The Information Age: North Korean Style 156
An anonymous reader writes "It seems cell phones and the internet have come to the reclusive nation of North Korea — albeit in a manner that you might not expect. North Korea now sports over a million cell phones, although calls are not allowed outside of the country and text messages come daily from North Korean authorities sporting government propaganda. The internet is not the global internet of Twitter and Facebook, but a government-crafted intranet that is restricted to just a tiny percentage of the population. The intranet is restricted to elites in North Korea with good standing. The intranet uses message boards, chat functions, and state sponsored messages; its use has also been encouraged among universities, technical professionals and scientists, and others to exchange info. An even smaller fraction can access the outside internet. All of this seems to be an effort to control the information revolution without losing authority."
"Information age"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Propaganda isn't information.
An entire country imprisoned/brainwashed (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine, an *entire country* held captive and being brainwashed by political media. I hear North Korea is pretty bad too.
Meanwhile, in the US, media all sounds the same (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's no coincidence that all the major media players use exactly the same words to describe events. Case in point? The description of the election was "razor tight" was repeated everywhere. Now if this were a commonly used expression, I wouldn't have noticed. But this is a ridiculous and meaningless expression. what is "tight" about a razor? Nothing. Razors are sharp. Razors are thin. Razors are not "tight." But that the media repeated this across the board says a lot to me.
It says they are there to repeat what they are told to say and to use that repetition to drive the masses to think and believe in particular ways. And of course it works...
"Support the troops!" Right? It doesn't mean what I think it should mean. Of course it *does* mean that we don't reject them when they return from tours of destruction and unaccounted for "collateral damage" which may or may not include the killing of children or other innocents. It means we don't blame them for doing what they were told... or even if they were doing more than they were told. (Really, we don't know what they were told to do.) But that it should mean is that wounded fighters should have their lives taken care of for the rest of their lives... you know, like the congressmen, senators and presidents who sent them off into harm's way to do their bidding in persuit of their agenda. We don't do that. Our government has no interest in doing that. No one actually supports the troops in any meaningful way... in fact, on Veteran's day, the one "holiday" where *I* (a veteran of the first Iraq 'thing') should get recognized and the day off and all that, I don't. Who does? Banks, the postal service, some schools... Not me though.
"Support the troops!" means something else. It actually means "support our agenda unquestioningly" and that is exactly what has been happening.
Re:"Information age"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Propaganda isn't necessarily false.