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North Korean Flash Games For Export
linzeal writes: "Despite it being pretty-much closed off to the world, North Korea is the next boom place for IT and tech outsourcing, PC World has reported. Flash games are being developed there for outside publishers, largely thanks to the home-grown talent. Does this mean that the the cartoon company that makes The Simpsons might use North Korea as well? Well it looks like they already have started."
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http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/File:Kim_jong_hair.png
Table-ized A.I.
It's bad when your country has to be a hellhole, and not a developed country like the US.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
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North Korea is actually in a pretty good place to make something happen, if you think about it. At a minimum they don't have to maintain all those C and COBOL systems.
Anyway. How did they get all the computing power not only to run flash but also to design games for it?!
My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
"I'm North Korean now? D'oh!"
What does it tell us about the business of software development when one of the world's foremost autocratic hellholes is seen as a good place to do it?
For bonus points, try to find a copy of Pulgarasi [wikipedia.org], a giant-monster film directed by a man who was by North Korean intelligence on the orders of Kim Jong-il, the director of said film.
Here ya go, for free, at google.
irony #1: a television whose wit is only possible in a country with freedom of expression, being drawn by cartoonists in a country where there are no freedoms at all. anyone north korean attempting a north korean version of the simpsons would be put to death
irony #2: a country so beholden to the almighty buck that it will export the production of everything to the cheapest place possible, relentlessly and continuously, until you are driven to places where things are so cheap because of adherence to communist ideology. capitalism's relentlessness includes ways to monetize and capitalize on artifacts of the the communist age. that's an irony china certainly has a lot of domestic experience with
there are about 20 other ironies. see them for yourself
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Was everyone in the country an extra? Ridiculous fight scenes...
Flash games are EVIL!!!
One that hath name thou can not otter
Who's the director, the kidnapped guy or Kim Jong-il?
This is the real reason Apple doesn't want flash on iPad and iPhone.
Flash is programmed in countries without freedom, where people are enslaved and forced to work with adobe tools!
You mean, as opposed to nice cozy China ? We've been disregarding the political regimes of our sweatshops /oil suppliers for ever (well, at best disregarding, at worst helping along), so...
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I thought the American government didn't allow its citizens do business with this hellhole.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Maybe we don't know as much about NK as we think we do.
communist ideology is incompatible with reality, much as libertarian ideology is incompatible with reality
attempting to make communism work in reality results in domination of society by cult of personalities. individuals who can do no wrong (while they do plenty wrong). attempting to make libertarianism work in reality results in domination of society by corporations. corporations who can do no wrong (while they do plenty wrong)
balance in all things. unfortunately, we must pay a mighty price in this world for the ideolgoical fools who go to the extremes of libertarianism and communism, when the middle way, the moderate way: capitalism with socialist safety nets, socialism with capitalist engines, the only really valid real world solutions to the paradox that is human selfishness and altruism
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
North Korea Flash Games Like: "Expel the Inspectors"- quickly hide your nuclear material and kick out inspectors before the time runs out! 30 levels of action packed hide and seek! And lets not forget "Battleship" Use your submarine fleet to take out Enemy South Korean vessels. Explore new lands, suppress your nation, defy sanctions. This action packed game will have you enacting the lifestyle of the leader of an "axis of evil" nation! **Please note these games may not function on your iPad.
You'd prefer they stay jobless and starving?
the threat all of us faces is fundamentalism
not just the usual fundamentalism of religions: muslim fundamentalists, christian fundamentalist, jewish fundamentalists, although they of course continue doing the damage they have done for centuries
also, fundamentalisms of politics and commerce: free market fundamentalists, constitutional fundamentalists, brain dead partisans: a sort of fundamentalism of political party, etc
even other bogeymen can be recast as fundamentalism: racism, for example, is a form of racial fundamentalism
whenever you adhere to one aspect of human reality, and make it your only concern, to say that is solves all problems, you yourself, you have become the source of the problems in this world. because the truth is, the world is complex, and simplistic teachings about who and what we are always fail
unfortunately, this truth never stops certain assholes from continuing to tell us that simplistic teachings are the solutions to our problems (and thereby become the source of our problems)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The kidnapped guy, Kim Jong-Il was the executive producer I think
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
On big piles of cash, I know. But still, with their companies' money they're propping up the North Korean regime, just to offset their bottom line. These people are rotten to the core.
and north korea responded by building a nuclear bomb, launching missiles over japan, and torpedoing one of their ships
the path of diplomacy actually has its limits, especially when whom you are reaching out to is so mad with rabies they continue to attack you
i'm not saying we shouldn't continue on the path of diplomacy, i'm simply asking you to see that diplomacy does not always succeed, and war and isolation become necessary, at some point. we aren't at that point yet, and hopefully we never get to that point. but we may get there, and you should recognize that, especially when dealing with something as batshit crazy as north korea. north korea is the one who is pushing us to that point, not us. you can't extend your arms in peace to someone shooting at you
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"If you really look at Libertarianism, you'd see that corporations would lose a lot of the protections of assets and greater liability and fewer government handouts"
wow, this is an awesome form of libertarianism. so, dear libertarian, who is going to enforce this liability? answer: some form of centralized government bureaucracy... oops, we destroyed them
libertarians don't understand that when you weaken the government, there is only one power left in the room: corporations. at that point, nothing stops them from corrupting and controlling every remaining government function you hold dear
libertarians have plenty of things to hate in government. what they should do is work at REFORMING government, not destroying it
put it this way: make a list of every abuse of big government you despise and hate
now, take away that big government. what do you get?
reality: you get THE SAME LIST OF ABUSES, plus A WHOLE BUNCH OF NEW ONES, SOME FAR WORSE, being committed by corporations. that really is the truth. please recognize that
you NEED big government to hold the corporations in check. but to the extent that big government is entwined with corporations, WORK TO REMOVE THAT CORRUPTION. don't work to remove the only thing holding corporate power in check!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
China might not be as free/open as some places, but comparing it to North Korea is a bit of a stretch.
