Richard Medhurst posted a couple of videos recently talking about this:

Part 1 - “Israel and the United States want the giant amounts of gas in Gaza, and to create a rival to China’s New Silk Road.”

Part 2 - “Israel and the United States plan to turn Gaza into the “Ben Gurion Canal”, a rival to Egypt’s Suez Canal. This is about controlling the world’s most geostrategic shipping lane.”

The New Atlas touches on and reads some quotes from this paper a bit in this video: https://www.yewtu.be/watch?v=MWzF5NvFdOs&t=2507s (@41:54)

A very normal quote from the paper:

…it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.)

An example of what’s discussed in the New Atlas video:

[Brian Berletic speaking about the paper] They also laid out the the whole Iran nuclear deal, they didn’t mention it by name, but they were talking about a deal they would propose to Iran, deliberately sabotage, blame its failure on Iran, and then use that as a pretext for military aggression. So it says, “in a similar vein any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper International context both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to and minimize the blowback from it. The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support, however grudging or covert, is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer”–and they’re talking about a widespread conviction–not an understanding of a fact, but the belief in a US fabricated lie–so they say to “strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer, one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down” because, for the wrong reasons they admit in this paper–and many other policy papers, including from the Rand corporation–that if Iran ever did have nuclear weapons they would be used solely as a deterrent.

It says, “under those circumstances the United States or Israel could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians brought it upon themselves by refusing a very good deal.” I mean remember shortly after this paper was published, under the Obama Administration the Iran nuclear deal was proposed. Eventually it was signed, it was implemented, the Iranians adhered to it, and then under the Trump Administration it was the US unilaterally withdrew from it, blaming Iran, just as the Brookings institution spelled out. And the Biden administration was supposed to reinstate it, but of course that was never going to happen because that was not the plan as laid out by the real policy makers of US foreign policy, these unelected, corporate-funded think tanks.

These think tanks produce these policy papers, teams of lawyers craft parts of these policy papers into bills, the bills go with lobbyists to Washington to be rubber stamped–many people in Washington don’t even read them–and then the bill is sent to the corporate media to sell these policies to the public. It’s very important to understand how the US really operates where foreign and domestic policy really stem from. Not your elected representatives, unfortunately. The fact that this Brookings institution ploy to propose sabotage, unilaterally withdraw from and then use a deal with Iran as a pretext for military aggression transcended the Obama, Trump, and Biden Administration. This demonstrates the continuity of US foreign policy regardless of who sits in the White House and whoever is running Congress.

Socialist Constitution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (2019) - DPRK’s constitution on Wikisource

DPRK Socio-Economic, Demographic and Health Survey 2014. - Survey co-authored by the United Nations Population Fund and the DPRK’s Central Bureau of Statistics (Related: UNFPA summary of DPRK census population data from 2008).

North Korea’s Surprisingly Robust Healthcare System - Article in Global Asia

ProleWiki page on DPRK - ProleWiki page giving info on DPRK

I am also learning details about this so I will just share what I’ve been looking at. Some of these I haven’t fully read yet, so keep in mind I am just showing you the same things I am learning from in the moment.

How Palestine Became Colonized - Video/documentary overview by Empire Files

Palestine, Israel, and the U.S. Empire - Audiobook released by Liberation School, looks like episodes 3-9 probably deal with what you’re asking; I haven’t listened to it yet

Palestine 101 - Series of history articles by Decolonize Palestine

Deconstructing and debunking Zionism - Another article; I haven’t read it all yet, I just skipped to the section “What are the origins of Zionism?”

Apparently the attacker was also their landlord:

According to the Will County sheriff’s office, the woman had called 911 to report that her landlord had attacked her with a knife, adding she then ran into a bathroom and continued to fight him off.

The Muslim civil liberties organization called the crime “our worst nightmare” and part of a disturbing spike in hate calls and emails since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. The group cited text messages exchanged among family members that showed the attacker had made disparaging remarks about Muslims.

I’m taking a look through the link that @GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml stickied on c/GenZhou. I’m also trying to learn more about the early history of the region, as I also mostly only know about the more recent history. So, take my post as someone else also learning about this too and sharing my notes, not as someone well-versed on the topic.

Here’s a page from there: Myth: My people were here before your people.

