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Are Some of North Korea's Long-Range Missiles Fakes?
gbrumfiel writes "North Korea has not been shy in announcing plans to destroy the United States, but questions remain over whether it has the nukes or the missiles to do so. Now NPR reports on open-source intelligence showing that one of the North's most 'advanced' weapons might actually be a decoy. Six KN-08 missiles were paraded last year, but each showed differences in the way they were assembled. Is it all a bluff? Or are the missiles part of a real program?"
Obviously the ones they parade are just shells. Do you think the US/USSR paraded armed nuclear missiles down the streets back in the day?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I just read those two lines under that nice picture.
Some analysts say the half-dozen missiles showcased at the military parade were fakes.
So the ones they showed in a parade are fakes. Now how smart do you have to be to decide to use fakes in a parade? I mean, you have maybe only two of them working, maybe only one, or maybe even six in good condition. Why take the risk that something happens while showing them off? Showing them in a parade means they are not ready to use if the US or the South attacks. (How unlikely this might be to us, they have a different perspective.) The decoys might be empty ones that will be used later. That each of them has differences only shows that they are working on them.
It wouldn't surprise me if much of what the DPRK has put on display are mockups. A bit of craftsmanship and just enough engineering to keep the suckers from visibly shaking and flexing during a parade is a lot cheaper than the real thing, and does 90% of what you need a missile to do.
On the other hand, it's possible that the newer stuff are all custom one-offs. SCUDs they probably have an assembly line for. I'm not sure if they've really had enough launches to wring the bugs out of anything higher performance, a point at which they can freeze a design and say this is the definitive [cobert]Type-O-Dong[/cobert], model X.
Luke, help me take this mask off
A country without much money to make mock-ups, and real nukes.
Say a country that is isolated from the outside world with very few trading partners. Who tends of emphasize their military?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It only takes ONE to start a major war.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
They probably just want to use a scare tactic, make the US think they have the firepower and wait till they back down out of fear. It's like a bully at school who threatens to beat you up every day after school but never actually does it, your scared until you figure out he's a bigger pussy then you are.
Say what you will about North Korea, you still have to admit those guys sure know how to put on a parade.
He's a doctor, not an egomaniacal third world leader with nuclear weapons and a taste for freaky porn!
From orbit, I presume?
Close inspection of the nose of the missile shows the warhead's surface is undulated. Some analysts suggest the wrinkles mean the material is a thin metal sheet, unable to withstand flight pressures.
Maybe they're speed ridges, you know, to make them go faster. Sort of like speed holes on a sports car, but different...
No, in case I fooled you, I'm not a rocket scientist.
Problem solved!
So just to be clear. Them threatening to nuke us, bad. Us nuking them just to be sure, good. OK?
Only one way to find out ...
Take off every 'sig'!
All your 'sig' are belong to us!
Yes. Because we would use neutron bombs that simply kill everyone and the fallout dissipates rapidly so we don't get any after effects. and if we air burst them all no nuclear winter.
It's a WIN-WIN!
Well except for some of china, south korea, and japan.... sorry guys....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"The real McCoy is cyber warware."
Indeed. We already knew, the US conquered all the computers of the North, both of them.
Look, I don't know for sure if they are faked, and neither does anyone else. If they are real, all of the world leaders need to be removed and punished for allowing it to happen. But let's suppose for a moment that they ARE fake. I do know that the idea of blackmailing or threatening mass devastation using fake WMDs is evidence of either very sick (and stupid) minds indeed, or a bankrupt response policy on the part of the civilized world. We know this has been done before. Saddam Hussein did his level best in 2003 to convince the world he had WMDs and would use them. In response his military was shredded, he ended up dead, and his country was reduced to a wasteland in slow motion after his military was conquered.
Now, SH's ghost can maintain that his foolishness served its purpose, since ultimately the US was bankrupted and the US politico-strategic goals were turned into a sick twisted forlorn mess that ended in a worse outcome than the status quo ante. OTOH, SH lost his own life, his political movement was turned into an ash-heap, and most telling of all, his nation ended up in a living hell that continues.
