief Walter Sharp of US forces in Korea attended. They praised Han and offered solatium to the bereaved family. The attendance by high US officials and monetary payments probably were for the purpose of suppressing anti-American sentiment that might blame the delayed search for Cheonan survivors caused by the precipitous US search for its own victims, resulting in Han falling victim.
An object like a corpse pulled up from the sea at the third buoy was taken away not by an ROK helicopter but by a US military helicopter. This too suggests that what sank at the third buoy was not an ROK ship but a US military boat.
The search and recovery of the Cheonan was given to a civilian company and the command of the operation was in the hands of a Korean barge. The search at the third buoy was conducted by a special ROK UDT-SEAL team and the latest ROK light-weight aircraft carrier, the Dokdo, served as the command center. What can be assumed from this disparity is that the US and ROK military prioritized the search for the American submarine at the third buoy over the search and recovery of the Cheonan. This is especially the case for the US military, which commands the ROK military. After the incident, the start of the search and recovery of the Cheonan was delayed, probably because US and ROK authorities prioritized the search for the US submarine.
KBS TV in the 9 o’clock news featured this under the title, “The Mysterious Third Buoy. Why?” Subsequently, a number of ROK newspapers and magazines reported on the incident. The ROK authorities vigorously criticized these reports and sued KBS for “false reporting” and maligning the government. After the trial, the KBS website had to stop displaying film and articles about the incident.
The Mysterious Third Buoy. Why? (http://news.kbs.co.kr/tvnews/news9/2010/04/07/2076673.html)
A gag order was issued to the UDT-SEAL team. When it was found that the problem of the third buoy was not about the ROK authorities but about the US military, official pressure increased and KBS and other Korean media stopped reporting on the incident. As in Japan, the Korean media, which is subject to American authority, seems to share an implicit rule not to inquire into US military matters.
A Nuclear Submarine Armed with Nuclear Weapons was Underwater?
KBS, which reported on the existence of the third buoy, was criticized for filing a false report. Thereafter, the possibility that the Cheonan was attacked by an American submarine was regarded as a dangerous and groundless rumor, and was virtually suppressed in South Korea.
However, the suspicion that the Cheonan sank as a result of friendly fire surfaced within the South Korean media immediately after the event. On the day of the incident, ROK and US forces were conducting the joint military exercise Foal Eagle to the south of Byaengnyeong Island. According to a joint US-ROK announcement, the exercise was to have been completed on 18 March, but the actual exercise was prolonged to 30 April. On the day of the incident, the exercise was underway. After the incident, the US-ROK authorities made no mention of the fact that the joint military exercise was in progress. But the day after the incident, various ROK media and newspapers reported that the Cheonan might have been sunk by friendly fire during the military exercise.
The Cheonan and the “suspicion” of inadvertent attack during the ROK-US Joint Military Exercise (http://www.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2010/03/29/2010032901461.html)
In response to the report, ROK authorities acknowledged that the military exercise was in progress, but stated that it was not taking place near Byaengnyeong. Rather, it was off the coast of Taeon, Chungchong Namdo, which is about 100 kilometers to the south of Byaengnyeong. ROK authorities announced that the Cheonan did not participate in the military exercise. But a high-speed ship can reach Byaengnyeong from Taeon in two to three hours. Since last year, the DPRK has been criticizing the US and ROK for threatening activity in approaching its maritime area during ROK-US joint military exercises. This time, too, US and ROK ships may have gone north close to Byaengnyeong island. If the Cheonan had sunk during the exercise, the ROK authorities, in order to avoid criticism from North Korea, would not make such an announcement. Although the authorities announced that the Cheonan did not participate in the exercise, it is possible that the announcement deviates from the fact.
The Jaju Minbo of the ROK (left wing) analysed the KBS News report. What is interesting is the analysis of the geographical environment of the third buoy where the submarine sank. The American submarine sank in the offing several hundred meters off the coast near cliffs that are called Yongteurim Rocks, on the southern side of Byaengnyeong. Around Byaengnyeong Island there are many shoals where submarines can run aground while underwater, but the sea in front of the cliffs is deep. There, the northern and eastern sides are divided by land and if North Koreans tried to watch Byaengnyeong from their territory, they would not be able to locate a US submarine on the south side of the island. North Korea recognizes the sea area around Byaengnyeong as ROK territory. A boat moving underwater near the island would not be attacked by the North Korean military, making this a safe hiding place for a US submarine.
On the basis of this kind of geographical information, novelist Soo Hyon-o, a specialist in military affairs, told the Jaju Minbo: “Perhaps the American submarine adopted a posture of near war. Meaning that it can send a missile toward North Korea during an emergency while underwater in the sea near Byaengnyeong Island. Using the sea around the rocks as a base, it can intercept DPRK communications from the opposite shore of the island.”
Jaju Minbo (http://www.jajuminbo.net/sub_read.html?uid=5790&section=sc2&section2=): “Did the North Hit and Completely Sink a US Submarine?” (http://www.jajuminbo.net/sub_read.html?uid=5790&section=sc2&section2=)
Byaengnyeong Island is the nearest point in South Korea to Pyongyang . . . about 170 kilometers. For the US-ROK military, it is the best place to counterattack in the event of emergency, and it is also well placed for radio interception. If the US places a submarine near Byaengnyeong Island and it stays for a long time, in the event of a North Korean attack on Seoul, the submarine can fire a missile within minutes.
A submarine employed for such an operation is undoubtedly an atomic submarine, which can stay under water for one month. An atomic submarine extracts oxygen using electric power generated by the atomic reactor on the boat by electrolysis of sea water. Unlike a diesel submarine, such a boat does not have to surface at all. Many US atomic submarines can be loaded with nuclear missiles. In order to counter North Korea, which claims to be armed with nuclear weapons, the US military might maintain a nuclear-armed submarine at all times near Byaengnyeong Island, the closest point to North Korea.
If the US and ROK military installed a missile aimed at North Korea on Byaengnyeong Island, they would be fiercely criticized by North Korea, which would agitate ROK citizens who regard citizens of the North as their brethren, necessitating removal of such a missile. However, a US submarine loaded with atomic missiles underwater near the island would have the same effect as a land-based missile at a time of emergency. It would not be known by the North, nor would there be a need to inform ROK citizens about it. Thought about in this way, the possibility of a US submarine armed with nuclear weapons being near Byaengnyeong Island is almost greater than its not being there.
Many US atomic submarines have more than 100 crew members. They operate the submarine by night and day shifts, so the crew is large. If a US submarine sank under the third buoy, there could have been many victims, their number comparable to those who died in the Cheonan incident. There is also the fear of radioactivity leakage. What the US military hastened to recover from the sunken submarine could have been a nuclear warhead. That is why the UDT-SEAL team of the ROK military was made to conduct the search hastily. Warrant Officer Han’s death on duty occurred in the process.
The sinking of the Cheonan was widely reported immediately, but the sinking of the American submarine was concealed by the US government, and the ROK authorities were made to assist in the concealment. The reason for concealing the sunken submarine is probably to prevent North Korea and ROK citizens from knowing that a US submarine was underwater near Byaengnyeong Island for the purpose of attacking North Korea in time of crisis. If that fact became known, the North would be angry and attempt some form of retaliation, and anti-US sentiment among ROK citizens would be fanned. But, because KBS and others reported on the sinking of the US submarine, even though handled as an error, the North can be presumed to have grasped the steps of this event fairly well.
