Trump's victory, and the further mass oppression of minorities, is closer than ever before. May god have mercy on our souls.
previous preamble
The totalitarian capitalist dystopia which was created by the United States in the aftermath of the Korean War has increasingly experienced problems as the multipolar world is being gradually birthed.
Due to the widespread exploitation of the population, long work weeks, and high housing prices, the population growth of South Korea has plummeted, with the lowest fertility rate on the planet, and the highest suicide rate in the OECD. While a capitalist "success story" before the 2008 recession in terms of profit accumulation for the richest at the expense of most others, conditions have grown more dire in the Long Depression since the crash. GDP growth per year has averaged out at 2-3%. For more concrete figures, labour productivity has stagnated, particularly in the service sector. The rate of profit hit a peak when the dictatorship ended in the late 1980s, but has since massively tumbled. These dynamics are not unique to South Korea; they are happening throughout the West.
While South Korea is stagnating, perhaps even falling, its northern neighbour is rising. With Russia already persona non grata to much of the developed world and yet still maintaining fairly good economic growth and continuously albeit gradually moving towards victory in Ukraine, Putin sees no reason to be intimidated by the West's shunning of the DPRK, and Russia is establishing ties as well as military and economic deals. This seems to portend an end to the post-Soviet period of forced isolation due to UN actions forbidding the people of the DPRK to leave the country (which many westerners believe is a policy originating from the Korean leadership due to their propagandized education).
Many in the West are still, regrettably, unable to properly analyze the geopolitical situation of Korea due to their government programming, leading to bizarre takes about imminent collapse, or desperation on the part of Russia or the DPRK, unable to recognize that the DPRK has a powerful military sector all its own, and decades of autarky has created a durable society where limited resources must be used efficiently and effectively. The position of the Korean Peninsula seems likely to be a critical part of the US-China conflict, whether this is an outright war or instead a series of proxy wars. Indeed, Korea's position may soon become very important in global trade routes if the US tries to cut off the Strait of Malacca to Chinese-bound cargo ships, with vital resources like oil and food potentially transported both over land and via the Arctic Route over Russia and through the DPRK to China. Russia's leadership clearly sees the importance of Korea in the future, hence their actions now; and, of course, South Korea siding with Ukraine has also forced Putin's hand to oppose them more openly.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The "Country" of the Week is South Korea! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
I am really starting to think that the liberal infighting and constant media coverage about Biden's age is an attempt at hedging against any argument that his electoral failure is tied to his support for the genocide in Gaza. Biden was not going to win the election against trump before this debate, it was already assured that millions would refuse to hold their nose and vote for him regardless. But now the ruling class can ignore this sort of analysis and focus on, "Biden lost because he was too old, he couldn't connect with young people" and they will hammer that home until they can completely erase the effect of the first anti-imperialist mass movement in the USA since the Vietnam war. The death toll coming out from the Lancet article had really driven this home for me. They have fully convinced themselves they can invent their own reality. The public hand-wringing the Biden admin has done, all while being primarily responsible for the genocide continuing as it has, is just so absurd for anyone paying close attention. This is probably the worst atrocity of the 21st century (so far
) and they will try their best to erase any electoral consequences, and thus erase anti-imperialist discourse from popular understanding of history. Seems even more important now to symbolically vote for an anti-imperialist candidate like Claudia de la Cruz, because even a relatively large, but still marginal vote in a battleground state would be hard to ignore, particularly if liberals decide to demonize and blame 3rd party voters for a Trump victory. "If everyone who had voted for de la cruz in Georgia voted for Biden, he would have won" etc. etc.
I find this exceedingly unlikely. The American electorate does not give a single flying shit about foreign policy and hasn't punished an administration over warmongering since Vietnam and the draft. The protests against the war in Iraq 20 years ago were much larger and still bush/Obama were voted in and out based on economic reasons, not their warmongering. Until America's foreign adventures directly and consistently lead to large scale consequences for the civilian population at large, the voting patterns of the American electorate will not be affected by foreign policy. They do not give a shit.
I don't actually think the protests against Iraq were that much bigger in the US, although they were much larger in Europe. I think the biggest protest against Iraq was in NYC with about 500,000 people. There have been sustained protests across the US, with the first few mobilizations getting around 500,000 people in DC and even 8 months later drawing close to 100,000 to DC last month. I think it is also pretty impactful because back then, during the Iraq war, in the US you could be a democrat upset with Bush protesting the war and think plausibly that it wasn't a contradiction even though the Democrats voted for the war too. You could be led to think if you voted really hard the war would end. This war is Biden's and those people in the streets were all by and large current/former democrats. Not to mention the electoral effect of the muslim community turning against Biden, in states like Michigan where it is enough to completely undermine his ability to win. I get that people want to say American's don't give a fuck about the rest of the world, and that is often very true. But the past 8 months has been a sea change in comparison to the last 30 years in my opinion, and the conversation isn't about which bourgeois political clique will do imperialism best. People are involved in an anti-imperialist movement that can't be co-opted by Democrats effectively, which is distinct from a lot of the anti-war activism during the Iraq era- which was firmly ensconced in the end of history
Fair enough, the intent of my comment wasn't to compare these protest movements in detail as much as it is to say that the American electorate does not give a shit about the wars and devastation their military industrial complex and politicians inflict on the rest of the world.
AFAIK (I could be wrong, I was in middle school when this happened), the Iraq war protests were largely single day demonstrations, with the largest occurring on Feburary 15, 2003, involving a few hundred thousand people in several US cities (more globally). A paradigm shift occurred around the time of Occupy Wall Street towards doing encampments and sustained agitation instead of demonstrations. The single-day rallies which stand out (attendence-wise) after this are mostly media-endorsed affairs, like the Womens' Marches, March for Science, March for our Lives, etc. Basically glorified parades.
The George Floyd Uprising blows everything else the fuck out of the water (in all US history), with an estimated 15-26 MILLION participants in every major city in every state in the union. While Palestine was not the focus of the movement, Palestine Solidarity was a significant undercurrent, with a focus on US police co-training in counterinsurgency tactics with Israeli occupation forces. In addition to the more recent campus encampments against the genocide in Palestine, there have been regular sporadic demonstrations in cities like New York for a while now, many of which don't even make the news and you only catch clips of on social media.
In 2003, the tactic seemed very much to be do an event which is noteworthy, get the media to cover it, mission accomplished. in 2011, the tactics changed, but the mindset was very much the same. By 2020, it seemed like there was no longer any concern with mainstram media coverage and it has become very much simply about confronting the police who stand between the people and their elected "representatives," and engaging with other people who are willing to do the same.