Surreal and intriguing. There is a palpable sense of fear and unease on people's faces, not a smile to be seen. A gloomy insight into a whole other world. And questions assumptions about human behavior.
Its frightening to think how easy it is to suppress a whole population for years and decades on end. The romantic image of courage, revolution and human freedom comes to naught here. Status quo, acceptance and survival seems to be the more natural human state.
There is the natural reluctance to put one's head above. And for good reason, anyone foolish or brave enough to put their head above in this all knowing state will be put down swiftly, and perhaps brutally to be made an example of. How does change happen here?
Organizing anything in this state of pervasive surveillance is nearly impossible and should be a wake up call for those sleepwalking into one.
The only way we know from history is implosion of the prevailing power center or outside support motivated more by massive self interests than human freedom or kindness, compromising the road ahead.
Surveillance, secret courts and dubious processes are meekly accepted but change can become very difficult once these infrastructures are put in place, operational and at the complete discretion of whoever happens to be in power. A warning for all of us.
It could be cultural as well. I remember showing pictures of my childhood in Soviet Union to people in America and they'd comment how gloomy and sad everyone looked -- even at birthday parties. The thing is we weren't gloomy and sad (well not all the time even though we were poor). We just didn't smile in pictures. So not saying people are not scared and oppressed there. We know they are. But some of the reactions could be cultural as well not all due oppression.
Maybe there's an old shared South and North Korean cultural thing going on? I am American born Korean and I always forget not to smile. Every Korean wedding photo I'm in I'm smiling while everyone else looks somber even if I know they're super happy. My own wedding photos have my relatives struggling to smile. Lovely mix of photos. :p
Had slavic (Ukrainian) grandparents and many other relatives. Can confirm, they don't smile in pictures (despite living in North America), at least the older generation...
I saw a group of Asian tourists line up and take each other's photos in front of the Venus De Milo at the Louvre. Each one had the most grim expression on their face. Everyone seemed perfectly happy before and after.
Isn't that more practiced indifference? There is no nervousness about it. It's hard to zero in on it but in this case there is an air of helplessness and despondency, with all that iconic imagery and hubris typical of totalitarian regimes. It all looks a bit too dire trivializing the people and magnifying their helplessness.
It could just be our or my own prejudice and perspective knowing what we know about North Korea and reading more into these rather unique and powerful set of images, you just want people to be free and happy if possible.
I don't know, bribe China, bribe North Korea, surely there must be a way to get those holding the strings to let go and to do it not because of nuclear weapons, strategic interests or business but to set the people free. What a moment it will be. Humanity would have truly prevailed.
> with all that iconic imagery and hubris typical of totalitarian regimes.
I think all that iconic imagery is probably biasing you.
I'm not saying that DPRK is a wonderland, but I'd wager that if you took photos of the Pyongang, Moscow Metro, London, Tokyo and New York subways and randomly swapped the various backgrounds, a casual viewer would view the Soviet-influenced Moscow- and Pyongyang-background passengers as gloomy, and the New York- and London-background ones as having "practiced indifference".
(You'd probably have to be clever with the composition, though - seeing obviously-British people or people of African descent with Mao or Lenin behind them would be a little jarring, and a bit out of place.)
I kind of want to do this now, but don't think I have the time today.
> I don't know, bribe China, bribe North Korea, surely there must be a way to get those holding the strings to let go and to do it not because of nuclear weapons, strategic interests or business but to set the people free. What a moment it will be. Humanity would have truly prevailed.
The desire for change must come out of North Korea inhabitants, then other states can help. Otherwise what you're suggesting would be externally orchestrated regime change, a thing that usually ends up badly for the people living there.
> It could just be our or my own prejudice and perspective knowing what we know about North Korea and reading more into these rather unique and powerful set of images, you just want people to be free and happy if possible.
This, I can't help but think he'd have a different opinion if some of these pictures were shown out of context without any indication that it's NK.
> There is the natural reluctance to put one's head above. And for good reason, anyone foolish or brave enough to put their head above in this all knowing state will be put down swiftly, and perhaps brutally to be made an example of. How does change happen here?
> Organizing anything in this state of pervasive surveillance is nearly impossible and should be a wake up call for those sleepwalking into one.
