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Finally Found It!
06-03-2010, 07:06 PM
It took me a while to find this artical, but I finally found a link to it in the Wikpedia Article covering the sinking of the Cheonan.
Apparently, despite their largely neutral stance, China has vowed that the perpetrators of the sinking of the ROKN ship will recieve no protection from them. Story here.
So, it's pretty much as I thought: China is politely asking to be left out of this, using words that will not enrage the Koreans on both sides of the border. Meanwhile, pretty much everyone else in the world thinks that N. Korea oughta owe up to what's happened. The evidence is stacked against them, after all, and I think the S. Korean will settle amicably for reparitions.
Really, I think Kim Jong Il missed out on a golden opportunity. He could have condemned the people responsible for this and extended reparitions to the families of the dead sailors and to the S. Korean government. It's either that, or he actually did order the sinking and is deathly afraid of that order being tracked all the way back to him - to the point where he'd rather risk war.
Still not happy about this. Still worried that any opening salvos are gonna involve missiles with dirty-bomb warheads aimed at Tokyo. I'll talk more about my current experiences when it all blows over and OPSEC no longer applies. And I'll have pretty pictures of US Navy at work, too.
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There always is the other possibility, of course. That NK didn't actually have anything to do with this this time, but blaming them saves you face and wins you influence:
From Brewerstroupe and New America Media
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When evaluating a conspiracy theory, it is worth asking yourself:
1) How many people would be required to make a conspiracy like this work?
2) Does the conspiracy involve blatantly immoral acts, such as deliberately lying about the death of people you are sworn to defend, which would make anyone involved likely to betray the conspiacy or act as a wistleblower?
If the answer to 2 is "yes" and the answer to 1 is ">3", then it pretty safe to dismiss the conspiracy out of hand.
The other thing you need to do is evaluate the source of the theory. And, frankly, a website with an agenda is not a good source, unless they're pointing at a souce you do consider trustworthy. And their sources (especially Brewerstroupe) are, frankly, about as untrustworthy as you can get.
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Also, if the conspiracy requires more than three people working with perfect competence in order to pull it off, you can also dismiss it out of hand. No group bigger than a handful can escape having a bozo who'll mess something up.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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What does amuse me is those people who believe that they are dealing with evil conspiracies, made up of people who are:
a) completely ruthless
b) amazingly competent
c) fanatically loyal
d) capable of predicting the future in a number of cases
e) could even have technology beyond modern science
and f) are thwartable by a Bozo in the Basement with an Internet Connection.
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What hypercompetent conspiracy?
You got a taskgroup laying mines, somebody fucks up and a ship gets sunk. What do they do? Come clean and make apologies to the families of the dead, or cover their asses and blame enemy fire? If you don't know the answer to that, remember Pat Tillman.
Then the politicos, whether they know the truth or not, don't look at a gift horse in the mouth and start milking the official story to push their agendas (the increasingly impopular SK president pulls a BushJr and becomes a beloved "War President", Japan is pressured not to remove the Okinawa base... win-win for all the involved!)
You don't need premeditated conspiracies for this, just the usual dishonesty.
And Jinx, EVERY news source has an agenda nowadays. I don't have a reason to trust that website less than the declararations of a military investigative comission (maybe the other way around, given the track record of the later). If the facts they report about the place the sinking took place in are wrong, I'd be grateful to be corrected. If they are right, the affair becomes at least suspicious. And for a non expert at least the picture of the barnacle-covered "killer torpedo" looks unconvincing.
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In order for there to be a coverup, everyone involved in the investigation has to agree for there to be a coverup. In order for everyone to agree, you need to sound them out and get them to commit themselves - without revealing to anyone who wouldn't agree that you're planning a coverup.
This requires telepathy of some type.
As for the website. The "article" is a direct copy of a blog post from a guy called "Brewerstroupe". I googled him and checked out his blog. He is, quite frankly, a loon.
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I checked it, he didn't seem particularly loony to me. Of course, YMMV according on how much you disagree with his premises.
Leaving aside the messenger, I don't think that the message should be discounted offhand. And a "conspiracy" within the military is easy to achieve: if a soldier is ordered to shut up, ha usually will, if he knows what's good for him.
Some such conspiracies have come to light (like the one I originally mentioned), but only after months or years pass and someone gathers the courage to come forth - and I believe that many more are never uncovered.
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I haven't seen pictures of the torpedo in question, but I can assure you of two things:
1. Barnacles develop pretty damn quickly on unprotected surfaces - if one of our RHIBs is in the water for more than five days (it happens when we're in port), then it's gonna need to have the barnacles scrapped off. It's why they were the bane of all wooden ships as they degraded their ability to move quickly through the water.
2. N. Korean torpedoes are cheap - IE: no protective coatings. It's why they have a selling point with countries like Russia and China.
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When someone:
a) disagrees with every other news source on a subject, including those that mutually hate each other (like Fox News and the New York Times, and The Telegraph and The Guardian).
b) has no discernable expertise in the subject.
c) has no one looking over his shoulder doing fact checking (he's a blogger).
d) holds very strong, non-mainstrean political views.
e) believes in other conspiracy theories (I did actually read some of his blog posts).
it is safe to discount him. While a stopped clock is right twice a day, that is not the way to bet, especially when it disagrees with a wide range of other clocks.
