Declaration of War

 We're at war and we don't know it. 

 For a long while now we've been at war. And it's a world war. And we're losing it. It's a war with casualties from mostly one side only, but it's a very civic war. In this war, most of the time, it's not like someone will come to us and shoot us, oh no. That's not polite. In this war we lose little by little, our lives and our time. Although in some areas you do get shot, where the fight is in its worse shape. It's an asymetrical war, both sides are rather different in numbers and power. But it's a war nonetheless. 

This war has been raging for all our history. Sometimes there's calm periods and truces. Sometimes there's small victories. But lately it's going worse for us, after a period where it seemed we could achieve some level of victory, or at least a reasonable truce. 

 We've had recent battles in plenty of places. In Brazil, we lost to ignorance and stupidity, and because of its current culture it may take some time before any victories can be achieved. In Chile there was a recent stand off that gives us hope after a long period of darkness, but it needs to be developed and to grow into a victory, and it may not be one just yet. In Bolivia we won after almost losing an important battle. Hong Kong seems lost, the battle continues but the enemy is too brutal in there. In USA we were defeated so long ago nobody remembers our side, but lately there's been some movements towards a change, although it's still in its infancy, and the latest results are not really a victory. Poland was never in our side but maybe after the latest abuse some reaction will be triggered. I'm not informed enough to talk about countries in Africa but it seems there's been an ongoing change in there too, little by little, in some of them small victories for us. Turkey has been conquered after a period of hope, and we need to recover it but won't be easy. Russia had some chances but the opportunity was not taken. Most religious-based countries mark a huge defeat for us.

Spain was lost since 1939, and is still lost to this day. Catalunya has a chance to be a small win, but Spain will fight us to the death. 

One side is always the same: Fascism, dictatorships, unchecked corruption, economic power, religious power. The other is just the average person. 

The war is simple: Average people want to have nice lives. Lives where you do work, but you also have free time, health, friends, and where you can work with what you like. Lives where you can allow yourself presents, for you and your friends and family. Where you can have vacations and visit places. Where you can have moments of rest and calmness. Where you can believe whatever you want and no one imposes their views on you. Where you can retire and you don't need to die right away. Where people help each other. and where we can collectively decide things for ourselves. Then we have internal struggles about how to achieve these objectives, but that's the idea.

The other side wants to have these things only for a few of themselves, the chosen ones, and everyone else should suffer and die slowly to provide these things to them, It's a simple as that.

 Maybe this seems simplistic or evident. But what I want to remark, is that this is WAR. When people get kicked out of their houses, people DIE. When factories are closed down, people DIE. When hospitals are privatized and medicine is not affordable, people DIE. Those are casualties. When some rich or powerful bastard takes a decision to withheld resources for the common people, this person is PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE for the impoverishment, misery and death of these people. Same way I would be accused of not helping someone that was bleeding to death in my house if I ignored them and didn't call an ambulance nor did anything at all.

All this was to explain a few things regarding the current struggles:

 1-This war is all the same war. Catalan people wanting to vote and getting beaten by police is the same war as Hong Kong people wanting to decide for themselves and getting beaten by police. It's the same war as BLM in USA. Its the same war as medical professionals asking for more resources. It's the same war as workers asking for better conditions. It's the same war. So, support all of them and don't be blinded.

2-A lot of idiots are supporting the wrong side because in their little evil minds, they think they're part of the powerful side and that they will get better lives through it. The reality is that they will be squashed and discarded with all the rest, but since they will not be the first ones and the first ones are a group they don't like, they think this is good and later they'll be spared. 

3-Being neutral or equidistant, or "centrist" here means support to the powerful. As they say in Germany, a table with 1 Nazi and 9 people that let them be there is a table with 10 Nazis. And thinking the one doing the beating is the same as the one being beaten is morally abhorrent. 

4-Civility is not an option when it results in one side always winning because they're the only ones that can be nasty and violent and brutal while the other side is expected to put the other cheek and accept their fate and "be nice". Doing a "smart" economic operation that can force a building full of people to be kicked out to the streets should be responded with the same rage and pain that it has caused and the person responsible should suffer horrible consequences for it.

5-The current health crisis is making everything on hold, but we should not forget that we're at war, and you can see whose lives have been the most affected and who's reaping benefits from all this, and understand then who needs to be defeated. 

