News Stories

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by Mystique

EDIT: Yes yes, I know Circular, I already somewhat half heartedly conceeded on the "freedom of speech" note;

"Freedom of speech exists, but those guys should still burn" isn't much of a concession.

they're entitled to the benefits of democracy as everyone else, even if they did snatch their gain from the weakened and disillusioned hearts of previous Labour voters, of which that party crashed and burned real bad in this election, thus giving many of the other parties a better chance at grabbing voters.

Even if they'd lost - they'd still be entitled to say what they want.

I still find it sastifying to see them run off for their first speech regardless xD

I don't. As a non-white living in a white country, I have no sympathy for their ideas. But the thing is, I also dislike censorship and mob rule, which is what egg throwing is about.

[solomon]

Originally Posted by Vexx

Newspapers are fairly good IF you read more than one. Most cities have only one major paper (usually owned by a national entity) and they've cut almost all the local out of them. Also, "no one is reading the newspapers anymore" ... at least the big ones, and they're going out of business. In no small part, imo, because of their sterilization (in much the same way that most "local tv news" *isn't* anymore).

The best paper in my town hands down is a local FREE newspaper (survives on ads) that does outstanding investigative reporting on city and state affairs. They are unabashedly progressive but in a fiscally pragmatic way. There's also a new centrist newspaper (also ad supported) that is starting to do quite well.
The competing major paper is so out of touch that it only survives out of habit. Most of its news is simply newsfeed copy (no local integration of various information sources) and the editorial slant is kind of a weird pro-corporate "good old boy network" big guvmint hash. The last few elections have had them clearly out of touch with their shrinking reader base. I get better world coverage from reading the local (also free) asian newspaper.

But you're right -- virtually any newspaper leaves most commercial television news in the dust.
The big networks give the national/world news maybe 15 minutes a night (after commercials and "WE BE NEWS" logo graphics) and part of that is often a "cute puppy" story. Their local affiliates are even worse with pseudo-local news and the new "teaser" airtime suckage. My wife likes to time the 'no-information-alarmist-question teaser versus the actual time spent giving the vital information (its all about keeping your eyeballs through the next commercial break). As a medical professional, the "OMGZ, WHAT U NEEDZ KNOW BOUT VACCINES!!!!" type of teaser just infuriate her, because she HAS to watch it so she can spend the next few days correcting the misinformed anxieties of patients.

PBS is really the only functional broadcast news station with the News Hour, the Business Report, BBC World News, European Journal and the investigative news like Frontline, Bill Moyer's, NOW, Washington Weekly, etc. CNN has PLENTY of time to do deep news coverage but squanders the opportunity -- every 15-30 minutes you have this feeling of deja vu with CNN because, guess what?, you DID just see the same report before. All the FOX channels are simply 100% loud braying tabloid trash with no distinguishing between news, commentary, gossip, and propaganda. MSNBC is only slightly less obnoxious than FOX because they use essentially the same techniques.

You're in the Pacific NW right? I used to read the Seattle times and that is an EXCELLENT newspaper. The two big texas ones in Dallas and Houston didn't do much for me. The main ones I read are the NY times and the Washington post (DC area resident) along with certain other papers for different regions (LA, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, etc.) some times look the Canadian Globe and Mail or The London Times as well.

A GREAT new online source is ProPublica, a non profit news service that specilizes in independent journalism, I heard about it on NPR

http://www.propublica.org/

[solomon]

http://www.detnews.com/article/20090...-Chrysler-sale

Pensioners in the U.S. state of Indiana has filed suit with the Supreme Court over an alleged shafting of their renumeration of assets from Chrysler due to the speedy bankruptcy proceedings. Essentially they say they aren't being properly reimbursed and that the government basically violated bankruptcy law.

Perfectly valid claim (from what I know) but I worry about too much delay resulting in Fiat walking away and Chrysler being liquidated.

[Mystique]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

"Freedom of speech exists, but those guys should still burn" isn't much of a concession.


Even if they'd lost - they'd still be entitled to say what they want.


