Are you seriously asking for the censorship of people who exercised their right to free speech (asking for the banning of Trump's entry to the UK), in the name of free speech? What incredible hypocrisy.
Also, please don't spam irrelevant links on HN. That's a quick way to get banned.
Didn't read what he was saying. But free speech does not shield you from the consequences from other people i.e I can certainly censor him in my home. The USA government cannot censor him of course, up to a certain point. The government can censor your free speech if it consists of you yelling fire in a crowded movie theater, or so the theory goes. Trump getting a Yuuuuuuge amount of hate from the people is part of their right to free speech.
China wants stability, they don't want trouble on their borders. So if this would cause NK trouble (it might), they'll block it.
Some day, though, NK will fall apart, if only when this Kim or the next runs out of planned economy money to reallocate to bribes. Then China will have a problem on its hands.
China's also an unlikely ally for intervention here as it too was recently reprimanded for continued use of torture in prison and cracking down on human rights lawyers and activists by the UN Committee Against Torture:
> China's also an unlikely ally for intervention here as it too was recently reprimanded for continued use of torture in prison and cracking down on human rights lawyers and activists by the UN Committee Against Torture:
That's like saying that he US is an unlikely proponent of action here (despite the fact that it is, obviously a key proponent of that action) since it, too, has been reprimanded by the UN Committee Against Torture over its use of torture, particularly in the context of detainees at Guatanamo Bay and at secret, exterritorial detention facilities.
If NK didn't fall apart from losing somewhere around 10% of their population in the 90's famine, what could possibly make it fall apart? They've been out of money for a long time. They've been imprisoning just about everyone and shooting people left and right for a long time. It's a lot worse there than any western novel about disutopians ever imagined.
I don't think it's falling apart any time soon, especially now that the regime is nuclear armed.
I can't see how the DPRK is anything but meta-stable, but we have so little visibility into it we just don't know.
3 generations of a single family's dictatorship is remarkable in modern times, usually one of the power bases upon which the regime stands swerves it from such a thing.
The nuclear arming just helps with outside threats, I would think, and no one with the means really wants to destabilize them. As I understand it South Korea shudders at the thought of trying to integrate such a population into their country, one which is on average a foot shorter and significantly less intelligent due to pervasive malnutrition.
That even the Army is filled with malnourished men says something significant, and, yeah, indicates more stability that you'd expect on general principles.
> 3 generations of a single family's dictatorship is remarkable in modern times
Looked at that way, maybe. OTOH, authoritarian one-party-rule revolutionary regimes lasting on the order of 75 years (e.g. Mexico under the exclusive rule of the PRN/PRM/PRI, the USSR) don't seem as unusual, whether with regular turnovers in power to nonrelated successors (e.g., Mexico), irregular transfers of power to nonrelated successors (e.g., USSR); I don't see any compelling reason that one-party revolutionary regimes that practice irregular succession to related leaders would have particularly different lifespans.
I think they still have to be counted as relatively uncommon in modern times, unless you or others can think of more than those two notorious long lived examples. Does the PRC count?
Even then, the DPRK is coming right up to that rough max lifetime, if per Wikipedia you count 1948 for its founding and 1922 for the USSR, the PRI et. al. a bit longer, but then again it wasn't quite the same thing.
> I think they still have to be counted as relatively uncommon in modern times, unless you or others can think of more than those two notorious long lived examples. Does the PRC count?
The Soviet and PRI regimes are convenient because they started earlier than the DPRK regime, they've ended and their lifespan is, for that reason, known. The PRC, Castro's Cuba, and a number of other one-party (mostly, that I can think of, Communist; the PRI regime is an outlier there) revolutionary states that are a bit younger than the DPRK and are still functioning exist, as well.
I think that such regimes become naturally less stable when the whatever misery existed in the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary period (including any major international war on the territory of the country around its formation) and was relieved -- even if replaced new miseries -- by the institutionalization of the revolution has passed from living memory.
> Even then, the DPRK is coming right up to that rough max lifetime
Sure, I wouldn't be surprised if the next couple decades saw the collapse (as one-party states) of most of the remaining early-cold-war era regimes, the DPRK particularly included; the DPRK is the one I'd expect to collapse most messily, too.
China has been propping up the North Korean regime for decades now. Not only do they provide oil to keep the lights (mostly) on, but China acts as a re-shipper for shady North Korean exports like drugs, military hardware, and counterfeit cash. That's where the hard currency comes from to keep Kim in the saddle.
North Korea may end up with a coup or a revolution, but change isn't going to come through economic collapse absent a change in Chinese policy.
Deeply saddening but I doubt Kim Jong Un will actually face international justice. 2014 report aside, the world has long been made aware of the cruelty in N Korea, to no avail. I don't see what's different this time to suggest that the tide will actually turn.
The only way he'll avoid prison is if he dies young, he won't be able to avoid justice for 4+ decades, there are many corrupt old people in prison who thought they could.