Key points from the page:

The ethnic cleansing, massacres and colonialism needed to establish Israel can never be justified, regardless of who was there first. It’s a moot point. Even if we follow the argument that Palestinians have only been there for 1300 years, does this suddenly legitimize the expulsion of hundreds of thousands? Of course not. There is no possible scenario where it is excusable to ethnically cleanse a people and colonize their lands. Human rights apply to people universally, regardless of whether they have lived in an area for a year or ten thousand years.

A point regarding the historical issue of the population (read the whole page for more info about that):

[T]he Palestinian Arabs of today did not suddenly appear from the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century to settle in Palestine, but are the same indigenous peoples living there who changed how they identified over time. This includes the descendants of every group that has ever called Palestine their home. When regions change rulers, they don’t normally change populations. Throughout history, peoples have often changed how they identified politically. The Sardinians eventually became Italians, Prussians became Germans. It would be laughable to suggest that the Sardinians were kicked out and replaced by a distinct foreign Italian people. We must separate the political nationalist identity of people from their personhood as human beings, as nationalism is a relatively modern concept, especially in the Middle East.

“Jewish history … forms a part of the Palestinian past and heritage, just like every other group, kingdom or empire that settled there does … These positions can be maintained while simultaneously rejecting Zionism and its colonialism”

If we reject the “we were there first” argument, and not treat it as a legitimizing factor for Israel’s creation, then we can focus on the real history, without any ideological agendas. We could trace how our pasts intersected throughout the centuries. After all, there is indeed Jewish history in Palestine. This history forms a part of the Palestinian past and heritage, just like every other group, kingdom or empire that settled there does. We must stop viewing Palestinian and Jewish histories as competing, mutually exclusive entities, because for most of history they have not been. These positions can be maintained while simultaneously rejecting Zionism and its colonialism. After all, this ideologically driven impulse to imagine our ancestors as some closed, well defined, unchanging homogenous group having exclusive ownership over lands corresponding to modern day borders has nothing to do with the actual history of the area, and everything to do with modern notions of ethnic nationalism and colonialism.

Another page: Myth: The “conflict” is ancient

This shallow analysis of the question of Palestine serves multiple functions; First, it is an attractive and easy way to comment on the situation without actually saying anything or taking a side. It is convenient because it spares you the need to do any research or take a stance while simultaneously morally elevating yourself over the “backwards” people in the region. This is done in an attempt to project a false image of understanding or nuance.

[T]he question of Palestine is not some ancient blood feud between eternally warring peoples, it is a recent struggle resulting from settler colonialism infused with reactionary ethnonationalism, both relatively new concepts originating in the last couple of centuries. The analysis of the question of Palestine through any other lens will produce a flawed and misleading understanding of the facts on the ground and will result in shallow and ahistorical interpretations of the region as the one discussed above.

Since iirc the video you linked mentioned this: Myth: The name “Palestine” was a Roman invention

As I said, I am also learning more about the more distant past history of this region, and at the moment I am in the phase of just gathering information and reading up, not yet at a phase of fact-checking certain details (though, as the pages above importantly point out, certain facts are moot points in regard to justifying settler colonization–nonetheless it’s good to be aware of factual historical information).

I’m going to be taking the information on the above pages as a jumping off point as I learn more about it. I noticed that each page in their myths section contains a list of sources, so maybe you (and I) could start looking into those. I know you said you know about the more recent history but I thought this Empire Files video was informative due to containing several quotations from Zionists before and throughout the history of their colonization of Palestine and context about European colonial projects: How Palestine Became Colonized.

Again, this video, like the above website, and also like the video you linked, are all media intended to quickly introduce information to a mass audience, so we should always be taking them as a starting point for more detailed research. As someone else in this thread mentioned, keep learning about the history, keep expanding your knowledge of the context. Read widely with a critical mind and with a materialist analysis and keep wary of the imperialist point of view being the default in many sources. Explicitly Marxist histories of events can help very much in orienting your research but you can also do your best to make that kind of analysis yourself as you become more informed using sources of all kinds as long as you remain critical.

I happened to come across these articles today, linking in case you still wanted info on this topic

AP corrects story falsely claiming homosexuality is illegal for Palestinians

Why I painted a rainbow flag on Israel’s apartheid wall

The Real Oppressors of Gaza’s Gay Community: Hamas or Israel?

I suggest studying some Korean history and reading the works of DPRK’s leaders and other DPRK authors directly and over time you can form your own evaluation of what they believe and why they have implemented particular policies at various times. I don’t have time to write more on it at the moment but you can find some of Kim Jong Il’s views on Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, socialist construction, and Juche here.

