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North Korea's School For Hackers?
Makoto writes "How do you launch a cyber-war with no IP infrastructure? South Korea claims that North Korea is training about 100 "cybersoldiers" per year in electronic warfighting tools and techniques, including writing viruses and hacking. But according to a story at Wired News, North Korea can barely keep its electrical grid up - not to mention feed its people. Even the Pentagon says North Korea's hacker academy is probably just propaganda by South Korea."
Just because they don't have a general electrical grid doesn't mean that they can't keep electricity going to their "hacker compound".
How good can this training really be?
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While that's true, they've also managed to turn out atomic weapons, which is quite a bit more complicated than training someone to use nmap. So, really, a lack of a reliable national power grid and insufficiant will to feed the masses does not necessarily exclude the possibility that they're training script kiddies....
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Would they be employing Kevin?
Maybe they can't keep the power grid up because the CyberWarrior School uses that as a practice target.
Come and get me Script Kiddies! My IP address is 127.0.0.1
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
So what if they can't keep the power grid up now. If their government-sanctioned hax0r d00dz piss in the wrong corn flakes, they will have a lot more trouble with their power grid, communications systems, sewage systems and whatever else air strikes like to land on.
So what do you think? Can government-spondored hacking (I really hate the "cracking" euphemism, sorry) be considered an act of war?
Link this article with that one and you know how the next Korean war will take place (with the 3l337 south koreans this time).
Thank you Slashdot !
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Oh, the Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea has no problem keeping the lights on at its military bases. It's the civil population that suffers. The DPRK military hoards food shipments for itself instead of distributing it to the people. But hey, the mass starvation in North Korea can hardly be laid at the feet of the ruling Communist government. Let's all repeat together - "IT'S AMERICA'S FAULT!"
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
So the Pentagon in spewing propaganda about South Korean propaganda about North Korea. Hmm.. Who to trust?
"Hacker" Training in Korea: how to spoof other ISPs through your country's servers.
In other news... we still have not found any weapons of mass destruction In Iraq despite our government telling us that they there.
Even if they do have a hacker school, so what? Like we here in the states do not teach a subset of our military these skills. Hacking is cheap and easy way of causing a lot of damage. It's a smart thing for them to try.
Davak
It's easy to teach people to blow themselves up as terrorism - "pull the switch, you'll go to heaven"
But hacking? You can't hack into something with just training... you need skill. I doubt some makeshift terrorist camp is going to give people programming skill.
"North Korea's School For Hackers?"
Hack what? An abacus?
I hear the parties are outrageous. And the babez? Out of control!
Best Windows Freeware
The story probably is propoganda by the South Koreans, *BUT* there is a marked difference between what the miliary gets and what civilians get. The ruling party and the military apparently get an amazingly high percentage of the resources in the country. So, while the rest of the country starves in the dark, the military eats well and probably has the lights on all the time. So, if the military wants to have a hacker school, they probably can afford to devote the resources to it. So what if a few hundred thousand peasants need to shiver in the dark!
There was a very interesting documentary special on Cinemax last month about a visit to North Korea. Sounds like quite a surreal place.
you think they are gonna do it from a government compound ? Nah I bet they go to a net cafe in Belgium or somewhere totally unrelated. The ability and knowledge is the hard part, access can be had all over the place...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
where do I sign up?
Reminds me of a certain strong bad email: If you had super powers, would you use them for good or for awesome?
South Korea has tons of "hackers" who ruin online gaming by cheating and flooding servers.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
I just read "The Armed Forces of North Korea" by Joseph Bermudez and some other books and reports and I don't think it'd be proper to discount the DPRK's abilities when it comes to Special Forces and Unconventional Warfare.
They've shown a high-level of professionalism when it comes in infiltrating the South and they did pull off the siezure of the USS Pueblo.
Sure the country's electrical grid is dodgy, but so was Israel and Jordan's until the late 80s. The DPRK military doesn't usually have the same electricity or food supply problems that the rest of the country has.
I'd not listen to everything the RoK says, but don't discount them as far as the Pentagon might*. The RoK is heavily infiltrated by the DPRK and I'm sure thier "cyberwar" planning would have agents in the South kick it off from that broadband rich area.
"The KPA (Korean People's Army) is still predominantly an analog and vacuum-tube force," said Alexandre Mansourov, a professor at the Pentagon's Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. "We tend to overestimate the level of information-technology expertise in the North Korean military, and South Korea is especially guilty of this."
That might be true for the majority of thier systems, but the DPRK has been buying modern SAMs ECM, Navigation and other systems from the FSR and China. Some of the more elite units in thier vast special forces have at least Gen 2-3 Night Vision and GPS recievers.
* - I've not read either link yet.
It may be just for "propaganda". Propaganda is very important to them. Blocking legitimate communications, astroturfing and sabotage are not just popular in Redmond.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
All they have to do is hack into the Lineage servers and watch as 75% of South Korean males between the ages of 15 and 40 go into the fetal position from going 'cold turkey'.
*.*
So what if they can barely keep the power grid up or have starving people.... The Soviets faught the Cold War and they had people starving too.
Let us not forget that North Korea has also had enough time and money to make atomic bombs... that is quite a few food stamps spent on R&D.
Once trained how can they control the crackers? What's to stop it backfiring?
We should not misunderestimate them. Thank you and God bless America.
George W. Bush
President, United States of America
I don't think any other problems North Korea may have has any bearing on whether or not they have high-tech hacking schools. I work for a large multinational and am repsonsible for IT in all areas outside US and Europe and the bushmen with bamboo computers and blow-guns myth is precisely that. Goddam Nigeria buys Pentium 4's, you think North Korea still uses vacuum tubes as the article laughingly asserts? Hell, India is considered one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world, have nuclear weapons and a space programme, but have barely 50% literacy. North Korea builds 8-lane highways that go virtually unused for future growth, don't think they don't have the resources and bright minds to throw at a military problem they think is pressing. I'm not saying the school is real, I really wouldn't know, but don't subscribe to the myth that everyone else in the world is using Lite-Brite instead of notebooks...
Working in the Intelligence community, I have had the opportunity to speak with North Koreans occasionally. I talked to one getntleman who told me about the computer science class he had in the North Korean equivalent of high school. He said the learned to program a bit in school, I asked him what kind of computers he had in class. He replied there were no computers, they simply wrote the programs down on paper.
Seems to me this is very similar to the nuclear situation with north korea. At the same time the pentagon is pressing for new research in nuclear weopons they're pressing Iran and North Korea to cease they efforts.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
And if North Korea doesn't have nukes, they damn well shouldn't be trying to give the impression that they do given their history of murdering South Korean politicians and kidnapping Japanese kids to go along with their "starve the masses" food distribution system.
In a game...
Koreandude: Hehehe... head-shot
AmericanPl8r: Dude, you haxor, cheater!
KoreanDude: You calling me a cheater?
AmericanPl8r: Yeah. You suck. Cheating hacker.
KoreanDude: You want to see sum real hackin?
AmericanPl8r: ?? Brb, I smell something bur..[NO CARRIER]
Yeah... as if we aren't seeing enough overseas hacking in games, etc as it is... now they're being trained for more serious stuff? Luckily, Canada is already producing a counterforce
King Jong II is completely insane.
Dude, where's my packet?
The true purpose of such a North Korea group might actually be to train their gurus with the latest and greatest information... ...to keep tabs on their own people!
While it may be difficult to get into large systems here in the United States and do a lot of damage, it it much easier to install backdoors and logging programs.