China is authoritarian; some of the laws are strict by our standards, but if you obey them and mind your own business, you'll probably be left alone.
Westerners can visit China and go about on their own there without being chaperoned or harrassed. Chinese people can leave there if they want (and some do).
North Korea, on the other hand, is totalitarian -- it's basically a giant prison camp, almost impossible to get into or out of without making very special arrangements, and where you can be executed for making an overseas telephone call.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The Party/military leadership will reap the real profits, those doing the animation will get a few minor perks like decent clothes and enough to eat (mostly to keep up appearances before greedy/gullible outsiders like Eloesser), and the rest will remain... you guessed it... jobless and starving.
You were saying...?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The connection is this: An animation company that works on the simpsons is located in south korea. They have been working on a korean folk tale translated into a full length movie, and have been working with north korean animators for the feature.
There is nothing in the article that states (as the summary implies) that any of the simpsons is done in north korea, nor that there are any plans to do so.
Anyone know a better "news for nerds" site that doesn't have all the misleading headlines SlashDot has taken to lately?
I'm kind of sick of this sh!t.
They have extreme experience in maintaining images and vast legacies.
You were saying...?
He was saying the animators wouldn't be jobless and starving.
- These characters were randomly selected.
All of a sudden all those "TRAPPED IN SWEATSHOP HELP" messages that I see in Flash games make a lot more sense now. At first I thought they were easter eggs or something.
The article mentions this, but it also alludes to the fact that 95 percent of the world is outside the jurisdiction of the American government.
Yeah right. Those students at the Tiananmen Square, for example, they should have "minded their own business".
(Ok, so you just meant to say North Korea is worse. You don't need to make the PRC look better than it's people to do that.)
in a comment thread on slashdot
but i'll state my case:
the types of powers you want to remove from government will be replaced by corporate power
corporations are beholden to shareholders. government is accountable to you. so why do you want to remove the only thing that protects you, and replace it with an entity that is not beholden to you at all, not even in theory?
of course, it doesn't always work out that the government is accountable to you: corruption of our civil servants and our legislators, by corporations, make them serve corporate interests instead of ours. THAT'S the crime you need to fight, not government itself
why don't you work on making government live up to its, shall i say for the sake of this audience, the originalist constutional purpose, of serving us, and stop working at destroying the only thing we have protecting us from corporate domination?
because right now, you are a fool: the sum total of all of your beliefs and all of your efforts serves to empower corporations, who will commit all of the crimes you see big government committing, and many more. of course, this is not what you want. the tragedy is that you do not see that the real world effects of your beliefs is to give us that: corporate domination
my hope is that fools like you can be educated as to this simple fact, before some future hell of corporatocracy, created by your efforts, does not serve as the educational lesson on why we need a strong central government to hold corporate power in check
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Am i the only one that find it slightly funny that parent post was modded Retundant instead of Flamebait or Troll?
Good thing Flash is so secure!
Sorry, I forgot there are ads on the Web; I use Lynx.
A small federal government making sure that state laws agree with the US constitution, and a few other duties expressed in the constitution.
One of these powers reserved to Congress is the power to create copyrights and patents.
I have the power to A) Sue (remember, the government still exists to prevent force and fraud)
A company engaged in nationwide interstate commerce has far more money for legal representation than you will ever have.
B) Not choose to use the corporation
Sure, you could choose not to use the local electric power company, but then you would have to join the Plain People. How does libertarianism handle the natural monopoly characteristic of a public utility?
C) Form my own company (remember, with reductions in government powers comes the reduction of Copyright/Patents)
Which is why the MPAA-owned television news media support only middle-of-the-road candidates in the Republicratic parties. Any Republican bringing libertarian ideas to the table, such as Ron Paul, gets buried. That's also why crap like the Copyright Term Extension Act and Digital Millennium Copyright Act pass with unanimous bipartisan support.
We simply believe, like many of the founding fathers, that the government has two and only two roles, protect their citizens from force (things like murder, rape, invasion, theft, etc) and fraud (food poisoning, unsafe drugs, misleading contracts, etc).
Can you give examples of programs under the current Republicratic U.S. government that do not have at least a side effect of protecting citizens from force and fraud?
the war in Iraq
...protects us from force against our energy supply.
On the other hand, if I don't like a certain company, say I don't like Apple, I choose not to buy [its products]
That works for companies that don't hold a monopoly on a product considered to form part of the essential standard of living in an industrialized country. Say I want telephone service, but I don't like Verizon or Comcast. Third parties can't enter the market because the government is protecting the public from force (invasion of non-subscribers' land to pull cable to reach subscribers' land).
