That's what I love about living in America rather than North Korea: we don't have a news media working in lockstep to proclaim the greatness of the Dear Leader.
No, it's communist. It's just called Juche. Note that nothing about how things are actually done in NK changed when they changed their constitution. Note also that constitutions are essentially meaningless in a dictatorship, since they provide few, if any, real constraints on the dictator. Which, after all, is why we call them dictators.
Looks like the fall of most of the communist states has gotten the regime a bit nervous. Can't have any of the little people thinking they might like to end their Socialist Paradise.
It isn't anything Marx would call communist. North Korea guarantees protection of private property in its constitution and it is a member of the world intellectual property organization.
A communist society shouldn't have an antithesis between mental and physical labor or intellectual private property. It should be a society where everyone is free to work and collaborate on whatever creative projects they want to.
If you take the reality of the situation instead of the claims of the officials, then there has never been a communist country in the world and certainly not in NK.
There has never been anything close to a communist economy. Communism means there are such advanced productive forces and automation technology that there is no antithesis between mental and physical labor:
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs! - comrade Karl Marx
This is the same hyperpartisan Senator who was at the forefront of the effort to deny habeas rights to Guantanamo inmates.
The Entitled Party had complete control of the House and a 60 senator supermajority in the Senate for the first year of Obama's presidency, not to mention near complete control of the "news" media, Hollywood, television, the arts, the unions, etc, etc. If they wanted to introduce habeas rights for prisoners of war for the first time in US (or most any other country's) history, Obama et al could have done it anytime they wanted. State-run news media would have dutifully reported the wonderfulness of it all. Television programs and Hollywood movies would have exclaimed over the Nobel Peace Prize winner's greatness in their plot dialogue. They didn't do any of it.
Remember, it's Cornyn that's being "hyperpartisan", not you.
I can't tell if this is a markov generator trolling me or not. All I can tell you is: I'm glad the questions are being asked, but don't go assuming John Cornyn is a friend to hackers.
Maybe, but I hope you can appreciate why you're getting the ad hominem accusations from your words in the original post.
Can't we appreciate when justice is done or good questions are asked no matter who is asking them?
Personally, I know the national media is going to navel gaze on any opportunity to put any hard questions to this administration. We might as well support the opposition party for at least serving some purpose.
Who defines what a hacker is? The definition certainly does not include fealty to state power, let alone respect for Obama or any political party. You seem to believe that HN is a Democrat Party auxiliary.
What does requiring (as miked points out, essentially unprecedented) habeas rights for prisoners of war have to do with being a "friend to hackers"?
You should probably respond to his point that if Cornyn's position were so radical, surely President Obama would have acted in opposition. Otherwise, you can call the position deeply immoral, but surely it's bipartisan by now.
California's government is nonfunctional and almost bankrupt right now because California is a One-Party State, and that party likes to buy itself votes with other people's money and then get people like you to blame everything wrong on someone else.
Give the Entitled Party credit: they've destroyed the state's finacial situation, but hey, they've got a total lock on the state. So its all been a big success on the one thing that counts.
This is an extremely simplistic and inaccurate view of California's political problems, which are in fact in large part related to initiatives that passed through California's direct democracy process. Proposition 13 is among the most significant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(1978...
California Republicans are essentially as bad as California Democrats, at least on the local level where Republicans sometimes win. I'd personally take Washington State Democrats over virtually any politicians in California. Politicians and voters in California are just terminally insane.
California became a one-party state in 2012. Prior to 2012, it was very much a two-party state, and the problems date as far back as the 1990s, when it was still considered a swing state.
Assume nobody else has any idea what they're doing either. A lot of people refuse to try something because they feel they don't know enough about it or they assume other people must have already tried everything they could have thought of. Well, few people really have any idea how to do things right and even fewer are to try new things, so usually if you give your best shot at something you'll do pretty well.
What a fantastic insight, not to mention a real motivational boost.
Yes, he means the guy who starved 39 million people to death during his reign of terror. Yes, he means the guy who made my wife spend three years of her childhood in constant hunger. Yes, the guy who sent my father in law to a labor camp for ten years for making a joke about him. At least, that's what his best friend told them when they were torturing him. Yes, * that * Mao.
Still, I'd like to thank him for inventing all those antibiotics and modern surgical techniques.
By the way, who's the source of your "65" number? Oh wait, I think I know.