One large threat to the North Korean government is its own people. Knowing what these people are reading and saying online is a great step in repressing rebellion.
Davak
It will be more of a "blinding white flash"...
Is this happening in North or South Korea, and which one is the bad one?
I'd better switch it over to MSNBC so I can learn about American Idol-err, I mean, important news with globe-spanning implications.
So they start a cyber war.
Viruses/Worms run Rampant on Windows machines.
Win2k Server becomes an easy target
Microsoft Stock plummets.
The Geeks inherit the earth.
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
This User Friendly strip :-)
that you graduate with a SDFCE (Sum Dum Fuk Certified Engineer) certificate??
Are you willing to give them the chance to actually demonstrate such a success?
S Korea captain: We get signal - main screen turn on!
N Korea : Hello, how are you gentlemen. All your base are belong to us.
-What you say?
-You have no chance to survive, make your time... ha ha ha
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Linger or Longer?
Linger longer?
As below, so above and beyond, I imagine drawn beyond the lines of reason. Push the envelope. Watch it bend.
nmap -sS www.anything.kp
Starting nmap V. 3.00 ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ )
Failed to resolve given hostname/IP: www.anything.kp. Note that you can't use '/mask' AND '[1-4,7,100-]' style IP ranges
WARNING: No targets were found in the entire country, so 0 hosts scanned.
Nmap run completed -- 0 IP addresses in domain ".kp" (0 hosts up) scanned in 16 seconds
Yawn.
The DPRK has software development expertise that is "competent, if not world class," according to Hayes.
Sure, but they probably shoot the developers in the head execution-style if they don't turn out a certain number of lines of code per hour. I'd say that's an incentive to perform. No North Korean coders wasting time on Slashdot, that's for sure.
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
With Indian and Russian programmers now a commodity (no longer a low cost standard), North Korea will be the next source of discounted talent. If you are familiar with Russian style programmers, you will see the same in the North Koreans.
There are only two countries currently positioned to take advantage of this new low cost resource... South Korea and China.
The cheabols (large domestic corporations) in South Korea have been positioned to take advantage of the resources in the North for at least the last three years. Very few people outside the peninsula know what is really going on here in terms of technology, etc.
Training...yes. Hackers? Depends on whom you talk to and how you phrase the question...just like anything else.
It's true, I tell you -- I've experienced this first-hand. I was playing Diablo II online and sure enough, these people started logging in and slowing down the entire bnet server thing.
When a game that promotes capitalism at its finest (lidless for an 2 SOJ) gets hindered by a "cyber-attac", the terrorists win!
How competant do you think these guys will be? In a country like that an expert would be someone who knows what a lan is.
A good degree from a competant comp-sci school and you could probably do a lot more damage.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
This message is not flamebait, you retards.
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
They've also taken over the old soviet program to train children in ESP, so that they can kill anyone, anywhere.
Yes, but we also have Puppetry of the Penis.
1) Electricity shortage
2) Little available food
Obviously, they [North Korea] is training its entire populous to live like geeks [top ramen noodle rations] and use the ultra-low power Via C3 platform. Why can't you see this, beallj? Their power grid is pressed to the limits because North Korea bounced a check to purchase a shit load of computers and is now in the process training everyone to fight the Matrix^H^H^H^H^H^H United States corporation. If they were using Athlon or Pentium4, they wouldn't have enough power! Duh!
As South-Korean /.'er, i think North Koreans are not going to be able to teach them cyber soldiers well. It's barely even hard for them to keep their waters or electricities running for gov't facilities...
Cyberarmies won't do much good for them though since you know, there should be a lot of freedom cyber armies in the whole world who will be more than willing to help to keep this cyber world in order.
buffering...
... in a big subterrainian cave with Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, honest lawyers and all those WMDs.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
...I know because I learned all I need to about that country from the last Bond flick *Die Another Day.* If you watch the movie, you'll even discover how Michael Jackson became white...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Of course, I use BeOS, so I am immune from all attacks except the dreaded, "Lack of Developers" attack. *Shiver*
It's kind of sadly humorous how topical the RTS game C&C:Generals is, with the US fighting a vague arabic terrorist organization with chemical weapons and the Chinese forces which use hackers extensively as electronic warfare as well as money source from stolen bank accounts.
If there isn't a mod out there to change the Chinese over to the North Koreans, there should be.
They may have a terrible power grid and no network infrastructure, but it would make more sence for them to infiltrate their hackers into SK prior to hostilities and have them hack from there. I'd bet SK is already watching various routes into the country that NK hackers might use. It brings visions of Neuromancer's Screaming Fist where airborne hackers parachute behind enemy lines and tap into the enemies telcom network.
If they exchange hard miltech with India, then... why not IPtech ?
We here in California can't seem to keep our electrical grid up nor feed all our people and we turn out both computer hackors and nukes in spades.
Try Mr. Lee Jeong-Nam's HackersLab site: learn to hack zone
I tell you I've learnt so much about (*nix) security from this it's not funny.
(The site is so comprensive it also support other language options: Korean, Chinese and Japanese)
ps: See you on level 17 and on the "Hall of Fame"
The most likely foe for North Korea in any military conflict would be South Korea and its ally, the USA. Since South Korea's economy relies heavily on their IT infrastructure it is more than logical to have a credible threat at hand.
;-)
It is also far more difficult to wage war against the US, since North Korea's fleet wouldn't stand a chance against Aircraft carriers. So they would not be able to reach the American coast with enough forces to conquer the territory of the US. Considering the overwhelming force of the US military the only viable solution for the North Koreans in this asymetrical combat situation is to resort to tatics formerly only used by so called terrorists, like the Unabomber, the guy from Florida that sent the Antrax letters or the entity formerly supported by the CIA (during the 80's in Afghanistan) now known as Al Quaida, that managed a direct attack on the pentagon.
Modern civilisations have modern vurnerabilities. Our modern societies result in a lot of highly trained scientists that can research very much and very fast. Our infrasructure allows for a lot of production. This and other things allow for our overwhelming military might.
Even though it might be possible for rogue nations to infiltrate our societies with "undercover soldiers" or special forces ready to use our modern infrastructure against us in the event of war against their country I doubt if this to be possible on a large scale.
The nations that come into question here don't trust their citizen. The greatest strength modern societies have is loyalty and wealth (connected, no doubt about it). The dollar (combined with military might) proved to be the most potent weapon against resitence in Afghanistan and Iraq. In both countries the lower leaders were just bought out. The few that didn't accept the money were bombed. That showed the rest the way to go.
Anyways. Using hackers the rogue nations can attack and still control their soldiers, since they physically stay were they are. Let's wait and see what online pr0n does to them
Having read the article thoroughly, this startling news shows the flaws in the brewing Open Source Zeitgeist that is gripping the software community. Have you considered that providing software for free to countries such as China is essentially tacit support for oppressive regimes?
Far-fetched? Think about it: With MySQL, the People's Army will now be able to do multiple queries on their tables of democratic activists in Olog(n) time instead of lengthy searches in card catalogs. The bureaucratic overhead previously allowed activists enough time to flee the country. How about building cheap firewalls so the people can't get the unbiased reporting that CNN provides? Or using Apache to publish lists of Falun Gong people to their police forces instantly? I doubt that never crossed your minds when you were coding away in your parents' basements. Consider putting that little thought in your mental resolv.conf file.
