#Liberty in North Korea

[psalm40speakstome]

“URGENT: North Korean Refugees At Risk of Forced Repatriation”

It so easy to send an email or tweet. I know our world is bombarded right now with the hurting on a global scale…but that’s exactly why this is happening…because we are distracted and they don’t think we are watching. Let’s let them know we see and hopefully change something. 💔🙏🏻

[ridenwithbiden]

[timetravellingkitty]

you know how everytime people see tourists in china having a good time they feel the need to bring up the evils of communism and tiananenmen square? we should start doing the same for the usa. tourist having a great time at the statue of liberty? remind them of wounded knee. visiting the gateway arch? what about the usa's bombing of north korea really i could go on

[sophieinwonderland]

I find the reason people vote for Trump to be ridiculous.

"I will vote for him because he is going to fix the economy!" but his past policies pretty much only benefited the top 1% and economists criticize his 2nd term planned policies, saying they are going to hurt the US economy.

"He will protect liberty!" but what about abortion rights? Is that protecting liberty?

"Better security!" Trump doesn't care about climate change despite the fact it is the biggest threat we face, and he also doesn't want LGBT+ individuals joining the military (fewer soldiers = less military power).

I'm sure there are more. America, please don't vote this buffoon into power again.

All of this! But let's add more to it!

"I will vote for him because he is going to fix the economy!"

One of Trump's big promises is putting massive tariffs on goods from overseas.

This means that any goods that are delivered here are going to be more expensive. Companies will pass this extra cost off onto the consumer.

Whatever people think about inflation now, it will be worse if you make companies pay more to deliver goods to the United States.

"He will protect liberty!"

Also, what about freedom of speech? Trump has threatened to target media organizations that criticize him. He has threatened to shut down pro-Palestinian protesters.

The only freedom of speech that he values is that of people who support him.

"Better security!"

Our biggest geopolitical threat on the world stage today is Russia.

Currently, Russia is hemorrhaging resources in a prolonged war in Ukraine, with Ukraine being supported by other countries providing it with arms and resources to sustain it.

Russia has threatened to use nuclear weapons against us and the rest of the world, and they have allied themselves with North Korea who regularly threatens the same.

If Russia is allowed an easy victory in Ukraine, it is likely that they will next set their sights on NATO allies soon after.

I do not want to downplay the humanitarian aspect to our aid to Ukraine. That morally, it is the right thing to do to help Ukrainians protect themselves against a foreign invader.

But I also think Trump supporters need to understand that there's strategic benefit for the United States to continue to supply Ukraine.

A victory for Ukraine will put an end to Russian expansionism for a long time.

Failing that though, every single year that the war goes on is another year that Russia isn't able to attack NATO. It's another year that their forces are all occupied in a war they expected to be finished in a couple weeks.

Keeping Russia occupied and Ukraine well supplied is in the best interest of the United States.

If Donald Trump is elected, it is likely that he will withdraw all aid from Ukraine. He will give Russia a free pass to do whatever they want.

There's even a good chance that he will withdraw from NATO if Russia attacks NATO countries, leaving us without allies.

Anybody who thinks that Donald Trump can protect us hasn't been paying attention.

[eugenedebs1920]

When we look back at dictatorships, whether in fascist regimes, communist states, autocratic rule, and totalitarianism, ect. the philosophy’s don’t have all that much in common. One thing they do have in common is a “great leader” or an “emperor”, and more so nowadays a “strongman” who lords over the population with ”an iron fist”, a fancy way of saying they oppress thier people.

Let’s look at WWII. What did Germany’s leader (I heard we weren’t supposed to use the H word but you know who I’m referring to) and the emperor of Japan share in similarities? Not much, if anything at all. After Pearl Harbor America declared war with Japan and as a result of the treaty between Japan and Germany, Germany declared war with America (DUMB!!). What did germanys leader and the emperor of Japan have in common? Did they share any common ground other than the leader was almighty and the subjects were expendable? No. What they had in common is their oppressive rule and the fact that the free countries condemned their style of governance. So whether you have any similarities or not, as an oppressive regime, your only allies are other oppressive regimes. The idiom, your enemies, enemy, is your friend.

Fast forward to now and we don’t have the same style of fascism and dictatorships, in the more developed countries, as back then. Hence it’s not the same kind of harsh oppressive system. More of a soft autocracy. Orban in Hungary and Erdogan in Turkey are a prime example of the “soft autocracy”. Russia is an authoritarian state. Their sham government is a front for the pleasing of the world but, Putin rules Russia as a dictator.

The last thing these authoritarians want is their people to get any wild ideas of individual freedom and liberty. We did screw Russia over good after WWII, and I promise they didn’t forget, but beyond that, they want any democracy to fail. They don’t want their people to see that it is possible to have a thriving free nation. Who is the most power, wealthiest, freest nation on the planet? The United States of America.

China, Russia, Turkey, Hungary, North Korea, they would LOVE to see us destroy ourselves. All that they can do without invoking a military conflict, they will to undermine us, make us seem as if our system of government is feeble, flawed, corrupted, they will, and are. They want to rule over their citizens with fear and divisiveness. Making the population too scared to rise up against them.

This is why, in particular, Russia has been caught meddling in elections all throughout Europe and here in America. It is also why it’s so troubling that Republicans, and Trump in particular, are so keen on people such as Orban and not willing to help a democracy like Ukraine. Trump and Putin being “friends” is not a good thing. Trump is the easiest person to manipulate! All you have to do is complement him or offer him money and he’ll do whatever you want. Orban is an authoritarian! Why is he going and having private meetings with Trump directly after he met with Putin. This isn’t a Sherlock Holmes mystery here! It’s pretty damn easy to see!

