Slashdot Mirror
North Korea Conducts Fifth Nuclear Test -- The Largest One Yet (cnn.com)
TMB writes: As reported by CNN, North Korea has conducted its 5th nuclear test, the largest yet at 10 kilotons.
Before the test was reported, Slashdot reader hcs_$reboot reported: A magnitude 5.3 earthquake has been detected in North Korea, amid reports the country had been preparing for its fifth nuclear test. South Korea's Yonhap news agency said it had been an "artificial quake." The U.S. Geological Survey said the tremor had been detected in the north-east of North Korea, close to a known nuclear test site. The earthquake occurred close to the surface, the USGS said. The shallow depth and precise timing of the quake suggests it was man-made. North Korea says it has tested a nuclear warhead and that the test showed the warhead "has been standardized to be able to be mounted on strategic ballistic rockets."
Its a bit more complicated than that - the partition of Korea only happened in 1948, two years before the Korean War started, and *both* sides were making aggressive noises and movements toward the other, it was simply the North that first moved en mass south of the border to reunite the country. The South at that point was still building its military in preparation for its own invasion of the North, as well as disenfranchising a huge number of its own citizens who were communist or didn't support the US-and-UN imposed elections.
By the start of the Korean War in 1950, the South had imprisoned 30,000 communists, and had interred 300,000 more in "reeducation camps". They had also killed more than 60,000 of their own citizens in various quellings of uprisings by disowned groups. The North were doing their own similar thing, sure, but I concentrate on the South here because they are always the side which gets white washed when it comes to the Korean War. After all, you hardly ever hear that, in the early days of the war, the southern president, Syngmam Rhee, ordered the executions of between 100,000 and 200,000 of his political opponents in the Bodo League massacre.
The North today may be run by nut jobs, but do not mistake the cause of the Korean War as solely the Norths fault, nor on the same level as todays North Korea...
Its a bit more complicated than that - the partition of Korea only happened in 1948, two years before the Korean War started, and *both* sides were making aggressive noises and movements toward the other, it was simply the North that first moved en mass south of the border to reunite the country. The South at that point was still building its military in preparation for its own invasion of the North ...
And it is not as simple as you suggest. While both sides claimed to be the legitimate government of all of Korea and desired reunification, only one side had the actual capability to force reunification. The North, far better armed than the South due to Chinese and Soviet support, had the capability to completely overwhelm the South. The South had no such capability.
By the start of the Korean War in 1950, the South had imprisoned 30,000 communists, and had interred 300,000 more in "reeducation camps". They had also killed more than 60,000 of their own citizens in various quellings of uprisings by disowned groups. The North were doing their own similar thing, sure, but I concentrate on the South here because they are always the side which gets white washed when it comes to the Korean War ...
Failing to indicate that the North engaged in such practices on a far larger and even more brutal scale is a whitewashing of the North.
It is in the Quran, but it is not clear how to interpret it. 72 may be the actual number, or just 'a very large number'. Furthermore it is not clear if you get virgins or 'grapes'. Obviously you will not get 72 grapes, but this likely means that you will get 'infinite food'. This is actually likely, as in the times it was written hunger was an even bigger problem compared to today.
The Saudi's already have nuclear weapons - who do you think paid for the Pakistani program ? It just happens that they are stored in Pakistan arsenals. If things went tits-up and the Saudi's [specifically the Royal Family and Government] found themselves on the wrong end of a Nuclear-armed Iran those weapons would quickly be moved to Saudi territory. Note the Saudi's bete-noire isn't, and never has been, Israel. [The Saudi Government considers Israel a convenient whipping boy but that's just to keep the punters in the Mosque and Souk happy. In reality they know that tangling with Israel would be a very, very bad idea and anyway they both have the same enemies]. The threat comes from Shia-dominated Iran whose population and ruling Theocracy are very, very unhappy with the way the Saudi's treat their own Shia minority in the East. Iran is not, and never has been an Arab country.
He's right. Early Arabic is a wonderfully ambiguous language; something that is a valuable asset to any religious text.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Mainly because it ignores that the only reason North Korea exists is that a local, unpopular Communist sympathizer named Kim Il-Sung was set up as a puppet ruler in the North in the wake of Stalin's invasion of Northern China. Stalin had negotiated a withdrawal from Manchuria with Chiang prior to the August 1945 invasion. No such agreement applied to Korea, and Stalin chose to keep it as a buffer state under a compliant puppet ruler.
Self-determination for Koreans was non-existent in the North. Complain and die.
You sound like a Communist yourself.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
You're right, people in that part of the world are all so unforgivably stupid for thinking that people in some other part of the world are all so unforgivably stupid. It's certainly not you who is unforgivably stupid.