Metal Reviews

Pre-emptive strike

It's the only answer, I'm afraid... talks are all fine and well, but sometimes words have a more everlasting effect when punctuated by a coupla 20 megaton blasts.

Out with the Sunshine Policy, say hello to the Sunburn Policy...

have you seen Kim Jong-il on the news recently? he looks like he's about to die in five minutes.

Maybe he will and the guy that takes over will be less of a crank.

That's JUST what THEY want you to think!

No way, man.

He's grooming his youngest son, Kim Jong-un to take over, who is said to be 'exactly like his father.'

However, a continuation of the family dynasty may not be in the cards; we may see a coup from another member of the WPK, more than likely a general or another part of the ruling class. Thing about the DPRK is that you need to have military backing or you're not going to be able to rule.

either way, the status quo in North Korea isn't going away anytime soon.

How young is this youngest son?

I think another factor that no-one is considering here is the fact that Koreans and black people don't get on very well. Kim Jong Il's probably just listened to some old Ice Cube album and decided that he's going to ruin Obama's It Was A Good Day.

He's 25 or so as of now, and he's a member of the Defense Commission.

He does have diabetes, though. It may be the case that the continuation of the family dynasty is impossible, in which case another identical petty lunatic tyrant with military backing will take over, maybe the head of the Defense Commission or Kim's brother-in-law or who goddamn knows.

N. Korea is an ongoing pain in the ass. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what the next "great leader" will bring, though I suspect it will just be more of the same, if not worse.

Considering that the US and N. Korea are technically still at war, all the bellicosity and protaganism meted out by Dear Leader has been met with immense restaint. As is necessary in a situation like this, I suppose.

Unfinished business, N. Korea is; it'll be interesting to see how this ends. What will happen when they find that they cannot extort any more money from the west?

Anybody here think they'll live to see a nuclear war? Not a full-scale, balls-out go-for-broke exchange between the US / China? Russia / Europe (which, barring some kind of accident or computer glitch, is very, very unlikely), but a very limited on, perhaps on the Korean Peninsula, or the Gulf?
Because, if the so-called tripwire is snapped, that may be the only option... al ong drawn out, brutal war involving a nuclear armed N. Korea will leave tens of thousands dead, and Seoul will be vaporized first.
Whatta mess.

not a major threat

If we do see a nuclear war I'd put money on it not being Korea. They are the world's cranky loners, and whilst cranky loners can do awful things, I don't think they are quite suicidal enough. Basically, launching a nuclear weapon at South Korea would be swallowing a cyanide capsule, surely.

Now, India and Pakistan, on the other hand...

True.
OTOH, N.Korea has not much to lose, and they have a fruitcake running the show. Any person that would use nukes to blackmail another country is not one that should have them. Which brings us to proliferation.
I agree that India / Pakistan is probably more likely to happen though.

Goat, you are right that violence begets violence, but you are inverting the situation. The French revolutionaries were trapped in a violent system- they were victims of violence, and as a result they were brutalised. Why is the leap to the Terror something that was begun by the revolution, and not the inevitable consequence of the original problem; i.e. the rule of the monarchy? Same goes for Russia. And let's not forget that these French revolutionaries were not a group of colonels and intellectuals; they were ordinary people. The revolutionary movement was an intensely democratic one, regardless of how violent it was.

What is totally written out here, is the role of the "non-violent" liberals/conservatives in both of those episodes. After the overthrow of Louis in France, and before the Guillotine got wheeled out, there was of course the small matter of the massive invasion of France by other European powers, with the aim of reinstalling the monarchy. In these wars, far more French people died than did so during the Terror. But who now has become the villain? Of course, it is Robespierre. Same again with Russia; remember the massive civil war/invasion of that country supported and carried out by supposedly enlightened Europeans. That's written out, and again the destruction of Russia becomes solely Lenin's responsibility.

I'm not trying to exonerate Lenin and Robespierre; but there is far more at work in those episodes. You will no doubt agree with that, but if you say that intolerable violence is the inevitable end of revolution, then you buy straight in to this very conservative conception of history that the only LEGITIMATE force is that of the civilised liberals against the insurgents.

Trapt, I disagree with some of your examples. There never was an American Revolution, IMO. There was a handover from colonial to local rule, but the social order in the US was never reversed.

As regards the English Revolution, it is wrong to see Cromwell as the revolutionary IMO. His faction, once the act of deposing the King had been accomplished, often acted as a conservative force, resisting, often violently, the genuine revolutionary sentiment that was rampant amongst ordinary English people at the time but which was never allowed to find political expression.