Long story shorter than it could be. Russia will be putting out all kinds of misinformation and deepfakes, false stories and made up articles. Check the source! Despite what Trump says, because he only says it due to them being critical of him and covering him appropriately, the established sources, your NBC’s, CBS, ABC, CNN, Washington Post, NY Times, ect. these are credible sources. Are they corporate money making organizations? Yes. Does the press situation in this country need an overhaul? Yes. But these aren’t fake news (I had to laugh while typing that because that’s LITERALLY what Trump calls them) their flawed news but they aren’t social media deepfake, made up, complete fabrications to throw our democracy into turmoil. They will tell you the story as it is happening. The first step in autocratic rule is to limit information to what suits your narrative. Thats why Trump calls them fake. I can’t believe I’m sticking up for the media so much right now but , for reals!…

Check your sources. Know that their is forces that want to see us fail. Want us to be angry and rioting and questioning if democracy works. It does. Trump is a Russian asset, that’s why all this nonsense is amplified the way it is. In 248 years, 60 presidential elections, only the three involving Trump has this whole fraud, stolen election, noncitizen voting bullsh*t ever came up. Just Trump being a traitor. Don’t let the country’s most notorious conman con ya.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 10, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUL 11, 2024

“In 1949, when leaders of 12 countries, including President Truman, came together in this very room, history was watching,” President Joe Biden said yesterday evening at the opening of the 2024 NATO Summit, being held from July 9 through July 12, in Washington, D.C. 

“It had been four years since the surrender of the Axis powers and the end of the most devastating world war the world had ever, ever known,” Biden continued.

“Here, these 12 leaders gathered to make a sacred pledge to defend each other against aggression, provide their collective security, and to answer threats as one, because they knew to prevent future wars, to protect democracies, to lay the groundwork for a lasting peace and prosperity, they needed a new approach. They needed to combine their strengths. They needed an alliance.”

That alliance was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the “single greatest, most effective defensive alliance in the history of the world,” as Biden said. 

The NATO collective defense agreement has stabilized the world for the past 75 years thanks to its provision in Article 5 that each of the NATO allies will consider an attack on one as an attack on all, and respond accordingly. 

Biden looked back at the alliance’s 75 years. “Together, we rebuilt Europe from the ruins of war, held high the torch of liberty during long decades of the Cold War,” he said. “When former adversaries became fellow democracies, we welcomed them into the Alliance. When war broke out in the Balkans, we intervened to restore peace and stop ethnic cleansing. And when the United States was attacked on September 11th, our NATO Allies—all of you—stood with us, invoking Article 5 for the first time in NATO history, treating an attack on us as an attack on all of us—a breathtaking display of friendship that the American people will never ever, ever forget.”

Biden celebrated that the alliance has continually adapted to a changing world and noted that it has changed its strategies to stay ahead of threats and reached out to new partners to become more effective. Biden noted that leaders from countries in the Indo-Pacific region had joined the leaders of the 32 NATO countries at this year’s summit. So did the leaders of NATO’s partner countries, including Ukraine, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, and the European Union. “They’re here because they have a stake in our success and we have a stake in theirs,” Biden said.

The promise of collective defense was daunting for opponents in 1949, when the treaty had 12 signatories: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States. It is even more daunting now that there are 32, with both Finland and Sweden having joined the alliance after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Together, the NATO countries can marshal about 3,370,000 active-duty military personnel and have a collective defense budget of more than $1.2 trillion. 

In addition, as Jim Garamone of Department of Defense News noted, the NATO countries share intelligence, training, tactics, and equipment, as well as agreements for permitting the use of airspace and bases. “[O]ur commitment is broad and deep,” Biden said. “[W]e’re willing, and we’re able to deter aggression and defend every inch of NATO territory across every domain: land, air, sea, cyber, and space.”

When NATO formed, the main concern of the countries backing it was resisting Soviet aggression, but with the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Russian president Vladimir Putin, NATO turned to resisting Russian aggression. “[H]istory calls for our collective strength,” Biden said. “Autocrats want to overturn global order, which has by and large kept for nearly 80 years and counting.”

Biden called out Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine and recalled that NATO had built a global coalition to stand behind Ukraine, providing weapons and aid while also moving troops into the surrounding NATO countries. He announced that the U.S., Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, and Italy are donating more air defense equipment. 

“All the Allies knew that before this war, Putin thought NATO would break,” Biden said. “Today, NATO is stronger than it’s ever been in its history.” Biden noted that the world is in a pivotal moment, and reminded his listeners: “The fact that NATO remains the bulwark of global security did not happen by accident. It wasn’t inevitable. Again and again, at critical moments, we chose unity over disunion, progress over retreat, freedom over tyranny, and hope over fear.

Again and again, we stood behind our shared vision of a peaceful and prosperous transatlantic community.”

He assured the attendees that an “overwhelming bipartisan majority of Americans understand that NATO makes us all safer…. The American people know that all the progress we’ve made in the past 75 years has happened behind the shield of NATO,” understanding that without it, we would face “another war in Europe, American troops fighting and dying, dictators spreading chaos, economic collapse, catastrophe.” He assured allies that Americans understand our “sacred obligation” to NATO, and quoted Republican president Ronald Reagan, who said: “If our fellow democracies are not secure, we cannot be secure. If you are threatened, we are threatened. And if you are not at peace, we cannot be at peace.”

And then Biden surprised NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg, the former Norwegian prime minister who is stepping down from his NATO position after serving since 2014, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. “Today, NATO is stronger, smarter, and more energized than when you began,” Biden said. “And a billion people across Europe and North America and, indeed, the whole world will reap the rewards of your labor for years to come in the form of security, opportunity, and greater freedoms.”

Today, Biden reiterated the theme that alliances happen not “by chance but by choice.” Before the attendees got to work, he explained that the NATO countries must strengthen their home industrial bases and capacity in order to produce critical defense equipment more quickly, a deficiency made clear in the struggle to get armaments to Ukraine. Such readiness will strengthen security, he said, as well as creating “stronger supply chains, a stronger economy, stronger military, and a stronger nation.” 

The Washington Summit Declaration released today reaffirms NATO as “the unique, essential, and indispensable transatlantic forum to consult, coordinate, and act on all matters related to our individual and collective security,” saying “[o]ur commitment to defend one another and every inch of Allied territory at all times, as enshrined in Article 5…is iron-clad.” 