I don’t know much about the subject specifically in Gaza or in Palestine in general, aside from this academic paper which is about the use of pinkwashing as a colonizer tactic. Regarding advocacy groups it mentions the group alQaws. Here is an article by alQaws: Queer Liberation & Palestine. Quote from article in which they warn about the weaponization of LGBTQ issues to further colonial agendas:

Israeli settler colonialism, and tactics such as “pinkwashing” weaponize our queer experiences to place us in opposition to our own society and communities. Pinkwashing is a form of colonial violence. It promotes harmful narratives and policies that alienate queer Palestinians from our own communities. Our answer to pinkwashing is to say that liberation is indivisible, and that there will be a place for all of us at the rendezvous of victory. The Israeli criminal government and Zionist LGBTQ movement manipulate and exploit queer Palestinians’ lived realities to advance a colonial agenda. The standards for solidarity and action cannot be set by the colonizer.

Another article from them: No Queer “Co-Resistance” with Colonizers: Confronting Normalization and Pinkwashing

In alliance with anti-colonial coalitions, alQaws developed and popularized the concept of “pinkwashing” to expose how Israel and its defenders use the language of LGBTQ rights to distract from the oppression of Palestinians. Over the years, Palestinian activists came to recognize that pinkwashing is not simply an outward-facing propaganda machine—it is a direct form of colonial violence, one that pushes Palestinians to view ourselves and our communities through the lens of colonial prejudice.

Pinkwashing relies on exploiting progressive rhetoric about “tolerance” and “gay rights,” to conceal the violent nature of the occupation and settler-colonialism in Palestine. Normalization, similarly, draws on liberal ideals of “dialogue” and “partnership.”

5 Way to Support Palestinian Queers

Perpetuating tiresome tropes of presenting Palestinians as inherently oppressive and Israel as a liberal state that protects LGBTQ rights is counter-productive and factually baseless. Israel is a settler-colonial state that offers no rights to Palestinians, queer or otherwise. Our struggle as queer Palestinians is against Israeli colonialism as much as it is against homophobia and patriarchy in Palestine. Israel uses pinkwashing tactics to lie about “saving” LGBTQ Palestinians from their society. We ask that you steer away from these lies that are intentionally used to justify their colonization of Palestine. alQaws and our allies in Palestine will continue to amplify our message as well as provide protection and a political home for LGBTQ Palestinians. Israeli LGBTQ groups do not have a say in the work that should be done to fight patriarchy and homophobia in Palestine, including the incitements led by the Palestinian police.

As I said, I don’t know much about it beyond the above, which I have not looked deeply into, so take this information with a grain of salt.

The “patsoc” ideas which promote patriotism in the imperial core and reject decolonization are much different from the socialist patriotism which is anti-imperialist and decolonial. DPRK does uphold socialist patriotism, which is regarded as part of its internationalist duty of completing the Korean revolution by focusing the majority of its attention on Korea, to make sure their revolution is successfully carried out, and which is specifically against promoting national chauvinism, and rejects racism.

DPRK’s emphasis on looking inward for solving its problems and on self-reliance come from Korea’s specific conditions. Specifically, Korea has been a battleground for world powers for much of its existence and historically had strong ideological currents of subservience to larger powers influencing its politics, which posed obstacles for progressive/revolutionary movements in Korea since feudal times and into the modern era. After DPRK was formed, it also had to deal with the issue of different influential strains of thought among socialist countries, including its powerful neighbors, Russia and China, during the Sino-Soviet split. The opening of China and the fall of the Soviet Union led to further inner debates. DPRK’s emphasis on focusing on its own conditions is a necessity for it to avoid dogmatically following other states’ lines and thus committing errors in its own revolution, not a blanket rejection of foreign ideas.

I am still learning about Songun, but from what I have read so far, it seems to have its roots in the Cuban missile crisis where US aggressions were ramping up, and finally came to the fore as policy during the Arduous March, when the US was trying to use the economic upheavals after the fall of the Soviet Union, with the US attempting to end DPRK by intentionally starving its people to death. It was determined that in order for Korea to complete its revolution and defend socialism, it would be necessary to heavily prioritize defense due to DPRK being under constant mortal threat from imperialism. Edit: Also, with DPRK’s more recent nuclear developments, I believe the policy of Byungjin (parallel development of military and economy) has returned to the fore, though I may be wrong about that. I’d appreciate being corrected if someone knows.

