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.
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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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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.
Find it extremely funny/sad that people argue that US billionaire oligarchs are less evil than those in Middle Eastern oil states. The argument, after you navigate through all the facades of actually existing capitalism, basically boils down to stating that US billionaires are less evil because they don't directly make the decisions that result in government oppression, war and human rights violations to the degree that oligarchs in oil states do, it's just that the entire apparatus that allows US oligarchs to be so wealthy is based off of all those same things.
I do not find this "argument of abstraction" convincing, to say the least. Even if this somehow makes US billionaire oligarchs slightly less evil than their oil state counterparts, it is definitely not something to be proud of.
And that's before even acknowledging how those oil states came to exist in the first place. Without Western support, both capital and military, it would be impossible for these stares to exist. Saudi Arabia even admitted this recently.
In general people really do not understand how "actually existing capitalism" functions and how it is synonymous with imperialism and polarisation. You cannot seperate the means of this wealth accumulation from imperialism. One can even take this further and argue that imperialism is not merely a stage of capitalism as Lenin stated, but synonymous with capitalism itself.
Taking this further, one can argue that capitalism and it's evolutions can only be understood as a single global system comprised of polarisation (the centre - periphery model), where the periphery countries do not lag behind those in the centre, but whose structure has been changed to enable polarisation by force. Thus, imperialism is not merely the subjugation of one nation by another, which is the colloquial definition, or a specific stage of capitalism, but imperialism is rather “precisely the amalgamation of the requirements and laws for the reproduction of capital; the social, national and international alliances that underlie them; and the political strategies employed by these alliances”.
Its so annoying when I read American sports fans complain about "Saudi blood money" in sports. I have no love for the Saudis and I wish nothing but misery on the House of Saud, but bro, you live in America. What have the Saudis done that the US hasn't either done or supported someone doing?
Chapo recently had a guy on to talk about Saudi 'sportswashing' and it was pretty silly.
Yeah I just listened Felix's interview with Karim Zidan earlier today. He has a lot of good coverage on the issue and I agree with his opinions on it. The money the Saudis throw around in sports is absolutely silly. I'm a pro wrestling fan, and the WWE deal has been controversial with fans for quite a while, which is hilarious to me, given that WWE used to do shows for American troops in Iraq.
AmeriKKKa is sportwashing its reputation of being an imperialist genocidal machine by being one of he host of the 2026 World Cup
yeah it was insufferable whiny liberalism
I expect that kind of stuff from white people, but an Egyptian guy? he said Saudi are spending so much money on sports to 'present themselves like a normal country', but no one ever makes that argument about the US or Europe or anything.
Moral superiority among sports fans is hilarious to be honest. Why do they think all the top footballers/soccer players from South America and Africa play in Europe? Because they grew up supporting Bournemouth or Real Betis? No, it's because of the money, or the chance to play for a bigger European club with an international fan base like Real Madrid or Manchester United, for even more money. And how did Europe obtain such a financial advantage over South America and Africa in the first place? Now that's an uncomfortable question to ask them.
These dorks would fail to catch the bad guy in a scooby doo cartoon.