COVID-19 - appropriate government response?

[Red]

Teo, you were just explicitly forbidden from discussing soft/hard science in this very thread. And you may still be forbidden from doing it forum wide including in the topical thread (@Red, do you know when that expires? I think it was one year.)

He actually has one more day until it expires. But:

The fact that Teo still does not understand or even consider the difference between a descriptive claim and a predictive one suggests that prohibition should be extended an additional year if @Red and @Jebus agree.

You know, I'm willing to give him a few days discussing the subject material, I'm sure he's learned more than he lets on. So let him discuss it a little then see how it goes from there.

@Red were you taught that in school?

I took APUSH and not once was Croatia mentioned. I studied American history pretty intensely during Junior year, and in all the videos and documentaries I've watched and books and articles I've read, I don't think Croatia was mentioned once. That wasn't even taught to me in Elementary or Middle school.

I also took AP Euro and I don't recall a single time Croatia was mentioned. Maybe in the World War II chapter? Or when we learned about the Balkans? I don't remember.

The US Education system has its issues, and enjoys brainwashing the youth with patriotic bullshit, but it isn't that inept.

Teo, give it a rest. Nobody knows about your country or cares. Literally Americans can not tell you anything about Croatia, even that it's a real country.

I suppose you can say Croatia is the Wyoming of Europe; backwards, conservative, uneducated, and no one is really aware of its existence.

The only people who may have heard of Croatia as a country is if they know all the lyrics to Yakko's World. I think.

(Checks lyrics)

Holy shit, Croatia isn't even in there.

I actually may want to ask you about some of the other things you wrote brimstone, but I have a class right now.

[teo123]

You could publish them easily

Seriously? And all the time I've spent immersing myself into the linguistic literature before I could write those papers doesn't count? And all the time I've spent studying programming before I could make a simplified programming language to write a paper about it doesn't count? Not everybody is able to do stuff like that, and those that are able to often aren't willing to. It's far from "easy".

difference between a descriptive claim and a predictive one

But even with descriptive claims, linguistics is still harder than political science. Which claim can you be more certain is true, "'Šišmiš' means 'bat' in Croatian." or "Bernie Sanders said something like 'American Dream is more easy to achieve in Venezuela these days than in the US.'"?

Literally Americans can not tell you anything about Croatia, even that it's a real country.

OK, I thought the schools in the US teach something as important as that, at least symbolically important.
Though I can kind of see why the US would want to erase something like that from history. Croatia, or, better say, what was left of it in the late 18th century (the area around Ragusa, modern-day Dubrovnik) established diplomatic relations with the US expecting military help from the US if Ottoman empire attacks it (which Ottoman empire didn't because Dubrovnik agreed to pay taxes to the Ottoman empire, while maintaining some degree of autonomy). Unfortunately (or fortunately, for it's very hard to tell what would have happened otherwise), at the beginning of the 19th century, the Ottoman empire actually conquered Dubrovnik, and we received no help from the US, or even some explanation of why we didn't receive any help. Soon after that, Napoleon "liberated" parts of Croatia, including Dubrovnik. That fact about diplomatic relations between Croatia and the US is not really important in the sense that it modified the course of history, it's just symbolic.
And I guess they aren't teaching in the American schools about how the US, at the beginning of World War 2, supported the Chetniks, which turned out to be a huge mistake, since Chetniks only pretended to fight against Fascism, while, in fact, they were secretly giving resources the US and the UK gave them to the Fascists.

They have an unbiased bias, which is a bias to remain unbiased even in cases where the right side is obvious, so they typically stick to reporting on facts and dig for "both sides" even when there isn't another side.

I am not sure what you mean. Do you mean to say that those accusations that the English-speaking media make about human rights violations in China and Russian are true? Do you think that Tiananmen Square actually happened?
My perception is that the political system in China today is similar to the political system that was implemented by Ante Marković in the 1980s, and most of the people in Croatia remember Marković'es reign as a very good period.