I saw this sentiment expressed by another poster yesterday and almost responded, but this seems like a much better context.
I, personally, agree that pervasive surveillance is a bad thing and that the power of government should be carefully restricted. That said, what is the path from "pervasive surveillance" to "be[ing] put down swiftly, and perhaps brutally to be made an example of"? North Korea's state has the willingness and power to chop down those who stand up; how would one of the nations "sleepwalking into [a state of pervasive surveillance]" get away with it?
I can certainly see, and articulate, dangers involving minority targeting. Similarly, I can articulate the dangers of isolated cases of abuse of power. I cannot, however, articulate a path for a liberal Western nation to become North Korea (or even China) without delving into tinfoil hat territory.
That's a classic slippery slope, isn't it? How would you know and how would you stop it. Are you able to stop the surveillance, the secret courts, harassment of activists and whistle blowers, the double speak and duplicitous justifications today?
You won't even know were it not for Snowden at great cost to himself, not an easy decision when the first impulse is to put your head down. And 'allegations' would be met with 'tinfoil hat' you just used.
How will you then detect and stop it tomorrow? Wait for another Snowden? Another sacrifice? Is there some defined point at which the population just stands up and says no. Or is it just faith?
Our democratic systems allow us to say yes, but not no. There are huge flaws with accountability, choice and capture by vested interests that remain unsolved. And now we have creeping surveillance, self serving justifications and arbitrary governance processes to deal with. Few of us have the privilege to stand up and say no, too engrossed in day to day life.
There is no clear mechanism to say no beyond protest and we can see how repressively liberal western democracies are dealing with dissent and protest today, infiltrating and tracking activists, protests and general harassment, something unthinkable at the height of liberal posturing during the bulk of the cold war. Isn't it way beyond the point of faith.
Korea spent thirty-five years occupied by imperial Japan, a regime never much noted for the softness of its grip, and after the war, was partitioned and the northern part given directly into the hands of the Soviet Union as a proto-Cold War quid pro quo. That's not so much what you could call a "slippery slope", as it is torture and brainwashing on a societal, rather than an individual, scale.
> Organizing anything in this state of pervasive surveillance is nearly impossible and should be a wake up call for those sleepwalking into one.
Is North Korea even in a state of pervasive surveillance by modern standards? Their technology is not all too advanced. It's the thought of being listened to that keeps people in line, more than the technical implementation. And that overwhelming condition is really the result of propaganda - communication fanout rather than fanin.
Sure - especially enlisting amateurs with "if you hear something and don't report it, you're part of the conspiracy". It still takes a sense of being overwhelmed for the ambivalent to take that seriously.
It's also worth noting that these people generally don't appear to be aware that their picture is being taken. Though I'm a happy person, my resting face isn't necessarily going to look any happier than these.
I'm always fascinated to read about North Korea. I feel so incredibly bad for the people who live there, who either know how bad things are (and can't do anything about it) or don't know (and thus don't care). In some ways, the latter group is probably better off.
(A great book: Nothing to Envy, by Barbara Demick, about life in North Korea and what it's like to escape to the West.)
It's amazing to see what North Korea will do to keep its own citizens in the dark, and to try to make things look amazing to foreigners -- only to fail spectacularly.
The attempts to erase traces of the metro cars' German origins reminds me of the department stores I've read about in Pyongyang, in which people enter and exit without buying anything, only to return minutes later, in order to give foreigners the illusion of a great commercial success.
All countries engage in propaganda and patriotism to some degree, but North Korea really takes the cake here. I hope that its citizens will one day be able to gain more freedom and financial security, but that somehow seems unlikely in the near future.
> in which people enter and exit without buying anything, only to return minutes later, in order to give foreigners the illusion of a great commercial success
I don't get it. Foreigners see success in people who don't buy anything?
No, the story that I read indicated that the North Koreans brought Western visitors to a department store, to demonstrate how great North Korea's economy was.
This Western visitor noticed that after people exited the store, they immediately entered again, to give an illusion of a busy store -- when in fact, nothing was actually being purchased.
(I can't remember if the shoppers were using money or taking things out of the store, but I have to assume that they were. I wish that I could find this story, which was quite fascinating.)
