North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Il Dead at 70 518
As reported by numerous sources, Kim Jong Il has died at the age of 70 (69 by some tallies), after 17 years as the brutal head of North Korea. While the cause of death is uncertain, Bloomberg News says "Kim probably had a stroke in August 2008 and may have also contracted pancreatic cancer, according to South Korean news reports."
Meh (Score:5, Insightful)
World has now one asshole less.
Re:And now the danger begins (Score:3, Insightful)
Causing trouble abroad is a classic way to cement power at home: "Busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels".
Team America will miss him (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdug6yHJB40 [youtube.com]
There are not enough dictators left in Asia to keep the yellow man down. It's terrifying. Why hasn't the CIA made more they have the technology!
Re:It's a big deal (Score:4, Insightful)
Taking a brutal dictator seriously is exactly the wrong approach. I'd rather remember him as a supporting character in a lowbrow puppet comedy. I won't bother to post the YouTube link, since there's already two or three up here.
Re:It's a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
Some 0.1 percent of his subjects will now kill themselves in mourning. Is that enough of an appreciation of how important he was?
He was a bad man. bent on nuclear proliferation and providing arms to our enemies. He starved millions of his own people to death. He dedicated something like 1.5 million man-years to the reception of former US president Jimmy Carter.
That's moot now. His son may be coherent, or the military cabal that kills him may be. The news item is that the situation just became fluid. I hope the State department isn't on Christmas break for this one.
Re:Meh (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes him an asshole? He was in a really difficult position. He played lots of mind games with US, South Korea and rest of the world because he had to. This whole thing predates his leadership.
What makes him an asshole? Are you serious? Lets see... making sure his army was fed before anyone else while watching over a million (!) civilians starve to death. Forced labor camps with conditions not much better than Nazi concentration camps. Clandestine kidnapping of Japanese nationals. Stunts like the unprovoked sinking of his neighbor's vessels, and firing medium range missiles over the border, then stamping his feet like a spoiled brat with demands for increased food aid. Shooting of tourists for wandering away from their "resort" compound. Aggressively pursuing nuclear weapons and military might while ensuring that his people were too hungry and scared to revolt. Establishing a god-king cult of personality. Having anyone who wants to leave that hellhole of a country executed on the spot. Punishing entire families (including small children) for "crimes" of individuals. Secretly compiling a vast store of luxury goods and spirits for disbursement to his party elite, while claiming to be a shining example of humble socialist perfection. Raising his son to believe he's the rightful heir to the universe, thereby ensuring that the cycle of arrogance and brutality continues for another generation. That, my dear reader, fulfills my definition of a grade A asshole.
Re:Meh (Score:4, Insightful)
Dude, stick to your script of bashing google.You can't tell a Democracy from a direct Democracy [wikipedia.org] from a Republic [wikipedia.org]. You can't tell free speech from a majority voting system, and think that because something isn't perfect, it should be tossed out. And finally, you just make up shit when you say "and would likely even attempt to make law to kill them".
In short, you're either a giant troll, or an even bigger moron. Your Google bashing is pretty subtle at this point, but the rest is really junky.
To bad south park is in the off season (Score:5, Insightful)
They would have a field day with this.
Re:Meh (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you think free speech is good for the humankind, overally?
Well, this is basic civics, I'm surprised you didn't learn this somewhere. You might want to pick up a good book about governments and learn this basic stuff.
Freedom of speech, that is the ability to criticize the government, is important, because then the people can change the government if they decide they don't like it. Search for the meaning of "the pen is mightier than the sword" if you'd like more information on that topic.
We can demonstrate empirically that democracies overall have been better for humankind, this is history. From a theoretical standpoint, you may have a king who is better, more efficient, and more just than a democracy would be. However, inevitably he will have a son, or grandson who is not such a good king, and monarchies have no good system for removing bad leaders like democracy does. Democracy doesn't guarantee a good government, but it guarantees that the people will have the government they deserve.
Re:And now the danger begins (Score:5, Insightful)
Which might make him more manageable to the US being that young. I am sure if he doesn't comply he will be gone soon.
He'll be gone for what replacement? If the US goal is to "manage" the region and/or head of state, well... the US doesn't have the best track record for placing people in power in foreign governments.