Any approach that doesn't take this into consideration, that doesn't understand this is a war, that doesn't understand that we're all going to suffer and die unless we turn the tide strongly to the other side will not succeed. To go back to USA, the current election results will not achieve anything at all, things will just get worse a bit more slowly in there, the important defeat there was in the democratic primaries and after that one the end result would be bad or horrible, but never good.

The "agree to disagree" and moderation is for cake, not for the worth of human lives. And Nazi Germany was not defeated with hugs and good intentions.

It's the end of the world (as we know it)

So, we're again in Interesting Times. And maybe we have had enough for a while.

Nevertheless, this has created an opportunity at least. Yeah, it's a horrible thing what's happening and it would be better if it didn't, but it's giving us lessons, really important ones. And I'd like to mention some of them, as I think about them.

1-In lots of workplaces, it is possible to work from home. This one is written from a privileged standpoint, of course, shops and industries and the primary sector is not included in this. But there's currently a lot of new jobs, based on services, where we have been forced to go there every day and stay there for a lot of hours, to be present just out of a certain old fashioned panic that if we don't have someone breathing on our neck, we won't work. Well, not the case, clearly. At the same time, there's meetings and such things that in the end were not as necessary as we thought and can be shortened or eliminated without that much problem. For sure in-person contact has its advantages too, but this should really made us rethink how we work, and try a more balanced system where maybe we can easily be home at least half of our time.

2-Really essential services are the primary sector, the food shops and the cleaners. Jobs like working in a supermarket or cleaning offices and houses should be better valued and paid nicely. Also better considered.

3-Healtchare must be public. Private healthcare that depends on profit has no advantage in dealing with this, because it requires a lot of resources and hours and it's overall too expensive. Also, public healthcare must be well-funded and have enough resources. And given this learning, I would go further: Just straight up ban and nationalize private healthcare companies. Also, if you're all for private healthcare and vote for parties that are against public one, it's only fair you refute any treatment nor help in public hospitals and facilities. Or reconsider your vote next time.

4-Capitalsim doesn't work. The system is totally broken and this crisis is showing its worst sides. Under pure capitalism, we would need to continue working right now, as we die left and right. Under pure capitalism, now people should just go hungry and starve and die out as they cannot work. Under pure capitalism, any business that was unable to function for this period should just close and disappear, or leave its employees to die out at least. This is neither a sustainable model nor a model we should want to keep. This needs to go. I'm not advocating for communism, but we must get rid of the idea that the market is great, when the truth is the market would see humankind destroyed in order to keep benefits. We have seen this before, in the people that lose track of the real world and require workers to do extra hours to finish a project that will ultimately have no meaning 2 weeks after completion. Well, I'm exaggerating a bit on this example, but this same attitude is the one where some manager considers that maybe people should just work, because the company needs it, without realizing this means people will die.

5-Related to this, we need to make people in power responsible for their actions. Managers who have disregarded warnings and asked people to work have killed people. Governments who haven't taken action once it was clear how serious the situation was and have not followed medical expert's recommendations are guilty of personally killing people. One thing is not knowing what to do, another very different is thinking that since your friend the banker prefers people to die than to close some of his business, you can allow it. Or allowing it out of some political agenda. This means you are killing people. And this is not the only situation when this happens: when a government allows banks to kick people out of their homes from unpaid mortgages, both the bank and the government are directly killing people. When a manager over stresses their workforce to the point of people having nervous breakdowns, they are directly killing people. When a rich bastard not only doesn't pay their taxes but also pressures the government to close public hospitals, they're directly killing people. No more fucking euphemism, if you do these things you're a killer, and you should not be allowed to get away with it.

6-Centralism doesn't work. Look, I think Spain is a failed project and I'd rather be left out of it. Maybe you don't think the same, that's fine. But what is undeniable, as we've seen in companies, countries and other organizations, is that when you centralize everything, when you try to manage personally more and more and more things, when you're further away from the real action separated by layers of responsible people, well, you have a less clear image of what is happening. In this crisis, hospitals and small towns or neighborhoods can know better what's the best actions to take. They can know better what resources they have, what do they lack, what to do. So you leave them be, unless they prove to be doing a bad job out of it. Then, if they lack things, if you have organizations over them you can manage that from such a higher level, and so on. But when you try to, basically, micromanage everywhere, that doesn't work. So let's not do that. From a government point of view, I believe regions should be more independent and able to take their own decisions, since they tend to know better their own needs. For example, now Spain has declared we can go back to work. This is idiotic and will cause deaths as the experts are saying (see point 5), but I'd say that for some regions it may be OK. However, should be managed region by region as I said, to see which ones can do it and which ones cannot.