Clearly if others nonetheless, seeing all this, choose to follow in his footsteps, something is wrong with the response to this kind of psychopathy. I can't believe that effective precision decapitation is so hard to do. In one instantaneous surgical strike, send all of the leadership to meet their maker. The US bungled doing this to SH on the eve of war. What was so hard about that? Find them and destroy them, and do it with force so much the opposite of showy that far from being shock and awe, no one in the country even realizes it has happened until you litter the whole countriside with pamphlets and everyone realizes that the reason none of their leaders show up any more is that they have been eliminated with extreme prejudice. That the entire civilized world acted as one, that they will repeat as many times as necessary, that they exercised extreme care not to harm the population, and that they did it barely lifting a finger.
Exactly the same goes for Iran. If they continue going out of their way doing their level best to convince us they are psychopathic, relieve Iran of its burden with a snap of the fingers.
We have tried the silly way, treating psychopaths like civilized human beings, and it continues to make monkeys out of us. Sure, our own cowardly leaders are afraid of the same thing being done to them, but they are fools to think they can guarantee their own oh-so-sacrosanct personal hide is protected if they only don't provoke the true psychopaths. And they bloody well should be afraid the same thing could be done to them if they themselves act like psychopaths.
Seriously folks... they HAVE nukes. We know this. They've detonated them underground, we've detected the flash. It's fact. (unless both they and our own government is lieing to us... a distinct possibility)
Do they have missiles that can launch them? Who gives a shit? Any ballistic missile they would have would be trivial for our military to shoot down. They do, however, have very sophisticated submarines. All they need to do is load one of their nukes on a sub and sail it into a major harbor anywhere in the world and viola, world catastrophe. This is the threat we should be worried about. The whole missile thing is just sabre rattling, irrelevant of their real capabilities. They'd need thousands to overwhelm our defenses.
now we have north korea. from TFA:
North Korea has demonstrated its ability to build short- and medium-range missiles, and it has launched a small satellite into space. But neither of these achievements would necessarily allow it to reach the U.S. with a warhead.
so how many more steps will have to be completed before we land a competent assessment that north korea can send a warhead to the US? are we seriously going to entertain the idea that a country capable of launching a satellite into space is just 'faking it' when it comes to missile technology? Parent posts are probably correct: you're absolutely insane to parade real missiles in a public square if the goal of those missiles is to be highly mobile and undetectable in the face of a nation thats demonstrated numerous times its willingness to violate foreign sovreignity in the pursuit of furthering its interests.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Might they be referring to the wikileaks post after the anon north korea 'hacking'?
We've probably got a bunch of fakes too: they make good decoys for those who would try to attack or steal our weapons. They're probably better-made, but they're fakes all the same.
The real question is, does North Korea have any of these long-range missiles that aren't fake?
I know this may not be popular but when someone threatens you and you strike out at them it's a whole different ball game then if you just strike out at someone or threaten them just to make yourself look tough. This is like the question of the death penalty. Some try to make it seem hypocritical that you kill someone to show that killing someone is wrong. No, you're killing someone for killing someone else without justification. It's not like you're taking some random guy off the street and throwing him in front of a firing squad. It's a simple cause and effect situation.
I don't think the North Koreans are going to do things either way and certainly wouldn't think the use of arms against them is warranted at this time but they are trying to raise the ire of just about everyone around them.
From orbit, I presume?
That would be the only way to be sure...
He's a doctor, not an egomaniacal third world leader with nuclear weapons and a taste for freaky porn!
So close!
He's a doctor, not an egomaniacal third world leader with nuclear weapons and a taste for freaky porn, Jim!
Fixed that for ya.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Do they have fricking laser beams?
North Korea barely has electricity, they certainly aren't a threat. A small group of rednecks with shotguns could probably take on their entire military.
I'm unsure how many rednecks would be a 'small group'. Could you translate that into how many 'pickup trucks filled with rednecks' that would be? Thanks!
Well my argument against the death penalty is that there is a chance that you could be wrong and the person didn't actually do the crime + you're only as bad as the person committing the crime if you react in the same way they have acted.
That's from the 3D capabilities of CS6 Extended.