It warns that “Russia remains the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security” and pledges “unwavering solidarity” with Ukraine. It says that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO” and calls out Belarus, North Korea, Iran, and China for enabling Putin’s war. Indeed, the declaration calls out China even more directly, warning that it “continues to pose systemic challenges to Euro-Atlantic security,” especially by flooding other countries with disinformation. 

Russian aggression is a deep concern for NATO countries; so is Trump, who worked to take the U.S. out of NATO when he was in office, vowed he will accomplish that in a second term, and in February 2024 told an audience that if he thought NATO countries weren’t contributing enough to their own defense he would tell Russia to “do whatever the hell they want.” (Biden noted yesterday that when he took office, only nine NATO countries met their target goal of spending 2% of their gross domestic product on their defense, while this year, 23 will.) 

Biden was key to rebuilding the NATO alliance after Trump weakened it, and the leaders at the NATO summit told foreign policy journalist for The Daily Beast David Rothkopf that they were “not concerned with Biden’s ability to play a leading role in NATO during his second term.” They “express confidence in his judgment” and “have a great deal of confidence in the foreign policy team around him.” But they worry about Trump. 

Shortly after Biden gave his powerful speech opening the summit, Trump had his first public event since the June 27 CNN event, at his Doral golf club. It was a wandering rant packed, as usual, with wild lies, but he did touch on the topic of NATO. “I didn’t even know what the hell NATO was too much before, but it didn’t take me long to figure it out, like about two minutes,” he said. Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton told a reporter that Trump’s willingness to undermine NATO is “a demonstration of the lack of seriousness of the way Trump treats the alliance, because he doesn't understand it."

Following the NATO summit, Hungary’s right-wing prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who remains an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, will visit former president Trump at Mar-a-Lago, just days after meeting with Putin in Moscow and with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing. There is speculation that Orbán is acting as an intermediary between Trump and Putin, for whom the destruction of NATO is a key goal.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[ask-north-korea]

Hello everyone! I'm sorry I haven't been more active on here. Still, I thank you for supporting me along the way! 

For the sixth year in the row, I will be running a fundraising campaign for Liberty in North Korea, an organization that works to help people fleeing the North Korean regime safely make it to freedom. So, I’ve set up a Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) fundraising page, the link to which can be found at the bottom of this post and in my blog description.

I’ve always wanted to use this blog for education and to do some tangible good in the world. The last two years, we've raised over $1000, which was absolutely lightyears beyond what I thought this fandom could do! I’m setting the goal this year at $1000, by January 1st. Let’s try and keep the momentum going!

I know people can be strapped for cash this time of year, so don’t feel bad if you can’t donate! You can still reblog this post to help more people see it!

If you would like to learn more about what challenges North Korean refugees face and what sort of work LiNK does for them, you can read more about that here (be warned, possible triggering content ahead).

Let’s band together and change someone’s life for the better!

Click here to donate.

[misfitwashere]

Friends, It has been 459 days since the U.S. Congress passed legislation to support Ukraine. 

Russia, supported by arms from Iran and North Korea, is now slowly advancing on the front, bombing front-line cities, and sending scores of missiles and drones at cities throughout Ukraine.  Russia has recently destroyed one major Ukrainian hydroelectrical facility, and as write is targeting two others.  The aim is to bring down the Ukrainian electricity grid.

The U.S. Congress is once again in recess.  Although sizable majorities of Americans and their elected representatives want to support Ukraine, legislation has been blocked by the Putinist wing of the House of Representatives.

What can we do?  In the long run, we can recognize that this is all one struggle.  The war the Ukrainians face every day is the most devastating element of a coordinated effort to bring down democracies.  In the short run, U.S. voters can make phone calls to make sure that American does the right thing.  Mark your calendar for a day next week and a day following week to call your Congressional representative. 

Right now we can make donations that will help Ukrainians defend themselves, survive, and make sense their experience for the rest of us. 

1.  Safe Skies.  This is passive drone-detection system that allows Ukrainians to detect drones and cruise missiles in time to shoot them down.  President Zelens'kyi just posted some photos of that end of the operation.  Thanks to thousands of people, including many of you here, I was able (with support from some great historian colleagues) to raise enough money to protect eight Ukrainian regions with five thousand sensors (map here).  Ukraine needs 12,000 total sensors to protect the entire country, so 7,000 more.  The technology is inexpensive and effective.  I have seen it at work.  It saves lives.  This is a very direct way that you can help Ukrainians protect themselves.  Just go to this page and hit the button "Protect Ukrainian Skies." 

Donate to Safe Skies

2.  Razom for Ukraine.  This is an American 501(c)3 that carries out important policy advocacy work in Washington DC and around the country.  Aside from their terrific advocate team, they have a large group of volunteers who work tirelessly with Ukrainian NGOs to deliver aid and supplies to Ukraine.  I have worked together with their great team on events for years and am always filled with admiration of their energy, efficacy, and devotion.  A donation to them is a very safe bet.  Please visit their page and donate.

Donate to Razom

3.  Come Back Alive Foundation.  More and more I hear from people who wish to help the Ukrainian army directly.  A Ukrainian NGO that supplies soldiers on the front with what they need is Come Back Alive.  They have been doing this job since the first Russian invasion and are very well reputed and highly reliable.  You can see their fundraisers here.

Donate to Come Back Alive

4.  1 Team 1 Fight Foundation.  This is a group with some very active European volunteers who have shown their mettle and devotion in getting supplies to the front in Ukraine.  They are also an American 501(c)3.  You can find their campaigns here.

Donate to 1 Team 1 Fight

5.  Liberty Ukraine Foundation.  Here we have a small group of (mostly) Texans who have done a great job in delivering humanitarian and military aid to Ukrainians.  You can find their current projects here.  They are a US 501(c)3.

Donate to Liberty Ukraine

6.  Documenting Ukraine.  As many of you will know, I helped establish this project to support Ukrainian scholars, journalists, writers, artists, photographers, librarians, archivists, and others who are documenting the war, each according to their own talents and following their own projects.  We have given grants to 360 Ukrainians at this point, and are aiming for 500 by the end of the year.  (One of those 360 was Mstyslav Chernov, the director of 20 Days in Mariupol, which just won an Oscar).  I am proud of this effort to give Ukrainians a voice and to create a record of the war in real time and across multiple media.  You can donate here.  This is also a US 501(c)3.

