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.
In news on Burkina Faso, the country is set to pass a new Code of Persons and Family, which criminalises homosexuality, only recognises religious and customary marriages, and allows for the "loss of nationality" for those that have acted against the interest of the country, whereas previously only desnaturalisation was the consequence of that. The transitional government has also been extended by five years, now that the initial two years will be over in September.
Burkina Faso junta bans homosexual unions, 11 July 2024
No mention of the rest of the changes to the code or the plan to extend military rule by the BBC, which is interesting. This is still very bad news.
That's gonna be a yikes from me dog
Revolutionary nationalism and its contradictions will be the make or break of socialism or barbarism
Things were looking a little too positive lately on Burkina Faso.. Sankara must be rolling in his grave
Yeah the recognition of only religious and customary marriages sounds like something Sankara would disagree with, considering his stance on women's rights.
Sankara's government strictly outlawed the most common form of marriage, which was to have it arranged by village leaders.
I assure you, subordinating personal relationships to religion and custom is a necessary condition for liberation from neocolonialism
this is what happens when you allow nationalists to run things and not committed marxists
I think your framing is off; it’s not an issue of “allowing nationalists to run things”. The marxists were killed, the nationalists are what’s left to fight the French
huh, yeah okay i did frame that incorrectly, you right you right
Please, dear God, Allah, Odin or Marduk, give me a successful antiimperialist movement that is not run by chud assholes!
Unfortunately anti LGBT views are very popular in Africa and LGBT identities are often seen as a product of colonialism. Even though the reality is that homophobia based on Abrahamic religions and colonial legal codes was caused by colonisation. That's not to say that Africa was a paradise for LGBT people before colonialism, many were probably bigoted towards LGBT people just like the rest of the world, it is to say that the modern type of bigotry many have nowadays is a product of colonialism.
Its ironic because before colonialism queers were generally well tolerated and celebrated. It was colonialism that fucked them up.
Old cultures and societies were much more understanding.
I wonder what would ever end the memetic link causing people to conflate homosexuality with western imperialism and colonialism.
LGBT led commie insurrections
Cuba has a good start
I think people overrate how prevalent "traditional African religious beliefs" were practiced in pre-colonial Africa, especially right before colonization. Wikipedia gives contradictory info on when Islam spread into Burkina Faso although there was apparently an ethnic group that has been Muslim for more than a millennia. What is now Burkina Faso was situated near old Muslim African polities (Ghana Empire, Mali Empire, Songhai Empire, Sultanate of Kano, Sokoto Caliphate, the various Hausa kingdoms). It shouldn't be surprising that Burkina Faso would be a Muslim-majority country.
The AES is a Muslim-majority confederation. Burkina Faso has the lowest percentage of Muslims with around 60% while the other two are 90+% Muslims. And since Abrahamic religions have a hater-boner over queer people, the AES will most likely follow suit.
Kind of hard to do when the NATO countries killed off the Marxists and let the neoliberals run things. The only real opposition you get are nationalists.
Yuck, and Burkina Faso was looking hopeful recently. Sad to see.
So they extended the transitional government and allowed "loss of nationality" for those that have acted against the interest of the country, then they added the anti-gay law as a distraction hm, anyhow I don't think the anti-homosexuality law will do much difference.
Yeah we (in LGBT people) are already hated as is over most of the continent. It's just a formalization of the already existing reality. It's still had though, as now people can go to jail because of this.
Depends on how it will work, if it's gay sex = jail like here then it's pretty much nothing, they won't able to prove it. If acting gay can get you in jail then it's a big problem.
Another thing I thought of is that Burkina Faso is in active combat with with the Islamic State, having homosexuality not being illegal might be a recruiting factor, especially with the narrative of "gay people bring diseases like aids", I don't know much about how society is in Burkina Faso, but based on my experience as a person living in a neighboring country, in Algeria being trans is not illegal but it isn't legal either, similar to how it was in Burkina Faso before this decision, and the way I see it if the country decided tomorrow to make being trans illegal it would be worse for me and I'll have to hide myself more than I already do, but if they made it legal the takfiri wahhabists would exploit that to recruit more members and there would be riots and way more hate crimes.