What happens if you refuse to pay the fine on ideological grounds, Teo?

As the law later says, they will confiscate some property from you.

izreći će se zaštitna mjera oduzimanja predmeta

But it's a bit hard to tell what would actually happen if you are proven guilty of "insulting the anthem" in Croatia. The Croatian singer Josipa Lisac recently actually performed a parody of the Croatian anthem, she ended up in court and she was judged to be innocent (I don't know the details), so it doesn't really tell us what would happen.
See, that law obviously can't be enforced today, you can't possibly pay a certain number of "dinars" today when the currency named "Croatian dinar" doesn't exist today. I am not sure what the abbreviation "DEM" refers to, my guess is that it also refers to some currency which doesn't exist today. So, even if you are judged guilty of "insulting the anthem", most likely what will happen is the same thing that happened to Karl von Habsburg when he put the "von Habsburg" name on his website (which is illegal in Austria), he was proven guilty but nothing happened because the law saying that he ought to pay a certain number of Austrian Kronen was not enforceable then.

You realize I do not trust you on any subject, right?

Why don't you trust me about that? I published papers about that in peer-reviewed journals. And it's not even particularly obscure, I think that quite a few people who haven't studied etymology know what "Vilo Velebita" actually means.

Anyway, it doesn't matter way something means, it matters what people think it means.

By that logic, laws in the US that explicitly favor men over women are now constitutional, because "All men are created equal" meant "All human beings are equal", but "men" now usually means "male human beings". That's obviously not how it works, laws don't change their meaning as the language changes.

Google says it means this:

Why do you think Google Translate knows better than somebody who has published linguistic papers in that language?

If vague, it does give them that power. Vague laws are used in North America and Europe like that too, creating cases of overcharging people by applying laws that barely fit, and yet it can stick.

As far as I can see, if laws are vague, usually exactly the opposite happens. Security companies are known to successfully defend themselves in courts when they refuse to give people money by appealing to the lack of clarity of the laws and the contracts. The Croatian politician Branimir Glavaš was able to postpone ending up in jail for a decade by appealing to ridiculous legal technicalities, in spite of clear evidence that he poisoned Čedomir Vučković.

If you're interested in this subject then become a defense lawyer and argue your interpretation before a court to see what it actually means.

Hey, listen, I don't have a lot of time to study law, I am studying computer science and it's very demanding. But the idea that you can end up in jail for posting an anti-police message on Twitter even if there is no law explicitly saying that's illegal seems so ridiculous I'm having trouble taking it seriously.
But, let's say, for the same of argument, that it's true, that 1 in million Croatians do end up in jail for posting an anti-police message on Twitter. How is that worse than what's going on in America, where 3% of the population are in jail, mostly for trying to cure themselves with drugs (whether or not they actually work) that politicians have decided they should be illegal in the US?

If you're comparing laws restricting freedom of speech to copyright laws to justify their ambiguity then you've already lost.

I am not trying to justify them, I am just saying such laws exist everywhere, not just in Croatia. That law wasn't intended to restrict freedom of speech. A law that explicitly says "You must not criticize the police." wouldn't get passed, two thirds of the Croatian Senate certainly wouldn't vote in favor of it, not even half would. But unclear laws such as that law or the copyright laws do get passed, as well as do the laws that end up protecting the security companies when they break their obligations.

Not really, that's along the lines of reading Korean language North Korea state propaganda and thinking that's meaningfully contributing to your understanding of the issue.