Donate to Documenting Ukraine

It has been six months since meaningful U.S. aid has reached Ukraine.  You now have a list of six institutions that can help. 

Think of this as the Challenge of Six. 

I am now going to make donations myself.  If you want to join in, please do! Maybe you have give $6, or $60, or even $600? Or another round number that begins with 6? Be creative. Be generous. It matters.

Thank you!

TS 29 March 2024

I'll add my favorite as it supports medics like our late Warrior Medic, Savita Wagner.

[tomorrowusa]

While Putin is bombing schools, maternity hospitals, and hardware stores in Ukraine, the Ukrainians struck a Russian over-the-horizon radar station 1,800 km (1,119 miles) from Ukraine. Apparently Russia's radar technology didn't see the drone about to hit it. 😆

A long-range drone operated by Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) attacked early-warning Voronezh M radar in Russia's Orsk city in Orenburg Oblast on May 26, a source in the agency told the Kyiv Independent on May 27. For the first time since the start of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine attacked facilities in Orsk, some 1,800 kilometers (around 1,200 miles) from the drone's launch location, according to the source. Russian media claimed on May 26 that a drone fell in the Orsk suburbs in the Novoorsk district, allegedly targeting a military facility. No damages or casualties were reported. The military intelligence source told the Kyiv Independent that the consequences of the May 26 attack are still being clarified. Later during the day, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Schemes project published satellite imagery of the radar system after the attack.

Here are before and after satellite photos of the Orsk radar facility. It's a little difficult to make out the damage because the photos were taken at different times of day and from slightly different angles. But inside the red circles there are blackened areas which can't be accounted for by shadows.

Ukraine's military intelligence also struck another Voronezh radar in the village of Glubokii in Krasnodar Krai on May 23, causing a fire at the facility, according to the source. Voronezh radar is an early-warning equipment that provides long-distance airspace monitoring, focusing on ballistic missile attacks and aircraft. Its operational range is up to 6,000 kilometers (around 3,700 miles).

These over-the-horizon radar systems are updated versions of technology developed during the Cold War. With Ukraine set to receive F-16s later this year, damaging these radar installations would make it more difficult for Russia to monitor Ukrainian flyers from afar.

The distance traveled by Ukrainian drones keeps increasing. They may soon have all of European Russia within range of drones. One goal may be to be able to disrupt shipments of arms Russia is getting from North Korea and China as they pass through Siberia.

[dragonstepp]

What can we do

I am watching MSNBC, the Nicolle Wallace Show, and what I am hearing are a lot of people who have been threatened by the trumpeter, and who seem to be frightened by the threats, and are asking what can be done about him.

So here are two things I am thinking.

At the age of 83, and living in a pretty safe place, you might be saying to yourself: it is easy for you to talk like this, but what about me? i get out and hold a gathering of all you who are worried about your own safety. I would if I could. I am not afraid of that bastard.

They talk about how if he were put into prison, he would be able to get to his base, who might be willing to give him money, but won't do anything about him. If he loses his phone, he could write letters (which he won't do - he will depend on his base to do what he won't).

If he were in prison, where he belongs, if he cries that those of us who would put him there are not following the Constitution, and perhaps he will call on those who are following him go out do his bidding, and kill everyone who did this to him. But how many can he call on to kill for him?

The one thing that would help is if he were dead.

So here is a thought. Since he admires Putin so much, and wants to be like him, do as Putin does. Kill people. Throw him in lock and key without a trial. If he admires Putin and Kim so much, we the people should do as they do - just put them in lockdown. Put everyone who loves him in prison where they cannot be found. A reporter who has spoken against him is in a prison in Russia, and keeps getting kept there over and over.

Why can't We the People do something like they do in North Korea, and Russia? We don't want to be like them? Why the hell not. He is treating us like them.

Perhaps if those who keep shipping on people who live in Scotland and Ireland would put as much energy talking up things that have nothing to do with us, and did something useful, or writes something different from their own indifference, we might come together as a nation, and did something against those who would like to destroy us.

Wise up, folks, and do something that can help our country instead of things that are useless to our own wealth and healthfare.

I simply do not understand why we cannot be bothered, saying let the other person do it.

I lived through WW II, Korea, Vietnam - I hate war. I think we can do better. But I can almost guarantee you that if the trumpeter is allowed to continue his actions and words, and would never give up his autonomy if he gets the chance, and you who care about useless things, are going to lose those rights, and live like the Russians and Ukranians and those who are fighting for their own liberty, and you will find yourself living in those conditions. Many people are living with the result of our people going into their countries and killing and destroying them. Perhaps we will find ourselves living in those conditions.

Because the trumpeter will, if he wins, or just keeps on acting the way he is being allowed to, he will bring death and destruction on us as he continues to gain his own backing by the stupid people.

Maybe I'll be dead. Or maybe, as I continue to believe I might be immortal and get out and fight the battles against the evil. I would not hesitate if I find out I don't have to and can fight the battles.

Carol in Austin

[talenlee]

Hecsenfore, A Necrostate in Principle

There’s this quote, from The Great Dictator:

To those who can hear me, I say – do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed – the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish…

So long as men die, liberty will never perish. This is an idea that works for a variety of places to represent bad rulership, to show undying and unrelenting leaders. In Cobrin’Seil, I use places with undead rulership enough to give them their own technical name, that of a necrostate. A necrostate refers to a polity in which the ruler or ruling class is represented by the dead. In the real world, there is an extant necrostate (North Korea), but that’s ceremonial, in much the same way that a theocracy doesn’t need a real god to exist for the power to be situated in the hands of religious leadership.

But where dictators do not die, where the ruling class do not naturally cede power as human structural limits, can you form a reasonable, tolerable, culturally diverse and stable necrostate? How does something with an immortal, predatory ruling class get created and managed in a way that still creates a place where the people who live there are not in danger of permanent loss of life or exploitation, and what can sustain this kind of place over time? Is it possible to create a necrostate that, at least in the context of social and political structures, is not worse than places with things like noble orders?