My point is that the North Korean government was so inept at propaganda that their attempts to demonstrate economic stability and power were laughably transparent.
I understand, that makes sense. What a clearly stupid decision on the government's part. It would have been much better if the stores were simply empty. Thanks for clarifying.
In a similar vein, there's pictures online of a "computer lab" in North Korea shown to visitors. There's people typing away at computers, which is seemingly normal, until you realize none of the computer have electricity.
I think the point is that they're attempting to make the shops look busy, but it's a ham-fisted/incompetent failure (they recirculate the same "shoppers", nobody buys anything)
What's arrogant and condescending about feeling bad for a country in which people don't have enough to eat, where every house needs to have pictures of the country's founder and his son, and in which punishments for even minor infractions involve entire families going to prison camps?
There is plenty of documentation establishing that those two things and many others are accurate. If you don't believe western media, there are Chinese sources as well.
For the malnutrition, North Koreans are smaller on average, and they even have trouble to recruit for their army, this cannot lie. The abuses and problems of North Korea are also very well documented.
In metro, no one (if not many) is carrying cell phones! That is (just one of) something our eyes are not used to. (In Singapore, nearly every one in metro is hooked to their phones)
This is too much:
"North Korea doesn’t use the traditional Gregorian calendar, they use the ‘Juche’ calendar, beginning on the date of Kim Il-Sung’s birth, Juche 1. "
At some point people realized they got the year wrong for Jesus's supposed birth. But the reaction was, "eh, fuck it", so our calendar isn't really based even on that anymore.
FWIW Japan uses, in parallel, the Western system, but also a system where the years are counted from the beginning of the reign of the current emperor.
Well Japan's is a bit more baroque since every once in a while the emperor dies and it gets reset (currently it's the Heisei era, which began in 1989).
It is still very commonly used by everyone besides academics and, as others have said, papering over it by calling it the "common era" isn't really that convincing.
I was replying to "we still call it..." "We" are officially not calling it "the year of the lord" in secular contexts because inclusive language is really important. The language has changed. Certainly it has a meaning traced back to religion for historical reasons but so do a lot of other things and it's inconvenient to throw out very well established conventions sometimes. And, yes, new terminology takes a while to catch on.
> I first heard BCE/CE maybe ten years ago or a little less.
Well, if your username is a guide, and you were born in '86, then that makes you 29 or 30, so 10 years ago would be 19 or 20, so in college. That makes sense for the first time for someone to hear about it; it takes a while for ideas to trickle down into elementary & HS textbooks.
Yes, it often takes years for new terminology to catch on and sometimes it doesn't. If a whole generation grows up seeing it in textbooks, and hearing it in the classroom I have no doubt that it will catch on eventually. Most people don't talk BCE outside of a classroom anyways.
I've always found this odd. Declaring the last 2000 years the "Christian Era" seems much more offensive than a couple of letter standing for some fairly arbitrary latin. Added to which, even in countries which could be described as being in a Christian era, it just didn't get going for a couple of hundred years after 0AD
Anno Domini isn't "fairly arbitrary latin" it is very meaningful. CE doesn't stand for Christian Era, it stands for Common Era. There also is not a year 0, it goes from 1BCE to 1CE. Year zero probably doesn't exist because it doesn't make sense for how we count things, you don’t say "it is the 0th year of the common era."
the astronomical year numbering system actually does use year zero but they also use negative years rather than BCE notation.
What makes it so Common? What great event occurred on the year 1 CE that we decided we should start marking our years from that point? Ovid writing "Metamorphoses"?
> What great event occurred on the year 1 CE that we decided we should start marking our years from that point?
Absolutely nothing. You need to have a starting point, and for historical reasons we ended up with that one. It isn't a meaningful date for anybody, but it turns out having a common reference point is more important than having a significant reference point, so nobody cares.
It's actually a very meaningful date to a lot of people on this planet, although I'm not one of them.
We used to refer to years past that date using a short phrase in a dead language. However, this short phrase in a dead language referred to a religious figure, which is Not OK. So we decided we'd rename it "Common Era" but keep the numbers the same because that would be a big hassle. As a result, our calendar still counts how many years have passed since the alleged birth of Christ, but because people might be offended by the words "Anno Domini" we've called it something different.