When military secrets were exposed by the sinking of the Cheonan, the military started to take measures (http://japanese.yonhapnews.co.kr/Politics2/2010/04/19/0900000000AJP20100419001500882.HTML)
Mistaking the American Submarine for a North Korean Submarine?
The discussion so far has not come to the most important question: why did the Cheonan and the American submarine sink? I will address this now. The Jaju Minbo article, which analyzed the report by KBS TV, writes that a North Korean submarine came South, attacked the Cheonan and the US submarine, and may have sunk both boats. However, in my view, the possibility of the North having done this is extremely low.
Right after the Cheonan sinking, the US and ROK governments announced that there was little possibility that the Cheonan sank as a result of North Korean attack. If there had been a North Korean submarine attack, the North Korean government, after a few days, might have proudly announced that it had sunk both ROK and US boats. If US and ROK governments announced before then that the sinking was probably not the result of a North Korean attack, both governments would risk being criticized by citizens, and high officials would have had to assume responsibility and resign. If it was truly not an attack from the North, the US and ROK governments would be expected to quickly announce that it was not from the North. Jaju Minbo, a leftwing newspaper close to North Korea, perhaps simply wanted to show the power of North Korean military.
As noted, a US-ROK joint military exercise was in progress that day near Byaengnyeong Island and it is highly probable that the Cheonan was at the site as part of the exercise. If a military exercise was going on, then other US and ROK ships were present. So if a North Korean submarine did attack, the US and ROK would have fiercely counterattacked and sunk it. Even if they failed to sink it and it escaped, if there had been an attack from the North, then the US and ROK could stand in the position of justice for simply having defended themselves, so they would immediately have announced that such a battle had occurred.
The North feared that the US and ROK would use the joint military exercise as a pretext to move north and attack its nuclear facilities. Pretending to conduct a military exercise as a cover for a real attack is a plausible US military strategy. For the North to attack in such a situation would be suicidal as it would give the US and ROK a pretext for war.
If the boat was not sunk by an attack from the North, the remaining possibility is that an error occurred. I suspect that the US military had not informed the ROK that an American submarine was stationed underwater near Byaengnyeong Island. If the American submarine that sank at the third buoy was underwater for a long time, it follows that it did not participate in the joint exercise that day (it had other duties).
I think it likely that the US submarine, which was off the coast to the south of Byaengnyeong, happened to approach closer to the shore than expected and ROK forces, mistaking it for a North Korean submarine, fired. When the US submarine returned fire, both boats sank as a result of a friendly attack due to a misconception. The US submarine must have known of the approach of the Cheonan with the use of a passive sonar used for receiving communication. But if the American military was keeping the presence of the submarine secret from the ROK, then the US submarine could not communicate by radio with the Cheonan.
The Cheonan was attacked from the port side. The ROK authorities announced that the Cheonan at that time was heading northwest. If that is really the case, then the boat’s port faced the open sea. The American submarine underwater near the shore would have attacked from the island side, the reverse of the open sea side. This contradicts the above hypothesis. Except, in order to hide the friendly attack by the US military ship, the possibility exists that the ROK authorities announced the direction of the Cheonan in reverse. (If they announced that the Cheonan was attacked from the island side, then the North Korea attack theory would not be possible and the suspicion of a friendly attack would become stronger.)
China’s Role in North-South Arbitration After the Cheonan Incident
Following the sinking of the Cheonan, media and political circles in South Korea uniformly expressed condolences. Concerts and entertainment events were canceled one after another. The rightwing suddenly became active, demanding that the government “counterattack North Korea.” ROK local elections will take place in June. The Cheonan political situation will greatly influence the campaign.
Donald Kirk, an American reporter in South Korea, who is familiar with the American military situation, compares the Cheonan incident to 9/11. Some people say that this is going too far. But the possibility that they wish to conceal, that the Cheonan was sunk by friendly fire from the American submarine, is achieved by casting suspicion that it was sunk by North Korea. The result is that political circles and society are aroused, naturally making Americans want to liken the incident to 9/11.
A former reporter for the New York Times calls the sinking of the Cheonan a tragedy that is comparable to 9/11 (http://japanese.joins.com/article/article.php?aid=128300&servcode=A00&sectcode=A00)
An opposition member of the ROK National Assembly challenged the Minister of National Defense, demanding that the truth be revealed and noting that the sinking of the Cheonan may have been a mistake made by the US military. He was criticized by rightwing media as “a foolish congressman trusting conspiracy theorists.” The same label was applied by the mass media to US and Japanese representatives who sought to inquire into the truth of 9/11.
Rep. Park Yongson Engages the Minister of National Defense over “The American Inadvertent Bombing Theory,” which was Officially Rejected as False (http://japanese.donga.com/srv/service.php3?biid=2010042700058)
Following the sinking of the Cheonan, if the US and ROK had announced that the Cheonan was attacked by the North and they would counterattack, the result would have been full-scale war. However, the US military in South Korea is moving toward withdrawal. The command in case of emergencies is scheduled to be transferred from the US to the ROK military in 2012. Moreover, leadership of international politics in the Korean peninsula is in process of transfer from the US to China with the approval of US administrations from Bush to Obama.
Within the military-industrial complex centered in the Pentagon, there must be opponents of multipolarization who wish to reverse this. They do not wish to sit back and watch East Asia fall under Chinese hegemony in this manner, with US military withdrawal. They naturally seek to take advantage of the Cheonan incident to induce war between South Korea and North Korea, and, as at the time of the Korean war, develop it into war between the US and China so as to reverse multipolarization in East Asia. Although I may be projecting too far, one may even suspect that they provoked the friendly attack by concealing from the ROK military the underwater navigation of the US submarine around Byaengnyeong Island.
If a great war again erupts on the Korean peninsula triggered by the Cheonan Incident, even if Japan does not bribe the US with the “sympathy budget”, the stationing of US forces in Japan would continue, and the US would again view Japan as an unsinkable aircraft carrier. The Japanese economy would thus again benefit from Korean special procurements after sixty years. This would be a desirable outcome for Japanese who favor dependency on the US.
However, amidst the strife centered, US multipolarists appear to be stronger than the military-industrial complex (and US-Britain centrists). The result is that the Cheonan Incident has not led to a second US- Korean War. Further, what is regrettable for those in Japan and the ROK who wish to continue dependence on the US, the US has transferred to China the role of mitigating the aggravated North-South relationship.
Chairman Hu Jintao of China, on 30 April, talked with President Lee Myung-bak who attended the opening ceremony of the World Expo in Shanghai. Three days later he hosted a visit from North Korean President Kim Jong-il, making possible a China-North Korea summit. It is unclear whether Six-Party talks will be held subsequently, but China has certainly strengthened its role as mediator between North and South Korea.
Many South Korean citizens have come to distrust government pronouncements on the Cheonan Incident. In the ROK, the fact that the American submarine sank near the third buoy may change at some future time from “conspiracy theory” to fact. As long as ROK national policy remains one of dependence on the US, the matter of the third buoy will have to be suppressed. But to the extent that the ROK moves toward multipolarization (emphasizing China and coexistence between North and South), the lid will be taken off.

