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Did North Korea Really Attack Sony?
An anonymous reader writes "Many security experts remain skeptical of North Korea's involvement in the recent Sony hacks. Schneier writes: "Clues in the hackers' attack code seem to point in all directions at once. The FBI points to reused code from previous attacks associated with North Korea, as well as similarities in the networks used to launch the attacks. Korean language in the code also suggests a Korean origin, though not necessarily a North Korean one, since North Koreans use a unique dialect. However you read it, this sort of evidence is circumstantial at best. It's easy to fake, and it's even easier to interpret it incorrectly. In general, it's a situation that rapidly devolves into storytelling, where analysts pick bits and pieces of the "evidence" to suit the narrative they already have worked out in their heads.""
Answer: Betteridge
Worse than we got? A company that everyone loves to hate got embarrassed. Sony will likely lose a bunch of money. The FBI will get Beltway Cred for it's great Cyber sleuthing work. Hundreds of security consultants will get some nice Christmas bonuses. A few people will have their lives messed up.
What are we supposed to do to NK? Give them a stocking full of coal?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
How is a bunch of speculation a news story? Is this Foxdot?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Kim Jong Un is exactly the type who would accept undeserved credit for a cyberattack. "What, who me? I did what? Uh ... oh really? Oh! OK, yeah everybody, I did it!"
Maybe you can really shock NK and learn that it's means it is in 2015?
Who has the motive as well as the means?
NK.
Is there any hard evidence of a false flag?
No, just the usual conspiracy theories.
Would you really want to send your son or daughter to die in North Korea because crackers broke into a company's servers? Also I'm not really convinced yet that NPRK's military was behind the crime.
The fingerprint for the attack was made to look Korean because they are traditional enemies of Japan. Whether it was really Korea or not, no one will ever know.
I was suspicious of the U.S. allegations that the North Korean government was behind it when the North Koreans denied it was them. If you're going to hack somebody to make a political statement, it makes no sense to later deny that you were involved. Someone might be trying to make it look like North Korea, but I seriously doubt they were directly involved in this.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Ev3ryb0dy kn0ws it w4s teh l33t h4x0rz who were butt-hurt from Other OS, Rootkit, etc. On the bright side, they're making fools of the government-media complex.
That should be DPRK, of course. Serves me right trying to use fancy initialisms.
Because the world is just full of people who would hack a company to blackmail them not to release a movie about Kim Jong Un. Because everyone loves the Great Leader! His family's personality cult^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HVoluntary Praise Actions only take up about 1/3rd of the North Korean budget. And I mean, they totally deserve it. I mean, did you know that his father was the world's greatest golf player who never had to defecate and whose birth was fortold by a swallow and heralded by a new star in the sky?
No, of course it wasn't North Korea. Clearly it was the work of America! Because America wants nothing more than a conflict with North Korea right now. Because clearly Russia and Syria and ISIS aren't enough, no, the US obviously has nothing better to do than to try to stir up things out of the blue with the Hollywood obsessed leader of a cult state whose family has gone so far as to kidnap filmmakers and force them to make movies for him. It all just makes so damn much sense!
Cue the conspiracy theorists in three, two, one...
I am a proud traitor to my species in alliance with my mother the Earth in opposition to those who would destroy her.
Removing the government, destabilising the region and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians based solely on circumstantial evidence isn't exactly new to the US government, i'm sure they don't really care who was truly responsible.
Tell that to autocorrect.
I was suspicious of the U.S. allegations that the North Korean government was behind it when the North Koreans denied it was them. If you're going to hack somebody to make a political statement, it makes no sense to later deny that you were involved. Someone might be trying to make it look like North Korea, but I seriously doubt they were directly involved in this.
Wrong--Even implausible denials can be very useful in international relations. They give sympathetic expatriates and foreigners something to support and are also useful legally. The obvious example is Putin's recent doublespeak over invading Ukraine. It is only a paper shield but it helps confuse the issues slightly, delaying and discouraging organized response of any kind.
As another example, since the UN Charter as passed, open wars of aggression have been outlawed. As a result, there have been a whole lotta agressive "self-defense."
As another example, Israel-Palestine. Regardless of which side you're on, you'll see the other side doing what you think is lying about something or the other.
To make a political statement? Since when was this "a political statement"? It was an attempt to stop a movie that made fun of the Great Leader. An attempt that mostly succeeded. Which was done after previously threatening Sony about the issue.
What, exactly, is to gain by admitting culpability? Is that usually what criminals do? "Why, yes, officer! I threw the brick through my ex's window to get back at her and scare her. I'm telling you now so that you can go ahead and punish me!"
I am a proud traitor to my species in alliance with my mother the Earth in opposition to those who would destroy her.
NK denied it, rather than taking credit.
Their tools are widely distributed, so faking the source is really easy.
The US government is weird combination of ineptitude and self-aggrandizement, so the FBI claims are likely pure BS designed to make the claimants look good (they were SOOO sure that had profiled the Yosemite killer years ago that it only took two more deaths to prove them wrong).
So what's the motive then? Plain ol' extortion, or are they trying to distract the media from the CIA torture story that came out about the same time? If it's the latter, it did a good job -- the media and public seem to have the attention span of a two-year-old.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Bin Laden initially denied that he was responsible for 9/11. He only started bragging about it years later, after US was occupying Afghanistan.
Yeah but there's no juicy oil contracts to secure in best Korea.
Here is your first issue "The FBI points to reused code from previous attacks associated ..."
Do you believe the FBI? Seems yet another three letter org. Maybe their reputation isn't as bad as the others, but they are also known for having a really tough time with the truth (Break and enter, secret files on US citizens, etc).
Next can you outline what you "got" and what you think you need to "give"?
Sure, NK is a nice easy target (small, backwater) and you might be able to go over there for a "quick win". That strategy hasnt always worked on many of the other "small, backwater" nations you have visited in the past has it?
So.. in summary, the American Subsidiary of a Japanese company was hacked and decided not to release a "pro USA / anti-NK movie" making fun of some other "leader" and you think you should go to "war" over it?
What would you think if NK released a movie about killing a US president?
Next "If it is war he wants it is war he gets. "
How many nations have you "hacked"? Is that also an act of war?
Your nation attacks the gvt of other nations and their companies. If NK did this, they only hacked a single "US company" and not the gvt.
Is that worth a "war"? How many trillions are you going to borrow from china to pay for it?
He doesn't want war, just to make people think he wants war. If he actually starts a war NK will be blown off the face of the earth, and he is definitely aware of that.
Time will tell, but from everything I've been able to find out North Korea doesn't have an Internet pipe big enough to have moved all that data to the country in the amount of time needed to pull this off. It had to be done from physically inside the Sony network to portable hard drives or was executed from a location with a very large Internet pipe.
Regardless it was a stupendous hack with major consequences. Not applauding, but whoever did it was very good.
Would you really want to send your son or daughter to die in North Korea because crackers broke into a company's servers?
The cast of "Duck Dynasty" did North Korea's hacking for them? I didn't know this...
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
But I wouldn't mind sending our forces in to remove the North Korean government and return the land to South Korea...
I'm with you in spirit on that, but there's a tiny little problem with actually doing it: China actually likes North Korea for some reason, and would get very, very upset with us for even so much as supporting a South Korean invasion of the North, let alone us spearheading the removal of the (sorry, have to say it) legitimate and sovereign leadership of North Korea. In short, it would be the start of World War III (or, 'The Last War', if you prefer). I'm sure Russia would pile on, too, since they're buddies with China. Everything else would pretty much go to Hell in a handbasket pretty quickly from there.
I, too, however, am beginning to wonder if this whole incident was staged by Sony as a gigantic publicity stunt.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Um... I hate to be the non-technical person that points this out, but...
