RE: News: Saudi Religious police to have less power
October 5, 2012 at 7:32 pm
(This post was last modified: October 5, 2012 at 7:37 pm by cratehorus.)
(October 4, 2012 at 4:00 pm)Doubting_Thomas Wrote: That'd be because the internet is generally unavailable in north Korea, especially to normal people, and many north Koreans haven't even heard of it. North Korea has it's own national intranet and most of it's true internet sites, basically propaganda sites, are hosted overseas. Although many would argue that North Korea is atheist in the mono-theist sense, it's a nationalist* dead-leader cult with strong parallels to theocratic rule.
North Korea (or as they like to call themselves, Korea) have been under a military dictatorship since their war with the US started in 1950, the war has not ended, therefore they keep they're military-style government. The US, would not only do the same thing, if they were at war with greater or more powerful country, but the US has done so in the past, the japanese internment doesn't exactly seem like "democracy"....to me atleast
North Korea also has strict laws against all forms of private property and advertisement, this obviously causes problems since the internet's main revenue stream has always come from their advertisements, and trademarked software.
Freedom house, however is a collection of journalists that rate countries based on "which monitor censorship, intimidation and violence against journalists, and public access to information" While North Korea's internet is not "free", saying that is similair to saying Somalia's internet is not free, while true it's diferent from the regimes that use filtering mechanisms, on your phone calls and emails, or those that ban content offensive to the states chosen religion, which can range from porn sites, to atheist forums like this one
North Korea is cut off from the internet, much as it is from other areas with respect to the world. Only a few hundred thousand citizens in North Korea, representing about 4% of the total population, have access to the Internet, which is heavily censored by the national government. According to the RWB, North Korea is a prime example where all mediums of communication are controlled by the government. According to the RWB, the Internet is used by the North Korean government primarily to spread propaganda. The North Korean network is monitored heavily. All websites are under government control, as is all other media in North Korea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_ce...by_country
Quote:* You see it labelled "Stalinist" a lot but this is a weak description; national-socialist in the descriptive sense would be a better fit if it wasn't for that term being inextricably linked to Nazism, which they are not. Also, unlike Nazism their main 'enemy' is external, although they do not tolerate free thinking internally. As Hitchen's classically said, at least you can die and leave North Korea.
Stalinists, or Marxist-Leninist's as they prefer to be called, would be more appropriately defined as state capitalists, rather than communists (or national socialists), which they seem to argue is incremental socialism, but most modern communists seem to argue Marxist-Leninism is simply a right-wing corruption of communism.
North Korea actually removed all mentioning of the term communism from their constitution a few years ago, they also have a strange state religion called Jucheism which is "atheistic" but I am not too familiar with it, but either way they're not exactly a extreme leftist paradise, as most right wingers would like you too beleive