If that does not concern you ( which it probably doesn't, since the lashout.org paradigm is publishing articles about how not to pay for things ), consider something else. When China eventually goes to war with Taiwan, we want to be able turn their command and control facilities into the computing equivalent of a train-wreck. One of the advantages of Windows never mentioned in the article is the ability of Microsoft to remotely deactivate Windows XP in the case of a national emergency. Thanks to GNU/Lunix, Taiwan will be on a collision course with the mainland in the near future.
Which throws into question Mr. Stallman's motives. A known proponent of socialism, the Chinese government and RMS are natural allies. Could it be a back door to Stallman's dream of an über-Socialist United States? We may never know for sure. Next time you consider contributing to an open source project, ask yourself this question: don't you want to make sure your work isn't used for nefarious purposes? Will you risk having blood on your hands?
Even the Pentagon says North Korea's hacker academy is probably just propaganda by South Korea It could also be propaganda by the pentagon in trying to portray NK as not a threat to a jumpy American populous.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
And some U.S. defense experts accuse South Korea of hyping the cyber threat posed by its northern neighbor, which they claim is incapable of seriously disrupting the U.S. military.
Excuse me?? We're talking warships running (or not) on NT.
That's like me trying to convince you that you can't outrun my Hyundai because I've got a turbo-charger in it.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
I mean, we don't even know if those North Koreans have a-bombs or not! How often do you get these totalitarian regimes that will starve their people to death just to make nukes? What a silly concept! Bloody neocons! Next thing they'll tell us is that the North Korean political leadership is living in luxury while their people starve! The nerve!!!
For some real propaganda, check out www.kcna.co.jp.
Oh yes, this link is real.
Not only does North Korea have trouble keeping their power grid up, they barely even have a power grid.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I think this picture says more about North Korea than any article ever could. It's a Nasa compsite image of the Earth At Night. It shows man-made light levels. It beautifully visualizes a combination of population density and "development".
For anyone weak in geography, look at the top and all the way to the right. The bright snake shape is Japan. Go to the bottom-left of the snake and look up-left a smidgen. That bright squarish area is South Korea. It looks like South Korea is an island floating in the sea, but it isn't. North Korea is directly above South Korea. North Korea is a big black hole. If you look carefully you can see a single white dot directly above the top left corner of South Korea. That dot is the capital of North Korea.
That black hole of a country has the world's THIRD LARGEST ARMY and they want to build NUKES. They are diverting their entire economy (what little there is of it) to supporting that army and building weapons. The North Korean government is incredibly isolationist and paranoid. They claim various international organizations are "conspiring" against them. They make no secret of the fact that they want/plan to "liberate" South Korea.
North Korea is like some homeless guy who doesn't have any shoes or food because he spends all his money hoarding knives and bullets. His brother happily lives in a nice house with his wife and kids, and this guy wants to invade that house on a "liberation mission". To top it off, this guy actually has a nuclear reactor to build a nukes with.
Anyway, another facinating thing to look for on the map is the Nile River. It on the top right of Africa. It's a very thin bright line with a kink in it. Each bank of the river is densely populated and well developed, but beyond that it is pitch black and empty.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Although I completely agree with your statement;
...to keep tabs on their own people!"
" The true purpose of such a North Korea group might actually be to train their gurus with the latest and greatest information...
Richard Stollman is right about software. FROM my comments about the SCO thing;
"Just a parting thought about the whole sco vs the world thing.
The reason why Microsoft bought a Unix license is not the fact that ifconfig, etc etc sounds terribly close to ipconfig etc, etc, etc ad infinitum?
If this is the case then we all might need to bow our heads to Redmond and keep our collective mouths shut for eternity!
Richard Stallman is only a voice in the Gnu wilderness, but he is right.
Giving the exclusive rights to digital communication technology to one small consortium is as bad as the Spanish Inquisition of all printed material by a Gutenberg press. Then trying to enforce an exclusive control of all printed and sold documents for ever! Just look how that ruined the beauty and glory of Renaissance Spain! The monopoly cannot be allowed to happen, or we are headed for an era that will make Orwells 1984 look like a Baptist Church picnic during a rainstorm."
The scary thing is that we are not as far away from a corporate run police state ourselves, if things are allowed to get out of hand!
the rat is well regarded in Japan it is the sign of a good harvest.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
University of Calgary is planning on teaching folk how to write virii, but I don't think for quite the same purpose.
Two Rules For Success:
1) Never tell people everything you know.
Yet, the United States Army has plenty of money to spend on Nuclear Weapons and other kinds of weapons of mass destructions. Plus, the US is the only country that regularly uses these kind of weapons against defenseless countries.
Huh? Perhaps I'm compleatly off base here, but when has the US used Nuclear weapons against defensless countries on a regular basis? We've used them twice, against a country we were at war with, over 50 years ago. I would hardly consider that 'regular' useage, and I would hardly consider WWII era Japan 'defenceless'.
And I'd be curious to know when we've used other weapons of mass distruction. Nerve agents in vietnam? I suppose you could argue that that exercise 30 years ago a deployment of WOMD... but it'd be a stretch. Regular? Hardly.
. . . the US is the only country . . . against defenseless countries.
So when all those third world nations used (and continue to use) WOMD against other nations and their own people, they somehow don't count?
Their president is an idiot and a warmonger.
Oh. Now I understand. Because you don't like the president, it's ok to make up things about America. Makes perfect sense.
There are lots of good, sound reasons to criticise Bush and America's forigen policy. Telling bold face lies is not one of them.
The Internet is generally stupid
Donald Rumsfeld creeps me out. I mean, look at the guy.
Maybe their cybersoliders keep hacking the power grid.
God spoke to me
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/cRosett/? id=110003548
Why would this matter, to you or to anyone else?
Because GWB and his hawks claimed that they knew Iraq had WMD, and led their nation to war on that ground. It seems clear that was a lie.
This wasn't any little white lie either, tens of thousands of people were killed as a result of it.
Hey I am currently living in Japan N. Korea gets free unchecked exports from here (usually marked as food, but even the government here admits most of it is Money from "north Korean companies" i.e. N. Korean government opened banks in Japan used to filter the drug money they earn here) N. Korea has also been kidnapping people from here dcoumented back to the 70s to train their own people. I am sure it is not to hard to smuggle someone in as well. The only way to shut down N Korea is to get the Japanese government to shut down this b.s.
It is axiomatic in the security biz that everyone is undersecured. But consider the huge number of attacks we get every day. There are plenty of free-range viruses. There are lots and lots and lots of exploits and attacks. Some of the people creating them are damned bright and very well trained.
And that's just the hobbyists. We aren't even addressing the ones who do it for money.
So why hasn't computing crashed and burned forever under the weight of all of these? It's because, in our sloppy suboptimal way, we have learned to respond. The procedures for identifying a new attack or vulnerability aren't great. But they are good enough. Our collective immune system responds.
If North Korea is training 100 l33t hax0rs a year it's a drop in the slop bucket of pros and amateurs already out there doing harm.
If the numbers aren't that impressive, then how about the kinds of attacks they can do? My suspicion is that it isn't nearly as bad as it seems at first glance. This is North Korea we are talking about. There aren't that many people who have grown up living and breathing OS source code. Of the few really skilled people they have many (most? all?) are probably needed in other capacities making them unavailable to write the next Big Worm.
And how good will they be? Creativity, the free play of ideas, and the ability to see things from a different perspective - all of which are important to being a really good code monkey let alone a world class security breaker - are capital crimes in North Korea. Praising the Great Leader and lock-step conformity don't cut it when you are trying to come up with the unexpected and the truly creative.