The evidence that implicates NK on the previous attacks - is it the same evidence used to assign blame in the current attack?
Is this citing the conclusions based on the same evidence/situation from previous attacks to give legitimacy to the evidence in the current attack?
What a scam! Claim something on flimsy evidence, then cite those claims to give legitimacy to the flimsy evidence!
I wonder... can I do this sort of thing in the scientific literature? Hmmmm...
our governments love bogey men, someone who they can point at and make us forget their own faults or to use as an excuse for more spending on the military/spy-agencies/... We have been here before, anyone remember how Saddam was supposed to have WMD (in spite of doubts from Hans Blix), Tony Blair's ''dodgy dossier''. Finding other examples is not hard.
Time will (probably) tell if it was/wasn't NK - but by then the difference will not make a story.
What would you think if NK released a movie about killing a US president?
They've released propaganda films about nuking us. We didn't mobilize the cyber or real armies over the matter; I guess that's the difference between a modern nation-state and one held together with a pygmy's cult of personality....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
(signed)
Betteridge
Kim who? Kim Dotcom?
Probably a good educated guess by the FBI. Probably will never know if North Korean government was actually involved directly. Or who actually carried out attack.
Because history shows this to be true?
Didn't you go there in the 1950's and "blow them off the face of the earth" (aka retreat?)
That pretty much sums up the problem with America. Always wanting to go in and topple governments in other countries and set up their own sock puppets. Seen them do it for oil and now for corporate embarassment. What's next, war over hurt feelings?
Coal?! Definitely not! That would just help them stay warm through the winter. Send dirt instead.
It's not the first time North Korea has denied their attacks. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROKS_Cheonan_sinking
Occam's Razor says that the simplest explanation is that it is perpetrated by North Korea. No one gained anything from preventing The Interview from being released other than NK.
The North Korea connection is entirely a fabrication. An insider sells Sony data or a criminal tries extortion attempt.
ISIS sympathizers or Russian cyber-ops get it, and are trying to use it to involve US in yet another pointless military adventure.
-- because attention to North Korea reduces attention to Ukraine or Middle East.
Perhaps you have noticed a decrease in Ukraine and Middle East coverage in the last week?
I rest my case.
What did you type for autocorrect to insert an extra character?
it"s? it;s? it:s? it#s? it?s? its?
Point is, you have an extra character in there. Autocorrect would not suggest it's for its.
I was suspicious of the U.S. allegations the moment I heard them. The allegations are and always were entirely political with no basis in fact. How come people don't get arrested for trying to incite a war like they do for riots?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I was suspicious of the U.S. allegations that the North Korean government was behind it when the North Koreans denied it was them.
Yes, because the North Koreans are forthright and honest chaps, their statements are always unbiased and true...
If you're going to hack somebody to make a political statement, it makes no sense to later deny that you were involved.
The North Koreans do not operate on the same logical reasoning that most of the rest of the world does. Trying to apply what most of the world defines as "making sense" to what North Korea says and does in not as straight forward as you might think. They have often denied involvement in thing later proven.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
North Korea has never claimed credit for any of the non-computer related provocations they've made, from the violent to the subtle, with the sole exception of those which they're unequivocally responsible for, such as North Korean Artillery firing on a South Korean island. They've denied any number of things that basically the entire rest of the world believes to be their doing.
Consider the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan a few years ago. It was sunk by an explosion not far from North Korean waters. Pretty much the entire rest of the world concluded that it was a North Korean torpedo, but North Korea denies responsibility.
This isn't to say that they did it - just that a denial isn't inconsistent with them having done it, based on past patterns of activity.
But I wouldn't mind sending our forces in to remove the North Korean government and return the land to South Korea...
I would. Fund the pointless, unjust war yourself, if you want it so badly; don't take my money to do it. I don't much care for randomly invading sovereign countries and killing thousands to install puppet governments that our government likes.
And South Korea's government may be better, but it's far from freedom-minded.
> Maybe their reputation isn't as bad as the others
I don't know if you've noticed, but the FBI was a notorious instrument of repression for much of the 20th century. Its activities included infiltration of civil rights groups, planting provocateurs in undesirable organizations to justify their destruction, and so forth. Historically, the CIA has engaged in crimes overseas, while the FBI engages in crimes at home. It's only recently that these roles have become blurred.
How about you fix the issues with your own country first?
As a taxpayer, i would assume you would be more interested in helping your own people rather then fund a war to install a puppet government many thousands of miles away?
Read "War Is a Racket" by Smedley Butler
...and the US was never able to actually prove his involvement. That's why the Afghanistan war happened in the first place.
So I hear it was an inside job, how did NK get a spy infiltrated into Sony so quickly? Does NK really have that many spy assets all over the U.S. that they can whistle up as needed? Or was this an elaborate operation set up when the movie was first announced and they managed to infiltrate a NK citizen into Sony pictures in the time it took the make the movie? How does this all actually go down? FYI, NK is pretty computer illiterate over all compared to most countries and nearly every country on the planet is better positioned than NK to pull this stunt off along with a whole bunch of independent yahoos. Unless there is U.S. born traitor working for NK, seems that the possible suspects could be narrowed down pretty quickly. I am NOT saying NK was framed, but I AM saying there are a lot a people out there to do stuff for reasons I wouldn't and more real data is needed.
Keep tellin yourself that.
I wouldn't mind at all if North Korea were suddenly free and part of South Korea. Almost everyone in North Korea would be far better off. However, doing so by military force is utterly INSANE.
Even if China didn't intervene, the fact that millions of South Koreans live within artillery range of the border with North Korea means that in a shooting war with North Korea we'd probably be looking at tens to hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties just for the South alone, and probably as many or more North Korean civilians just from economic hardships and displacement - and that's leaving out the North's ballistic missles, nukes/etc. So even if the worst case scenario doesn't occur, the minimum expected result is already horrific enough that no sane person would want to pursue it.
As for it being a publicity stunt, I considered that too at first, but Sony is going to get hammered so badly by the stuff that's been released that the lawyers' fees alone will outweigh any http://it.slashdot.org/story/14/12/24/1757224/did-north-korea-really-attack-sony#additional profit they could make off the movie. It would have to be something like a shady coalition of greedy entertainment industry lawyers, or a cabal of deranged Seth Rogen/James Franco fans trying to boost the movie's popularity... but at that point we're going completely off the deep end.
I'm with you in spirit on that, but there's a tiny little problem with actually doing it: China actually likes North Korea for some reason, and would get very, very upset with us for even so much as supporting a South Korean invasion of the North
Would they? Perhaps, yes...
Would they DO anything other than wave their arms around? I'm pretty sure I could make sure they don't...
Taiwan and the disputed seas off Japan are far more important to China than North Korea is... I imagine I could make a deal with them over that. They might still wave their arms around, but even Japan may be willing to give up some of the disputed islands or do a joint oil development deal with China (oil is really what it is about there) in return for North Korea going away.
It just takes a President who is a leader and not a reactor and follower, and we really haven't had one of those since Reagan. (Bush is no better than Obama in this case, so I'm not picking sides there)
(sorry, have to say it) legitimate and sovereign leadership of North Korea.
So was the Nazi government in Germany, but we didn't let that stop us.
History is written by the victor. It sounds cold and heartless, but it is the truth. The current leadership of North Korea is only sovereign and legitimate until someone else comes along and knocks them off.
After all, England used to be the sovereign and legitimate government of America, or at least the 13 colonies. Shall we give that back? ;)
I'm sure Russia would pile on, too, since they're buddies with China.
Don't be silly, Putin needs a way out, I'd give him one...
In return for Ukraine joining NATO and Russia signing a treaty with Ukraine acknowledging its sovereignty, Russia could keep Crimea and we would recognize that. Crimea shouldn't have changed hands the way it did, but it happened and isn't likely to be undone, and it was Russia's just 50 years ago anyway.
