Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Drygioni]

This may not be an issue many people will want to talk about for whatever reason, but it's a pretty big thing nonetheless and a thread can never hurt, until we all start arguing with each other. Let us hope against that!

So, about the said event: what do you think? Anything, really. Feel free to chuck in your two cents.

In Critical Thinking (it is too a real subject!) today, we looked at how different papers had reported the incident. Predictably, the qualities and tabloids alike basically sensationally reported that this could be the end of the world; the difference was that the qualities devoted about eight pages to in depth coverage and speculation, while the tabloids mostly had pictures and info on that crazy and sexually depraved Kim Jong Il. Seriously, since the '40s Britain has been the world leader in making sexual allegations against it's enemies.

Here is the story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6032525.stm

[FlipConstantine]

I've heard in a few places that the seismic evidence would indicate that it wasn't a nuclear weapon at all, something to think about, I don't actually have any articles or anything to back this up right now (will look) but something to consider.  Possibly this is all just an attention grabber.

[Drygioni]

I've heard in a few places that the seismic evidence would indicate that it wasn't a nuclear weapon at all, something to think about, I don't actually have any articles or anything to back this up right now (will look) but something to consider.  Possibly this is all just an attention grabber.

Yeah, I was trying to find an online source saying it might just have been a very big explosion underground. Either way, until there's some concrete evidence proving there really isn't so much to worry about (Japanese planes are scanning for radiation I heard) North Korea have still worried a lot of people and countries.

[wombat]

They mentioned this on NPR earlier. I guess that would be good news except - a country that is so crazy that it would set up a test to fool people into thinking it had a nuclear bomb?  Creepy.

[FlipConstantine]

They mentioned this on NPR earlier. I guess that would be good news except - a country that is so crazy that it would set up a test to fool people into thinking it had a nuclear bomb?  Creepy.

They just want to roll with the big boys, you can't hardly blame them.

[Choop]

KimJongIlIsADickSlap

[AlohaDawg]

World developments now seem to point to Ronald Reagan as a genius.

He foresaw technology, especially missile and nuke technology falling into the hands of rogue states or non state entities. His Missile Defense Plan (SDI) from the 80's was maybe overambitious but that was when the perceived threat was from the USSR - now rather than 1000 missiles,  we will probably see one or two and we have technology that gives us a good chance to intercept them now because we kept funding the research.

Say what you want about Mr. Reagan but he sure had that right, and few wanted to listen.

[littlefallsmets]

World developments now seem to point to Ronald Reagan as a genius.

Not to turn this into a political fight or nothin' but...

Being precient on the topic of rogue state nuclear development? That's fine, that's great.

Still doesn't make up for... putting up the money and the training and the arms that created... Sadaam Hussein and Al-Queda and... pretty much taking every bit of nastiness in the Middle East and teaching it how to organize and fight and kill, trying to use them to destabilize the Soviet Union without any thought to the idea that, oh, maybe these guys might eventually turn on us.

Most of the people we're talking about as rogue states/non-states were directly or indirectly created by Reagan, as well as his ideological predecessors and successors, destroying and creating whole countries just to needle The Big Awful Russians.

Reagan getting the threat of small-state atomics correct is less about him looking like a genius and more like... if you take a hundred question multiple-choice test right and you just fill in random letters and get twenty-five questions right? That doesn't mean that you at least knew a quarter of the questions, you just had to get a few right by sheer statistics.

[littlefallsmets]

2> This was necessary on the part of the US as Soviet planning, as already exemplified, was to control areas via a satellite network of ideological puppet states.

I don't know if that's true, though.

We "lost" Vietnam, the whole place went Communist and... it turns out that, no, there weren't suddenly Communists taking Seattle. It wasn't one step in a domino theory, it was a country in civil war because of how much France had screwed it up colonially speaking and... sure... America and Russia and China and so on tinkered with it and tried to make the battle its own but...

End of the day, it was its own civil war and just because the Vietnamese Communists won Vietnam didn't mean that Pan-National Russian Communism landed in Boston and took Cape Cod. That's exaggerated, of course, but... it does lead me to wonder.

Did all these little attempts to turn local wars into Capitalist V. Communist sub-fights "win" the world for America?

From what I've been able to glean, the Cold War was "won" not through that but by (a) the USSR's own satellites rebeling from within (b) the failure of the economic model of Pure and Centrally Controlled Communism (c) Western cultural penetration and (d) bankrupting themselves in the direct military build-up of The Cold War i.e. having as much as America had.

I don't know. The mess in Iraq is kind of... forcing me to re-examine a lot of preconceived notions I've had about American history.

I mean, we overthrew a somewhat-secular ethnically Sunni military dictatorship because we were attacked by a stateless Shia theocratic organization comprised largely of Saudis and functioning out of Afghanistan and (now) Pakistan... essentially out of a Domino theory being applied to Muslim Extremism instead of Communism.

You may be right but I have my doubts about that official narrative of the Cold War.

My questions about the now force me to take a second look at parallel situations in the then.