So even if it's not pure propaganda from Seoul I'm not all that worried.
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
I mean one could said that rightist have the tendance to be money grubbing bastard, green doom-sayer, and moderate show-stopper muddying all issue. Come on , people, ueber-generalisation like that are not making the debat advancxe a bit. This is not "argumentation or fact" this is "prejudice".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Here in NOrth Korea we have computers and stuff. I am writing this on my Commodore 64 that I just digged from my backyard. Now excuse me while I reply to my friend, Mr. Katz.
Junos from Afh^h^h^hNorth Korea
.
"Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds !"
Got to be a mindless bot to say something like that about a real issue unless parent is actually a descendant!
Which post came first the chicken or the shit.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
May be possible. Communist states provide
everything for their elite. I is just that
normal people are sufferring.
Also communist states generally have strong
selection in schools in math and physics
- it should not be a problem to pick 100
best students and provide them with
PCs.
If your choice is to hack or be hungry - what
would you do ?
Also they wouldn't be distracted by having fun.
All your base are belong to us!
No, if they did we wouldn't have electricity, or heat, or fuel, or food, or . . .
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
We had that power deregulation fiasco about the same time the economy went down hill. Coincidence?
I think not!
It just shows to go ya, if you can't keep your electrical grid running, you can't have hacking!
Infuriate left and right
Anyway, another facinating thing to look for on the map is the Nile River. It on the top right of Africa. It's a very thin bright line with a kink in it. Each bank of the river is densely populated and well developed, but beyond that it is pitch black and empty
Well, of course. The Nile valley is the only part of Egypt that has water or real soil. The rest is pretty damned useless has been since the Pharoahs.
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
Exactly where are you getting this information?
Lots of starving people? I cannot remember a single incident of starvation in my entire 26-year history. That's not to say it doesn't happen, but if people were starving "all the time", perhaps Sally Struthers wouldn't have made a career out of asking for food donations for children in Africa. As it is, those infomercials are burned into my brain because they were splatterred all over television.
Which brings me to my next point. How could those commercials be burned into my memory if we were having power outages "all the time". I mean, really, I guess I was imagining running my television whenever I wanted and for as long as I wanted. I must have been so entertainment-deprived that I hallucinated Sally Struthers and those African children. It must have been really bad too, because the whole country was sick of those commercials. So I guess America suffers from a mass delusion induced by power outages "all the time".
Have you ever been to the US? No really, have you? It sure doesn't sound like you have. It sounds as though you're regurgitating some anti-American party-line propaganda. Yes, America has problems, but so does every other country. The difference is, America publicly displays its problems through the media (a.k.a. freedom of the press). That makes it really easy for some other country to use one hand to point at the US claiming we are rotting from the inside, while using the other to gag their internal media from reporting similar problems inside their own contry. It's real easy to paint someone else as evil if you can censor the flow of information within your own country. It would also allow them to quietly "remove" any dissenting opinions.
I believe the country that opens as much of its internal workings as possible to public scrutiny is by far one of the freest countries in the world. It's the political equivalent of the open source philosophy. If the public can scrutinize it, then it can be corrected. Do you have such an open system of government??
Uhh, please tell me how you believe the U.S. is responsible for the DPRK. Maybe you should have fit some history classes into your life somewhere.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. There wouldn't be a DPRK if Truman hadn't showed how much of a pussy he was. Had he allowed MacArthur to nuke the Chinese and North Koreans (and the Soviets if they raised a huff over it) and take the whole peninsula of Korea by the fall of 1951, there would be one nation on the Korean peninsula, and it wouldn't be ruled by Kim Jong Il.
Now, 50-odd years later, we see just how right MacArthur was.
so do dead dictatorships. dont forget that part.
Bomb them all! ahaha.. I'm sure south korea nor its neighbours will object.
I just tried that. Look at all that porn!
"How do you launch a cyber-war with no IP infrastructure?"
In related news, the US Legislature will be opening a University for training politicians in ethics.
Listening to countries like South Korea and the US whine about North Korea's nuclear and hacker programs is like listening to the mafia whine about the local three-card-monte grifter.
North Korea builds 8-lane highways that go virtually unused for future growth,
:) Then tell me if you survived 10 minutes.
In TotalAnnihilation this is called a nano-stall. Such 'future expansion' is the beginning of your demise. Check out a strategy game of your choice and try a strategy like that
Jobs? Which jobs?
The RoK is heavily infiltrated by the DPRK
I wonder why. What can make the Northern agents work as spies while living in the South? I'd say that the gap (in economic status, freedom) is higher that in W/E Germany or Cuba/Florida.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
The place is a complete and utter basket case.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
A week or two ago I checked out linuxcounter and I swear there was an entry for north korea (1 user). Now there is nothing. Strange...
North Korea is training about 100 "cybersoldiers" per year in electronic warfighting tools..
That's nothing, I'm teaching my sister the exact some techniques. I also discouage camping. Before you know it, she'll frag all you.
-------
Support Indy Music. Buy
Even the Pentagon says North Korea's hacker academy is probably just propaganda by South Korea."
Of course, we all know the Pentagon is dedicated to truth, justice, and so on, so we can trust what they say implicitly!
On the other hand, if anyone is capable of recognising propoganda...
We all know the North Koreans (well, the leader anyway) is much worse than Saddam & Iraq--for goodness sakes, the North Koreans ADMITTED to violations--we don't even have to make up the weapons of mass destruction story with these guys.
However, North Korea doesn't have any oil or other valuable resources so attacking them won't bring us the ROI necessary to justify a war.
Why the heck should we, the USA, throw away billions of dollars and risk a disaster with our trading partners (if the North Koreans get lucky and launch a missile in time at South Korea or Japan)? In the case of Iraq, it was obviously worth all the temporarily bad foreign relations including getting busted for spying on UN officials because of all that oil & strategically located huge mass of land.
It isn't like we're actually in the business of overthrowing goverments in order to bring down evil dictators who abuse their people--we actually don't give a rats ass about human rights violations overseas--heck, look at Amnesty International's report on the number of children killed by both Israel & Palestine (hint: if you've been getting all your news from the same 5 mega corporations as me, you'll also be SHOCKED about which country actually killed more children last year).
Folks, war is all about ROI and how we'll benefit economically and militarily. This is why we go to wars. Ever play Sid Meir's Civilization games and break treaties or start wars? This isn't "evil", and this isn't "righteous"--it is simply rational if the goal is to win and sometimes very distasteful when you see the real-life consequences from ALL perspectives.
Just be grateful that we weren't born overseas and try to think of ways to get that ROI for the USA without wars--because compassion alone isn't enough to stop this train.
Again, think about the specific benefits we receive from wars and figure out a way for us to get them without actually doing nasty deeds like repeatedly killing/threatening foreign journalists or dropping cluster bombs that cause civilians to die. If you can help us gain those benefits, we might stop invading other countries and making up plausible stories to justify our actions.
Am I a conservative or liberal? Neither. I just believe in the Constitution of the USA and will defend your right to speak your mind even if I totally disagree with your views. God Bless America--we have our share of faults and need to improve but I'm proud to be an American.
http://www.commoncause.org
http://www.fair.org
I take it you haven't even played the game, in which you as a player can play any of the three sides.
If anything, the game is a commercial for the might of the Chinese army, being that the last time I looked at the stats, they were on average the most successful in online multiplayer matches.
