Likewise, North Korea sees a weak President and sees potential bargaining opportunities. The longer this states in this tense state, the more likely dissension could come from the North Korean ranks .... possibly. Trump's shown in Syria he's not afraid to retaliate.
It's such ludicrous posturing - are n Korea going to nuke s Korea or the us? No, because they will get annihilated.
Are the is going to pre-emptively nuke n Korea? No, because Russia and China will react, and presumably any sane European will think they have lost the plot.
Are the us going to invade to enforce regime change? Hell no, way too costly in manpower and political fallout. Are the us going to cruise missile key sites in n Korea? No, because the stuff that actually counts is too well buried.
That leaves n Korea getting on with doing whatever they want with missile development, and why is that a problem? Are they going to nuke anywhere? No they aren't because they'd get annihilated in retaliation.
If the us really want to stop them the only real route is to get the Chinese to stop them, and how much do the Chinese care? And even if China decided to get punitive with n Korea, at this point I don't see it making a difference.
The biggest risk in all this is Trump thinking that his penis-stroking posturing actually scares the n Koreans, rather than just pushing them toward some knee jerk insanity. Right now he's the biggest risk to global security going.
He's trying to force the Chinese to rein them in because the last thing China wants is 30 million refugees rocking up in Manchuria.
Why is North Korea such a big enemy these days anyway? They trade with regimes as bad elsewhere in the world.
I think it's the nuclear stuff, mate
I'm not sure other countries are 'as bad' as North Korea. They're well out on their own.
But the nuclear stuff probably wouldn't be a problem if they weren't frozen out of everything, no?Originally Posted by mokbull
Maybe but let's not pretend they're enemy number one because of concerns about democracy or human rights.
Also, I'm not sure how the US expects North Korea to act, given the 28,000 US troops stationed 100 miles south of Pyongyang, and the constant military exercises that the US and ROK perform.
Jong-un (and his father, and his father) are clearly dictators, but it terms of building up their military defenses - I can kind of understand the reasons why. Obviously, they don't help themselves on the global scale with the aggressive statements of destroying the US every 10 minutes.
Well, we (the US) froze them out of everything after the Korean War, so that goes back a long way and you can't let bygones be bygones. In any case, unless you're ISrael, I don't think the West is chill with anyone acquiring capabilities, definitely not a personality cult that starves its people to death.
Yeah, you can see why they would want them ('Axis of Evil'); but in hindsight they would probably have been better off being 'weaker' and more prone to invasion whilst not having to live with all of the choking sanctions. It's probably a bit too far gone now as well in terms of chucking it in in return for concessions. Oh well.
I read the people in charge of making decisions about Korea after WW2 had to ask where it was on the map.
It's quite dumb how Korea was split in the first place. Like most partitions.
What was the alternative at the time? It's a bit like people complaining that we left eastern Europe to rot behind the Iron Curtain after WWII. What was the alternative?
I dunno. It just feels like Korea's been the victim of circumstance. Yanks liberating one half, the Soviets taking the other and, as soon as WWII's over, there's a split. You've got to think, at some point the chance of a Berlin-style repatriation could've taken place.
Reading over some of the recent stuff, the North is always seen as the aggressor but neither Korean nation could realistically go it alone.
I doubt it. This is evidence of wishful thinking, for lack of a better phrase, as opposed to dealing with the facts as they are.
I think nuking China and winning the Korean War is the only plausible alternative, and that probably tells you everything you need to know.
True. Maybe things will come good for North Korea when China runs out of places to build shit. South Korea's already there. Move into that market, Kim.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-c...e=news_central
One person dead after someone rammed a car into a group of counter-protesters to the Nazi rally in Charlottesville.
Just before it hit.
I'm not sure why anybody is surprised at this sort of behaviour. America operates in its own bubble of stupidity at the best of times.
They should have just left the statue up.
Wrecked a sexy Dodge Challenger.
What, using vehicles to kill people? Because that doesn't happen anywhere else...
Lee only sided with the Confederacy because he was more loyal to his home state than the federal government. It's not as if he's John C. Calhoun thinking slavery is the mark of civilisation.
No, I mean the idea of minutemen type characters walking around with AK47s whilst their mates wave Nazi flags.
The vast majority of militiamen are peaceful, law-abiding citizens, and if you start pointing fingers then you only alienate the more moderate gun-toting freaks.
At least we don't need to deal with terrorists.
Tbf I'd love to plough a car in to a gathering of UAF cunts.
Hilariously you fell for the same bubble of stupidity as lost cause morons.
Here is Lee on slavery:
I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy.
Here is Lee on what he felt was appropriate for runaway slaves:
Not satisfied with simply lacerating their naked flesh, I then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash their backs with brine, which was done.
He had, as always, administered the beating himself.
Here he is AFTER the Civil War discussing slavery:
that unless some humane course is adopted, based on wisdom and Christian principles you do a gross wrong and injustice to the whole negro race in setting them free. And it is only this consideration that has led the wisdom, intelligence and Christianity of the South to support and defend the institution up to this time.
As far as I remember, that lashing and brine story was not supported by any evidence and most people think it's false.
