Astonishing videos

[dieseltaylor]

http://www.flixxy.com/bear-animal-nature-film.htm

How the hell!!!

http://www.flixxy.com/little-north-korean-girl-playing-guitar.htm

The advantages of having limited state owned radio and TV!

Television

Main article: Media of North Korea

Broadcasting in North Korea is tightly controlled by the state and is used as a propaganda arm of the ruling Korean Workers' Party. The Korean Central Television station is located in Pyongyang, and there also are stations in major cities, including Chŏngjin, Kaesŏng, Hamhŭng, Haeju, and Sinŭiju. There are three channels in Pyongyang but only one channel in other cities. Imported Japanese-made color televisions have a North Korean brand name superimposed, but nineteen-inch black-and-white sets have been produced locally since 1980. One estimate places the total number of television sets in use in the early 1990s at 250,000 sets.

[edit] Radio

See also: Radio jamming in Korea and Voice of Korea

Visitors are not allowed to bring a radio. As part of the government's information blockade policy, North Korean radios and televisions must be modified to only receive government stations. These modified radios and televisions should be registered at special state department. They are also subject to inspection at random. The removal of the official seal is punishable by law. In order to buy a TV-set or a radio, Korean citizens should get special permission from the officials at places of their residence or employment.

North Korea has two AM radio broadcasting networks, Pyongyang Broadcasting Station (Radio Pyongyang) and Korean Central Broadcasting Station, and one FM network, Pyongyang FM Broadcasting Station. All three networks have stations in major cities that offer local programming. There also is a powerful shortwave transmitter for overseas broadcasts in several languages.

The official government station is the Korean Central Broadcasting Station (KCBS), which broadcasts in Korean. In 1997 there were 3.36 million radio sets.

[Affentitten]

Apparently the doctoring of radios and TVs to receive outside media is fairly common though, as is the import of black market Chinese stuff. South Korean soap operas are religously followed by many North Koreans, though the official party line is that the soap operas themselves are propaganda, cooked up by the South to depict unimaginable luxury belonging to ordinary citizens. Like microwaves and three meals a day.

[Michael Emrys]

Y'know, every time I feel like really bitching about life in the US, I remind myself that it could be worse. What if I had been born in some place like Sudan or North Korea, for instance. Doesn't mean we should be complacent or not try to do better, but it's good to keep things in perspective: it could be a lot worse.

Michael

[Affentitten]

You shouldn't bitch about life in the US. OK, if you're poor, black and sick, the US is not as great as if you're in Holland or Sweden. But it's a hell of a lot better than being poor, black and sick and living in rural Mali.

I read a great book about life in North Korea earlier this year. It's the collected experiences of various defectors. The most poignant moment is when this women (a North Korean surgeon) makes it over the border into China. She stumbles into this village and wanders into a private house courtyard. There's a bowl on the ground filled with rice and a few scraps of chicken. She hungrily devours it, wondering why this food is left out on the ground. Then it dawns on her: a dog in China eats better than a doctor in North Korea.

The book is called "Nothing to Envy". I highly recommend it to anyone here who feels like they're getting a rough deal in life.

[gunnergoz]

I'll happily bitch about life in the US as long as there are individuals in this country who are dedicated to enriching themselves at the expense of the American middle class, all the while dismantling the framework of democracy to suit their whims.

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request

[Michael Emrys]

If you want victims look to children, especially of the poor, or the mentally ill. And they don't spend any time making democratic institutions serve their greed either.

Agreed.

Re the middle class though, I think their influence peaked out sometime between the mid-'50s and mid-'60s and has been in decline since then. The change might not be as great as they think it is, and much of it is their own doing, but it's there. Changes in tax and other government policies allowed the super rich to grab up ownership of an ever greater portion of the economy and it has largely come at the expense of lower middle class workers, who then found themselves losing ground rapidly. I've spoken with many men in their sixties and older who during their adult years had good paying manufacturing jobs and could support their families on a single income. Now, their children are scrambling to just get by with often having to work at two jobs.

Some of this was the inevitable result of the US losing its position of the dominant industrial power in the world, but we could have ridden out that storm and still retained an equitable economic system had we chosen to do so. Instead, we made a lot of bad choices in establishing spending priorities. All classes contributed to that, but by virtue of holding the most decisive positions, the upper class contributed the most. They called the tune and the rest of us followed.