[An electronics company] can't borrow money infinitely or create money out of nothing like the US government believes they can.
Do you know who creates the money supply in the United States? The government has (in a libertarian fashion) outsourced this function to a consortium of twelve private banks called Federal Reserve, which is as federal as FedEx.
Tiananmen Square was 20 years ago.
Kent State was only twice as long ago and happened in the US.
Slashdot poster citing Wikipedia citing Fox News citing the South Korean Good Friends.
Quite.
As far as monitoring goes, the difference between NK and US ("the West") is that NK does it with people in the next room, and US does it with tech everywhere. NK is merely three decades out of date. I cannot enter the US without being interrogated (during which I must affirm that I'm not of certain political affiliations), photographed, retina scanned and fingerprinted; I can't communicate without my words being intercepted without warrant.
As far as prison camps regular and super-size and executions played out in the media all but at the point of filming the death proper, the US and its allies have quite a few of them - although mostly it makes prison camps of foreign territories. More people have suffered under US rule than the Kims could ever dream of. In the US, I am free to speak my mind as long as not enough people are listening, and the freedom of troublemakers is taken rather than their lives: that is the difference in the sophistication of oppression between US and NK.
that is good
your motivations are pure, and i agree with your motivations as they are my motivations too
but the kind of change you want will make everything you complain about now, worse
please try to understand that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Not true. You will get harrassed. Cops will spy on you and expect a shake down or two. Don't resist and they'll let you go. Been there. Caught the copy searching my room and got searched at corner stores. It's a police state.
To the extent that either a Libertarian and a Communist ideology only works "100% according to intent" when you have all the people involved on-board with the ethical/moral requirements - no, they're both impossible to achieve. (For that matter, the same can be said of true anarchy. IMHO, it's really a great idea in theory, but it doesn't appear to stand the "test of time" if it's actually implemented. Ultimately, it has a fundamental requirement that everyone living in that system functions on a mentally high enough level to see that it's very destructive for ALL involved to become greedy or power-hungry.)
I'm still far from convinced that a libertarian form of government is "incompatible with reality", though. It appears to be pretty much what the Founding Fathers of the USA intended. It's only brought up as though it's some "radically different political idea" because the standard two parties of our era, the Republicans and the Democrats, have wandered so far from those original intentions and plans for U.S. government.
Personally, I think the USA would be far more in line with what the Libertarians are advocating if it weren't for allowing the Judicial branch of govt to subvert so many laws by creating rulings that changed their original intent. That ability to "interpret" the law is a very powerful one, and if the Founding Fathers overlooked anything - it was probably the extent of change of fundamental laws that eventually provided for.
(Then again, I believe it was Ben Franklin who once expressed concern that the government they set up could only last, at best, 200 years or so, before corruption tore it apart from within?)
Yes, but the U.S. isn't trying to hide the fact that it happened to its citizens to this day.
This tells a lot about regime inhuman enough to expose its own people to ActionScript.
839*929
U.S. movie studios threatened to move production out of the U.S. if Congress didn't pass the Sonny Bono Act. They could make the same threat about relations with North Korea.
In the U.S. you get to write what you just wrote without being hunted down. I assume this is true because I see a constant stream of anti-U.S. sentiment coming from U.S. citizens, and I never hear about them disappearing, and I see the same ones repeat their same attacks on their nation.
Yes, the U.S. has done some wrong things, including their ongoing and pointless sanctions against Cuba (have sanctions EVER achieved anything but to make the populace more patriotic?), but I would much rather live in the U.S. than Cuba or North Korea. China on the other hand is a pretty decent place to live. I have lived in China, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. The latter three of which I am free to say vitriolic things about the government and have people agree with me. In China, they tend to attack me and defend their government, even if they were previously saying the same things about their government previously. But not many dare to say anything negative on public record (e.g. in a Newspaper, on the radio, or under their real name on the Internet).
That being said, it doesn't bother me, because for the most part, Chinese citizens are treated pretty well, except those of Tibet and Xinjiang from time to time, but it's a lot better than the way the English (followed by Americans, Australians and New Zealanders) treated their natives (Native American tribes, Aborigines, and Maoris).
The main difference is that these days, the Native Americans, Aborigines and Maoris are free to voice their grievances without being hunted down and put into jail. The Maoris are a lot better off than the other two groups, mainly because by the time the English got around to conquering New Zealand (Colonizing! That's sugarcoating what really happened).
But these days the governments are actually trying to reduce the damage that was caused in the past, and do allow free speech. The Xinjiangese and Tibetans don't have that luxury.
Yes, the rights in the West are being eroded, but they are still far superior to that seen in places like Cuba and North Korea, and superior to that seen in China.
People who protest in the United States usually seem to get arrested and beaten after they start smashing shop windows and cars (none of which belong to the government), so I would say they deserve what they get.
People talk about natural rights, but unless there is a God, there only exist those rights which we fight for ourselves, or those that are given to us by our peers. But in reality, in a natural, and evolutionary sense, there is no such thing as a "right", which is simply a human concept. That being said, I do believe that we should all have these rights, I'm just saying that like ethics, and religion, they are a human creation. But it IS a human creation which I admire, and would fight to keep these rights for myself, those that I love, and my countrymen, if it came down to that.
Guy Delise, the author of 'Pyongyang' has done other comics about his travels in Asia. Great stuff!
