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.
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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.
CIApedia about China's former foreign minister: "On December 7, 2023 he died at the age of 57 from either suicide or torture."
Politico reports that Xi is going "full Stalin". at press time, after using millions of Ughyur slaves to dig up a Soviet-era gulag mass grave featuring the skeletons of millions of Russian dissidents, he has found Stalin's comically oversized spoon (right next to Stalin's diary where he talks lovingly about Hitler and how much he loved doing the Holodomor, which Xi burned, as communist regimes love book-burning so much) and is now eating all of China's stockpiled grain. Will nobody end this madman's spree?
It's real funny how they talk about China's government in the article. In literally any Western country, cabinet reshuffles are so mundane that they're barely worth reporting on - like, of course people are going to come and go depending on their performance and any scandals that they might be involved in. I didn't think that the United States is collapsing when Trump went through a bunch of different people when he was in power, that's just not how it works, very few governments are that fragile. But for China, they're like, to paraphrase, "Our top experts indicate that the Chinese regime is facing major instability and Xi may be planning to invade Taiwan to try and bolster the nation and keep the populace supporting his failing, flailing government." Like, no? "Speculation on Chinese media is that Li Keqiang was assassinated..." Yeah, fit and healthy 68 year old guys don't just drop dead of heart attacks like that! Just this bizarre lens of orientalism, as if we're dealing with the fucking court intrigues of the Han Dynasty.
It is actually entirely possible that the people getting owned had some suspicious shit going on in the background or otherwise needed to be removed from their positions, and it's also entirely possible that this doesn't portend that the Chinese state is a mere 5 days from collapse. New people will fill those positions and things will keep chugging along as normal. The Chinese economy isn't doing spectacularly, but no economy is, no matter how much the United States pretends that GDP has even the slightest, most tenuous connection to reality. Quite frankly I think that China was right to pop the housing bubble sooner rather than later, and it'll pay off massively in the long run if they keep at it.
Our wholesome democratic reshuffling their barbaric purges
Unironic purges and death sentences to every idiotic lib that proposed that stupid Biden-Xi summit. A rare case I wish the CPC was even 1/10th as evil as these clowns think and they were just willing to go around purging everyone with a western education or background from even remotely close relations with the top of the party.
This is tabloid level news "reporting". But if somehow it was true, all I feel is a big meh realy, like who is supposed to care about this?
You have to remember that the entire CIA network in China was killed or imprisoned a few years ago. They’ve had to restart everything from scratch. So essentially, 99% of the reports about Chinese officials and secretive policies are based on vibes or third hand accounts from non-US agencies
Update: According to CIApedia he no longer killed himself or was tortured to death.
Necromancy with Chinese characteristics