Catsup&Liquor
ABOUT: Soy un perdedor. / 내가 제일 잘나가.
&YOU: "Be a Star-Screwer!" - Corso
What the true effects will be on the international stage are TBD.
What a freak show our world is turning out to be, eh?
Someone said it best when they likened this hullabaloo to a reality show, with politicians, diplomats and the media starring in it. The rest of us? Glued to our screens, simultaneously disgusted and enthralled by what might come next. Real World: International Diplomacy Challenge?
That was a bad attempt at echoing that MTV reality show. (Sidebar: I think it’s still going on, but not so much as a social experiment as much as it’s a taped orgy for attention whores.)
I was trying to avoid posting more on the North/South situation or about this whole WikiLeaks thing. It’s not like I have much to contribute (though when do I ever). I could throw my spear into the murky flow of information and take a stab at analyzing, or I can just be lazy and throw a bunch of links at you.
Guess which one I chose…
“A South Korean rocket appears to have exploded moments after take-off, ending the country’s latest attempt to join the space-launch industry.”
I wonder who’s going to get that rocket up first— the North or South?
In somewhat related thoughts, every time I read about stuff like the space race or how all “compliant” nations back S.K. and sneer at N.K. it makes me think more and more about the ideas and perception of quantifiable power.
It’s like that question that gets asked time and again in international relations discussions:
Who has more power? Do nation-states which (largely, or at least in writing) lock themselves into a set of rules when operating in the world, in exchange for the backing of other nation-states (i.e. mess with me, you mess with my friends) have the upper hand? Or is it actually the states like North Korea which operate under their own terms, but must do so under near-isolation from these other blocs, who will gain leverage in the end?
I don’t know. I guess it depends on how you view power in general.
(Of course, for a speck of dust like me, power is mostly abstract and can be held almost as well as a ribbon of smoke. Then again, I’ll never have to consider how this struggle to hold on to such an “abstract” idea will affect the world in a real sense.)
An article far more pertinent to this idea that I read today: North Korea warns UN against Cheonan ship debate
Okay, random rant over. I should go lesson plan or something.