Yes, [Congress] has the power to [create copyrights and patents], it is not a constitutional requirement to.
Congress was obligated to join the Berne Convention when it joined the World Trade Organization. Plenty of industries unconnected with copyright that export goods would complain if other countries were to raise duties on U.S. goods in response to the U.S. leaving the WTO just to get out of the Berne Convention.
Alive with "a few minor perks" instead of dead from starvation sounds like progress to me. But what do I know, I'm just a greedy, evil, capitalist.
People who protest in the United States usually seem to get arrested and beaten after they start smashing shop windows and cars (none of which belong to the government), so I would say they deserve what they get.
I'm just going to highlight this as pretty much reflecting the tone of your whole argument: "when a government I like takes away your freedom, it's surely because you were doing something bad".
In NK, you get arrested for whispering. In China, you get arrested for talking. In America, you get arrested for shouting. In each case, the government makes sure that not enough people hear you; it's just that some countries silence you earlier on, as they're not yet sophisticated enough to know the sweet spot which keeps people quiet enough while making them think they're free. The only reason I can say without significant repercussion what I'm saying right now in the West is that not enough people are listening to me.
If you want complete freedom, you go and live on a mountain. You will never, ever get that in any society, no matter what political system. Society = compromise. Deal with it.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
What manner of strawman is this? Of course society is a compromise. This doesn't mean it has to be based on outright physical oppression of a majority and trickery to mollify the rest.
Every empire's justification has been "Society = compromise. Deal with it." applied with poor premises. You're rewording the white man's burden.
You can write what you like because very few people will ever read what you write, and even less of those will actually believe it...
The powers that be control the mass media, which means the vast majority of the population will only ever hear their side.
A small number of people may know better, and a small number of people may be genuinely crazy, but when you control the mass media you can ensure that anyone who disagrees with the status quo is generally regarded as being crazy.. Wether they really are crazy or not is another matter entirely.
Oppressing people while convincing them they're not oppressed is the most effective form of oppression... The vast majority of people will be content with the situation and not actively seek ways to do anything about it.
You can't enter the US without being interrogated? I've entered the US dozens of times, pre and post 9/11 and I've never been interrogated.
Here is what it was like the last time I entered the US (September 2009, Port Of Entry-Alcan) - Can I see your ID? Where you going? How did you get into Canada with that Iguana? Oh...have a safe trip.
That was my "interrogation" while entering the US with a truck full of belongings and a 12 foot trailer.
You can however move around the US without handlers. You can stay in whatever motel/hotel you can afford without it being bugged and without government minders watching you.
http://axisofeviltour.com/nk-main.htm
Had you lived in the DPRK, being that critical of the DPRK would have resulted in the imprisonment of you, your family, your parents and grandparents.
"charities"
the libertarian magical cheat
you have a philosophy founded on the triumph of selfishness over all of altruism, and under such a social dynamic, suddenly people are going to be bountiful givers. its hilarious. or rather, it would be hilarious, if so many low iq assholes weren't so earnest about this libertarian foolishness
you are either a willfully intellectually dishonest liar, or you are completely deluded as to your own subject matter
the sum total of your beliefs is to drive this great nation into the status of something like somalia or haiti. that's what you get without a strong central government: more corruption, domination by mafia and companies, degradation and then destruction of the middle class. that really is the truth, it is such a shame so many earnest clueless fools like yourself don't understand that
work to CLEAN UP your government, fool, don't destroy the only entity which protects you from other forces that would fill the power vacuum and subject you to abuses far worse than what you complain about today
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I am having serious difficult believing that there could be any possibility of world-class advanced technology being developed by anyone in North Korea.
This is a zone where people have been kept at near starvation level of existance by a fanatical idealogical dynastic psychotic family of rulers for sixty years. And kept as slaves by the Japanese for fifty years prior to that (1945). Satellite photos show North Korea as the darkest place on Earth during the night hours. The few refugees that have escaped describe brutal Stalinist secret police forces everywhere and mass starvation prevailent in the countryside.
All access to the outside world is denied except for a few party elite. In its place is a brain-washing (and the North Koreans invented brain-washing) cult of Kim Il Sung and his son.
Sure they have a small number of Solzhenizen's 'First Circle' technical elite, but very few people are in this category. These poor fools managed to develop an atomic device and deliver it to the top leadership. This does not mean that the place is ready to join the civilized world.
North Korea is a great dilemma for the civilized world. As millions die from starvation and drug-resistant TB, do we just ignore them as we did Cambodia in the late 1970's? Do we risk stumbling into a pan-Asian war by trying to intervene with humanitarian aid? Do we just continue to do nothing under the guise of holding six-party talks? Do we form a coalition of China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia to murder the top 100 NK leaders, invade, and transform the place into a Chinese-style Socialist-Entrepenerial society? Do we just bring the 30000+ solders home that we have on the DMZ and tell the Koreans/Chinese/Japanese to deal with the situation themselves? I would favor the later policy, but I don't live there.
I've entered the US dozens of times, pre and post 9/11 and I've never been interrogated.
So you've never been asked whether you were a Nazi, whether you are a Communist, what your purpose is in the US, where you're staying, how you got to know those in the US you're meeting, etc.? I know some of these questions won't be asked to /everyone/, but some are on the standard ex-INS visa waiver form. Or maybe since this is usually done with checkboxes and a smiling man who mostly keeps his gun in his holster, you're misled into thinking an interrogation is just a friendly chat.
