Current current events thread

[lisztisforkids]

N.Korea got the bomb. Discuss.

[mephisto]

I read something completly shocking in the newspaper today. USA has also got the a bomb

I must have read/heard all wrong those times when I saw american politicians talk bad about Iraq, Iran and North Korea having atomic bombs. Wich is bad, because we all agree that atomic bombs are bad.

But on top of this the USA is supporting countries like Israel and Pakistan who also have got the atomic bomb. I am sure those politicians who support Israel but not North korea don't know that the USA and Israel have atomic bombs.

Tomorrow I will send the american goverment a letter were I will write that both the USA and Israel have atomic bombs. I will of course write that everybody can't know everything about their country(even politicians). So right after they have read this letter and found out about this alarming truth, the US politicians will destroy all of their atomic bombs(naturally since they are against N.K having nuclear weapon sthey will wan't to set a good example by destroying their own ) and force Israel, Pakistan, France etc to do the same thing, and we will all have a much more peacefull world

[henrah]

USA are gonna have to get more bombs now to compensate. Then N.Korea will need more bombs. There'll be so many bombs and threats from having bombs, but nothing much will happen.


Then Israel will put a whoopee cushion underneath N.Korea as a joke and the bombs will fly.

[nicco]

Current current events

Croatia - England 2-0

hehehe

[jas]

Meh. I made a vague stab at getting myself up to speed on current affairs, but a quick flick through even a newspaper as un-broadsheet as the Metro was a thoroughly depressing experience. (Until I got to the comedy gold in the letters page. )

I have no interest in the "my penis is bigger than yours" competition currently being held by world leaders. Nor in religious wars (as an atheist - or, at least, an agnostic - this makes about as much sense to me as an argument over whether we should be worshipping Santa or Gandalf). Or in the obesity epidemic, the anorexia epidemic, how many 12-year old single mothers there are, what Paris Hilton has done recently or what wall the government has pissed our money up against most recently.

The only thing I'm particularly interested in reading in a newspaper at the moment is climate change. And that's not exactly a barrel of laughs, either. I'm not apathetic; I just don't see how anyone could keep up with the news on a regular basis and not want to leave the planet.

Oh, actually, there was one shocker in the news recently that left me thinking that the world had obviously turned on its axis. Scotland won a football match. Against France. Worrying.

Jas

[jpianoflorida]

so isn't there a big difference in an athiest and an agnostic?   sounds like you basically just don't know what to believe in or not believe in??   

[jpianoflorida]

pianistimo.....I may need your input here! where are you? lol

[pianistimo]

i'm printing out chopin etudes.  if a bomb goes off, i won't know it anyways.  i'm smiling at all the fingering.  imagining it's cortot's.  and, all those notes in french.

it's terrible to say - but have you ever gotten so wrapped up in something that you really don't care if the person next to you is an agnostic or athiest.  now, isn't an agnostic a person who would believe if they could see, and an athiest a person who would believe if they thought it was true.  of the two, i think that i would more likely convince an agnostic - because athiests usually want to be cremated and don't want to have to pay more for funeral services because converting to a religion.

i think it's all the funeral parlors fault.  that's what i think. 

[prometheus]

Bush failure at diplomacy resulted in N-Korea probably having a nuclear weapon. It's amazing. It almost seems like Bush wanted N-Korea to get one.

At least they lose a bomb every time they do a test.

Of course it's pretty strange to think countries don't want to develop nuclear weapons while countries like India, Pakistan, Israel, etc have them. And of course US, UK, Russia and France too.

The result may be that Iran, Japan, S-Korea, S-Arabia will soon also have them. And then maybe countries like Brazil, Germany, Turkey etc may want to have them too.

Never before has a country disarmed his own nuclear arsenal. It's going to cost the US and co a lot of money. Don't forget that about 2 million N-Koreans already died of starvation. Just like UN sanctions resulted in genocide in Iraq; 1 to 2 million children at least. Plus of course the 600,000 people more than Saddam could kill as a result of the war the US and UK started.

I hope they are so smart that they will make all N-Koreans extremely rich. Then they will rebel. The poorer the people of N-Korea the less chance of rebellion. Just like the 1 to 2 million children killing US sanctions on Iraq helped Hussain keep power. Maybe that's what they want.

As I said before, some think that Kim Il Jong is the dove and the generals are the hawks. If the Generals take over it may be even worse.

[pianistimo]

if anyone had diplomacy with north korea in the last 45-50 years - who would it be?  they have been the undiplomatic ones.  killing even their own people.  it's really the whim of a dictator.  and he's no dove.  not with the constant threats he's making.  prometheus - i admire the fact that you stand up for the civilians and children of these countries...but to equate their countries failure of diplomacy on bush is really not true.  there are no leaders that can seem to talk sense into north koreas made up mind.  they want power.   