Re:And now the danger begins (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, this is probably good. It takes a lot of political skill to maintain a dictatorship in the face of all of the normal crises in addition to quelling uprisings. I'd make the argument that a dictator is the highest form of politician since you don't even have the legitimacy of a crown to validate your power. An unprepared heir to a dictator won't likely be able to maintain the current state. Odds are, the military has seen the damage done by KJI and will tack back to a more accessible government; assuming they take over.
Re:It's a big deal (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:And now the danger begins (Score:4, Insightful)
What the US might think is the least of his problems. I think top of mind for him is how to embrace his own military establishment, and reassure them they will not lose influence. I should think he's well trained on the levers of power, so maybe this goes easy.
If the military doesn't accept him, things get pretty random. Random is not good.
Re:It's a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
I would start by allowing free speech, criticism of the government
And you'd be instantly deposed by the second tier of the leadership; the people who made it good during the old regime, and who would be jailed or worse if the regime failed or if it became more democratic.
The first thing you need to do is consolidate your hold on power. Remove the old guard, replace people in key positions with your men. Take special care to ensure control over the armed forces - army, police, people's "militias". Make nice or be sure you control non-governmental leaders of opinion, (like religious figures), if such exist. Keep your people honest enough that they won't have too much of a vested interest in keeping the old society style. Only after that should you start opening your society, maybe during your second or third year or thereabouts.
For a relatively good example see how Gorbachev handled his reforms in the former USSR - he started by calling for changes, but kept specifics rather vague, in the meantime making sure the old apparatchiks were removed from power (for example he replaced the powerful conservative Gromyko with the younger reformist Shervadnadze). About one year later he started with the economic reforms (a.k.a. perestroika), at the same time continuing the consolidation of his position. Only after he was sure of his control, in 1988 (three years after being elected secretary of the communist party), did Gorbatchev introduce the "glasnost" liberalization reforms (greater freedom of speech, greater freedom of the press, less control of criticism of the government, release of a big number of political detainees).
Perestroika didn't work, because Gorbachev, whatever his other qualities, was still a communist at heart, and never pushed the reforms far enough. Glasnost was however quite successful, and, IMHO, was a direct contributor to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, and to the subsequent disollution of the USSR.
Re:It's a big deal (Score:2, Insightful)
woosh!
Re:It's a big deal (Score:2, Insightful)
Besides, free speech in Western world is relative too. Just try yelling fire in a crowded theater. Or dance around a monument in US. [wtop.com]
Re:It's a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
It would cause turmoil in the country.
No it wouldn't. You made that up without providing evidence.
Since China is a democratic country
China is not a democratic country. You can't have true democracy without free speech. Really, this is an important point. If you don't get it, you will never see reality clearly.
Re:It's a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh come on, Castro may be a communist and a dictator, but on his best days he couldn't hope to match the shithouse-rat-crazy antics of the Dear Leader.
Re:How does this qualify as a slashdot item??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Surprisingly, it turns out that we nerds occupy forms in the real world, and thus significant news about this world are news for nerds.
Re:It's a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
Calling China a democratic country is a stretch. The elections are not independent, the communist party maintains full control over it. Besides speech is highly restricted. How do you expect democracy to function without free speech?
Re:It's a big deal (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It's a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, phantomfive - but I think that Sharklaser is speaking with a cultural background that you lack.
Personally, I've never been to China. I've only met a few Chinese people. I don't like China because it is communist, and because they are working hard to steal American jobs, American tech, and they are working hard to dominate American interests.
Despite my likes and dislikes, I've read enough to understand that Chinese culture has almost no resemblance to my own culture. The fact that I have traveled, seen other cultures, and due to the fact that my own relatives represented different cultures gives me some framework to understand what Sharklaser seems to be saying.
The fact is, you don't just turn a culture upside down overnight, unless you enjoy chaos. People who have lived a certain way for generations simply aren't going to accept radical change in ten years, or even twenty.
How many years have the women's libbers been working on their agenda? And, women still bitch about that "glass ceiling". Change doesn't happen overnight, or even within a lifetime. It takes centuries to make really big changes in a culture, UNLESS you're wiling to accept a lot of turmoil.
