Kim Jong LOL
R. Stevens says,
"North Korea apparently tested another nuclear weapon and my mind immediately goes to bad jokes. For those who don’t get it: Fat Man & Little Boy. Xeni deserves part of the blame for asking if I knew any Kim Jong LOLs. You’d be surprised how hard these are to make without ripping off Team America or being racist!"
the latest
latest episodes
ugh
someone just unfunified the lol meme.
lol
I think my mom wore those shades in 1979, unfortunately.
can haz cool shades?
can haz shooooz? where? whoops did they go kaboom?
I did this one ages ago:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/phlyingpenguin/107188478/
Anyone else notice KJI has lost some pretty significant weight recently? I'm concerend for his health.
KJI: I NOT SICK! I LOSE WEIGHT FOR NORTH KOREA NEXT SUPREME TOP MODEL! I ONLY CONTESTANT, BUT BIKINI CHALLENGE SO HARD!
Ha! I was thinking about suggesting Kim Jong LOLs last night. But I was going for I Can Haz Mushroom Cloud.
North Korea is just a puppet of China's plan to invade and conquer the rest of Asia! Sounds like a conspiracy? Think about this... what country has been financially supporting N. Korea from collapsing? China. Who has been providing raw materials and scientific expertise to N. Korea? China.
Who would benefit if N.Korea starts a war with it's neighbor? Probably not N.Korea. Who would benefit?
I'm pretty much with Peanut on this one. What do they REALLY have to gain? Nothing, if you look at it in terms of world relations. (The US ain't the only game in town, folks.) He's basically a funny looking little man with little man's complex, that was given his country on a platter by his father, Kim Il Sung. All he had to do is run with what he had, which is pretty much what he's done. Now, along comes a bit of nuclear technology, far behind anything any other nuclear armed country has, he pops off a 15 kt device, and you'd think the world was going to end. He's NOT stupid, desperate, maybe. But not so desperate as to turn his country into a glow in the dark parking lot. So then, Qui Bono? China, from the destabilization factor, which allows it to wreak havoc with its economic power, the power which WE, the USA, practically handed to them via greedy corporate entities looking to maximize profits at the expense of all else. Why fight a war when all you need to do is buy the enemy out?
@ Sea Daddy #11:
What do they have to gain? A little insurance against invasion, for one.
Bush mentioned three countries in his infamous "Axis of Evil" speech. We invaded the only one that didn't have an active nuclear weapons program. The other two can rest a little more easily in the knowledge that nobody wants to start a war with the crazy mofo who could reduce Jerusalem or Seoul to radioactive ash in under 20 minutes.
Not being invaded by the USA?
Same reason Iran wants a nuclear deterrent.
(Also, Iran doesn't actually have that much oil, and actually needs nuclear energy to survive.)
Iraq didn't have WMDs, and look what happened there: imperial conquest by USA.
The anti-China jingoism in the USA has gotten quite ridiculous. Not that China doesn't have problems (human rights, pollution), but they're not the next superpower looking to pull a Red Dawn on the USA either, so chill.
However, all these wasted scarce resources in the DPRK on nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them reminds me of this Onion article:
N. Korea Detonates 40 Years Of GDP
The dichotomy between the danger of ripping off Team America and "seeming racist" is interesting. Imagine a meeting circa 2001 or 2002 or so:
Trey Parker or Matt Jones: ... and then we'll have the Kim Jong Il puppet sing a sentimental song, something about 'I'm so lonely."
Writer 1: Wouldn't it be funnier if he had a really thick accent, so it came out "I'm so Ronery"?
Politically correct intern: No way, making fun of his accent is offensive and racist!
Trey Parker or Matt Jones: Okay, you're fired. Also, we're going to call security and order them to kick you in the balls.
No one would benefit from North Korea starting a war, including China and least of all North Korea itself. The NK bomb serves the NK leadership in two ways: as a deterrant against invasion, and as a way to perpetuate antagonism with their neighbors and with the West. Both have the same goal of maintaining the status quo, which has essentially been their goal for the last 50 years.
As for why China helps prop them up, I'm guessing they, too, see benefit in maintaining the NK status quo, as the net result with a cantankerous and isolated NK (as opposed to a unified, democratic Korea) is an advantage in the balance of power in the region.