(Or maybe you're Canadian. They're exempted from most of this shit.)
You can however move around the US without handlers.
If a government can and does track activities without a warrant, why do you feel any more at ease that they don't have a human physically and ostensibly following you around? That's just a threatre of freedom.
Had you lived in the DPRK, being that critical of the DPRK would have resulted in the imprisonment of you, your family, your parents and grandparents.
I don't have evidence that all that would happen. The world suffers a lack of neutral reports about DPRK - it's like Cuban exile sites showing the "awful" condition of some Cuban buildings, each picture making me think "wow, that reminds me of X on the East Coast / Y in England".
But I did hit your link and stop reading at "the guide wouldn't allow you to keep your passport?" since you'd have to be the least travelled tourist in the world not to recognise the number of countries where the government directs hotels to hold your passport during your stay (and copy information).
try to draw an equivalency between north korea and the usa
it would be hilarious, if you weren't being so serious
the usa has committed plenty of crimes, and continues to do so, and you should castigate the usa for that
but dude: you fail at reality if you fail to see that north korea is well beyond the usa in the evil behavior department. really
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What a painful way to segue between the two stories, especially since the second is rather non-sequitur, let alone how the mention of the second story is worded to draw poor conclusions.
Who is willing to trust North Korean software? As there likely to be back doors and other spy stuff in it.
there would be no corruption of the government, there would simply be no government to corrupt. instead, corporations would do their deeds completely unimpeded
if sanity were in power, the corruption of government that we both despise would be rooted out and the government would continue its vital function of regulation and enforcement to keep corporate power in check
now what again am i not ready to understand?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Last year the USA exported about a million dollars worth of goods to North Korea. Trade with North Korea is heavily retricted by regulations intended enforce the UN sanctions but it is not entirely banned. See North Korea .
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Unlike the US, where Presidents are remembered for the effectiveness of their leadership as opposed to having their names plastered on the largest vessels in the Navy.
That being said, I can't wait to see the USS Bush. It'd lead to all kinds of hilarity in times of war.
Overheard on an opposing navy vessel: "Sir! I've sighted the Bush!"
you left out a word there... "who was..." kidnapped "by North Korean..."
(no joke here folks).
Now Apple will just use this as more bad PR for Flash "Do you want to support totalitarian regimes by using flash? No, use HTML5 instead! Think of the children!".
I've traveled between the US, Middle East, Europe, Mexico and Canada numerous times and never have been asked if I was a Nazi/Communist/where I'm going/who I'm meeting when I come back to the US.
Even on direct flights between Tel Aviv to New York, Amsterdam to New York, Frankfort to Portland, never ever get those kinds of questions returning to the US or going into places like Tel Aviv. Worst grilling I got was Haifa to Greece by Israel on a ferry and Atlanta to Paris when I got to Paris CDG.
Look, I realize that if the government really wanted to, they could track you, but the reality of it is the US Federal Government doesn't, hell they didn't know where I was in the US for 8 years to give me a tax bill I didn't know about. If the IRS can't figure out where you are when you aren't even hiding from them, that doesn't really make me wonder about the all-seeing-eye of the Feds.
Sure, some countries will hold your passports, but when you travel in the United States no one is keeping track of your papers, you don't need internal passports in the US (unlike the DPRK), you don't need internal passports in Canada.
Last fall I traveled between the continental United States and Alaska, even past one of the most strategic places in the US, the Alaska Pipeline, no ID checks there, only ID checks were at the borders, as far as the US government was concerned I could have disappeared pretty much anywhere in that trip.
Now I live a km away from a major US military base, again no ID checks to be here.
That is impossible in the DPRK by any and all accounts of life there.
No, the fact that drugs are prohibited it prevents people from being able to know what is exactly in them.
A lot of the drugs on which the government has declared war are Schedule II prescription drugs. When you get coke, meth, or oxy from a licensed pharmacist on a doctor's prescription, you know exactly what is in it. For example, I have a cousin who's on long-acting amphetamines for ADD and a grandfather who's on Vicodin for pain. As for cannabis, the DEA under the Obama administration is delegating that to the states where it should be; currently, 14 states have made it a legal prescription drug.
The government would and would pay the dollar-holders gold if requested. [...] Gold reserves wouldn't need to expand because all it would lead to would be falling to stable prices.
What happens when everybody decides to trade in dollars for gold coins at once? Would a government keep a full reserve or a fractional reserve?
Gold reserves wouldn't need to expand because all it would lead to would be falling to stable prices.
If every dollar is backed by 1/1000 ounce of gold in Fort Knox, and the population doubles, there will only be half the money to go around per person. Prices might deflate, but deflation leads to a spiral of hoarding money and taking it out of the economy in hopes that it will be worth more goods later. Some economists believe that the Great Depression included such a deflationary spiral.
Lenin said "When it comes time to hang the last capitalist, he will probably be the one who sold us the rope."
