With some hope, I wonder if they came to the same conclusion I have, It's too expensive to have weapons that are basically useless. MAD is so last century.
Bombing/killing thousands or more with one drop is not 'precision military targeting' and is not acceptable to the world at large anymore. ( if it ever was )
That's not even remotely close to why they're doing this. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate blackmail tool on the world stage. No one seriously expects North Korea to nuke anyone because everyone knows that within a couple of days, the country would cease to exist from retaliation by the US. It's just political BS. "Give us more food for our (literally) starving population or we're going to make weapons". The world would rather give them food and money than have them make weapons, even if everyone is fairly sure they wouldn't use them. Why risk it? Of course, we also worry that they could sell them to countries who don't feel nuclear weapons are useless (which they absolutely are not).
Their country is so screwed up that this is probably the only way they can feed their population.
I would feel remiss to not point out the U.S. is as dependent as North Korea on international trade to feed our populace as well. The sanctions imposed on North Korea have severely limited its trade to a few rogue nations circumventing it. If similar sanctions were imposed on the U.S., I expect there would be similar economic devastation ... the fuel shortages of the 1970s caused by OPEC to punish the U.S. would pale by comparison.
I know you did not explicitly state that N.K. leadership is competent because they can't take care of their people without help from the outside world compared to U.S. leadership, but I felt your statement implied this and hope you concur there is not, necessarily, an absolute objective truth to that assessment.
With some hope, I wonder if they came to the same conclusion I have, It's too expensive to have weapons that are basically useless. MAD is so last century.
Bombing/killing thousands or more with one drop is not 'precision military targeting' and is not acceptable to the world at large anymore. ( if it ever was )
I just started thinking about this as I left the thread to do some other things. What exactly is the problem with the food supply in NK? Has the land become incapable of supporting the populace? Has their isolationist tendencies prevented them from acquiring the technology capable of producing the food necessary from the land they have to support the country? Is the government intentionally putting policies in place that prevent their agriculture from doing its job?
As you stated, the US has/had a similar problem and there certainly were multiple reasons for this, many of them not caused by the government. I wonder what's the case with NK.
But you are tolerant?intolerance to communism,
But you are tolerant?
But you are tolerant?
Why wouldn't someone be tolerant of it? If mexico decided to become communist and the people there supported it, why would we try and stop them? To me there is no reason why a capitalist society and a communist one can't get along. As long as one is not trying to impress their views upon the other.
I meant tolerant of communism.I view myself as, generally more tolerant than most to most things, but intolerant toward intolerance and not blindly loyal or patriotic to elements of popular culture.
That is to misunderstand communism. The 'people' do not have the option to support or oppose a communist government. Furthermore Marxist/Leninist communism is not content to stay within its borders. By admission it seeks dominion over competing ideologies.Why wouldn't someone be tolerant of it? If mexico decided to become communist and the people there supported it, why would we try and stop them? To me there is no reason why a capitalist society and a communist one can't get along. As long as one is not trying to impress their views upon the other.
That is to misunderstand communism. The 'people' do not have the option to support or oppose a communist government. Furthermore Marxist/Leninist communism is not content to stay within its borders. By admission it seeks dominion over competing ideologies.
That is to misunderstand communism. The 'people' do not have the option to support or oppose a communist government. Furthermore Marxist/Leninist communism is not content to stay within its borders. By admission it seeks dominion over competing ideologies.
I meant tolerant of communism.
We probably shouldn't be using the terms communism, capitalism, or democracy to refer to what exists today, or has ever existed in the past. So, if we can get past the nonreferring, but ideologically compelling, terminology, one question wrt the thread title seems to be whether or not anybody can trust anything the government of North Korea says. And wrt that my opinion is ... no.
Doesn't sound like you know much of the history of the time. McCarthy was one small part, though he features heavily in the story of time. There were literally hundreds of Soviet agents in the US at one point, many of them US citizens, dozens of them holding high ranking positions in the US government....I am, most definitely, intolerant to witchhunts of the sort committed by the United States government against supposed "communist sympathizers" in the mid-twentieth century spearheaded by McCarthy.
By elected officials? No. Perhaps you mean the current VP of the US and RepLast decade, there were similar rattlings against anyone with pacifistic, pro-environmental or other 'evil liberal' leanings as being terrorists.
N. Korea, the current topic, is ML communism. You're misinformed. Spend some time on the Manifesto.
I challenge you to produce a single example of a true communist society. What western capitalists fought is the militaristic expansion of the Marxist ideology wielded as a tool by totalitarian governments to control their own people and attempt by force to control others. While most western governments are imperfect and constantly struggling to meet the needs of their people while also trying to be "fair", attempting to reach utopian society using violence and oppression could never result in true communism.
Even the most purely intentioned revolutions succumbed to totalitarian rule by dictators. In a true communist society their would be no elite rule over the people and fair distribution of resources to all regardless of education and popular status. That will never ever happen in the real world.
but it won't change the fact that communism has always ended in failure.
China?
>china
>communist
come on. At best they are *nominally* a communist nation. Even then, I would only call them successful at a international level. The people in China are living horrible horrible lives. Compare situations in China to those of workers in the USA before the Great Depression.
I do not consider China to be successful.
I can concede that pure capitalism is just as much and pipe dream as pure communism.