[musik_man]

No one's confirmed that the explosion was in fact a nuclear weapon.  It was only equivalent to 5 kilotons of TNT.  It could very easily have been a dud or a fraud.

https://www.washtimes.com/national/20061009-115158-2477r.htm

Prometheus, while I dislike sanctions in general, we need to give the blame for starvation where it's due, the North Korean government.  If it produces anything, communism produces famines that kill millions regardless of any trade restrictions.

[ihatepop]

They should bomb themselves.

ihatepop

P.S. I wonder if there are people on piano street who are north korean.

[pianistimo]

our dentist back in california was from south korea, but he had relatives in north korea.  it's terrible how all the money is spent on warfare and people are starving.  he always asked for prayers for those people.  i think the general population of north korea must be very tired of their government.  it's certainly not in the hands of the people (i don't understand why they always say 'people's republic' and 'people's this and that.'  it's a sacrifice that the government thought would pay dividends and the sacrifice has been the people's work and wages - not to mention dignity.

i've not travelled in that part of the country and profess a certain amount of ignorance - but from books i've read and reading about kim jung - he's not as 'dovish' as he looks.  maybe it's a sort of point of desperation that these people are coming from.  i certainly hope they don't have an atomic bomb and that it WAS tnt.

 

[henrah]

I think the dove remark was just for comparison to the generals being hawks.

[prometheus]

US 'doves' aren't 'real doves' either. It's also about contrast.

About the cause of the famine. It's not really that communism doesn't work in the economic sense; it does produce some nice results in Cuba. It's about helping the people overthrown their government. If the people are dying and suffering then this will never happen. Their currect famine was caused by several things. They had some failed harvests. They decided to spend even more incredible amounts of resources on the military. They think they need to because they know without a strong army the US or someone else will attack at some point in time. So they learned the lesson of Iraq. They need WMDs, otherwise they will be attacked like Iraq was attacked.

If sanctions are added then it will hit the population, not the government. It will probably help the goverment, just like in Iraq. And that was the purpose of the sanctions in Iraq. Remember that Albright said that the 1 to 2 million dead children 'were worth it'? She meant keeping Hussain in power. Because a power vacuum would lead to what we have in Iraq today. And that's bad. The same arguments used by the Bush I administration not to overthrow Hussain in the first way. They want a harsh military junta. It was just that the name 'Saddam Hussain' was a little embaresing for them.

i don't understand why they always say 'people's republic' and 'people's this and that.

It's a pun aimed at Orwell's 1984...

[elspeth]

P.S. I wonder if there are people on piano street who are north korean.

If there are, you can bet they're not in North Korea - the internet is virtually unknown there, very few people have access and all communications sent online are censored by the  government. All information the ordinary people have comes from the official channels... I seem to remember Michael Palin writing in one of his travel books that any country with a Ministry of Information must by definition have something to hide... many a true word...

[prometheus]

There is a American(?)-Korean girl on pianostreet that oppossed calling Kim Jong-il crazy.

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?action=profile;u=10420

[zheer]

   Over six hundred thousand civilians in Iraq have died as the result of the invation and the number continues to rise, now talk about war crime, who is the reall terrorist, honestly. Iraq was a far safer place under saddam, in-fact Iraq is only in the situation it is now because America and the united kingdom have terrorized IRAQ since 1991.
   Since i have relatives in IRAQ i can tell you many people have died from hunger since the sanction imposed by the west. This is a decloration of war by the west.

  Do you know what the funy thing is, troops are shooting and killing people in the middel-east, and here in london we have a government that gets defencive  in if a muslim women covers her face. The attitude is ,well if you live with us you must do as we think you should do , and if we decide to invade your country, we will do what we like whether you like it or not and yes you guys are the bad ones.

[lisztisforkids]

   Over six hundred thousand civilians in Iraq have died as the result of the invation and the number continues to rise, now talk about war crime, who is the reall terrorist, honestly. Iraq was a far safer place under saddam, in-fact Iraq is only in the situation it is now because America and the united kingdom have terrorized IRAQ since 1991.
   Since i have relatives in IRAQ i can tell you many people have died from hunger since the sanction imposed by the west. This is a decloration of war by the west.

  Do you know what the funy thing is, troops are shooting and killing people in the middel-east, and here in london we have a government that gets defencive  in if a muslim women covers her face. The attitude is ,well if you live with us you must do as we think you should do , and if we decide to invade your country, we will do what we like whether you like it or not and yes you guys are the bad ones.

