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Bulletins and News Discussion from April 1st to April 7th, 2024 - The Heydey of Juche - COTW: Democratic People's Republic of Korea

Image is from this CNN article.

The DPRK's history has been a rollercoaster, with admirable highs and heartbreaking lows, most notably the Korean War and the fall of the USSR. Its steadfast commitment to Juche, a variant of Marxism-Leninism that focuses on self-sufficiency, has both made the DPRK a target for imperialist genocidal powers, and allowed them to survive these attacks.

Lately, we seem to be seeing a transition from surviving to thriving. China and the DPRK have always had a much more complicated history than Western education and media allows its population to know, with periods of quite strong disagreement - it's not the case that China is somehow the DPRK's master. Russia is the DPRK's other neighour that isn't US-occupied, and while they obviously differ substantially in ideology since the USSR fell, the tsunami of sanctions on Russia has changed things. The stick has been removed from the equation, with Russia facing no possible punishment from the West because they were unable to enact sanctions effectively and used all their ammunition in the first few barrages rather than turning the screws over time (I don't care if we're on the 14th sanctions package, it's all been meaningless for Russia since the end of 2022).

The carrot is also more visible, with an alliance making a lot of sense for both. Once again, Western education and media would have you believe a Parenti-esque reality in which Korea is a massive and unpredictable danger to the world, but is simultaneously so poor and destitute that their artillery pieces are made of wood and their missiles out of paper-mache. The truth is that Korea has innovated greatly in missile technology, with some of their weapons matching or even exceeding those of the Russians, hence the Russians' use of them in Ukraine. Russia also finds it advantageous to invest in Korea to strengthen the anti-hegemonic alliance's presence in the Pacific, countering the US-occupied lower half of the peninsula who has naturally sided with Ukraine. Additionally, Russia is investing deeply in the Arctic sea route. This will open up as climate change continues; is naturally quite defensible for Russia so long as Korea is there to provide further defense at its eastern edge; and is both a faster and safer route for Russia to access China - especially in a world where straits can be blockaded by even impoverished yet determined countries like Yemen. The situation in the Red Sea benefits Russia and China now, but in the coming years, the US may apply the same lesson for their own benefit elsewhere.

It is perhaps this new sense of self-confidence that has let Korea give up on reunification with its lower half via peaceful measures. A new Korean War would be devastating for both sides even if it remained non-nuclear, but with a rising DPRK and with the South falling yet further into hypercapitalist exploitation and misery, and a US that remains non-committal to its "allies" when times get difficult (as in Ukraine and Europe), a reality where Korea may finally hold the upper hand and have the ability to liberate its south may be approaching in the years and decades to come.

The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.

The Country of the Week is *the DPRK! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

994 comments

  • English summary of the Biden-Xi phone call

    If the U.S. side is willing to seek mutually beneficial cooperation and share in China’s development dividends, it will always find China’s door open; but if it is adamant on containing China’s hi-tech development and depriving China of its legitimate right to development, China is not going to sit back and watch.

  • Reading about the JDAM/F-35 sales at the same time reading about what they are uncovering at Al-Shifa.

    God damn America. I no longer give a single rip about any domestic policy in this evil country. I don’t care about Trump vs Biden; whatever infinitesimally small advantage Biden may have in domestic policy is completely irrelevant. Saying this as an American with kids.

    I hope myself, my family, my comrades, and all marginalized people are spared in the future. But the reality is that America deserves hell on earth. There were many good people, working class people who died in the WTC on 9/11; they did not deserve it but America absolutely deserved it. And 9/11 doesn’t even represent a small down payment on what America actually deserves.

    Death to America and death to “israel”.

  • The details are emerging on the IDF strike that killed the World Central Kitchen aid workers, including American/British/Australian/Polish citizens, and it is (unsurprisingly) extremely clear it was (yet another) very specifically targeted assassination. I'll post the thread below, but the info comes from Haaretz here.