There seems to be a low threshold for being accused of racism, but R. Stevens picked a funny way to phrase it: "You'd be surprised how hard these [jokes] are to make without ripping off Team America or being racist!" You'd be surprised how hard it is to resist being racist!
@#15
As for why China helps prop them up, I'm guessing they, too, see benefit in maintaining the NK status quo, as the net result with a cantankerous and isolated NK (as opposed to a unified, democratic Korea) is an advantage in the balance of power in the region.
Bingo. NK is a buffer against thousands of SK and US troops. Add in the fact that a war between NK and anybody would most likely mean hundreds of thousands of NK refugees heading to China--which is part of the reason China started building a barbed wire fence on the shared border.
It should also be noted that there's no or very little evidence that China has supplied nuclear technology and equipment to NK, while there's plenty of evidence that the USSR and Pakistan (see: AQ Khan) have.
Being told you can't do something is often motivation for doing it.
Potens has two meanings: the first is powerful, the second is able. Man always wants to be able to do what they please. The US saying "you can't do this" makes North Korea into the underdog. Who wants to live that way?
These countries know they won't get invaded if they have nuclear powers, because the underdog is just crazy enough to press the big red button and then it's bye-bye Earth as Cheyenne Mountain responds. The US's biggest nuclear defense is also its own death warrant. Defeating yourself is still not winning.
Can has shiny boom booms!
"These countries know they won't get invaded if they have nuclear powers, because the underdog is just crazy enough to press the big red button and then it's bye-bye Earth as Cheyenne Mountain responds. The US's biggest nuclear defense is also its own death warrant. Defeating yourself is still not winning."
Exactly. If everyone remains sane, then it's straightforward game theory. Counterintuitively, nuclear weapons are 100% defensive. They have great value, but only if they are never used. Yet that value (deterring potential enemies) is dependent on their use being credible. Hence the paradoxical Strangelovian need for automating an action that no sane human would actually choose.
Of course, it can (and has, in the Cold War) get out of hand pretty easily. Carl Sagan famously described the nuclear arms race as two men standing waist deep in gasoline, one holding three matches and the other holding five. I've always found that pretty apt.
i thought the real threat is NK/Iran supplying their new found toys with terrorist organizations...the powers that be don't seem worried about the countries actually using it themselves.
imagine even a small nuclear/dirty bomb exploding in Tel Aviv. that's the reality I see in the not too distant future.
Dirty bombs are useless weapons. The radiation can be cleaned up in a few days. Citing a "dirty bomb" is just fear-mongering (i.e. the Politics of Fear).
As for Tel Aviv, I'd say that's Israel's problem. Just as the USA considered the possible threat of a backpack nuke in NYC or any other major city, at least a decade before the WTC destruction. However, due to size constraints, the resultant damage would be equivalent to a tactical nuke at most. It's not like the ones deployed in ICBMs or bombs that we associate with most nuclear weapons testing, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki.
This is also unsubstantiated fear-mongering of the "boogymen" of terrorism. The nuclear powers, such as Pakistan, actually worry very much about nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists -- none of them want the repercussions from an investigation proving that. So the Pakistani Army has their nukes locked up tight from the religious fanatics, for example... even if it means that the Army is expelled from the official "government" there should it become another theocracy.
The US invade North Korea? A logistical nightmare. Not gonna happen, and they know it. Not to mention a well trained NK army. True it has third rate equipment, but it would be VERY costly in terms of human like, on all sides. I maintain that China DOES benefit. From the destabilization factor, and by extension, the ability to make their opposition "look at the wrong threat". China won't do the "Red Dawn" thing, they don't have to. Like I said before, they will simply BUY US OUT! Hello! Death by dollar! Those who think we are going to come out of this economic problem of ours unscathed will be in for a VERY rude surprise. Who do you think has been buying up all that debt? CHINA! There is even talk of making the renminbi one of the prime currency's as opposed to the dollar. WAKE THE F**K UP! The Chinese think in terms of the long haul, ie, hundreds and sometimes thousands of years whereas we think in terms of instant gratification. They are patiently SELLING us all the rope we need to hang ourselves financially, (and at a very cheap price too)! And all the while, we are watching a funny looking little man with bad Don King hair and glasses like Charles Nelson Reilly, shoot off a few nuclear firecrackers, (relatively speaking). Sure he has the Taepo Dong 3 missile. But weaponizing what he has is another thing. Its not deliverable! So again, I say, Qui Bono? Who Benefits?