This is an updated version of an article that was originally published at Tanaka Sakai’s website on May 7, 2010. 韓国軍艦「天安」沈没の深層 (http://www.tanakanews.com/100507korea.htm)
Tanaka Sakai posted another article on the aftermath of the incident (http://www.tanakanews.com/100531korea.htm) on May 31, 2010.
See Satoko Norimatsu's survey of critical English language analyses (http://peacephilosophy.blogspot.com/2010/05/very-little-has-reported-in-english-on.html) of the Cheonan Incident at Peace Philosophy blog.
See also Selig Harrison, What Seoul Should Do About the Sinking of the Cheonam. (http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_opinion/420827.html)
See Jeff Stein, Asian Analysts Question Korea Torpedo Incident (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/05/asian_analysts_question_korea_torpedo_incident.htm l?hpid=news-col-blog).
See Yoichi Shimatsu, Did an American Mine Sink > South Korean Shi (http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/did-an-american-mine-sink-south-korean-ship/)p?

Tanaka Sakai is the creator, researcher, writer and editor of Tanaka News (www.tanakanews.com), a Japanese-language news service on Japan and the world.
Tanaka Sakai's new book is 『日本が「対米従属」を脱する日—多極化する新世界秩序の中で—』
The Day Japan Breaks with "Subordination to the US": Amidst the Multipolarizing New World Order (http://www.fuun-sha.co.jp/book/57tanakasakai.html)
Recommended citation: Tanaka Sakai, "Who Sank the South Korean Warship Cheonan? A New Stage in the US-Korean War and US-China Relations," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 21-1-10, May 24, 2010.

