North Korea

First his assertion that you're either "on parade or at home" - simply not true.

Second - his idea that "The concept of liberty or humour or irony or happiness or love doesn't exist." is also entirely baseless. But since he doesn't speak Korean, I suppose he wouldn't have understood any of the jokes, or irony that Koreans use. Nor, I suppose, has he read any of the defector testimonies about love and romance in the DPRK.

Third this idea that "We now have millions and millions of North Korean children... who have been raised to believe that they live in a regime that is run by a god." is one that is insulting to the intelligence of north Koreans, and is so indicative of the neo-colonial mindset.

He adds nothing of value to the discourse on the DPRK beyond spreading FUD.

Edit - also, he can't even get basic facts about the DPRK right - the nation was formally established on September 9, 1948 (I remember the day cause it's my birthday, along with having read about it hundreds of times).

Time for a WATMM meetup in North Korea! =D

  On 8/7/2015 at 6:46 PM, chenGOD said:

First his assertion that you're either "on parade or at home" - simply not true.

Second - his idea that "The concept of liberty or humour or irony or happiness or love doesn't exist." is also entirely baseless. But since he doesn't speak Korean, I suppose he wouldn't have understood any of the jokes, or irony that Koreans use. Nor, I suppose, has he read any of the defector testimonies about love and romance in the DPRK.

Third this idea that "We now have millions and millions of North Korean children... who have been raised to believe that they live in a regime that is run by a god." is one that is insulting to the intelligence of north Koreans, and is so indicative of the neo-colonial mindset.

 

He adds nothing of value to the discourse on the DPRK beyond spreading FUD.

 

Edit - also, he can't even get basic facts about the DPRK right - the nation was formally established on September 9, 1948 (I remember the day cause it's my birthday, along with having read about it hundreds of times).

that's a very literal, autistic reading of what he said

yes the children have been raise to believe that they live in a regime that is run by a god

that's not to say that they actually believe it...but rather with all the propaganda everywhere, they are being raised to believe it

would you not say that's true?

and liberty, humor, irony

clearly he's not talking about the actual people of NK being joyless humorless husks of human beings

but rather the cultural and social atmosphere that is forced on them

  On 8/7/2015 at 5:32 PM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 8/7/2015 at 5:17 PM, chenGOD said:

Christopher HItchens opinions on North Korea are about as worthwhile as compson's.

 

lol how so?

 

are you familiar with Chris Hitchens Limpy? He's one of the most infamous 'liberals turned neocon' who essentially imploded from narcissism and bloodthirsty idiocy, so why would you trust/take somone even remotely seriously like that on international issues? id give you the benefit of the doubt and assume maybe you don't know about Hitchens legacy, but he's not too far off from serial killer eyes Sam Harris, so not sure?

its disappointing to see any member of watmm promoting the work of neocons :(. Sometimes I make the mistake of thinking Limpy has reasonable views but then this just sort of pulls the rug out from under that. Anybody in their right mind wouldn't promote him, truly (ignorance of who he is is maybe a mini excuse at best)

only slightly disagree with Chen here, that Compson's opinions were far fucking dumber than Hitchens, Hitchens didn't just absorb right wing hysteria about muslims, he created 'intellectual' arguments for why we should kill them (which is far more dangerous)

  On 8/7/2015 at 7:58 PM, John Ehrlichman said:

 

  On 8/7/2015 at 5:32 PM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 8/7/2015 at 5:17 PM, chenGOD said:

Christopher HItchens opinions on North Korea are about as worthwhile as compson's.

 

lol how so?

 

are you familiar with Chris Hitchens Limpy? He's one of the most infamous 'liberals turned neocon' who essentially imploded from narcissism and bloodthirsty idiocy, so why would you trust/take somone even remotely seriously like that on international issues? id give you the benefit of the doubt and assume maybe you don't know about Hitchens legacy, but he's not too far off from serial killer eyes Sam Harris, so not sure?

 

its disappointing to see any member of watmm promoting the work of neocons :(. Sometimes I make the mistake of thinking Limpy has reasonable views but then this just sort of pulls the rug out from under that. Anybody in their right mind wouldn't promote him, truly (ignorance of who he is is maybe a mini excuse at best)

 

only slightly disagree with Chen here, that Compson's opinions were far fucking dumber than Hitchens, Hitchens didn't just absorb right wing hysteria about muslims, he created 'intellectual' arguments for why we should kill them (which is far more dangerous)

 

I'm confused - what is the definition of a neocon? And what is a neocon's agenda?

