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.
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The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Lmao
https://archive.is/7moxU
Westerners getting mad at this shit shows that they have no experience with dealing with large wildlife. Elephants use up a huge amount resources just to stay alive, many nature reserves in South Africa regularly have to relocate excess elephants otherwise they literally destroy and deforest the entire reserve. Elephants just uproot and destroy trees, and the ones they don't destroy have all of their foliage eaten by them.
Botswana is dealing with the same problem here, but on a countrywide scale due to elephant preservation efforts being very successful. Having too many elephants in one location will straight up destroy the environment and harm the elephant population. Is trophy hunting the ideal way to control population numbers? Of course not, and I'd obviously prefer indigenous hunting and conservation methods, but there are no natural predators that can regularly kill elephants, they are just too big and strong. Unnatural human conservation efforts unintentionally caused the elephant population to skyrocket in this single location in the first place, so we have to also control the elephant population unnaturally, otherwise the whole ecosystem gets destroyed. Which can lead to the extinction of many species in the area, including elephants themselves.
I recall reading something about elephants being by far the animal most responsible for deforestation I world history, second only to humans. It was a long time ago but that's the jist of it
I could easily imagine that being the case. I've talked to people that deal with elephants and wildlife in nature reserves, and they're basically described as hormonal gigantic raging bulls and stallions who will destroy an entire patch of acacia trees in a single day. Even a family of five elephants can cause havoc in a smaller nature reserve.
The Kruger National Park is about the same size as the countries of Israel or Slovenia, or the US state of New Jersey (20 000 square kilometres), and it can only accommodate about 13 000 elephants right now. Any more and there would be adverse affects for the rest of the wildlife in the park.
Made me wonder about what elephant meat might taste like (eating an invasive or overpopulated species can be a good way to keep the population down without just letting them rot after killing them, like trophy hunting but we actually use the animal), but apparently it’s rubbery and not very good.
Tangent: I’d love to eat some Asian Carp to cull an invasive species in US rivers, but there’s nowhere near me to get them.
Please God let this happen it would be so fucking funny
Unfortunately we'd just see acute xenocide being carried out, though. It's not like the blessed elephants would actually win.
Anyway, it'd sure be nice if the response were "Want us to stop killing elephants for your own entertainment? Then you can easily just directly fund our conservation projects without it..." rather than essentially, "Here, YOU kill them." Pointing out the (colonial and neoliberal) root cause of the ecological problem would be better than doubling down on, "We want to keep on mass murdering them indefinitely, actually."
I mean the whole reason that there are so many elephants in Botswana is because these conservation programs, which have been partially funded by western nations, have been highly successful. As the article states:
And the reason those numbers are so high is because of successful conservation. Unfortunately, an unintended consequence is that there are now simply too many elephants for the amount of land available to them. That amount of elephants over 40% of Botswana equals 130 000 elephants over 232 000 square kilometres of land. This is a very similar land to elephant ratio as the Kruger National Park in South Africa, which has 13 000 elephants over 20 000 square kilometres of land. And that's in a national park, not over nearly half the country like it is in Botswana.
Quite simply, any more elephants and they will start harming the land and ecosystem, which will be bad for the rest of the wildlife present and bad for the elephants themselves. They'd run out of food and water. It's unsustainable to have so many elephants in one area, with the population growing at such a fast rate. The elephants have to go for the benefit of the rest of the ecosystem and themselves. Ideally they'd be redistributed over all of sub Saharan Africa and indigenous hunting and conservation practices would control elephant numbers, but the logistics of such an operation would be massive. And as stated in the article, Botswana has already given up 8 000 elephants to nearby countries.
I'm aware of the overpopulation problem.
It's an odd interpretation of "conservation" where you conserve one species to the detriment of the whole rest of the ecosystem. And to the point where mass murder becomes a necessary component of that "conservation".
I mean, that’s what we get for making conservation funding tied to how cute an animal is and not state run and planned by biologists. Or, in the case of Africa, destroyed the local economies to such an extent via colonial extraction that foreign USD determines their policies instead of local planning
Yep. 100% agree. That last is basically what I was getting at from the start, in fact.
hell yeah