If I were in the position to pick a new calendar start date, I'd probably just go with the Unix Epoch... AE, Anno Epocha? We'd now be in the year 46AE :)
> It's actually a very meaningful date to a lot of people on this planet
As galdosdi surmised, it's not about whether you're not a believer, it's about that 1 AD isn't believed to be the date for Jesus's birth. At some point historians & theologians realized the calendar was incorrect, and so they had a choice: keep the reference point everyone was familiar with, even if that date is no longer significant, or switch to a better estimate for Jesus's birth, keeping the calendar significant. People decided that commonly known was more important than significant, and so we're left with a BC / AD split, where the reference point is longer meaningful.
mcphage may have meant that it isn't a meaningful date for anybody, because we now know that 1 AD is probably at least several years off from the birth of Jesus Christ.
I always hear people make this claim, but on what evidence do we "know" that? There is no contemporaneous source talking about him while he's alive; the earliest we've got is Mark which was probably written around 60 or 70.
Conversely, I always hear the claim that Jesus was born on 1 AD, but on what evidence do we know that? Some random monks in the dark ages tried to guess so they could make a calendar, and that's the guess they came up with.
While the modern estimate certainly has uncertainty too (how could we ever _know_ such a thing with complete certainty?), there's no way it's _less_ accurate than the original estimate made by some random monk in the middle ages, working with much less data. It does not make sense to privilege that random monk's guesses over today's guesses.
According to Wikipedia, there's two different methods -- written Roman records of Herod as mcphage mentions, or using written Roman records of Pilate's crucifixion and subtracting the claimed age of Jesus at that time. Both methods give years that are in the same ballpark, roughly 4 to 6 BC, which should give confidence that they are close. No method gives an answer of around 1 AD. (Actually, it's pretty impressive that some monks working hundreds of years later in the dark ages are no more than a few years off from today's best estimates)
The Wikipedia page on this topic also mentions trying to work backward from the reference to Jesus being "about 30 years old" during his ministry, which could point to about 1. So really I don't think anyone knows for sure.
Yes, so the point is at best, there's no reason to privilege any particular one of these guesses, whether 4 or 5 or 1 or whatever. We just don't know, ergo the AD/BC date system does _not_ center about a date that has much meaning for anyone, which was the O/P's point
Herod, who according to the bible was king when Jesus was born, died in 4 BC. Whether or not you believe in Jesus, the fact that it didn't happen in 1 AD isn't a controversial fact anywhere.
I went and looked at this on Wikipedia and it seems there is some dispute about Herod's date of death: "Most scholars agree that Herod died in 4 BCE, although a case has also been made that Herod died only in 1BCE.[10][11][12][13][14][15]"
Anyway, this assumes historicity of the accounts saying he was born during the reign of Herod but that's kind of complicated by the Moses imagery; this isn't exactly neutral and unimportant. But I guess that is as good a basis as any to try and determine the real date.
They tried the same thing in the French Revolution. Lookup the French Republican Calendar.
Before you deride it as ridiculous, remember that the metric system came about in the exact same way. The only difference is the world kept their space measure but tossed their temporal measure.
The French republican calendar was tightly related to the French revolution and the French society of that time and was probably never conceived with the purpose of being adopted by other countries.
Whereas the metric system's proponents were people like Lavoisier, Laplace, or Condorcet, who tried to base the system on the principles of logic and natural phenomena. Undoubtedly a more 'global' approach.
Sadly Jefferson was not persuasive enough at the time with his similar proposal to the congress.
Not too strange though, several countries do this, although usually mixed with the Gregorian calendar. Japan uses both the Gregorian calendar and its own calendar where years are counted from the start of the reign of the reigning emperor. This year 2016 is Heisei 28; the year 1980 was Shōwa 55. This system is often used on formal documents and one's date of birth.
Yeah, thanks for pointing that out. It triggered curiosity on Music in North Korea.
Ain't surprised the way article starts:
"Music of North Korea is heavily influenced by the political situation in the country."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_North_Korea
If NYC decided to punish littering by imprisoning you, your entire family, and all of your descendants in perpetuity in some of the world's worst labor/torture/starvation camps....NYC would be pretty spotless too.