What does that look like, and how do we get there?

In Cobrin’Seil, there are three necrostates I’ve discussed in public:

Voolfardisworth, which is a classic Westerners-ideas-of-Romanian-Transylvanian culture, a full on Castlevania-em-up land of valleys with different vampire lords each trying to cook up the best vampire hunter to send out to other, nearby vampire lords, but not too nearby, and also, hopefully, with crucial weaknesses that they can exploit when that vampire hunter comes back home to clean up. This is to be a blunt metaphor for the way that nobility and landed gentry fundamentally treat people like commodies.

The Osteon, which is an industrialised Victorian style nation where instead of relying on coal and whale oil, all the mass-production technology is based on constructs made out of human bones. This is to be a blunt metaphor for the way that early capitalism treats people like commodities.

Uxaion, a venture capital necrocybermagepunk city with sprawling gangs and a very cruel vision of human capital, constantly trying the Most Exciting New Thing in an attempt to exploit a constantly flowing living population. This is to be a blunt metaphor for the way that late capitalism treats people like commodities.

Anyway, so like, if you go by this, in Cobrin’Seil, you might look at the setting and go: Okay, so necrostates are shit. Like the least bad of them is – well I don’t know, the least bad might be the Osteon or Voolfardisworth, but like, we can all agree that Uxaion is definitely the worst right? And I think that that represents a weakness in my worldbuilding. Uxiaon was made to be an explicit jab at silicon valley culture, and the other two are part of The Horror Peninsula, the Szudetken, where I wanted to give people places to make characters who could very clearly point to the world around them and go ‘I fight that.’ But that isn’t that I think necrostates are inherently bad, inasmuch as I don’t think, in a fantasy roleplaying setting, that it’s impossible to have organisational structures in general that don’t suck.

I want to make sure in Cobrin’Seil there are a few necrostates that manage to crest the lofty goal of ‘not blatantly evil’ and maybe even tap into the fantasy of like, what if we did have the dead around, what if there was a way that that was… not bad? From that impulse then there was the project of creating a space, and investigating it deeply, about a Necrostate that isn’t as simple as a place that sucks, and what a Necrostate that’s a good place to live is going to look like.

First of all, to understand the origin of this place, Hecsenfore, you need to understand the international legal system of the Eresh Protectorate, and the nature of Vampires in Cobrin’Seil. The Eresh Protectorate, I’ve written tons about that you can dig into that at your leisure. For now, the simple idea is the Eresh Protectorate is a set of interconnected city-states that hold a reasonably coherent, reliable and honestly, ‘good’ legal system that you have to comply to if you want to join.

Vampires are immortal undead beings that through a variety of different processes, come to subsist on stolen life force through a predatory means. They are very strong, they are very fast, they have some strange rules they have to live by. The typical Vampire is a monster that eats people and controls populations to eat them later over time. One of the things that Vampires tend to be unified around are extremely weirdo brains, with behaviour that, disconnected, look like strange archaic laws set up by storytellers.

In the context of Cobrin’Seil, the weird behaviours of Vampires are because when they die and become Vampires, the disconnect from normal biological life brings with it a lot of strength: they no longer need to eat or drink to sustain themselves, and therefore, whatever magic fills their bodies makes their bodies stronger. Thing is, this is also true of their minds – Vampires with small or subtle neurodivergent traits have those traits amplified to the nth degree. Every single Vampire shares some traits with autism spectrum, ADHD, and OCD, because the natural and normal anxiety responses that those effects often trigger are amplified in their minds. And just like people with those conditions, these are managed behaviours that individuals can learn about and take care of and don’t need them to be pathologised.

Vampires aren’t bad because of their brain worms. They are bad because they eat people. But they don’t have to, and from there we get the genesis of Hecsenfore. It starts with a single Vampire lord, considering the Eresh Protectorate. From the perspective of a long lived leader, the Eresh Protectorate are a fantastic deal for offering stability and long-term growth. They’re one of the longest lasting organisations, they have had no major revolutionary actions and their generally hands-off position towards their city states makes them excellent for trade and any special interests. There’s an entire Eresh city that feeds the protectorate pretty much nothing but sheep products, and if your special interest is things like ancient magical books or even just medicinal sciences, you probably can do worse than saddle your existing project to this body. Looks good.

But also, the Protectorate is a fantasy organisation based around the fantasy of ‘what if a country doesn’t have to suck shit’ and has a lot of competing factions that are, generally, holding different philosophies in a positive direction even if I don’t think that say, churches are great. But okay, point is, the Protectorate has a moral high ground to look at candidate cities to tell them whether or not to fuck off. They’ve told Uxaion, the hypercapitalist silicon valley undead land to go fuck themselves, for example. But they also have a standard of living and maintain that by doing things like ‘actually protecting people’ and ‘preventing revolution through abundance’. It’s a magical setting, the church can make food for people, a lot of problems can be handled with a central organisation.

Which means you can’t just sign up to join up because if you suck shit, they’re probably going to lose your paperwork, or tell you things you need to change to make the paperwork valid. Mostly, this doesn’t happen because people who know they can’t fulfill the requirements and meet the trade laws of the protectorate already can’t become members.

So imagine this like, Vampire, right.

Yes of course they’re hot. Really hot.

Big nerd, though, because again, that Vampire anxiety. They have a name, but it’s not important – you’re not going to meet Lochestow anywhere most of the time for the purpose of this conversation. You’re probably not going to hear him invoked either.

Anyway, so this vampire has a citadel, maybe they’ve even made it into a full blown city to start with. This citadel has the people in it they feed from, and art and literature and its own culture and you have a city, you have a thing and the Protectorate, over there, wants cities. Easy, then, they say something like:

hey, what laws do I have to follow to become part of the Protectorate, and how hard are those laaws to set up?

There are trade and safety laws, those are almost all immaterial and unimpressive to this Vampire, which means they can probably comply with them really easily. They check them over and just get someone in the organisation of the citadel to just go ahead and enforce them. Make an enforcement department if they need that.

And they’re like uh okay but what about the murder one.

What?