I thought everybody would agree people who speak Korean and who can North Korean media are more qualified to talk about North Korea than those that don't.
Do you think the life in North Korea is really as bad as the English-speaking media make it look? Don't you think life in North Korea today is almost certainly better than life in Croatia was in the early 1990s, and that it's better than anywhere in the world 100 years ago? Don't you think most of the people in North Korea are living happy lives there without us knowing that?
Let's face it, Communism doesn't always lead to people living horribly. Quite a few people in Croatia who lived under Communism support it. So much so that the first thing the new president Zoran Milanović did when he got to power was to return the sculpture of the Croatian communist leader, Josip Broz Tito, to the Pantovčak Square in Zagreb.
The Croatian Constitution to this day explicitly denies protection of property rights to citizens (Article 50 allows the government to confiscate property if the it thinks that's for public good), though, in praxis, the property rights are obeyed.
I am not saying that Communism is a good thing, in fact, the government infringing upon property rights is almost always a bad thing. But that's not worse than the War on Drugs that's going on today in the US.

There are already NGOs and such collecting this information.

What exactly is an NGO? Why would they be reliable sources of information about politics?

[teo123]

Also...

If you're comparing laws restricting freedom of speech to copyright laws to justify their ambiguity then you've already lost.

You seem to imply that there is some fundamental difference between laws restricting freedom of speech and copyright laws. Why? Copyright laws are but one example of the laws limiting freedom of speech. Merely stating you are the author of some poem (or any other piece of artwork) which you aren't is speech which is unlikely to actually harm anybody, and banning it is limiting free speech. But copyright laws are so unclear they can also be interpreted as saying essentially "Things must not be said if they've already been said.", and, as such, they basically make any sort of speech gray area. They are the stupidest laws limiting the freedom of speech. And they are sometimes used as such, the Church of Scientology is famous for appealing to copyright laws to silence criticism.

[Lay Vegan]

@Not The Real JReg Please help prevent this thread from becoming a complete dumpster fire. Maybe if you engage the troll he'll grow tired and go away.

After all is said and done, do you guys think this crisis will bring momentum to the vegan cause and put an end to factory farming sooner?

I think it will help make a stronger case for the abolition of wild animal farming. China had already implemented temporary bans on the market following the outbreak of SARS and MERS, so it’ll be interesting to see whether this ban will remain permanent after the COVID-19 pandemic has been mitigated. Chinese politicians will need to decide between money and public health.

Not sure if this will affect public perceptions on domesticated animal farming though people are literally stocking up on dairy, meat, and eggs. Still, this hasn’t stopped effective altruists from arguing to close wet markets globally. https://www.project-syndicate.org/comme ... ri-2020-03

I think in the worst case scenario, people will simply call for China to better regulate its wet markets.

Or will it just be chalked up to gross Chinese eathing habits? So far I've only seen vegans talk about the animal farming aspect, and I've seen several pundits blame Chinese wet markets specifically.

That’s the racist way out. I haven’t seen evidence that most people in China eat wild animals, but even if they did, focusing on that would detract from the larger issue- farming animals under these conditions increases the likeliness of zoonotic outbreaks, regardless of where it occurs or who is doing the farming. And from what I've seen this isn't that uncommon in developing countries. @brimstoneSalad Didn't other pandemics like HIV and ebola spread from similar practices?

[Not The Real JReg]

@Not The Real JReg Please help prevent this thread from becoming a complete dumpster fire. Maybe if you engage the troll he'll grow tired and go away.

My child, I have given you guidance on how to treat the prideful one.

For it was written:

I hope that if somebody on this forum is ever bothered by your nonsense, they will take a leaf out of my book and respond to you in a similar fashion to how I did. They would be very wise to turn their misguided efforts to attempt to educate you into a delightful fun activity of posting inane gibberish and seeing how long it takes you to realise that they're just mocking you.

My work here is done. And so I command to all forum members, go forth and build my kingdom by trolling this stupid prick until he gets fed up and leaves.

However, I think that ideally he would be banned from the forum. From what I can tell, the sole reasoning for keeping him here is that the forum doesn't have enough active members and he is an active member. However, I think the reason this forum doesn't have enough active members is because of people like him scaring other people who could be potentially be more active away. Food for thought!