I only play the American forces because I prefer the capabilities of their units, not because I think they're any more morally correct than the others.
Virii is not a word in English or Latin.
Yes, but that will all change once they start harvesting energy from people's bodies.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
A school for hackers! North Korea is clearly pure evil. Let's nuke 'em while the chance.
We're saving our nukes for Franceafter all, Everyone likes a little nukkie.
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
"North Korean is chobo! South Korea have gosu starcraft only!! our ghost nukk them first!!! kekekeke"
What would be really a scream is that if the parent post to this came from Bill Gates as an Anonymous
Coward!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Never underestimate the sheer programming will of the N.Koreans. They have been able to showdown some of the best by writing a goog GO gaming program. You don't need much network with determination and a copy of the latest MS CD. Hmmm...strong algorithms, combanitorial game theory, a nation of haughty MCSEs. Never discount:
c om puter_gaming.html
http://www.scientific-computing.com/scwjulaug02
Computer gaming is another major leisure field that uses scientific computing techniques, where the programming challenges lie not merely in graphics but in providing strong opponents and a believable game environment in real time. With board games, the problem is purely algorithmic. Chess, for instance, has proved relatively straightforward to program with a 'brute force' approach of checking a tree of all possible moves. This has been unsuccessful with Go, which has 10 to the power of 700 possible games, as opposed to chess's 10 to the power of 120, and an order of magnitude more legal moves at any turn. Go programming draws instead on a variety of techniques such as pattern recognition, cellular automata and combinatorial game theory. Such approaches, both commercial and academic, have achieved sufficient success for the Japanese Go Association to move on from its 1972 statement that Go is unprogrammable, recently awarding a 2kyu diploma (a skill approaching expert dan level) to the North Korean program KCC Igo. However, the best Go programs are still beatable by strong amateur players.
This is like saying an apple is more of a fruit than an orange, they're both fruit, which is more of one? There's no real way to tell.
I dunno how many people have starved/died ect because of North Korea's aweful government, but i do know that hundreds of thousands have people have been killed by Saddam, and these are facts that no one questions. Saddam had WMD, another unquestioned fact, North Korea says they do or atleast are trying to build some. Who's worse they're both going to hell imo.
The fact isn't so much that we don't give a rats ass, the fact is, look what happened to our foreign relationships when we attacked Saddam, someone, who as i said before, unquestionable killed hundreds of thousands of people, and even invaded another country. We got crap from everywhere except basically Israel and our own people. One of the problems is, the world in general lacks the ability to look at things in an objective manor. You can't say killing saddam is ok because he killed so many other people. people think you are a warmonger ect ect.
Another thing, why is anybody ever shocked when they learn Israel kills people? I swear, it's umm a duh factor. We killed children in Iraq. Is this stuff right? no. shit happens in war. quite frankly if I'm in the infantry and in a fire fight, if i think some kid poses a threat to me, I would shoot him. There is no time for second guessing and all this other stuff that you can do after the fact. War is hell, you're 'workday' is not hell, your life is not hell. War is. You have to make these decisions where there is no right answer and your decision means ending the life of others.
Do you honestly believe that people in washington are so evil that they would do that? I believe their are some, and I believe a lot of them would lie if it were in their interests, but I do not believe that Bush or RUmsfeld or especially Powell would invade and kill thousands for money. If they do, they've got a nice spot in hell waiting for them, next to Saddam. But I don't believe they would, I believe, like most people, they would lie but not at the expense of thousands of lives.
I do however aggree 100% with your last paragraph.
This may be a reason South Korea is scared and will agree with any measure the government says that they need to be taken to stop them. You just have to realize that you can still step away from the computer. A thought just occured to me. What if they see that it is thier job to free us from the computer that tries to seduce us to stay in our houses for day after day.... NO CARRIER
Does anybody know what the legalities are on hacking into computers ran by the "axis of evil"??
I'm sure that if a NK system admin called up the FBI, they wouldn't exactly give a shit...
and finding out that's it's much harder to keep a country than defeat it, the empty warheads in the pentagon are now urging caution and not invasion, even though this country (NK) has openly admitted having WMD and has threatened to use them, as opposed to Iraq where now, finally, after months of pure unadulterated crap, people in the UK and the US of short_attention_span A are finally starting to realise that Bush, Blair and co. pulled a fast one on them.
From the article:
:-)
:-)
"The following year, Pentagon adviser and Rand consultant John Arquilla concocted a fictional scenario, published in Wired magazine, of a global cyberwar engineered by -- whom else -- the North Koreans."
Later in the article:
"Arquilla said highly automated U.S. military processes, such as the "air tasking order" of an air campaign, or time-phased deployment of troops and equipment, could be disrupted by a North Korean cyberattack."
"In such cases, the disruption of American combat operations and logistics could make a very substantial difference in the overall military campaign," said Arquilla.
So I can infere from what mr. Arquilla said that the US armed forces coordinate their logistics and operations using the open structure from the Internet and it's usual tools...
I almost can see general Schwarzkopf using ICQ group messages to coordinate an attack... the friendly fire? someone looking at some p0rn webcam get so excited and fires a full blast
geez... how I would like to be a consultant... talking bullshit like this and getting attention... and if I really wanted to get media attention I would mention blinding comms sattelites and using EMP weapons in the war field... they would think "geez... this guy is Grand Moff Tarkin incarnated"
Notice the falklands aren't there. I had an older version in which they were large and bright. But maybe that was during the war.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
After US vs Iraq 2 you can now drive your monster suv to the cornerstore to get your booze. Then go home and bitch about things on Slashdot a little cheaper thanks to Sir George Bush and Co. Cyber war with the Chinese is about as stupid as driving an SUV in town.
/who wants to be a millionaire /consumerism.
People living in the Orient want peace and International brotherhood/sisterhood
as much as any other sane group of human beings. Not some abstract political shit like communism. Or; what was American enlightened self interest. Now become, get ahead of the Jones/ at all environmental cost
I am an old time hippie idealist, and hope to die happy with my ideals rather than sit around watching the mushroom clouds bloom on CNN till one hits home.
Ps, a flamer for your eyes;
Boy the advertising and network rights to that show could be worth about 6,000,000,000 or about a buck a person world wide. Might even pull in more than the big Eyerac (Iraq) show did. We would kick those commie nukes butts! Nothing to worry about we use Microsoft servers, those dumb stupid unix commies can't do visual studio worth shit.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Of course, Bush's "Axis Of Evil" speech and the example he set with Iraq probably aren't exactly a good incentive for a country to disarm.
ya, i here you. the drug money problems are still going on in central america and south america also.
its just that the current admin in the states has side showed the real trouble because coke has become too big and runs alot of the polit now.
i am sure that alot of financing of koreas nukes and tech comes from laundered drug money also.
americans have got to stop driving around in an suv while they are snorting our future out the windows, pun intended, or the situation will get out of hand.
please excuse the lack of caps my old dell key board is starting to bite the dust.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
"Even the Pentagon says North Korea's hacker academy is probably just propaganda by South Korea."
;-)
:o)
That is right they know much of what is propaganda
Did ya forget about the "mass destruction weapon" that was suppose to legitimate the Iraq invasion ?
-LOL
Um, hmm. Where to begin...
You think these people have computers? They're lucky if they have a job, lucky if that job has electricity access. Lucky if they've had a foreigner in their city. Lucky if they've used a phone.