Even as written, your conspiracy wouldn't work - soldiers are loyal to each other and get really pissed if their commanders show disregard for their lives. Now, add in the hundreds of contactors involved in the salvage operation, the civilian experts from a number of countries and everyone else involved.
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nemonowan Wrote:There always is the other possibility, of course. That NK didn't actually have anything to do with this this time, but blaming them saves you face and wins you influence:
From Brewerstroupe and New America Media First sentence in that story: "It's emerging that the South Korean and US Government's official story that North Korea torpedoed the Cheonan submarine may not be entirely true."
Of course that isn't true. ROKS Cheonan was a corvette, not a submarine.
When they showed that they couldn't even get the most basic fact of the matter correct, I stopped wasting my time reading the article.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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nemonowan Wrote:You got a taskgroup laying mines, somebody fucks up and a ship gets sunk. What do they do? Come clean and make apologies to the families of the dead, or cover their asses and blame enemy fire? If you don't know the answer to that, remember Pat Tillman. This is the first I've heard that the corvette was "laying mines".
Also, you're ignoring http://english.chosun.com/site/data/htm ... 00678.html]the captain's report that his ship was under attack. Who are you going to believe - somebody halfway around the world with a blog, or the person who was actually there?
nemonowan Wrote:And for a non expert at least the picture of the barnacle-covered "killer torpedo" looks unconvincing. How fast do barnacles grow in those water conditions? (No, I don't know, and you shouldn't trust my answer to that question anyway. Ask a marine biologist.)
nemonowan Wrote:You don't need premeditated conspiracies for this, just the usual dishonesty. nemonowan Wrote:Some such conspiracies have come to light (like the one I originally mentioned), but only after months or years pass and someone gathers the courage to come forth - and I believe that many more are never uncovered. Those two statements, put together, reveal your own agenda...
--
Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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blackaeronaut Wrote:I haven't seen pictures of the torpedo in question http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/asia_p ... 129703.stm]Here you go - look roughly halfway down the page.
--
Rob Kelk
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them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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*Looks carefully* The feck? Those aren't barnacles! It's corrosion. Aluminum tends to corrode in that manner, leaving a white, powdery deposite. Believe me, after all the topside preservation I do to keep my ship in shape I ought to know it on sight.
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I agree with BA. That kind of corrosion could easily form within a couple of days of seawater exposure on untreated aluminum.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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Jinx999 Wrote:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia_p ... 263325.stm
NK border guard shoots 3 Chinese. (*_*)
(O_O)
(O_o 
(o_o
Holy SHIT.
While the Chinese reaction is relatively tame (the people shot are being prtrayed as smugglers), I still think that the DPRK is continuing to dig its own grave.
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I could care less if NK implodes. What's worrisome is that they may decide to do as much damage to other nations when they do so.
__________________
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Also, once they collapse, somebody's going to have to go in and rescue the civilians.
Keep in mind that this is a country that has been isolated for so long, even the border guards don't know what a modern camera looks like (according to CBC journalists). How the heck is the rest of the world supposed to do anything for them once we can actually provide help?
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robkelk Wrote:Also, once they collapse, somebody's going to have to go in and rescue the civilians.
Keep in mind that this is a country that has been isolated for so long, even the border guards don't know what a modern camera looks like (according to CBC journalists). How the heck is the rest of the world supposed to do anything for them once we can actually provide help? The same thing we do in ever humanitarian crisis... not nearly enough. 
----------------
Epsilon
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*Sighs* Well, I imagine that if things do go to shit that it'll wind up becoming another Occupation of Iraq. Complete with insurgents suiciding themselves to kill everyone in sight. *Rolls Eyes*
The people there are starving and impovershed. Not completely backwards. It would take a while to get their country back up to speed with the rest of the world, but it will happen. Though I bet their entire telecommunications infrastructure is going to need to be overhauled - if it even exists at all beyond a vestigial state.
On the otherhand, these people are starving and desperate. I've got a strong feeling that if they knew that the US and allied nations would come to the rescue if they staged a big enough uprising, then they would. Of course, their propaganda machine keeps them in the dark about these things. So, if things did turn to shit and we went in to clean house... I think there'd be a very large workforce already on hand. Granted, they wouldn't be the most skilled of laborers, but I bet they could learn pretty damn fast, and then build even faster.
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Why those folks are smugglers?
06-12-2010, 02:53 AM
blackaeronaut Wrote:Jinx999 Wrote:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia_p ... 263325.stm
NK border guard shoots 3 Chinese. (*_*)
(O_O)
(O_o
(o_o
Holy SHIT.
While the Chinese reaction is relatively tame (the people shot are being prtrayed as smugglers), I still think that the DPRK is continuing to dig its own grave.
There's no other way to make a living!
These folks are starting to see war as their only way out.
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And it is all because of the propaganda machine they got going over there. This is gonna be all kinds of ugly.
EDIT: Oh, and the isolation doesn't help, either. Their women don't even know if they look pretty or not!
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I really shouldn't do this...
06-22-2010, 01:15 AM
I passed HR screening as a IH specialist for Seoul. So I'll utter the famous last words as an experiment:
Nah, they would'nt take me. It'll never happen.
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