It's also worth bearing in mind that if those who have it in their power to ban him don't do so, then come judgement day, I will cast them into the lake of urine and faeces where they will suffer for all eternity. Amen.

[brimstoneSalad]

Publishing is easy, whether your paper is good or not is aside from the fact.

But even with descriptive claims, linguistics is still harder than political science. Which claim can you be more certain is true, "'Šišmiš' means 'bat' in Croatian." or "Bernie Sanders said something like 'American Dream is more easy to achieve in Venezuela these days than in the US.'"?

Now I have to ban you for a week.

@Red do you still think he's learned?
The opposite of hard science isn't easy science. Hard does not refer to difficulty, but something more like firmness. A hard science can be easier or more difficult than a soft science.

Also, claims about what Bernie Sanders said are more historical fact claims than political science claims.
The fact simply of what a law is or says goes beyond political science to just the domain of obvious common and easily accessible fact of law.

Political science has more to do with categorization and predictive effects of policies and how they work in systems.

The fact that cars are required to stop at stop signs unless otherwise posted isn't really the domain of political science either -- questions of how those laws work or affect society is more so.

Political science has less to do with saying IF Sanders said "American Dream is more easy to achieve in Venezuela these days than in the US.'" and more to do with evaluating the actual truth of what the "American Dream" is and whether it is or is not easier to achieve in Venezuela today than in the U.S.. Fact checking sites are usually not that in depth or controversial.

Though I can kind of see why the US would want to erase something like that from history.

Nobody is trying to erase Croatia, it just literally is not important enough for a footnote. I can see how that's hard to accept so you need to come up with a conspiracy theory, but that's all there is to it.
Text books contain ample condemnation of the U.S. unethical dealings with and land theft from Mexico, for example. American education is not the Japanese educational system where anything that might bring shame on the country is systematically removed from text books. The United States is portrayed accurately as the bad guy in many chapters of U.S. history. @Red should be able to confirm this.

And I guess they aren't teaching in the American schools about how the US, at the beginning of World War 2, supported the Chetniks, which turned out to be a huge mistake, since Chetniks only pretended to fight against Fascism, while, in fact, they were secretly giving resources the US and the UK gave them to the Fascists.

University level history courses specifically on WWII may mention this briefly, but even in those cases it may not be important enough to cover. There's a lot of material to cover, again Croatia may not make the cut for a footnote. It doesn't mean you're being erased for a political reasons, just not important enough to mention.

They have an unbiased bias, which is a bias to remain unbiased even in cases where the right side is obvious, so they typically stick to reporting on facts and dig for "both sides" even when there isn't another side.

I am not sure what you mean. Do you mean to say that those accusations that the English-speaking media make about human rights violations in China and Russian are true? Do you think that Tiananmen Square actually happened?

Of course you deny Tiananmen Square.
You never cease to outdo yourself.

My perception is that the political system in China today is similar to the political system that was implemented by Ante Marković in the 1980s, and most of the people in Croatia remember Marković'es reign as a very good period.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Current politics in China are trending to more conservative Confucian ethics, Maoism is all but dead, it was buried a long time ago by capitalism.

What happens if you refuse to pay the fine on ideological grounds, Teo?

As the law later says, they will confiscate some property from you.

What if you refuse to let them confiscate your property?
Obviously there is a point of resistance that can result in arrest, and a point in resisting arrest that can result in you being killed.

But it's a bit hard to tell what would actually happen if you are proven guilty of "insulting the anthem" in Croatia.

Obviously. The point is the laws on the book.

See, that law obviously can't be enforced today,

Any law on the books can be enforced if there's political will. A judge can determine an appropriate replacement.

So, even if you are judged guilty of "insulting the anthem", most likely what will happen is the same thing that happened to Karl von Habsburg when he put the "von Habsburg" name on his website (which is illegal in Austria), he was proven guilty but nothing happened because the law saying that he ought to pay a certain number of Austrian Kronen was not enforceable then.

