Due to American cluster bombing campaigns advised by Kissinger during the Vietnam War to damage supply lines, over 2 million tonnes of ordinance were dropped on Laos over about a decade, averaging a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes. Laos is thus the most bombed country on the planet up to this point. 80 million bombs failed to explode - the cleanup operation is expected to take centuries, and 25,000 people have been killed and injured by bombs in the last 50 years. About 50 people are killed or injured every year to this day.

After the United States withdrew from Laos, the Pathet Lao took power and abolished the monarchy. Kaysone Phomvihane became a dominant figure in Laotian politics, keeping the course on Marxism-Leninism and implementing the first Five Year Plan in 1981. The second Five Year Plan in 1986 was modelled on Lenin's NEP, and this doubled rice production and significantly increased sugar production. After the fall of the USSR, Laos allowed a small capitalist class to exist, with similar control over them as in China. Laos maintains a 48-hour work week with paid sick leave, vacation time, and maternity leave, and workers are well-represented in trade unions. They faired relatively well during coronavirus from a social standpoint due to quick and efficient action to lock down the country, experiencing ~750 deaths out of a population of over 7 million.

There is hope even after utter destruction by genocidal oppressors.

The weekly update is here on the website.

Your Tuesday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
Your Wednesday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
Your Thursday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
Your Friday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.

The Country of the Week is Laos! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

  • Donald_Drumpfler [comrade/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Folks, good news - I think I've found the stupidest article I've read all year, so now you have to read it too.

    Courtesy of the failing Rolling Stone magazine: All This News Is Making Horny Copypasta Writers Exhausted

    Some choice cuts:

    Horny copypasta takes the trend a step further, using sexual innuendos to memorialize major world or news events. While they’re purposefully made NSFW, the texts are intended to be copied wholesale and then sent to as many friends as possible. (Think replacing a portion of Christopher Columbus with the peach emoji.) While horny copypasta usually thrives during holidays, a swath of recent deaths and events have sent copypasta writers into overdrive. But several writers tell Rolling Stone that the meme format isn’t just a good laugh— it’s a way for people to use humor to address a world that has become increasingly dystopian.

    What?

    “In recent years, as the internet has become a shell of what it used to be, where it is no longer this free realm of information and connection but rather a hyper-sterilized wasteland of ads and sensationalized content, that we yearn for something novel and familiar,” Dravved says. “That’s where the exaggerated removed of the copypasta comes in. You take something either mundane — like a holiday or tragic, like a death — and you turn [it] into this weird amalgamation of what you remember the internet being like, when you had to sneak downstairs to the family computer to sign on to AIM.”

    Yes, the internet has turned to shit, but I still fail to see how exactly horny copypasta is a pleasant recall to the days of yore.

    “There are definitely people in my life that I almost only have emoji pasta touchpoints with anymore, folks that I was friends with years ago and their lives have taken them different places,” he tells Rolling Stone. “I enjoy having a reason to reach out to folks that I might not otherwise talk to on a day-to-day basis.” One writer, who asked not to be identified in order to protect their budding emoji text chain empire, acknowledges that the past two weeks have been full of news items perfect for more sexy emoji rants. But they tell Rolling Stone, the fear of burnout won’t prevent them from staying “the juiciest source for [everyone’s] horny copypasta desires,” mostly because shitposting has no office hours.

    Amazing how this article keeps getting weirder and dumber at the same time, wow.

    Dravved also notes that while copypasta surrounding death might seem gauche, they’re a common way for people on the internet to deal with an excess of seemingly massive world events. “It’s a form of coping for a lot of people. Focusing on making the stupidest, most depraved copypasta you can come up with helps distract you for a bit, and maybe laugh instead of focusing on how many lives will be ruined,” he says. “The more people who are able to just turn off their brain and post some horn garbage, the better. The world sucks. It helps to know that there’s always people willing to laugh at it.”

    The absolute state of Western liberalism going into 2024, huh.

    What in the sweet beejesus even is this crap. I think I've twisted my head into the "wtf am I reading" meme at least 15 times going through the article.

    Hope you enjoy that feeling now as well.

    • MalarchoBidenism [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      All this☝️NUDES 🍑😳 is making horny 😈copypasta 🍝 writers ✍️ SEXhausted 🥵😩

        • VOLCEL_POLICE [it/its]B
          ·
          1 year ago

          Show

          The VOLCEL POLICE are on the scene! PLEASE KEEP YOUR VITAL ESSENCES TO YOURSELVES AT ALL TIMES.

          نحن شرطة VolCel.بناءا على تعليمات الهيئة لترويج لألعاب الفيديو و النهي عن الجنس نرجوا الإبتعاد عن أي أفكار جنسية و الحفاظ على حيواناتكم المنويَّة حتى يوم الحساب. اتقوا الله، إنك لا تراه لكنه يراك.

          volcel-police

    • emizeko [they/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      I read the article and I still don't understand what the fuck is going on