#641
[account deactivated]
#642
bb bourgeoisie
Post rating: ~
i'm terrified, particularly of a living wage
#643
Post rating: +

toyotathon posted:

is white amerika the most easily-frightened people in world history or what. is the fright just performance for the imperial masters?



i mean the same people who incessantly post about how we should nuke those crazy north korean bastards off the face of the earth freak the fuck out every time the dprk reasserts that they will defend themselves so probably a bit of both

#644
Post rating: +
it's much easier to sell something if you kind of believe your own bullshit about it. like if you're trying to sell phones, you'll tell yourself whatever kind of phone you're selling is good, and you'll believe it, but you'll still exaggerate how good the features are and how well they will suit the customer's needs, and gloss over any shortcomings like some other model being better spec'd and better value, and do all that knowing full well you're misleading the customer but believing that's okay because it is after all a decent phone and hey, ya gotta eat. foreign policy experts and bloggers and whatever do the same thing, just with genocide instead of phones.
#645
Post rating: +++++
without a hint of irony the presenter for the bbc said that it might be nessesary for the usa to nuke the dprk to prevent kim jong un doing something "crazy". Whos the crazy one now fucko
#646
Post rating: +
forbes published a My Pics From The Fabled Hermit Kingdom-type article the other day https://www.forbes.com/sites/dougbandow/2017/08/07/the-north-korea-washington-doesnt-want-americans-to-see-photo-essay/

author seems like a real piece of shit but there's this at least:

At the Foreign Ministry I spoke with Choe Kang-il, Vice President of the Institute for American Studies and Deputy Director General for North American Affairs at the Foreign Ministry. He was well-spoken and amid the revolutionary rhetoric made serious arguments. Washington wants his country to disarm. But the U.S. routinely engages in regime change—Iraq and Afghanistan are but two examples. Even more so Libya. So the North Koreans see nukes as keeping the peace, which means preventing Washington from attacking them. For good reason I would prefer that the DPRK not possess the bomb and ICBMs, but there is nothing irrational in their claims. And, if President Donald Trump was sitting in Pyongyang facing an aggressive superpower which bombed, invaded, and occupied other nations at will, he probably would want nukes and missiles too.



so i guess that puts him head and shoulders above most of the participants in The Discourse

also:

The lady traffic cops have become a celebrated fixture in the capital. They definitely stand out. But far more striking to me is how North Korean women—in Pyongyang, anyway—look so normal in the sense of dressing nicely. Fashion has come to Pyongyang, at least. In contrast, the men remain more likely to look “socialist plain,” if I can coin a phrase.



if you're gonna pull crap like this, maybe don't make the mistake of including several pictures of yourself walking around in slacks, a white button-down, and a suit jacket that obviously hasn't fit in some time

#647
Post rating: ~
feelin' so fly, like socialist plain
#648
Post rating: +
lmao your president said that there will never be a day when america is not the most powerful nation...but i know....i know that there will come a day
#649
Post rating: ~
the western rhetoric across the spectrum of 'experts', politicians etc is consistent now, that DPRK could have the magic nuke-icbm combo ready to use within 12-18 months, and that despite the west's "best efforts" kim is "unlikely to step back from the brink", so i can't help but take the regional US military buildup as more than posturing and i think war is genuinely imminent in that 12-18 month window
#650
[account deactivated]
#651
[account deactivated]
#652
Post rating: +
Huh
#653
Post rating: ~

Petrol posted:

the western rhetoric across the spectrum of 'experts', politicians etc is consistent now, that DPRK could have the magic nuke-icbm combo ready to use within 12-18 months, and that despite the west's "best efforts" kim is "unlikely to step back from the brink", so i can't help but take the regional US military buildup as more than posturing and i think war is genuinely imminent in that 12-18 month window


I don't think the war will happen. The DPRK can already hit South Korea and Japan with nuclear weapons, and although China doesn't want the DPRK to have nuclear weapons, they wouldn't want a war on the peninsula either. I might be wrong, but I think the window to stop the DPRK's nuclear capability has closed, and an invasion would have unacceptable consequences to the US. I think the DPRK won for now.

