In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
Now if someone just the fucking lunatic up in the United States. There could possibly be progress.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Beyond the bluster, the Trump administration has been quietly engaged in back channel diplomacy with North Korea for several months, addressing Americans imprisoned in the communist country and deteriorating relations between the long-time foes, The Associated Press has learned.
It had been known the two sides had discussions to secure the June release of an American university student. But it wasn’t known until now that the contacts have continued, or that they have broached matters other than U.S. detainees.
People familiar with the contacts say the interactions have done nothing thus far to quell tensions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile advances, which are now fueling fears of military confrontation. But they say the behind-the-scenes discussions could still be a foundation for more serious negotiation, including on North Korea’s nuclear weapons, should President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un put aside the bellicose rhetoric of recent days and endorse a dialogue.
The contacts are occurring regularly between Joseph Yun, the U.S. envoy for North Korea policy, and Pak Song Il, a senior North Korean diplomat at the country’s U.N. mission, according to U.S. officials and others briefed on the process. They weren’t authorized to discuss the confidential exchanges and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Officials call it the “New York channel.” Yun is the only U.S. diplomat in contact with any North Korean counterpart. The communications largely serve as a way to exchange messages, allowing Washington and Pyongyang to relay information.
Drowned out by the furor over Trump’s warning to North Korea of “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has expressed a willingness to entertain negotiations. His condition: Pyongyang stopping tests of missiles that can now potentially reach the U.S. mainland.
Tillerson has even hinted at an ongoing back channel. “We have other means of communication open to them, to certainly hear from them if they have a desire to want to talk,” he said at an Asian security meeting in the Philippines this week.
The interactions could point to a level of pragmatism in the Trump administration’s approach to the North Korean threat, despite the president’s dire warnings.
On Friday, he tweeted: “Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely.” But on Thursday, he said, “we’ll always consider negotiations,” even if they haven’t worked in the last quarter-century.
The contacts suggest Pyongyang, too, may be open to a negotiation even as it talks of launching missiles near the U.S. territory of Guam. The North regularly threatens nuclear strikes on the United States and its allies.
The State Department didn’t immediately comment on Yun’s diplomacy. The White House also had no comment. A diplomat at North Korea’s U.N. mission only confirmed use of diplomatic channel up to the release of U.S. college student Otto Warmbier two months ago.
Trump, in some ways, has been more flexible in his approach to North Korea than President Barack Obama. While variations of the New York channel have been used on-and-off for years by past administrations, there were no discussions over the last seven months of Obama’s presidency after Pyongyang broke them off in anger over U.S. sanctions imposed on its leader, Kim. Obama made little effort to reopen lines of communication.
The contacts quickly restarted after Trump’s inauguration, other people familiar with the discussions say.
“Contrary to the public vitriol of the moment, the North Koreans were willing to reopen the New York channel following the election of President Trump and his administration signaled an openness to engage and ‘talk about talks,’” said Keith Luse, executive director of the National Committee on North Korea, a U.S.-based group that promotes U.S.-North Korean engagement.
“However, the massive trust deficit in Pyongyang and in Washington toward each other has impeded the confidence-building process necessary to have constructive dialogue,” he said.
The early U.S. focus was on securing the release of several Americans held in North Korea.
They included Warmbier, who was imprisoned for stealing a propaganda poster and only allowed to return to the U.S. in June — in an unconscious state. He died days later. Yun traveled on the widely publicized mission to Pyongyang to bring Warmbier home.
Despite outrage in the U.S. with Warmbier’s treatment and sharp condemnation by Trump, the U.S.-North Korean interactions in New York continued.
Yun and his counterpart have discussed the other Americans still being held. They include Kim Hak Song, a university employee detained in May accused of unspecified “hostile” acts; Tony Kim, a teacher at the same school, accused of trying to overthrow the government; and Kim Dong Chul, sentenced last year to a decade in prison with hard labor for supposed espionage.
But the American and North Korean diplomats also have discussed the overall U.S.-North Korean relationship. The two countries have no diplomatic ties and are still enemies, having only reached an armistice — not a peace treaty — to end the 1950-1953 Korean War. Twenty-eight thousand U.S. troops are still stationed in South Korea.
In its own convoluted way, North Korea has indicated openness to talks in recent weeks, even as it has accelerated the tempo of weapons tests.