Wow, miked, I'm with you more than you know. We now have at least two of us here on HN whose fathers-in-law were sent to labor camps by Mao. I guess it stands to reason that with Mao's victims as numberless as the stars, there would be victims' relatives everywhere.
As for Mao's great medical advances, I've actually been in a number of medical facilities in China. My wife survived and later became a physician at the second best hospital in Beijing (and presumably one of the best in the country). This was the hospital where the mid-level communist party members go for treatment (no proletarians need apply). All I can say is: Holy crap! I've also been to a medical clinic in the village where my wife's family is from. My advice to travelers: don't get sick in China. Get sick in Taiwan or Hong Kong.
Stalin (who would know) once said that one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. When my wife tells me about her childhood (she only does this when I ask about it) it's the little details that chill me, not the "statistics" of her life. Here's a few:
She and her friends used to want a taste of sweetness so much (the Great Helmsman apparently considered candy a bourgeois excess) that they used to pull the bodies of honeybees apart and suck on them to get at the nectar. (This from a woman who today loves animals more than anyone I know.)
When my wife was in grade school she got so hungry one day that she snuck off into a field near her school and dug up a single sweet potato and ate it raw. She was caught and, for this horrendous crime, her principle put her on limited rations (and she was already hungry all the time) for an indefinite period. She became weaker and weaker as the months went by. Finally, after six months of this constant hunger, one of her teachers became alarmed at her state and went to the principle and asked to have her rations restored to her previous (limited) status. The principle's response? "Oh, I had forgotten she was still on limited rations. I only meant for that to last a month. Yes, restore her food quota." This was the little girl who is now my wife.
Would you recommend getting sick in the Philippines, or India? I'm sure there's plenty of 50 y.o. Indians with crushing stories about poverty, but nobody blames Ghandi.
The crowd saying "Mao murdered 100 million" are blaming him for everything bad which happened in China, while the "Praise Grandfather Mao" brigade are praising him for everything good which happened in China.
It would be a lot more productive to say: "China started at a low base, and didn't do anything remarkable under Mao or his successors. In terms of health and GDP, it could have been a bit better or a bit worse. He didn't make China poor. He didn't make China rich, either - if he didn't finish off feudalism someone else would have. Chinese guerillas would still have fought the Japanese, and would have won. The only thing (good or bad) that Mao really had any control over was slapping up posters of himself, purging accused rightists, and coloring everything blue and grey."
Exactly. Hitler built up Germany (well, before he smashed it, but there's always scapegoats for that) and made the Autobahn we Germans still love so dearly, and there's people still arguing with a straight face Hitler was a great man. Industry is overrated - it's just food, peace and shelter that aren't. Human progress is inevitable, speeding it up while fortifying ruling classes does not impress me, ever.
Mobo Gao in his 2008 book The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution, credits Mao for raising the average life expectancy from 35 in 1949 to 63 by 1975, bringing "unity and stability to a country that had been plagued by civil wars and foreign invasions"
Still, bleh. My point was that he might as well have done ONLY evil; with the kind of attitude displayed in the essay he wrote as student (it's not like he lived the rest of his live differently) it would have taken a bullet to stop him. Reflection did not enter into it. That's my point.
>> Rather than jumping on the low-carb bandwagon before his ideas are properly tested, the precautionary principle suggests that it might be more reasonable to follow a moderate diet like the Mediterranean diet (or to follow Michael Pollan‘s stunningly simple advice to “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”), to limit “empty calories” from simple carbohydrates like sugar, to eat a variety of vegetables and fruits, to choose low calorie density foods that are more filling, to limit meat intake, to limit salt, and to keep looking for behavioral and environmental ways to change our calories-in/calories-out balance.
Ummm, why does the precautionary principle state that we should avoid Diet X (Mediterranean Inuit, Vegetarian,...), rather than Diet Y?
Doesn't the precautionary principle really say that nothing should ever change, since we can always gather more data to further remove risk? (Except, of course, the things the speaker really wants to change, in which case the principle won't be invoked.)
The Mediterranean, Inuit, and vegetarian diets (and presumably also the Pollan diet) are empirically well tested, because many people already live by those diets. This makes them conservative choices. There's no guarantee that they will work, but there is a high probability based on empirical evidence.
This. Here's a story of two Canadian writers who were forced to spend thousands on defending themselves for engaging in politically incorrect Badthink:
>> we aren't allow to know when our troops fire on civilians in another country.