This is what happens when there's no political will to enforce a law. They'll just say you're technically guilty but issue no punishment, or a polishment comically small.

For example, there are some laws on the books in the U.S. in certain areas that you can't block traffic and peaceful protesters can be arrested for that, but a judge will likely find them guilty and then fine them a dollar or a cent or something or something along those lines. It's a way to enforce a law that people don't really agree with without *really* enforcing it. The arresting officer gets a victory, but the protester doesn't really have to pay anything meaningful. It just depends on the political will.

You realize I do not trust you on any subject, right?

Why don't you trust me about that? I published papers about that in peer-reviewed journals. And it's not even particularly obscure, I think that quite a few people who haven't studied etymology know what "Vilo Velebita" actually means.

I don't find you to be of a mindset to be capable of reliable credibility. It's only chance whether you happen to be right because you can't recognize when you're wrong, and you have an astounding degree of confidence in obviously false claims like that people are put in jail for holocaust denial in the U.S. or there was no massacre at Tienanmen Square.

By that logic, laws in the US that explicitly favor men over women are now constitutional, because "All men are created equal" meant "All human beings are equal", but "men" now usually means "male human beings".

In ambiguous cases constitutionality IS a matter of interpretation, and that's up to the supreme court in the U.S. If they decided it meant that, there's not really much anybody can do aside from appointing a bunch of additional justices to override it.

That's obviously not how it works, laws don't change their meaning as the language changes.

Most governments don't last so long as to see the language change significantly while laws still survive, but there can be changing interpretations even in the time span they survive in. You can see a bigger effect from things like biblical laws which some people still try to follow yet interpret wildly differently than they originally were and follow those interpretations. What laws are are ultimately how they're applied, there's no magical authority behind them.
There are various theories in legal interpretation like textualism vs. originalism that try to figure out what the original framers would have thought, but that's not the only way to see things or even necessarily the most popular. Whatever wins is usually whatever is more politically pragmatic, and there common interpretation means a lot because it's easier to sell to constituents and juries.

[Jebus]

The United States is portrayed accurately as the bad guy in many chapters of U.S. history.

When did that change? I went to elementary school in the U.S. in the 70s and we had to learn all this shit about the great Columbus, heroic pilgrims etc. We were even forced to pledge allegiance every morning.

Do you think that Tiananmen Square actually happened?

You have got to be shitting me. You seriously need to ask that psychologist who measured your IQ as 125 for your money back. You were obviously ripped off.

[Red]

Publishing is easy, whether your paper is good or not is aside from the fact.

You mean like that 'study' that was published to show that chocolate is actually good for you, when in reality it was published to show how easily bullshit can be championed by anyone?

Can't leave anything to journalists either.

Now I have to ban you for a week.

@Red do you still think he's learned?

Well... I want to think he can learn.

I may be wrong, but I think Teo is just trying to be provocative.

The opposite of hard science isn't easy science. Hard does not refer to difficulty, but something more like firmness. A hard science can be easier or more difficult than a soft science.

I'm curious, what would an example be?

Would you say difficulty is subjective? Or does it have to more do with how interested you are in the subject and the amount of time you dedicate to it?

Nobody is trying to erase Croatia, it just literally is not important enough for a footnote. I can see how that's hard to accept so you need to come up with a conspiracy theory, but that's all there is to it.

Teo if it makes you feel any better, it probably means that your country will be largely left alone if any global catastrophe happens (I mean, there are still less than 1000 confirmed cases of Corona there, if that means much).