Pakistan has real, official, working nukes. Pakistan could fall to the Taliban at any moment. But they're not communist (or pretending to be communist), so using them for scaremongering doesn't have the same cache. If North Korea's nuclear program works as well as their hotel-building program, we're all safe.
So you were fine with Dollar hegemony?
But creating a new Bretton Woods system with the Renminbi as the reserve currency (which actually has the savings required to do so) has you worried?
the devil cannot abide to be mocked, so yes, we should make as many Kim Jong Lols as we can and flood the web with them. If any deserved a place on the gallows next to Cheney, it's him.
I see the real threat of North Korea coming after the collapse. A flood of new refugees, more than the south can handle and China, Japan and all the rest of the region slamming their doors. It's not finding places for the illiterate, unskilled starving that will be the problem, rather it is the releasing of the very dangerous, very serious gangster clique that ran the country for decades. These are people who had nation-level resources to learn and practice counterfeiting, assassination, extortion, drug manufacture, slave trading, international money laundering, arms trading and more. They are not going to take up farming.
Everybody should read Guy Delisles "Pjöngjang" comic, it's a rare find: extremely entertaining and yet educating about a very, very strange land and its Dear Leader.
LOLgrims was funnier.
@#22 (Sea Daddy):
Not to be pedantic, but it's *cui bono.*
@takuan
NK submarines will stop grabbing people off of Japanese beaches and depositing them there instead.
ZUZU #24
Do YOU live in China, or the USA? I have to admit I'm worried about my own a$$, and that of my family and children, rather than your abstract vision of what is and what is not acceptable. So stay on topic, and please get off your high horse. The view up there sucks after awhile. And hypoxia can affect your thought processes enough to suppress your survival instinct. Wait, it seems to have done that already. Just sayin'.....
what would happen if Pyongyang went up in a mushroom cloud and China, Russia and the USA all looked at each other and agreed none of them did it?
Certainly the deaths of a million innocents along with the thug government. How is that different than the million about to starve in the next famine? Or all the deaths that went before?
Something has to break. This is a meaner, poorer world now, the days of wealth that made a sunshine policy possible are over. I also believe that a North/South shooting war would result in the loss of NK's entire million man army in a day or two. Remember Desert Storm.
The sad truth for North Korea is no one really needs her.
Hoo, hilarious. Obama won the White House while promising that his brand of kinder, gentler diplomacy would better rally the world against bad actors. Now is the time to prove it.
For cripes sake people.
Don't you know by now not to use the word "currency" or "dollar" around Zuzu?
Now we have to catch and sedate him again.
Just crash Wikipedia somehow, you'll be fine.
#31: The NK military is really well dug in. Enough of them would survive a nuking to make an awful mess of things; most war games scenarios end up with hundreds of thousands of dead SK civilians.
Obama won the White House while promising that his brand of kinder, gentler diplomacy would better rally the world against bad actors.
Are you referring to the Governor of California, sir?
oh yeah, the guys with the big hats and bloodstained whips would survive of course. I don't think NK has enough of a missile supply to keep fighting after the first day, the air-force would be gone in six hours and all that is left is foot-soldiers marching into minefields, cluster bombs and stand-off weapons. Yes, SK would suffer horrendous civilian casualties, but like NK, I cannot see who would care. It's just the finish of a half-century old proxy war.
Frankly, this official portrait doesn't even require text to be a LOL. That's not the jowly, androgynous bobblehead with the Peggy Lee sunglasses that we all know and love.
Ha! I didn't have to look up the word androgynous. I looked it up years ago after reading a review of an Annie Lennox album - or maybe I looked it up after listening to Sonic Youth's Androgynous Mind. Anyway, I knew that one! (what the hell is Androgynous Mind about anyway?)
Whoa, got off topic there a bit - sorry bout that.
When the NK regime goes down, I hope it does so peacefully.