If this were easy, they wouldn't need us to do it!
Do you honestly think it would be cheaper and easier to remove real nukes from silos than to build cheap mockups? Even if NK was THAT poor (and they're not when it comes to their military, which is one part of NK that is well-financed) that would be a pretty stupid way to try to save money.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Given that they might have only fake weapons, about 4 pickup trucks.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Who's the schmuck now?
You never expect irony, do you?
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@iyfwrestling
I had to ask myself: Why Sharks? Why not honey badgers? It didn't take long to figure out though that, unlike the sharks, honey badgers wouldn't wait for your call. They don't give a shit, they'd just launch the missiles to see what happens next.
How long did it take the US to decapitate Al Qaeda? I mean, seriously, d'you think finding and destroying enemy heads of state is easy?
Saddam Hussein was NOT easy to find. He had his whole country to hide in--and he did. The US didn't get him until US had control of his country.
The US also missed Qaddafi--he stayed free until he lost control of his country too! NOTICE A PATTERN HERE?
US got lucky with Bin Laden--and Bin Laden didn't control Pakistan nor have control of a country's resources to help him hide.
And if US tries the same thing on NK's leaders, US not only face a high probability of failure, US faces almost certain nuclear retaliation, perhaps not against US, but against US interests at the least.
The reason US/TheWest don't routinely 'decapitate' is not only because TheWest just CAN'T do it (history demonstrates this), it's because it's stupid to try it unless your enemy is incapable of retaliation.
--PM
You argument would speak against any punishment, with the death penalty just being the most final case. After all, if I'm innocent, I'm not exactly going to be happy to have been imprisoned for 20 years.
And by your logic on an execution being as bad as e.g. murder, do you think that people who illegally imprison others shouldn't be subjected to jail terms, or fraudsters should never be fined?
Why does North Korea remind me of a bad episode of Pinky and the Brain?
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
You CAN make a big bomb with TNT, nuke sized even.
However, I do NOT think that you can fool US detection. I'm not familiar with the techniques used exactly, but don't you think the seismic signature of a nuke and a big conventional bomb would be very different? How about neutrino fluxes? Can't fake that with TNT. How about "the flash" (other than neutrinos), like long-wave EMP radiation that might make it through the ground, and maybe a trace of high energy stuff? How about residual radionucleotides that escape?
I don't think Government lying could even be done successfully--it's not just the US who has capability of analyzing seismic data to determine if it's nuke or not. I bet Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Japan, and Israel could ALL do that too. If the US gov't tried to lie about it, they'd be caught out immediately.
NK has nukes. Period. Due to all the arguments above, I believe it is a fools bet to think otherwise. The news reports do say they're pretty lousy nukes, but they're nukes.
--PM
Yes. Sorry gi, but you were a hostage.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Actually it is mostly American history books that spread the "US Defender of Freedom" propaganda. Others record that America declared war on Germany for the simple reason that Germany had already declared war on America after America had sat out a couple of years of war so they could make money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Ok, let's look at this more closely, because you bring up very good and valid points. While it's true, if you are wrongly incarcerated you won't be happy about it, however, there are things which can be done to repay you for that injustice (financial compensation, and I know it may never be enough to make up for you losing your freedom). What reparations can you make to a man who you executed? He's dead, his body will no longer function, ever, you can't give him anything to make him come back to life or to make up for killing him. I won't say that execution is just as bad as murder, because I don't think it is (though I do think it somewhat barbaric).
I got nuthin
Also its very likely that their last two "nuclear" tests were fakes as well using large amounts of conventional explosions.
It is the best that photoshop can make.
No good deed goes unpunished.
I'm completely with your starting point. The US is incredibly incompetent at knocking off the psychopaths at the top, but is pretty good (albeit at staggering cost) at liquidating huge numbers of underlings and innocents. In fact this is so much the case that I don't believe they are trying. Then you come to that whole paranoid phantasm that Saddam had a whole slew of "doubles" so how could he ever be found.
The difference with me is that I don't just accept this happy horse manure. I demand that the US smarten up.