---
Everyone has their price, and most people have something else more important to them than any given item, other than of course the most important thing.
The islands off Japan are not as important as removing North Korea, Russia behaving is more important than who controls Crimea, etc.
If you try to lead people along by the nose, saying things like Bush did "you're either with us or against us", they just fall over and fight back. Give them a better option and most people will take it.
Keep dialing in so their 14.4k dialup modem can't dial out.
Creat a worm that blocks incoming/outgoing IP range 210.52.109.0 – 210.52.109.255 to all wordwide nodes.
Why does it make no sense to deny you were involved? North Korea typically does deny things which they actually do ( for example) while taking credit for things they don't or can't do. Their whole game is to live behind an obfuscation of words. If we actually believed them when they said they were prepared to nuke us, they would be smoking crater already. However, if we didn't quietly worry about it, they wouldn't so easily milk concessions out of us (and would probably get invaded). Their ideal outcome would be for anyone planning another Kim Jong Un movie to decide it's not worth the financial risk, while still leaving the U.S. government insufficient proof to retaliate. Don't make the mistake of believing the leaders really are as deluded as their rhetoric. They have real strategic objectives behind it.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
I don't think setting up puppet governments works either, look at Iraq, Iran, and a hundred other countries.
Frankly, Iraq should have just been cut up after 2004 and split between the various nations around it, remove it completely from the list of countries.
Likewise, North Korea... don't setup a new one, just make it merge with South Korea, everyone will be better off.
As to why we should do this? Sometimes the adults in the room have to do what is best for everyone, even if the kids don't like it. North Korea is acting like a child and should be treated like one.
And yes, I do have 3 kids, so the issue of them going to war is real, I would send them if we would do it properly.
There is, however, possibly the world's largest repositories of rare earth metals.
1) No concrete evidence that a Sovereign County hacked into Sony, but POTS says he thinks they did anyways
2) Movie is probably total piece of sh*t anyways, who cares?
3) Even if NK did it, it is not an attack on US but a foreign corp with some US holding, but still a Japanese company, why don't they saber rattle instead of us?
4) The whole thing could have been PR stunt from Sony to advertise the movie
5) Why didn't POTS just tell Sony "get your sh*t together, improve your security - tired of this crap, dayum!"
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Even if China didn't intervene, the fact that millions of South Koreans live within artillery range of the border with North Korea means that in a shooting war with North Korea we'd probably be looking at tens to hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties just for the South alone
A deal would of course have to be done with China to make them ok with this, there are many things in this world more important to China than North Korea, the objective of the President is to find something more important to China than North Korea that can be given to them in return for them being ok with it.
As for the artillery within range of the border, that is indeed an issue. However with China's help that may not even be needed.
It is worth noting that if we had 6-12 months to prepare for this in secret, we could gear up and be ready to take most of it out on the first day, and South Korea could be ready for it as well.
Only a fool would do this with a few weeks planning, such as the way we went into Afghanistan and Iraq. Look at the first Iraq war... we had 6 months of build up and crushed the 4th largest army in the world in weeks.
Who wins wars is often not who has the biggest military, it is who can show up on the battlefield the first with the most and apply it properly. Tactics are fun, but wars are really won via logistics and supply.
and that's leaving out the North's ballistic missles, nukes/etc
I of course don't have access to secret intel on that, but I suspect none of their nukes are actually deliverable. There is a mile of difference between an underground test and putting a warhead on a missile.
the minimum expected result is already horrific enough that no sane person would want to pursue it.
Why not? Would you rather have 50,000 or 100,000 deaths in a week, or a million over 20 years?
It is the same nonsense behind the complaints over nuking Japan in WWII... Yea, that killed hundreds of thousands of people, but so did the firebombing of Tokyo...
Would Japan have surrendered within 6 months anyway? Yes, most likely, but people would have kept dying... it isn't like the other option was to not use them and everyone would sit and wait 6 months... most likely MORE people would have died had we not used them.
Note that I'm not saying use them again North Korea, totally different situation where the people aren't fighting as much as the leadership is. I consider most of the civilians there to be held against their will, so clearly nuking them is not going to happen.
install a puppet government
Why does everything think that we should be setting up puppet governments?
History shows that is generally a bad idea.
We might run things for a few years, the way we did in Japan and Germany after WWII, but then it needs to be turned over to them.
In this case, "them" is South Korea, simply give them North Korea and it simply becomes "Korea".
Likewise, North Korea... don't setup a new one, just make it merge with South Korea, everyone will be better off.
Except the countless thousands that will die as a result of this, the people who have their money taken to fund the useless war, and all the people who will have to rebuild the country and suffer from the rebellions that will inevitably happen. Then people will have to deal with the South Korean government, which is only better, but still far from good.
Sometimes the adults in the room have to do what is best for everyone, even if the kids don't like it.
I don't like the world police mentality, and nor do I care for preemptive warfare. They're a sovereign country and we have no pressing reason to invade unless they physically attack us.
That pretty much sums up the problem with America. Always wanting to go in and topple governments in other countries and set up their own sock puppets.
Someone has to be the adult in the room, if nations want to act like children, then they need a spanking.
And we don't have to setup ANY government, South Korea is easily wealthy enough to be able to absorb North Korea and make a unified nation, they get the land, they get that job.
Of course North Korea didn't attack Sony. Asking "Did North Korea really attack Sony?" is like asking "Does NORAD really track Santa?"
The North Korea story was spin to save Sony from the devastating bad publicity about the depths of their business and technological incompetence. (The politicians who defended them will get repaid for this favor during the next election cycle. My previous comment about this from last week: They may even start using this to try to rescue that disaster of a movie. "You have to see 'The Interview'! To support free speech and America!")
The Dear Leader Of The Free World announcing "don't blame poor Sony, they were helpless victims of the evil North Koreans" totally changed the media story, saving Sony huge $$$ in both public perception and future lawsuits.
But just how America's President and trillion-dollar national security state could get things so wrong - but should always be trusted when saying who's bad and deserves to be killed, like some kind of psycho-Santa delivering death from his sleigh filled with drones - will never be questioned.
Businesses and politicians will never stop lying when it works this well.
Merry Christmas.
I was suspicious of the U.S. allegations that the North Korean government was behind it when the North Koreans denied it was them.
Yes, because the North Koreans are forthright and honest chaps, their statements are always unbiased and true...
That is also true about the US too, and their adamant allegations about another country have always turned out to be true...
Well, NORAD really does track Santa. http://www.noradsanta.org/
You are saying that NK has a lack of powerful computer skills.. do you actually have a factual basis for that? They send many students outside for training and education, and there are reports that they do indeed have a cyber war unit. They used to kidnap Japanese people for information, surely they could get their hands on some Pcs running linux.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/n...
http://www.hawknest.com/
Yeah, I'm with you here. I'm sure it's more likely that this is a PR stunt gone wild and we all fell for it. Even the POTUS fell for it. Before this, I hadn't even heard of the studio, much less the movie.
Let's see...
* Sony was already in panic mode after their security breach. This sure took the new spotlight off of that.
* OK, movie is coming out now... oh, no, no it isn't, it's too dangerous! ("ooh, forbidden fruit! No one wants to SEE a BANNED movie, do you?")
* media goes nuts. POTUS makes a statement. NK kicked off the internets.
* OK, sure, you can watch the movie, but ONLY in SELECT THEATERS NEAR YOU!
* Sounds like NK pretty much held to their party line of "huh? We didn't do it! But whatever it was, I bet you deserved it, you capitalist swine!"
suckers :P
Japan was already trying to surrender when they were nuked. If I remember right what they wanted were guarantees the emperor would live and that they wouldn't be completely destroyed by the peace deal.