Yeah, I get what you're saying. But what would it take to keep folks in NYC from littering? Is that the only way people stop littering-- when they're threatened with imprisonment, flogging, or worse?
This was also true in the not quite as oppressive (but still oppressive by Western standards) Eastern European dictatorships pre-1989. It's from a combination of reasons -- fear that graffiti/litter would get you in trouble and the fact that in order to approach full employment, many more people were involved in cleaning than under capitalism.
This is very true; some years ago a friend who works for the Foreign Office was posted to Tunisia, and we went to visit her there. She pointed out a guy at a traffic intersection in a splendid uniform with white gloves, waving on and halting the traffic, basically doing the job of a set of traffic lights. This would have been derided in Europe or the US, and yet here was a guy with a purpose to his life rather than sitting around unemployed. Even the uniform seemed designed to imbue the job with kudos.
Isn't it weird how it's not affordable to pay for a new public service but as soon that job is being done you're told not to get too attached because a robot will be along promptly to replace you?
In large part due to massive governmental inefficiencies, massive defence spending, and because the richest individuals and corporations hardly pay any tax on their (real) earnings...
Or may be some people don't litter not because of fear of trouble but because they know how to behave?
Also about more cleaning: there is a proverb that sounds something like "It's clean not where a lot of cleaning has place but where people are not littering"
The New York subway could make almost anywhere look clean. Certainly every subway I've been on in Europe was spotless by comparison, and even the ones elsewhere in the US were pretty good.
DPRK's subway system is clean because the punishment for littering is so severe.
if someone gets a ticket for littering in NYC people on HN are all up in arms. I don't have a link for it now but take a look at the comments for the story about the policing slowdown in New York when they stopped writing tickets for parking, turnstile jumping, and other minor offenses. People were all like "yeah, we don't need parking tickets! Society works fine without them, they are just for revenue! Punishment does nothing to effect behavior!"
It's difficult to imagine what your worldview would be like growing up around such a high level of propaganda from a young age. Every piece of visual media you have ever encountered trying to subvert your view of the world. (I guess not too dissimilar to our own lives, on a smaller scale of course).
It's true of every society to some extent. The West's less overt tactics are arguably more effective than Soviet-style propaganda because they're less obvious.
> The West's less overt tactics are arguably more effective than Soviet-style propaganda because they're less obvious.
America has pretty overt propaganda, e.g. the Pentagon paying the NFL millions to 'salute the troops'.
As a non-American, seeing young children reciting the pledge of allegiance in unison is downright creepy. I'm guessing Americans do not have alternative experiences and hence consider it to be normal. I'm guessing the same applies to Koreans growing up in Korea: it's normal. I'm not suggesting the levels of propaganda are in the same ball-park.
As an American I find schoolchildren reciting the pledge of allegiance in the morning very disturbing. Especially ones who are much to young to actually understand what they are saying.
And it always happened in every primary school I went to.
To add to the creepiness, when a child sits for the pledge (legal, AFAIK) and is punished. Add the comments from supposedly rational adults on the local news article about it... and you see some people really take forced patriotism seriously.
Nobody can be forced to stand for the pledge or recite it. (West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette[1]) however uninformed school board may illegally punish students anyway or become vindictive in other ways. By not standing for the pledge a kid risks being seen as a troublemaker or "difficult" which can cloud a teacher's judgements in other matters. Making it part of the school day makes no sense for just that reason. Certain religious groups (ex Jehovah's Witnesses) are against pledging allegiance to a flag and it's unfair to put a student in that situation for something so silly as the pledge of allegiance. But as you said some people feel very strongly about this sort of fake and forced ritual.
I have a big problem with teaching it to very young kids who don't really don't have the capacity yet to really understand what it means or what they are pledging to. Most kids kinda slur their way through it because it contains vocabulary that the typical 5 year old wouldn't have. [2]
[1] "The case is made difficult not because the principles of its decision are obscure but because the flag involved is our own. Nevertheless, we apply the limitations of the Constitution with no fear that freedom to be intellectually and spiritually diverse or even contrary will disintegrate the social organization. To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds. We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes. When they are so harmless to others or to the State as those we deal with here, the price is not too great. But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.
If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us."
[2] I used to say "I pledge OF allegiance to the flag....under god, invisible..."