For this reason:
I want artists to be able to buy posters and statues and entire wall murals and repurpose them as advertising, or for general mockery.
You know the stuff I'm talking about; those heroic ultra-realistic pieces showing Dear Leader and Great Leader magically increasing the productivity of laborers with on-the-spot direction.
Then trade your USD for some RMB while the former are still worth anything, and start learning Mandarin, if you really believe the Chinese are "taking over".
But as far as I can tell, the Chinese "Gosbank" will be as aloof and indifferent to your suffering as the USA "Gosbank" has been. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Do you really believe that you received some kind of favoritism as a citizen of the USA because of dollar hegemony? Do you really have something to lose by their being a new "Number 2"?
Maybe you are that politically connected, but I imagine if that were so you'd just take your wealth offshore before the house of cards comes crashing down, and live on a private island somewhere, as I'm sure has happened with all of the largest parasite corporatists of the Bush regime.
But for those of us unprivileged to be a member of the "political class", any fiat currency system is fundamentally flawed. So whether it's the Federal Reserve Note or the People's Currency, more than likely does us neither any better or worse.
(Though, as I said, perhaps somewhat better with the RMB because at least the People's Bank of China as actual savings to provide credit with, whereas the U.S. Treasury is in several trillions of debt, so all the Federal Reserve can do is create inflation -- most notably "quantitative easing".)
Killing two threads with one quote. Christopher Hitchens on beliefs and totalitarianism.
Living in Seoul, I just wanted to say that it's amazing how little South Koreans care about North Korea and it's threats. No one back home believes me when I say this, but there has been absolutely no change in the mood of Seoul in the last couple of days. As one of my friends said, "North Korea has been threatening us for 50 years". And another: "Foreigners worry more about North Korea than we do". It's the ultimate Boy Who Cried Wolf. Of course, the government must spring into action, but the general populace remain unmoved. As part of my job (English teacher, natch) I have met hundreds and hundreds of South Korean people, and not one of them has ever admitted to being either scared of the North, or having any desire to be reunited with them (if really pressed, most will admit they do want a unified country, just not in their own lifetimes). And I always ask them about it, which amuses the hell out of them. That is the general attitude here toward the North: derisive amusement (in my experience anyway). The older generation of Koreans who felt real sadness about their divided country are all dying out.
and I find that very comforting.
The upside is that Alan Alda might get some work again.
If only USAmericans had that kind of "take it in stride" attitude after 9/11, instead of being such chronic flinching cowards afraid of their own shadows -- willing to sellout their freedoms for the illusion of safety.
Even now, when people are finally starting to concede that terrorism is at least a backseat priority to the current economic and environmental calamities, apparently half of them in the USA still agree with Dick Cheney with all this "We're at war. It's a War. We'll torture anyone we want in secret prisons with no oversight and kangaroo court "military tribunals" just to show the world not to fuck with us!" bullshit.
Sorry, but 9/11, while tragic, has always been an act of criminal destruction. And while the destruction is a classic example of misleading vividness, the truth is that automobile accidents, cancer, heart disease, are each, every year more deadly than the WTC destruction was.
You're vastly more likely to die in a car crash, from a heart attack, or from cancer, than you are to die because of a terrorist act. Try to have some perspective, please!
I, for one, commend the ROK residents for not succumbing to the politics of fear.
yeah, talk to any of the generation that survived the war in Europe. They knew when to be afraid - and when not.
@Antinous - I've never seen a picture or portrait of Kim Jong Il that needed a caption to be funny.
Have you seen the dear leader lately? He isn't lookin' so hot... if that's really even him.
ZUZU? I have one word for you. G O L D.
A couple of Kim Jong-il cartoons ...
http://politicomix.blogspot.com/2009/05/kim-jong-il-and-bill-clinton-solution.html
http://politicomix.blogspot.com/2009/05/kim-jong-il-wonders-wwvmd.html
"I cannot see who would care."
I think the people downwind from the burning NK cities dropping radioactive ash on their farmland will care.
INVISIBL MEGAT0NNEJ
DOOMSDAY DEVICE FAIL.
FALLOUT: IT HAZ A FLAVR.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/5130264/Kim-Jong-il-the-life-and-times-of-the-leader-of-North-Korea.html