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
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.
Some pleasant news from the Ukraine war:
A memorial to the brave men and women of the Red Army who fought in the Great Patriotic War was rebuilt in the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol
Show
The banner of victory once more flies above the corpses of dead nazis, as it should.
Ex-US ambassador Victor Manuel Rocha charged over spying for Cuba
A former US diplomat who served as ambassador to Bolivia has been charged with working as an agent of the Cuban government for more than 40 years.
Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, is accused of helping Cuba gather intelligence against the US since 1981.
Mr Rocha referred to the US as "the enemy" and claimed his work as a secret agent "strengthened the Revolution", according to court papers.
to our based comrade doing his part to support the revolution. There’s a long history of Americans acting on behalf of Cuba and completely befuddling the US deep state, because they can’t fathom someone risking everything not for money, but for ideals. It only took you assholes over 40 years to figure him out, good job (makes jerking off motion)Footage of Hamas monitoring "Israeli" soldiers literally right outside their tents.
Unbelievable. This is why tracking above-ground control is meaningless militarily.
I've been quite busy with random annoying life problems recently, so I haven't exactly had time to devote to the beloved cuck n chad power rankings. We're back baby. Russia vs Ukraine still gets the top row out of respect for our god ordained traditions.
Gigachad Chad Neutral Beta (Fe)Male Virgin Cuck Putin (top spot for the first time, he has taken full control of the situation and slowly heading for the ultimate W) Shoigu (he has redeemed himself, can't deny the Ws anymore) Western media (I respect the audacity of just dumping all your anti-Ukraine material as soon shit turned around) Zaluzhny (he's super cringe sometimes, but he might accidentally collapse the Ukraine state) Zelensky (it's so over for our actor boy) Hamas, PIJ, Qassam and all resistance groups in Gaza (literally Allah's bravest soliders) Hezbollah (causing a headache for the occupier on the whole northern front) Qatar (horrible track record when it comes to most issues, but they made the ceasefire possible) Israeli "leftists" (bros heading for olympic medals in mental gymnastics) dead IDF soliders (semen extracted?) The people of Gaza (bravest people ever) Iraqi and Yemeni resistance (ultimate respects for these chads) Venezuela (don't know what's happening and war is bad, but I trust mustache boy Maduro) Saudi Arabia and UAE (as an Arab, I feel a strong urge to spit in the face of every Saudi and Emirati) Iranian diaspora (forever the worst diaspora, but reaching new levels of derangement recently) Motaz Azaiza (this gigachad has gone through absolute hell and still delivers real journalism) Gustavo Petro (I respect him so much, an average Latin American leader is more based than the best European) Piers Morgan (his thirst for views keeps platforming great pro-Palestine voices) George Santos (took a massive L this week, but this is not the end for our entertaining boy) Olaf Scholz (this man will not stop sucking Israeli dick if there's one Israeli dick left unsucked) Earlier today I went out to walk to the corner store to grab some stuff. When I rounded the corner that a busy bus stop is on someone who was waiting for the bus had a seizure and went down HARD, smashed up their face, teeth and glasses. While I and a two of my unhoused neighbors stayed to provide aid, every single other person there (about 15) got on the bus and left her for dead on the sidewalk. She was overweight, the three of us were barely able to move her onto a bench to keep her upright and talking as we waited for an ambulance to come.
The most heart wrenching thing I've ever experienced is someone who just had a seizure, passed out and hit their head, try to tell me, as they can hardly speak, that they can't afford to go to the hospital. I stayed with her until the ambulance came, trying to talk to her to keep her conscious.
I'm a street medic, this isn't the first time I've had to give aid to someone who had a seizure. It is never any less terrifying. The most twisted part is that a lot of people with epilepsy don't need medical assistance afterwards, and it's important not to call an ambulance because we neither have enough to pick up everyone who needs emergency medical care, and the excessive cost of medical care in this county completely ruins people's lives. I hate it here so much. DEATH TO AMERIKKKA
BREAKING: Israel’s military assassinated academic Rafaat al-Araeer in Gaza.
Rafaat, an academic and author of Gaza writes back, was assassinated as part of a large Israeli campaign against Gaza’s educated figures.
he'd been regularly tweeting about Isntreal's crimes... here's his pinned post, a poem called "If I must die":
Show
how fuckin grim.
idk if anyone has pointed this out yet, but I feel like it can't be a coincidence that the US govt, US media/propagandists, and Israeli propagandists are all talking about sexual violence suddenly, almost 60 days into the genocide... within a week of a poll coming out that showed a double-digit disparity between women in the US and men in the US supporting Israel's military actions (phrased in the most uncharitable way).
Like, idk if this is conspiracy-theory sounding, but it seems like in an effort to temper Biden's complete loss of the electorate, and that they think that generating some kind of me-too controversy over Palestinian resistance will score them a real victory or something. It is just so seemingly manufactured. They saw a demographic that they think typically falls in line during election times (women, especially young women) and they just decided to run with this in the most cynical way possible because SA is something that young women actually care a great deal about.
tbh, it feels the same with the congressional grilling of university presidents a few days after declaring that anti-zionism is anti-semitism. Israel knows that a ton of pro-palestinian organizing is happening on college campuses or by college groups, and the only way to really stop that quickly is to create a climate where college administrators. Things like canary mission are losing their potency as pro-palestinian consciousness has been raised, but college administrators are a (relatively) small group that are typically over-paid and already obsequious towards donors (private schools) or political pressure (for state schools). It seems like the high degree of coordination that existed before oct 7th. I am sickened to think that the US/Israeli propaganda complex is finding its footing, but tbh I think I am also too disconnected from corporate media to see if any of it is even working in the first place.
Half-asleep bears are wandering around Siberia because it's too hot to hibernate
Bears that are struggling to hibernate due to abnormally warm weather in Russia's Amur region are wandering around in a daze, having suppressed their metabolism in preparation for winter.
Fucking bleak
Does any other country in the world divide their military structure up into geographical command groups? CENTCOM/AFRICOM/EUCOM/NORTHCOM/INDOPACOM/SOUTHCOM
Like this alone strikes me as a unique and obvious indicator the US is a globe-spanning empire that sees the entire world as belonging to them and has absolutely zero respect for sovereignty anywhere at all. Yet we hardly ever remark on it.