Next, why would you need to keep more tabs on their people? These people are controlled by a totalitarian state that would make Stalin shiver. They tell the people that the US is BEHIND them in technology. These people have had zero contact with foreigners for ~50 years. Spying is an implied part of every interaction and relationship in this environment.
People tend to have a misconception of police states as having a few agents that you cant trust. While in reality, these people dont understand the concept of trust.
They don't think about rebellion, because they dont have a chance. This is literally the most controlled population in human history.
I know this will be modded down, but I feel I must comment on this being a bad thing, as they will only use it to write more cheats and wall hacks for counter-strike, and ruin the game play for the rest of us. Down with those communists!
SuPz.orG
I can see my home from here.
quote: They claim various international organizations are "conspiring" against them
yea, we all know the CIA dont conspire against or assassinate anyone...
I see the Trolls have been eating lead-laced paint chips again. Since when is the CIA is an international organization?
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Well, of course.
I agree. I was just pointing out that it's an interesting map feature.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Wrong.
I don't think I made any "wrong" statements. Read my post more carefully, I never said what you think I said.
I was commenting on the country in general. DPRK is an economic wasteland crushed under the burden of excessive military spending. They are repressive, paranoid, armed to the teeth, and they want nukes.
I never said they were incapable of an internet attack.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
A lot of statements from the Pentagon or the Bush administration are propaganda too.
NoSuchGuy
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
If you turn the gamma up, you can actually see the land, as well as the lights. It becomes much more clear where everything is.
So South Korea is distrubuting propaganda about their hated opponent again, which is also spread by the USA (who also hate NK).
And we can see this is pretty obvious.
So... why, exactly, is this news?
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
That black hole of a country has the world's LARGEST ARMY and LARGEST NUMBER OF NUKES. They are diverting their entire economy (what little there is of it) to supporting that army and building weapons. The North American government is incredibly isolationist and paranoid. They claim various international organizations are "conspiring" against them. They make no secret of the fact that they want/plan to "liberate" the Middle East.
North America is like some rich guy who is going broke because he spends all his money hoarding knives and bullets. His brother happily lives in a little house with his wife and kids, and this guy wants to invade that house on a "liberation mission". To top it off, this guy actually has a nuclear reactor to build a nukes with.
North Korea also has plenty of IP connectivity. If you look back through the news you'll discover their government did a hosting deal with a large internet casino where the casino did all the work and the government got some of the bandwidth.
When writing about breaking into systems, please
use the term "cracking", and in no event "hacking",
since people might get a bad opinion about us
hackers/geeks/nerds/...
Reference: www.catb.org/~esr/jargon
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
In 1996, North Korea sent well-trained and well-armed infiltration agents into South Korea on an information-gathering mission and if it hadn't been for one sharp-eyed cabdriver, we might never have known that it had even happened.
With leadership resembling a Stalinist 'cult of personality' possessing total information control at its disposal, the North Korean government can create and has created effective personel resources in areas pertaining to espionage and infiltration. This well-documented fact makes the idea of North Korea's running a military 'cyberacademy' a lot more credible than the Iraq-obsessed U.S. Government which has a stake in playing down a North Korean threat would have you believe.
Two incidents show go far to prove this:
The first is the aforementioned infiltration of Nouth Korean reconnaisance troops by submarine.
After the infiltrator's accidental discovery, they were hunted down by south Korean Military and police units. After a series of bloody firefights, rather than face capture some of the infiltrators and submarine crew were shot to death by their own officers.
Here is a link to the story. http://www.koreascope.org/english/sub/2/nk10_7.ht
The second is the discovery after thirty years, that North Korea sent agents into Japan to kidnap individuals to serve as tutors in masquerading as Japanese nationals for the North Korean intelligence services. These people, among others, were flown to Japan for a brief reunion after decades of captivity during which their families had long since given them up for dead.
North Korea may have a very low GNP by western standards, but it is an industrialized nation and the ability of its government to divert resources from one segment of society to another certainly lends strong credence to the threat described in the article.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
Seriously though they have enough problems looking after their people as it is, if this is actually going on it's a bit pointless.
Extended Warranty? How can I lose!
Well, I thought California has its problems, too, in keeping its power grid online. :))
When you're high up enough in the North Korean Pecking Order ( NKPO ) you can just have ye wenches brought to your room.
Eat at Joe's.
North Korea can barely keep its electrical grid up - not to mention feed its people.
Like the United States?
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
Heh! They don't even need to cross the border. Or well maybe they do to buy a single can of Pringles and then they're off to the races!!! :-D
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
"the North Koreans ADMITTED to violations"
What treaty/deal is this ?
The US / NK give us energy and we dont make big bad bombs.
If this is the one then you cant blame them! They didnt get thear Power plants from the US.
CIA Factbook 2002 (US):"Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households
It is great that you came wuth that museum idea, I propose that you become the first exhibit there.
NK has tested missiles that could threaten any country in South Asia, they have a big and well trained army, perhaps as brainwashed as the Taliban (this people love their leaders, the incentive is to avoid torture and certain death, but who knows. In most dictatorships there are signs of a resistence movement, at least some Graffiti or clandestine literature. In NK theres is nothing, zero, zilch, nada), one of the few hard cash earners for this country is warfare technology, specially in the medium range missile field.
Also notice that the experts are concerned (in this site you can find names of the NK nuclear reactors and their capacity).
So do you want a glass box or a proper cage in the museum?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Go to the International Atomic Energy Agaency's website and look around.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... have a persecution complex.
Some of them (around 99%) can't understand that disagreements about one thing with them does not mean hate or automatic bashing.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If Iraq was not a threat to the US, who gave the US authority to decide unilaterally which people should be "liberated" at the expense of the "liberated people"?
What moral or legal authority does the US have to decide if a goverment in a sovereign country should stay or go?
The US has no mandate to liberate anybody, the only justification to attack another country is if yours is under genuine threat or if the UN decides that invasion is the only way to stop genocide. Sorry to break it to you but Hussein stop commiting genocide after the first Gulf war, after that he was just another dictator.
That is why it matters if WMDs are found or not. But sadly it seems like the US populace has gotten used to be lied to and will not care about the integrity of their elected representatives.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... whose principles differ widely from the ones of the US.
Don't be idiotic, other countries have different points of view and don't have childish foreign policies to make the US or any other country angry.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"This is your enemy! His name is Theo!
This is your flend! His name is Bill!
And remlember, you don't HAVE to study, you can just be a lice picker for the rest of your rives!
That is all!"
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
North Korean government is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people--especially through starvation. They have also been responsible for numerous terrorist activities outside their own borders. This is a fact. They are FAR MORE ahead of Iraq in terms of WMD development including nuclear warheads and longer range missles. >>"Saddam had WMD, another unquestioned fact, North Korea says they do or atleast are trying to build some." Holy Cow! They found WMD in Iraq??? Where exactly is the WMD and when was it found? What is the source of your info? If you're referring to the HUGE multi-day ABC news story on April 26-27, then you've been misled my friend. They knew 2 days beforehand it was unconfirmed and they didn't air a retraction when they later found out the story was false. Don't take my word for it, see the facts about the proven-to-be bogus ABC story here: http://www.fair.org/activism/abc-iraq-weapons.html
"We got crap from everywhere except basically Israel and our own people."
Of course this happened and here's exactly why:
1. Israel and Iraq are bitter enemies with Iraq posing a real danger to Israel. Remember that Iraq launched missiles at Israel in the past.
