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.
Two days ago, on the first day of the Islamic month of Muharram, my son was born. The little fucker busted out of my wife a few weeks too early, but he's finally here. We left the hospital a few hours ago after two days of medical checks and both he and my wife are now peacefully sleeping while I'm writing. I won the naming battle and we settled on a traditional, but cool name in my very biased opinion. I'm now Abu Hassan, which sounds unreal, because how the hell am I a father lol. Now the real battle starts, I cannot do the same mistakes that Pete Buttigieg's father did and accidentally make him a liberal. Maybe in 16 years or so, you'll have Hassan LargePenis posting a VR interactive three dimensional chad n cuck ranking in the news mega about the slow Russian progress in the Central European front of WW3. Thank you all in advance for the well wishes!
I gotta say, after having avoided it for years, watching the libs tear each other apart over biden on the politics subreddit is fucking cathartic right now lol
I never would've thought i'd see turbolibs throwing around "blueMAGA" at each other like this hahaha
Okay now let's remind y'all that this morning (or yesterday depending on the zone) over 100 Palestinians got killed in a massacre in Khan Younis
body bags
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why do I even bother touching grass when extremely funny things keep happening while I do so.
I saw this when I loaded up Hexbear and I was just like "oh fuck, has Israel invaded Lebanon or did Russia hit NATO or something?":
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must once again make an effort to be 100% online at all times. put the newsmega microchip in my brain
the sheer whiplash from "WE MUST DEFEAT TRUMP AT ALL COSTS! we're so desperate that we have to consider ditching the president to do so. it's the ONLY WAY to defeat fascism and Project 2025" to "<3 get well soon, hope your hospital stay is good, xoxoxo" from liberals is going to be extremely entertaining. violence is never the answer unless it happens to be against Palestinian children.
"There’s no place for this kind of violence in America. We must unite as one nation to condemn it."
pretty sure America is THE place for gun violence.
Every westerner who has opinions for a living is going
over the Trump shooting right now. "Political violence" is unacceptable, we are told. It's an attack on Our Democracy™, we are told. People who were talking about how dangerous Trump was are now wishing him well because of how beyond the pale the shooting was.Meanwhile, in a very different instance of "political violence", the very same people are sitting on their ass doing absolutely nothing as hundred thousands of Palestinians are being murdered in the zionist genocide. That's not a big deal to western professional opinion-haverd, at least not big enough to do anything about beyond at best saying that both sides are bad and voice an uncommitting support for the general idea of a "two-state solution".
It has never been more clear that when the media- and political elite are talking about how "political violence is unacceptable" what they really mean is that it is unacceptable for the violence to affect them personally. They are clutching their pearls because the violence that they are so nonchalant about inflicting on others suddenly got too close to one of of their own.
the whole ruling class crying about "political violence" after months of manufacturing consent for the ongoing genocide of Palestine is entirely about the state reclaiming their monopoly on violence, right?
My newest flex on the libs is that the Democratic Party needs to drop out of the U.S. presidential race entirely, so that a candidate from e.g. the Green Party who actually has a chance of winning can take their place. Neither Genocide Joe nor some yutz the Democrats pick using a completely undemocratic appointment process is going to win.
Move over. Leftists are coming through. Your blue vote is just a protest/spoiler now. Sorry.
Remember in the first days of the genocide, when Israel bombed a hospital (I think it was Al-Shifa?) and killed like 400-500 people? Except Israel came out and said “oh that wasn’t us that was a wayward Hamas rocket”. And then the American media did a full court press of taking everything Israel and the US govt said at face value. And even beyond that, all the major news outlets would keep bringing on OSINT guests who would explain how it could have been a Hamas rocket, but rarely if even did they explain why it was Israel?
No one can possibly think that it was anyone other than Israel now. But that whole thing has been memory holed (like the beheaded babies) so even if you try to remind people about it, they don’t care.
This dude tried to no scope headshot Trump lmao.
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Not an optic to be found
