SovereignState

They both have pursued further integration with the larger global economy, but (mostly) the U.S. keeps them from doing so via overwhelming sanctions and the Cuban embargo.

No one outside the us should waste any energy on thinking about them. They sure don’t think about us.

mfers an Australian named Yannis Stanopoulos, who the fuck is us, buddy??

Amerika is more egalitarian, of course. Neither most men nor women will ever be able to afford to purchase their own homes, let alone single folk.

in order to make the west look bad. And you can make the west look bad without lying about the Tiananmen Square Massacre’s existence.

Then why would these sources be lying?

NKnews and Daily NK are anti-DPRK news outlets funded by the U.S. Be pretty funny if even y’all’s most orientalist propaganda outlet turned out to be Norf Kowean (OR EVEN CHINESE!!!) Pwopaganda!

Comrade and I met a Nicaraguan gusano at a BLM rally whose family apparently still hold political and financial power over swathes of Central America. He was an actual goddamn psychopath. He said he was there because he was interested in the “other side”, and the only thing he was interested in was accumulating as much power as possible. When my comrade asked him why he was going to school in the states he just replied “Power.” He said the contras were heroes and he wanted to be in the position to control death squads like his father did who “defended his property from rebels”. Just deranged as fuck.

Seemingly the Netherlands was levying anti-socialist scaremongering against them as well as feigning concern over “human rights abuses” and the like. Western powers are starting to learn that their insidious and hypocritical accusations of human rights abuses and calls for regime change / desocialization under threat of economic punishment have consequences… good. Some aspects of the Nicaraguan government I do not like, but it is not my or the Netherlands’ or anyone but the Nicaraguan peoples’ right to decide those things.

Stonewalling the building of a fucking hospital because of concern over “human rights” is damn laughable. Supporting human rights by ensuring people lack the right to healthcare, wonderful.

I could see a very interesting storyline where you play as a German or Japanese conscript who becomes disillusioned as you witness the horrors of fascism before your own eyes and frag your superior officers. The problem? Nothing like this has been recorded as having ever happened, not even to the scale it happened during Vietnam among Amerikan conscripts. Either German and Japanese soldiers were so proselytized into their fascistic ideologies that they were ecstatic to be taking part in atrocities, or the post-war German and Japanese governments completely destroyed records of any comparable events. The only historically accurate campaign or story based game you could play as a German or Japanese soldier is one where your player character embraces Nazi or Japanese imperialist ideology fully and completely, or you get shot in the head by your superior officers immediately for showing hesitation. There is no compelling story to be told here, as the majority of the war was not hell for these people. It was looting, raping, pillaging and loving every disgusting fucking second of it.

Comrades have made excellent points in this thread. I do not know but do not think the NPA or the Indian Maoists are using child soldiers.

Something that must be considered regarding human rights accusations about “recruiting” child soldiers is the fact that oftentimes throughout history imperialist forces were killing anyone and everyone. When the Americans invaded the Philippines they gave the order to murder anyone over 13. “Human rights organizations” in the U.S., if they existed at the time, would point out examples of said 13 year olds fighting for their lives against an overwhelming and brutal force as “child soldiers”, all the while forgoing criticizing their own militaries for murdering children, armed or unarmed. A modern example is in Afghanistan, Libya, Palestine and Iraq. A common trope pointed to by Human Rights NGOs and soldiers’ orgs was that “terrorists” would give children grenades and the children would run into platoons of soldiers. There are two ways to look at this.

• The terrorists are violating international law and abusing these childrens’ human rights by making them fight. Why don’t their standing armies only recruit military aged men? What savagery!
• The “standing armies” of these nations don’t actually exist. Either they never existed, they’ve functionally been wiped out, or they are compradors fighting on behalf of the invaders. The invaders are murdering and raping everyone and anyone including children, blowing up schools and hospitals. This is asymmetrical warfare fought by starving and desperate people against an overwhelming force willing to forgo human rights in any suicidal bid in protecting their homes and nations. It’s not right, but war is hell, especially when you have no guns or military.

The first line is pushed by media and NGOs. The second line is closer to the truth. Invaders often show no quarter even to children. The nations they are invading are often underdeveloped. Children are starving and scared. They, and possibly the adults around them, feel they have no option but to fight.

This is not to excuse or attempt to argue in favor of using child soldiers, it is an attempt to understand why they may appear. There are very clear cut cases of terrorist groups like Kony’s “Liberation Army” recruiting child soldiers basically for shits and giggles, because children are easily malleable and controllable. There are also not-so-clear cut cases of desperate peoples resorting to desperate measures.

unscientific

edit: in fact, in light of your edit, not only unscientific but totally moralistic and idealistic. Similar to the patsoc bullshit, you can hide behind your Polishness to obfuscate your own western biases but they still shine through. Speaking down to comrades on this topic is quite despicable when it’s blatantly obvious you’ve done no research. Down-voting comrades w/ actual scientific analysis of the drug situation w/o responding is also just petty. Just want to restate that substances like psilocybin and peyote and ayahuasca are incredibly important to many imperialized people, and attempting to draw a “pro-drug” vs “anti-drug” dichotomy between the west and east or the global north and global south is a damned fool’s errand with no merit in historical or material fact. The true dichotomy is “pro-drug when it suppresses our enemies” and “anti-drug when it suppresses our enemies”, both lines held by the intl. bourgeoisie against the working class. If introducing heroin will destabilize and destroy a community, they are pro-drug. If psilocybin is being used for spiritual practices by a native pop., they are anti-drug. This is more complicated than kneejerk reaction and the painting of a dishonest picture.