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.
Honestly fascinating to see all this high tech gear eat shit the second it has to actually be used in the field.
What fucks with me is that the Namer IFV weighs 65 tons, the T90 tank weighs 45 tons, does the extra weight goes into making it even easier for a home made RPG rocket to blow it harder?
With a lot of these videos, it's not clear if the RPG actually penetrated in to the armor. The camera person obviously has to run for their fucking life before the IDF sends retaliatory attack of some kind. I would give, like, at least a finger for the IDF's internal reports on damage to their armored vehicles, to know how effect these RPGs are at actually penetrating armor to do critical damage to the vehicle or kill/injure the crew.
As somebody who is very much not a military guy, my position is that if this strategy wasn't doing anything, they'd have stopped doing it and tried something else months ago, because they're genuinely trying to win their freedom, not create propaganda or obtain profit. they don't have the resources to commit to weaponry and strategies that are ineffective, unlike, say, Ukraine, where the whole purpose of the war at this point is American MIC profiteering and looting the country of everything that isn't nailed down before Ukraine ceases to exist as a nation-state, to the extent that it even still is one today
Yeah, armored vehicles don't grow on trees. Even if all they're doing is injuring crew and disabling vehicles, that's more resources the entity has to spend repairing or replacing them, and that's more IOF school shooters taken off the field.
Agreed. A mobility kill is still a kill. And if you're going to recover a mobility killed vehicle you need a whole lot of stuff - a recovery vehicle, armor to protect the recovery vehicle, drones to scout the area, then all the resources that go in to repairing it. And even if the rocket splashes and doesn't do any damage - You're going to rattle the crew. They're going to think about any of their buddies who burned alive, or who were shot evacuating the vehicle. Afaik the IDF has been suffering a morale crisis for a long time, so even superficial damage likely contributes to the overall war effort.
I guess I should also add - If the IDF decides not to recover a damaged vehicle, and the crew doesn't scuttle it immediately, there's potentially a window to grab weapons and munitions off the tank before, I would assume, Israel sends a jet to drop a bomb on it. IDK, I'd love to know what the procedure is there.
Yeah, it would be very interesting to know how quickly they decide to go hannibal on stranded crew/vehicles
I agree. I would like to see a granular breakdown of damage to vehicles to better understand what is happening. With modern tank armor there is, or was, a lot of uncertainty about what it's actual protective capabilities are. For instance there are stories from Iraq of Challengers and Abrams getting hit with dozens of RPGs without having their armor penetrated. And Israel's Merkavas were famous for being the best protected and most advanced tanks in the world. So I'd like to know in detail what happens when a Merkava takes a tandem warhead at point blank range.
One really, really interesting thing I've learned from this conflict is that Israel's vaunted point defense systems seem to be an outright liability in urban warfare. They can't have infantry support because their point defenses would shred the infantry if triggered, but the engagement ranges where they're being fired at are shorter than the minimum range of the defensive systems. That's some good ass tactical knowledge to have!