While some of the US's propaganda is the direct overt military type, most of it is dressed up as "news" or "entertainment".
This year especially, look at the fervor of support for The Party(s). It's amazing how adding a narrow choice sidesteps people's inherent distrust for being told what to do.
> As a non-American, seeing young children reciting the pledge of allegiance in unison is downright creepy.
The practice dates from the heyday of Hitlerism, and arguably springs from much the same sort of motivation - and it's creepy enough before you read about the Bellamy salute.
It’s quite interesting to see Russian or American propaganda when you’re not from either – the patriotism, nationalism, corporatism and anti-intellectualism in the US seems so weird. Almost as weird as Russia.
I mean, doesn’t kids singing the national anthem in the morning before school seem a bit weird to you, too?
As a non-American (I'm British, arguably), the whole American flag saluting/pledge of allegiance/national anthem thing has always seemed excessively patriotic. I doubt many people in the UK could remember the national anthem beyond the first verse, and if required to make a pledge of allegiance, I imagine many would refuse.
But that's probably because it's a less important identity to people in the UK. It's not a country of immigrants, there is more than just national identity to hold people together.
Agreed. Though I'm from Germany, a country that is historically anxious about national pride.
And that includes myself. I get why people want to feel proud of their country, but I don't need this. I view a state as a provider of infrastructure, social security, and societal stability. Therefore I'm not particularly attached to the concrete state I'm living in, as long as it provides these amenities to me.
Compared to the rest of the modern World, we are "far-right". As a libertarian, I'd be politically extreme in any country in Europe. Even the USA Democrats are right of center compared to much of Europe. Besides, we like chanting it; its child-like fun.
"Far right", at least nowadays, in Europe has a very definite meaning that has little to do with economics (in that regard, "Far Right" parties tend to be the opposite than libertarian), but rather with their stance on immigration, religious, and social issues.
Australia has "Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi Oi Oi!" Usually a sporting chant, but it's sometimes used by Australian travellers to identify other Australians in a crowd (ie, yell out "Aussie Aussie Aussie" and see if anyone yells back "Oi Oi Oi!")
Well, there's sporting events... like the World Cup or European Championships, there every national shouts their own country's name without awkward duality feelings (even Germans, I just checked with one to be sure =)
The British do have moments of patriotism (I've certainly heard it in events ranging from football events to the Last Night of the Proms).
But yeah, American patriotism has too much of the more ridiculous nationalistic / jingoistic side of things. I can't think of a Western country where something as ridiculous as, say, not wearing a pin with an American flag on it, or supposedly failing to put your hand over your heart during the Presidential anthem, would become a major political attack angle.
Not British, but I guess the different national identities (English, Scottish, Welsh...) in the Kingdom play a major role, also considering the fact that one of them has had a fairly dominant role along its history.
Would a Scotsman or Northern Irishman identifies himself as such to a foreigner, rather than British ?
The non-English Brits say that any time a Scottish, Welsh, or Irish person does something good, the press describes them as British; something bad, the press call out their nationality; but that the press do the reverse for the English.
As a Scot, it is sometimes much easier to identify as being Scottish in many parts of the world. People tend to be slightly warmer to you when they find out you are from Scotland and not just Britain.
I guess years of colonialism still makes being British slightly tarred.
For example visiting America, people are interested enough if you are from the UK but if you mention specifically Scotland they instantly start getting much more excited.
"What emerges from the census results is that, while a majority of people in England, Scotland and Wales pick English (60%), Scottish (62%) or Welsh (58%) as their sole identity, younger and more diverse communities show higher proportions selecting a British identity."
Edit: I'm a Scot - seems natural for people to describe themselves as English, Welsh etc. and relatively few people I've known got it confused with Ireland (apart from the US VCs who invested in our UK-based startup and thought we were in Ireland and we actually worried that if we corrected them they might not invest... this was ~20 years ago).
I use the label "British" rather reluctantly. I've spent 3/4 of my life in England and 1/4 in Scotland, so it seems like an accurate descriptor, but I'd rather claim to be Scottish if I can claim to be anything. "Britain" is a concept linked inextricably to the UK's imperial history, for me.
