And... you really think he'll get that, if elected?

Personally, I'd suggest organizing what you want.  If, for example, you lived in a world where there were only 4 political issues... I'd suggest you set up a list of priorities for your ideal stances, based on a mix of how important the issue is to you and how likely the vote is to exact a favorable change (for example, I would suggest prioritizing stances which only required a simple majority to pass into law over something requiring a much greater consensus.  The importance of this second portion is extremely region-dependent... this will probably be more important in closer, more contested elections).

Essentially, my suggestion is to play politics.  Would you, for example, be willing to accept someone with an unfavorable stance on international trade in order to get a favorable stance on domestic taxes?  Would you trade immigration reform for drug rights?  In this way, you won't find a fully compatible candidate... but you best advance the political agenda for which you hope to achieve.

Fifty years ahead or behind?

So how does the business get to recoup its losses from actually producing the drug or making the song in the first place, xeno?  Remember, whoever gets that patent or copyright on the  product had to spend the money to actually invent/create the product in the first place... so the inventor starts off at an economic loss.  Meanwhile, the profitable businesses would be the ones that can just sit back, wait for someone else to invent the product they want to sell, and reverse engineer and reproduce the item for relatively cheap costs... so the ones who actually invent the products actually become the losers.

"That isn't the reason behind the law" is never a good reason to reject the law.  The Civil War was entered over the right to secede, although most people wouldn't dispute whether it was good, largely because it was essential to freeing slaves, a largely unintended consequence of the war, especially since at least 3 Union states were still holding slaves during the early war.  Evaluate the bill on its merits, not on what the people behind the bill wanted (now, if the people behind the bill crafted the bill in a way to change the bill's merits, there's reason to consider the people, but that isn't yet shown with this bill).

Hi.

Wait... I can shut down IC?

*starts plotting a legal battle to interrupt a war*

Umbrella Corp. does exist! 

> ~Wornstrum~ wrote:

> Yes, so when you start to look at the nation and its history, how do you start to compare if a ruler is evil or not? I mean I too can name many things I would feel are evil, but since it is a sovereign nation it is not up to me to decide whether it is evil or not. I am not part of an independant impartial identity able to pass judgement, and I feel there would be few people, if any on earth, that would be capable of being completely impartial. Both you and I are using bias that we have developed through education, media, opinions. So we need to look at the people in North Korea, which do not consider their leader to be evil (due to brainwashing, which I still maintain exists in every society in the world).

First of all, I'm in partial agreement with Justinian, in that looking at any ruler as necessarily "good" or "evil" is probably a terrible idea, because the very notion is such a can of worms... and considering you've already started with the pre-supposition that no outside force can judge Kim Jong Il... considering propaganda does exist both ways, either you create a system in which evil does not exist because the evil are judged by the people they brainwash, or in which, in your own worldview, "evil" is a word without meaning, at which point you've just wasted all our time with this meaningless debate...

And on this brainwashing argument... okay, I'll agree that brainwashing does exist in every society, to a point.  That being said, there is one difference.  In western societies, conditioning does exist to train people in some level of patriotism, for example (pledge of allegiance at the beginning of the day).  However, as we grow older, we have the right to challenge that brainwashing.  If a piece of propaganda is hogwash, and we grow to try and understand the world, in doing so realize that item in question is a piece of propaganda which is hogwash, we have the legal right to reject that item as hogwash.  That legal right does not exist in North Korea.

That's the difference, and the reason you can't compare "brainwashing" in most societies with that of North Korea... because we have a right to reject the story, which is going to be critically important in actually identifying what is propaganda and what is the truth (it's easy to say everyone is subject to brainwashing if you don't actually take an effort to identify the propaganda, and just generalize... the moment you identify the propaganda, though, the propaganda has no power over you... freedom of speech is the effort to identify that propaganda).

> "The human rights record of North Korea is extremely hard to fully assess due to the secretive and closed nature of the country."

So we see 2 different types of North Koreans, those who love their, now former, leader, and those who are escaped refugees. Those who escape have every right to refer to him as evil, but I still think comparing him to the worst villians the world has seen is quite harsh considering his rights abuses are more about control than killing (you can't control a poulation if you kill everyone). People like Hilter are considered evil by the people he ventured out to massacre, and as such affects the international community.

Well, this is an interesting can of worms...