#654
Post rating: +
planet earth 2017 is the worst campaign setting ive played yet
#655
Post rating: ~
i for one can't wait for the first jooshie work since Jong-Il's death: What Used to be Guam
#656
Post rating: ~
yeah i dont think war is likely unless i'm mistaken about institutional ability to reel back trump's stupidity/irrationality and the handful of nihilistic generals who'd recommend a preemptive strike
#657
Post rating: +
trump's clown shoes white house doesn't have the influence necessary to start a conflict on that scale without support, especially now that the rumors are circulating that china will 100% go all in to stop an invasion. the pentagon knows the US is laughably incapable of symmetric warfare these days and won't let the president start a war they will definitely lose. if he by some miracle managed to unilaterally spark off a full blown war then he'd be out within a week. possibly within minutes. possibly in a bodybag followed by a curiously lackadaisical investigation that turns up surprisingly few details. the pentagon takes its control of foreign policy very seriously!
#658
Post rating: +
I think this will probably blow over soon and the NatSec folks will go back to screaming about how we need to destroy the despotic Iran and replace it with the open democratic model of the UAE and people will forget about DPRK for a while. It won't appear in any history book but I think this moment with China saying that it will emphatically not tolerate regime change and the US subsequently punking out and abandoning their rhetoric could end up being the true turning point of China as the number 1 world power and the US going on a true and pronounced decline when we look back on this.
#659
Post rating: ~
that's all well and good but what happens when DPRK follows through with their stated plan to lob a missile into the waters off guam? because so far all signs have been it'll be treated as an attack on US territory with all that entails. i mean, china have said they won't tolerate invasion or regime change efforts but that they'd otherwise stay neutral in a war. there's still a lot of room for things to get pretty bad
#660
Post rating: ~
It seems really easy to err on the side of "ehh it'll blow over" as it has for as long as I've lived, but that is probably gonna feel pretty silly when it doesn't blow over.
#661
Post rating: ~
Also, to be clear, I mean "blow over" from a US perspective--obviously the sanctions the UN recently cooked up are terroristic and could probably end up killing thousands of Koreans alone. But as far as an actual war is concerned I can't imagine China would be dumb enough to let us destabilize the region even half as much as we have done elsewhere.
#662
Black Belt
Post rating: ~
from what i understand the KCNA article was from someone in gov, it doesnt necessarily correlate to the gov's position, especially since theyve been saying they dont have a first strike policy and dont want nukes in the first place, they only have them because they need to insure their autonomy.
#663
Post rating: ~
the problem is a (non-nuclear) missile fired near guam, while intended only as a demonstration of capability, could easily be taken by a bloodthirsty US as a 'first strike' of sorts. it depends how keen they are for war
#664
Post rating: +
yeah and china are kind of hedging their bets as to what would count as a deliberate initiation of hostilities by either side, they (understandably i guess) want the discretion to opt in or out of a conflict depending on the circumstances without technically going back on their word to anyone
#665
bb bourgeoisie
Post rating: ~

Petrol posted:

the problem is a (non-nuclear) missile fired near guam, while intended only as a demonstration of capability, could easily be taken by a bloodthirsty US as a 'first strike' of sorts. it depends how keen they are for war



and how desperate this administration is for a distraction

#666
Post rating: ~
it's amazing to me that they still need to reach further for increasingly reckless distractions when the dems are already graciously serving one up for them pro bono. weird world.
#667
bb bourgeoisie
Post rating: ~
weird but trü
#668
Post rating: +
i hope this all "blows over" and that tensions don't reach "critical mass", and that pending a reduction in tensions there's no "fallout" and that, uh, also that the situation doesn't go... "nuclear"
#669
[account deactivated]
#670
Post rating: ~
i mean it seems a little more tense than usual but we go through this shit literally every year and nothing ever happens. until it does, but, it's getting harder to take the rhetoric seriously. hell we're soon due for another go-around with iran too so maybe that's how we'll end out the year.
#671
Post rating: +
"current US president and steak salesman donald j trump uses popular loss making micro-blogging platform to threaten nuclear war"...