Plus the serial killer eyes of Sam Harris comment is just lol. No information in that comment at all.

  On 8/7/2015 at 7:58 PM, John Ehrlichman said:

 

  On 8/7/2015 at 5:32 PM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 8/7/2015 at 5:17 PM, chenGOD said:

Christopher HItchens opinions on North Korea are about as worthwhile as compson's.

 

lol how so?

 

are you familiar with Chris Hitchens Limpy? He's one of the most infamous 'liberals turned neocon' who essentially imploded from narcissism and bloodthirsty idiocy, so why would you trust/take somone even remotely seriously like that on international issues? id give you the benefit of the doubt and assume maybe you don't know about Hitchens legacy, but he's not too far off from serial killer eyes Sam Harris, so not sure?

 

its disappointing to see any member of watmm promoting the work of neocons :(

 

i don't have to agree with someone on everything to agree with them on some things

in fact, I get very suspicious when people can't agree with someone on anything

(for instance, the fact that you've never agreed with anything Sam Harris has said

i'm guessing because Greenwald called Sam Harris a 'neocon' or something

and so it seems you never actually bothered to find out what SH actually says and believes)

i know you like to call people 'neocon'

(you called me a 'neocon' for my position on the Ticking Time Bomb scenario lol)

but Sam Harris simply isn't a neocon

Christopher Hitchens...maybe, that's another story

  On 8/7/2015 at 7:43 PM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 8/7/2015 at 6:46 PM, chenGOD said:

First his assertion that you're either "on parade or at home" - simply not true.

Second - his idea that "The concept of liberty or humour or irony or happiness or love doesn't exist." is also entirely baseless. But since he doesn't speak Korean, I suppose he wouldn't have understood any of the jokes, or irony that Koreans use. Nor, I suppose, has he read any of the defector testimonies about love and romance in the DPRK.

Third this idea that "We now have millions and millions of North Korean children... who have been raised to believe that they live in a regime that is run by a god." is one that is insulting to the intelligence of north Koreans, and is so indicative of the neo-colonial mindset.

 

He adds nothing of value to the discourse on the DPRK beyond spreading FUD.

 

Edit - also, he can't even get basic facts about the DPRK right - the nation was formally established on September 9, 1948 (I remember the day cause it's my birthday, along with having read about it hundreds of times).

 

that's a very literal, autistic reading of what he said

 

yes the children have been raise to believe that they live in a regime that is run by a god

that's not to say that they actually believe it...but rather with all the propaganda everywhere, they are being raised to believe it

would you not say that's true?

 

and liberty, humor, irony

clearly he's not talking about the actual people of NK being joyless humorless husks of human beings

but rather the cultural and social atmosphere that is forced on them

 

What cultural and social atmosphere? That of going to the beach? Or school kids playing ultimate with visitors?

As to the first point - how about the millions of Americans who believe that Ronnie Raygun is a saint? I mean yeah they don't literally believe it, but they are raised to believe it. It's a stupid, stupid, stupid irrelevant comment that does nothing to progress the dialogue necessary to actually accomplish any goal of improving the lives of north Korean citizens.

Also, flol he didn't pay a bribe to get in to the country, he paid a visa fee. The same as one pays when visiting many countries.

Look, things are fucked up in the DPRK, there are grave human rights issues, and food security is obviously an issue. But Hitchens' whole tired schtick is about othering the people. And it's not even worth discussing. There's a reason North Korean watchers/policy advisers don't bother with any of that populist nonsense.

whatever, he's a golfer. I just thought they wouldn't let someone in to play piss poor golf. His handler seemed to really enjoy it though, probly the only chance he'll ever have to play that course.

Dunno if everyone has seen this already but I think this departures episode is one of the better ones I've seen on north korea. probably a lot of stuff in here you guys know about but i thought it was a lot less biased than some of the other things I've seen (aheemmVICE). The guys are a bit goofy but they really grew on me through the series. It's a good travel show in general if you're interested:

[youtubehd]1SHI4ruonnk[/youtubehd]

[youtubehd]_owR9ygz6JY[/youtubehd]

That show is actually what got me and my gf into travelling

  On 8/12/2015 at 5:48 AM, Rubin Farr said:

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/laibach-meet-first-western-band-perform-north-korea-1512467

Not the first Western band to play in North Korea - http://forum.watmm.com/topic/77927-north-korea/?p=2346346

Check out the audience's reaction to a Kpop group:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=dlM9YiFkclw

Apparently Laibach is playing in a 60-seat venue in a conservatory.