On July 4, after the North test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile that could potentially strike the continental U.S., leader Kim added a new caveat to his refusal to negotiate over its nukes or missiles. Instead of a blanket rejection, he ruled out such concessions “unless the U.S. hostile policy and nuclear threat to the DPRK are definitely terminated.”
That message has been repeated by other North Korean officials, without greater specification. Nor have they offered an indication as to whether Pyongyang would accept denuclearization as the goal of talks.
Still, advocates for diplomacy, including some voices in the U.S. government, view the addendum as a potential opening.
“North Korea is assessing its options,” said Susan DiMaggio, a senior fellow at the New America think tank who participated in unofficial talks with North Korean officials in Oslo in May that were also attended by Yun. “They recognize that at some point they have to return to the table to address what’s becoming a crisis. That’s what they are weighing right now: the timing of engagement.”
Any negotiation would face huge skepticism in Washington given North Korea’s long record of broken promises. The last serious U.S.-North Korea negotiations collapsed in 2012 when Pyongyang launched a long-range rocket that derailed an agreement of a North Korean nuclear freeze in exchange for U.S. food aid.
North Korea’s weapons program has developed significantly since then. As a result, its price in any such negotiation is now likely to be far higher. At a minimum, Pyongyang would renew its long-standing demands for an end to joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises — which are set to resume this month — and an eventual peace treaty with Washington.
To date, the Trump administration has heavily concentrated its diplomatic energy on cranking up international pressure on North Korea’s government, in particular pressing China to lean on its wayward ally. Last weekend, the U.N. adopted its strongest economic sanctions on Pyongyang.
Trump has been widely accused of injecting a new element of unpredictability and even chaos into U.S. policy toward North Korea, especially with his tweets and proclamations this week. It’s unclear what effect they may have on the back channel contacts being maintained by Yun.
On August 11 2017 12:25 m4ini wrote: TIL that in case those Guam missiles actually fly, the US would not be able to officially invoke Article 5. It's safe to assume that the NATO members would still offer military assistance, but technically they wouldn't need to.
I actually didn't know that. Makes Guam even "better" of a target from an insane minds standpoint.
edit: what's your guys opinions on that, do you think NATO countries would be morally obligated to offer help in case Guam gets hit (splashed, whatever)? I feel like there's compelling cases to be made for both arguments.
If the other countries didn't reply in a positive they can kiss NATO goodbye and all cooperation funding, military, and intelligence goodbye.
NATO explicitly refers to acts of aggression in the North Atlantic and European theatre. There's a reason why the UK didn't invoke NATO when Argentina invaded their land in the South Atlantic. It was because they couldn't, NATO simply didn't apply.
Naturally the bonds with the United States go far beyond the explicit terms of the NATO agreement and there would be cooperation, just as the US provided the UK with satellite information throughout the Falklands War, despite not being a participant. But the idea that NATO would be invoked over Guam is pure ignorance, Guam isn't covered by NATO. America's allies around the world would cooperate to varying degrees, not out of treaty obligations, but rather out of historical geopolitical bonds.
President Trump on Thursday sharply amplified his criticism of the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, raising the possibility that Mr. McConnell should relinquish his position if he cannot deliver on top legislative priorities.
After venting for days, on Twitter and in private, over the Senate’s failure to pass a health care repeal bill before the August recess, Mr. Trump was asked if Mr. McConnell should consider stepping down.
“I’ll tell you what,” Mr. Trump began, speaking to reporters outside his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., “if he doesn’t get repeal and replace done and if he doesn’t get taxes done, meaning cuts and reform, and if he doesn’t get a very easy one to get done, infrastructure — if he doesn’t get them done, then you can ask me that question.”
Kickboxer, is there some part of you that is bothered by the fact that you expressed outrage at the idea that people would argue against a Harvard professor and call him a pseudo-intellectual, and at the exact same time you're telling us that academics are systematically corrupted by this great cultural marxist conspiracy and that's why they always seem to come out against the far right on subjects?
In other words, you find it really unbecoming that people would dare to speak against an academic in the middle of this argument where you're speaking against academics?
As for NK, it's covered by the aegis of Chinese MAD. There has been some talk of it being irrational for China to go to war with the United States over an unprovoked American attack on NK. This is absolutely true, it would be highly irrational, after all, the world would get completely fucked up, NK isn't as valuable as the world, therefore it would be irrational. However that's the entire point of MAD.