2. Americans like you and me received 99.999% of our news from the same 5 USA corporations that made us believe that the war was totally justified and that people believing otherwise are unpatriotic left-wing conspiracy theorists (aka misguided losers).
If I owned a "big-5" media company, I wouldn't air anti-war or anti-GOP stuff either given that the FCC was going to vote to relax media ownership rules on June 2, 2003--which would help me make billions more for my shareholders.
Want examples? Here's how Wolf Blitzer tried damage control during a story and came out exposing himself not to be a true journalist:
http://www.fair.org/extra/0301/blitzer.html
Examples of how we handled some of our journalists:
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/iraq-censorship .html
Examples of we handled some foreign journalists:
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/iraq-journalist s.html
Example story you'll never hear on TV despite it being a huge scoop (poisoning/destroying a country's water supply and preventing required repair parts to be imported so that children/civilians die of disease caused by contaminated water--if this isn't terrorism, then what is? it certainly violates the Geneva Convention)
http://www.progressive.org/0801issue/nagy0901.html
>>"Do you honestly believe that people in washington are so evil that they would do that?"
If you re-read my post, you'll see that I explicately state that our government (USA) isn't evil. Our leaders are simply doing their job to make our country stronger for the future both economically and militarily. Unfortunately this end-goal sometimes requires very distasteful actions. And our public won't swallow these distasteful actions without vigorous protest if they had all the facts so we have to sanitize it and spin it so things don't get out of hand like it did during the Vietnam war.
Controlling the flow of oil isn't just about money--it is about security as well since so much of our infrastructure and econony relies on it.
I hope you visit the links I've provided to at http://www.fair.org--whether you are a conservative or liberal, it helps to identify media bias so you can form your opinions based on fact rather than spin.
I love /.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... and moderate down anybody that preempts how his comment is going to be moderated?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Woops, formatting was lost in my last reply. Sorry.
t ml
e r.html
i raq-censorship .html
i raq-journalist s.html
/ nagy0901.html
North Korean government is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people--especially through starvation. They have also been responsible for numerous terrorist activities outside their own borders. This is a fact. They are FAR MORE ahead of Iraq in terms of WMD development including nuclear warheads and longer range missles.
>>"Saddam had WMD, another unquestioned fact, North Korea says they do or atleast are trying to build some."
Holy Cow! They found WMD in Iraq??? Where exactly is the WMD and when was it found? What is the source of your info? If you're referring to the HUGE multi-day ABC news story on April 26-27, then you've been misled my friend. They knew 2 days beforehand it was unconfirmed and they didn't air a retraction when they later found out the story was false.
Don't take my word for it, see the facts about the proven-to-be bogus ABC story here:
http://www.fair.org/activism/abc-iraq-weapons.h
"We got crap from everywhere except basically Israel and our own people."
Of course this happened and here's exactly why:
1. Israel and Iraq are bitter enemies with Iraq posing a real danger to Israel. Remember that Iraq launched missiles at Israel in the past.
2. Americans like you and me received 99.999% of our news from the same 5 USA corporations that made us believe that the war was totally justified and that people believing otherwise are unpatriotic left-wing conspiracy theorists (aka misguided losers).
If I owned a "big-5" media company, I wouldn't air anti-war or anti-GOP stuff either given that the FCC was going to vote to relax media ownership rules on June 2, 2003--which would help me make billions more for my shareholders.
Want examples? Here's how Wolf Blitzer tried damage control during a story and came out exposing himself not to be a true journalist:
http://www.fair.org/extra/0301/blitz
Examples of how we handled some of our journalists:
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/
Examples of we handled some foreign journalists:
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/
Example story you'll never hear on TV despite it being a huge scoop (poisoning/destroying a country's water supply and preventing required repair parts to be imported so that children/civilians die of disease caused by contaminated water--if this isn't terrorism, then what is? it certainly violates the Geneva Convention)
http://www.progressive.org/0801issue
>>"Do you honestly believe that people in washington are so evil that they would do that?"
If you re-read my post, you'll see that I explicately state that our government (USA) isn't evil. Our leaders are simply doing their job to make our country stronger for the future both economically and militarily. Unfortunately this end-goal sometimes requires very distasteful actions. And our public won't swallow these distasteful actions without vigorous protest if they had all the facts so we have to sanitize it and spin it so things don't get out of hand like it did during the Vietnam war.
Controlling the flow of oil isn't just about money--it is about security as well since so much of our infrastructure and econony relies on it.
I hope you visit the links I've provided to at http://www.fair.org--whether you are a conservative or liberal, it helps to identify media bias so you can form your opinions based on fact rather than spin.
Nope.
I include killed Iraqi soldiers in my numbers. Your answers illustrates the deeply disturbing but very common American view that they were not even people. I'm not aware of any serious attempts to keep track of them, but around 25000 seems like a reasonable number.
The IraqBodyCount.com numbers are pretty solidly documented, and only includes those occasions when a journalist were present, so I would think the real number is quite a bit higher.
I'm not sure what you're suggesting about how to count the prisoners and children. Should anyone killed by Saddam's regime be subtracted from the numbers of killed by the invasion forces? That's not factual reporting.
I think most everyone cares about the Iraqi suffering, and even the worst critics of the war are happy that at least one good thing came out of it.
Then check out my two web pages at:
/. effect)
http://www.ncafe.com/northkorea/ (archived stuff)
and
http://www.freenorthkorea.net (blog)
(unlinked to prevent the rampant
Some of the more bizzare aspects of North Korea would blow most of your minds..
We need your help in figuring out how to break the information blockade around North Korea..
Two Stories from North Korea:
_ ll us.pdf
n y. pdf
http://ncafe.com/northkorea/SunOkLeeTestimony_w
http://ncafe.com/northkorea/AnMyong-cholTestimo
They train these 100 cybersoldiers, and then let 'em hook up to the real net. The cybersoldiers find /., Usenet, and pr0n, become hooked, and waste most of their time on those activities. Then they claim credit with their bosses for every defacement, bug, or virus to come down the pike, and everyone is happy.
LOL. If you want to ridicule a post by echoing it and "reversing" who it talks about, you have to make sure the reversal maintains atleast a smidgin of truth. Otherwise you just make yourself look like an idiot.
That black hole of a country
On that map North Korea is in fact a "black hole". It looks like ocean. The United states is by far the brightest region, with "the whole of euorpe" coming in a close second.
the world's LARGEST ARMY and LARGEST NUMBER OF NUKES.
You are demonstrating pure ignorance. China has the worlds larget army, 2.9 million servicemen, more than double the US's 1.4 million. Russia has the most nukes, well over twice as many as the US.
They are diverting their entire economy (what little there is of it) to supporting that army and building weapons.
North Korea spends somewhere between 20% and 30% of its GDP on its military while approximately 10% of its population has starved to death in recent years. The US spends somewhere between 4.3% and 5.7% on its military, and the US spends a higher percentage of its miliary spending on RESEARCH, compared to all western nations. The US provides food (food stamps) to anyone who needs them.
The North American government is incredibly isolationist
LMAO! Isolationist?? The usual complaint is the exact the opposite.
and paranoid.
The US thinks that there are terrorists trying to blow up Americans and American buildings. Americans and American builings are in fact blowing up.
In this document North Korea accuses the UN and the International Atomic Energy Agency of conspiring to harm North Korea. Part of the "proof" of this supposed conspiracy is the fact that North Korea is reffered to as "North Korea" rather than as "DPRK". They take a "serious view" of this "insult to their soverignty". This document is fairly typical of North Korean perception on international relations. Not to mention their constant fear that at any moment the 38,000 US personel and South Korea's half million servicemen are going to charge head-long into what is undoubtedly the most heavily forified border in the world, against the third largest army in the world.