7-Spain's traditional parties plus the right wing parties are useless. Right wing, we know, they're here to steal and lick their rich friend's anuses, and people can die as far as they care, we all know that. However, I hope it also helps to show that PSOE is almost as bad: they militarized the crisis instead of giving funds to healthcare, and since their members are professional politicians that don't know how to do things but know how to get paid from public funds, we've had the situation were resources are not reaching the people, or they buy the wrong things and millions are wasted, plus time is lost.

8-Left-wing parties do not deserve special protection just because they're considered left-wing. We made this mistake before with PSOE, letting it do things that were not left-wing just because we labelled it as the left-wing party. So, the same applies now to Podemos. They're part of the government even if they're not big enough to make some changes. I understand they're not able to criticize some of the government actions without creating a conflict, but that doesn't make them untouchable. We should criticize the fact that they let military to lead this crisis. We should criticize that they're not protecting workers by allowing people to work. And we should criticize their silence or their praise to the current government, when it's not right.

9-USA, UK and Brazil, as very capitalist and right-wing countries, are far from the worst of it, and it will be a massacre in there. Spain is already one because of several of the mentioned points, and forcing people back to work now will kill and numbers will grow again.

10-Catalunya's proposals have been a bit more smart than Spain's (because duh, it's not very hard to be), but far from effective, and one of the involved parties has also been de-funding public healthcare, and that's something we should not forget either.

There's plenty more things I could say, but politically speaking I find these are quite relevant...

Interesting Times

There's this English saying, with unclear origins (read more here), that says that there is this curse: "May you live in Interesting Times". Terry Pratchett used it in one of his books too. The idea, of course, is that the history moments that are most studied and explained are those of turmoil, chaos and strife.

We are indeed in one of these periods. and I'd like to talk about two subjects related to that, the election of a new President in Spain and the latest judicial verdicts and actions by the UE tribunals and parliament.

First, it seems finally a President has been elected in Spain. This President has been very difficult to elect, since the party he belongs to didn't have enough representatives in parliament to be elected on their own. This means the party needed to pact with others, and traditional parties in Spain are really against that. They're used to order around and dictate, starting from a clean majority, if possible an absolute one, to rule whatever they want, regardless of the program they had. This party, PSOE, is no different.

PSOE has been defended during this period as a leftist party, and the election of this president has been indicated as a triumph for progressive forces. However, this is totally false. For a long time now, all around the world, powerful forces (aka rich people and the newspapers and news agencies/broadcasters they buy) have been moving what is considered the centre of the political spectrum more and more to the right, to accept certain policies as "moderate" when they're clearly right-wing and conservative, and to promote neo-liberal economies. Because of this, PSOE is being considered as "left", but that's blatantly false (at national level at least. it´s different at regional or city levels).

PSOE has accepted authoritarian ways to rule, has maintained laws that restrict freedom of speech and has used repression as a tool while governing temporarily in this period without majorities. PSOE also reformed labour laws in Spain in favour of the big companies, have delayed retirement age and all around applied neo-liberal policies for some time now, refusing to act on things like house prices or bank control. PSOE has refused boats full of rescued refugees that were at sea. PSOE has done nothing to tax more or stop giving public money to the Catholic Church. Their attitude till now regarding Catalunya has been exactly the same as PP, the extreme-right wing party of Spain, of sending police and tribunals and twisting legislation to punish people. And so on.

The only thing that PSOE has done that can be considered more "leftist" has been defending abortion rights, defending LGBT+ rights and Women's rights, and proposing to legislate on issues like Euthanasia or drug use. While these are noble causes, these alone do not define a leftist party, and plenty of moderate or right parties in Europe nowadays defend some of these positions too, so it's not like revolutionary radical leftist of them.

What's more, PSOE had the chance of ruling with a true centre-left party, Podemos, since last elections, but because they're centre-right they wanted instead to pact with Ciudadanos (another right-wing party) or rule alone, which is why they repeated elections. Problem is they lost votes and Ciudadanos sank even more, so these two options were definitely not possible and they were forced to pact with Podemos instead and, all of a sudden, defend themselves as "progressives" when they're far from that.