If the Soviet Union had said "we're going to roll into West Berlin, that's all we're going to take, West Berlin only, not West Germany, not France, just West Berlin" and then done it, it would have been completely irrational for the United States to go to war. NATO would nuke the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union would nuke NATO, hundreds of millions would die. It would obviously be far more rational to just let them take West Berlin. And they know that, just as you do. They know that if you are a rational actor then you will never decide that MAD is the optimal course.
The foundation of MAD is saying 1) These are my red lines. 2) If you cross my red lines I will flip the fuck out in the most irrational way possible. If you don't let me have this not only will I take my ball and go home, I'll burn the entire stadium to the ground. My response will be so catastrophically disproportionate we'll both have nothing left. I promise you that. Even though it makes no fucking sense that I would act that way, I absolutely will. 3) Given that I am clearly an insane person, please do the rational thing and don't test me.
In a rational world filled with rational actors there isn't a situation where the optimal solution is to kill most of the world's population in a nuclear hellfire. Nuclear war is fundamentally irrational, MAD is built on irrationality. That's what the "it wouldn't make sense for China to get involved" people are missing. That whether or not it makes sense isn't always important. That the only reason we survived the Cold War at all is because whenever one side promised to be insanely irrational about something, the other side said "okay, let's be rational and not test them". And even then, we got lucky. We exist in one of the few timelines in which the Cuban Missile Crisis didn't trigger war.
China has a mutual defence treaty with North Korea built on the promise of MAD. An attack on North Korea is one of their red lines that they have assured us will cause them to act really irrationally. Now maybe they're bluffing. Maybe deep down they're rational and when forced to choose they'll not follow through. I have absolutely no clue either way. But here's the thing, nor does anyone else on tl. And whether it'd be irrational to follow through simply doesn't matter, and has never mattered. The only way we survive in a nuclear world is that when one side says "this is my red line which will trigger me to act really irrationally", you don't test them on it.
And sure, China's interests in the Korean peninsula have changed massively since they first swept the US army back to the beaches in the Korean War. Nobody is debating that. Times have changed. Hell, the Chinese turn towards the United States in the 80s is probably a big part of the reason that NK became so desperate to get their own nuclear deterrent. But they still renewed their mutual defence treaty with NK, as recently as 2001. And whenever asked they still promise to defend NK against an attack.
Personally, I think the odds are pretty good that China would love a third option. That if NK randomly shelled SK again they would say "we said we'd defend you if you got attacked for no reason but we're not gonna defend you after you shelled SK". But if Trump unilaterally attacks NK there is no third option. There is honour their MAD obligations or betray their MAD obligations. And I don't like those odds.
On August 11 2017 22:43 kollin wrote: I would like you, if you could, to explain in your own words what points he's making in this video, and why they're justified for example.
The evolution of an ideology which has in the past century repeatedly harmed humanity (when manifest as a political doctrine in actual reality) – namely hardline marxism/communism/communitarianism and its utter failure to produce anything resembling a functioning human society – appears in 2017 popularly dressed up as cultural marxism, built on the foundation of the post-modern / deconstructivist reasoning that invalidates the objective value structures, traditions, achievements and salubrity of our current civilization in lieu of your next type of cutting-edge egalitarian utopia-to-come, to be enforced on the grounds, and by use of, the same mechanisms as all previous related ideologies (in very short: ordering people how they can and cannot behave, and what you are permitted and not permitted to say, own or do) that have already resulted in genocidal terror, a whopping zero success rate (Venezuela, anyone?), and merely loads of didactic evidence how actual fascism is born and propagated in the real world.
Hint: the mechanisms revolve around groupthink, thought policing, the concept of "equity" among people with wildly varying intellectual and productive capabilities, and the justification of censorship and violence for political purposes. All of these are dangerously on the rise in the contemporary global left. Why?
Well, it turns out a very vocal minority of ideologues (many of whom are clearly very angry and deeply troubled individuals) of the above cultural marxism have for decades been systematically corrupting the academia, as well as masses of impressionable young idiots, resulting in absolutely apocryphal academic programs such as gender studies (lol), feminist studies (that is some hard science, bro), race studies (why? there are no races...), the utter death of a proper English Literature program (which is especially lamentable!) with some respect for the classics instead of the idiot deconstructivist approach, and other purely theoretical ideology clusters that have no basis in scientific reality and are not rooted in repeatable scientific experiments.