Re:It's a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
Taking a brutal dictator seriously is exactly the wrong approach. I'd rather remember him as a supporting character in a lowbrow puppet comedy.
That's nice, as long as neither you nor your family or friends can be touched by the ridiculous little man's army or secret police. If you lived in NK though, you'd take him much more seriously.
Please understand - I'm not trying to criticize you; I just personally feel uneasy dismissing Kim with a laugh or a shrug from the safety of the USA, even though sometimes he seemed to make a special effort to build himself into a caricature. But then I remember some footage I saw on the BBC a few years ago, supposedly smuggled from NK, showing the summary executions of a few people from a small village and I don't really feel like laughing anymore.
Re:It's a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
The nukes were on Russian ships, the emplacement was paid for by Russia, and all the money came from Russia as well. I doubt Castro had much to say in how the crisis was resolved. Castro approved the plan to install them, but that's about as far as his involvement went. Everything else was decided directly between Moscow and Washington. You can check out the wikipedia page with the timelines for this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_missile_crisis [wikipedia.org]
I don't think he was crazy. I don't think he was a communist either. I just think he was someone who, like a lot of folks, started out the right way but somewhere ended up missing a turn and then took the road down to Hell - paved, as always, with numerous good intentions.
Re:It's a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
Your attitude is shared by a lot of Chinese. However, if I ask them if they'd like everything they do on Weibo to be approved by a government official first, they say no. If I ask them if they want to know about the things that Weibo reports, they say yes. If I ask them: do you want corrupt government officials to be removed from power, they say yes. If I ask them: would you like to know that your cooking oil is poisonous and that your babies' milk contains melanin, killing him, they say yes.
Basically they want free speech for those issues where it suits them. But it doesn't work that way, because the corrupt factory owners never appreciate free speech. So unless you get something we call "free speech", you are giving a blank cheque to those in power who want their corruption to remain secret.
Remember: if an idea cannot stand criticism, it's probably because it's not as good as you thought it was.
Now I have heard it said that people in the city think the peasants are easily incited by some people providing silly ideas (a la Falun Gong). But in most Western countries this type of thing is still illegal: see your own examples. No nation in the world has absolute free speech. But the Chinese should have the freedom to criticize what is going on. Because one thing is certain: the corrupt owners of factories and companies will not stop poisoning people, or putting up buildings that colllapse, or steal the land of the peasants, if noone can speak about it.
Who modded this drivel insightful? (Score:4, Insightful)
"don't like China because it is communist,"
Well there's a well thought out argument. FWIW china hasn't been communist for over a decade now - its actually the closest thing to a capitalist dictatorship the world has right now.
"and because they are working hard to steal American jobs, American tech, and they are working hard to dominate American interests."
Oh right, so the chinese forced american companies to outsource all their menufacture to china did they? It had nothing to do with greedy CEOs wanting to save a quick buck and screw whatever US jobs it cost or what knock-on effect it may have on the economy just so they could "raise shareholder value" - and coincidentaly collect a fat bonus for doing it did it? And same CEOs having outsourced blue collar work are not happily outsourcing white collar work to india. I suppose thats the indians fault is it?
You need to look closer to home for the reason china is in the ascendent. I would say the USA has economically shot itself in the foot but its actually closer to having blown its entire leg off.
Re:It's a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
What? No, if you know of a case where free speech has caused problems, bring it up.
Not that I agree with GP's point, but in the interest of completeness:
Westboro Baptist Church.
Re:Kim Jong Il, (Score:2, Insightful)
I just don't get why this is Apple's fault. There are plenty of companies that outsource to Foxconn
When you see some obnoxious eco-warrior driving a Prius, you are allowed to mock them and point out that they could have bought a lighter, more fuel efficient car and paid a third less. If you see some smug urban prat driving an SUV soft-roader you can likewise point and laugh. Apple users are "Apple Users", not just people who use Apple. They aren't buying the product, they are buying the image and mythology. Mocking that mythology, and dirtying that image, is not just fair game, it's almost mandatory. Notice how quickly and automatically you bit at the bait? That's why you're fair game.
Re:"He starved millions of his own people to death (Score:4, Insightful)