Having said that, this is better than the alternative. The alternative was the three extreme-right-wing parties of Spain (yes, we have three of them, we don't have a "new extreme right wing" now, we always had it, it´s just now split in pieces and that's good) ruling together, but thankfully they have been fragmented and don't have a majority to rule even if they pact. PSOE alone will not do much, but since it will have issues governing, the fact that they need to pact and negotiate is a good thing. We will see if Podemos and the other leftist parties can twist its arm enough for them to actually act and do some progressive things.

There´s people in Catalunya that say that PSOE is the same as PP, and to let them rule is bad. This reminds me on the campaign started in USA to convince progressive voters not to go to vote Hilary using targeted ads, that infamous scandal. While I agree that PSOE is not good, the reality is that the possibility of the extreme right parties ruling again is catastrophic. I´m not sure whats the best course of action really, but seems to me a scenario where they need to pact with left and independentist parties is better than one where all right-wing parties ally themselves and rule.

However, as a final note: This government won't push leftist policies enough and will still pretty much protect the powerful. If you want real change, PSOE is not the party, you need to vote more left. There's several options there (which is a problem, when there's this fragmentation too), but there are better left options. It's a matter of selecting one. And yes, they're not perfect. The curse of the left is that there's no perfect ruler, instead of the right where this doesn't matter because you just obey your leader. But still, vote the best left option that there is, or change is impossible.



As per the second topic: The UE tribunals have ruled that three Catalan politicians that could not swear on the Spanish consititution because they were in exile or in prison are members of UE parliament, regardless of the fact that they could not swear on it becasue members are elected by people voting, not by posterior procedures, and therefore the Spanish tribunals cannot prosecute them without the approval of the UE parliament. Two of them are exiled and will join the parliament on 13th of January, and the third one is in prison in Spain, but this verdict makes his trial void (and would need, legally, to be repeated after UE parliament allows it).

This has been followed by the UE parliament ordering Spain to fulfil the law (indicating without explicitly saying that they need to liberate the prisoner), since the UE Tribunal is the highest instance and the Spanish tribunals need to follow it.

This links nicely with my previous post. The problem of how Spain reacted to the Catalan independentists is that it's not legal, it's not democratic, and in general it's not how a progressive democratic country works. Spain has acted like a dictatorship, has twisted laws, bypassed rules, done whatever they wanted however they wanted it, ignoring their own legislation and just going for punishment, revenge and blood. Anyone defending that doesn't understand about democracy, regardless of your opinion on independence, and that's something that I really hope that those who do not defend independence understand, finally, with he help of Europe: Every Single Time that Europe tribunals have been involved, since they're really independent and democratic, Spain has been shown to not follow the law and to act incorrectly. Every time. And there's more to come, once other sentences reach UE tribunals too.

What's more: For all the ones that say they defend legality: As per the law, this prisoner should be freed and given access to UE parliament. I'm not going to say all laws are just, because I've previously stated that you should always question them, because dictatorships also have laws. But if you're not hypocrites, now you should defend his liberation, and ask Spain to follow the law. Or ask for the Spanish Government and the Spanish Tribunals to be accused and judged, same way you asked for the Catalan politicians to be judged.

Or you truly, really, believe that Spain is a better democracy with a better judicial system than all the other UE nations combined?

Time for questions

So I haven't written in a while, especially about politics, because mostly the current situation can be summarized by screaming to the void at top volume for 4 hours....but I'd like to try to explain some things.

You probably have seen that the people that organized a referendum in Catalunya have been condemned by Spain to lots of prison years. And that people here got tired of this crap and started to protest in a more hardcore way, blocking roads and stations. And then police started to beat people up, and people responded by barricading and setting things on fire, and we're still in this situation.

So, let's start by saying that Barcelona is not a war zone, you can live perfectly well here unless you're right next to some  very conflictive point. So, yeah, newspapers are exaggerating the situation to make it look so much worse than it is.

However, it's bad what's happening yeah. And it's bad only when police act. Otherwise, there are no issues. So, police is doing a horrible job, because they're supposed to keep the peace, but instead they're guaranteeing there's problems and chaos. Police is used as a punishment for protesters instead of trying to establish normality, and it shows.

Anyway, I'd like to try to explain that what is happening should horrify a lot more people than it does, and why.