So, in defense of logic, science, the very nice system of capitalism we have working here, and plain old communication between human mammals that does not include "defining nazis" and then "punching nazis", which is mostly grounded in the absolute sanctity of true speech under any circumstance and however devastating its content might be to anyone's "feelings", it would be good to identify these movements and destroy them before they seep into legislation, and, during some odd historical moment no one apparently ever sees coming, result in 1930s Soviet Union. Any other questions?
On a side note, I have no idea why I need to explain something that is extremely well explained by a far more eloquent person "in my own words", but hey, I went and did it anyway. Maybe now, out of courtesy, you and Farvacola can watch the below video start to finish, and think about the subject a little harder, especially with regard to who this person you are seeing here - basically forced to handle an enraged mob - appears in reality, as opposed to what you have been told about him. Perhaps that's the single most telling argument I can give you.
Maybe you can describe exactly what goes on in this video in your own words?
In the video I linked, Peterson attacks postmodernists and postmodernism, as if it was one cohesive movement that subscribes to similar ideas. This is completely wrong, and once again shows Petersons desire to mislead or just his complete ignorance. His attacks on postmodernism for disregarding logic are completely ridiculous for a number of reasons. Firstly, the logical (haha) steps he takes to prove this are incoherent - PHALLOGOCENTRISM -> LOGOS -> THEY DONT LIKE LOGIC GUYS. This is in line with a peculiarly conservative affinity for believing that logic and science are on your side, and anyone who disagrees with you is too stupid to see that. Another reason his disregard for postmodernism and its attitude toward objective knowledge is ridiculous is because he is a huge fan of Nietzsche who - guess what - provided the foundation for postmodernism and its stance on objective knowledge through his ideas about will and knowledge.
Why Marxist professors have corrupted academia and the student body neither you nor he makes clear, beyond 'SJWs are bad and therefore this whole academic field is bad too!!!!'. The assumption that any academic field not based in scientific empiricism can't be legitimate is typical of many of his supporters as I think a great deal of them are STEM students - but it is ignorant, anti-intellectual and dismisses large swathes of legitimate academic thought due to a lack of understanding.
What Peterson does is take people's anger over perceived problems in society - justified or not - which are in this case about SJWs specifically on college campuses, and give it a seemingly intellectual, academic foundation which borders on conspiracy theory.
It's specifically the social sciences that have gone to shit, hand-in-hand with the prevalent "cool" stance to identify with if you're an intelligent and also clueless adolescent.
You can't corrupt math or physics for obvious reasons, and clinical psychology is pretty close in verifiable accuracy (as in actually reliably helping people, i.e. producing demonstrable results in the real world). So I would consider him a scientist, definitely, and his "enemies" the bullshitters.
There's even a clip where he's debating a social sciences professor who, verbatim, states there are no biological differences between men and women . That is word-for-word literally what he says, and someone like that is ratified to teach in academia? I think that's a pretty fucking serious problem.
On August 12 2017 00:10 Kickboxer wrote: It's specifically the social sciences that have gone to shit, hand-in-hand with the prevalent "cool" stance to identify with if you're an intelligent and also clueless adolescent.
You can't corrupt math or physics for obvious reasons, and clinical psychology is pretty close in verifiable accuracy (as in actually reliably helping people, i.e. producing demonstrable results in the real world). So I would consider him a scientist, definitely, and his "enemies" the bullshitters.
There's even a clip where he's debating a social sciences professor who, verbatim, states there are no biological differences between men and women . That is word-for-word literally what he says, and someone like that is ratified to teach in academia? I think that's a pretty fucking serious problem.
What is the problem? As I've shown he makes countless statements that show a complete lack of understanding on the subjects he's discussing, yet I don't think he should be banned from teaching. I still don't understand how exactly the social sciences have been corrupted, beyond the cultural Marxism conspiracy (which for a lot of people is analogous to the Jews).
I love that cultural marxism has been turned into this boogey man of the right that will destroy western society. And of course, you can’t escape the anti-Semitic over tones of demonizing the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory as a secret cabal set on destroying the west. But hey, I guess multiculturalism and a bunch of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany must be a secret evil. Its like they read it as cultural communism and made the amazing mental leap that communism is bad, so cultural communism is also bad. And because it has the word culture, it is linked to diversity.
I would be a little cautious about interpreting the fact that someone with controversial views on something has a lot of academic citations as evidence they're a great author-the two most common reasons something is cited are 1) it supports your argument or method or 2) you are presenting evidence that contradicts it, whether because it used a terrible methodology or misrepresented its results.
