@FBM,
First, to tell the truth about the US history is not writing against the US. You can pull books of history, from elementary to university level, and what I said is what is found in those books. The only thing needed to obtain the same conclusion as mine is a calculator.
Second, do you think that distributing a dumb movie into North Korea will help to stop public executions, starvation, and death/work camps? Are you serious?
@carloslebaron,
Why do I have this feeling that you're not even reading what I post?
Dish Network is playing the movie on pay-per-view.
@FBM,
I think some people just have a hard time reading and understand posters who have nuances. Much easier to understand someone who is either/or.
I hardly know about this subject as I have not kept up. However, today I did get up and read the news for the first time in a while. (Been feeling really bad lately, advise for anyone, be careful of certain types of medicine, if it don't get you while you are taking it, it will get you when you are getting off...) Anyway, read an article concerning this subject. Kind of leery of about posting it as it gives some ammunition, but... found it on google news but its from Fox.
NSA program reportedly helped US gather evidence against North Korea in Sony hack
I personally think this article only gives confirmation that this spying stuff is not all bad, but I understand almost everyone who is usually a "leftist" will disagree and I am fine with that.
@FBM,
Quote:Why do I have this feeling that you're not even reading what I post?
Perhaps it's because you want to evade this simple question: do you think that distributing a dumb movie into North Korea will help to stop public executions, starvation, and death/work camps?
Last news reveal that before the Sony incident, the US Intelligence made a breach on North Korea's communications (Internet).
Why the US cries wolf when someone does the same is the question.
Communication systems -of all kind- hiking is something "normal" between countries, enemies or allies.
@carloslebaron,
Many or most of the people who are floating anti-Kim propaganda over the DMZ in balloons or on USBs through China are NK defectors. They seem to think it's a good idea, and they'd know a lot better than I. Or you.
@FBM,
It is probably a symbol more than the film itself. As short as the Arab Spring was, at least we saw through that, sometimes leaders can be overthrown in these countries if enough people want it. At least that is what I took from it.
Well, I watched "The Interview" for free on Youtube.
Lets use the same film's argument here.
Lets see Anderson Cooper making a kind of similar interview to President Obama in the program 60 Minutes.
At this time, a straight interview not manipulated by the government agency of public information:
-Mr. President, You allow the spending of billions of dollars in military equipment when no country of the world is attacking the US for centuries, while people in Mississippi suffer of hungry, have no health insurance, and can't live the current technology of having at least one computer connected online in their homes.
-(Whatever President Obama answers)
-MR President, are you gay?
-(Whatever President Obama answers)
-Mr. President Obama, there are records that you have a lifetime membership in a gay club of Chicago. Is because of this membership the reason you are so encouraged to promote homosexuality into the American society?
-(Whatever President Obama answers)
And so forth.
I can tell you that the movie has a great initiative to break the wall that impedes us to listen answers from leaders because the manipulation of information imposed by governments, and this includes, of course, the US government.
I can tell, that before interviewing other leaders -including dictators- with complete "freedom", the US must be the example to let the interviewers asking whatever the interest of the people is.
I'll hope, that the "fighters for freedom" read this message and encourage to ask the same questions of this message or similar questions to President Obama in a national broadcasting.
Hope, that the correspondent government agencies won't become cowards to impede this kind of interview on President Obama.
What do you think?
And why do you think that this kind of interview is not fair with our current president.?
@tsarstepan,
North Koreans have DVD players, and the government does not execute criminals en masse? Sounds like things there are not as bad as advertised.
@hawkeye10,
Sounds like a Zen socialist paradise. When are you going to defect to your utopian North Korea, Hawkeye?
There may not be (very many) people starving to death outside the labor camps these days, but that doesn't mean that everything is peaches and cream up there. I tutor two North Korean refugees, and since I'm a nobody with no political power or voice, I don't see any reason to distrust what they tell me in private about their experiences.
Outside of Pyongyang, for instance, pretty women hide their beauty because they don't want to get noticed by party officials and be forced to have sex with them. If they get pregnant from such an encounter, they're forced to have a back-alley abortion.
They refuse to have their photos taken here in the South because they know that there are spies who could collect the photos and punish their family members who are still in the North.
One of the two had a bleeding ovary while up North and nearly died as a teenager when she had to undergo abdominal surgery without anesthesia and the incompetent doctor failed to stop the bleeding.
I recently attended an English speech contest in which the contestants were all North Korean refugees. I'd link to a video of that event, but there isn't one because they couldn't run the risk of being identified. These are people who want to shout their stories to the whole world, but can't because of the oppression in the North and the number of spies here in the South.
@FBM,
Quote:"Humanitarian needs must be kept separate from political issues to be able to ensure minimum living conditions for the most vulnerable, especially women, children and the elderly."
can't imagine how that can truly work
@ehBeth,
Next we will be told that we must send money to ISIS for the same reason. does no one remember that we proved that Saddam took a huge chunk of the humanitarian aid flowing into Iraq for many years? Why would the result ever be different? Even in countries where we are on the ground in large numbers running things like Haiti it is frustratingly difficult to get the dollars to were they are supposed to go.
@ehBeth,
Thing is, the regime wants the whole country to be prosperous, just as long as they stay in power. Humanitarian aid that would genuinely help those who need it include vaccines, fertilizer, pediatric medicines, prenatal vitamins and things like that. Food aid would be great if the distribution could be monitored independently. There are some such monitors for some programs already there. One just got expelled yesterday for allegedly spreading anti-regime messages.
@FBM,
FBM wrote:
Thing is, the regime wants the whole country to be prosperous, just as long as they stay in power. Humanitarian aid that would genuinely help those who need it include vaccines, fertilizer, pediatric medicines, prenatal vitamins and things like that. Food aid would be great if the distribution could be monitored independently. There are some such monitors for some programs already there. One just got expelled yesterday for allegedly spreading anti-regime messages.
But we keep on being told that being an enabler is baddd.And seriously, it is none of our business. The Chinese are the next superpower, they have long and deep ties to North Korea, this is their problem to solve..... or not. Though I guess we are on the hook if they go South.
Are you Korean? Do you know what the Korean expectation is for what their situation is going to be after the USA is departed from the region with China in charge, likely in partnership with Russia and India? I am thinking a unified Korea.
@hawkeye10,
Quote:U.N. calls for $111 million for crucial aid for North Korea
Maybe you misread that as "U.S." Asian countries hold powerful positions in the UN, and if they say it's the UN's business, it's the UN's business. Aid isn't enabling. There is no known internal challenge to the regime's hold on power. The sort of aid I'm describing would alleviate the suffering of the victims, not prop up the regime.
The S. Koreans I talk to have various expectations, so it would be an error to try to characterize them all in a single description. There are even some down here who support the NK regime and would welcome their takeover of the South. A prominent SK politician was recently jailed for leading a conspiracy plot along those lines.
@FBM,
Quote: not prop up the regime.
OK, you must be American, no Korean would say something that dumb. The Government has to love repackaging the loot and spreading it around to the people they want to have get it (those who behave), saying that it is a gift from the government.