Teo, it really isn't a big deal if anyone knows about your country. Countries are made up, they don't exist, and aren't inherent in nature. Of course, you have to function as though they do exist, but when it comes down to it, they're imaginary. Your country doesn't define who you are as a person; You should look towards intellectual, creative, and moral endeavors if you want to establish yourself, since those are the things that actually matter. And you're still young; you have time to do these things. I'm in a similar position right now, as brimstone and others might be able to tell you, but we have our entire lives ahead of us to establish ourselves and make our mark on the world. I've had, and still have insecurities about myself, as I'm sure you do as well, but whinging about it will only make you feel worse. You have to take time, learn, and then when you truly are ready, put your best foot forward.

Anyway, I know they aren't quite the same thing, but I see nationalism and racism are pretty linked in that respect; artificially creating groups based on superficial qualities and separating them based on that. Don't be like that guy from that shitty PragerU video about how why you should be a nationalist.

Speaking of which:

Text books contain ample condemnation of the U.S. unethical dealings with and land theft from Mexico, for example.

My boi Polk

Some people think that James K. Polk was basically the American equivalent to Hitler (and Manifest Destiny is the American equivalent to Lebensraum) but that might be a bit too much. Still an interesting comparison.

American education is not the Japanese educational system where anything that might bring shame on the country is systematically removed from text books. The United States is portrayed accurately as the bad guy in many chapters of U.S. history. @Red should be able to confirm this.

Slavery, manifest destiny, trail of tears, internment camps, Reconstruction, stealing land, unjust wars, Iran Contra affair, Pinochet, Guantanamo Bay, Vietnam and Korea, Red Scare, Trump... yeah there's a lot. That's not to say the US has nothing good about its history, and I'm proud that the country has made progress, but doing that while ignoring the good paints a skewed picture. One good thing is that I'm able to say all of this without being locked up.

I said this earlier I think, but in elementary school at least, people like the founding fathers are viewed as types of superhumans. While I do think they were great men, they were not without their flaws and faults. I think my favorite example is Thomas Jefferson, the do as I say not as I do guy.

Let’s see: freedom of speech; freedom of religion; freedom of the press; you can own niggers… Looks good to me!”

I don't think I learned any negative things about the US until Middle School, except slavery. To be fair however, I think depending on where you go to school, the US History education may not be as truthful (look at Texas).

Of course you deny Tiananmen Square.
You never cease to outdo yourself.

I thought he already said he denied it before? Or am I misremembering?

I don't find you to be of a mindset to be capable of reliable credibility. It's only chance whether you happen to be right because you can't recognize when you're wrong, and you have an astounding degree of confidence in obviously false claims like that people are put in jail for holocaust denial in the U.S. or there was no massacre at Tienanmen Square.

Do you think the US should outlaw Holocaust denial? People are pretty dogmatic about freedom of speech here.

[Red]

The United States is portrayed accurately as the bad guy in many chapters of U.S. history.

When did that change? I went to elementary school in the U.S. in the 70s and we had to learn all this shit about the great Columbus, heroic pilgrims etc. We were even forced to pledge allegiance every morning.

I think at higher levels, students learn the actual fucked up shit. Indoctrination still exists across all age groups I think.

[brimstoneSalad]

Google says it means this:

Why do you think Google Translate knows better than somebody who has published linguistic papers in that language?

I think we have established that you're an idiot, and that publishing papers doesn't really mean much if anything. Yes I trust Google more than I do you.

If vague, it does give them that power. Vague laws are used in North America and Europe like that too, creating cases of overcharging people by applying laws that barely fit, and yet it can stick.

As far as I can see, if laws are vague, usually exactly the opposite happens. Security companies are known to successfully defend themselves in courts when they refuse to give people money by appealing to the lack of clarity of the laws and the contracts. The Croatian politician Branimir Glavaš was able to postpone ending up in jail for a decade by appealing to ridiculous legal technicalities, in spite of clear evidence that he poisoned Čedomir Vučković.

You do not understand what "opposite" means. Vague laws favor those with more political pull, and more money for expensive lawyers who are able to convince the jury of a particular interpretation of those laws.

