[jimjam]

Do you think it's possible that you've eaten up the type of propaganda that you normally berate

NO WAY! This kid is a "free thinker". I got this from an unbiased source. It is common knowledge that "free thinkers" never err. Further more, keep in mind that this kid is, by his own admission, an "astute observer". Shit Man! You can't beat credentials like that with a stick.

people like me, free thinkers

[QatzelOk]

...kept leaving his passport on the counter and walking away, and leaving his bags on the ground and walking away, the latter for which a Chinese customs official kept scolding him in a humorous tone.

Forget what you've been told by Western "authorities" about foreign systems of governance. Instead, observe the everyday actions of the people who live there.

Do they seem overly trusting? If so, then this means they feel free to trust other people in their system. Which is the greatest freedom of all.

The greedbag, selfish, anti-social everyday behavior of suburban North Americans demonstrates what a failure this system is, so the reverse methodology is also filled with insights into proper governance.

[Sivad]

What makes you think the DPRK is a "demented fucked-off shithole"? Do you think it's possible that you've eaten up the type of propaganda that you normally berate others for? I do.

No, you're the one with the ideological blind spot here. My opinion is based on all the information available, not just MSM. The fact that NK society doesn't allow people or information in or out should tell you something. NK could set the record straight anytime by opening up its society for unrestricted travel and allowing its people full free access to communications. You're in deep denial, like flat earth territory.

This is fucked up. Unless you mean to carpet bomb the US to rescue me.

I don't think it's any more fucked up than say denying massive and horrific human rights abuses and pretending that the brutal despotic regimes inflicting that abuse are liberators.

I'm willing to have a serious discussion but if you guys are just going to be silly and outrageous then I'll post silly and outrageous shit too.

[skinster]

You've presented no facts though.

[Sivad]

Extreme censorship and travel restrictions aren't facts?

[Sivad]

Are you in regular close contact with average citizens of NK? Do you skype with them? Are they on Youtube? Did you go there and travel around freely to see for yourself? Do you know anyone that has? Do you know of anyone that has? Where are your facts?

[Sivad]

NO WAY! This kid is a "free thinker". Further more, keep in mind that this kid is, by his own admission, an "astute observer". Shit Man! You can't beat credentials like that with a stick.

So you don't consider yourself an astute observer or a free thinker? You hold yourself out as a dense dogmatic partisan ideologue?

[jimjam]

So you don't consider yourself an astute observer or a free thinker? You hold yourself out as a dense dogmatic partisan ideologue?

The arrogance of youth is way behind me and now I am certain that I am dumber than i think i am.

[Sivad]

The arrogance of youth is way behind me and now I am certain that I am dumber than i think i am.

You seem extremely arrogant, dismissive, and condescending, it doesn't take an astute observer to recognize the rhetorical gimmick of faux humility.

[QatzelOk]

My opinion is based on all the information available, not just MSM. The fact that NK society doesn't allow people or information in or out should tell you something. NK could set the record straight anytime by opening up its society for unrestricted travel and allowing its people full free access to communications.

This thread is about Cuba.

Does Cuba - like North Korea - prevent Americans from visiting freely?
Answer: No. The US government limits this with laws and propaganda (sonic f*ing attacks)

Does the Cuban government refuse American credit cards?
Answer: No. The US government restricts their use in Cuba.

So your idea that North Korea and its governance are "scared of the real world" might not be accurate after all. Look how "scared" your gigantic country is of tiny, little Cuba - a country the size of a golf course in Texas with the same size GNP as the Nutella corporation.

[Sivad]

I'm always fascinated by this level of denial. At what point in the process of ideologization does an otherwise rational person lose all perspective, detach from reality, and just fully commit to bullshit? Is it a conscious decision or is it a subconscious survival/defense mechanism of evolutionary psychology? I'm not sure but I do know that the human propensity for self deception is the biggest threat to long term survival that we face as a species. If we don't get it under control the bullshit is certain to bring about our collective destruction.

[QatzelOk]

I'm always fascinated by this level of denial. At what point in the process of ideologization does an otherwise rational person lose all perspective, detach from reality, and just fully commit to bullshit? Is it a conscious decision or is it a subconscious survival/defense mechanism of evolutionary psychology? I'm not sure but I do know that the human propensity for self deception is the biggest threat to long term survival that we face as a species. If we don't get it under control the bullshit is certain to bring about our collective destruction.

I was just there and had to get acquainted with the idiosyncracies of visiting. My Canadian cash and Canadian credit cards worked fine. But American credit cards are restricted by the US government, and so is the use of US cash in Cuba.

The Cuban tourist industry would be happy to take US money and US credit cards. But they can't because of US-imposed restrictions - US-imposed lack of freedom.

Same with Americans freely travelling to Cuba. Totally discouraged and limited by the USA - not Cuba.

North Korea is not some kind of a monsterous place either. The people and governance there simply had to deal with the USA (and allies) flattening their civilization 50 years ago, and sanctioning them to death almost ever since.

Once can extrapolate and imagine the extent of capitalism's violence outside of the nations it totally controls.

[skinster]

Right. It's like history didn't happen because Sivad doesn't know about it, and thinks his opinion = facts.

[Sivad]

I was just there

Ok but I know a lot of people who were born there and lived under that oppression well into their adult lives. Why should I take the word of a tourist over the testimony of people who possess the lived experience of it?

North Korea is not some kind of a monsterous place either. The people and governance there simply had to deal with the USA (and allies) flattening their civilization 50 years ago, and sanctioning them to death almost ever since.