I've found in my travels within the UK as an American, that the reverse is also true. I tend to get a much warmer reception in Scotland than anywhere else.
(Except Shetland. I got the feeling they don't really like outsiders in Shetland.)
The British national anthem is a complex affair. The final god save the queen verse is well known internationally, but the initial Sailing By and the shipping forecast in the middle are often missed completely
I doubt many people in the US could remember (or ever even knew of the existence of) the national anthem beyond the first verse either. The first verse is the only part commonly sung, in my experience.
One exercise I picked up recently was to read the "Western" news, i.e. the Guardian and comparing with the Russian worldview at RT.com
RT might seem a bit.. over the top about certain topics (i.e. Syria and how Russia is doing), but is it really, or is it just OUR subtle propaganda that conditions me to take everything Russia says with a pinch of salt?
I don't understand, do you mean RT is not at all representative of the Russian worldview, or do you mean RT is bad because of the influence it has on the Russian worldview?
I noted that BBC jumped on the "Putin's comrades corrupt" at the same time that RT jumped on "Cameron's father corrupt" at the same time when the Panama papers were released.
That whole national anthem (or pledge of allegiance) thing doesn't happen in most American schools, so many of us Americans can't imagine it either. With even northern states (including California) jumping into this, it doesn't seem like the country I grew up in.
I went to middle and high school in Mississippi (!!) and Washington state (late 80s early 90s), never did the national anthem or pledge except at special events like football games.
I grew up in Georgia and we said the pledge every morning from first grade all the way through high school. There was also a public prayer before football games. This was in the seventies and eighties in a relatively rural community about an hour from Atlanta.
I'm pretty sure they still do the pledge but may have done away with the prayer.
Not propaganda. I'm sure it depends on the state and/or school district.
Here's the law for Florida. The morning pledge recitation is pretty clearly spelled out. It is up to the school district to implement it or not, of course. (The district I went to chose to.)
I grew up in a suburb of Chicago and I said the pledge every morning, from from kindergarten to high school. I honestly thought every student in the US did the same.
Even though I believe it's been proven to be some form of hoax (although I'm not sure if it's been proven by whom), http://propagandafilm.net is highly worth a watch.
There are moments when it truly feels like the above statement equally applies to "us" as it does to "them".
If the train carriages look familiar to anyone who's seen the German Democratic Republic's carriages, that's because they're the very same ones. The DPRK took some of the GDR's old U-Bahn trains.
Actually, North Korea bought subway train carriages that were in use in western berlin as well. I recognize those in the pictures - during my time in university, I used them all the time - in west berlin.
I wonder if we "took out" the leadership, how long we would leave things as they are to allow people to adjust. How much of shock would it be to tell people they can go and visit any country, call anyone, learn about other cultures without fear of arrest
When the Berlin wall fell - the economic collapse of Eastern Europe was total for a decade. Leave vacuum at the top - and ordinary North Koreans will be even worse. Look at the paradise that is Iraq.
The only semi-successful country that avoided total pain was East Germany - and it was because of the unification.
Iraq was held together by a strongman of one of two secterian factions on the country, who when the country collapsed went right back to killing each other.
I don't think any such analogous situation exists in North Korea, it would be much more like East Germany, the economy would be horrible for decades, but I doubt it would come to perpetual civil war like Iraq.
The cost of the German reunification was enormous. And that was for a country that was probably one of the best economies of the communist states. I can't imagine what the cost and effort would be to keep North Korea from collapsing.
What if every time a tourist group visits N.K thousands of people are alerted and they play their assigned roles (like Truman show). And when the tourists left, they go back to their reality.
This looks like a place of lies, indoctrination and personality cult. Had it been kept shut to outside visitors, I wouldn't have missed much. North Korea seems to be a living nightmare.
Aren't you bringing in your preexisting biases here? While I'm sure there are plenty of "living nightmares" we can find in North Korea I'm not finding one in these photos.
"a place of lies, indoctrination and personality cult" - which leader, country, company is not trying to achieve the same? That is the living nightmare.
Of course, there are exceptions. Sometimes. A few.
I'm struck by how hopeless the average person appears to be in these pictures. You can see only sadness and despair in their eyes, it is truly quite tragic.