 Than tell all of your acuaintances in Iraq to stop blowing each other up. The majority of the civialin causltys are from Iraqi on Iraqi, indirectly realted to the invasion. Just imagine, what would happen if the Shia's and Sunnis got along? the U.S. might leave.

 I am confused, if you hate the west so much why do you live there? Why not move to an Arabic country were the women are forced to wear a veil?

[prometheus]

I 'hate' the west also. I just 'hate' the middle east even more...

Plus he answered that question before. What's the point?


Also, when there were crazy macho muslim scum with guns running around in my country trying to run the show I would probably kill them as well if they refused to leave peacefully.

(Well, actually I would probably die first in a Ghandi-style attempt to get them out. I am just trying to sound like a normal reasonable person.)


As for N-Korea. The fact that no extra radiation has been detected and the weak blast may indicate they did not test a nuclear device. All nuclear tests we humans did increased the amount of radiation particles in the atmosphere of earth by a large amount. Of course this was an underground test. But it it was a actually a 'nukular bomb' then they must have excecuted it really well in terms of trying to protect the enviroment. In that case, really the French can learn a lesson from N-Korea. They would just send some secret agents to blow up some civilian ships.

[thalbergmad]

Do you know what the funy thing is, troops are shooting and killing people in the middel-east, and here in london we have a government that gets defencive  in if a muslim women covers her face. The attitude is ,well if you live with us you must do as we think you should do

No, here in London we have a Muslim Community that cannot stop whinging about every percieved slight and appear to make little effort to integrate.

[kony]

"Russia's defense minister expressed "no doubt" that North Korea detonated a nuclear test and said the force of the underground blast was equivalent to 5,000 to 15,000 tons of TNT."

i don't think N. Korea will start any wars any time soon. they'll probably only use their weapons as retaliation in the event of an invasion.

i don't think this is of concern.

[prometheus]

N-Korea wants to end the still continuing war. They except the US to pay for this treaty. The US doesn't only refuse to pay, they also refuse to negotiate. At least, that is what Bush does not do. Under Clinton it was different. It was only after Bush talked about the axis of evil thingy and attacked Iraq N-Korea realised they needed WMDs, otherwise they may be invaded. So they restarted the project stopped by Clinton.

[henrah]

Global politics sucks ass.

Who's up for Mars? Best invest in it now before it also becomes overrun with WMD-needing communists.

[zheer]

  I am confused, if you hate the west so much why do you live there? Why not move to an Arabic country were the women are forced to wear a veil?

  Look man, it was'nt always like that, but in recent time it is difficult for me to be on the same side as those that invade nations, and BTW i rather see a women in veil, than the thousands of of western prostitutes, have noticed that almost 100% of net pornography is filled by wetern women, like animals, incest , rape, bondage, gand rape,and so on and on is a western thing, pedophilia, anyway thats not my business.
    Make no mistake The UK and the USA have blood on their hand , cold murderes, many of those who realect these people say things like, well if you dont like it go back to you country You F**cking  forighner, racism is only the start. So no if it war you wont it is war you will get i know whos side am on. The war is fueld by a deep hatred toward all muslims and the entier arab nation, and in  return they are looking for oil money land and power.
  You might ask why terrorizm, well if a nation has no military power to defent its nation from  super powers like the USA then they have no option, but to use other methodes, one then gets labeld a terrorist, but if troops invade murder rape torcher muslims they get called heroes , or democracy.

[henrah]

well if a nation has no military power to defent its nation from super powers like the USA then they have no option, but to use other methodes, one then gets labeld a terrorist, but if troops invade murder rape torcher muslims they get called heroes , or democracy.

That's only on this side. How do the troops that 'invade murder rape torcher muslims' as you put it get labelled in the country they are invading? Heroes I doubt, terrorists or something close I don't. The labels of terrorists is a subjective label, only coming from a certain point of view. Same with good and evil.

[prometheus]

They are viewed exactly as what they are; an occupying force.

[lisztisforkids]

[thalbergmad]

Too much English, American & Iraqi blood has been spilled in this pointless war.

The Iraqi people and other members of the so called religion of peace are doing such a great job of killing each other, that they don't need any assistance from the coalition any more.

About time Presidents Bliar & Bush grew some nuts and admitted they were wrong.

[lisztisforkids]

Too much English, American & Iraqi blood has been spilled in this pointless war.

The Iraqi people and other members of the so called religion of peace are doing such a great job of killing each other, that they don't need any assistance from the coalition any more.

About time Presidents Bliar & Bush grew some nuts and admitted they were wrong.

 True. My government has made my country much more of a target by this whole fiasco.