I recommend this essay on ProleWiki, The Cleanest Farce: How “Experts” Distort the DPRK, and the page about Juche which has sections about Juche’s relationship to dialectical materialism and to Marxism-Leninism specifically. Tl;dr is that ML is seen as a correct revolutionary idea but that it, being very old by now and being formulated in the world’s first successful socialist revolution, it lacks certain concrete details about socialist construction in the present day and also (naturally) has a different context than Korea’s revolution. Therefore it is regarded as a basically correct idea for revolutionaries to follow, but that following it dogmatically is an insufficient application of it, and all countries will need to forge their own path to suit their own conditions as they are confronted with the task of socialist construction and defending the revolution in the present conditions. Juche takes the dialectical materialist view of the world, and it is just dealing more with how people can have a certain attitude and point of view to successfully carry out revolution.

Knowing how the wheel of history spins now has given us the ability to predict it and therefore the power to take our destiny into our own hands and shape history after our desire.

I’m not an expert and still in the process of learning about this, but I would say your understanding of it here more or less lines up with my understanding from what I have read so far.

As I understand, Juche dismisses the idealist world outlook as groundless and also rejects mechanical materialism, and holds that the dialectical materialist view is the scientific view of the world. However, it is considered that merely holding a dialectical materialist view does not automatically cause people to start using it as a tool to change the world to humanity’s benefit, which is the question that the Juche idea is mainly concerned with: defining and promoting humanity’s role in changing the world, and increasing peoples’ consciousness of this role. As I understand it, Juche promotes the concept that humans (as a collective whole) not only can but should center themselves in changing the world to benefit them, within the real scientific limits of the world, i.e. with the knowledge of the laws of nature and society which operate independent of human’s will. This is seen as a necessary attitude in humanity’s emancipation from oppression, as simply having a dialectical materialist view does not necessarily cause people to start acting on humanity’s behalf even if it does give them an accurate scientific view of reality’s motion.

Texts about Juche seem to primarily focus on asserting that it is correct for humans to center their own needs in how they shape the world, and also focus on discussing humanity’s historical pursuit for independence and methods of preserving that independence when it is achieved through progressive revolutions, with the primary focus now being the struggle to end imperialism and capitalism and to defend and evolve socialism, in order to remove exploitation from society and continue on humanity’s path to pursuing independence from all restrictions, both natural and social, overcoming them with a methodical and scientific understanding combined with an attitude of intentionally centering human needs and desires in the way humanity consciously shapes the world.

If someone sees something wrong with my understanding, please let me know. I am still in the process of learning about this.

Geopolitical Economy Report

Yes, the US is purposely starving the world.

Yep. I doubt you’ll care to read the following but I’m putting it here for others to see.

The United States is the world leader in imposing economic sanctions and supports sanctions regimes affecting nearly 200 million people. … Targeted countries experience economic contractions and, in many cases, are unable to import sufficient essential goods, including essential medicines, medical equipment, infrastructure necessary for clean water and for health care, and food. … While on paper most sanctions have some humanitarian exemptions for food, necessary medicines and medical supplies, in practice these exemptions are not sufficient to ensure access to these goods within the targeted country. (Center for Economic and Policy Research)

It’s well known that sanctions are ineffective for pressuring governments, but very effective at waging siege warfare by starving and killing ordinary citizens by disease and infrastructural failures. Continuing to use sanctions in this way and to this extent, when this is well known, is definitely “purposely starving the world”. An independent expert appointed by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in 2019 that US sanctions violate human rights and international code of conduct and can lead to starvation. Why does the US continue to be the world leader in imposing sanctions, increasing its use of sanctions by 933% over the last 20 years, when this is well known? It’s because they know the effect, and they’re doing it on purpose.

We can also look at some US internal memorandums from before it was more politically incorrect to talk about starving people in other countries. In 1960, U.S. officials wrote that creating “disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship” through denying money and supplies to Cuba would be a method they should pursue in order to “bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government” in Cuba.

In other countries, we see a pattern of US officials and US-backed institutions purposely denying aid and loans to governments they don’t approve of, and then suddenly approving aid and opening up loans when a coup brings a leader they’re happy with into power. When Ghana was requesting aid under an administration that the West’s bourgeoisie didn’t like, U.S. officials said this: “We and other Western countries (including France) have been helping to set up the situation by ignoring Nkrumah’s pleas for economic aid. The new OCAM (Francophone) group’s refusal to attend any OAU meeting in Accra (because of Nkrumah’s plotting) will further isolate him. All in all, looks good.” The “situation” they were helping to set up was a coup they knew was going to happen. After a US-friendly coup took place, suddenly it was time to give the “almost pathetically pro-Western” government a gift of “few thousand tons of surplus wheat or rice”, knowing that giving little gifts like this “whets their appetites” for further collaboration with the US. You will find the same song and dance in numerous other countries, Chile being a well-documented example, if you simply look for it.