So, let's say you're not pro-independence. That is fine, each person can have their opinions. You feel that Spain is a nice country, or you feel that Catalunya will do better with Spain, or you're against Spain losing Catalunya. Or some other reason like that. That's fine, I repeat. But even then, there are things that I believe concern you.

The Spanish government and judicial system condemned people to lots of years for organizing a vote,  debating it in parliament, trying to organize a protest and declaring "independence" without any real chance to back it up for real, kind of symbolically. That's it. That's the summary.

Now, you may say, "oh no, but the vote was illegal/declaring independence was illegal". Well, first of all, that's debatable, Spanish laws could be interpreted either way about this. Second of all, laws are not pillars of morality. Laws are rules written by governments. Dictatorships have plenty of laws. If something is illegal, sometimes it's good to also ask yourself, why is that, and if it really should be. As mentioned before in other posts, to assume all laws are just and good is dangerous, submissive and can give birth to horrible monsters like Nazism and Stalinism. And well, when is a vote something that should not happen, really? Why voting is so bad? Could you ask yourselves that? You may say that all of Spain should vote, which is fine, but then why not get the region's opinion first since we're at it? Doesn't it sound...fishy, that you cannot even vote? Today it's this topic, but tomorrow it can be another important one (like reducing CO2 emissions or transitioning to green energies) and the result may be the same, "oh it's illegal to vote about this!". This is a slippery slope, really. It's ok to vote but only if you like it? That's the thing here?

Then you could say it was not the vote, that it was the independence declaration. Only thing, it was symbolic. No administrations changed control. No infrastructures were taken. No efforts were made to change taxation mechanisms nor implement any type of real independence. The declaration was made and then nothing was done to implement it. While I could accept that declaring independence is illegal under the current constitution, the point is that it was not implemented. So, with no effort to do it properly, they should be condemned to lots of years just because they said it?

Then you could say it was the protest a few days before where some police cars were vandalized. Which is true, but the people condemned didn't personally do it either, and they asked for tranquility and peaceful protesting at all times.

Then on the trial, the main argument about violence happening in Catalunya was to say that 1-Screams and looks of the people were "violent" and 2-that the police brutality was the cause of organizing the vote. The first argument means that "violence" can be anything now, as long as the people in power decide something is violent. So you cannot protest against anything that you consider unjust, because it's "violent. The second point is the same defense rapists use, "she was asking for it".

Also on the trial, it was not allowed to use videos or images that contradicted the witnesses statements. They were shown later. So no witness could be considered false and to be removed from  the trial during the trial itself. And there's a lot other things that happened during it that plenty of international organisations have condemned, saying that it didn't guarantee proper rights. I mean, I understand you may be against independence and you didn't like the fact that people tried to vote about it, but isn't it...troubling, how forceful it was? The Spanish government disagreed with the idea, accused people and then proceed to not follow their own laws and checks and balances to make sure these people would be condemned. Isn't it worrying this can happen, regardless of who's being tried and for what?

This was a vengeance, plain and simple, not really a justice matter. Isn't that something that should not happen at this levels, inside the justice system, regardless of your political believes?

Then there's the matter of  the following protests. Of course there has been protests, and there's been people organizing them. They have been disruptive, they have been intense and they have been a lot of them. Well, guess what, that's how all protest that achieved something have worked. That's how we got the 8-hours workday. That's how some other regions and colonies gained independence. So, that's how protests work, they're disruptive or they're useless. Did they put bombs or killed people? No. Did they use firearms? No. Did they enter into direct fights with the authorities? Well, some people have, but the vast majority haven't, and the ones that have are mostly using it as defensive strategies. There has been burnings and fires, yes, and it's not good they happened, but not with the intention to harm others, just to protect from police charges. The thrown objects are bad, ok, but again, these things have been more as defense from charges.

Well, this is now being considered terrorism (not a joke). And again, let's say you agree, those stupid pro-independence bastards are bothering you. Thing is, next time you want to protest because you have a shit salary and rent is being controlled by investment funds that want to make you pay a lot more? Forget about protesting. Any demonstration, any type of road blocking, any type of disruptive action can and will be considered terrorism. Don't you think this is worrisome? That it's establishing precedents? That real democracies should not consider this terrorism?