In any case, the argument he made against just setting the blacks free all at once was a nuanced and intelligent one. The problem being, of course, that having no institutional knowledge, no education, and very little real world experience, freed slaves would not be in a much better position to improve their stock than they were before. I remember reading how Lee said that 'real' slavery would immediately be replaced by another form of economic slavery; that is the basis of this 'gross wrong and injustice' that he mentions. Lee wasn't an abolitionist, but I've always viewed him as fairly empathic for a military man.
Just no. Why was that nuanced argument needed?
Or, put it another way, what would you think if the Germans started building statues in 1962 and started arguing about nuance?
My ancestors fought for the Confederacy and I'm sure I would have as well at the time. It would simply have been wrong.
Re-integration of freed slaves into society would have gone far better than it did if people had been willing to invest more time and money into transitioning an entire minority out of slavery rather than just emancipating everyone and setting up some black colleges.
Not really sure what youre getting at with the German thing. Are you trying to compare the Confederacy to the Nazis? Or Lee to, say, Goring? That was quick.
Re-integration? They were never integrated. It was always going to be ugly. Has it even happened yet completely? But the idea that the people who participated in chattel slavery were offering nuanced plans because they cared about the Negro? Seriously? Wait always means never.
The reference to the Nazis is about the timetable of the statues. They started appearing 18 years after the Civil War as part of the Redemption movement, specifically the Cult of the Lost Cause. It was specifically aimed to end Reconstruction and to rebrand the Confederacy.
Why shouldn't we talk about chattel slavery like the Holocaust? Walk through what slavery was as practiced and ask why we don't either think of it or discuss it. Remember Lee did not even practice Washingtonian slavery; he freely broke up families. There may be degrees of difference but not of kind.
It just seems a bit selective. If you want to annihilate all monuments to people whose morals fall short by modern standards then fine, but Mount Rushmore is going to look a bit shit.
I don't want to destroy any of them. I think that is a purely municipal matter. I like Baltimore's approach of adding plaques is the best. I think Princeton renaming stuff is insane but universities are going to university. Landrieu's speech won me over for the New Orlean's approach of remove and find museums or society to House them. But I reject the notion that they are the history. At best they are a half telling.
Here is the speech he gave:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t0jQTHis3f4
I'm afraid I don't agree with this, as below.
This is it. You can only assess their views in the context of their time. Lee was far from extreme. So if you're going to engage in historical revisionism by taking down statues etc., it's presumably only a matter of time until Washington D.C. and the state of Washington are renamed given he was a slave owner for most of his life.
Most (if not all) remembrance is a politicised 'half telling', so I would just hope people can do their own research (which they would if they cared), but I can see how a plaque would work provided it was done properly.
You could be a Southerner and have a nuanced opinion on the matter. Presumably you would want to consider what could happen to Southern society if however many million slaves were freed at once as well as what would happen to the slaves themselves, since both would be important in determining the prosperity of the region. It may not be coming from a place of 'love for the Negroes', but no political consideration has that pure a motive. At the very least it seems obvious that Lee was humanistic and didn't view everything from a lens of profiteering, which is enough for me to not condemn him, even if he wasn't sufficiently convinced of immediate abolition to take a stance as an abolitionist himself. I really don't see what you find revolting about him, other than an apocryphal story of him whipping an escaped slave and the fact that he fought for the South.
Slavery was for the economic benefit of the states that practiced it, while the Holocaust was (mostly) a plan to exterminate. Of course slaves were treated very poorly, that's not a debate, but it had nothing on the Holocaust.
Replace it with Mount Richmore
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John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Thin Elvis and Fat Elvis.
I agree with all of this but we don't have this conversation around these topics in the South. For example, look at the first statue wharehoused in New Orleans: the Battle for Liberty Place.
We get a debate about honor, duty, and celebrating. But we never have the following discussion:
What was the Battle of Liberty Place?
Um, the battle to overthrow the municipal government by the White League during Reconstruction.
The White League?
Just what you think it is. Also famous for lynching Italians. They got 11 at once in their best ever showing.
What was the original inscription?
Oh, something about white supremacy.
When was it installed?
In the 30's. I may be getting this one wrong. Anything else happening at this time?
That is kind of a fucked up statue. Hint: if you know your local history down south almost all of them are like this. Wait, that statue was actually the Sons of the Confederacy being pissed about busing in '73? Um, yes.
If anyone ever actually looked this up instead of yet another round of state's rights, the paternalism of American slavery, and how the civil war was about agriculture I'd be happy.
That seems like a conversation you could have about most aspects of how you all came to live in a country founded on displacing and mistreating the natives, and one that is even harder to have by just pretending that these monuments were never put up and revered. That monument (which I'm just reading about) appears to have had an inscription added to it, but it seems like a pretty trivial one beyond it becoming a focal point for plebs, which is another issue.
How's this? The US had a war against them, and they lost. It'd be like you lot having a statue of Napoleon in front of Buckingham Palace.
I would say it's more like the Scotch/Welsh celebrating people we knocked off, since I imagine the people who want to preserve these monuments still see themselves as Americans.
The problem with contextualisation is that you can use it to mitigate/excuse almost anything. It is possible to both condemn and to understand.
The state of these people.
The lad with the guitar giving the best kick of all time.
Where was Mert to defend the statue?
They're such losers.
What are you going to re-name the country when Amerigo Vespucci's slave dealings come under the spotlight? McDonaldland is the obvious choice, but Ronald McDonald must have some historic sex offences on his record.
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