If you were claiming NK was only monstrous because of the threat from capitalism then I could take you somewhat seriously, but outright denying the atrocities of the NK state is just laughable. The NK state isn't even socialist. Democracy, civil liberty, and enlightened humanism are the basis of socialism, without those fundamental elements a society is anti-social. So you don't have to like renounce your ideology or anything in order to condemn anti-social red fascist states like NK and Cuba.

Once can extrapolate and imagine the extent of capitalism's violence outside of the nations it totally controls.

I'm not denying the vicious imperialism of the West, I just don't see how it justifies the anti-social tyranny of red fascism.

[Sivad]

thinks his opinion = facts.

I could start posting dozens of defector's accounts of the reality inside NK, studies and reports by human rights organizations, etc. There's a shitload of open source intelligence that totally debunks this nonsense, but really if the facts I presented above aren't enough to make you stop and question then that would just be a waste of time. There just aren't enough apologists for red fascism out there to pose a serious problem so at this point it's not worth the attention or energy to bother combating.

If you ever do want to have a serious discussion about the etiology of red fascism I'm up for it.

[annatar1914]

I could start posting dozens of defector's accounts of the reality inside NK, studies and reports by human rights organizations, etc. There's a shitload of open source intelligence that totally debunks this nonsense, but really if the facts I presented above aren't enough to make you stop and question then that would just be a waste of time. There just aren't enough apologists for red fascism out there to pose a serious problem so at this point it's not worth the attention or energy to bother combating.

If you ever do want to have a serious discussion about the etiology of red fascism I'm up for it.

''Red Fascism'' is an Oxymoron, a contradiction in terms employed by the Elites to confuse common people into developing a higher consciousness of their situation in this world. Nor is North Korea a Communist State, hasen't been since the 1960's. It could I think be called ''Fascist'' now, very much so.

[Sivad]

''Red Fascism'' is an Oxymoron, a contradiction in terms employed by the Elites to confuse common people into developing a higher consciousness of their situation in this world.

The right deliberately confuses red fascism with socialism in order to inoculate mass consciousness against the real socialism, libertarian socialism. The term originated with left libertarians and anarchists as a way of distancing their systems from totalitarian systems. Capitalism owes a big debt to red fascism, the horror of it has done far more to preserve the capitalist system than its own merits and achievements. Capitalism probably wouldn't still be around with out it.

[skinster]

I could start posting dozens of defector's accounts of the reality inside NK, studies and reports by human rights organizations, etc.

Go on then. I've repeatedly asked for your "facts".

I see human rights organizations are likely to be correct and true here unlike you know recently when all the major ones like HRW & Amnesty International lied to us about why we should intervene in / destroy Libya and Syria.

[annatar1914]

Dear Sivad, you wrote that;

The right deliberately confuses red fascism with socialism in order to inoculate mass consciousness against the real socialism, libertarian socialism.

So you're a Utopian, I see.

The term originated with left libertarians and anarchists as a way of distancing their systems from totalitarian systems.

The term ''Totalitarian'' is also a word picked up from the Fascists, a surprise, no? It points to the Bourgeosie mentality which plagues almost every Socialism/Communism, along with and in relation to Anti-Theism. ''Totalitarian'' means from Mussolini-speak ''nothing outside the State, nothing against the State, everything for the State'', which even in Mussolini's case was baloney of course.

Real World Communism knows that like with Lincoln attitude towards Slavery in America, bad reactionary ideas don't just go away on their own, especially when there's a pecuniary interest in holding to said ideas. Force has to wake people up first sometimes before an evil can be eradicated, like Suttee or the Thug cult in British India. So, there has to be a period of authority before democracy, so freedom can thrive. And so like Lincoln's war dictatorship during the American Civil War, Communists need a Dictatorship of the Proletariat to combat the Dictatorship of Money

Capitalism owes a big debt to red fascism

Capitalism owes a big debt to the fake ''communists'' and ''socialists'' who created that propaganda neologism.

the horror of it has done far more to preserve the capitalist system than its own merits and achievements.

While it's true that Revolutions are cruel and sometimes unjust, being full of regular sinners and a few genuinely evil men just like the rest of us, the ''horrors'' have been exaggerated ten fold at least.

What keeps Capitalism going is that it doesn't take brilliant minds among the Capitalists-who ARE Class Conscious unlike the Proletariat-to co-opt and propagandize and use every means fair or foul to divide and divert and crush their opposition, whether the opposition is aware that they are an opposition or not, even.

Capitalism probably wouldn't still be around with out it.

Given human nature, i'm still on the fence as to whether Capitalism even can be defeated, failure though it is. However, I'm also sure good and more just men than myself probably said the same thing about Slavery too. The essence is the same monarchial and aristocratic despotism of; ''you work and i'll eat as much of your share as I can manage''.

[Sivad]

Go on then. I've repeatedly asked for your "facts".

Okay, I'll bite.

First, you haven't addressed the facts I've already presented. What about the political repression? The travel and emigration restriction, the extreme censorship, lack of any meaningful democracy? What can reasonably be inferred about NK society from those facts?

You posted an Empire Files interview with Tim Chirac so I guess you take him as an authority on NK. He says in that interview "there is no reason to gloss over the nature of the authoritarian state in North Korea because we know that there are many political prisoners." In an interview with Max Kaiser he says "there's no doubt this is very cruel regime the way it treats its own people [...] this is a country that has tens of thousands of people in these prisons." So do you agree with Chirac here?