I was on the train in NYC yesterday and there was only sadness and despair in the eyes of the passengers. Some looked hostile and others completely apathetic. I am sure I could have died there and no one would have even looked in my direction. Dirt covered every area of the car; neglect and laziness or just budget cuts. The smell ran sour, never sweet, due to the miles of stagnant water, mold, dead things, garbage, and human stench. The train made several stops on it's transit between two stations, a stretch that could take anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes depending on the day. People pushed their way through to get onto the cars, no artwork was present save for the advertisements and the countless notices asking for you to be polite to your fellow riders. Over the PA system, a soulless voice once again reminded that one should avoid displaying their electronics, this to lower the risk of being robbed. Once out of the subway, I was greeted by a dead rat in a rat trap as a reminder of what we all are. I did this all in reverse on the way home.
I am a native New Yorker and have taken the subway since the late eighties for middle school, high school, college, work, fun, etc. It has tremendous value, for sure, but it's no source of happiness or joy to go down into that hole.
That is false. You wouldn't notice in the metro (and in the streets, same) any especially negative feeling, in any way different from any other part of the world (except that, like somebody else pointed, in the latter place, the eyes are generally on mobile phone screens).
I know because I just came back from North Korea.
The western media like to portray authoritarian regimes as hell-like places where people is sad and militaries are all over, ready to shoot anybody at the minimum misstep.
In reality, within a certain frame, daily life is quite regular; everybody is busy with their own lives, not especially happy or sad.
I stress "within a certain frame" - inner perception works within a frame, and of course, people needs to pay attention to the restrictive culture.
I'd rather say "tired", as most of the people are hardworking farmers, without access to any transportation mean except the bike.
It actually reminded me a bit of Beijing, which is hardly authoritarian in that way. "Tired" is the right classification, the subway is just a way from here to there, and usually means the beginning or end of a long day.
They haven't put cameras in my bathroom yet, so that's one way. Seriously, China is a fairly free society outside of public and media institutions, even more free in the west since police coverage is overall much less (so lots of law breaking in the open; e.g. prostitution, jay walking, driving like a dork).
I would be pretty hesitant to characterize any government with a legal system that works essentially by fiat, a sophisticated censorship regime, and the possibility of punishment for association or speech as "not authoritarian," even if China is somewhat more open than other countries which we use the term to describe.
It isn't really rule of law, for sure. More like, if they don't like you, they can find something to put you in jail with. Yes, China is an authoritarian state in that way, but if they don't dislike you, they aren't going to make any special effort to control/monitor you (unlike the DPRK).
China is an authoritarian state, but it really is all about degrees...its no where near DPRK levels, just like the USA is nowhere near China's level (well, the USA is authoritarian in completely different ways, so they aren't very comparable).
Perhaps you're simply projecting those feelings because of what you know and heard about NK. I'd wager that the citizens don't live much differently in the day-to-day than you or I do, setting aside the propaganda and obsession with the Great Leader (lol) of course.
Western metros are filled with propaganda too - we just call them advertisements and they are commercial, not national in nature. Not that different when you take a real outside view. Everybody is blind to the idiosyncraties of their own culture.
They had never seen foreigners in those metro stops before. Suddenly here are a few of them, and taking pictures to boot. To me, they just seem wary and maybe a little afraid.
No, I've travelled extensively, and the general reaction to obvious foreigners is either overfriendliness, fascinated stares or complete and utter disinterest. Fearful avoidance is something I have yet to experience.
Its frightening to think how easy it is to suppress a whole population for years and decades on end. The romantic image of courage, revolution and human freedom comes to naught here. Status quo, acceptance and survival seems to be the more natural human state.
There is the natural reluctance to put one's head above. And for good reason, anyone foolish or brave enough to put their head above in this all knowing state will be put down swiftly, and perhaps brutally to be made an example of. How does change happen here?
Organizing anything in this state of pervasive surveillance is nearly impossible and should be a wake up call for those sleepwalking into one.
The only way we know from history is implosion of the prevailing power center or outside support motivated more by massive self interests than human freedom or kindness, compromising the road ahead.
Surveillance, secret courts and dubious processes are meekly accepted but change can become very difficult once these infrastructures are put in place, operational and at the complete discretion of whoever happens to be in power. A warning for all of us.