North Korean people are collecting cigarette

[best2002]

According to New Focus, a press specialized in North Korea, North Korean people are collecting cigarette filters to use as bed sheet fills. These filters act as substitutes for cotton. There have been reports of North Korean people fighting over cigarette filters thrown on the street. Moreover, when North Korean soldiers tried to raise goats to solve the malnutrition problem, the goats died because the goats had nothing to eat. If you take a look at North Korea through Google Map, you will notice that mountains in North Korea are barren. I don't understand why North Korea is so barren and why the people tolerate the evil dictator rule.

(http://joongang.joinsmsn.com/article/aid/2013/01/23/10095847.html?cloc=olink|article|default)

[AndyTiedye]

1. People Like to Think that if Things Get Bad Enough the People Will Always Rise Up

The reverse is the case. If things get bad enough, the people will be too weak to rise up,
as they are overwhelmed by the struggle to merely survive.

[truebluegreen]

2. Not unlike the U.S.

where the purposedly-decimated middle class is too busy trying to cope with rising costs for everything and falling wages.

[MADem]

3. It's entirely unlike the US. Famine is a hell unto itself, and comparing it to

the challenges faced by middle class Americans is trivializing and really inappropriate, IMO.

People die when there's no food. They don't die when they have to cut the premium channels on the cable in order to stretch the family budget.

[truebluegreen]

4. You think Americans aren't hungry?

Where have you been? If you think the difficulties many Americans are facing are the equivalent of cutting the premium channels on the cable you are sadly mistaken. That's like saying Americans are not poor because they all have refrigerators and TVs.

My point was that deliberately manufacturing economic hardship for your citizenry is a control mechanism, and one that IMHO has been employed in this country since the 70s. It has been Republican policy at least that long, and practiced elsewhere in the world for centuries.

[MADem]

5. Don't try to compare the famine in North Korea to malnourishment and poor diet in USA.

Where have YOU been?

To compare famine that results in seriously stunted growth and death to what is even the WORST circumstance in USA is just a lame ass load of bullshit.

Your point was not taken, because you did not make it. You rather flippantly made a comparison between people starving in NK and (admitted--but nowhere NEAR as dire) hardship (which can run the gamut from cutting the premium channels to foreclosure and more--but not 'ribs-out' starvation) in USA.

A famine stricken North Korean can't go to the church soup kitchen, or the local food pantry--because these things do not exist for them.

Again, you are trivializing REAL hunger--the kind that KILLS people. It's obtuse and offensive.

[truebluegreen]

7. Fine. I'm obtuse and offensive.

What are you? Inquiring minds want to know.

Tell me, what do you know about soup kitchens or food pantries in NK? And why would those be your method of choice to deal with famine? Just curious. 'Cause I've always considered those the RW "solutions" to hunger in this country--contribute to your favorite charity! don't rely on the government.

The reason we don't have "ribs out" starvation in the US (assuming that's even true) is that we have some vestiges of a safety net, for now. Your empathy for North Koreans is admirable but it doesn't mean there isn't REAL suffering in this country. The fact that you call it "malnourishment" and "poor diet" says it all--those poor people just need to make better choices!

You may call yourself a dem but from where I sit it doesn't show.

Buhbye.

[MADem]

8. If you are going to snark and associate charitable programs with "RW 'solutions'"

as if that is a given, there's no talking to you. Not that the "Buhbye" at the end of your rant is conducive to further discussion, in any event. All I can tell you is that when I did a six month stint volunteering at a "feeding center," not a single one of my co-volunteers was a winger or even a Republican. This was rather surprising to me, too, considering the outfit was operating under the auspices of the Catholics.

I never said there wasn't "real suffering" in this country. I'm sure you could find real suffering in the Principality of Monaco if you'd only look. It may not be poverty or starvation, but suffering takes many forms.

Anyone who can dismiss the famine and misery of those poor bastards in NK, notwithstanding their idiot leadership, isn't showing any "dem" credentials from where I sit either. And to get annoyed when I am focusing on that topic--given that it IS the subject of the OP--is rather rich.

So Buhbye backatcha there, bub.

[Lurks Often]

9. Sixty years of constant brainwashing

hasn't helped, nor that if you say anything remotely against the government or the "Leader" in North Korea, you stand a good chance of being hauled off to a labor camp with even less food then the average North Korean gets.

Read a story some time ago, that of those North Koreans that made it to South Korea, virtually all ended up on government aid because psychologically they couldn't cope with the freedom in South Korea.

[Democratic Principle]

6. North Korean

IMHO North Korean is a Goolog or Holocaust Prison Camp. The govt has no regard to health or welfare of its people.
I do not understand the statement that the US has been doing the same thing since the 70's?