Getting a lot of 2) citations is easier when you make a business out of engendering outrage and publishing "controversial" results, but it doesn't make you any better of an academic. I'm not familiar enough with this guy to know whether he gets 1) or 2) more commonly but there are some people in my field who definitely lean toward the 2).
On August 12 2017 00:10 Kickboxer wrote: It's specifically the social sciences that have gone to shit, hand-in-hand with the prevalent "cool" stance to identify with if you're an intelligent and also clueless adolescent.
You can't corrupt math or physics for obvious reasons, and clinical psychology is pretty close in verifiable accuracy (as in actually reliably helping people, i.e. producing demonstrable results in the real world). So I would consider him a scientist, definitely, and his "enemies" the bullshitters.
There's even a clip where he's debating a social sciences professor who, verbatim, states there are no biological differences between men and women . That is word-for-word literally what he says, and someone like that is ratified to teach in academia? I think that's a pretty fucking serious problem.
To be fair, I would go with that. Let's remove everyone who doesn't have a clue from universities. Instead of, you know, whining about their free speech being infringed because they don't get to be dishonest toward a bunch of students on stage and shit like that.
The center (saying the center cause it includes liberal professors so even with the caveat that this is America I don't want to say the left in this context) has facts on their side, I'm not threatened by removing the people who don't. I guess you have been misled enough that you aren't either, but my guess is you're going to be annoyed with the results.
I almost went out of my way to post something extremely longwinded, with pro's and cons of my experience with Jordan Peterson, but I've restricted this to a few bullet points. Also, this does not belong in the US politics thread imo (the entire Google shit doesn't belong here either), there should be a different meta-psychology/society/religion/false-dichotomy thread for this discussing (meta)societal trends or something
1) Jordan Peterson has gone too deep down the sybmolic rabbithole. His interpretations of religion are too esoteric for the casual religious person. 2) He has a crusade against the post-modernistic nature of society and only sees it one dimensionally, namely as deconstructivism 3) He draws parallels between communism (marxism) and SJW ideology (neo-marxism). How? I don't understand this. He identifies them as moved goalposts, I personally see them as two different beasts. It's almost some sort of conspiracy theory the way he talks about it. 4) He acclaims Western society as the best the world currently has (debatable, but understandable) and therefore almost frees it from criticism or blame, while those aren't mutually exclusive. 5) He panders to conservatives because he got a great bunch of followers from it (and converted many from the left), so he almost becauses some kind of cultural/spiritual leader. His talks are approaching dangerously fast a kind of rhetoric where he's excusing the right for their reprehensible behaviour/response to multiculturalism seeping into the West. 6) I think Jordan Peterson is a very intelligent man and I agree on many fronts. But these are some bulletpoints on where I think his main flaws are. He was right to stand up for dismissing bill C-16 and has crafted an ironclad defense for doing so, but this has resulted in him being lifted to status of enlightened despot. It's scary to see this happen in such a small timeframe. It's almost Milo Yiannopoulos-eque but without all the drama and extravaganza.
A little sidenote: Ben Shapiro, for example, is also an intelligent person, but his flaws are that he's too crass, he doesn't always know the intricacies of what he's talking about and he doesn't allow for constructive discussions to happen. He's like Lauren Southern where they claim to "follow the data", but have very little grip on what those data entail or have inclinations to find other kinds of data to shed a different light on the situation. As long as it fits their narrative, the data they found is fine and the "truth". I'm extremely fond of how the Google memo got scientists with different views on the matter to respond, which shows how NOT black and white the truth actually is.
Edit1: the dismissal of JBP for the social sciences is because they write vast amounts of papers with them being cited once. So they fill libraries with their scriptures and 'coerce' the universities to subsidize them without actually having any decent platform to do so. It's basically boils down to "speculation and conjecture is bad, we should go back to traditional forms of education". Edit2: I tried to refrain myself from posting here, but I can't help myself any longer. This is a recommendation to everyone posting in here: start to have some constructive discussion, with refuting/commenting on what people actually say instead of hand weaving and blanket dismissal without addressing actual talking points. It's extremely frustrating to read endless drivel of people talking over each other making it seem like they're talking to each other.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Beyond the bluster, the Trump administration has been quietly engaged in back channel diplomacy with North Korea for several months, addressing Americans imprisoned in the communist country and deteriorating relations between the long-time foes, The Associated Press has learned.
