An image of a Central Committee meeting in Hanoi. Image taken from this article.
General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng implemented an anti-corruption campaign in 2016 called "blazing furnace" in shorthand. Since then, the fire has ripped through both politicians and businesses, up to even the Presidency. Nearly 200,000 party members, 36 Central Committee members, and 50 police/military generals have been disciplined since the initiative began. In 2018, Dinh La Thang, the former party chief of Ho Chi Minh City, became the first sitting Politburo member to be criminally charged, and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. In 2023, President Nguyễn Xuân Phúc was implicated in a corruption scandal and resigned. He was replaced by Võ Văn Thưởng, who was then also caught in a corruption scandal a year later in March 2024, making him the shortest serving President in Vietnamese history. The Presidency is current headed by Võ Thị Ánh Xuân while they find a new President; she also took that role in 2023.
The ousted leaders tend to also be part of the more West-friendly, technocratic faction inside Vietnam, either reflecting how these people also tend to be more easily corrupted, or how the Communist Party is slowly moving away from a foreign policy which allies itself with the West (as Vietnam has comprehensive strategic partnerships with several Western countries), or some combination. Of course, this shouldn't be overstated - Vietnam has maintained a close friendship with China for years, and both incumbent leaders are intimately familiar with anti-corruption campaigns and how and why they must be conducted in order to deliver maximum public benefit.
America clearly desires Vietnam to pick their side, because America strongly desires another vassal state in East Asia like the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan to further encircle and isolate China. And so the headlines and commentary of Western state propaganda like Radio Free Asia, the BBC, WaPo, Business Insider, etc reveal their increasing annoyance with Vietnam's government. They often couch this in the standard "objective" economics language); about how removing leaders who foreign investors were reassured by might mean economic pain for Vietnam ahead. As Bhadrakumar noted in 2023, perhaps the BBC revealed their intentions the best:
Reading Vietnamese politics is always difficult — the Communist Party makes its decisions behind closed doors. But hard-line General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, who was given an unprecedented third term at last year’s party congress, appears to be consolidating his authority by ousting senior officials seen as more pro-Western and pro-business. Officially this is all happening in the name of fighting corruption,.. but it’s indicative of a power struggle at the top of the party… the likely rise now of more security-focused officials to the top of the party will be bad news.
Even a quick google search right now will show a bunch of articles by clearly nervous Westerners: Why Vietnam’s Escalating Anti-Corruption Campaign Might Backfire because, as we all know, only authoritarian regimes are vulnerable to things like public opinion and discontent, while Western "democracies" are insulated from such petty phenomena. Leaders here can have disapproval ratings of 60-70% and not even the slightest consequence will happen to them - a real sign of democratic freedom and justice over those primitive regimes in the East! Or, take: ‘Blazing Furnace’ Turns Vietnam Into Another Chinese Province; China turning both Russia and Vietnam into their provinces in just two years was a real diplomatic masterclass. Or, back in 2022: Vietnam's 'blazing furnace' crackdown burns $40 bln off stocks. Not the stocks! Anything but the stocks!
If your actions as a leader are pissing off Bloomberg, you are going in the right direction.
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 Vietnam! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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The bulletins site is 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.
Our strike vote is starting today for UAW 4811, the grad student/student researcher union for the University of California system. For those unaware, this push started back after the raids on the UCLA encampment. It apparently gave the union enough cause to start this proceeding. Which is good! Likely the vote will go through, and then things will get spicy. The vote closes Wednesday afternoon.
On the downside, the highest level of the union leadership still has a bunch of collaborationist fuckers, so they undercut the total power of the strike before it started by declaring it a 'limited' strike, with a maximum deadline of June 30th. Obviously, presetting a deadline for your labor action isn't great. It also undercuts the threat of long term withholding of student grades, which would result in the academic machinery grinding to a halt. That said, it is at the very least past the deadline of the quarter's instruction.
The UC system is weird in that instead of semesters, we use quarters of the year, with a Fall, Winter, and Spring quarter of primary instruction, and then a summer quarter. That means that school goes way farther into May/June than pretty much everywhere else, so the campus won't be empty by any means, and there will be disrupted classes. There will be some form of material impact, and every bit helps I hope.
I was talking with someone, and they think that the University might just play nice and try to wait it out, but I'm really not sure about that. They were pretty chill, in terms of direct force at least, during on more "normal" strike about a year ago, but the harsh crackdowns of students literally just sitting around makes me think it might be different this time. I think it's possible that if our strike materializes, and it has actual material consequences, however mild, they might windmill slam that police brutality button. I feel kind of paranoid typing and talking about this lol. But regardless, I started stocking up on first aid supplies and some protective stuff. I don't know how far away we are from Kent State 2.0.
Nice. Also, organize within the union to undermine that "leadership" BS. Maybe genocide and its being brought home are worth more than two weeks of downtime.
It's a work in process. The union is kind of split into subsections for each campus, each with their own local stewards/leadership, and then there's some top level admin types lurking above. There are good people in union positions. It's not like a totally lost cause. It's just a lot easier to start at the local level and work up. There's been a good push into unfucking it, especially after our last strike, where the shitty people were obviously incompetent/corrupt.
Different campus also have different material conditions at times, which influences, well, a lot of stuff.
Which UC school has the most militant local and which UC school is most compromised?
Well, it's impossible to really tell now, but you can see some interesting patterns by looking at the voting pattern on our last contract. Contracts have to be approved by a majority of the membership to be put in place, and generally the votes are more perfunctory, with most people approving. Often times you see 90 percent approval. That was not the case in our last contract.
Due to truly terrible bargaining, the contract was deficient for a large amount of people. Cost of living varies quite a bit in California, though it's generally high. In some places it's really bad, to the point of homeless grad students, in the case of Santa Cruz. Surprise surprise, the bargaining team delivered a shit contract that didn't address people's needs fully. We and a lot of others tried to agitate for continuing and escalating the strike, because the leadership was being real shit at it. They still had all the levers of power though at that time, so it was difficult. They even hired a PR firm to push the vote through lol. Despite that, several campuses still very much voted No on the contract, and overall, the results are a rather terrible look for the UAW, for anyone that's clued in.
The vote is split in two here, as this was before the union was combined into one bigger one. The percent is that which voted Yes on the contract. The second grouping was generally a little bit better off on average than the first grouping, though it's complicated as students sometimes went back and forth between the two depending on the quarter.
Vote results for last year's contract
UAW 2865
Yes 11,386 Votes (62%) No - 7,097 Votes (38%)
SRU-UAW
10,057 Yes Votes (68%) 4,640 No Votes (32%)