SK wouldn't want NK back. NK is a backward country, and while the SK Presidency doesn't know who the NK population would vote for it surely wouldn't be a SK party. So it makes little sense to take them back. It's a completely different situation from Berlin, where the somewhat poor Eastern population wasn't badly educated.
Dunno how to break it to ya mate but Santa is fuckin ya mum.
Are you implying that DPNK will cause "a million [deaths] over 20 years" with the Sony hack? Most of the estimates I've seen are much lower than that. I do believe the animosity most Americans harbor against North Korea is based on PR and not on facts. The largest threat the Un-regime poses is to their own people, for whom I feel nothing but pity.
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
Used to be that East met West in Hong Kong, and the water kept the Western cultural norms from corrupting the peasantry.
Now, South Korea is the island, and North Korea is the water.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Send dirt? What? So they can grow some veggies? Send some old CRTs.
I don't think setting up puppet governments works either, look at Iraq, Iran, and a hundred other countries.
On the other hand, look at South Korea.
I was suspicious of the U.S. allegations that the North Korean government was behind it when the North Koreans denied it was them.
Yes, because the North Koreans are forthright and honest chaps, their statements are always unbiased and true...
Sure, but in fairness, American TLA's aren't well known for their honesty, either. Remember James 'my job is to lie to the American people' Clapper?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Kim had the motive. If it is war he wants it is war he gets. We'll give worse than we get.
I did not realize you had your own army.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
That is also true about the US too
And this has exactly what to do with the possiblity that NK did the Sony hack? Not much if anything.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Given what the D stands for, you are correct to change it to something else at random. N for Nazi seems a fitting alternative for the FPRK.
North Korea has thousands of guns pointed at Seoul, within 5 minutes of a true engagement, they would let loose and while it won't level the city, it would still be a major disaster. http://skeptoid.com/blog/2013/... http://www.popularmechanics.co...
Also, there have been no reviews of the film, either positive or negative. For a movie that looked as bad as the one shown in the previews I saw, this could what saves the box office. I can see no possible advantage for NK to invest the resources into hacking Sony over a second-rate comic movie. Who would get an advantage from the Sony hack? I'll bet a lot of Symantec licenses will be renewed before the end of the year. Sorry, just free-associating here. If I had mod points you'd get an insightful.
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
1. The North Koreans have absolutely nothing to gain from the Sony hack.
2. No one who knows actual facts about this case has any interest in letting the truth be known.
3. We will never, ever know who hacked Sony, or why, until it IS in someone's interest for the truth to be known.
4. That won't happen.
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
I don't buy any of it. Show me the video where Kim Jong Un threatens America. The only "evidence" we have is entirely circumstantial -- from government and media talking heads. And I wouldn't trust a word they say. The U.S. government and the media alike have entirely too much to gain by issuing propaganda and laying the groundwork for a future war. Key reasons America would love to start a war with North Korea:
1. Would complete an unfinished war we settled with armistice in the 1950's. Old warmongers have long memories and a war with North Korea would cement their legacies and would justify America's Korean War.
2. North Korea has tremendous human capital -- meaning a highly-intelligent, highly-literate workforce that the West would love to exploit. The West has every expectation that North Korea's citizens would be just like those of South Korea: westernized, consumers, who have a strong national GDP. Hundreds of bulge-bracket corporations would love to set up shop in North Korea, export goods to North Korea, trade with North Korea, sell their wares in North Korea, and employ a highly-intelligent North Korean labor pool for all sorts of professional services at dramatically lower wage rates -- like the way back office jobs have been exported to Vietnam and to the Philippines.
3. And perhaps the most important reason the U.S. would love to start -- and finish -- a war with North Korea is that America could station more of its troops there as a strategic jumping off point against Cold War foes Russia and China. Don't for a minute think that the U.S. invaded Iraq and Afghanistan by accident. Both nations border either Russia or China. That's also the reason the U.S. has continued military operations in those nations. With the U.S. posting thousands of troops on the border of Russia and China, its effectively like what the Soviet Union tried with parking missiles in Cuba -- playing the game of Risk with real lives on a global scale and trying to park your munitions, your troops, your war vehicles as close to the opponent as possible. It sends a clear message to Russia and China -- the U.S. is in your back yard.
Which is precisely why the U.S. did nothing during the Rwandan civil war. Or why the U.S. did nothing to stop genocide in East Timor that killed 100,000 people. Those nations do not border former Cold War foes. Those nations do not have exploitable human capital resources. There is conscious design into the choices behind our aggression with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea. Don't for a moment think these nations were picked at random.
I question the rhetoric coming out of Washington. We've seen too many historical examples where U.S. secret government has created propaganda to lay the groundwork for future war. We've seen too many examples where U.S. secret government has assisting in the deposing or assassination of leaders of sovereign nations (Iran, Iraq, Vietnam, for example) with the intent of installing leaders who favor American business interests. And we've seen too many examples where U.S. secret government has waged covert war against a nation (Cuba for example).
And we've seen plenty of examples of this sort of propaganda from other nations. For example, the Reichstag fire.
Don't just go for the knee-jerk American patriotic response. Do your own thinking on North Korea. Frankly, I'm still wondering how North Korea bridged a 15-year technology gap in the 1990's, when the CIA concluded that North Korea had no mid-range missile technology despite the conservative heads in America calling for more funding on Star Wars Strategic Defense Initiative, but then suddenly North Korea launched a test of the taepodong 1 missile over Japan.
Again, don't just swallow rhetoric such as, "America never bargains with terrorists." That's hogwash. Do your own research and thinking. You'll note that the U.S. has given arms to dozens of hostile, terrorist groups, and has given millions of dollars to other terrorist organizations, if only to ensure those terrorist organiza
New Economic Perspectives
SK wouldn't want NK back. NK is a backward country, and while the SK Presidency doesn't know who the NK population would vote for it surely wouldn't be a SK party. So it makes little sense to take them back. It's a completely different situation from Berlin, where the somewhat poor Eastern population wasn't badly educated.
Economically it doesn't make sense, but it isn't about economics. When Korea was divided families were split.
South Korea is willing to spend a lot of resources and make a lot of sacrifices to bring North Korea into the modern world.
Old CRTs? They could make an army of radioactive supermen.
Send them our old incandescent light bulbs.
That is also true about the US too
And this has exactly what to do with the possiblity that NK did the Sony hack? Not much if anything.
Well, if a country has a track record of lying about the antics of other countries, one might choose not to believe them now. The US is like the boy who cried "Wolf!".
No, I wouldn't...
But I wouldn't mind sending our forces in to remove the North Korean government... ...A simple 2-3% tax on corporate earnings from the new United Korea until the cost is repaid, including a healthy payment to the family of any US solder who dies.
Nothing too big, so that it isn't painful enough to cause problems, but something to show that they have to do their part in paying for our services.
"The Iraq war will pay for itself." Dick Cheney, is that you?
It still gives me a little shock when I see someone express such breathtaking arrogance and ignorance.
You added a new twist, though, I have to hand it to you for suggesting that we levy a tax after "liberating" North Korea, to *literally* pay blood money to families of soldiers who die.
Most of the United States' problems around the world are exacerbated by the enforcer mentality behind much of our foreign policy, and you want to turn the U.S. into an openly mercenary state.
Bravo, sir, bravo. Tell the orderly to stop stealing your meds.
Here's a wild idea, let the people of North Korea decide their fate. Maybe they wouldn't like the idea of a bunch of westerners coming in and saying you belong with them now. I thought the whole point of a democracy was in being able to decide your own fate. Sorry, I forgot. You're only allowed to chose one that the Americans approve of it seems.