Vague laws are a major tool for two faced corrupt governments that want to pretend to be lawful, because they can use them how and when they want for their political convenience and personal gain. The more vague a law is, the more dangerous and prone to abuse.

When you talk about government and anarchism, what you do not understand is that the principle questions of importance are the kind of government. The devil is in the details.

But the idea that you can end up in jail for posting an anti-police message on Twitter even if there is no law explicitly saying that's illegal seems so ridiculous I'm having trouble taking it seriously.

This in the norm in oppressive countries with poor protections for free speech like Croatia. You have trouble taking it seriously because of a nationalistic delusion so perverse it forces your brain to come up with conspiracy theories against your country rather than accepting reality.

How is that worse than what's going on in America, where 3% of the population are in jail, mostly for trying to cure themselves with drugs (whether or not they actually work) that politicians have decided they should be illegal in the US?

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque

I have never said that the Americas and Western Europe are perfect. Most countries have their own problems, and the U.S. is not the best so far in terms of political freedom.

There are also arguments for and against free speech. In favor of free speech one might say that the people of the U.S. have the freedom to criticize the prison-industrial complex and thereby (eventually) effect change. This is why free speech is often exalted as superlative among freedoms; it is often said to be the freedom upon which every other derives or can derive.

I have discussed elsewhere in what senses and when I disagree with freedom of speech, or at least the extreme version as represented in the U.S.

If you're comparing laws restricting freedom of speech to copyright laws to justify their ambiguity then you've already lost.

I am not trying to justify them, I am just saying such laws exist everywhere, not just in Croatia. That law wasn't intended to restrict freedom of speech.

Copyright laws are distinct in that they explicitly exclude criticism and political/religious expression, which is the point free speech is supposed to have in ensuring other freedoms.
There are of course grey areas as with Scientology scripture which is under a copyright that is heavily enforced.
More info: https://stss.nl/legal/copyrights-versus ... s-freedom/
If you were to see this taken to a court, it's very likely that religious freedom would win over the dubious copyright claims. Criticism and parodies pretty much always win if they end up in court.

I think you'd have a harder time copying and spreading Spiderman comics based on a Spidermanism religion, since the authors never claimed to be nor attempted to establish a religion based on them.

I thought everybody would agree people who speak Korean and who can North Korean media are more qualified to talk about North Korea than those that don't.

No. There are journalists who risk their freedom and lives infiltrating North Korea to get information (and they speak Korean to do this), and there are also North Korean defectors who are usually considered a more reliable source. State media is not. Speaking Korean doesn't give you any special insight, it only gives the Journalists the ability to infiltrate the country -- the same as *looking* Korean does. Having a particular appearance doesn't give you any special insight either.

Do you think the life in North Korea is really as bad as the English-speaking media make it look? Don't you think life in North Korea today is almost certainly better than life in Croatia was in the early 1990s, and that it's better than anywhere in the world 100 years ago?

Yes, and maybe. Being 100 years behind is really a terrible prospect both socially and in terms of infrastructure.

Don't you think most of the people in North Korea are living happy lives there without us knowing that?

Despite everything? Did I ever say they do not? No.
That doesn't mean things can't be better, and it doesn't mean it's excusable that they are not better. The best excuse they have is the sanctions against them.

The Croatian Constitution to this day explicitly denies protection of property rights to citizens (Article 50 allows the government to confiscate property if the it thinks that's for public good), though, in praxis, the property rights are obeyed.

Pretty much every country has laws like that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain
Compensation varies.

I am not saying that Communism is a good thing, in fact, the government infringing upon property rights is almost always a bad thing. But that's not worse than the War on Drugs that's going on today in the US.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque
Again you do this. Hey, distract everybody with something else irrelevant!

I think I covered everything else.

@Jebus I think it varies by grade. You'll see the best information in university level material, but there's some in highschool textbooks too. I have no doubt that it's all tall tales and songs in Elementary school. Governments don't seem to think younger children are capable of handling nuance.