There seems to be a kernel of truth to what he said. In our quest for ever cheaper labor, we are subsidizing regimes that are dedicated to our destruction. How smart is that? In the short term, it might seem justified but nobody is looking down the road.
so many of these fantasy utopian ideologies like libertarianism are formed in a void of any understanding of history or real human nature. to be a true libertarian you have to be a philosophy major in college with too many books and no social experience, or an angry unemployed 40 something behind on his alimony payments adopting a "philosophy" that justifies why so many people hate his selfish ass
the libertarian "charities will take care of it" fudge fill-in-the-gray-area is classic "i don't know a damn thing about human nature but my fundamentalism will work because i say so"
libertarianism is just as dangerous as communism, perhaps more so, because its a homegrown domestic fundamentalist stupidity
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Hello FuckingNickName,
Although you make a number of completely unwarranted assumptions about me and my beliefs, I'm still not sure that the Flamebait mod is truly deserved.
I didn't draw any comparison between North Korea and the US -- you did. However. now that you bring the US into it...
I find it ironic that I -- a born US citizen who carries a valid US passport, and who has never been convicted (or even accused) of any serious crime in the US or anyplace else -- can visit China with at least 10 times less hassle than I can visit my own relatives back in the States.
I am also not at all in agreement with (much less proud of) many of the USA's foreign policies and various military and especially covert actions of the last six or seven decades. Many of these things have been done for the benefit (and sometimes even at the behest) of US-based multinational corporations.
Nor am I overly fond of a domestic economy that tends to treat its own workers as something to be used up and then cast aside.
It's partly on account of these things that I prefer living overseas.
All of this being said, I fail to see what bearing it has on the fact that North Korea is indeed a "hellhole".
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
And probably old news. The Nosotek web site is (C)2008 and 100% boilerplate. And a few weeks ago, DPRK cut off all contact with S Korea and confiscated S Korean property in the N. Doesn't look like BofA or Lockheed or even the Simpsons will be outsourcing anything there anytime in the near future.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
there is a true us, and then there is a lesser them. you've just elevated yourself above other human beings as superior for reasons which are contrived: not unique to christianity and certainly not adhered to by christians, especially "real" (hypocritical) christians
as soon as you draw a line: a superior "us" versus an inferior "them", you've dehumanized, and implicitly excused abuses against those who are "inferior"
this is how every pogrom, inquisition, and crusade got started. with the thinking you've just written. and right now, some muslim is writing EXACTLY what you write, and thereby implicitly beginning the excusing for atrocities
the truth, we're all weak, we're all human, and some of us are weak and human... with a massive need to feel superior
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I've been to China several times, and the worst harrassment I've had to endure on any of those trips was having my cigarette lighter confiscated at the Beijing airport and receiving a stern lecture about having "smuggled dangerous materials" aboard my flight from Stockholm, which I finally terminated with a cheery, "The security people at Arlanda saw it and didn't seem to have a problem with it; if you don't believe me, I'll be happy to wait while you ring them up and ask them about it yourself".
Other than at the airport, I never had any problems. I saw surprisingly few police on the streets, and the one or two of those who even seemed to notice me were traffic cops who merely smiled, nodded, and waved me on across the street or whatever.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
He's talking about the people that call themselves fundamentalists while getting the point of the religeon entirely wrong. The ones that look at the words to find weasel loopholes and ignore the meaning. Those are the ones that use the name of God to push their own narrow and ultimately purely political views - the sort of people that get it so wrong that they act as if Jesus wanted to exterminate the poor.
We recently watched "State of Mind" on Netflix Instant Streaming for Memorial Day, so my kids could see why fighting for freedom is so important.
It's just sad how brainwashed everyone is. (Not that you aren't in America if you listen blindly to the media.)
But if you want to see what goes on in North Korea (in 2004), take a peek.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
"In America, you get arrested for shouting."
What are you talking about? Fred Phelps and his gang have been shouting "God hates fags" all along, and they've never been in jail. Maybe it would be better if such hate speech was illegal, but when your government gives you such, almost limitless, freedom of speech, you should respect it. Most people on the world don't have such privilege.
If you post as an AC, don't expect me to spend a mod point on you.
Sure, it does. Try to find out in American sources, WHAT those Chinese were protesting against.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I've traveled between the US, Middle East, Europe, Mexico and Canada numerous times and never have been asked if I was a Nazi/Communist/where I'm going/who I'm meeting when I come back to the US.
You didn't "travel between", you were American, returning to US. Of course, immigration officials wouldn't try to kick you out from your own country, you moron.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Tianamen Square was a difficult situation - handled disastrously badly. Thousands of protesters had occupied the center of the city - there were no coherent demands with extremists of various sorts pushing for conflicting agendas. Sending in the army was the WRONG thing to do - but its not clear what is the right thing. Thailand recently found itself in a similar situation and didn't do a whole lot better at solving it.
I've been to China recently and it doesn't "feel" oppressive - people there are willing to discuss and criticize the government. I believe that North Korea is a whole different level of oppressive.
Not saying China is good, but they aren't that bad.
No one said anything about being kept out, it was about questions on entrance and keeping tabs.
Really try and keep up if you have the comprehension, if not, quiet down.
China is authoritarian; some of the laws are strict by our standards, but if you obey them and mind your own business, you'll probably be left alone.
not according to this bloke who's farm is being illegally confiscated because of property values in china..
Wait! Whats a sig?
The only good North Korean is a dead North Korean.