There’s a law against murder?

well I mean, this vampire thinks, we don’t have to murder, we just have to drink blood. So… y’know, we just keep murders from happening. I mean murders can be illegal and we can still have people break a few laws.

Yeah but, the advisor points out, there’s kinda a bit of a concern here where we’re like, actual predators that eat people, maybe they might not consider us inherently trustworthy on the ‘we don’t do murders’ front?

And thus begins the slow, steady ratcheting towards a totally different moral perspective. Because most of the time a ruler – any ruler! – runs into a problem like this, that says the Protectorate’s standards will involve changing your life and the way you rule, they respond with something akin to ‘screw that, I don’t care about the Protectorate that badly.’

But this Vampire thinks of this as a problem, a puzzle. Something that can be solved. Just set things up so the Vampires don’t need to kill humans to feed. That’s a thing they can do, it’s just a matter of taking enough blood in the right time frame, and a population large enough can absorb that. And this is math, and Vampires love to do math. Well, some do.

Then there are corollaries, details, contingent situations. How do you keep people from being injured when you feed? Formalise the process, make it so there’s no need to struggle and Vampires only feed reasonable amounts. Oh hang on we have a thing for this, this can just be a tax. Make it so people can pay blood for their taxes. But wait, the response is, now there’s a problem where suddenly people are going to be squeezed for their taxes, this means destitution can be addressed with lifeblood, that’s going to be a problem, people exchanging money for blood, because blood can be exchanged for money. That means these regulations can’t allow that.

There needs to be caps on how much blood you can give, we need to regulate that, and if we need to regulate that, then we need to make sure nobody can double pay to go over their limit, okay, so, okay we have these blood drawers who take the blood, and that means we need a central reserve and control system for that, but that, that isn’t hard at all, and if we set that up right, that’s great, that’s a job, that’s a thing that we can have enduring and constantly work on, we love a project. But if we’re tracking these blood drawers we need to be able to track everyone in the city, and we need to make sure they’re healthy if they’re contributing blood and that means…

Look it’ll be easier, it’ll be tidier if we give the mortals universal health care. A few clerics as blood drawers, heal people and get pure blood, no need for hunts, no need for risk, and now if we just keep the population numbers high enough then we’re talking about a completely tenable situation. Then the next step is the protectorate presenting a problem where the numbers need to be dialled in. You need to make sure nobody is incentivised to kill someone else to donate blood. Okay, so fine, we have a guard system in place. Fine, the Protectorate want that anyway. Wait, that doesn’t address crime? What does? Oh, okay, okay, fine, fucking, so everyone has basic income, rent is free for basic housing, and that guard system group can be about enforcing and publically accounting these Best Vampire Practices. Oh, they can be seen as the way the non-Vampires show their investment in the good of the city too, call them the Stakeholders and then, somewhere in all this, somewhere along the line, this city starts to become a pretty cool place to live, if you’re someone who can, culturally, handle the vibes and recognise that every three months, you’re giving blood.

Then pivot across to the Protectorate. This looks sus as shit right? Like this vampire has basically started whole new systems inside their city and they’re now doing everything they can, OVERCORRECTING, really, and now they’re patiently building all these systems to make their city a valid Protectorate city.

Don’t know.

Don’t trust it.

Just, y’know, keep an eye on it.

What’s more, every time they send an investigatory team to this city, they come back remarking on how sure, it’s a bit weird looking, and they are absolutely drinking blood, but it’s fine. And that leads to further investigations into how good the mind control or illusion magic of the city must be because they keep getting these reports and they seem good and there needs to be an abundance of caution. The Protectorate are more likely to believe their investigators are mistaken or deceived than their actual finding.

For now.

And okay, now this vampire has the problem that they’ve fallen into the vampire trap of when an immortal, undying mind gets brain worms, those worms dig deep. Now, making this city good is their Special Interest Project. And that special interest project is obsessive, and has created its whole new layer of culture. Because to humans, this city is kinda gothic, has all these rad amenities, a creepy blood payment system, and the leadership is this small population of vampires that you obviously don’t want to fuck with and keep themselves removed and have like their own very distinct interests that shape bits of the cities. Like one group of the vampires are into art so their section of the city has a bunch of galleries. It’s interesting, it’s weird, but it’s also very free, very safe…

.. and from the Vampires perspective, this is a glass clock. The population must be over %, it must always reach high enough that they can always attest to Blood reserves and not run the risk of a starvation incident. New vampires arrive in the town thinking ‘this is a city run by vampires’ and aren’t expecting to walk into what amounts to the most intensely regulated minecraft farm ever made, and where every new vampire needs to be met with a commensurate increase in the overall population and oh, you can’t do that? You can’t bring enough people to safely continue the city project? Then you can leave or you can convince someone else to leave or, much more likely, you can disappear when you decide you don’t like how we do things here with our interlocking brainworms.

Another hallmark of what this city needs, is an antechamber. A place that is not actually part of this necrostate, but nearby enough that the necrostate can use it as a link point to the other nations that do not want to deal with a necrostate directly. In this case, the case of this city-state, that’s a little adjacent town, called Poinera. That town is going to wind up with a disproportionate importance, one of those funny little geographical details – like a tiny town which is regularly making huge deals for large sums of money or buying disproportionately large quantities of things since they plan on onselling them to people the seller won’t. This place wants to be a Protectorate city, too, but it’s also probably not a city, probably not ready to become part of the Protectorate yet.

Where we get then is a city that through sheer social pressures and response to systemic demands, has become a great place to live because if you’re detached from Wealth As A High Score, the actual project is interesting in and of itself. The Protectorate are convinced it’s sus because it looks too good to be true and the Vampire Monarch is obsessed with making it better because they’ve got the brain worm now and they have, coincidentally, become a beloved leader, blackhearted and selfish and entirely unprepared to cope with being one of the city’s favourite people.

They are a shepherd. You can shear a sheep many times, but skin it only once.

And they will fight the wolves.