    The IDF's early explanation re the killing of the World Central Kitchen team is in - per "security sources" speaking to Haaretz. Before we get to the putative pretext for the attack, they also disclose a harrowing detail - the drone bombed the convoy THREE TIMES in succession..

    because team survived one hit and tried taking cover in another vehicle, and then survivors moved to a third - and were finished off there. Deliberate, repeated targeting of convoy, making sure no one was left alive. And this actually doesn't stack up w the alleged pretext:

    "According to sources acquainted with the details of the incident, the Operation Room in charge of securing the route identified an armed person on the truck and suspected this was a terrorist. By the time preparations were made for the attack, the truck arrived....

    at the warehouse, together with the three WKC vehicles carrying seven volunteers... minutes later, the three vehicles left the warehouse, without the truck on which an armed person was allegedly sighted. The cars traveled on a route already confirmed to WKC by the IDF. The IDF

    was also made aware of the timing of this particular convoy. At some point, while convoy was traveling on the authorised route, the Operations Room ordered the drone operator to strike one of the vehicles. Some passengers were seen leaving the stricken vehicle and moving...

    to the other two. They had time to alert superiors they had been attacked, but seconds later were struck by a second missile. They began moving wounded to 3rd car, and that's when the 3rd missile hit. All seven volunteers were killed." This is actually far worse than I imagined.

    The first and last vehicle targeted were over 2km apart:

  • Found an article on CNN dated April 14, 2022 - so that's about 50 days after Russia began the SMO. I'll just paste the headline and the first few sentences, that's what matters:

    Biden calls atrocities in Ukraine a ‘genocide’ for the first time

    President Joe Biden said Tuesday the atrocities being uncovered in Ukraine qualify as genocide, a designation he’d previously avoided but that he now believes is warranted as scenes of devastation emerge from towns once overrun by Russian troops.

    “I called it genocide because it’s become clearer and clearer that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is just trying to wipe out even the idea of being Ukrainian. The evidence is mounting,” Biden told reporters in Iowa after using the term earlier in a speech.

    “It’s different than it was last week, the more evidence that’s coming out,” he continued. “Literally, the horrible things that the Russians have done in Ukraine – and we’re going to only learn more and more about the devastation.”

    “We’ll let the lawyers decide, internationally, whether or not it qualifies,” he concluded, “but it sure seems that way to me.”

    The Genocider-in-Chief couldn't wait two whole months to declare that Russia was committing a broad genocide. He won't even condemn Israel much less say it's a genocide. Russia, on the other hand, gets that label with nary any actual evidence.

  • ‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza

    During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based. One source stated that human personnel often served only as a “rubber stamp” for the machine’s decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about “20 seconds” to each target before authorizing a bombing — just to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male. This was despite knowing that the system makes what are regarded as “errors” in approximately 10 percent of cases, and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all.

    Moreover, the Israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes — usually at night while their whole families were present — rather than during the course of military activity. According to the sources, this was because, from what they regarded as an intelligence standpoint, it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses. Additional automated systems, including one called “Where’s Daddy?” also revealed here for the first time, were used specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family’s residences.

    In addition, according to the sources, when it came to targeting alleged junior militants marked by Lavender, the army preferred to only use unguided missiles, commonly known as “dumb” bombs (in contrast to “smart” precision bombs), which can destroy entire buildings on top of their occupants and cause significant casualties. “You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people — it’s very expensive for the country and there’s a shortage [of those bombs],” said C., one of the intelligence officers. Another source said that they had personally authorized the bombing of “hundreds” of private homes of alleged junior operatives marked by Lavender, with many of these attacks killing civilians and entire families as “collateral damage.”

    In an unprecedented move, according to two of the sources, the army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians; in the past, the military did not authorize any “collateral damage” during assassinations of low-ranking militants. The sources added that, in the event that the target was a senior Hamas official with the rank of battalion or brigade commander, the army on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander.

