as a platform for delivering nuclear warheads.

And that NK is not interested in satellites at all.

Some would seem not to trust Kim Jung Il.

We need to send our chief investigator, Dennis Rodman, to find the truth.

Rodman and lil Kim deserve each other while the rest of us laugh.

into space. They also have detonated atomic weapons. That joke is on track to getting an ICBM.

experts talk about using high-altitude nukes to induce an EMP that would destroy electronics in the U.S., North Korea is one of very few rogue states thought to have both the dangerous leadership and potential technical capability to do it.

Not to be too scary, but testimony presented to Congress was that a sophisticated high-altitude attack that affected the entire U.S. would result in 60-90% die-off of U.S. population from various causes within a year. Who'd be vicious and crazy enough to actually do that? Kim Jong-un seems possibly to be.

(Apparently almost any well-funded terrorist group could theoretically purchase the materials and expertise on the world market to launch low-altitude nukes from, say, tankers at sea, severely disrupting a whole region or regions.)

dictatorship...

and, one that has nuclear weapons.

Whether one believes the phrase "rogue state" is tossed around too easily or not, North Korea absolutely fits the description. The government is essentially an extortion scheme masquerading as a country. They don't have the resource wherewithal to adequately feed their people, so they basically terrorize their neighbors into periodically buying them off.

What is truly tragic is that the people of that country suffer incredibly- humanitarian abuses on a scale which we here in the west have trouble grasping- but there is really no way to help them because any aid merely enriches and further empowers the people doing the abusing.

It's terrible, and that government having ICBMs only makes it worse.

isolated, paranoid dictatorship'"? Dictators can be your friend if they are the 'lesser of two evils'. Just imagine if one day North Koreans rise up to overthrow the 'isolated, paranoid dictatorship' that represses and cannot feed its people and Mr. Kim decides to put his army to 'good' use. It will happen one day - though perhaps far into the future.

Brutal tyrannical dictators are awful, unless they are anti-communist or serve our national interests.

Diem
Rhee
Batista
Franco
The Shah of Iran
Saddam in the 1980s
Noreiga
Pinochet
Chiang Kai Shek and his military dictatorship
Botha and Apartheid South Africa
Mubarak
Suharto and Sukarno

Just to name a few.

it serves the 'national interest' of the big country. And, of course, the 'national interest' of the big country is determined by an often-quite-conservative government representing the concerns of powerful, not-very-liberal factions (e.g. a military, industrial complex) within the big country.

Conservative governments, in particular, do not put much value on the human rights of anyone, especially of people who are unfortunate enough to live in said small-country dictatorships. Those people must be sacrificed for the 'greater good' - not surprisingly the 'greater good' is determined by the effect on the big country not the small one.

The truly horrendous countries are those that the US supports. The others, not so bad.

So Saddam had Americans travel to provide human shields. Even in the '70s and '80s the USSR had defenders, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution was seen by many as not such a big deal. Keep in mind that the ultimate evil, Hitler, was responsible for fewer deaths than Stalin. And Mao trumped both of them.

North Vietnam was great and liberated and did no evil. That it provided air cover for a while when Pol Pot's little aberration in E. Cambodia served their interests is of no great concern, because when Pot went full-tilt genocidal they didn't support him then and later disposed of their former ally. Cuba provided Soviet weapons and even sent troops to some horrible civil wars in Africa and even some insurgencies in the Americas, allowing people to say that the Russians advising the Cubans weren't actually involved. After all, Putin, I mean Brezhnev, denied it.

Mugabe said bad things about the West. After elections when he said he'd continue to kill and blow things up it was decided to have a re-do because he was judged by the West to be the true leader and he needed to win. Thus the West made him dictator for life. Well, not all of the West. Just progressive-thinking factions in the West. The Ndebele, of course, suffered as a result, but who cares about some Africans who die from oppression and famine. After all, the Ndebele didn't support the guy that Western whites supported.

Khomenei had his Western supporters. In the '00s Assad had supporters here. In the early '00s so did Qaddhafi, until he flipped and Bush II approved of him. Assad and Qaddhafi didn't change their behavior as they went from good to bad; they just changed how the PTB in the US viewed them, and that was enough to change how they were viewed.

Not such a big difference in thinking between the right's "My side's right and therefore I'm entitled to overlook and justify their wrongs" and the left's "My side's right and therefore I'm entitled to overlook and justify their wrongs." Or, as one DUer put it and I parroted for quite a while, "The worst of us is better than the best of them." At the very least, one should admit when one's side sucks even if you still think the other side is worst. While the ends don't justify the means, if all the means available are crap then you pick those with the best outcome, but you don't polish the turds and call them opals and rubies. And if your means suck worse than the others, the goal should be to figure out what's wrong with your ends or to find new means.

In most cases liberation is an internal process, both macro and micro.

But in the meantime, it is pretty hard not to empathize with the suffering of those people.

I read the book not too long ago by the man who escaped one of NK's concentration camps- there simply are no words.

most people most of the time. It is horrific.

What could possibly go wrong?
[hr][font color="blue"][center]All things in moderation, including moderation.[/center][/font][hr]

An ICBM hitting Hawaii.

NK's incompetence is as dangerous as anything else.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]All things in moderation, including moderation.[/center][/font][hr]

If he had done what Truman told him to do and stayed the fuck away from the Yalu River, it would have been over far earlier and quite likely most of the people in North Korea would be free. I think arguably the outcome would have been quite different.

provides electricity and a decent standard of living. The people in South Korea must wake up every morning wishing that history had worked out differently and Kim could be their dictator too.

?w=610 ?w=610

I suppose it is only natural for neighbors of a crazy man with powerful weapons and the means to deliver them to be somewhat fearful. But Kim's bombs and missiles are more for dictator-protection than as a realistic threat to anyone else, no matter how bellicose dictators like to talk to project their toughness. (Toughness is an essential quality for dictator survival so they like to project is for domestic consumption.)

Dictators probably correctly suspect that the actually use their atomic bombs and associated missiles against another country would, let's say, rapidly endanger the continuation of the family dictatorship that they have grown accustomed to enjoying. I doubt Kim is that stupid - although pretending to be that crazy does frequently pay diplomatic dividends.