Here's what seems like a clue to me. Countries are impoverished by wars, but the elite get rich. Why spend 100 grand to hire an assassin or send a small commando team to nail the leader when you can make the military industrial complex unimaginably rich stealing the people's money to fund a gigantic war to knock off all the pigeons? US leader after US leader, do you see my middle finger?
As for the difficulty decapitating Al Qaeda, that is clear. The network is underground and not organized too hierarchically. Also, as a collection of fanatics, new heads will just pop up instantly. Despotisms like Saddam's Iraq, North Korea, and Iran are entirely different. The headers wear UNIFORMs with MEDALs. They stick out like sore thumbs. They are extremely hierarchical, and the power structure is in it for self aggrandizement. Yes, in Iran they do harness religious fanaticism to their ends, but they are not at all similar to Al Qaeda.
Finally, do you really think NK's command structure is going to survive the elimination of the leadership and be all gung ho to retaliate and thus commit suicide? Retaliate how? With a bunch of fake missiles, or at best some ancient liquid fueled crap that sticks out like a sore thumb while it is mounted on a launchpad and laboriously fueled up for launch because it can't be stored and erected with fuel in it? Granted, all the while we twiddle our thumbs it does get gradually more and more perilous as NK does make progress.
Actually his dead grandfather is the eternal president still, they keep the country together by cult worship of him, "cleanest race" and blood purity propaganda, and the worst death camps on earth for the last 50 years such as Camp 14, where children are born as slaves for life under "three generations of punishment" .
Its unfortunate that these Nuclear and Chemical weapons headlines obscure the human rights violations. Currently there is a UN commission investigating NK for crimes against humanity. After reading "Escape from Camp 14" I was completely appalled that these death camps exist even today, and according to satellite images are expanding.
What I want to know is why they have the terrible camoflauge paint job. Wouldn't they look better and more awsome if they were all high-techy coloured and stuff?
When they move these things around the Americans watch them every step of the way, they can't hide them with cammo paint, its not like they are wheeling these things through the jungle or anything either, at any great speed. You can't hide these things, seriously, and so you are parading them around, make them flashy, give them some style! Paint the image of a few great Kims on the side, make them something that really pops, stands out...
don't these dictators know how to do propoganda anymore?
Or railguns?
Playing devil's advocate: there are a lot more of us (us here being everyone North Korea has threatened) than there are North Koreans. And North Korea is already killing North Korea. They're just doing it very slowly and painfully. If I'm ever put into a North Korean hard labor camp, I'd probably quickly be praying someone would nuke North Korea even if I'm in it at that moment.
I had to ask myself: Why Sharks? Why not honey badgers? It didn't take long to figure out though that, unlike the sharks, honey badgers wouldn't wait for your call. They don't give a shit, they'd just launch the missiles and go eat a snake, they don't give a shit what happens next.
FTFY
On the other side, you have some 600,000 shitty South Korean soldiers who would probably drop their guns and run
The South Korean soldiers I've known would absolutely not do this. They are tough. They would not win against the North alone, but they absolutely would sacrifice themselves to hold off until the US arrives from the south (where the US military bases are).
Also, your idea of military strategy is wrong. 1.1million infantry cannot do anything without support, they will be mowed down like grass. Look at the battle of Somme for an example of what happens when you try to cross a No-Man's-Land with overwhelming numbers of infantry.
North Korea has the capability to inflict millions of civilian casualties on South Korea, on the first day of battle due to the poor strategic location of Seoul, but they won't win a conventional war.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
How about neutrino fluxes? ...How about "the flash" (other than neutrinos), like long-wave EMP radiation...
The problem is that none of these things were detected!
Wikipedia: 2009 detonation - Lack of radionuclide confirmation
or this one: ...as of two days after the blast, Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean investigators had failed to detect any radiation...
Wikipedia: 2013 detonation -
All evidence we have shows that it *was not* nuclear.
Im aware of that, I was pointing out the hypocrisy of it all.
You're thinking in the context of mass attacks. That isn't going to happen.