North Korea now exists in their own little delusional time zone, 30 min apart from the rest of planet Earth, because "those Imperialist dogs won't tell us when to strike the hour!"
I wonder if they even have a contingency plan for when that fat fuck keels over? Maybe he threw a shot into his "wife", but who knows.

http://news.yahoo.com/north-korea-celebrates-time-zone-pyongyang-time-164038128.html

  On 8/14/2015 at 7:03 PM, Rubin Farr said:

North Korea now exists in their own little delusional time zone, 30 min apart from the rest of planet Earth, because "those Imperialist dogs won't tell us when to strike the hour!"

I wonder if they even have a contingency plan for when that fat fuck keels over? Maybe he threw a shot into his "wife", but who knows.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/north-korea-celebrates-time-zone-pyongyang-time-164038128.html

lol what does that even mean?

The effect the time zone change has on anything is pretty meaningless. Time zones in general are pretty arbitrary - for example a country the size of China is one big time zone. Same goes for India (and as I just found out, India is also at a 30 minute offset from UTC). Myanmar also has 30 minutes offset. Nepal has a 45 minute offset. In North America, Newfoundland has a 30 minute offset.

Look at this time zone map - tell me how stupid it is for Belarus to be UTC +3 while parts of Turkey and the Ukraine that are further east are only +2.

Queensland disconnects from the rest of Australian eastern standard time by an whole hour when they go on daylight savings and we don't every summer. I can still drive over the border into new south wales and not have to negotiate a paradox in the space time continuum, it's only the man made devices called clocks that change.

I agree the hour is irrelevant, Saudi Arabia drew its own time zone so all Muslims could worship sala (prayer time) in unison, so that at least has a logical reason. but what purpose is a 30 minute difference? As delusional as N Korea is, they are still trying to do business with China and Russia, but imagine the difficulties with telling time, it's a basic function of international business, and will only make things more difficult for them. Take for example Saudi Arabia again, for decades their weekend was Thursday and Friday, because Friday is the holy day of worship, and like the US who use Sunday as the Christian day of worship, they wanted the 2nd day of the weekend for worship. well, now in the internet age where they need to be accessible 24/7, they have changed the weekend to Friday and Saturday. you can only fight the trend of globalization for so long, but with N Korea they can stage that fight indefinitely, at the cost of their citizens' well being (which doesn't really seem to be a priority).

they also have purportedly executed their Vice Premier, bc yeah, N Korea.

  On 8/14/2015 at 7:47 PM, Rubin Farr said:

I agree the hour is irrelevant, Saudi Arabia drew its own time zone so all Muslims could worship sala (prayer time) in unison, so that at least has a logical reason. but what purpose is a 30 minute difference? As delusional as N Korea is, they are still trying to do business with China and Russia, but imagine the difficulties with telling time, it's a basic function of international business, and will only make things more difficult for them. Take for example Saudi Arabia again, for decades their weekend was Thursday and Friday, because Friday is the holy day of worship, and like the US who use Sunday as the Christian day of worship, they wanted the 2nd day of the weekend for worship. well, now in the internet age where they need to be accessible 24/7, they have changed the weekend to Friday and Saturday. you can only fight the trend of globalization for so long, but with N Korea they can stage that fight indefinitely, at the cost of their citizens' well being (which doesn't really seem to be a priority).

 

they also have purportedly executed their Vice Premier, bc yeah, N Korea.

Somehow companies have managed to deal with the vast complexity of different time zones until now, I'm not sure this will change because of North Korea's sudden shift.

Of vastly greater importance, this is the swimming pool at one of the Kim family residences:

sorta looks like a dink

oh my

  On 8/14/2015 at 11:15 PM, DerWaschbar said:

sorta looks like a dank

agreed my procyon friend

thx chen you always know how to pump a guys tire

newfoundland is a 30 mins dif zone too

really? Strange

  On 8/15/2015 at 4:54 AM, DerWaschbar said:

thx chen you always know how to pump a guys tire

newfoundland is a 30 mins dif zone too

Yeah they are standing up to the imperialist bastards.

haha sexual

  On 8/15/2015 at 11:36 AM, LimpyLoo said:

haha reproductive