It had been known the two sides had discussions to secure the June release of an American university student. But it wasn’t known until now that the contacts have continued, or that they have broached matters other than U.S. detainees.
People familiar with the contacts say the interactions have done nothing thus far to quell tensions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile advances, which are now fueling fears of military confrontation. But they say the behind-the-scenes discussions could still be a foundation for more serious negotiation, including on North Korea’s nuclear weapons, should President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un put aside the bellicose rhetoric of recent days and endorse a dialogue.
The contacts are occurring regularly between Joseph Yun, the U.S. envoy for North Korea policy, and Pak Song Il, a senior North Korean diplomat at the country’s U.N. mission, according to U.S. officials and others briefed on the process. They weren’t authorized to discuss the confidential exchanges and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Officials call it the “New York channel.” Yun is the only U.S. diplomat in contact with any North Korean counterpart. The communications largely serve as a way to exchange messages, allowing Washington and Pyongyang to relay information.
Drowned out by the furor over Trump’s warning to North Korea of “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has expressed a willingness to entertain negotiations. His condition: Pyongyang stopping tests of missiles that can now potentially reach the U.S. mainland.
Tillerson has even hinted at an ongoing back channel. “We have other means of communication open to them, to certainly hear from them if they have a desire to want to talk,” he said at an Asian security meeting in the Philippines this week.
The interactions could point to a level of pragmatism in the Trump administration’s approach to the North Korean threat, despite the president’s dire warnings.
On Friday, he tweeted: “Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely.” But on Thursday, he said, “we’ll always consider negotiations,” even if they haven’t worked in the last quarter-century.
The contacts suggest Pyongyang, too, may be open to a negotiation even as it talks of launching missiles near the U.S. territory of Guam. The North regularly threatens nuclear strikes on the United States and its allies.
The State Department didn’t immediately comment on Yun’s diplomacy. The White House also had no comment. A diplomat at North Korea’s U.N. mission only confirmed use of diplomatic channel up to the release of U.S. college student Otto Warmbier two months ago.
Trump, in some ways, has been more flexible in his approach to North Korea than President Barack Obama. While variations of the New York channel have been used on-and-off for years by past administrations, there were no discussions over the last seven months of Obama’s presidency after Pyongyang broke them off in anger over U.S. sanctions imposed on its leader, Kim. Obama made little effort to reopen lines of communication.
The contacts quickly restarted after Trump’s inauguration, other people familiar with the discussions say.
“Contrary to the public vitriol of the moment, the North Koreans were willing to reopen the New York channel following the election of President Trump and his administration signaled an openness to engage and ‘talk about talks,’” said Keith Luse, executive director of the National Committee on North Korea, a U.S.-based group that promotes U.S.-North Korean engagement.
“However, the massive trust deficit in Pyongyang and in Washington toward each other has impeded the confidence-building process necessary to have constructive dialogue,” he said.
The early U.S. focus was on securing the release of several Americans held in North Korea.
They included Warmbier, who was imprisoned for stealing a propaganda poster and only allowed to return to the U.S. in June — in an unconscious state. He died days later. Yun traveled on the widely publicized mission to Pyongyang to bring Warmbier home.
Despite outrage in the U.S. with Warmbier’s treatment and sharp condemnation by Trump, the U.S.-North Korean interactions in New York continued.
Yun and his counterpart have discussed the other Americans still being held. They include Kim Hak Song, a university employee detained in May accused of unspecified “hostile” acts; Tony Kim, a teacher at the same school, accused of trying to overthrow the government; and Kim Dong Chul, sentenced last year to a decade in prison with hard labor for supposed espionage.
But the American and North Korean diplomats also have discussed the overall U.S.-North Korean relationship. The two countries have no diplomatic ties and are still enemies, having only reached an armistice — not a peace treaty — to end the 1950-1953 Korean War. Twenty-eight thousand U.S. troops are still stationed in South Korea.
In its own convoluted way, North Korea has indicated openness to talks in recent weeks, even as it has accelerated the tempo of weapons tests.
On July 4, after the North test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile that could potentially strike the continental U.S., leader Kim added a new caveat to his refusal to negotiate over its nukes or missiles. Instead of a blanket rejection, he ruled out such concessions “unless the U.S. hostile policy and nuclear threat to the DPRK are definitely terminated.”