I don't. As a non-white living in a white country, I have no sympathy for their ideas. But the thing is, I also dislike censorship and mob rule, which is what egg throwing is about.

I'm not saying either of you guys are wrong, I'm just being straight out honest and stating how I feel for this particular event and no amount of civility in theory of how we all 'should' be will change it.
When you fall into the minority group as target practice for their propeganda for more than your lifetime (and I've been keeping tabs on these peeps for quite some time now) - somehow one tends to find that their heart and emotions are roused to the point of apathy where ideally, you'd like their actions stopped and party disbanded in all honesty.
(That is my civilist approach)

For them to invoke this much reaction and anti support against them is to simply reflect the level of their extremist views on the whole.
The Tories also have their concerns about immigration and have fairly strict stances on they way they wanna curb things, but they do not openly go out inciting fear, spreading malicious slander on some of their citizens and pinning the countries problems on 9% (before, the total ethnic minority count would have been less, it was 6% in 2000)
It's like the modern KKK (I know they're still about over there) going to Central Park (I'm picking New York for a reason) and hosting their extremist views there.
...
You honestly and literally really think that people will walk by when we can all hear this, all be affected by it because it sincerely is so vicious and just go:
Hey, it's democracy folks!
Even if we feel like sniping them and their words are currently pissing me off to hell and the worst part?
Influencing and manipulating other fellow citizens to actually believing their crap which in the long run will someday affect us - we're fine to just let them carry on spreading the love as they've been doing.

The Green Party, the Independant Party and many other small groups that I don't believe in, all have right to campaign with their beliefs and grow but they do so without malice or hidden blind accusations.
In return, they won't get eggs thrown at them and they gain some actual respect to how they approach their campaigns and grow stronger with every election.

It's a <sarcasm> friendly reminder </end sarcasm> for their first public 'offical' speech that they really do not have the support of the country or the general mass. To think that they're gonna be vocal to the Europe (France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the rest) that Britain stands for such and such when as a 'mass' we do not, really is to quote the leaders of the Tories and Lib Dems, "sickening".
At least for what occured for this occasion I'm glad.
They'll get their talks and I'm fairly sure police escort will be heavier, especially for the talks in Manchester tomorrow.
It doesn't stop them talking or representing themselves in the long run, no one can really change that much.
It's just a small momento of sastifaction from my end, pardon me for openly being human.

[LynnieS]

Originally Posted by solomon

http://www.detnews.com/article/20090...-Chrysler-sale

Pensioners in the U.S. state of Indiana has filed suit with the Supreme Court over an alleged shafting of their renumeration of assets from Chrysler due to the speedy bankruptcy proceedings. Essentially they say they aren't being properly reimbursed and that the government basically violated bankruptcy law.

Perfectly valid claim (from what I know) but I worry about too much delay resulting in Fiat walking away and Chrysler being liquidated.

What was funny, IMHO, was that a piece of support for the suit entered came from Fiat in their saying the company (Fiat) would not walk away from the deal. Therefore, the hurry is not needed.

But the Supreme Court has now cleared the sale - at least on this one issue. http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/court-c...chrysler-sale/

GM's, though, is looking to be a bit interesting as well. Apparently, the asbestos claims' participants got left out of the negotiations. These would likely disappear once the new GM and Chrysler companies are started since the claims are with the old companies, which would now have very few assets to hand over.

http://www.freep.com/article/2009060...ut+of+GM+talks

[aohige]

Originally Posted by Vexx

Putin may be a bastard, but yeah it is nice to see that sort of smackdown of a weasel .... then the business schmuck just makes it worse for himself by reading the document that they've ALL undoubtedly were supposed to read thoroughly. So it means he came to the meeting unprepared. Ouch. And "3 strikes you're out" he tried to walk off with Putin's pen. oye...

Basically, due to the financial hit these businessmen took from the crisis, they shut down an entire factory which the little town where the factory is relies on for living.
With no compensation for the workers, and left dry.

Putin told him to sign the damn papers to reopen the factory, and compensate the workers. The guy didn't sign it.
So he's called up to be humiliated in front of the press, with pissed-off Putin glaring at him.

