Predicto

Not to be snarky, but the 20 million civilians living in Seoul are glad you are not in power either.

I think the chances of this are less than 1 percent. China is trying to get rich and powerful. The last thing it wants is a war on its borders, a war that would involve 1) millions of starving refugees pouring into China and 2) massive amounts of US troops on its border. I have no illusions that the Chinese do anything for altruistic reasons, or that they play fair in politics or business, but they are not some sort of Dr. Evil supervillains either.

At least twa will come back to defend his claim, or at least try to change the subject. That's something.

I waited a month and a half to see if mikered30, btfoom, or nonniey would respond to this straightforward debunking. They clearly were invested in the thread and the subject matter, and then they just went silent. It's kind of frustrating, knowing that the same behavior of 1) reposting something from the conservative alternative media, 2) believing in it wholly, 3) disappearing when it turns out to be exaggerated or false, and is going to be repeated in future threads, and is being repeated all over the Internet on all sorts of subjects. ---------- Post added April-10th-2013 at 11:13 AM ---------- This may be accurate, or there might be more to the story. I did a google search and the first 100 hits were from right wing blogs and message boards repeating this blog post verbatim. I got tired of digging. I'm going to wait a few days and see if the story gets clarified or debunked. As this thread has proved, you can't trust a National Review blog story without letting the dust settle for a few days.

Really, no military strategist is concerned that North Korea could successfully invade South Korea. You are correct about that. However, Seoul is only 35 kms from the DMZ, and is one of the largest cities in the world. The best estimates I have seen indicate that North Korea could lob well over 20,000 artillery shells per hour into downtown Seoul where 11 million people live, and at least 3 times that amount into the northern parts of the Seoul metropolitan area (where several million people live). Even if there is no risk of ultimately losing the war, there is an overwhelming likelihood of enormous civilian casualties in the hundreds of thousands (or even millions) before we manage to silence those gun emplacements. The nuke stuff is just a sideshow in comparison, and an actual invasion from the North would be a joke.

It's a little more complicated than that. North Korea is the most racist society in the world. They have been conditioned to believe that Koreans are the only "clean" race of people and that contact with the outside world will pollute their gene pool and undermine their natural moral superiority. This includes China as well. They are not even really communists. They are a horrible blend of the racist and military-first aspects of far right totalitarianism and the collectivist aspects of far left totalitarianism. Hitchens wrote about it here. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2010/02/a_nation_of_racist_dwarfs.html

Exactly. Perfectly put. Seoul is basically 20 million hostages, all within reach of North Korea's outdated but still lethal artillery. Literally millions of civilians could be killed within the first hour of bombardment. North Korea would be wiped out soon afterwords, but that wouldn't be much consolation. People who complain that US is "looking weak" when it "puts up" with North Korea's antics don't appear to have spent much time thinking about those millions of South Koreans.

Good for Iowa, anyway.

Nah, mostly we give them surplus grain (with the nice side effect for grain producers of propping up grain prices in this country). If North Korea doesn't get that grain, we have to find somewhere else to dump it. Usually we dump it in Africa, which ensures that local African farmers can't make a profit (no one can compete with free stuff), which ensures that the farmers will go out of business, which ensures that Africa will have another famine, which ensures that we can send more grain there and keep our grain prices propped up. It's just business.

I suspect that video is a parody. Some of the comments are claiming that the translation was completely different than the words actually being spoken by the narrator. Funny as heck tho.

These 4 people picket in front of my building with great frequency. The woman is kind of cute, but it gets old. :doh:

They are not going to attack South Korea. They have zero offensive capability and would be mopped up after killing a lot of people for nothing. They know this. All of this :pooh: is just to try and have some relevance/leverage in the world, and to make sure that no one can ever invade them.

Hey, if your farts are as bad as my old college roommate's were - it IS a declaration of war. Chemical warfare bordering on nuclear. :thud:

There are literally 20 million South Koreans living within shooting range of North Korea's artillery. Seoul is right near the border. http://www.businessinsider.com/map-of-the-day-how-north-korea-could-destroy-seoul-in-two-hours-2010-5?op=1 It's easy for someone sitting in Richmond Virginia to say "we need to send them a message... sometimes you have to make sacrifices."

Everyone is sick of them, but what can you do? Make a military move against them and 500,000 people in Seoul would die in the next day. They can't defeat us, but they have hostages.

Sadly, by highlighting the absurdity of the picture out to the entire world, the Huffington Post has probably just consigned these poor people to the gulag. The regime definitely will find "not being enthusiastic enough when near the Young Leader" to be a capitol offense.

Age range for dating thread

I was going on this picture posted above, where his head appears to be fully double the size of anyone else in sight. http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web05/2012/7/25/10/enhanced-buzz-4261-1343225329-0.jpg ---------- Post added July-25th-2012 at 02:26 PM ---------- [/color] Oh lordy. Who would think that WWIII would start with such innocent beginnings. :paranoid:

Ok. Is it just me, or does little Kim have the biggest head in the world? I mean, lampshade big. Olmec statue big.

She has a following of random guys all over the interwebz.

I feel sorry for him. Do you think it was a circumcision gone wrong? :paranoid:

Yeah, that naked bike ride thing is happening all over the place. London, Barcelona, Portland. We had it in San Francisco last weekend. Frankly I don't get it. People do not look their best on a bike, and many people who do these rides do not look that good to begin with. On the other hand:

Good luck Wizards.... Davis sure woulda looked great in a Warriors Uni.

Fixed that for ya.