[Revy]

I believe that it may spark anger in the populace, but to be completely honest, I would like for this to happen with as less bloodshed as possible to cause an uplift of revolutionary activities.

The nukes will be filled with candy like piñatas, providing much happiness to children all over the globe...
The explosion will be an explosion of confetti, after which unicorns will emerge from rainbow-colored mushroom clouds being ridden by leprechauns sprinkling glitter over the cities below...

[Revy]

Waitwait, if nuclear war is already occurring between the U.S. and North Korea, and you just happen to support one side over another, then it means you support nuclear war? Whaa?

Why the fuck would North Korea nuke the country it's trying to unite with? That's just ensuring that the effects of nuclear radiation fuck themselves over as much as their southern brothers, neither of which it wants.

They won't nuke anyone, the only nuking that has happened is the nuked brains of those who believe DPRK is a socialist paradise.

They don't need to nuke Seoul, they are so militarized they would just bomb it with regular bombs. North Korea has the fifth largest military in the world (some say fourth?).

The US has had no problem destroying so many innocent people, North Korean regime wouldn't give a shit either. That is only unless you think they are compassionate benevolent rulers. 하하하!:blink:

[Lyev]

Can we just re-iterate this nonsense about Juche and the DPRK's (weak and failing) economy? Autarky in North Korea has failed, as far as I can see. Before the fall of the Soviet Union their trade was roughly 50-50 between China and the Soviet Union. China is still their regular, steadfast partner. But here's the facts, last obtained in 2008. Their main export partners are as follows: China 42%, South Korea 38% and India 5%. And now their main import partners: China 57%, South Korea 25%, Singapore 3% and Russia 3%. Would we agree the famine(s) of the 1990s was sparked by the loss of the Soviet Union as a trading partner, but greatly exacerbated by the economy, farming techniques, inherent geographical complication etc.?

[Rusty Shackleford]

They won't nuke anyone, the only nuking that has happened is the nuked brains of those who believe DPRK is a socialist paradise.

They don't need to nuke Seoul, they are so militarized they would just bomb it with regular bombs. North Korea has the fifth largest military in the world (some say fourth?).

The US has had no problem destroying so many innocent people, North Korean regime wouldn't give a shit either. That is only unless you think they are compassionate benevolent rulers. 하하하!:blink:
no one here thinks that, you fool.

[al8]

Waitwait, if nuclear war is already occurring between the U.S. and North Korea, and you just happen to support one side over another, then it means you support nuclear war? Whaa?

Why the fuck would North Korea nuke the country it's trying to unite with? That's just ensuring that the effects of nuclear radiation fuck themselves over as much as their southern brothers, neither of which it wants.

Because you can nuke fleet armadas and also airspace to counter the onslaught of air forces. You don't always have to nuke civilian targets, such as densely populated cities, like the yanks. Nukes have legitimate military uses.