The NK DMZ is 2.5 miles wide. It has no easy passage for vehicles and directly passing through the forest would be all but impossible. Reaching the other side, on foot - if you avoid being eaten or otherwise killed by wildlife or AP mines - would instantly result in being turned into hamburger and/or fine mist by a mix of automated turrets, mortars, etc. Any massing of troops in the forest, as detected by airborne infrared sensors, would immediately result in shelling of the area.
So really, a land passage isn't exactly tenable. There are small passages through these jungles and those are likewise guarded. They'd get shelled out within seconds of any indication of a convoy rolling down the road. (I don't care if they are well trained soldiers, they've got to either walk or ride vehicles, and it takes a long time to move even a fraction of a million people, well trained or not.)
So really, the only tenable way for NK to get actual troops and their associated Chinese vehicles to SK is by sea or air. How well do you think that will work?
Here's a hint: NK uses 1950s-1970s Soviet technology for pretty much everything they do that's "advanced". That means most of what they do is one-off and poorly assembled; they are easily 70 years behind the West at this point in basic industrialization, and they're even further behind if you consider what they are able to produce domestically. NK would almost instantly fall apart internally if they expended the time, energy, and resources to engage in a war - in the matter of days, people would be dying of starvation in high numbers. Posturing alone is likely too much for them to sustain for long.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
All the history books / classes trumpet the whole "US Defender of Freedom" thing regarding WW2, because we helped stop the holocaust. Yet we have the same sorts of concentration camps / ghettos as in WW2, in North Korea right now. You dont think thats something worth considering war for?
Stopping the Holocaust was not really the reason the US entered the war. The public reason was that we were attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. The real reasons are up for debate. But this is a good object lesson in the use of history classes to reinforce the idea that America = Awesome. Unfortunately history is as often about making one's country look good as relating what really happened way back when.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Google "Quaker gun". According to Wiki that phrase dates to the American Revolution; but I bet It's the oldest trick in the book. I bet we can find storis of the ancients doing fakes. There was an entire fake army division prior to D-day in WW2, along with the real ones. My favorite WW2 fake was the bomber with a tail gun that had a double-length barrel with an unusual looking flame arrestor on it. It was either an ordinary gun or a broken tail gun. The Germans didn't want to mess with it though, because it was pretty bad looking.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I have a feeling that N.Korean soldiers would be more likely to drop their weapons and look for menial jobs around Seoul that pay 20x better than soldiering for the Kims.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
It would be pretty stupid for any country not to have a few decoys, and a few extra well hidden installations.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
While there may be things that *can* be done for you in cases where you were wrongly incarcerated, do they ever happen? I think the only reparation you are going to get in the US is that you won't be in debt for the room and board for the last 10 years.
On the other side, you have some 600,000 shitty South Korean soldiers who would probably drop their guns and run at the first sign of attack...
Oh, I didn't see this "comment". You are DEAD WRONG. 1) They aren't shitty. 2) They are all fully cognizant of the fact that they are there to defend their country. I've met a few of these men (spent time in Asia, including S. Korea), do not confuse S. Korea with the S. Vietnam of the 60's. Seoul is not the Saigon of the Vietnam era, rife with graft & corruption, and petty dictators propped up by a paranoid Lyndon Johnson. S. Korea is a modern society with a petty but dangerous neighbor to the north, and is fully prepared to defend itself. They have to, the have no where else to go. Your opinion is petty and uneducated bias.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
EXACTLY.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
You ever hear of the neutron bomb? Destroys people - leaves buildings standing. Fits in a suitcase. It's so small, no one knows it's there until - BLAMMO. Eyes melt, skin explodes, everybody dead. So immoral, working on the thing can drive you mad. That's what happened to this friend of mine. So he had a lobotomy. Now he's well again.
I had a girlfriend like that once.
i.e. from the line in the movie "Dr. Strangelove" of something like "...it's all about lust if you keep it a secret. Why did you keep it a secret!?!?" while asking the Soviet ambassador who replied, "Premier was going to announce it at Party Conference, as you know he likes surprises." I cannot recall the exact conversation from the movie.