Okay, Wormstrum... what is allowed for the purpose of attempting to retain power?  Stalin literally killed 12 million of his own people in order to ensure the population were loyal.  In fact, the very argument which you use to justify North Korea would justify the Holocaust, as Hitler's whole story relied on the assumption that the Jewish population was subvertly controlling Germany.  Anyone remember the Somali warlord crisis with UN food aid?  Sounds similar to this.  If your own worldview means I can literally starve the population outside my most loyal fans without having any moral repercussions... you justify just about the worst dictators that have ever walked the planet, including the very people you point out to be the worst...

> Do not get me wrong, I do not agree with his actions, nor do I consider him to be a saint. My point is, he either needs to be judged by completely impartial group from a North Korean point of view. I also am hoping for peace to be maintained (oh how I am hoping, I don't need panic phone calls from my mum "Are you ok? I heard there is a civil war in North Korea")

I like how you do that...

1: I think he needs to be judged by an impartial group from a North Korean point of view.
2: Admitting that the North Korean government has brainwashed its people

If you admit to #2, then your entire argument is functionally bankrupt because an "impartial group" from a North Korean point of view wouldn't exist.  You're just using words that sound nice, but have no equivalent in real life.  Hell... jury selection should tell you this story!  Do you realize how much of a pain in the ass it was for lawyers to concoct an "impartial jury" in any number of high-profile cases, such as the Michael Jackson or OJ Simpson trials?  And you're trying to find an "impartial jury" in a nation... to judge its leader... yeah, this is just ridiculous...

> "Four non-parties to the treaty are known or believed to possess nuclear weapons: India, Pakistan and North Korea have openly tested and declared that they possess nuclear weapons, while Israel has had a policy of opacity regarding its own nuclear weapons program. North Korea acceded to the treaty in 1985, but never came into compliance, and announced its withdrawal in 2003."

As for the NPT, I do not think they are breaking any treaties by their possession, nor with their trading with Syria. Also if North Korea possessing nuclear weapons is evil, shouldnt the US also fall under the same scrutiny as North Korea for their possession? Lets have a look at the uses of nuclear weapons during war time...only the US has ever attacked with nuclear weapons. Cold War, places like Turkey housed nuclear weapons aimed straight at the Kremlin (rather aggressive position, not that the USSR was not aggressive also) but placing nuclear weapons near the US in Cuba was considered an act of war. As far as the threat of nuclear weapons, I feel more of a threat of their uses from the US than North Korea (and lets just say I am within striking distance of North Korean missiles). The whole "it's evil" is solely because other nuclear weapon holders do not wish North Korea to have them...which doesn't sit well with me.

1: The IAEA disagrees with you on your assessment of North Korea's legal status in the NPT.  http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/iaeadprk/dprk.pdf

As for Syria, yes, that's definitely a violation.  Pillar 3 of the NPT forbids transfer of nuclear technology unless it can be demonstrated that the technology is only for peaceful purposes.  Neither Syria nor North Korea allowed inspections or even made the facility known until after Israel bombed it.  So yes... they violated the treaty.

2: I never said the possession of nuclear weapons was evil.  Look back at my wording.  I specifically said the violation of the NPT was the problem, specifically because it created international security concerns.  Syria being the exact example of what kind of problems are created... when a nation is willing to transfer nuclear technology to increase the number of nuclear states from 9 to 10, 12, 15, etc., each nation holding the weapons is a new variable in retaining political stability with nuclear weapons... so even if each nation is run by rational individuals (and I do think Kim Jong Il was a rational individual in that he was motivated by real-world pragmatic concerns), added members to the "nuclear club" mean added potential for stolen nuclear weapons (especially among new proliferators), added potential for a particular region's conflicts to escalate, and added potential for accidental nuclear wars (the US and USSR literally almost started World War 3 over a weather balloon during the 1980's... it's a real threat).  So that's the goal in this... there is a real pragmatic goal in ensuring nuclear weapons are in as small an amount of people's hands as possible... it's not built in racism or fear of any particular nation...

Justinian, I'm arguing this in the context of an assumption that there is such a notion as "good" or "evil" in the context of geopolitics, for the sake of engaging Wormstrum's argument (i.e., I'm not trying to say his interpretation of geopolitics is correct... but trying to construct the realist framework of international relations to where it can be translated into his ethical analysis of politics)... so... would you agree that, if such a notion does exist, it's more likely to exist as a relationship between the state and its own people, as opposed to a relationship between the state and people of other nations?

Not as much "is this possible" disbelief as "does reality have this much a sense of humor?"