Open access to information might make a difference - at some point the world will be blanketed with internet access from satellites/drones/balloons, it will be impossible for the average North Korean to be forcibly kept ignorant forever.
There is really no international justice. The international arena is an anarchy, where countries operate to keep each other in check while expanding their own sphere of influence. NO COUNTRY has ever intervened to "bring justice" to another country.
Even during World War II, the Allied powers went to war against Hitler's expansionism, and not on account of the holocaust. If Hitler had just concentrated on killing people in his own country (like Stalin), no one would have clamored for bringing the Nazis to justice.
I think that you need to move that quotation mark one token right.
One could instance India's intervention in the then East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh; the always bad relations between India and Pakistan had plenty to do with it, but I don't think were the deciding factor. It has been a while since that was in the news, though, and I haven't read up on it since.
From my brief look at that conflict, how the fight in East Pakistan was spilling over into India, millions? of refugees fleeing and that sort of thing that compelled them to act. That they could poke West Pakistan in the eye was just gravy, that this was a humanitarian action was incidental, sort of like Vietnam's intervention in Cambodia which put paid to the Khmer Rouge's extraordinary demoniacal regime. They didn't invade to do that, or have their National Guard equivalent give the PRC a drubbing, they did it to stop the Khmer Rouge from going across the (disputed) border and slaughtering their own people.
> Even during World War II, the Allied powers went to war against Hitler's expansionism, and not on account of the holocaust. If Hitler had just concentrated on killing people in his own country (like Stalin), no one would have clamored for bringing the Nazis to justice.
Not sure if we can say that. There were reports of what's going on smuggled out of Nazi territory, but they were mostly ignored; public opinion learned about the genocide only when Allied soldiers stumbled upon the concentration camps in 1944. Hard to tell what would have happened if people listened to the reports that came even before the war.
When you won't accept a ship full of Jews, and given how many Stalin killed, I don't think anything short of the UK actually being invaded or Perl Harbor would have got the US into WWII. Lot of anti-semites in leadership positions pre-WWII. Hell, Wilson was a KKK member and re-segregated the federal government.
President Wilson was a racist. The screening on March 21, 1915 of "The Birth of a Nation" that he so enjoyed (probably because he was friends of the author of the book it was based). You can search on all that information.
The Wikipedia page ignores all the other articles (do the search) about Wilson's beliefs, friends, and civil rights record. It is also ignored in HS history books just as President Lincoln's dealing with the Dakota is ignored. Let's also remember he was happy about the biggest KKK march on DC in US history. Never mind his dumb meeting after WWII in Paris.
I never said he wasn't a racist. I said he wasn't a member of the KKK. You haven't provided any evidence that he was.
"Not being a member of the KKK" doesn't mean someone wasn't a racist. If he was a racist, we can say that without saying he was a member of the KKK. You'll note that I linked an article titled "President Woodrow Wilson was a Racist", which successfully accomplished this.
The book I saw as the source "Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White" detailing 5 Presidents who were members. The only dispute I see about the book is its deemphasis of churches over Republicans.
I wasn't think the US, particularly amongst the general population, particularly cared if the UK was invaded. There was strong anti-British sentiment, further boosted by the UK effectively defaulting on its WW1 war debts to the US, much of which came out of "ordinary" Americans' pockets.
It is interesting how our mainstream media phrases these things, to make them a question. They frame debate to be 'normal' or 'silly'. For instance, they could also ask:
Will China protect Tony Blair from International Justice?
Will Mozambique protect George W Bush from International Justice?
More generally the U.S. in its dealings with China always want to put our Chinese friends on the back foot by questioning their human rights record. Meanwhile, which country imprisons the most? USA. I would not be at all surprised if there were more people imprisoned inside the USA than there are people imprisoned in the rest of the world.
Hence, when it comes to important matters of human rights it is difficult to take the U.S. government or media seriously.
> I would not be at all surprised if there were more people imprisoned inside the USA than there are people imprisoned in the rest of the world.
I would, since it's common knowledge that the US has 22% of the world's prisoners.
America has an incarceration-per-100k of about 700, while North Korea has an estimated 600-800, but we can't be sure because they're so secretive.
HOWEVER, america's prisoners get medical care, food, and many protections. North Korea's prisoners are starved, beaten, raped, and worked to death in brutal camps that rival nazi germany for pure concentrated evil.
Whether China chooses to exercise its veto to prevent the UN from issuing a strongly worded condemnation or not, North Korea will protect Kim Jong Un from international justice. They have weapons pointed at some of the world's most densely populated areas, and enough fanaticism to use them. Even if the rest of the North Korean leadership were to decide Kim Jong Un was going too far, I don't think the UN would be invited to participate in their palace coup.
> Whether China chooses to exercise its veto to prevent the UN from issuing a strongly worded condemnation or not
A referral to the ICC is a substantively different action than a condemnation (of course, the DPRK is unlikely to cooperate with the ICC, at which point there is a different discussion that may happen at in the UNSC -- or potentially even the GA, under "Uniting for Peace" -- about how to deal with that.)
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/115005/sponsors/HO8...
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