Except that most of the Entitled Class, from academia to journalists to Hollywood, has made an minor industry out of supporting totalitarian apologists such as yourself. A prominent example: the New York Times has refused to return the Pulitzer awarded to its pro-Stalinist reporter Walter Duranty, who lied so thoroughly about the Ukranian famine of the 1930's.
Sometimes this apologizing is done directly (as above and as with the fawning support for the late Stalinist historian Eric Hobsbawm), but more often through moral equivalence arguments such as yours.
My wife barely survived the Great Leap Forward. She spent years of her childhood hungry, only to come to this country and read people like you. Unlike you, she's very clear on the difference between Chinese Socialism and America's (semi-)free system.
The difference is that the USA has managed to take the killing out of their borders, but aren't any better. This lets them portrait themselves as innocent.
Your quality of life is product of a market sustained by wars and extortion of other countries. The quality of life of the chinese that live in cities are sustained by the rice pickers of the countryside. THAT is the real difference.
I'm from ex-USSR and have never been to the US, so my view is kind of balanced. I think the US was able to come up with the most universal product of all times: the american dream. Everything else is just execution.
There were wars throughout the history, but previously there were no ways to make another country people wish to change their believes and become the consumers of another country way of living on a mass scale.
> Your quality of life is product of a market sustained by wars and extortion of other countries.
Their cost of war probably outweighs by far any direct/indirect profit they can expect to get out of them. In addition, there are plenty of prosperous countries that are not involved in any wars.
> The quality of life of the chinese that live in cities are sustained by the rice pickers of the countryside. THAT is the real difference.
Fixed pie fallacy. Rich people are not rich because they exploit poor people.
> Their cost of war probably outweighs by far any direct/indirect profit they can expect to get out of them. In addition, there are plenty of prosperous countries that are not involved in any wars.
You are telling me that, for example, Iraq was invaded, for what exact reason, if not for their massive petroleum resources? Menace of WMD? C'mon. The "plenty of countries" you mention is a small fraction of the world, and are extorting and exploiting the third world.
> Fixed pie fallacy. Rich people are not rich because they exploit poor people.
Yeah, great call. Except I never said people in the city are rich because of the contryside. I said they are sustained, they need food and other goods produced by agriculture and such, which is only produced in the countryside. If your born on the countryside, they don't even let you move to the city.
> You are telling me that, for example, Iraq was invaded, for what exact reason, if not for their massive petroleum resources? Menace of WMD? C'mon.
There were certainly a few interested parties which have/will indeed greatly profit from the war. I'm not denying that. As a whole though, I'd be surprised if there is a net gain for the US considering the astronomical amount of money the they have spent on the war.
> The "plenty of countries" you mention is a small fraction of the world, and are extorting and exploiting the third world.
Which country is Sweden exploiting? Which country is Switzerland exploiting? The vast majority of third world countries are sovereign and free from foreign exploitation. In fact, many third world countries receive foreign aid from the US.
> I said they are sustained, they need food and other goods produced by agriculture and such, which is only produced in the countryside.
Agreed. What's your point?
> If your born on the countryside, they don't even let you move to the city.
That's not true at all. I'd say about 90% of Shenzhen people were born in the country-side. You very seldom meet someone who was actually born in Shenzhen given that the city is ~30 years old.
> I'd be surprised if there is a net gain for the US
You must be trolling
> Which country is Sweden exploiting? Which country is Switzerland exploiting?
Essentially trading manufactured goods for raw goods
> Agreed. What's your point?
You cryed "fixed pie fallacy", but it doesn't apply. "Such and such fallacy! Over!" cryes are extremely annoying.
> I'd say about 90% of Shenzhen was born in the country-side. You very seldom meet someone who was actually born in Shenzhen given that the city is ~30 years old.
If the government needs people in a new city, it will make sure that people will move to that city. But if a man born on the countryside wants to move to the city, he will not be allowed to do so, at least not near as easily as in any western country.
See. I am not arguing that China has a better way to run a country. I'm just saying that first world countries are no saints either.
ShenZhen is the WORST example you could make. It is a Special Economic Zone, created as an experiment to look at the effects of urbanising the country side...
Go next door to Guangzhou, in the evening and walk along the streets and count the "migrants" (what Chinese call people from the country side in the cities) sleeping on the sidewalk because they have no "right" to housing or "legitimate" work.