North Korea doesn't have electricity outside Pyongyang and it's only on for a few hours a day. Only the army has fuel to power generators and they use it sparingly. The number of school children who avoid starving to death long enough to graduate isn't enough to staff an IT company. Opening an IT company would be illegal in North Korea would result in the owner and his immediate family being sent to a forced labor camp for 7 to 12 years. Would you consider Somalia the next boom place for IT?
I wasn't making any assumptions about your beliefs about the US beyond poking a little fun at your citing the very US-centric Wikipedia ;-). I was trying to illustrate that the US achieves the same control by different methods lest the wrong problem be identified. It is not that NK is a prison camp, it is that much of the world is a prison camp.
Hopefully implied (and made explicit in a later post) is that China is just somewhere else on the spectrum of methods to achieve the same end.
Maybe it would be better if such hate speech was illegal,
No it wouldn't.
No it isn't.
"God hates fags" is like "magic unicorns hate puppies". Even Phelps knows it, and has indicated it's not he who hates but magic^WGod.
The right to come out with harmless (from the PoV of rocking the boat carrying the elite) nonsense is well recognised in US law, and is part of the distraction which enables the government to say "see! you are free! You can call Bush a moron! You can call blacks niggers! How can this not mean you are free???"
We are comparing it to North Korea which is a lot worse than what the Chinese demonstrated at Tiananmen Square.
Now you reminded me of this: A group of young Muslims ask their religious leader what is democracy. He responses: "it's when I get up on the minaret and piss on you, but you can piss on me too".
If you post as an AC, don't expect me to spend a mod point on you.
the stunt performer who played Godzilla from 1984 to 1995 - portrayed Pulgasari, and when the Godzilla remake was released in Japan in 1998, he was quoted as saying he preferred Pulgasari to the American Godzilla.[1]
Well who the hell didn't?
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
Err.. it rather sounded to me like you weren't liking the situation in the west, and comparing it to China and the DPRK.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
...because destroying the US and offshoring our jobs to China and india wasn't enough. Corporate America has to prove that they have absolutely NO moral convictions whatsoever. Who is worse than North Korea? Does the Taliban have any programmers that will work cheap?
Protip to people who think China and North Korea are about the same:
Do you know where North Koreans flee to (according to someone who helps them flee), because it is so much better?
To China!
Yes, that’s right. That’s how bad NK is. So bad that China looks like the promised land.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Sure, it does. Try to find out in American sources, WHAT those Chinese were protesting against.
The were protesting against communism, obviously.
The director was Shin Sang-okk, who was abducted along with his wife, actress Choi Eun-hee. Shin was considered one of Korea's most talented directors at the time.
Bzzt, wrong.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Bzzt, wrong.
OK, what then would you be told if you "tr[ied] to find out in American sources" what they were protesting about?
In other words, "woooshh."
You would find that American sources implied heavily that protests were against communism, in support of democracy, in support of capitalism, or against some kind of horrible conditions imposed on the population, however it is never said directly because American journalists knew that it would be an easily verifiable lie.
In reality, protests were against Deng Xiaoping and in support of Hu Yaobang's positions, who died a day before. While both politicians are known to promote reforms, Hu Yaobang's ideas were obviously Communist, and directed toward preserving Communist nature of the system while fighting against abuses and corruption, and other oppressive policies instituted by Mao. The closest figure from USSR history would be Khruschev, though Hu Yaobang was far more popular. Den Xiaoping, on the other hand, was focused on adopting Capitalism-like or Capitalist direction of development, what ended up "integrating" abuses and corruption into the system. Yeltsin would be the closest equivalent in USSR/Russian history.
One has to perform an act of massive mental contortionism to describe this as "pro-democracy" protest -- if there was any democracy involved, it was to express support for a popular Communist leader who promoted Communist understanding of "democracy" that has very little to do with American/Western idea of the same name. It was most definitely directed against Capitalist reforms of Deng Xiaoping, and for return to "true Communist" ideology of reforms proposed by deceased Hu Yaobang. US was, obviously, on the side of Deng Xiaoping and not the protesters, so revealing the content of the protests would discredit the whole idea of "democratization" of other countries by force and economical pressure, as US greatest ally in China just shot hundreds, possibly thousands of protesters against those very policies.
Ironically, Capitalist direction of development of China ended up hurting more Americans than it helped, and relationship between US and China that resulted, can be best described as mutually abusive. US media in 90's could have a good reason to side with actual protesters in retrospect, however since that would involve admitting that they were pro-Communist, it could never fly.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Are you a lawyer, or just dense?
Why would anyone asks idiotic questions to your own citizen just because he just returned from abroad? As for "keeping tabs on", I can assure you, visiting an "enemy" country such as Cuba or interacting with foreign intelligence agencies will earn you some very special status, but it won't be at the immigration desk.
On the other hand, when a foreigner comes to US, especially from any place with less than friendly relationship with US, there is no end to harassment and idiocy. Multiply that by a hundred if he tries to actually immigrate.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Why would someone ask idiotic questions of their own citizens for having contact with someone from outside or it, or from going outside of it?
Why the good people at the DPRK, they surely do. Which is what the conversation is about, "does the US treat citizens like the DPRK does?"
Of course they don't, I've been to Gaza/Ramallah/Cuba and had friends in Fatah and used to be friended on facebook with a guy from Hezbollah. That might come up at a security clearance check, but it doesn't keep me from a government job and surely isn't going to get me put in prison.
In the DPRK that'd be prison, or worse, for knowing people who are open threats to the DPRK.
