http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-nuclear-usa-senate-idUSKBN17Q1LR

Apparently the last time they did that with the Senate was in 2003 prior to the Iraq war.

The situation's pretty tense. Looks like the US won't allow NK to become a state with serviceable nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Russia and China have warned the US against attacking NK. If the US were to occupy NK, China would lose that strategic buffer, which is just one of their reasons for objecting. On the other hand, the North Korean regime is not without its problems for China itself.

I'm guessing that if NK continue to pursue the nukes and conduct the tests which they've declared they will, the US will intervene while Russia and China will condemn them severely but will not risk escalating things further because North Korea shouldn't be worth it.

Do you think they will do announcements of some sort in front of a tapestry of Guernica covered by a sheet again? I thought that was pretty cool they did that when I found out. Unfortunately I found out about it after having already become an Imperial Stormtrooper!

But let's be honest, this isn't about the nukes, this is about a new market to exploit and bring into the global economy. The DMZ and Seoul will become a Pripyat style exclusion zone complete with wish granting rooms, and the rest of best Korea will become a series of empty strip malls on either side of a five lane highway.

More seriously, it is amazing to me that China hasn't put it's foot down in regards to Best Korea just to avoid dealing with the U.S. in the area.

Another current events thread? Aint nobody got time for that.

Wake me up, when (N.) Korea ends.

Don't be like that, Jones.

What good is a thread if Jones ain't around to fill it with bizarre content?

Besides, attacking North Korea is not my idea of courage. It's more like, suicide.

-Don Solo

I am not familiar with North Korean politics, but it appears that they have volleyball matches before weapons testing?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/world/asia/north-korea-nuclear-test-preparations.html

I don't hate that I understand this joke, I hate what I had to do to understand it.

You don't like Tarkovsky?

Or did you actually travel through the exclusion zone only to reach the threshold of the room, only to examine your own selfish motives and decline the event?

In a sense, yes.

Roadside Picnic > Stalker > S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and I really, really like S.T.A.L.K.E.R., despite almost everything about it.

You've done a man's job, sir...

And I remember almost nothing about Roadside Picnic 10 years later except that I liked it. I guess I should revisit it. Isn't it set in Alaska or something? I never played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. but it looked kind of fun. I wish that Kubrick had adapted Roadside Picnic as well, since him and Tarkovsky are so often compared. It would have been an amazing pair of films to contrast.

Parts of it were.

Well I guess I better rewatch Stalker in order to understand this thread.

I don't hate myself for not getting the joke, I hate that I made this post.

Well all of my references are thin and forced so it might not make more sense, but you should rewatch it because it is some of the best cinema ever.

Also I was mostly interested in the bolt throwing mini game.

Well I did just watch an absolutely atrocious late Felini film from the 70's about flatchulence nostolgia, which was apparently co-writtem by someone who was rather dissatisfied with the thing but went on to work with Tarkovsky on a supposedly better nostolgia film, so I guess I could check that out and binge on Tarkovsky again.

Solaris was pretty amazing, more straightforward than stalker (still trying to actually finish reading the damn Lem novel though).

I was impressed with how much I enjoyed the Solaris remake. Probably because you see Clooney's ass.

I'm thinking of picking up another Stanislaw Lem book called Golem XIV about a supercomputer that does ayahuasca

I've always loved Return from the Stars.

Even Dontrel the Dolphin is better.

I really want to read that too now because it sounds like this.

Edit:So thanks!

I cant believe you guys were talking about Stalker without me!
Jon'C, have you tried Call of Pripyat? I found it to be far more polished and much more engaging that the previous games in the series. And how about those Metro 2033 game, eh? Noting like some good survival horror games with limited hud and an overall lack of ammo.
Also, I heard they were going to make a tv adaptation of Roadside Picnic. Like all adaptations for things I love I'm happy it doesn't seem to have gone anywhere, just like The Black Cauldron remake Disney threatened to make.
See, I have these conflicting feeling that although I want to see the characters and the places I've only imagined with books, I worry that it will botch it, become popular and celebrated as something it isn't, or bomb so badly people stop reading the books and they fall out of print and are forgotten forever. /tangent)

What about blockading North Korea so they are forced to survive off of internal resources, I mean, how long could things last until the infrastructure collapses and the poor begin to eat the rich?

Are they continuing the Metro series? Haven't heard anything as of yet. Rough at the edges but I have a soft spot for the series.

The NK situation kind of sucks, because I think everyone else would prefer to continue the status quo if possible. NK sucks, and has a lot of human rights abuses, but at the end of the day it hasn't been much of a threat. It would take a lot of blood and treasure to actually fight a war with them, and probably create a worldwide recession while South Korea recovers.

The issue is that if they do get nuclear weapons and a delivery system, they become much harder to ignore. If a rouge general orders an artillery strike during some kind of internal power struggle, that's a hassle, but at the end of the day, it's easily dealt with. They'd be a lot easier to deal with militarily during a period of internal instability. On the other hand, if they have a nuke that they can deliver, we have a real problem. If something went wrong and they hit Tokyo or LA, that could kill a huge number of people and really destabilize world order.

oh

This thread does not deliver.

I don't think the US has to intervene in the traditional sense, that would invoke an undesired Russia / China response. Here is what I believe will happen:

1. North Korea will continue on its current path. Neither China nor Russia are going to stop them.
2. The US bombs NK to kingdom come, agreeing not to invade.
3. NK responds by destroying Seoul and anything else they can destroy before they are wiped out.
4. After the smoke clears, US, China, Russia will each enforce their borders with NK, effectively trapping all the North Koreans inside their war torn country. Huge humanitarian crisis, limited within the borders of NK.
5. US rebuilds Seoul. After decades and decades of even worse than present day horrors, some sort of government will emerge from the ruins of NK.
6. Afterwards, the US will be remembered as a monster, people will rewrite history to make the current NK government into heroes and champions of fighting tyranny.

Is this a joke about history repeating itself, or something?

This guy thinks we're going to war.

http://www.realclearworld.com/video/2017/05/24/george_friedman_us_attack_on_north_korea_imminent.html