The poor schmuck that went up to sign the papers was the richest man in Russia a decade ago.
He was worth 30 billion dollars, and still has much of that wealth.
So him cutting off the factory enraged the public, and made him a very easy "bad guy" for Putin to punish and look good to the public.

[Reckoner]

Originally Posted by aohige

He was worth 3 trillion dollars, and still has much of that wealth.
So him cutting off the factory enraged the public, and made him a very easy "bad guy" for Putin to punish and look good to the public.

What? 3 trillion?.... I don't think somebody can be that rich.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

What? 3 trillion?.... I don't think somebody can be that rich.

Probably in rubles. The denomination is around a 1 : 30 exchange rate for USD : Rubles.

[aohige]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

What? 3 trillion?.... I don't think somebody can be that rich.

I meant billion. Even that was wrong.
He was worth 28 billion dollars it seems.

That's insane amount considering Gates is 40 billion.

[solomon]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8094076.stm

Odd that it was during a busy workday in the middle of Downtown. Odder still that apparently some dude just walked in with a rifle. Happened around 1 pm US eastern time. Pandemonium on the roads right now. (Live in suburban DC backyard)

[4Tran]

Originally Posted by aohige

You have to remember, North Korea is guilty of numerous kidnappings of South Koreans and Japanese.
Hell, they even admitted to this, and for decades these two nations have been negotiating with North Korea to get their citizens back.

It's pretty natural to jump to kidnapping considering The Great Leader's track record for kidnapping.
We're talking about the one government that DOES indeed kidnap people.

While this is true historically, North Korea seems to have backed down from this policy in recent years. Is there any indication other than this event that they've started it up again? On a slightly different note, there's still a lingering possibility that Kim Jong-Il is either dead or on the verge of death, and that this is a powerplay to ease a new leader into place. Either way, North Korea is likely to allow for a negotiated release of these two women.

Originally Posted by yezhanquan

And blow up commercial planes of their enemies.

When did North Korea ever do that? I can recall Americans and Soviets shooting down commercial planes, but I can't recall North Koreans doing that - do you have any links to such incidents?

Originally Posted by solomon

Does that include papers? They are my main source of US based news, and although imperfect (I wonder what the glory days of newspaper writing were like) they still are ten times more informative than the television. Bill Moyers had some guests talking about how the media is too preoccupied with being seen as too liberal or whatnot, thus they air any old thing that Rush or Newt says (even if it has no merit, like the justice nominee Sotomayor's "racist" charge) lest they be seen as "biased".

There are serious issues with all forms of American media. Even from the most respected media outlets (Wall Street Journal, Time, Washington Post, etc.), you can find contributors who either distort information or write outright lies. Recent cutbacks in newspaper publications mean that there's less editorial control and factchecking than ever, so it's more important than ever to read anything with a skeptical eye and a good BS filter. Sometimes, even reading from multiple newspapers isn't enough since articles are sometimes based on what was published elsewhere, and the verification standards aren't good enough to catch that. Moreover, there's always been a lot of rah-rah journalism which leads to events being poorly covered by just about everyone (see the Kosovo mess for an extreme example).

On balance, print news is a fair sight better than television news, if only because print isn't so concerned with have all that stupid "balanced" reporting. But you have to bear in mind that a lot of television talking heads are also the most prominent member of the print news services.

Right now, the best of the American media outlets is probably McClatchty, but I'd still get cross-check with some foreign sources - the BBC is always a good place to start, but you should be open to more exotic material like Al-Jazeera as well.

Originally Posted by Vexx

Aye, the BNP should have the right to say what they say and everyone else should have the right to call it the mean-spirited crap it is and throw tomatoes, eggs, cream pies, and other non-lethal bits of embarrassment.
Its better to have these clowns in the public eye where people can keep an eye on them

Perhaps, but bear in mind that a lot of European countries have hate crimes legislation that can be used to crack down on any excessive speech like inciting violence against a minority. That's why people like Mike Savage can be barred from the UK .

[Vexx]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/bu...ardt.html?_r=1

There are two basic truths about the enormous deficits that the federal government will run in the coming years.