    I actually think I'm going to throw up

  • Went to uni with a guy who was both an outspoken communist and an even more outspoken zionist (only in germany

    )

    I checked his twitter shortly after October 7th and he was doing hasbara like a good little doggy, ticking all the boxes.

    Checked his twitter again last week and his tweets are now protected. Aww, were people mean to you cause you defended the fucking Nazis?

  • Major new article from 972 mag. Israel is using an AI bot to identify and target Hamas. This is apparently how they came up with the 37k Hamas number. The AI's list was apparently treated as an order, with the only oversight being to check if the target was male.

    Perhaps more significantly, Israel had/has also given full permission to bomb suspects in their homes. The number of acceptable civilian casualties per strike is 20.

  • I would vote for Joe Biden but liberals keep telling me to write in this dude called "99% Hitler" instead. Seems like a weird choice but I don't know anything about politics so I guess I'll trust their judgement.

  • A man was arrested today in Casa Rosada (literally Argentina's White House) after he tried to enter the building armed with a machete while claiming "I am God, and I am going to kill the President".

    Source

    Also he will meet tomorrow with the commander of the United States Southern Command, General Laura Richardson. Imperialism done with a lady in charge, feelin' the future and the inclusiveness here!

  • I've been running into more Chinaboos lately. They treat China the same way weebs treat Japan. Saying random Chinese phrases they learned from Chinese films, lusting after Chinese men and women, talking about how badly they want to move there, and talking about how they're living in the future. It's weird to see from someone who grew up in a time when Japan was getting all the attention and anything Chinese was deemed uncool or cheap.

    They're largely leftists but a good number of normies have also been doing this, most of them being younger.

  • José Andrés Says Israel Targeted World Central Kitchen Workers ‘Systematically.’ "This was not just a bad luck situation where ‘oops’ we dropped the bomb in the wrong place," the group's founder said in an interview on Wednesday.

    This is pretty big. Andrés is an uber-lib, like the Pod Save varieties. He's done a lot of charity stuff that he gets PR for, but he's tight with the Clintons and Obamas and has, of course, been accused of stealing tips, advocating against workers, and working with ICE.

    This very well could be a breaking point for the petit-bourgeois lib.

  • Last month's news: editorial from The Gazette https://archive.is/g3ajP, article from NYT https://archive.is/tPrps

    'NEW Cooperative', USAmerican farming company dumps 265000 gallons (1,000,000 liters) of liquid nitrogen into a tributary of a major river, killing 789,000+ fish. Ecosystem has been pretty much destroyed, and a biologist says it will take decades for it to recover (New York Times). The company was fined $6,000

    . The state government has a maximum fine of $10,000 it is allowed to charge without going to court (The Gazetta).

  • Fucking annoyed, comrades. In my local vegan group, some reactionary said some bigoted shit in the chat. Pls let me not doxx myself and give too much info, but it was something that would get an immediate ban from Hexbear or any progressive subreddit.

    The admin DM'd me. "I know that you're passionate about [oppressed marginalised group], but can you delete your comment". The guy fucked posted literal pages in his defense of saying bigoted shit, but I posted 8 words calmly saying that it wasn't cool. The vibe I'm getting is that the admin is fine with it and probably secretly on his side.

    The thing is, everyone hates this guy. Outside of his terrible opinions, he's a massive knobhead, and he's very unfun to hang out with. Women hate him because he's a creep. He's not worth defending.

    Edit: maybe it's easy to ignore my opinion because I'm a tankie, but this is 1990's bigotry, not the secret 5D racism that Fascists used to have to deploy to get past Twitter bans.

  • What's up nerds and losers, I'm meeting Grover Furr and some representatives from the People's Democracy Party of South Korea, who are progressives and not communists because it's illegal to be an organized communist party in South Korea, and some other neat people from around the globe tomorrow.

    If you got any questions you want me to ask any of them, let me know.

994 comments