[Hexen]

Because you can nuke fleet armadas and also airspace to counter the onslaught of air forces. You don't always have to nuke civilian targets, such as densely populated cities, like the yanks. Nukes have legitimate military uses.

Thing is though, The worst part about Nukes is that they also have radiation which it would pretty much be a environmental catastrophe which would backlash at both sides...*looks at the depleted uranium used at the Iraqi and Afghan occupations and BP Oil Spill* oh that's right, governments don't give a flying fuck about the environment which is what scares me the most.

Nukes shouldn't even be used for any reason at all (unless your stupid enough to use them which unfortunately most governments are which also terrifies me) hell those things should never been invented.

Fuck you Rudolph Peierls (The name is considered a pun actually) Otto Frisch, Enrico Fermi, and anyone involved with the creation of the atomic bomb for creating this shitty world.

[Yazman]

Another ridiculous bluff, one which has already been called by the US and South Korea as operations have already begun.

Its really hard to take them seriously when they keep up this stupid and ridiculous bluffing. Haven't they ever read the story of the boy who cried wolf?

[CJCM]

Well we must take into fact that the extreme neo-cons want us ( by that i mean the civilians around the world ) to believe that the DPRK is going to take over the world within 20 or so years.
The whole hype that Iran and the DPRK are going to insinerate the whole world just because they find us unworthy is portraid in the media more and more.

Heck even I found a war plan:rolleyes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6NiAGu4_8s

PS : much disrespect to the haters of the ML government in the DPRK.

[dearest chuck]

with friends like the american left, who needs enemies?

[dearest chuck]

Now based on what I have seen I can tell you they have something which most other developing countries would envy.

For example, DPRK has no lack of doctors and nurses, as we have seen in other developing countries where most of their doctors have migrated to other places. But DPRK has enough doctors and nurses, they have a very elaborate health infrastructure, starting from the central to the provincial to the district level. One very important element they have is what they call "household doctor". One doctor takes care of 130 families and about 500-550 people depending on the size of the family. So the doctors there work in the clinic to provide family health care services.

Of course they use both traditional and western medicine. In afternoons they will do home visits, and they keep good medical records. I personally reviewed those medical records at the clinical level. But the only point I need to mention is the records are not computerized but manual. So that is something we need to address when we say they need to improve the quality of data in order to use modern technology to properly collect those data and do analysis. It is very difficult to work on manual records. My sense is that the data needs improving. And in order to improve the confidence of partners, there is a good infrastructure that may be the entry of many people.

Another important element is that as a government policy the health of every citizen in the country is covered, so there is universal coverage. People in the country do not have to worry about a lack of financial resources to access care. But the country has another challenge, and that is distance. I found travelling in the mountain area to be quite difficult and of course, there is a lack of fuel; that too is a challenge.

That is why in this country the use of telemedicine would be important to improve the health service and to help the professionals so that the doctors and nurses can get access to centres of excellence in the capital, and not working in isolation.

So what struck me was what they have managed to do under very difficult conditions.http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2010/20100430_chan_press_transcript.pdf

[danyboy27]

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2010/20100430_chan_press_transcript.pdf
yea well, that what you get after visiting ''tourist'' north korea.

[al8]

Thing is though, The worst part about Nukes is that they also have radiation which it would pretty much be a environmental catastrophe which would backlash at both sides...*looks at the depleted uranium used at the Iraqi and Afghan occupations and BP Oil Spill* oh that's right, governments don't give a flying fuck about the environment which is what scares me the most.

Nukes shouldn't even be used for any reason at all (unless your stupid enough to use them which unfortunately most governments are which also terrifies me) hell those things should never been invented.


No, nukes should be used if there are good reasons to use them. Nuking a swarm of bomber squadron before it bombs your country to smithereens is one example where one can go and calculate the cost/benefit. Would rather suffer a chance of having slightly more radio activity than the normal background one for 50 year than have everyone I know die through excruciating conventional means, such as with a U.S military bombing campaign.

[Rusty Shackleford]

z6NiAGu4_8s



im close to vomiting. seriously... these right wing horror stories are so ridiculous.

[People's War]

If you had been isolated and had a significant military presence right at your border, you'd be scared when they made such aggressive gestures too.

[scarletghoul]

yea well, that what you get after visiting ''tourist'' north korea.
Yeah the WHO is sooo gullible.. and the DPRK would construct an elaborate pretend country and medical system just to fool the foreigners...

You serious boy ??

[Shokaract]

Because you can nuke fleet armadas and also airspace to counter the onslaught of air forces. You don't always have to nuke civilian targets, such as densely populated cities, like the yanks. Nukes have legitimate military uses.

I was responding to danyboy25's example scenario of North Korea nuking Seoul. Sorry I didn't make that clear.


well, i agree, the scenario is just fucking absurd, but some people think it could actually happen to avoid famine.