Spoiler for long article:

The first is that President Obama’s agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying. The second is that Mr. Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit, despite what his advisers have suggested.

The New York Times analyzed Congressional Budget Office reports going back almost a decade, with the aim of understanding how the federal government came to be far deeper in debt than it has been since the years just after World War II. This debt will constrain the country’s choices for years and could end up doing serious economic damage if foreign lenders become unwilling to finance it.
Mr. Obama — responding to recent signs of skittishness among those lenders — met with 40 members of Congress at the White House on Tuesday and called for the re-enactment of pay-as-you-go rules, requiring Congress to pay for any new programs it passes.
The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.

You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.
The first category — the business cycle — accounts for 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing. It’s a reflection of the fact that both the 2001 recession and the current one reduced tax revenue, required more spending on safety-net programs and changed economists’ assumptions about how much in taxes the government would collect in future years.

About 33 percent of the swing stems from new legislation signed by Mr. Bush. That legislation, like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, not only continue to cost the government but have also increased interest payments on the national debt.
Mr. Obama’s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies — together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama — account for 20 percent of the swing.

About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama’s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas.
If the analysis is extended further into the future, well beyond 2012, the Obama agenda accounts for only a slightly higher share of the projected deficits.

How can that be? Some of his proposals, like a plan to put a price on carbon emissions, don’t cost the government any money. Others would be partly offset by proposed tax increases on the affluent and spending cuts. Congressional and White House aides agree that no large new programs, like an expansion of health insurance, are likely to pass unless they are paid for.
Alan Auerbach, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and an author of a widely cited study on the dangers of the current deficits, describes the situation like so: “Bush behaved incredibly irresponsibly for eight years. On the one hand, it might seem unfair for people to blame Obama for not fixing it. On the other hand, he’s not fixing it.”
“And,” he added, “not fixing it is, in a sense, making it worse.”

When challenged about the deficit, Mr. Obama and his advisers generally start talking about health care. “There is no way you can put the nation on a sound fiscal course without wringing inefficiencies out of health care,” Peter Orszag, the White House budget director, told me.
Outside economists agree. The Medicare budget really is the linchpin of deficit reduction. But there are two problems with leaving the discussion there.

First, even if a health overhaul does pass, it may not include the tough measures needed to bring down spending. Ultimately, the only way to do so is to take money from doctors, drug makers and insurers, and it isn’t clear whether Mr. Obama and Congress have the stomach for that fight. So far, they have focused on ideas like preventive care that would do little to cut costs.

Second, even serious health care reform won’t be enough. Obama advisers acknowledge as much. They say that changes to the system would probably have a big effect on health spending starting in five or 10 years. The national debt, however, will grow dangerously large much sooner.
Mr. Orszag says the president is committed to a deficit equal to no more than 3 percent of gross domestic product within five to 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office projects a deficit of at least 4 percent for most of the next decade. Even that may turn out to be optimistic, since the government usually ends up spending more than it says it will. So Mr. Obama isn’t on course to meet his target.

But Congressional Republicans aren’t, either. Judd Gregg recently held up a chart on the Senate floor showing that Mr. Obama would increase the deficit — but failed to mention that much of the increase stemmed from extending Bush policies. In fact, unlike Mr. Obama, Republicans favor extending all the Bush tax cuts, which will send the deficit higher.

Republican leaders in the House, meanwhile, announced a plan last week to cut spending by $75 billion a year. But they made specific suggestions adding up to meager $5 billion. The remaining $70 billion was left vague. “The G.O.P. is not serious about cutting down spending,” the conservative Cato Institute concluded.

What, then, will happen?
“Things will get worse gradually,” Mr. Auerbach predicts, “unless they get worse quickly.” Either a solution will be put off, or foreign lenders, spooked by the rising debt, will send interest rates higher and create a crisis.
The solution, though, is no mystery. It will involve some combination of tax increases and spending cuts. And it won’t be limited to pay-as-you-go rules, tax increases on somebody else, or a crackdown on waste, fraud and abuse. Your taxes will probably go up, and some government programs you favor will become less generous.
That is the legacy of our trillion-dollar deficits. Erasing them will be one of the great political issues of the coming decade.