Let's also talk about the police charges. You can also say that police tell protesters to leave and if they don't they should be hit and arrested because they're not following the law. But then, police are hitting people on the head, on the neck, on other areas where it's clear in their procedures that they cannot hit. Isn't it a problem that the law doesn't apply to them then? Isn't it curious that rubber balls are banned in Catalunya and police used them anyway? Doesn't make you wonder,  that police can arrest anyone in the street,beat them up, jump on top of them, touch them (to women usually), and that's all fine? Is police above the law? And then, why is wrong to defend from them also not following the law? Are you ok with all this because "they would never do this to me, why would they?". Because this is for protesting, for demonstrating, with ideas that are not the officially approved ones. Should you be hit in the head for not running away fast enough when police charges to make people move? Is this proportional? Is ok to beat anyone in the area just in case, even people that are leaving?

And following also this topic, isn't it weird that fascist have been running around Barcelona and beating people up, and in these cases there has never been police beating them or stopping them? Or that when unionist, let's say, have slapped pro-independence people in front of police, police did nothing whatsoever? Isn't it a problem how friendly police is with fascists? And also the same fascist, how friendly they are always judged when they beat someone up and such things? Similarly when it's about rapists that belong to police forces, as shown in La Manada?

Then, considering all this, and consider how the Spanish government refuses to talk. About anything, really. Isn't it strange that no one on the Spanish side is willing to sit down with no pre-conditions, and try to see what can be agreed on or what can be done to improve the situation? Not saying agreeing to anything, I'm just saying to talk.

I will also add for those that put both sides at the same level, do you think it's the same to hit someone and to defend yourself from someone hitting you? Is it the same to control police charges than to have some people among thousands that do fight back? And even then, do you think it's at the same level, police charging and people protesting? An organised force beating civilians is the same that a few disorganized violent groups? And given the last images, is it ok that police infiltrators are trying to rile up these people so there is some fights and some chaos? Do you think it's the same to organize a voting and send police to beat people up? Do you think it's the other's side fault when, during a negotiation, one side just says "No" without further comments and proposals?

Also, consider this: It has been proven that the Spanish government, in the past, has used police to try and incriminate people, accuse them, make sure that minimum you get big news about it by filtering information to the press, prepare charges, etc. Doesn't this concern you a bit? Doesn't this makes you doubt the whole judicial process?

I keep adding: Spanish tribunals are usually decided by the two main parties that are in charge of all this repression and that have alternated ruling the country for the last 40 years. A lot of these judges have been members of the party "in the past". A lot of these judges have clear preference with a certain political spectrum. There's even some that are the same ones that were ruling during Franco's dictatorship, they never moved or were never removed from the position. Isn't that something to make you wonder about the quality of Spanish judicial system?

Just to finish, there's Catalan politicians that left the country and are staying in Europe to internationalize the conflict. Spain has send extradition orders to several of them. Don't you find it curious that Germany and UK and Belgium have, in general, ruled that the detention orders were wrong/didn't apply? Don't you find it disturbing that, in places where there should be separation of powers, the Spanish government is threatening diplomatically other governments about the outcome of a trial in their respective country, which is made by the separated judicial power? Do you think it's normal that the Spanish judges have only asked for the detention of certain people, and that they have withdrawn the petition depending on the political moment?

Now that there's other protests in the world at the same time: do you trust China's and Chile's Governments regarding their actions and declarations with their respective protests? Whatever are your thoughts about independence, don't you see parallelisms between all three cases and how police and governments are acting? Do you disagree with how Hong Kong people is being treated when they protest certain laws? Do you like that Chile protesters have been shot?

Do you still think independence is the problem here? Do you still think it doesn't apply to you? Do you still think Spain is being fair and just with their reaction? Do you still think that, when the time comes, your protests will be treated differently because yours will be just and necessary?

Do not defend independence. If you don't want it, that's ok. However, wonder what is at stake here, because it ain't about the independentists.

Last Bit of Korea

So I'm finally out of South Korea and spending some days in Gold Coast, in Australia. The Australian experience deserves another post, but I'd like to talk about Korea a bit more before that...

When I left, I felt relieved. The last period of my stay hasn't been easy, and I've grown pretty tired of the place. I think that's because a number of things that I noticed and I just lost patience over them.