There would also be the North Korean people to consider. Even if we somehow freed North Korea from "Dear Leader" tomorrow, the North Korean people have been fed a steady diet of pro-North Korea propaganda for their entire lives. Following their leader is all they know. If North Korea came to America to "liberate" us from our government and install a North Korea style government, they would meet with resistance. (Our government isn't popular or perfect. But it is orders of magnitude better than NK's.) Even if we magically freed the North Korean people tomorrow, they would likely resist their new-found freedom as much as possible. It might be decades before they were used to freedom.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I prefer DKNY yours sounds like a cheap Asian knock off.
-Alex. http://bit.ly/1iVPtfA
Maybe it's not the orderly. Perhaps God is speaking to the next prophet of neoconservative new world order using the tried and true method of direct deep brain aural injection. Otherwise known as schizophrenia.
That or he thinks war in N. Korea was accurately portrayed in M.A.S.H.
You would deny them warmth, but would give them food instead?
Hard to make life worse for those in NK. They're so bad off if you give them something, it's more than they had before, and if you take something away, it's more than they had before.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
... is how many people don't want it to be North Korea.
Last time we fought NK, South Korea lost half a million people. I can't imagine the casualties this time around. North Korea has the third largest standing army in the world, and they're not spread out all over the world.
SK wants a more normal NK, not a war that could potentially cost them their existence. Some warmongers in the US and Japan certainly want war, but that's because they're not directly in the line of fire. Actually, Japan really just wants face by making war, which may be even more dangerous than the US's reason, which is to siphon even more money out of the population and into the military-industrial complex.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Would you really want to send your son or daughter to die in North Korea because crackers broke into a company's servers?
The cast of "Duck Dynasty" did North Korea's hacking for them? I didn't know this...
Cracker is also a term for a malicious hacker. The media has corrupted the term hacker from its original meaning: someone who is obsessed with the internal details of a system and is able to manipulate it in unconventional ways.
I think of the difference between a cracker and a hacker as similar to the difference between a burglar and a locksmith.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Don't need veggies. I heard the dear leader doesn't poop or pee.
Ssssshhhh! You're gonna make them panic! Or in the immortal words of Kay (ironically a Sony film), "the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT!"
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
How about a compromise - let's let Sony pay for the war. Just give them a one-time legal exception, let them hire whatever mercenaries (excuse me... "private military contractors") they want, then invade. It would cost Sony probably one or two years' profits, but they might be able to get other corporations to buy in under the idea that they'd be the next to be attacked.
That does leave the question of what to do with NK afterwards, but we can deal with that once it becomes an actual issue.
I don't think it would be a perfectly analogous situation to Iraq or Afghanistan though. For one thing, it wouldn't just be having a new government set up by the US, it would be rejoining with the ethnically identical South. There are probably a lot of cultural rifts and some serious economic inequality they'd have to deal with (German Unification Problems on Steroids), but probably what the USA would do is go "Okay South Korea, it's your problem now".
It's an interesting question though, how the population would react. They've been fed a diet of lies all their lives, but judging by what various defectors to the South have said, people have an inkling of what the truth is. After all, they can see that things are so much better even just in China. If I had to guess, you'd have initial euphoria over rejoined families, of the influx of economic aid and the restoration of liberty, followed by lingering resentment on both sides due to the massive difference in productivity and wealth. Southerners would gripe about having to support and rebuild the North, and Northerners would resent the Southerners in turn. It would be generations before the scars would start to fade. Many of the current defectors seem to have a lot of difficulty adjusting to life in the South for all sorts of reasons, even with assistance from the South's government. I think it would something like that, played out on a much larger scale.
China just doesn't want American troops on their border. America got close in Korea but when they failed they tried again in Vietnam but they lost there too. Now finally they just ever so barely have troops on the border via the little 200 miles or so of Afghanistan that borders western China, although America is about to get thrown out of Afghanistan too.
No, but I do believe that the DPNK will cause a million deaths over 20 years to its own people.
And that is a crime against humanity and all humans should feel responsible to do something about it.
It would take longer than 5 minutes for the guns to be properly manned and for the orders to fire to come.
Within an hour we should be able to destroy most of them.
"The Iraq war will pay for itself." Dick Cheney, is that you?
We all know the Iraq war was nonsense, which is why we were well supported going into Afghanistan but not into Iraq.
And as far as your quote, it would have made sense if we had actually taken the oil for ourselves as payment, as so many nations have done in the past. Why we didn't actually is a bit beyond me.
Since everyone assumed that is why we went in, we might as well have done it. As it stands, I don't think we took a single barrel, unless you know otherwise.
Had America been left to decide its own fate, we would still be British citizens. France stepped in and funded our war, a fact that a lot of Americans like to forget when bashing the French. France also sent their navy to help, without which we probably also wouldn't have won.
Very few nations really throw off the current government in power without outside help. It is a romantic idea, but without help, it is very hard to do.
The people of North Korea can try all they like, but they lack the means to actually do it, they need someone to help.
And frankly, we're all human beings, lines on a map are just drawn to divide up stuff, shouldn't we all care that millions have starved to death there?
I don't like the world police mentality, and nor do I care for preemptive warfare. They're a sovereign country and we have no pressing reason to invade unless they physically attack us.
I don't like it either, but it is the right thing to do.
How about Rwanda in the 90s, when the world stood by while hundreds of thousands of people were murdered in genocide?
Was that ok?
And with this, you would lose any hope of support from anyone in the region. The South Korean government would either consider this tribute as too much of a humiliation or would consider it as payment for the war in its entirety and not commit any of its own troops. Japan would be skeptical and would start distancing itself, China would use it to enormous political advantage, as would Russia. Not to mention the problems that this tax would have on integrating the brained washed North Korean masses into Korean society, when they are trained to hate everything un-Korean as imperialism for 60 years, then suddenly are conqured by foreign soldiers and are forced to pay 2% of their earnings to a foreign power, learning that Kim Il Sung was right all along.
Basically you would be turning this from something achieved with a few air strikes, lend lease and South korean blood to another Vietnam war, for two percent of the income of a war torn and divided nation.
People like you having the vote is why the framers of the U.S. constitution did not envision a standing army or entering permanent alliances.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Cool, we get to choose what government programs that we fund? Fine, don't take my money to fund the bloated, unnecessary, government mandated healthcare program that was rammed down everyones throat. The one that the politicians determined that we had to have that cost me and my family $4000 last year. I just love the fact the govt believes they should take my money and make it so that I can barely afford healthcare and can't afford college for my kids and so that they can provide both of those things to people who can't for free.
China actually likes North Korea for some reason,
That reason is, the NK regime is keeping its bizarrely oppressed people from flooding into China as refugees. As long as Kim Jong XX is in power that's 24 million people China doesn't have to deal with.
Side note: NK's government is as legitimate as a dictatorship can be after being installed when the west and soviets divided up the spoils of WWII. That is, not legitimate at all.
Interesting point of view...
All I can say is that I simply disagree with you, but we won't convince each other of anything here, so fair enough...
North Korea is not like Iraq. They have a huge and dangerous army. In the event of war, millions of people would die within thirty minutes. The US would win, but it wouldn't be called victory.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The US is so used to fighting ragtag militias of barely trained islamic fundies that they've forgotten what a real war is like. Everyone acts like North Korea is as backwards at the Taliban, but it's not the case. If the US tries to fight North Korea it's not going to end well.
Japan was already trying to surrender when they were nuked. If I remember right what they wanted were guarantees the emperor would live and that they wouldn't be completely destroyed by the peace deal.
SK wouldn't want NK back. NK is a backward country, and while the SK Presidency doesn't know who the NK population would vote for it surely wouldn't be a SK party. So it makes little sense to take them back. It's a completely different situation from Berlin, where the somewhat poor Eastern population wasn't badly educated.
No, Japan was not trying to surrender by any definition of the word "surrender".