[Vexx]

In separate news... now that the "shock of the 2008 presidential election" has worn off amongst our own "moonbat loony right wing" -- they're starting to act on the exhortations of the hyperbole of the 'talk radio and talking head' propagandists.
Shootout at the US Holocaust Museum: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/0..._n_213864.html
This guy is a real "treat" o.O (as is the perpetrator in the recent family planning health clinic doctor's murder).

[Vexx]

And finally in US healthcare news:

(from NPR)
A recent Harvard study shows a dramatic increase in personal bankruptcy filings related to medical expenses in the last eight years.

In 2007, 62 percent of all personal bankruptcies were linked to medical bills. That's nearly 20 percent more than reported in 2001. And in most cases, those who sought bankruptcy protection had middle-class earnings; nearly 80 percent were covered by health insurance.
Medical expenses are causing more Americans to experience financial distress and insolvency. The rapidly rising bankruptcy numbers will probably add pressure to the national debate over health care reform.

[Shadow Kira01]

Originally Posted by 4Tran

On a slightly different note, there's still a lingering possibility that Kim Jong-Il is either dead or on the verge of death, and that this is a powerplay to ease a new leader into place. Either way, North Korea is likely to allow for a negotiated release of these two women.

You got a good point here. There is a possibility that the Kim Jong-Il we see on the mass media nowadays is an impostor that had went through physical appearance alterations as that many leaders of communist nations tend to keep replica of themselves to use on a variety of occasions. Originally, it is to serve the purpose of preventing themselves from getting assassinated but of course, these replicas have many other useful purposes. Nonetheless, whether the healthy Kim Jong-Il is the real thing or a replica has little to no meaning to me, as well as most involved nations. North Korea is an enemy and that does not change.

[Vexx]

Nations in general tend to feel the most vulnerable during a transition of authority -- I suppose that could be a fair hypothesis for North Korea's current shrieking.

[4Tran]

Originally Posted by Vexx

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/bu...ardt.html?_r=1

There are two basic truths about the enormous deficits that the federal government will run in the coming years.

That's a very good article that rings true on a lot of level, and I think that it does a good job of summing up the sheer enormity of the problem facing the American economy. On top of that, there are no easy solutions (with the possible exception of more socialism ), so it's likely that it won't be touched on by any major politicians. I imagine that the Obama Administration is fully aware of it though, and it's undoubtedly giving them lots of sleepless nights.

Originally Posted by Vexx

In separate news... now that the "shock of the 2008 presidential election" has worn off amongst our own "moonbat loony right wing" -- they're starting to act on the exhortations of the hyperbole of the 'talk radio and talking head' propagandists.

Until something drastically improves on the American political scene, I have a feeling that this is just going to be the tip of the iceberg. The apex of American domestic terrorism was during the Clinton Administration, and given that the rhetoric is even more heated now, I can easily foresee those days returning.

Originally Posted by Vexx

And finally in US healthcare news:

(from NPR)
A recent Harvard study shows a dramatic increase in personal bankruptcy filings related to medical expenses in the last eight years.

In 2007, 62 percent of all personal bankruptcies were linked to medical bills. That's nearly 20 percent more than reported in 2001. And in most cases, those who sought bankruptcy protection had middle-class earnings; nearly 80 percent were covered by health insurance.
Medical expenses are causing more Americans to experience financial distress and insolvency. The rapidly rising bankruptcy numbers will probably add pressure to the national debate over health care reform.

This deserves to be expanded upon. Here's a write up on the same study (empahsis mine):

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/05...lls/index.html

Medical bills prompt more than 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies
By Theresa Tamkins

This year, an estimated 1.5 million Americans will declare bankruptcy. Many people may chalk up that misfortune to overspending or a lavish lifestyle, but a new study suggests that more than 60 percent of people who go bankrupt are actually capsized by medical bills.