That message has been repeated by other North Korean officials, without greater specification. Nor have they offered an indication as to whether Pyongyang would accept denuclearization as the goal of talks.
Still, advocates for diplomacy, including some voices in the U.S. government, view the addendum as a potential opening.
“North Korea is assessing its options,” said Susan DiMaggio, a senior fellow at the New America think tank who participated in unofficial talks with North Korean officials in Oslo in May that were also attended by Yun. “They recognize that at some point they have to return to the table to address what’s becoming a crisis. That’s what they are weighing right now: the timing of engagement.”
Any negotiation would face huge skepticism in Washington given North Korea’s long record of broken promises. The last serious U.S.-North Korea negotiations collapsed in 2012 when Pyongyang launched a long-range rocket that derailed an agreement of a North Korean nuclear freeze in exchange for U.S. food aid.
North Korea’s weapons program has developed significantly since then. As a result, its price in any such negotiation is now likely to be far higher. At a minimum, Pyongyang would renew its long-standing demands for an end to joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises — which are set to resume this month — and an eventual peace treaty with Washington.
To date, the Trump administration has heavily concentrated its diplomatic energy on cranking up international pressure on North Korea’s government, in particular pressing China to lean on its wayward ally. Last weekend, the U.N. adopted its strongest economic sanctions on Pyongyang.
Trump has been widely accused of injecting a new element of unpredictability and even chaos into U.S. policy toward North Korea, especially with his tweets and proclamations this week. It’s unclear what effect they may have on the back channel contacts being maintained by Yun.
I assume you're saying "shuts the fucking lunatic up," (or is that Trumpsplaining.) But I am just chuckling at the higher power above the nation's chief diplomat and commander in chief shutting him up. Elections have consequences.
The recently confirmed secretary of the Navy says he will follow any order the president gives on transgender troops, but that “any patriot” should be allowed to serve.
“We will process and take direction of a policy that is developed by the [Defense] secretary [with] direction from the president and march out smartly,” Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer told reporters Thursday night after visiting Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.
"On a fundamental basis, any patriot that wants to serve and meets all the requirements should be able to serve in our military"
Spencer was confirmed a week after President Trump tweeted that he plans to ban transgender people from serving in the military.
On Thursday, Trump said he thinks he’s “doing the military a great favor” by banning transgender troops.
“It’s been a very complicated issue for the military, it’s been a very confusing issue for the military, and I think I’m doing the military a great favor,” he said from his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.
During his confirmation hearing last month, Spencer said he believes that individual military branches should not be a “Petri dish for social experiments.” He added that by that he means policies should be developed by the Pentagon as a whole.
“I totally believe that policy should be developed at the DOD level, and then discussed and socialized and deployed and then obeyed,” he continued. “We have to work together, including all our service people, to make sure that they are given what they need, whether that be spiritually, whether that be psychologically, whether that's materialistically, to fight forward so that — so readiness is the key and lethality is the product.”
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford has said the military’s transgender policy will remain unchanged until the White House send the Pentagon over an official directive, which has yet to happen.
Meanwhile, Coast Commandant Adm. Paul Zukunft has pledged not to “break faith” with his transgender service members.
Two LGBT rights groups sued the president earlier this week on behalf of five transgender troops, arguing Trump’s intended ban violates their equal protection and due process rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.
Honest(-ish) question here, why are so many of US discussions so wrapped up in idolatry? Like, somehow these sociology topics, or business, or economics, or even science arguments all seem to revolve around throwing around some "significant" names.
And, while it could just be me not noticing, very few of them seem to have any significance outside of the US.
On August 12 2017 00:10 Kickboxer wrote: It's specifically the social sciences that have gone to shit, hand-in-hand with the prevalent "cool" stance to identify with if you're an intelligent and also clueless adolescent.
You can't corrupt math or physics for obvious reasons, and clinical psychology is pretty close in verifiable accuracy (as in actually reliably helping people, i.e. producing demonstrable results in the real world). So I would consider him a scientist, definitely, and his "enemies" the bullshitters.
There's even a clip where he's debating a social sciences professor who, verbatim, states there are no biological differences between men and women . That is word-for-word literally what he says, and someone like that is ratified to teach in academia? I think that's a pretty fucking serious problem.