The US imposes starvation and depravation of other countries on purpose, using it as an economic wrecking ball, then pats itself on the back for giving “aid” to the countries which have been hollowed out by such tactics.

The loans which magically become available to countries that meet the US approval standards are not so pretty either, as a former IMF senior economist said, he may only hope “to wash my hands of what in my mind’s eye is the blood of millions of poor and starving peoples”, there not being “enough soap in the world” to wash away what has been done to the global south through the calculated fraud of the IMF, whose tactics are designed to accomplish the same kind of goals as the sanctions are–to prevent the economic rise of any country but the US by wrecking its competitors economically, tearing apart their local manufacturing capacity and transforming them into mere resource extraction projects, redirecting their agricultural industries into exports to make sure they reach a level where they are more reliant on imports to feed themselves, and reliant on foreign aid which is ripped away whenever they do not do what the US approves of or make friends with who the US wants them to.

I refer to #3, why don’t they just do it then?

This is what secondary sanctions and the US’s various protection rackets have always been designed to prevent, which has definitely been a powerful tool for them, but it seems with the rise of the new non-aligned movement and de-dollarization its becoming a less successful one and we can see countries “just doing” what they want more and more while the US leadership waves around, as usual, more sanctions and military threats in response.

Thanks for the response, I’ll check out the writings you linked!

Interesting idea about the quiz, I’d be curious to see what you do with that if you make something like that.

Happy birthday, I’m glad you’re here. Thank you for always finding and posting interesting information, you do a lot of digging and I like that you provide a lot of quotations when you share information. I’ll definitely check that film out.

Feel free to ask me anything

Have you thought about writing articles about any of the topics you’ve done a lot of looking into?

Undecided people are generally the most willing to really listen.

Once people begin down a path of having an opinion on something, it becomes harder to change their view. This is because of mechanisms in the brain that automatically activate when we make difficult choices, mechanisms that serve to resolve cognitive dissonance. As the abstract of this study states: “A choice between two similarly valued alternatives creates psychological tension (cognitive dissonance) that is reduced by a post-decisional reevaluation of the alternatives.” In other words, when we see two options that both seem somewhat reasonable, but must choose only one, we experience cognitive dissonance. The brain kicks in to resolve this dissonance, creating positive associations with the choice we made and creating negative associations with the choice we rejected.

What happens when we encounter dissonance-generating information about the choice we now prefer, our brain once again tries to solve the dissonance, by becoming less responsive to information that doesn’t conform to one’s already held beliefs, with certain areas of our brain failing to activate when we encounter dissonance-inducing information (such as disagreement or facts that go against our position). To put it simply, we respond very actively and positively when something confirms our beliefs (resolving dissonance), and respond somewhat negatively or impassively when something contradicts our beliefs, or even double-down and tune out dissonant information, to a degree that is measurable on brain scans. (Here is a thread I made about this a while back.)

I am not an expert on psychology or neurology, I just decided recently to study up on experimental psychology and neurology regarding things like decision-making, confirmation bias, forming opinions, etc. and soon I want to do some study into what happens to people psychologically/neurologically while in cults, as well as other organizations such as religions or political parties. My reason for doing this is to become better at communicating with people who have really entrenched themselves in a certain stance and have a fact-repellant mechanism going on. So far the main thing I have seen mentioned alongside studies into this kind of thing, is that because people are more responsive at a neurological level, to agreement, it is a decent strategy to begin such arguments by agreeing with them in some way, and I imagine it’s also a good strategy to give people room to deal with their cognitive dissonance as it is generally a subconscious mechanism that actually makes it measurably harder for them to respond to facts. However, I know from experience it’s very hard to be patient enough to do this, especially when the person is being combative or holds a very bad position, so I understand simply not engaging with ideologically entrenched people and focusing more on undecided people (which is generally what I do, and I think it is worthwhile and effective for people to do so).

However I hope that in the future, through a scientific understanding, I can develop a strategy for reaching people who are not just the middle, “undecided” types but that can also reach toward more ideologically entrenched people when I do run into them and have the time and energy needed to deal with their dissonance response on a case-by-case basis.