So, like I said - Really try and keep up if you have the comprehension, if not, quiet down.
Why the good people at the DPRK, they surely do. Which is what the conversation is about, "does the US treat citizens like the DPRK does?"
DPRK treats most foreign countries as enemies -- and for a good reason, as US behavior with this whole "axis of evil" proclamation had shown. It's very reasonable to expect that North Korean that traveled abroad was targeted by enemies of North Korean government for some purpose -- be it propaganda, recruitment for some hostile action, espionage, etc. American who interacted with organizations currently at war with US, is usually treated far worse than that -- unless he is sent by US government or media, he is automatically treated as an enemy or "terrorist, trained by al-Qaeda".
However Americans who travel abroad, either go to countries that US considers to be its friends or colonies, or are surrounded by red-white-and-blue bubble of American-friendly handlers or military, or otherwise they would be killed for being American, thus making the whole issue moot. In either case, it is obvious that his trip presents no threat to the American government.
You make no distinction between government oppression toward people it suspect of being opposed to its policy, suspicion toward people who demonstrated direct support of organizations that have the goal of overthrowing the same government, and meaningless bureaucratic inconvenience. That makes you a typical American who can't tell government policy from a hole in the ground.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I assume this is true because I see a constant stream of anti-U.S. sentiment coming from U.S. citizens, and I never hear about them disappearing.
Obviously the US is much better at making people disappear without making a noise.
to say you are out of touch with a kindergartener's ability at compare and contrast and devoid of a firm grasp of reality is putting it mildly
Fair enough, this is the Internet, generic insults are admissible substitutes for an argument.
here, read this: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/asia/10koreans.html
Well, I did, and it follows the model of every on-the-streets pro-capitalism article published about any centrally planned economy since the US first started declaring the USSR its sworn enemy. The model goes like this:
(1) Take half a dozen willing emigrants and start the ball rolling by mentioning random irrelevant luxuries which they enjoy now, such as strawberries in springtime or the ability to watch a different set of propaganda on TV;
(2) Advance to the meat of your story: the centrally planned economy is so corrupt that no-one gets compensation for their work and everyone would starve if they followed the official methods;
(3) Ask them for stories about how they implemented petty capitalism to survive, because you cannot survive without capitalism;
(4) Add emotive rather than descriptive language to illustrate just how hard even fairly routine actions were - e.g. fishing is always in "treacherous waters". A staple is that goods are always carried one hundred miles across a mine-filled swamp on a unicycle;
(5) Once you've built empathy with these heroes of the American dream, describe how crackdowns on and confiscations of their justly earnt property make petty capitalism impossible;
(6) Round off with one party official making a delicious quote describing how great the system is and insisting that crackdowns on capitalism are moral for added "OMG the humanity!".
The inevitable conclusion from such articles is: everyone bar Party officials who hasn't already escaped from the regime must now be dying or dead, which is an obvious nonsense. Thus the article must be exaggerating or non-representative.
But at least the article givs a hint of the elephant in the room: sanctions and US military opposition. No country on this earth exists well when it is faced with those two hurdles.
Next, we can move on to how many democracies or tolerable governments (from the PoV of the people) the US overthrows for something much worse - Kim could never dream about holding more than his own countrymen under his thumb. We can talk about currency devaluation in the West - both jumps in specific countries and the imaginary currency by fiat of most Western nations which is devalued in a constant trickle. We can then move on to how collusion between US government and corporation has destroyed the savings of US workers.
By the template of this article, you are the successful Party official, achieving comfort through a combination of intelligence and conformance, proclaiming the greatness of your government while it craps on the majority of the world's people.
this is not a western or capitalist smear job. communism simply results in dysfunction. it doesn't matter if the west is in love with communism or does everything it can to destroy it. the west doesn't matter. what matters is the intellectual failure of communism to accurately describe human behavior. communism will always fail, all on its own, all by itself
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i stated it doesn't matter what the west believes, that communism fails on its own, so how can i be engaging in what you are describing?
especially since you yourself engaged in what you described in the post i am responding to?
are you capable of coherent thought?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
When forgetting to spew your party BS for a minute, you are very clear about wanting a centralised government able to force all private assets in the country into one legislated monopoly.
The above coupled with how libertarians, in the end, want to have an opportunity to exploit others while weaseling out of any contributions, makes me wonder...are you already in the "family" which will likely take over, be on top of libertarian oligarchy? Or hoping to still bribe yourself, when the time comes, into uberclass? Which one is it?
Another telling thing - everybody paying for public education of course assures that the place / society is quite stable, nice well-being or even prosperous in the long term; a thing which generally benefits you and will greatly benefit your children. Well, not if you want a society that's easy to exploit...
Also, you very much support "imperialistic wars", despite claiming otherwise; if you wouldn't, you also wouldn't want wasting resources on "the best military in the world", and instead focused on why you need it (well, I'm sure you know why, to have better "business opportunities"...). Ignoring all the places ahead of US, and with very social net systems, should be easy after the above.
Oh well, to bad like with any worshippers, you forget how your idols ("founding fathers", in this case, it would seem) lived a long time ago, in a completelly different reality; and nurtured a much, much worse one from what we have presently (I'm sure you're good by now at ignoring their frightingly anachronistic views...after all, you already pick only those suiting you)
One that hath name thou can not otter