What is the problem? As I've shown he makes countless statements that show a complete lack of understanding on the subjects he's discussing, yet I don't think he should be banned from teaching. I still don't understand how exactly the social sciences have been corrupted, beyond the cultural Marxism conspiracy (which for a lot of people is analogous to the Jews).
The political division in social sciences between left and right is roughly 17:1 amongst the professors. For every 17 professors who vote on the left, there's one who votes on the right. In 1996, this was 2:1. That's how it has been 'corrupted'. There are probably many explanations for this, but no matter the explanations, the result is that those 17 on the left are now confirming each other's political biases and are no longer being challenged in their political views, and through things like teaching the students and social media these views have spread like a wildfire -- largely unchallenged by intellectual thought.
Jonathan Haidt gives a great presentation of how this has influenced American politics, and how it ties in with social justice, and even gives some hints of explaining the rise of the alt-right due to this. You can ignore the reality of this, or maybe say that it is justified because the alt-right denies science, but I think it's problematic considering the nature of the American left-right divide (which absolutely ties in with - and I hate to say it because of the inevitable backlash - identity politics).
Watch the videos. I've replaced three of the short podcast-videos in my previous post with one cohesive presentation he gave at Harvard, so there's just two up there now. I can't sum it up properly, nor will I be able to convince you with my interpretations because - amongst other things - I'd undoubtedly leave out stuff that will just end up making you and people like Plansix go "that's racist" or "that's sexist".
On August 12 2017 00:59 WolfintheSheep wrote: Honest(-ish) question here, why are so many of US discussions so wrapped up in idolatry? Like, somehow these sociology topics, or business, or economics, or even science arguments all seem to revolve around throwing around some "significant" names.
And, while it could just be me not noticing, very few of them seem to have any significance outside of the US.
It is a recent thing, from my experience. Political discussions were not so closing linked to specific individuals back in the 2000s. I think the rise of youtube and social media had assisted in elevating people that would have had a hard time reaching so many without those platforms. But I don’t know why it is so prevalent in US politics and not in others.
a_flayer: for someone who claims to want an honest discussion on topics, you sure do like to pin people that might disagree with you into the corner and limit the words they are allowed to use.
You have to understand the amount of media the US consumes. From there, it isn't hard to understand how idolatry plays a big part in a lot of people's views on the topics you bring up.
On August 12 2017 00:10 Kickboxer wrote: It's specifically the social sciences that have gone to shit, hand-in-hand with the prevalent "cool" stance to identify with if you're an intelligent and also clueless adolescent.
You can't corrupt math or physics for obvious reasons, and clinical psychology is pretty close in verifiable accuracy (as in actually reliably helping people, i.e. producing demonstrable results in the real world). So I would consider him a scientist, definitely, and his "enemies" the bullshitters.
There's even a clip where he's debating a social sciences professor who, verbatim, states there are no biological differences between men and women . That is word-for-word literally what he says, and someone like that is ratified to teach in academia? I think that's a pretty fucking serious problem.
What is the problem? As I've shown he makes countless statements that show a complete lack of understanding on the subjects he's discussing, yet I don't think he should be banned from teaching. I still don't understand how exactly the social sciences have been corrupted, beyond the cultural Marxism conspiracy (which for a lot of people is analogous to the Jews).
The political division in social sciences between left and right is roughly 17:1 amongst the professors. For every 17 professors who vote on the left, there's one who votes on the right. In 1996, this was 2:1. That's how it has been 'corrupted'. There are probably many explanations for this, but no matter the explanations, the result is that those 17 on the left are now confirming each other's political biases and are no longer being challenged in their political views, and through things like teaching the students and social media these views have spread like a wildfire -- largely unchallenged by intellectual thought.
Jonathan Haidt gives a great presentation of how this has influenced American politics, and how it ties in with social justice, and even gives some hints of explaining the rise of the alt-right due to this. You can ignore the reality of this, or maybe say that it is justified because the alt-right denies science, but I think it's problematic considering the nature of the American left-right divide (which absolutely ties in with - and I hate to say it because of the inevitable backlash - identity politics).
Watch the videos. I've replaced three of the short podcast-videos in my previous post with one cohesive presentation he gave at Harvard, so there's just two up there now. I can't sum it up properly, nor will I be able to convince you with my interpretations because - amongst other things - I'd undoubtedly leave out stuff that will just end up making you and people like Plansix go "that's racist" or "that's sexist".
People who were on the right 20 years ago are now on the left. The spectrum has moved and left people behind.
EPT