Japan did send make an attempt at "peace", but their demands were to keep the Emperor in place, and oh, by the way, keep all of their conquered lands such as China. That's not a surrender.
An argument which neatly sums everything.
Except:
if it was North Korea, and they were trying to stop the movie, one has to wonder why they released it as a torrent if they were trying to stop it from being released.
The US is making the allegations, Of course it is relevant.
Given what the D stands for, you are correct to change it to something else at random. N for Nazi seems a fitting alternative for the FPRK.
Usually any country with a form of government (Democratic, Republic, Socialist, etc.) in the name is not that form of government.Doubly so when it is 'Democratic'.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
FWIW, I believe that North Korea made some threats about sabotaging South Korea's Nuclear piles. That, to me, is a more credible reason for taking down their internet....if that's what happened. (That their internet went down is apparently true. That it was taken down externally I have heard no acceptable proof of.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
George, is that you ? Did dick inflame you again?
You're wrong. iOS autocorrect changes its to it's all the time.
I am sure china knows how to deal with your versailles fancies.
History is written by the victor. It sounds cold and heartless, but it is the truth. The current leadership of North Korea is only sovereign and legitimate until someone else comes along and knocks them off.
After all, England used to be the sovereign and legitimate government of America, or at least the 13 colonies. Shall we give that back? ;)
No, but I think Hawaii and Guantanamo Bay deserve consideration.
Any country with the word "United" in the name of not quite united either: United States, United Kingdom, UAE, etc.
Perhaps it was someone trying to save us all from crappy movies!
FWIW, I believe that North Korea made some threats about sabotaging South Korea's Nuclear piles. That, to me, is a more credible reason for taking down their internet...
How can North Korea threaten to sabotage something that South Korea doesn't admit to? They're not a member of the Nuclear Club, last I checked.
If South Korea has a secret nuclear weapons program, that's something the world needs to know about and take actions against, just like with North Korea.
You are an idiot.
And frankly, we're all human beings, lines on a map are just drawn to divide up stuff, shouldn't we all care that millions have starved to death there?
A lot of us do, but when both NK and China have nukes, it's a tricky proposition to effect change. Would China happily leave NK out to dry, or would they send their tanks in? If their backs were up against a wall, would NK retaliate by sending over a nuke in a shipping container to one of our port cities? Also, with a recent look at our history, freeing up the Iraqi people hasn't gone all that swimmingly, what with the Islamic State forming their own little territory and chopping off every westerner's head they can.
It's great to say "we need to help them", but what you're saying is "we're going to send a lot of young American men and women into harms way, and many of them will end up dead or maimed. It's something that needs to be weighed very, very carefully. Despite our military and economic power, we can't simply march in and right all the wrongs in the world. I wish we could... I really do. But the world isn't that straightforward.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
https://www.torrenting.com/det...
That's just stupid. There have been plenty more serious threats made with absolutely no retaliation from the US. Now suddenly you think they'll act on this? You're an idiot.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Old CRTs? They could make an army of radioactive supermen.
Send them our old incandescent light bulbs.
No, that will also just help them stay warm like the coal.
Fully agreed the comments posted on the original post. usgov December 24, 2014 6:56 AM Just think of who wins from this whole scenario? It's simply the US and all of its funded 3-letter organisations. So the most plausible explanation is (just like 11th september) this is from the US itself to test and fund more cyberweapons.
http://askaralikhan.blogspot.com/
Did he stop fucking you, in the ass?
It sounds like you're confusing "being the adult in the room" is not the same as "being the bully in the room".
You are an idiot.
No, he isn't.
His was a damn good post, yours was a simple ad-hom with no indication of what you disagree about with his comment. If this is how you play 'Slashdot' then I'm afraid you LOSE.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
let them hire whatever mercenaries (excuse me... "private military contractors") they want, then invade. It would cost Sony probably one or two years' profits
Uh.. that sounds like you're suggesting Sony makes a trillion dollars or so profit every year.
Or am I missing something obvious?
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
As far as I'm concerned, it's just marketing bullshit trying to put a good face on Sony's latest breach. If it were their first, I might think differently, but it's pretty clear Sony's "security" is a freakin' joke. Add in a movie that would have probably bombed without all the exposure, and you have all the excuses you need to paint a "North Korea" connection.
It doesn't hurt that the US has a hate-on for North Korea so they can try to score some political points off the story, too.
Shame on Obama for selling out to Sony so blatantly.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Since everyone assumed that is why we went in, we might as well have done it. As it stands, I don't think we took a single barrel, unless you know otherwise.
Wasn't it more about showing the Middle-East what the global bully will do to an oil-exporting nation if it should dare to step off the US petrodollar roundabout?
Physically stealing the oil wouldn't have been nearly so profitable as simply enforcing the status quo.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Or what used to be West Germany. (Hint: It's now Germany.)
FWIW, I believe that North Korea made some threats about sabotaging South Korea's Nuclear piles. That, to me, is a more credible reason for taking down their internet...
How can North Korea threaten to sabotage something that South Korea doesn't admit to?
"Nuclear piles" is a synonym for "nuclear reactors" and South Korea definitely have some of these.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Ah, the approach that worked so well in 1938. "I bring you peace in our time"
A simple 2-3% tax on corporate earnings from the new United Korea until the cost is repaid
I have a similar idea. How about I buy a plane ticket to fly over and hit some sense into your silly head, and once you gain more sense, then you can dock 2% of your income to repay me the plane ticket. Sounds fair?
So --- Kind of like slashdot stories and comments.
And if it has "People's" there's an implied "A small number of " before it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Let's face it, who gets blamed by the US government for **anything** is always more to do with who it's politically desirable to blame rather than who the evidence actually points at. Uncle Sam is only interested in promoting hatred against whoever he next intends to bomb, not the truth.
You're utterly insane.
How about an alternate proposal. If the US triggers another war (this time in Korea), then for every South Korean life lost, a random American (not just a soldier) is also killed (remember that South Korea has a much smaller population than the US). And no, we are not going to pay you blood money to fund your military-industrial complex.
The people of South Korea doesn't want to start a war with North Korea and have zero interest in paying you to trigger one that'll cost million of lives, almost none of them American. You, safe and sound on the other side of the world is willing to trigger a war that'd make Afghanistan look like a picnic even if Russia, China, South Korea, Japan and US ganged up on North Korea. And you also want to profit from it.
In this case, "them" is South Korea, simply give them North Korea and it simply becomes "Korea".
Everyone seems to assume that South Koreans would be happy to pay the enormous economic and social costs of
absorbing 25 million people, most of which lacks any skills required by the modern, capitalist job market. Germans are paying the costs of reunification to this day, even though the difference in development and people's education between Eeast and West were incomparably smaller than in the case of NK and SK.
Because as the sole trader with N.K. they can, and do, seriously gouge them on the price of oil and most likely everything else.
That's why they put up with such xenophobic nutcases who even hate Chinese. The mother of a friend of mine had to flee the place when she married a man from China because of a large number of death threats from her neighbours. It's probably just as well because she made it out before the place devolved into starvation central in the late 60's.
I don't think it started that way but it's being milked as one - also the N.K. angle came in as a late afterthought to what looked like a ransom situation.
Who said anything about weapons, you moron?
Been there, done that in less than four years when there was no USSR to bail them out.
The place used to export food to China and now it's a basket case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine
I know someone who lived on the Chinese side of the border. They saw a lot of refugees despite the large number of N.K. troops across the river acting like prison guards trying to keep people in.
On that topic, that's what China did but the family of puppets went insane. How do we know that our puppets will be any better than their puppets? There is no viable opposition in N.K. so anyone we install will be either somebody associated with the current regime or a complete nobody.
Now the media is calling them cyberhackers.