*has been reading Zizek a lot*

Obviously each case is individual and very complicated; I forgot to make it clear originally that I view nonviolence as an ideal. I don't disagree with anything that you've said, Charles, but I will say that civilised liberals aren't my idea of the nonviolent, and I didn't mean to castigate the revolutionaries - although again, if the answer to oppression is uncontrolled bloodshed, it shows poor leadership if nothing else. The revolutionary government must share some of the blame for the violence, not just the foreigners; the way they dissolved into infighting is a direct parallel of how Lenin's followers fought.

You say if I think that: "that intolerable violence is the inevitable end of revolution, then you buy straight in to this very conservative conception of history that the only LEGITIMATE force is that of the civilised liberals against the insurgents." I'd argue with that: can't we have revolutionary movements without bloodshed? Just because most seem to end in a bloodbath, I'm not denying that they start out with good intentions or that they have genuine cause for action. It's the means, not the end.

Non-violence is the worthiest of ideals, and the consequences of an actual seizure of political power are generally violent. That's why I don't buy into the SWP's overthrow the state strategy. Institutions have to be changed from within, and if that can be done non-violently then so much the better.

But, a non-violent attempt at radical political change will nearly always be MET with violence. You used Gandhi as an example; hundreds of his peaceful followers were massacred by the British. The social progress that has made life tolerable in Britain has, IMO, not necessarily been the direct result of violence, but that dimension has always been there. The victims of an oppressive society have always had to use at least the implicit threat of force; if not in the form of actual Revolutionary Terror, but in the shape of the riot, for example. That has to underpin any concessions from the rulers of a society.

I don't think it's necessary to defend Robespierre or Lenin as individuals, but the popular upheaval that they found themselves at the head of cannot be condemned for its violence in the same way as the existing system could be. Because, the violence commited by an oppressed group is the simple logical result of the already existing oppression. I'm tempted to even say that morals don't come into it. Those people treated violently will become violent, it's just a fact IMO.

It may well be the nonviolent response by Gandhi and followers that made them memorable; another example of this is the American civil rights movement, yet under a President other than LBJ they may have been ignored, it's hard to say. Here's an example you've either been avoiding or not thought of: the Jews in the Holocaust. Nonviolence did them no good, except in historical record, yet even there the uprisings like the Warsaw Ghetto's are given priority.

Agreed that the violence of the oppressed is different to the violence of the oppressor, sure. I think we're agreeing on everything except how necessary responding violence should be... you could say that meeting oppressive violence with further violence means you've lost the moral argument - of course, violence is relative, but the symbol becomes much more potent when nonviolence is used. Of course, it's all very well discussing it now, I have no idea whether I'd respond violently to serious oppression or not, and of course, nonviolence is the hardest philosophy in the world to stick to. An ideal, as you said.

The question about MLK and LBJ is, what was the reason for civil rights legislation? Maybe it was a combination of the persuasiveness of MLK's movement and of LBJ's preparedness to listen. But perhaps there also had to be the dimension of force in there also. Which is more powerful as a motivator? The goodwill generated towards a noble peaceful movement, or the terror that if you don't acquiesce and meet their demands, you will be left with a massive population of people that despise your government, and will be more prepared to follow, say, a Malcolm X path. maybe for every MLK there HAS to be an Malcolm X, and without one the other is pointless.

Anyway, interesting subject. I guess the ultimate point I mean to make is that if you are observing a society in which there is systemic oppression, then there's almost no point bringing morals into a discussion of resistance to that. It's simply an inevitable consequence of it. (admittedly I'm being a bit provocative saying that, it's very different if you are actually involved directly... but then, who is to say that those involved directly are more likely to be right than objective outside observers)

Yes, that's always been the sticking point for me. Without living through a revolutionary time, how can you comment? And yes, fascinating stuff all around; LBJ has been one of my favourite Presidents (neeerd) for a while now due to the sheer inscrutability of what he did, the two sides to him, and the Malcolm X vs MLK debate is timeless.

@Rio: the American and English revolutions didn't really suit my argument but I didn't feel like defending the French and Russian revolutions which you defended in a very interesting way.

I know we are simply coming from opposite sides of the tracks but wouldn't you consider a violent response to oppression is possibly the morally right thing to do sometimes. If the Jews would've violently resisted their nazi captors would that not have been the right thing to do? I have a hard time not seeing nonviolent resistance as simple appeasement, like in the case of Native Americans in the late nineteenth century.

The English revolution is a very interesting subject IMO; not least because of the question of whether it actually was a revolution or not etc. But it seems like there was a whole host of proto-communist activity and belief that has been swept out of mainstream history. History being written by the victors, I guess.

Oddly my history course two years ago mentioned a large socialist movement being involved in the English revolution. However socialists were never mentioned in describing the early 1900 union worker revolts in the US.