This describes the process, the narrative of how a city-state like this can come to be. But what about this place, what about the place that does exist and how it formed? Then that’s the next part of the treatment. With the structure of the story, what follows is an examination of the city as it is – its name, its rulers, its culture and the places around the city that people are drawn to and why. This is where we get the project of the incredibly boring Vampire Lord Lochestow, who is if a Dentist’s Assistant became a Dracula, the way the city was named and titled, and what those details came to mean in the creation of the city state that is known now as Hecsenfore.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Rikki Schlott

Published: Feb 11, 2023

“They were in Manhattan, living in the freest country you can imagine, and they’re saying they’re oppressed? It doesn’t even compute,” Yeonmi Park told The Post of students at her alma mater, Columbia University. “I was sold for $200 as a sex slave in the 21st century under the same sky. And they say they’re oppressed because people can’t follow their pronouns they invent every day?”

The 29-year-old defected from North Korea as a young teen, only to be human-trafficked in China. In 2014, she became one of just 200 North Koreans to live in the United States — and, as of last year, is an American citizen.

Now, three years after she graduated from Columbia with a degree in human rights, Park is raising alarm bells about America’s cancel culture and woke ideology.

In her book “While Time Remains,” out February 14, Park writes how she made it all the way to the United States only to find some of the same encroachments on freedom that she thought she left behind in North Korea — from identity politics and victim mentality to elite hypocrisy.

“I escaped hell on earth and walked across the desert in search of freedom, and found it,” she writes. “I don’t want anything bad ever to happen to my new home … I want us — need us — to keep the darkness at bay.”

She implores readers: “I need your help to save our country, while time remains.”

Park first made headlines back in 2015 with her book “In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom” and for her bold claims that the woke environment she endured as a student at Columbia reminded her of North Korea.

In an interview this week with The Post, Park recalled what it was like to be a North Korean defector who escaped tyranny and oppression only to meet college students intent on claiming victim status and earning oppression points. She dubbed her alma mater a “pure indoctrination camp” and said many of her classmates at New York City’s most elite school were “brainwashed like North Korean students are.

“I never understood that not having a problem can be a problem,” Park said. “They need to make injustice out of thin air or a problem out of nowhere, because they haven’t experienced anything like what other people are facing in the world.”

She was born in Hyesan, North Korea, the second child of a civil servant, and grew up under the rule of then-Supreme Leader Kim Jong-il under the bleakest of conditions.

In the first five years of her life, an estimated 3.5 million North Koreans died of starvation. Park recalls hunting for cockroaches on the way to school to quell her hunger — even as the Kim’s regime banned the words “famine” and “hunger.”

“Darkness in Hyesan is total,” Park writes. ”It’s not just the absence of light, power, and food. It is the absence of dignity, sanctuary, and hope. Darkness in Hyesan is … watching your parents and neighbors hauled away by police for the crime of collecting insects and plants for their children to eat.”

After her father was arrested and sentenced to hard labor for the crime of trading dried fish, sugar, and metals, the Park family’s life in North Korea deteriorated even further. Finally, they planned their way out.

“I didn’t escape in search of freedom, or liberty, or safety. I escaped in search of a bowl of rice,” she writes.

Park’s sister fled North Korea first. Park, then 13, and her mother followed, crossing the freezing Yalu River into China. But rather than finding her sister, the pair fell into the hands of human traffickers who sold Park into sexual slavery. 

After years of forced slave labor, a still-teenage Park was finally able to break free and travel across the Gobi Desert to Mongolia with the help of Christian missionaries. From there, she went to South Korea where she found refuge and was granted citizenship.

Seven years after they were first separated, Park also reunited with her older sister. But they found out that their father had died shortly after he managed to escape to China.

Losing him, Park said, made her “step into a different life: one dedicated to human rights, and improving the lives of people suffering under tyranny. A life of meaning. A life that would make my father proud.”

When Park was a young girl, her mother told her the most dangerous thing in her body was her tongue and warned her that, if she said the wrong thing or insulted the regime, her family could be imprisoned or even executed.

“That’s the end of cancel culture,” Park told the Post. “Of course, we’re not putting people in front of a firing squad in America now, but their livelihoods, their dignity, their reputations, and their humanity are under attack. When we tell people not to talk, we’re censoring their thinking as well. And when you can’t think, you’re a slave — a brainwashed puppet.”

Since her time at Columbia, the New York City-based author and activist has started a YouTube channel, “Voice of North Korea,” where she shares information about life under the regime. She also joined the board of the non-profit Human Rights Foundation, where she works with dissidents from around the world and, most recently, helped with efforts to drop anti-regime leaflets in North Korea.’

Recently divorced, Park is also now a mother to a five-year-old son. She wants him to have the same freedoms she found in America — but is afraid they’re under attack by pernicious woke ideology, and especially identity politics.

In North Korea, Park said, the government divides citizens into 51 classes based on whether their blood is “tainted” because their  ancestors were “oppressive” landowners.

“That’s how the regime divided people. What an individual does doesn’t matter. It’s all about your ancestors and the collective,” she explained.

Now, when she sees Americans indulging in race essentialism and identity politics, she said, it feels eerily familiar.

“They say white people are privileged and guilty and oppressors,” Park said. “This is the tactic the North Korean regime used to divide people. In America it’s the same idea of collective guilt. This is the ideology that drove North Korea to be what it is today — and we’re putting it into young American minds.”

Park told the Post she hopes her second book serves as inspiration for Americans to fight back against false promises of “equity” while they still can.

“I really don’t think that we have that much time left,” she warned. “Already all our mainstream institutions have the same ideology that North Korea has: socialism, collectivism and equity. We are literally going through a cultural revolution in America. When we realize it, it might be too late.”

==

When someone who escaped North Korea gives you a warning, you pay attention.

[pollencoveredman]

after we go through each season, is there going to be a worst of the worst poll??

yep !! we’ll finish s16 then go straight onto the finalists — finds a dead guy vs goes jihad, north korea situation vs liberty bell etc etc.

frank’s brother is probably going to win but this has been so interesting to see how the other votes tallied up !! was surprised at how even the split was between goes jihad and gives back

on that note: here’s a list of all the win-losers so far if anybody is interested

[nyaruhodou]

It's Yeonmi Park who lives making up testimonies about how horrible life is like in N Korea to appeal to conservatives. Not about stuff like sanctions caused by western countries, but like how the state police can kill or surest you for wearing make up or watching Hollywood movies. Blatant lies. Think tanks also love having her present her testimony to justify anti North Korea sentiment.