Michael

[dieseltaylor]

Its well-known now that children and at least dogs have an innate sense of fairness. I think there is a huge frustration where fairness has disappeared from society. Obviously fairness is a matter of point of view and tends to the majority view.

Somewhere or other I have read what the acceptable multiple appears to be from bottom wage to top wage. ANd whatever it is does not exist in the US and not in the UK. The underlying sore is that the "managers" and the share-holding institutions are involved in a game where their salaries are arranged between them.

Perhaps it is easier to look at the symbiotic relationship between estate agents/realtors where in the UK they are paid on a percentage of sale price, the mortgage industry which is pushing mortgages and rewarded for the more they sell. and the Govt. who raise more tax as property prices rise. And in the UK again, a Prime Minister riding on popularity from the illusion of rising wealth. Who was interested in calling the bubble and stopping it.

Same for the US mortgage market. The super-rich could only win and all of those who fed richly, if only for a decade, on a sickening fatally flawed boom powered by cheap money.

My feeling is that whilst any country has a first past the post electoral system it is doomed to polarisation rather than better Government.

Anywa an American writing:

A century ago, class war was acknowledged as a distinguishing feature of American modernization. Vast industrial trusts led by Standard Oil ruled America’s economic and political system; and the tycoons who ran them were mockingly referred to robber barons. Given this oppressive situation, class war was an accepted political concept, embraced by Muckrakers, radicals, unionists and ordinary working people. Everyone knew that the only way to fight both the trusts and robber barons was through class warfare.

Today, class war no longer dare speak its name. Manufacturing has given way to financial capital as the defining sector of the global economy. And one of Standard Oil’s progenitors, Citibank, strongly influences the decisions determining federal economic policy. Sadly, today’s super-rich, whether members of the country club set, contributors to the Republican party, subsidizing a right-wing think tank or financing the “populist” Tea Party movement, are rarely derided as robber barons.

Today’s robber barons know that the media matters and have effectively bought-off the popular opinion makers. Stylishly groomed corporate executives and financiers, who are morally no better then slick thieves, have become celebrities. They are flattered on reality TV shows, praised on business programs and voyeuristically celebrated by the popular media. The American media knows better then bite the hand that feeds it.

Class, and especially middle class, is an effectively slippery category in American political discourse. It refers to everyone and no one. The U.S. Census Bureau does not use or define “middle class,” but has set the median income for a family of four in 2008-2009 at $70,000. A 2008 Pew Research survey found half of all Americans describe themselves as middle class.

Most Americans recognize class struggle in, on the one side, the ceaseless reports of high-levels of unemployment, increasing foreclosures and mounting unpaid bills and, on the other, in the skyrocketing stock market and unspeakable bonuses paid to financial wheeler-dealers. This presents one very powerful representation of class difference, but obfuscates the deeper conflict over the growing polarization of wealth in America.

According to NYU economist Edward Wolff, wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated. In the 15 years between 1983 and 2007, the share of wealth owned by the nation’s top 1 percent households grew to 34.6 percent from 33.8 percent; and the top 20 percent of U.S. households in 2007 controlled 85 percent of the nation’s wealth, up from 81.3 percent in ’83. The fate of America’s vast “middle class,” the remaining 80 percent, has only gotten more dire: in 2007, it controlled 15 percent, down from 18.7 percent in 1983.

It is time for Americans to reclaim the concept of class war. This needs to be done for two reasons: first, to actively combat the great squeeze ruining the lives of untold millions of Americans faced with financial catastrophe; and, second, to end the campaign by the super-rich (in league with government tax policies, subsidies and other give-aways) and the media to keep alive the fiction of America is a classless society free of class war.

[costard]

Sadly, today’s super-rich, whether members of the country club set, contributors to the Republican party, subsidizing a right-wing think tank or financing the “populist” Tea Party movement,

This is a little rough on the Republicans - the law giving corporate donors the right to remain anymous was passed when the Democrats held the majority. They might be out to screw the little guy, but at least they aren't two-faced about it.

[ASL Veteran]

Here are some more videos for you guys. Somehow they seem appropriate

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQMIe_mK9BY

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/meet-your-friendly-neighborhood-communists/

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/msnbcs-lawrence-odonnell-on-air-i-am-a-socialst/