...i guess i could have seen this coming.... ...but maybe i was just afraid to look too deep... ...sometimes... sometimes the future is best left hidden...
#672
Post rating: +++++
There's a new John Oliver propaganda piece about North Korea. The whole thing is bad obviously but the way he mocks the Sinchon massacre and American atrocities is truly vile. This also led me to discver that wikipedia calls the massacre "alleged" and is mostly composed of "NGO claims" disputing it happened, even though there is no dispute at all in scholarship that it happened. Oliver also casually slips in that Qaddafi was overthrown by "his own people" unlike Saddam because any admission of fault at all in the DNC line is unacceptable. The racism and bloodthirst of daily show liberals is timely since they are suddenly really concerned about nazis and domestic fascism and one could easily become confused and think they aren't themselves nazis who simply appreciate the politeness of out of sight, out of mind fascism.
#673
Post rating: +
yeah that shit was pretty bad. some of it was unintentionally funny though, like where he says it can be really hard to tell which north korea stories in the media are actually false (because the place is so crazy!!1!), and gives as his example the most obviously fake DPRK story, about all men having to get kim's haircut, then for good measure says they could find "no evidence it was true". nevermind the ample evidence that it's fake and, oh yeah, common fucking sense. the hoops these people will jump through to maintain the thinnest shroud of legitimacy over orientalism
#674
Post rating: +++++
wow this is like a peak settler colonial idea:

With the fervent hope that accordion master and all-American goofball Weird Al can bridge the seemingly uncrossable cultural divide between our two nations, Oliver’s Hail Mary musical missive—complete with Weird Al’s messages of peace and the fact that Americans are really too self-involved and “mostly harmless” to bother invading North Korea—finds Al (picture of universally beloved Tom Hanks unfurling behind him) singing and squeezing as if all our lives depended on it.



Liberals honestly believe the American empire is "mostly harmless"

#675
Post rating: +++++
i believe an actual lyric in the song was "we don't really understand why you're so mad at us"
#676
Post rating: +
The crushing hegemonic power of America's intensely goofy ass entertainment culture is far more terrifying than any of that dumbass rat torture shit in 1984
#677
Post rating: ~

Petrol posted:

the western rhetoric across the spectrum of 'experts', politicians etc is consistent now, that DPRK could have the magic nuke-icbm combo ready to use within 12-18 months, and that despite the west's "best efforts" kim is "unlikely to step back from the brink", so i can't help but take the regional US military buildup as more than posturing and i think war is genuinely imminent in that 12-18 month window


i think i need to take this back. the US rhetoric has been scaled back specifically regarding how it might respond to DPRK's stated plan to fire on the waters near guam, i.e. differentiating that from a direct strike on US territory. that's coming from mattis so i think the administration's position is now clear and is basically unchanged from previous policy despite the initial bluster (which i don't think i was wrong to observe was all too quickly being normalised by important imperial policy and propaganda organs)

#678
Post rating: ~

aerdil posted:

With the fervent hope that accordion master and all-American goofball Weird Al can bridge the seemingly uncrossable cultural divide between our two nations, Oliver’s Hail Mary musical missive—complete with Weird Al’s messages of peace and the fact that Americans are really too self-involved and “mostly harmless” to bother invading North Korea—finds Al (picture of universally beloved Tom Hanks unfurling behind him) singing and squeezing as if all our lives depended on it.



ayy lmao

#679
Post rating: ~

this is the good shit, this is what its all been building up to, just when you thought it couldnt get any better...along comes this
#680
Post rating: +
the worst person on the whole of american tv is british, how could anyone have predicted this?