Or something like that... Kubrick did a lot of research of politicos and technology of the time which much shown in movie has a realistic resonance. Soviet doomsday machine that was proposed but Kruschev (sp?) cancelled the program, "bomb 'em back the stone age" general, and illustrating B52 weapons systems (there are several steps and procedures to ready a nuclear bomb, they don't have readouts that tell you when exactly it will explode). This 1964 film also illustrates the psychology of various people with nuclear weapons.
mfwright@batnet.com
There's a good chance that the missiles shown in a parade were fakes. Many early missile designs didn't travel well. The US Atlas ICBM had walls so thin it had to be pressurized to keep it from collapsing. When not pressurized, it had to be held in a fixture that kept it under tension. North Korea's missiles are roughly at the Atlas level of technology - they're liquid fueled. Putting them on off-road trucks is not too useful, since they have to be accompanied by liquid oxygen trucks. They need a launch complex.
The Atlas was a good booster. Variants of the design were used into the 1990s. (There's a current "Atlas" booster, but it's a full redesign.) North Korea clearly has boosters in that league - they've launched several. They're just not well suited to parade displays. So it's quite likely that, for parade purposes, dummies were used.
Many states will compensate you for the term, to the tune of around $50k per year.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
And it happens often enough that there are rules about how much you get based on things like your education level, age when you went in, etc.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
I was born, raised, and educated in the USA, and I never heard this "U.S. Defender of Freedom" thing. We stayed out of WWII because large portions of the US wanted to avoid a repeat of WWI, just as the Oxford Student Debating Society solemnly resolved that there was no reason whatsoever to die for King Or Country just a year or two before Churchill and Co. shamed poor Chamberlain into demanding that Germany not invade Poland or suffer Britain's (and France's) wrath. After Japan attacked, we might have known that Germany needed to be included in the war but Germany was nice enough to declare war on us, before we had to try to convince Congress to declare war on a previously non-belligerent power just because we didn't like them.
We did not declare war on the Vichy regime because we thought that nominal neutrality might work better (and we decided to treat them as if they were the Ghetto Councils that the Nazis set up before they liquidated the Ghettos, ie in charge like Holly Genarro in Die Hard). We "knew" about the death camps, but no one believed the reports because they were made by commy-symps and Jews, and the idea of killing your best and smartest workers was too absurd, just as the Red Cross was notified of the Katryn Forest massacre of Polish officers by the Soviets, but they didn't believe it because the Germans reported it.
Face it, pre-emptive war, even against a righteous target, has lost a bit of its luster in the last decade. If the USA *did* decide to do something about NK, large portions of the world, including Europe, would complain about US Cowboy Diplomacy and Warmongering.
BTW, would Poland have objected so much if the Germans asked them to join in a crusade against the Godless Communists on their Eastern border, instead of what happened?
She fit in a suitcase? Was she of high caliber?
I drank what? -- Socrates
OK, 27 states do provide varying levels of compensation.
Source: Innocence Project Fact Sheet.
I live in one of the 23 states that do not provide any compensation for the wrongly convicted.
The big difference between North Korea and Nazi Germany is that North Korea's problems and human rights violations are all internal (aside from a few bombings and assassination attempts). Germany made their behavior an international matter by invading neighboring countries.
There's an unstated rule that what happens in your country is your business. Other members of the international community may complain about what you do inside your own borders, but they'll almost never take action based on it. Most of the international community supported the first Gulf War because Iraq invaded Kuwait. Most did not support the second Gulf War because it was a drastic intervention on the internal affairs of Iraq, even if S. Hussein was a psychopathic dictator who occasionally gassed his own citizens. The U.S. tried to paint it as an international matter by saying the threat of using WMDs on other countries was there. But without solid evidence to back it up, people weren't buying it.
I think most people see the right to self-governance as sacrosanct, even if it's clearly being abused by those in power. Because once you cross that line and say it's ok to invade another country for reasons that are internal to that country, you lose the moral high ground if someone invades your country. All the invader have to do is cite some sorts of problems or human rights violations within your country to justify their invasion, and they're treating you by your own standards.
If North Korea invades South Korea or attacks Japan, the U.S. will be there in a heartbeat to drive them back (and probably then some). But as long as North Korea's abuses remain internal, it's going to take a lot before the U.S. (or the international community for that matter) decides to intervene.