"In her interview with Rogan, Park said that North Korea has only a single train and that people often had to push the train to make it move.[4] Screenshots of this interview were used to turn Park into an internet meme.[42] In a separate interview, Park was told that a train engine alone can weigh 100 to 200 tons, close to the weight of the Statue of Liberty or an adult blue whale. Park responded that she had never seen people pushing trains in North Korea, though she believed that it did happen and claimed she had photographs to prove it.[4] She sent three of these photos to journalist Laura Jadeed, but Jadeed wrote that none of them showed people pushing trains.[4]"

PUSHING TRAINS?!?!? LMFAOOOO OK

[beardedmrbean]

People in North Korea have told the BBC food is so scarce their neighbours have starved to death.

Exclusive interviews gathered inside the world's most isolated state suggest the situation is the worst it has been since the 1990s, experts say.

The government sealed its borders in 2020, cutting off vital supplies. It has also tightened control over people's lives, our interviewees say.

Pyongyang told the BBC it has always prioritised its citizens' interests.

The BBC has secretly interviewed three ordinary people in North Korea, with the help of the organisation Daily NK which operates a network of sources in the country. They told us that since the border closure, they are afraid they will either starve to death or be executed for flouting the rules. It is extremely rare to hear from people living in North Korea.

The interviews reveal a "devastating tragedy is unfolding" in the country, said Sokeel Park from Liberty in North Korea (LiNK), which supports North Korean escapees.

One woman living in the capital Pyongyang told us she knew a family of three who had starved to death at home. "We knocked on their door to give them water, but nobody answered," Ji Yeon said. When the authorities went inside, they found them dead, she said. Ji Yeon's name has been changed to protect her, along with those of the others we interviewed.

A construction worker who lives near the Chinese border, whom we have called Chan Ho, told us food supplies were so low that five people in his village had already died from starvation.

"At first, I was afraid of dying from Covid, but then I began to worry about starving to death," he said.

North Korea has never been able to produce enough food for its 26 million people. When it shut its border in January 2020, authorities stopped importing grain from China, as well as the fertilisers and machinery needed to grow food.

Meanwhile, they have fortified the border with fences, while reportedly ordering guards to shoot anyone trying to cross. This has made it nearly impossible for people to smuggle in food to sell at the unofficial markets, where most North Koreans shop.

A market trader from the north of the country, whom we have named Myong Suk, told us that almost three quarters of the products in her local market used to come from China, but that it was "empty now".

She, like others who make their living selling goods smuggled across the border, has seen most of her income disappear. She told us her family has never had so little to eat, and that recently people had been knocking on her door asking for food because they were so hungry.

From Pyongyang, Ji Yeon told us she had heard of people who had killed themselves at home or disappeared into the mountains to die, because they could no longer make a living.

She was struggling to feed her children, she said. Once, she went two days without eating and thought she was going to die in her sleep.

In the late 1990s, North Korea experienced a devastating famine which killed as many as three million people. Recent rumours of starvation, which these interviews corroborate, have prompted fears the country could be on the brink of another catastrophe.

The daughter who fled North Korea to find her mother

Beatings, forced abortions: Life in a North Korea prison

"That normal, middle-class people are seeing starvation in their neighbourhoods, is very concerning," said the North Korea economist Peter Ward. "We are not talking about full-scale societal collapse and mass starvation yet, but this does not look good."

Hanna Song, the director of NKDB, which documents human rights violations in North Korea, agreed. "For the past 10-15 years we have rarely heard of cases of starvation. This takes us back to the most difficult time in North Korean history."

Even the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has hinted at the seriousness of the situation - at one point referring openly to a "food crisis", while making various attempts to boost agricultural production. Despite this, he has prioritised funding his nuclear weapons programme, testing a record 63 ballistic missiles in 2022. One estimate puts the total cost of these tests at more than $500m (£398m) - more than the amount needed to make up for North Korea's annual grain shortfall.

Our interviewees also revealed how the government has used the past three years to increase its control over people's lives, by strengthening punishments and passing new laws.

Before the pandemic, more than 1,000 people would flee the country each year, crossing the Yalu River into China, according to numbers released by the South Korean government. The market trader Myong Suk told us it had become impossible to escape. "If you even approach the river now you will be given a harsh punishment, so almost nobody is crossing," she said.

The construction worker Chan Ho said his friend's son had recently witnessed several closed-door executions. In each one, three to four people had been killed for attempting to escape. "Every day it gets harder to live," he told us. "One wrong move and you are facing execution."

"We are stuck here waiting to die."

We put our findings to the North Korean government, which told us it "has always prioritised the interests of the people, even at difficult times".

"The people's well-being is our foremost priority, even in the face of trials and challenges," said a representative from the North Korean embassy in London.

They also said the information was "not entirely factual", claiming it had been "derived from fabricated testimonies from anti-DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] forces".

But Sokeel Park, from LiNK, said these interviews reveal a "triple whammy" of hardship. "The food situation has become more difficult, people have less freedom to fend for themselves, and it has become pretty much impossible to escape." They support the theory, he said, that "North Korea is now more repressive than it has ever been before."

In Pyongyang, Ji Yeon said the surveillance and crackdowns were now so ruthless that people did not trust each other. She was taken in for questioning under a new law, passed in December 2020, which bans people from sharing and consuming foreign films, TV shows and songs. Under this Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Act, aimed at rooting out foreign information, those caught distributing South Korean content can be executed.

A former North Korean diplomat, who defected in 2019, said he was shocked by how extreme the crackdown on foreign influence had become. "Kim Jong Un is afraid that if people understand the situation they are in, and how wealthy South Korea is, they will start hating him and rise up," explained Ryu Hyun Woo.

Our interviews suggest that some people's loyalty has waned over the past three years.

"Before Covid, people viewed Kim Jong Un positively," Myong Suk said. "Now almost everyone is full of discontent."