The main problem that currently South Korean society needs to overcome is its deeply racist and sexist roots. Most issues come from this core idea. Not unlike Russia, the Korean men are celebrated and considered more important than women, and you can see that everywhere. Women are not taken as seriously, are not thought as smart as men, and are though to belong taking care of the house most of the time. At the same time men are pampered and protected from birth, and thanks to its good economy a lot of parents are directly buying apartments and houses for their sons. There's also a strong patriotic undercurrent, with the clear feeling that Koreans are superior, especially to people with darker skin complexion. Added to the situation there's also the fact that Korean culture has a very hierarchical structure based on your age, where being old automatically makes you wiser and with more authority, and others needs to serve you.

All this combines into a poisonous mix where there's a lot of men with a self-inflated ego and sense of worth in middle/upper-management positions, that are actually utterly useless when performing the most basic tasks. These people are rude, sexists, discriminate against foreigners and are a perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. If you're familiar with Sense8, Sun's brother would be a perfect example. They're good at misplacing blame and trying to involve others on their own faults, since it's unthinkable that they are the ones that should actually improve, being as they are the culmination of evolution on this planet. Another good example is the train company manager from Train to Busan.

The thing here is that because of the hierarchical nature of society, there's a lot of structures and attitudes that protect this behaviour and these types of people. Other societies, including the occidental one, overprotect their men, but society is more open to discuss and argument and counter comments no matter who says them, while in this society since the one saying it is an older man, he automatically is right and worthy of respect.

In this atmosphere it's not nice to work, or to live for that matter.

I have to say that this also causes that women tend to be 1000 times more competent, since they need to prove themselves time and time again to reach similar positions than men, and it's really noticeable how much better they are at pretty much everything.

Of course not everybody is like this, but enough people fulfil these patterns to be noticeable. In general, you can notice that people more open, that have travelled more, that have learned other languages, are better and don't fit these patterns. However there's a problematic number that still do.

Regarding the patriotism and racism, during the games you could notice one thing: These games were meant for Koreans. That's all good and nice, but these types of event tend to try to include all the world, and a lot of visitors mentioned they felt lost or abandoned when it comes to proper information about transport and timetables, among other things.

In general this situation made things a bit harder and you could notice everybody in this place was being drained because of these issues.

However, I also have to say that I've had really good moments in there of course. It was amazing when you met people more open, and it was really great to interact in these situations. Special mention to places like Malmi, Warehouse, Rush or Bon Voyage, restaurants/bars/clubs where you ended up almost being part of the place, where we could put music, control what happened, organise parties or just ask to cook one last meal for you even when the kitchen was closed. We survived and had fun thanks to such places and the people in there, and I'll miss that part for sure. And I hope my Korean friends forgive my previous comments, but I'd include them in this latter section as the people that made it all better :).

In this period after Japan I should also mention Busan, the second biggest city of South Korea, situated in the cost. I managed to visit it for a few days, and I have to say I really enjoyed the place. It felt more...cohesive, if that's the best way to put it, than Seoul. It felt like a more relaxed place, with beautiful beaches and parks, nice neighbourhoods with plenty of bars and restaurants, and in general a calmer attitude for being still a big city. We stayed next to a going out area purely by accident, but it was a nice addition and it was quite enjoyable overall.

Last but not least, I did manage to go back to Seoul other times, and one thing I discovered there is Hongdae, a neighbourhood close to Hongik University.

Same way that I said in previous posts that Seoul felt just like any other city, this region felt special. Maybe it was just the moment when I visited it, but it's true that this area is more "artsy", more underground/alternative, and I really liked it. I spent only 2 weekends/nights in there in this year and a half that I've been in Korea, but they were almost perfect stays and nights. In both cases all the restaurants, all the bars, all the food and drinks and people and music and atmosphere were pretty much perfect. I even found an extremely nice club (Club FF) with live rock music first and then a nice mixture of songs that allowed for a great environment to spend a night out, while at the same time being a place that is not very crowded and leaves you room enough to enjoy it while not feeling you're alone in there. I really loved Hongdae, and it may be extreme to go back to Seoul for just this area, but I would not mind that at all and would consider it.

I also have to say that after the train from Gangneung to Seoul opened, this city felt much closer. For my goodbye, I took advantage of that and escaped to Hongdae for just one night, one of the two I mentioned. I'm really happy that my Seoul goodbye was in there, almost perfect again, making me feel I was leaving a great place and countering some of the issues this stay inflicted on all of us.