Bankruptcies due to medical bills increased by nearly 50 percent in a six-year period, from 46 percent in 2001 to 62 percent in 2007, and most of those who filed for bankruptcy were middle-class, well-educated homeowners, according to a report that will be published in the August issue of The American Journal of Medicine.

"Unless you're a Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, you're one illness away from financial ruin in this country," says lead author Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., of the Harvard Medical School, in Cambridge, Mass. "If an illness is long enough and expensive enough, private insurance offers very little protection against medical bankruptcy, and that's the major finding in our study."

Woolhandler and her colleagues surveyed a random sample of 2,314 people who filed for bankruptcy in early 2007, looked at their court records, and then interviewed more than 1,000 of them. Health.com: Expert advice on getting health insurance and affordable care for chronic pain

They concluded that 62.1 percent of the bankruptcies were medically related because the individuals either had more than $5,000 (or 10 percent of their pretax income) in medical bills, mortgaged their home to pay for medical bills, or lost significant income due to an illness. On average, medically bankrupt families had $17,943 in out-of-pocket expenses, including $26,971 for those who lacked insurance and $17,749 who had insurance at some point.

Overall, three-quarters of the people with a medically-related bankruptcy had health insurance, they say.

It astonishes me that anyone can prefer this over a public system. Any discussion of this article should probably go in The Future of US Healthcare.

Originally Posted by Shadow Minato

You got a good point here. There is a possibility that the Kim Jong-Il we see on the mass media nowadays is an impostor that had went through physical appearance alterations as that many leaders of communist nations tend to keep replica of themselves to use on a variety of occasions. Originally, it is to serve the purpose of preventing themselves from getting assassinated but of course, these replicas have many other useful purposes.

Normally, I wouldn't buy into this kind of rumor without a lot of proof, but North Korea has taken the very unusual step of publicly naming Kim Jong-Il's youngest son as the official successor. It suggests that there's a great deal of shake up going on.

Originally Posted by Shadow Minato

Nonetheless, whether the healthy Kim Jong-Il is the real thing or a replica has little to no meaning to me, as well as most involved nations. North Korea is an enemy and that does not change.

That's strange. The world isn't some sort of black and white dichotomy, and situations and relationships don't remain static. A change in North Korean leadership might signify nothing, or it might signify greater potential for rapproachment, or it might signal a greater chance for war. Ignoring all of these possibilities doesn't seem to be a good idea.

[Bad wolf]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XygUZghkgc
Why Pat Robertson is a fucking idiot. <.<

[Mystique]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8094076.stm
What's going on over in DC then :\
Abortion doctors getting short at church.
Some old dude walking into a Holocaust museum with a rifle? O.o

Reports say the gunman is an American aged 89 with white supremacist links.

89....
Why do the bad ones always live the longest...?

[Shadow Kira01]

Japan unveils new emissions cut target

Aso said Japan's new target can be achieved through promotion of green technology, including solar panels and hybrid cars. Some projects are funded by the government's 15 trillion yen ($150 billion) stimulus package.

The target requires emissions cuts of 10 percent by the industrial sector and 25 percent by households. Business leaders called for state funding to relieve burden on small companies hit by the economic slump.

But environmentalists in Bonn said were critical of Japan's plan.

The World Wildlife Fund for Nature called it "dangerously lacking in ambition," saying it represents little change from Tokyo's earlier promise to cut emissions 6 percent by 2012. Greenpeace said it damaged hopes for an effective new treaty.

Having ambition is bad, lacking ambition is actually worse..

This seems to be true when it comes to reducing pollution.

Originally Posted by 4Tran

That's strange. The world isn't some sort of black and white dichotomy, and situations and relationships don't remain static. A change in North Korean leadership might signify nothing, or it might signify greater potential for rapproachment, or it might signal a greater chance for war. Ignoring all of these possibilities doesn't seem to be a good idea.

Although you seem have a wrong idea of how I look at things but given my perspective on various political issues on AnimeSuki, it is only natural that you would see it as such. However, I got to tell you that I do not look at the world in some sort of black and white dichotomy as that politics is supposedly to be flexible as water. Nonetheless, since your approach to the North Korean leadership seems to be absolutely correct, I rather not not clarify myself.