That would be some seriously obsessed robot if it made any sense.
Did he fall for it or is he getting political advantage out of it? Or of course, there could be the sheer fluke of both.
They may be grade A assholes but they are ones with an abacus. I doubt they had the patience to do such a thing let alone the expertise or the will. The story as told is a convenient way for both the criminals and Sony to deflect blame and a handy situation for the FBI to point to and scream "Cyberterrorism - give us more money to fight it!"
Everybody wins apart from N.K. and whoever in S.K. lives where some shells might land if N.K. wants to use artillery again to express their displeasure.
Cool, we get to choose what government programs that we fund? Fine, don't take my money to fund the bloated, unnecessary, government mandated healthcare program that was rammed down everyones throat.
Why do you seem to be assuming I'm someone who supports that sort of thing? What if I'm someone who desires limited government? And the implication with your statement also seems to be that people who don't desire such government mandated healthcare programs are warmongers who would desire a war. I don't think that's the case at all.
I don't like it either, but it is the right thing to do.
No, it isn't, and I've explained why. Fuck off with your world police nonsense.
How about Rwanda in the 90s, when the world stood by while hundreds of thousands of people were murdered in genocide?
Was that ok?
As opposed to playing world police and stopping it? Both are wrong, and I would rather do nothing.
Considering the number of companies available for outsourcing sooner or later it will probably happen, of not already. It would help explain the mish-mash of tools used in the job. Never trust a mercenary.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I don't know if you're getting your info from The Instutitute for Historical Review or Fox News, or somewhere like that, but we have the actual intercepts of communications in which Togo explicitly says to ambassador Sato that Japan is willing to surrender territories gained: Japan "has absolutely no idea of annexing or holding territories she occupied during the war." The War Department had these intercepts summarized/interpreted and ready for dissemination on 12 July 1945. This information was used and discussed in the run-up to dropping the bomb. We also have these discussions where the people deciding to drop the bomb or not considered the one request, to allow the emperor to live and remain considered "divine"; and we have the records of that committee rejecting this possibility. Further we have the Stimson memo that suggests that nukes be used to indicate to Stalin that he needs to slow down in Europe. Of course he knew we had the nuke, because his spies already had him building his own copy. Anyway, we've got all this info, and yet people still come back with, well, lies circulated by people who don't want to accept nuclear realpolitik. Here's the Togo-Sato intercepts: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/.... I think you can get the rest of it here: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/....
If you ask me it's russia ;) ... well I'm almost half-serious. If I'm trying to hurt the U.S... but I can't confront them directly anymore... I would do what the cia did for decades versus russia... I would go around finding anyone or any situation that would throw U.S. strength against other enemies. Such as... isis... and now north korea. Russia has the hackers to do the sony job.
On the other hand... .Isis draws in a certain type of person... war hungry? I dunno... I've seen at least one guy watch isis getting killed daily.. videos... every day.. for months. ugh. so that could be us trying to bring back some war.
"Taiwan and the disputed seas off Japan are far more important to China than North Korea is... I imagine I could make a deal with them over that. They might still wave their arms around, but even Japan may be willing to give up some of the disputed islands or do a joint oil development deal with China (oil is really what it is about there) in return for North Korea going away."
This is simply wrong. China will not want US troops right near China's border. Unless you fix the US troop problem, N. Korea is never going away.
That is a big problem. People simply don't understand Russia and Putin.
The Cold War might be over but the encirclement of Russia with NATO military bases that keeps creeping closeer and closer to the border of Russia continues. That also doesn't look friendly to Russians.
There is no way, Russians would allow NATO in Ukraine. Crimea is a nice political bonus for Putin but the whole thing is really about the NATO in Ukraine and essentially who is in control of the Russia's export ( the flow of oil and gas to Europe). BTW, did you notice how oil and gas prices dropped when sanctions against Russia started. Do you still believe in free market fantasies ?
In other words The US war industry hast been Behind this. Curveball again.
Topol m disagrees.
One theory is that Sony is doing a real life twist on that movie's plot. They make a movie they realize is going to be a big money loser, so to rescue it -- they fabricate a scenario where its offensive nature causes a situation where it causes a security risk for everyone. Film has to be pulled from the theaters to protect the people, and they get paid by insurance for the resulting losses from the "hack attempt".
I would rather do nothing.
Fair enough... perhaps no one will do anything when you're the subject of such treatment...
A lot of us do, but when both NK and China have nukes, it's a tricky proposition to effect change.
China of course has them, and they are deliverable... NK might have a few, but are they actually usable? There is a mile of difference between a bad underground test and a deliverable weapon.
Would China happily leave NK out to dry, or would they send their tanks in? If their backs were up against a wall, would NK retaliate by sending over a nuke in a shipping container to one of our port cities?
China isn't the same nation as they were during the Korean war, they have as much to lose with a war with the US as we do, they own too many US dollars to actually want war with us.
As for NK, the whole thing would be over very quickly, their government wouldn't be around long enough to do what you suggest.
Also, with a recent look at our history, freeing up the Iraqi people hasn't gone all that swimmingly, what with the Islamic State forming their own little territory and chopping off every westerner's head they can.
That is because Iraq shouldn't even exist, read up on its history and how it was formed by the British and why that was such a mistake. The people who live there don't want to be 1 country, it should have been cut up into three countries.
You must be joking...
Huge and dangerous? Really?
Millions would die within 30 minutes? Really?
Go back to your internet, you don't know what you're talking about.
They likely wouldn't, and shouldn't when it comes to world police nonsense.
Reminds me of the ole sound card company that went out of business after making cheap MP3 players... "Creative".
"But if you have to tell us you're creative......"
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
He is an idiot, because he's a warmonger. Unless North Korea actually attacks us (like Japan did), such comparisons are utterly nonsensical.
It's an interesting question though, how the population would react.
They'd probably react in the way most invaded people do. Really, one would've thought this kind of nonsense would've been put to bed after our most recent "wars of liberation." How quickly they forget!
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
It's repressive, just not as much as North Korea. A grand majority of puppet governments fail, and it's foolish to look at the tiny minority that do not.
We all know the Iraq war was nonsense, which is why we were well supported going into Afghanistan but not into Iraq.
Both Afghanistan and Iraq were nonsense.
Were any emails from the GoP hacking group received while N. Korean Internet went dark? It seems to me that might be a piece of evidence, as well.
Kythe
you don't know what you're talking about.
Actually, I do. Unlike you I know how to do research.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I work in Information security. NK had nothing to do with it. The blame got pointed that way so the NSA/CIA could play with their new toys. Note the Internet died in NK right after this. When you have a new wepon you have to try it out on a real target to fully test it. They picked NK because they are a small counrty that has real no defense against us.
More lunatic alarmist nonsense like got us into Iraq and every other endless war in the Middle East and Asia.
The million deaths is a ridiculous scare-mongery figure you pulled out of your ass; even if North Korea had the same death rate as the United States, you would expect 4 million deaths over 20 years just naturally anyway (population 24 million * 800 deaths per 100,000 people * 20 years ~ 4 million).
Washington in the Farewell Address: "As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils!... Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?" ... to say nothing of wars in fucking Asia, which he would never have even dreamed we'd be stupid enough to get involved with.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Ahhhhhhh, not *their* sons and daughters, I assure you.
This I can agree with. The fact that North Korea gets the blame is a political process that has little to do with truth but a lot to do with people thinking it's in their interest to go along with it. It doesn't mean people have some secret knowledge about what happened. For some it's an external scapegoat for others it's useful to pin it on the enemy, for some it's just automatic.
When something is pinned on the bad guy(Saddam, Assad,Qadaffi, Iran,Putin) there is very little motivation to challenge that. I know many cases where it's almost certainly wrong but it still has a huge impact on history. And often it assumes suicidal and evil attitudes from the bad guy rather than self interest. In other words people's brains switch to cartoon level.
