Anonymous is hacking North Korean computers and Ian Bremmer says they should be discouraged. Christian Coleman says we can’t ignore the atrocities anymore.
“Lie down and crawl or you might get hurt? What kind of talk is that?” —Morgan Earp (Tombstone)
“Stand up to a bully” has been motherly advice since the first kid got pushed off the first ever set of monkey bars. Ian Bremmer, at Reuters, seems to be saying that’s bad advice. His advice is “live and let live”. To, once again, quote Morgan Earp: “They’re bugs, Wyatt. All that smart talk about ‘live and let live’; ain’t no live and let live with bugs.”
“If she is malnourished enough to be rendered infertile, and can endure rape without pregnancy, her life is usually spared.”
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Disclaimer: I’m about to sound like somewhat of a hawk. I’m actually pretty dove-ish.
This is the third Kim saber-rattling and chest-thumping, while his citizens go hungry. We’ve survived two Kims and each one seems more megalomaniacal than the last.
“Anonymous knows how to hack, but it has no insight into how North Korea might respond to a cyber-invasion—and likely won’t be the target if North Korea decides it must retaliate.”—Ian Bremmer
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So, I have to say that point is fairly true. I can see what he’s saying, but should we let ourselves be bullied by Kim Jong-Un? Don’t the imprisoned North Koreans deserve our help as much as, if not more than, the Iraqis and Afghanis? Since World War II, we’ve been searching for an enemy bigger than our apathy and Anonymous has a good history of bullying bullies. They put the Stuebenville rapists in the fire and on our minds. Are we to presume that rape culture doesn’t exist in Kim Jong-un’s nationwide work camp? That seems like a ridiculous assumption. Or do we just find it less important?
Two hundred thousand people are imprisoned in concentration camps in North Korea. There’s no way to know how many women are being raped in those camps, but we do know rape is prevalent, it is casual, and the alternative is death. When those women (and girls) are discovered to be pregnant by their rapists, they are killed. Writing for Women Under Siege Project, Michele Lent Hirsch offers the only hope for these women: “If she is malnourished enough to be rendered infertile, and can endure rape without pregnancy, her life is usually spared.”
Bremmer, in his article, asks if we should discourage Anonymous’ “cyber-anarchism” in fear of angering Pyongyang. The answer is incredibly complex and intelligence officials could probably empty the Bic ink pen factory answering that. I’ll answer it, though: no. The Kim dynasty in North Korea isn’t giving up its power willingly, and I find it hard to believe that a revolt by starving citizens can gain much traction against a one million person army. Pyongyang has nuclear capability (barely capable, but still capable). They’re a rogue nation. They’ll have to be brought under the rule of law at some point; I think that is unavoidable. And soldiers marching from town to town, kicking in doors, and planes dropping bombs on cities is 20th century thinking.
Anonymous is possibly the wrong group to agitate North Korea, but the idea is good and deserves to be explored. Imagine if 1st Marine Cyber Division crashed the North Korean defense grid. That’s an attack I can get behind, and no one need lose a life. Cyberwar is 21st century thinking, and we need more of that to face down evil.
Thanks to @MWaitOntheMove for the heads-up on this news story.
Photo— Flickr/ yeowatzup
Richard, even a cursory look at American history reveals that we should keep our mouths shut about human rights violations. America launched the first industrial mechanized war, launched the two first nuclear strikes, and for a long time as been a world leader in arms sales. The sad truth is that most , if not all major civilizations have committed horrific human rights violations against their own people and others. The morality wars between countries are a joke and usually are won by the most powerful not the most moral.
The US, in my opinion, needs to keep its nose out of Human Rights abuses unless the international community as a whole decides to intervene. We’ve proven again and again that the US is awful at being a nation builder (although this is usually because we have a history of building nations in a way that directly serve our own geo-political interests rather than building nations for the inhabitants of those nations.) It wouldn’t be enough to just go into N.K. and take out Kim, too many people are made wealthy by supporting the system and have too much to… Read more »
What’s up Richard? How have you been? Having the who is better morally argument, them or us ,is a fruitless endeavor. I prefer to focus on the trash in my own yard. If I told my mother, after she called me out on my excesses ,that Jimmie down the street. did the same thing, you know exactly what she would have said and done. I would still find it difficult to sit down. I think we as Americans should stop comparing the quality of democracy to Chubby, insecure, despots from largely insignificant countries. Anyone would look good in that scenario.… Read more »
og. The who is morally better argument got abandoned pretty quickly, didn’t it? Two separate enterprises, taking out our own trash and looking at Nork. Difference is, the Norks can possibly land a nuke on South Korea or Japan or Taiwan. Or, if they get things backward, China. As to possible results from this possibility, or others, see Gavrilo Prinzip. Even if Chubby and all his sycophants just…disappear, there’s going to be a problem. As I mentioned before, the likelihood is that the huge majority of the North Koreans have at least some developmental deficit due to poor nutrition. They… Read more »
og.
There are such things as differences. Among them, the diff between us and North Korea is obvious even to the non-ignorant. You are not the only non-ignorant one.
The differences apply to human rights–you can’t possibly expect anybody with the aforementioned brain ration to think we’re as bad as or possibly worse than Nork so why did you bother to imply it?–or the situation in which nukes were used in WW II vs. what Chubby might be thinking about doing with his.
Jeez.
@Christian: Some of what you imply in your argument as a legitimate cause for the US-us- going to war with North Korea is so achingly bad it is difficult to know where to start dismantling the nonsense. First and foremost, it would seem prudent that before one suggests that our broke ass country get into another disastrous war we can’t pay for, one should be committed to being in the front on the front-lines themselves. Furthermore, it was the US who let the nuclear genie out of the lamp,twice, and now has the temerity and unmitigated gall to think it… Read more »
I was going to keep silent and let the conversation go on, but I can’t. I never said I wanted the U.S. to go to war (not a physical one, at least). I said the exact opposite.
“And soldiers marching from town to town, kicking in doors, and planes dropping bombs on cities is 20th century thinking.”
“…and no one need lose a life.”
Who’s the “we” ignoring the situation in North Korea? Anybody with half the brains God gave a goose knows what’s going on. That leaves out the people who can tell the Kardashian sisters apart, or know how many there are, but still…. Okay. We know. Now what? If the Norks have enough cyberwiring that hackers could take down their infrastructure, nobody dies? You have got to be freaking kidding me. And who would have the most redundancy? Right. The government, the party, and the military. It would be anarchy, starvation, and even more cannibalism than presently. What happens when the… Read more »