I was just reading an article the other day about people in states where there is no compensation, where the conviction still shows up on your record, and where employment for those wrongfully convicted is almost impossible as a result.
These people don't want $50k/yr for lost time - they want their records cleared. Heaven forbid that somebody proven innocent by DNA evidence have a clean record!
$50k/yr is the least we should be doing for them - it should probably be closer to $150k/yr. It isn't like we should be locking up that many people wrongfully that we can't afford it - if we are then the reparations are the least of our problems.
Ample grounds? Unless a police officer or prosecutor fabricated or blatantly withheld evidence, there is nothing you can do but accept that period of your life was wasted and that your arrest record will haunt you for the rest of your life.
Simply beating a case in an appeal doesn't automatically make you a victim of false imprisonment.
And can either of you counter what those history books state with evidence to the contrary?
Just another day in Paradise
Problem solved!
So just to be clear. Them threatening to nuke us, bad. Us nuking them just to be sure, good. OK?
The USA has a proven capability of nuking a motherfucker right up.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
At least 4 invasion tunnels.....that the powers that be admit to, have been found and it is widely thought they have some x number of tunnels that haven't been detected. The tunnels in question were large enough to accomodate armor and mobile artillery.
They could plausibly dump at least a division well behind the DMZ if they've managed to keep even two or three tunnels undetected and usable. This too can be countered by additional defensive rings further back from the DMZ but still it would add to the North's ability to make one hell of a mess before they get their teeth kicked in.
Though come to think of it, I wouldn't put it past us and the SK's to keep quiet about a few tunnels quiet then mining the holy bejezus out of them with some big dialed in arty to boot.
BTW, would Poland have objected so much if the Germans asked them to join in a crusade against the Godless Communists on their Eastern border, instead of what happened?
Actually Ribbentrop proposed that Poland joins anti-soviet pact during meeting with ambassador Lipski on 24 Oct 1938 . It was of course declined.
The biggest problem is South Korea would complain about the US precipitating a war, for good reason. They dislike the North Korean gov't, of course, but NK is quite capable of flattening half of Seoul with conventional weapons.
This is a situation where the US just needs to be a calm adult and let South Korea take the lead.
In the long game, continued NK belligerence as we have seen over the last decade will eventually provoke Japan to build a nuclear deterrence. The threat of that expensive future nuclear arms is what is going to get China to talk some sense into NK...eventually. In the short term, China has incentive to do nothing. In the long term, China is probably more worried about being boxed in a nuclear Japan and a nuclear South Korea (and a nuclear India) than it cares about Korea.
Radionuclides were detected in 2013, and 2006.
North Korea may have taken extra precautions to prevent their tests from releasing radionuclides, in order to conceal the nature of their fission devices (Pu-239 vs U-235, or possibly other isotopes) -- and thus, conceal & protect the supply chain for their fissile material.
Furthermore, don't let the low explosive yields fool you: NK is likely testing the compact trigger for full-blown, fission-fusion-fission thermonuclear devices -- whose explosive yield could be up to several hundred kilotons.
I think that most of the problems stem from a number of issues:
.3 turn mad, his life expectancy could be measured in seconds.
1.North Korea resolutely states that what it has with south Korea is an "armistice", a temporary cessation of open hostilities which can be withdrawn on a whim, NOT a peace treaty;
2. as per 1. above, it has liberally sprinkled the south of hostile acts even recently, witness the sinking of a south Korean corvette;
3. It recently tested a long range ballistic missile by sending it flying over Japan, not the most sensible thing to do;
4.Given the UN embargo, and the geography, north Korea can only survive at the whim of two countries, neither of which is south Korea and/or the USA, namely China, and to a lesser extent, Russia.