Like some in the North Korean government or some talking heads?

[Jazzhands]

Homefront is just proof the gaming industry is completely out of ideas. I was literally falling out of my chair laughing when I saw that trailer.:laugh::laugh::laugh:

[scarletghoul]

"great korean republic" wtf.. It's called undivided Korea.

Still, that trailer is hilarious. Would be cool if the first part came true; that is, Kim Jong-un somehow succeeding his rather right away and managing to reunite the country in a few years.. then US collapsing and withdrawing from the region. lol.

[danyboy27]

Yeah the WHO is sooo gullible.. and the DPRK would construct an elaborate pretend country and medical system just to fool the foreigners...

You serious boy ??

the WHO will see what the Korean governement want them to see, do you seriously think they will let them have unlimited access to every health facilities of the countries, that the north korean governement will do no effort to embelish the situation to look good on the paper?

the WHO also asked million people to get vaccined against swine flu, even tho there was obvious proof to believe the whole thing was horseshit and motivated by some corporate bribe.

you are fucking blind if you believe for a second that an organisation like that cant be fooled or bribed by a control freak governement.

[REDSOX]

I cant see the DPRK using nukes unless they are attacked by the states and their puppet friends in south korea. This is very provocative by the states and follows other provacations worldwide against Venezuela, Cuba, Iran etc. They better not fuck with the DPRK because they can mobilise their own populace against any attack or invasion and they have NUKES!!

[Rusty Shackleford]

US Assesses Options in Possible War (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128795368)


About 20 ships and submarines and the aircraft carrier USS George Washington are participating in joint U.S.-South Korea naval exercises that began Sunday.
North Korea has promised "sacred war" in response to these maneuvers, taking place in the Sea of Japan east of the Korean peninsula .
That kind of rhetoric is not new — the North used similar language after an international investigation blamed them for the sinking of a South Korean warship this spring. Still, the U.S. military must prepare for the worst.
The man in charge of the U.S. fleet in the Pacific is Adm. Robert Willard. When North Korea threatened war earlier this year, he acted like he'd heard it all before.
"The rhetoric from North Korea is not unusual. We're prepared for any contingency in this region. It's my responsibility that we are," Willard said.
Now, with the latest naval exercises, there is a new standoff.

The U.S. military has a number of plans on the shelf, but John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, explains the two primary scenarios.
One is based on North Korea initiating an attack — the "major theater war plan" or OPLAN 5027. The second situation would be the collapse of North Korea. This second possibility, Pike says, "is no one's initiative — that's something that just happens." It's known as OPLAN 5029.
The First Scenario: War
War might begin with North Korea launching an artillery barrage against Seoul, South Korea's capital.
Michael Green is with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and served on President George W. Bush's National Security Council. He says the U.S. and South Korea would have to respond quickly.
"There would be enormous pressure. In fact, I think the war plans would argue for immediately suppressing the North Korean artillery capability, if they fired at all," Green says.
One risk is that North Korea could launch chemical or biological weapons with that artillery. The North has thousands of guns at the demilitarized zone (DMZ) — many of them in hardened positions such as caves. A few hundred could reach Seoul.



"The Americans and the South Koreans have been aware of this artillery threat to Seoul for some time. They have counter-battery radars that would detect these guns firing, and counter-battery fire would probably destroy those guns before the first shells that they had fired had hit Seoul," Green says.
Even so, the first round of fire would still hit the city of 10 million people, possibly killing thousands.
Responses To The First Scenario
Destroying North Korea's artillery would be a U.S. Air Force and Navy fight. Precision-guided munitions would fall from warplanes. Warships stationed nearby would launch guided missiles.
Michael O'Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings Institution, says responding to a North Korean attack with artillery may not be adequate.
"[Y]ou have to say, 'Well, OK, if we've got to the point where we're dropping hundreds or thousands of bombs on them and they are shelling Seoul with hundreds or thousands of rounds — is this thing really containable?'" O'Hanlon says.
And if it's not, then OPLAN 5027 offers options for what comes next.
O'Hanlon says one possibility in this scenario is taking the fight on the ground into North Korea.
"Do we move in and secure at least a certain swath of land north of the DMZ to push back the artillery more systematically, or do we actually make a quick strike for Pyongyang and try to get the North Korean leadership?" he asks.
Should it come to that, the U.S. would still be in command. But South Korea's army would likely take the lead, driving north across the DMZ, moving into the cities and trying to secure the surrender of individual North Korean commanders.
Despite the planning, most experts agree that the war scenario is unlikely.
The Second Scenario: Collapse
Another plan exists for the second scenario, called OPLAN 5029 — regime collapse.
Pike, with GlobalSecurity.org, says this is the plan that the South Koreans have increasingly focused on.
"Over time, South Korea has concluded that an invasion from North Korea is improbable, but a collapse of North Korea may be inevitable. And then the question becomes: What do you do when North Korea falls apart?" Pike says.
O'Hanlon adds that a collapse scenario is "very complicated."
He and others note that in addition to everything planners must anticipate in the first scenario — the barrage on Seoul, for example, or how China would react — a North Korean collapse poses other challenges. That includes securing the nuclear weapons the North is believed to possess, says O'Hanlon.
"I tend to think that one of the most important priorities is going to be to establish, essentially, a cordon sanitaire around the country's perimeter because you can't risk the nuclear weapons getting out," he says. "And what if some North Korean commander decides that he'll do a deal with al-Qaida?"
O'Hanlon admits that situation is unlikely, but he says reality can be unanticipated.
"We also have to acknowledge that the scenario can surprise us all. We don't get to choose the scenario. The enemy gets a vote, so to speak," O'Hanlon says.
Even 60 years after the Korean War began, some things still can't be planned for.