No, the quality of life that America still enjoys is the legacy of an extraordinary free market system, one of the first and still most powerful that has ever existed. That market system developed the most advanced and successful capital market in history (that no longer exists), which is why America even still has the dollar global reserve currency, because the 'ol green back was "good as gold" for 150 years. Even today in its deteriorated form, the US monetary system is considered radically safer than all but a few in the world. That market system hinged in part on what was at the time the strongest private property rights in history, and a great judicial system to protect them.
China to this day is struggling just to emulate the kind of innovative success in free market economy that America pioneered centuries ago.
To the extent China is enjoying any success today, it's largely due to free market style reforms of their economy, attempting to abandon the destructive policies of Communism. There's no little irony in the fact that as China has moved more Capitalist, America has shifted far more Socialist (with predictable results).
Which countries did America extort from 1800 to 1965 in order to build its formerly tremendous wealth and resources exactly?
Are you talking oil? America discovered oil, and invented most of its processes. It also discovered oil in the Middle East using said technology, and that oil was then nationalized across the region and countless contracts were violated in the process.
Are you talking industrial technology? America was one of the few countries (eg along with Britain and France) leading the industrial revolution.
Are you talking computer technology? No comment even necessary.
Are you talking biotech? Again, no comment even necessary. Who did America steal its biotech from? Cambodia? Afghanistan? Vietnam? China? Panama?
Pick an industry, pick a technology, you'll find America's entrepreneurial fingerprint all over it.
Yes, you are right, the USA has used it's superior technology and industry to gain advantage of other countries.
I was merely pointing out that america, too, causes great destruction (outside their borders), and takes advantage of underdeveloped countries, selling their technologically manufactured goods for cheap raw goods.
I am not saying that it is more destructive than China (which is highly subjective), nor that america must stop or any such nonsense, which you seem to believe I'm heading to. I just want you to acknowledge that america is not morally immaculate, quite the contrary.
What is 'subjective' about 38,702,000 people murdered?
There is something deeply, profoundly morally wrong with you that you have attempted to equivocate that number away for the sake of your ideology.
Polite debate fails here. This is unforgivable. You must become a different person to the one you are now, the one who can put these weasel words on a web forum to try to blur distinctions that must be made.
"Murdered"... No, there was no intent. They starved, because of a number of counter productive measures. Mao would not instigate the great leap forward had he known the consequences in advance.
Hiroshima/Nagasaki was murder
Rape of Nanjing was murder
The holocaust was murder
Great Leap forward was a very big unintentional mistake.
Absolute numbers are deceptive (and depressing) when talking about China, but it is often better to look at percentages.
Your Attack on the GP's morality is uncalled for. I think you need to check your own ideology and emotion at the door, and discuss things rationally.
English is not my first language, yet I am sure I expressed myself clearly. I said it is subjective to say the USA are more destructive than China, not the other way 'round like you seem to have understood, or wanted to understand.
And yet the banana industry was financed in great part by american companies which established banana republics throughout the world. To be honest, there's not a whole lot of innovation in the banana industry as far as I've seen it or heard from people who worked in it here in Costa Rica. Also, never mind that most US territory is not well suited for banana plantation.
> attempting to abandon the destructive policies of Communism. There's no little irony in the fact that as China has moved more Capitalist
I think you need to read more Marx. Capitalism is the way you generate the capital to fund Socialism. Marx was aware that even if your own country was Communist, others wouldn't be, so their would be a "Opening up" phase where you move your country through Capitalism, until internal capital is enough to keep your entire population 'comfortable'.
>America has shifted far more Socialist (with predictable results).
Good lord, wtf are you talking about? Please keep your glaring demonstrations of ignorance in politics off this site. There are plenty of other sites for that.
>> The Iron Dome also has the benefit of twenty years of technological progress to draw upon vs the Patriots. A higher success rate here should not come as a surprise.
To the best of my knowledge the Iron Dome success rate is lower. Patriot missiles in the first gulf war sucked, and there is no solid evidence that even a single one hit its target. During the invasion of Iraq it was a completely different story: only one Patriot missed its target (mostly Chinese-made Silkworm missiles) and hit a Kuwaiti shopping center.
That's what I love about living in America rather than North Korea: we don't have a news media working in lockstep to proclaim the greatness of the Dear Leader.