As pointed out yesterday on the Bradley Manning discussion, the US is starting to get to the point where it can't credibly criticize other countries for their human rights abuses, given what goes on in this country.
I don't want this to turn into a discussion of whether the US is worse than North Korea, but both have abused - and continue to abuse - human rights in abysmal ways.
Sorry, no. Making the comparison assumes there's some parity, which is completely misleading.
In a different context, it's about as outlandish as claiming the space shuttle is really no different from the wright flyer. After all, both are capable of flight.
Nobody has the right to leave NK
That alone says loads.
The most essential freedom is the freedom to disagree and leave. North Koreans don't have that right.
Just see what they tried to do with Assange and Kim Dotcom.
They could've done that countless times with less public people.
This didn't stop US from bullying NZ and UK. NZ police even acted unlawfully because of this bullying.
Like all generalisations (even this one) that is completely incorrect. I believe there are a lot of people in US custody who are denied that right?
I'm not saying they shouldn't be where they are, or that they should have the right to leave, but your blanket statement is wrong.
Also see Dmitry Sklyarov for an example of when stepping on the wrong corporate toes can get you into all sorts of trouble in the USA.
Like in every other country? This is pretty much a given, so I generalized within obvious constraints.
"Also see Dmitry Sklyarov"
Yes, that's very bad
I know, and I know that it's (societally speaking) a necessary tool. But many see the rate of incarceration in the US as a massive problem itself.
Note that I in no way compare the DPRK with the USA, I just think that talking in absolutes or framing them as opposites doesn't really help. We got a lot of problems in the west too...
that's not true, both in terms of citizenship and geographical position
Good, because the grand-parent wasn't trying to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_the_United_States says, "According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 2,266,800 adults were incarcerated in U.S. federal and state prisons, and county jails at year-end 2010."
It seems like the United States is about an order of magnitude worse, even if you subtract the tiny fraction of US prisoners who are locked up to keep other people safe. And that's not even getting into how the countries' respective foreign policies violate human rights outside their borders, but I suggest reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War to start to get a handle on that.
It's not that the Korean rulers are more moral than the US rulers. It's just that they're less effective.
USA: 0.71% of the population NK: 0.63-0.83% of the population
200000/24,451,285 = 0.0081 2,266,800/313,914,040 = 0.0072
I'd say those are roughly the same - it certainly doesn't support a claim that the US is an order of magnitude worse.
The population of the US is around 315 million. The population of North Korea is around 24 million. [1]
If we divide the number of prisoners by the countries' populations, US incarcenates .69% if their people. Assuming NK incarcenates 175,000, that is .71% of their people. These numbers seem similar enough, so perhaps we should instead look at prison conditions. By all reports, North Korea has significantly worse conditions. It's incorrect to claim that North Korea rulers are "less effective".
1. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_populati...
North Korean rulers are less effective in that North Korea remains a small, poor, weak country; consequently North Korean rulers are only able to incarcerate 0.7% of a much smaller population. They would be much bigger human rights violators if they were able to establish control over a larger territory that included more people, as the US government has over the past century and a half.
Furthermore, in NK prison camps execution--including child execution--is commonplace. Maybe that will give you a clue as to why their prison population isn't higher.
Grow a brain.
The wars that the US have been waging are fucked up, I agree, but we're talking about the way a country treats its own people.
I don't think the US is perfect, and I readily admit that it has a shameful level of police brutality, but NK is a completely different ballgame.
I'm disappointed at the level of your response.
This in itself is a disturbing statement. So what are you saying, it's ok as long as the US is not as bad a NK? Very disturbing. In a modern society, in what the US should be leading as a shining example to rest of the world there should be -no violations of human rights-
The US treats a lot of people very reprehensibly, but comparing living conditions in the US to living conditions in NK is like comparing a Mercedes to a pogo-stick.
My comment is not about comparing anything to anything, it's about the throw away comments that "x isn't as bad as y so we're not doing too bad" when instead of pointing fingers we should be looking inward towards our own flaws. People in glasses houses and all that.
(Yes yes, it's still not as bad a NK but you should still try to fix these issues)
You said "So what are you saying, it's ok as long as the US is not as bad a NK?"
That statement is completely orthogonal to what I was trying to say. Nowhere did I ever imply that something is okay just because it's not as bad as something else. That whole concept is completely nonsensical. If Australia became as bad as NK and then NK grew to be even worse than it was before, Australia wouldn't suddenly be doing something "okay" just because NK has set a new bar for despicable. Hopefully nobody in this thread is so stupid that they couldn't deduce that on their own.
What I was saying is that you're a complete asshole if you think the US is "like NK". That sort of comparison is completely inane and extremely insensitive to actual North Koreans actually being executed because their father was caught devising a plan to escape the country or whatever. None of them can leave. The US is NOTHING like North Korea and I wish ill will upon everyone who makes the comparison. I hope you all sit on a thumbtack or something.
The day no citizens can leave the US is the day I will acknowledge a similarity between the US and NK.