Not a single mention of a US led first strike. This is most definitely political posturing to make the imperialists look like they are only on defense.

[Chimurenga.]

Not a single mention of a US led first strike. This is most definitely political posturing to make the imperialists look like they are only on defense.

What do you expect from liberals?

[The Vegan Marxist]

‘Solidarity with the people of Korea: End the war now!
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
By: Muna Coobtee

Statement delivered on behalf of the ANSWER Coalition

On July 25, 2009, Party for Socialism and Liberation member Muna Coobtee delivered the following statement on behalf of the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) at a Los Angeles vigil to demand an end to the Korean War, a war of aggression carried out by the U.S. government under the name of the United Nations. The vigil was organized by Korean American groups and progressive allies.

During the Korean War, more than 5 million Koreans perished, most of them civilians. Thirty-six thousand U.S. soldiers also died. The U.S. Air Force, flying under the flag of this great “world peace” organization, leveled every building north of the 38th parallel.

While it devastated the peninsula, the U.S.-U.N. forces were defeated in their effort to smash the socialist government in North Korea. They were driven out of the north and back below the 38th parallel by the combined military counteroffensive of the Korean People’s Army and nearly one million Chinese volunteers in December 1950.

Fifty-six years ago, on July 27, 1953, the United States and North Korea signed a truce to end the war. But the U.S. government has refused to sign a peace treaty. Thus, the two sides technically are still at war. This has given the United States a flimsy pretext to station tens of thousands of troops in South Korea for over five decades. It has also imposed economic and financial sanctions against North Korea, just like it has maintained the blockade of Cuba.

The ANSWER Coalition and its member organizations, including the Party for Socialism and Liberation, extends is warmest greetings and solidarity to our comrades and friends here tonight, and to the Korean people who justly demand peace and a formal end to the war on the Korean peninsula.

Fifty-six years ago, the United States signed an armistice to temporarily halt its war of aggression on the people of Korea. Before the armistice, a genocide committed by the U.S. imperialists and their allies in the U.N. claimed the lives of 5 million innocent Koreans and divided a whole people in two.

Despite the heroic efforts of Koreans in the North and the South for reunification and peace, the wounds created by Washington’s war have not yet healed. It is an outrage that there is no official peace treaty so many decades after the confrontation ended.

But the U.S. government does not want to end the war. It still has over 28,000 U.S. soldiers occupying the peninsula and militarizing the false border between North and South Korea. Despite the anti-war rhetoric of the Obama administration, the U.S. may be preparing for a new war. The danger is very real. The government is still threatening North Korea, its government and people, using the most racist and chauvinist characterizations that harm all Koreans.

The U.S. may not want to end the war, but we know they will soon be forced to end it. The resolve and continued work of Korean American activists like you, and anti-war allies from all communities in the United States, along with growing solidarity from progressive and oppressed people across the globe ultimately will prevail. Most importantly, the will of the Korean people on the peninsula cannot and will not be broken. Korea will be reunited!

ANSWER and the PSL will continue to struggle in the anti-war movement to make our common demands heard. We are for peace. We are for reunification. And we demand all U.S. troops out of Korea. Together, in unity and struggle, we will win.

Stop the war on Korea! Self-determination for the Korean people! End the sanctions and blockade of North Korea! Hands off Korea now!

Source (http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=14280&news_iv_ctrl=1261)

[KC]

End the war now!
Oh okay let me just go ahead and do that

On a more serious note, this type of "news article" is what makes me hate the vast majority of left rags.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Oh okay let me just go ahead and do that

On a more serious note, this type of "news article" is what makes me hate the vast majority of left rags.

Because we choose to try & prevent the US from attacking, & possibly overthrowing the DPRK? Your statement is what makes me hate all the fake "lefties" who hide behind a black mask & call themselves "Marxist".

