le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

really enjoying the libs saying "this is the first time an american president has SHOOK HANDS with a DICTATOR"

I got mad enough today at a lib i barely know ranting about this on facebook that i wrote something on facebook for the first time in years

ilmdge posted:

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

really enjoying the libs saying "this is the first time an american president has SHOOK HANDS with a DICTATOR"

I got mad enough today at a lib i barely know ranting about this on facebook that i wrote something on facebook for the first time in years

they wouldn't be liberals if their brains could "grok" the idea that america has been basically this bad forever and trump's just honest about it

ilmdge posted:

seduced trump w/ the magic orb

it all makes sense now, we're living in a chuck tingle fic

Thinking of Yeonmi Park tonight. After escaping North Korea, she had to learn a world of facts, like Australia and Africa exist. Here she is with a rare copy of Animal Farm. She told me reading Animal Farm helped her heal by showing that evil systems are made and are not natural. pic.twitter.com/r3a07g0yFF

— Andrea Chalupa (@AndreaChalupa) June 12, 2018

rolaids posted:

ah, andrea chalupa, of the my-grandfather-was-a-soviet-defector-and-now-i-work-in-"media" chalupas

ialdabaoth posted:

i heard on npr that lots of people in south korea are really nervous about the conference because they feel safer having usa nuclear arsenal and 30k trops on hand. many people in south korea think it is a sign of weakness to discontinue invasion rehearsals

we call these people U.S. Marines

sovnarkoman posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

Moon's party crushed in the elections, I wouldn't worry about South Koreans. NPR of course is going to find the one guy who says what they want but overall Koreans want peace and more importantly support Moon's economic policies.

what are his economic policies are like?

There's currently a class struggle within the party between the liberals and the leftists. The leftists have had some major accomplishments like raising the minimum wage 55% by 2020 (the initial demand of labor was 55% to 10$/hr by this year while businesses wanted 2.4%, the hike this year already has been 16% to give you an idea), releasing the head of KCTU radical umbrella labor union Han Sang-gyun from prison after Park Geun-hye had him illegally arrested, and big stimulus packages to jobs focused on incentivizing full time employment, youth employment, and low-income hires. There are more promises about raising pensions, reforming the conglomerates, etc. We'll see if those happen now that he has a broad mandate. Basically what Sanders or Corbyn would do it they were president. But since South Korea is in the semi-periphery, these policies necessarily contain anti-imperialism, in this case peace efforts with North Korea and China and collaboration with the actual party of the left in the Minjung party.

But there have been setbacks as well, with efforts by liberals to undermine the minimum wage law, throw other labor activists in prison (there's a struggle over the ex general secretary of the KCTU union Joung Yoo Lee's arrest right now which is very similar), and of course use the US as leverage to install THAAD against the wishes of the president and the Korean people. Moon himself represents a continuation of the presidency of Roh Moo Hyun who was about as far left as liberals can get without becoming leftists (unsurprisingly, imperialism is the line, specifically the collapse of the struggle against US occupation in 2002 and sending troops to Iraq which led to the end of the possibility for the national bourgeoisie (what was called the triparte alliance of labor/business/government which was kind of like a shitty New Democracy to implement progressive policy even though a kind of liberal consensus remained until 2007), but hopefully the stronger position of the left and the importance of China to both Korea's will change the balance of forces. The last collapse of the left happened because of imperialism but also the betrayal of petty-bourgeois students and national bourgeoisie forces and the lack of political leadership for the working class. Now that alliance has come together again with liberals in government but labor leading the mass movement in the streets, we'll see if a proletarian party can form and accomplish what failed before in less favorable circumstances. It would also be very important if North Korea could help, and for this it's essential to build political alliances as is currently happening with the first student exchanges between Kim Il Sung university and Seoul National University and hopefully labor solidarity building through visits to the North.

It's not really a question of whether the left should support Moon or be independent. The left is strong enough that it doesn't need to subordinate itself to anyone. That it is the opposite in America shows that the causality of whether to "support" X bourgeois party or movement is backwards: it is not our political choices that determine our strength but our strength rooted in material reality that determines what choices are possible. When the left is strong, the political choices are clear as well: peace with North Korea and lifting sanctions, repealing the national security law, end of the military occupation, nationalizing the conglomerates, and eventually building a socialist state apparatus through revolution when the capitalist reaction necessarily comes. The South Korean people aren't quite there yet but they're a lot closer than trying to convince white Americans that they should support the end of imperialist value extraction.

Edited by babyhueypnewton (June 13, 2018 22:40:36)