You missed which part was the stunt.
Sony got hacked and very embarrassing emails for leaked.
Sony's spin doctors went in to overdrive.. And devised that threats against a movie that was looking like a loser anyway could help..
And it has.. No one is talking about the emails any more.. The us govt is rushing to support Sony as are the us sheeple.
So basically a successful move by Sony.
Who cares of it causes an international incident... A few execs can get a little more bonus next year!
My beat guess is that usa wants a new ivation target. Ebola is no longer a problem since us forces are present. What to do next... russia is to big a bite to take alone in one sitting.
No t means the people are slaves - to the republic..
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
If he's a 'warmonger' then you must be an appeaser. Poor Assad, poor NK, poor Putin, poor old Pol Pot.. the evil old west.. If this were WWII you would arguing for surrender to Hitler, or Stalin. I bet a lot more people have died in NK, and will die due to their government than would die in a war. NK is a top heavy dictatorship and its people would celebrate if they were freed.
BTW China don't actually like NK but they are afraid of a revolution there triggering a collapse or revolution in China itself..
BTW Russia are not actually quite friends with China either more like rivals and potential enemies, they have a huge border between them and Russia has always been afraid of invasion by China.. More like 'frenemies'..
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
United States of Mexico?
We call ourselves the US, but we're not even the only United States on our continent...
Or this "threat" could just be a false flag attack from Sony, and just another way to build hype for a movie release. It gained a lot of attention and curiosity from people who would not otherwise be interested, mainly because of said terrorist threats. Nothing gets people interested in watching something like saying "you aren't allowed to watch this."
Having lived in China for 5 years, I don't think they actually like North Korea that much. There is a sense that they are like family given past alliance and similarities, cult of personality, etc. But while china now advances and moves forward, NK is like their little embarrassing little brother that dropped out of high school and they reluctantly have to try to keep them out of trouble.
The feel of China is that the top leadership are hell bent on making themselves the dominant world power of the 21st century. outsourcing, currency manipulation, and American debt are all parts of this plan. China would get pissed at an invasion of NK, not because they like them, but because it would be an invasion of "their" territory and sphere of influence.
I don't know if you're getting your info from The Instutitute for Historical Review or Fox News, or somewhere like that, but we have the actual intercepts of communications in which Togo explicitly says to ambassador Sato that Japan is willing to surrender territories gained: Japan "has absolutely no idea of annexing or holding territories she occupied during the war." The War Department had these intercepts summarized/interpreted and ready for dissemination on 12 July 1945. This information was used and discussed in the run-up to dropping the bomb. We also have these discussions where the people deciding to drop the bomb or not considered the one request, to allow the emperor to live and remain considered "divine"; and we have the records of that committee rejecting this possibility. Further we have the Stimson memo that suggests that nukes be used to indicate to Stalin that he needs to slow down in Europe. Of course he knew we had the nuke, because his spies already had him building his own copy. Anyway, we've got all this info, and yet people still come back with, well, lies circulated by people who don't want to accept nuclear realpolitik. Here's the Togo-Sato intercepts: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/.... I think you can get the rest of it here: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/....
Regarding: Japan "has absolutely no idea of annexing or holding territories she occupied during the war."
I've never seen any indication that those words were actually made by Japan to Russia (or to anyone).
You should have noted from the links you gave that regarding asking Russia to negotiate a peace, "Hirota made no suggestion to that effect".
Look at the context of the intercept; it's just part of an communication from Tojo to a diplomat regarding what to say when making an attempt to keep Russia out of the US-Japan part of WWII, it's not actually an offer to Russia, nor is it an actual statement of Japan's desired outcome post-war. Read the whole thing again. In the other link you gave, "Another intercept of a cable from Togo to Sato shows that the Foreign Minister rejected unconditional surrender and that the emperor was not “asking the Russian’s mediation in anything like unconditional surrender.”
Keep in mind that the Allies had long made it clear that Japan could surrender at anytime.
Japan had that option. If they wanted peace, they could surrender. It's that simple.
The Japanese response to our peace offer, the Postdam Declaration, was for Prime Minister Suzuki tell the Japanese press the government's commitment to ignore the Allies' demands and fight on.
I do admit that I exaggerated - I do not know if Japan intended to keep all of China, but they did make it plain they intended to keep Korea, Taiwan and some other pieces for "economic necessities", and those lands that Japan considered to already should have been part of Japan.
Anyway, what I'm talking about the contacts and discussions made by representatives of Japan's Navy and apparently some of Japan's banks made in Switzerland through the BIS and Allen Dulles OSS etc.
These were independent feelers not officially sanctioned by Japan's government and therefore had no actual weight, but they did show that not all of Japan was in "fight-to-the-death" camp. However, the position taken by those persons making the feelers was opposite to the position taken by those in control in Japan and they were afraid of being called up for treason, which technically they were.
As far as I can tell the European feelers were disconnected from the Imperial government when Togo Shigenori became foreign minister after Hideki Tojo was sacked.
non-imperial government European feelers:
https://www.cia.gov/library/ce...
The Korean government hacks a Japanese company and the U.S. are taking action over it. Say what? All this over a "movie" that hadn't even been released so Korea (or anyone) really knew the actual content. It's nuts to think a government would go to such lengths over something that wasn't released that could have been totally non-offensive. I could understand if some was pissed off AFTER it had been released, but not before. It's just too extreme for so many unknowns.
Cool, thanks for that. I knew they existed but had never actually had the chance to read them. Interesting that they wanted to use the Soviets as a go-between.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
If North Korea came to America to "liberate" us from our government
Amusingly enough that's the plot to the recent remake of 'Red Dawn'. You really must watch it if you like bad movies, it makes Ron Jeremy's vampire movie look like high art in comparison.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
The US would win.
Just like it did the last Korean War
I knew the Iraq war was nonsense when I was listening to Colin Powell lie to the world at the U.N. Don't know whether you realized it at the time or not.
You seem to have (willfully?) missed my point. The nonsense you're spewing about North Korea is more neo-con fantasy, similar to that the Bush administration did for Iraq. Except yours is even farther out in space. Unless I'm missing a troll, you're fruity as a nut cake.
Once again, you can say that from the safety of your current location.
They should let Sony fill the void.
I can see the border sign on the dirt roads, "Welcome to the Democratic Republic Mainland of Sony, the DRM of S."
My arguments stand on their own merit. What I would or would not believe if I were in a different situation than I am now is 100% irrelevant to the validity of my arguments. It surprises me how many Slashdotters--which I would think would at least be able to understand basic logic--use the "You'd think differently if you were in a different situation!" argument as if it's relevant to anything.
Have you never heard of bias? Why are only the people who are directly affected by something correct? That makes no logical sense. Lots of people would do or say *anything* if they felt it benefited them. A family of a murder victim wants to be judge, jury, and executioner for the accused? A robber thinks that laws against robbery are bad? Better listen to them, then, because you might feel the same as them if you were in their situation!
No, such arguments are irrelevant, illogical, and demonstrate that your critical thinking skills are lacking.
If he's a 'warmonger' then you must be an appeaser.
No, he's a warmongering world police fool. Read his posts. Not all viewpoints are equally valid, and his just leads to war, war, and more war, all in the name of some ignorant notion of 'justice' that has shown to increase suffering for everyone involved.
If this were WWII you would arguing for surrender to Hitler, or Stalin
We were attacked by a clearly identifiable country in WWII, so it's not even close to a valid comparison. Nice try.
I bet a lot more people have died in NK, and will die due to their government than would die in a war.
Sad, but they haven't attacked us. Preemptive warfare makes you a warmonger.
You know, now that I think about it, warmongers might want to move to North Korea; they'd fit right in.