As for Liberation, Iraqis were in fact dancing in the streets and toppling Saddam statues. Somehow I don't think you are going to find many South Koreans welcoming North Korean forces.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
>What treaty/deal is this ?
_ 200210175.html
Actually, "treaties/deals" would be more accurate since they broke 4 and ADMITTED to it:
1. "Agreed Framework" of 1994,
2. Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,
3. the International Atomic Energy Agency Safeguards Agreement,
4. North-South Denuclearization Agreement.
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Source: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2002/n10172002
WASHINGTON, Oct. 17, 2002 -- United States government officials will consult with friends and allies on what to do about North Korea's admission that it has been developing nuclear weapons, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said today.
North Korean officials reportedly admitted to an American diplomat that they have an active nuclear weapons program in defiance of the so- called Agreed Framework. In this agreement, North Korea promised in 1994 that it would freeze its nuclear program.
"It is a reality that they stand in direct breach of four separate agreements, by their own admission," Rumsfeld said in a Pentagon press briefing. The other three agreements North Korea has violated are the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the International Atomic Energy Agency Safeguards Agreement, and the North-South Denuclearization Agreement.
Rumsfeld said U.S. officials will be speaking to Japan and South Korean counterparts, as well as representatives of the People's Republic of China, Russia and possibly the European Union.
He indicated U.N. weapons inspectors in North Korea are not a likely option at this point, since the country has already admitted its violations.
[...]
No, I was reffering to the fact that they had them before, as in years ago. That is unquestioned, gassing the kurds? And I should add, I don't own a TV, and when I'm at home (not my dorm room) I mainly watch CNN as far as news goes. Also should add, why should I trust progressive.org and fair.org anymore than abc.com and msnbc.com? No reason, you might say cus they alter stuff and whatnot. Well the fact is, EVERYONE does this, you, me, Sam, Joe, and Bob even. And they're big so they do it on a larger scale.
Your points are helping my argument. I said why we wouldn't invade other countries that do similiar inhumane things. Iraq has ties to terrorism, and had chemical weapons. Every other country has a different situtation, so we can't justify ivnading countries, because people killing thousands does not make it right to invade another country according to international views. You have to have a specific threat to an outside element. North Korea has one threat, they're army and nuclear weapons. They are extremely isolated. Plus if they do happen to launch a nuclear weapon they will become non existant. So their usage of WMD is far less likely.
One of the problems wiht capitalism, point made. But like I said ebfore, everything is slanted, i try and get many news sources on an issue if i care about it. But the ironic thing is, that rarely do they ever add anything. They have their spin on issues and I daresay moreso than the Big US ones. IE I was reading an article about the Bush regime from some Arabic site. Good lord, the only facts he presented were things I already knew. Just his opinion on things.
Your progressiv elink just refers to the documents that he's unconvered and such. Why on earth would I believe him? Have other sites confirmed this? He could be lying extremely easily. But anyhow, if these things he reports are true, and I don't doubt they're not, than yes, the people involved should be punished. These types of things should be illegal. But you have 1 source, that proves exactly nothing.
Well find some evidence that's more credible than some joe blow 'uncovering' documents, and I'll believe you. I do not believe that our government could collectively cover up all these things, which out much more evidence being leaked. It's the nature of people to leak things. What good is a secret if you can't tell it? And overtime this does happen, as things become obsolete and such, yet you can find little evidence that we've more than any other country has done. And we are scrutinized by far the most, by other countries.
Nice to have an intelligent reply instead of some troll or some moron making fun of me.
While we don't regularly use weapons of mass destruction against defenseless countries, we do wage war against them fairly routinely. Vietnam, Iraq, Somalia, yeah we were really afraid of these nations, yup that's it. They had us shivering.
And while starvation and hunger may not be as bad in the US as it is in Africa, it is there and it's largely not talked about, poverty in the US is not in short supply at all.
hmmm oh yes, and the media, you actually think our media isn't censored? Our media is censored by both corporate and government influence... the government may not come prancing in with guns to stop a story but that's only because they don't have to. If you compare the media coverage of an event to the coverage in multiple foreign countries on a regular basis you'll start to see what I mean...
>"One of the problems wiht capitalism, point made."
Actually, big-5 media corporations focusing on pro-gop news and marginalizing opposing views is not capitalism. Neither is special interests such as media companies using campaign contributions to modify/repeal existing laws to their advantage. IMHO, this is simply legalized bribery and has nothing to do with capitalism.
capitalism: An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.
--Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
>"Well find some evidence that's more credible than some joe blow 'uncovering' documents, and I'll believe you."
First, all the links I provided was from www.fair.org except for one. Fair.org is well-respected and was founded by Jeff Cohen--he appeared on Today, Larry King, NPR, Fox News Channel's News Watch (as regular panelist), and CNN's Crossfire (as co-host). Also, his columns have appeared in USA Today, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and Miami Herald.
Secondly, you should check out C-SPAN rather than CNN next time you visit someone with a TV (yea, it can be boring but you get to see what our elected officials REALLY do in office--and it isn't so boring when people you voted for do things that are completely opposite of what they protrayed during elections). You'd see without any 3rd-party spin that we have members of congress and senate calling for an investigation into the Iraq/WMD false accusation and the pro-war members recasting the term "weapons" to "capabilities" (similar to the sleezy Clinton tactic of playing word games with the term "sex"--that was unnacceptable back then and this is unnacceptable now).
But unlike Clinton's Whitewater or Monica "scandals", the GOP doesn't want an investigation into this. Just like they didn't want an investigation or full disclosure of meeting notes regarding the conversations between VP Cheney and Enron (with the millions of people directly affected by Enron's corruption, I'd have thought it deserved as much air-time as Whitewater).
And finally, I gave you very specific examples of blatant media spin that includes direct quotes (like Wolf Blitzer's interview)--can you do the same and actually prove (not merely accuse) my sources to be doing the same thing?
If you're interested in non-partisan academic investigation into under-reported or censored news stories, then check out:
http://www.projectcensored.org/
They take hundreds/thousands of nominated stories and actually investigate each one to verify or debunk them. Then they vote on the stories they verified to be true and publish a list.
Follow the link to story #5 about us violating geneva conventions and you'll have your "evidence" that wasn't uncovered merely by Joe Schmoe.
Again, keep in mind such actions aren't necessarily evil. We have to sometimes do certain undesireable things to protect our national interests.
CURRENT LIST:
#1: FCC Moves to Privatize Airwaves
#2: New Trade Treaty Seeks to Privatize Global Social Services
#3: United States' Policies in Colombia Support Mass Murder
#4: Bush Administration Hampered FBI Investigation into Bin Laden Family Before 9/11
#5: U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water System
#6: U.S. Government Pushing Nuclear Revival
#7: Corporations Promote HMO Model for School Districts
#8: NAFTA Destroys Farming Communities in U.S. and Abroad
#9: U.S. Faces National Housing Crisis
#10: CIA Double Deals in Macedonia
#11: Bush Appoints Former Criminals to Key Government Roles
#12: NAFTA's Chapter 11 Overrides Public Protection Laws of Countries
#13: Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford Lied to the American Public about East Timor
#14: New Laws Restrict Access to Abortions in U.S.
#15: Bush's Energy Plan Threatens Environment and P