I think that the pointy heads are not wondering if the present dictator is better or worse than his forefathers, or if he is stark raving mad. Anybody here thinking that the north Korea military is NOT thoroughly infiltrated by Chinese agents? My take is that should kim jong
Another issue is closely related to point 3 above: why on earth the Chinese should have allowed the north Koreans to be so openly hostile to neighbours and the USA? it will cause trouble for them sooner or later. I am already flabbergasted that the USA, in a quiet sort of way, has not gotten to the Chinese ear that they could be apt to treat North Korea as their "renegade province" [pun intended], refuse any further contact with them, and invite all the ASEAN members to a quiet dinner somewhere. the only possibility of seeing south Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines at the same table should be sufficient to give them enough fits to squeeze north Korea into getting quiet.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
Stopping the Holocaust was not really the reason the US entered the war.
I never said it was, I said that was the common claim, explicit or implicit..
Germany made their behavior an international matter by invading neighboring countries.
As opposed to North Korea, which is only restrained by the knowledge that they cannot retaliate against the US if they spark a war.
What happens when they get second-strike capability? Or first strike capability?
I'd go for a GF who destroys people but leaves buildings standing. Think of all the free office supplies! And the sex.
Others record that America declared war on Germany for the simple reason that Germany had already declared war on America after America had sat out a couple of years of war so they could make money.
That is simply false. The United States stayed out of the war because it was deeply isolationist and anti-war at the time (watch 23:08 to 25:13), and wasn't party to any of the treaties that resulted in the war. (Interesting, isn't it? Many in Europe complain that the US didn't enter WW2 soon enough, but now complain when the US gets involved in the conflicts of today. A simple question of whose ox is being gored? )
Look at the Destroyers for Bases Agreement. The US gave the UK 50 warships, destroyers, in return for basing rights. What do you think that was worth?
What's a little debt between friends?
"In a nutshell, everything we got from America in World War II was free," says economic historian Professor Mark Harrison, of Warwick University.
"The loan was really to help Britain through the consequences of post-war adjustment, rather than the war itself. This position was different from World War I, where money was lent for the war effort itself."
Britain had spent a great deal of money at the beginning of the war, under the US cash-and-carry scheme, which saw straight payments for materiel. There was also trading of territory for equipment on terms that have attracted much criticism in the years since. By 1941, Britain was in a parlous financial state and Lend-Lease was eventually introduced.
The post-war loan was part-driven by the Americans' termination of the scheme. Under the programme, the US had effectively donated equipment for the war effort, but anything left over in Britain at the end of hostilities and still needed would have to be paid for.
But the price would please a bargain hunter - the US only wanted one-tenth of the production cost of the equipment and would lend the money to pay for it. . .
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Assuming it is the same question in your mind, maybe this.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
My apologies, internet postings are easy to misinterpret.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I won't say that execution is just as bad as murder, because I don't think it is (though I do think it somewhat barbaric).
A case can be made that a lawful execution is worse than murder.
A murderer might
a) kill in the heat of passion
b) kill somebody really, really "asking for it"
c) have had a bad life
d) have screwed up wiring
That said, what is the excuse of a prosperous nation? So prosperous that it almost invariably costs us more to argue about killing a guy than it does just to feed/house him in prison until he dies.
A murderer can have excuses. A nation... not so much. Keep in mind, how we treat the least among us says a lot about us. Also, however crappy our lives can get, it would be nice to set the bar a little higher than death row.
Can they be 3D-printed?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
This story is well over a year old. There's absolutely nothing new here.
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
Maybe, so long as they don't mind their parents, brothers/sisters/wife, and children going to a prison camp where they are unlikely to emerge alive.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
There are many cases in the US where people have been released from prison due to new evidence (usually DNA) proving that they didn't commit the crime. Those people then go on to sue for wrongful imprisonment and generally get pretty good payouts. Use your Google-fu if you need examples, they do happen.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Those aren't wrongful imprisonment lawsuits, they are legislatively-defined reparations for certain types of exonerations. Only about half of the states have anything like that and the ones that do have very strict rules behind them. For example, if you had a prior conviction or you pleaded guilty to the charge to avoid the death penalty, you won't get anything.
For more information (as posted somewhere else on this thread), see: http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Compensating_The_Wrongly_Convicted.php
Maybe my google-fu isn't as good as yours, but I certainly can't find many cases at all where any government entity was found guilty of false imprisonment. There are plenty of civil actions against people for submitting false evidence to get someone locked up, but the police and prosecutors are not at fault there.