[bcbm]

maybe this has already been posted in the thread, but i'd really like to see an explanation from those who believe it possible of how the us could at this juncture feasibly invade and overthrow the dprk.

[gorillafuck]

Since the US is defying the warnings by the DPRK, we'll see where this leads. I don't want nuclear war, but if so does happen, my support initially will go to the DPRK.
In the event of nuclear war you would support the DPRK in making the streets of Seoul run red with blood?

Are you nuts?

[KC]

Because we choose to try & prevent the US from attacking, & possibly overthrowing the DPRK?

Primarily because your stupid cheap sloganeering on top of your incredibly shallow and ultimately unrealistic analyses (if you could even call it that) is nothing more than a whiny rant directed at people that already agree with you and who get metaphorical boners over being rrrevolutionary.

Also, the US isn't going to invade/overthrow the DPRK; that statement alone shows you're a complete loon entirely divorced from reality because you're too wrapped up in your unrealistic ideology.


Your statement is what makes me hate all the fake "lefties" who hide behind a black mask & call themselves "Marxist".

Lol, being called a 'fake leftie' by a revolutionary cultist is pretty funny.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Primarily because your stupid cheap sloganeering on top of your incredibly shallow and ultimately unrealistic analyses (if you could even call it that) is nothing more than a whiny rant directed at people that already agree with you and who get metaphorical boners over being rrrevolutionary.

Also, the US isn't going to invade/overthrow the DPRK; that statement alone shows you're a complete loon entirely divorced from reality because you're too wrapped up in your unrealistic ideology.



Lol, being called a 'fake leftie' by a revolutionary cultist is pretty funny.

a revolutionary cultist? where'd this come from?

[Rusty Shackleford]

Oh okay let me just go ahead and do that

On a more serious note, this type of "news article" is what makes me hate the vast majority of left rags.

its a statement of our position and a demand.

can we not make statements and demands?

what if it said: "we need a revolution led by the working class right now!" would you still be criticizing it? or say it said "workers, smash the capitalists!" on every article?

though i agree with them, they get rather tedious and pretty much overpowers any subject and turns us into the RCP(minus the avakian speech) or something. its not like Liberation is only about the DPRK. We frequently call for socialism and indeed work for socialism and are working more and more with the working class, oppressed nationalities, and oppressed groups like LGBTQ.


Also, that article only speaks about the US preparing for a new war. not that the US is going to out right invade it.

[KC]

its a statement of our position and a demand.

can we not make statements and demands?

A demand to whom?




what if it said: "we need a revolution led by the working class right now!" would you still be criticizing it?

Certainly.

[LimitedIdeology]

So I leave for a few days because I was sick and I find I'm not the only one with an incredulity towards those who believe in the promise of socialism in North Korea (I'm never, ever going to call them a democracy).

[Bright Banana Beard]

So I leave for a few days because I was sick and I find I'm not the only one with an incredulity towards those who believe in the promise of socialism in North Korea (I'm never, ever going to call them a democracy).
Please do, this will give us more quality discussion than those who outright think that North Korea is worse than any states in the world.

[Kassad]

And over here on your left, you'll see KC has returned to make wild, unbased and irrational assertions about other leftists. His behavior is quite misunderstood by actual revolutionaries like us, which is why we tend to keep him locked away and isolated from other rational thinkers. Please don't feed him.
- MGMT

But seriously, make some points worth addressing, KC, or you're just as fucking stupid as you used to be: a lot of assertions, no real substance.

[KC]

But seriously, make some points worth addressing, KC, or you're just as fucking stupid as you used to be: a lot of assertions, no real substance.I made plenty of points in this thread and actually backed them up, unlike most people who just said that because the US are evil imperialists that they want to invade and overthrow the North Korean government.

Maybe you should make some points worth addressing, Kassad, instead of whining about me.

[LC89]

Russia Today America
South Korean warship conspiracy

Sorry about the bold words I used copy n paste
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wg4uYcalcEhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wg4uYcalcE

[GreenCommunism]

its very normal for state to talk about their nuclear weapon whenever they feel threatened, any of you guys played civilisation 2, other countries constantly remind you they have the nuclear weapon when the diplomacy screen comes up. its a clear example and it is true in real life, if nuclear weapon were so useless then why did india and pakistan stop the conflict? because both had nuclear weapon and were heavily pressured to stop it in case it turns into a nuclear war.

[this is an invasion]

its very normal for state to talk about their nuclear weapon whenever they feel threatened, any of you guys played civilisation 2, other countries constantly remind you they have the nuclear weapon when the diplomacy screen comes up. its a clear example and it is true in real life, if nuclear weapon were so useless then why did india and pakistan stop the conflict? because both had nuclear weapon and were heavily pressured to stop it in case it turns into a nuclear war.

And if a nuclear war happens we can prepare by playing Fallout 3. :thumbup1: