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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 20-Jun-2021
20-Jun-21 World View -- North Korea in crisis, facing 'tense' food shortage and surging food prices

Web Log - June, 2021

20-Jun-21 World View -- North Korea in crisis, facing 'tense' food shortage and surging food prices

Happy Juneteenth, everyone!

by John J. Xenakis

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

North Korea in crisis, facing 'tense' food shortage and surging food prices
Kim Jong-un 'solemnly vows' to overcome difficulties
The Denuclearization Delusion
Happy Juneteenth, everyone!

North Korea in crisis, facing 'tense' food shortage and surging food prices

Kim Jong-un last week announcing the 'tense' food shortage (Reuters)

Kim Jong-un last week announcing the 'tense' food shortage (Reuters)

North Korean dictator last week said that "The people's food situation is now getting tense," referring to scarcity of food and sharply rising food prices He added that the "agricultural sector failed to fulfil its grain production plan" in 2020.

A massive shortage of food has led to a dramatic rise in basic food commodities. A kilogram of bananas costs $45. The price of a kilogram of rice was $0.77 in April, $0.90 in May, and $0.96 in June.

North Korea is subject to both UN and US sanctions, but normally North Korea's agricultural sector can produce enough food, and receive supplements from China and Russia. However, this failed to be enough during 2020 for three reasons:

The US and UN sanctions continued.

North Korea, which has been claiming that thre are no cases of Covid in the country, closed their borders with China and Russia to prevent the spread of Covid. However, there have been reports of widespread Covid in some parts of the country, especially near the border with China. Normally, North Korea depends on China for food, fertilizers and fuel, but most of that trade was cut off.

Several unexpectedly large typhoons last year caused flooding.

The food shortage has not surprisingly led to violence in some areas. According to reports, construction workers building houses in the capital city Pyongyang, North Korea’s largest city with a population of about 3 million, are poorly fed, and are committing robberies and murders to steal food in the neighborhoods where the houses are being built.

Kim Jong-un 'solemnly vows' to overcome difficulties

At the conclusion of a Central Committee meeting on Friday, Kim "solemnly swore that the Party will surely break through head-on the difficulties lying in the way of the revolution" and remain loyal to the revolutionary idea to the end regardless of the "severer difficulties it may be confronted with in the future," according to KCNA, the (North) Korean Central News Agency.

It's not clear how the North Koreans plan to do that, but there have already been some missteps.

North Korea's state-run food stores normally sell just basic foods like unprocessed corn and rice, but due to shortages are now selling some processed foods like sugar, seasonings, flour and cooking oil. However, stocks of those foods are extremely low as well.

A different concern was raised by a recent special "intensive inspection of the storage maintenance status of combat reserve supplies" for the armed forces. The inspection revealed shortages of reserve supplies, and evidence of corruption, since the written records do not match the actual supplies. According to an RFA report:

"The main focus of this inspection is on supplies like wartime fuel, food, combat suites and medicine. All units typically lack fuel, food and medicine so they often secretly dip into their reserves."

Managers responsible for the combat reserve supplies may now fact punishment:

"In addition to the punishment of those who are found at fault in the military-wide intensive inspection, the project to distribute combat reserve materials according to demand will also be under review.
All units have been specifically asked whether they comply with the directive that requires them to create combat reserve supplies by contributing five percent of the daily supplies guaranteed by the state and of military supplies they themselves produce."

Obviously, this has implications for the ability of North Korea's army to attack South Korea, when Kim Jong-un decides to do so.

The Denuclearization Delusion

We haven't heard much from North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un since those exciting gone-by days of yesteryear prior to the Wuhan Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, when he was meeting regularly with Donald Trump, and the two were expressing their love for one another, in their father-son relationship. In particular, there haven't been any new tests of nuclear weapons or long-range ballistic missiles in a long time. There were some short-range missile tests in March of this year, but they didn't generate much excitement.

President Joe Biden has not announced a North Korea policy, except for "consulting with our allies and partners" and "some form of diplomacy ... conditioned upon the end result of denuclearization," as he said after the North Korean missile test in March.

At that time, I wrote a lengthy article comparing the strategies of Donald Trump and Joe Biden. (See "28-Mar-21 World View -- North Korea's ballistic missiles stoke the Denuclearization Delusion")

The point of the article was the same as in the articles about North Korea that I've been writing for years -- that it makes absolutely no difference what strategy is used by Trump and Biden. North Korea is going to continue developing and manufacturing nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles, and one day will use them, probably on Japan and the US. The idea of North Korea denuclearization is completely delusionary, even though the "Denuclearization Delusion" persists in the dream world of Pollyannaish fantasy.

In fact, Biden's special representative for North Korea, Sung Kim, was in South Korea on Saturday to discuss the stalled denuclearization talks. Kim Jong-un ordered his government to prepare for both dialogue and confrontation with the United States. Kim is demanding that the US lift its sanctions on North Korea.

Happy Juneteenth, everyone!

Saturday was the new federal holiday, Juneteenth, celebrating the day June 19, 1865, when the Republicans, who had won the Civil War and emancipated the slaves under Abraham Lincoln, officially completed the emancipation by forcing the Democrats, who had finally surrendered after losing the Civil War, to really give up their slaves and set them free.

I can't help but think that this is an odd holiday for the Democrats to be celebrating, since it's a day of their total humiliation and surrender. Following the emancipation, the bitterly angry Democrats formed the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and spent the next century lynching black boys and raping black girls with impunity.

This angers continues to today. Joe Biden grew up at the time when the KKK was active, and his friend and mentor Robert Byrd held the title "Exalted Cyclops." Biden and Byrd may have participated in some lynchings or rapes, or if not were certainly aware of them and approved of them. Biden was a racist and White Supremacist his entire life, and was quite public abut it until Barack Obama nominated him to be vice president. But with the recent release of Hunter Biden's texts, which were laced with highly racist epithets, we know that racism and White Supremacy are deeply embedded in the Biden family.

Maxine Waters, who has often appeared to be totally unhinged, must have suffered some kind of trauma in the past. My guess is that either she was raped as a young girl by a White Democrat in the KKK, or if not, at the least she must have known many young black girls who were raped. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who also seems to be unhinged, was born too late to be raped by a KKK member, but undoubtedly knew many black women who had been raped in years past. Frankly, I don't blame Waters or Lightfoot for acting as they do, given the trauma they must have suffered decades ago, surrounded by black girls and women who had been raped by White Democrats.

Lori Lightfoot's Chicago is a good example of how the Democrats are causing massacres of blacks today, just as though the KKK were as active as before. Lightfoot and other Democrat politicians have adopted a set of racist policies that specifically target black communities, making them unsafe and punishing successful black businesses. These policies include the following: destroying the black family, defunding police, not arresting violent criminals, letting violent criminals out of jail, keeping the police from making gun checks, forbidding community policing, and allowing huge amounts of fentynal and meth into the country through the southern border. Of course whites also suffer from these policies, but not nearly as much as blacks do. These policies all target blacks and have the specific purpose of making black neighborhoods unsafe and poor. These are all White Supremacist policies, and any Democrat who follows them is, by definition, a White Supremacist.

The results speak for themselves: Hundreds of blacks are killed each week through mass shootings on the streets of Chicago and other Democrat-run cities, where the above racist policies are in force. These have the same purpose as the 1921 Tulsa massacre of a century ago. It's as if the KKK were still as active as ever in the mass slaughter of blacks.

So now we come to the new Juneteenth federal holiday, which celebrates the Democrat Party's loss of their black slaves, and also commemorates the Democrat Party's launching of the KKK. I find it bewildering that the Democrats allowed this holiday to be celebrated, and I can't help but wonder if this is actually the beginning of a social war by the blacks against their white masters.

Sources:

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the Generational Dynamics World View News thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.) (20-Jun-2021) Permanent Link
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