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.
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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.
It really makes me wonder if this is what they actually believe or if this is just the version they're sending down to the small subset of the general public who still gives a shit. I think it might be the latter, and that they're freaking out because Russia's lost hardly any troops and equipment compared to the vast losses Ukraine has taken over the last 6 months (how time flies!) but are couching their Ls to make them appear as sort-of-Ws, like "Oh, we didn't realize that Russia would send 2 million troops to their deaths in human waves to counter us and that is what defeated us, alas!"
If it's the former then it's actually encouraging, as it shows that they have literally no idea what's going on in Ukraine and Russia and will go into future wars with completely faulty lessons from this conflict and produce further Ls. And, honestly, one wonders how much of Israel eating shit in Gaza right now could be explained by these generals looking at Russia and taking the exact opposite lesson that they should have taken. But on balance I think the IDF being incompetent is perfectly explainable with the regular kind of Western military incompetence that assumes that their enemies are knuckle-dragging idiots and that their own soldiers are genius ubermensch, and the fact that the IDF's only military experiences over the last few decades have been a) shooting at unarmed children for sport, leading them to shit themselves in fear (and due to disease now, lmfao) whenever an adult comes at them with an actual weapon); b) losing the Sinai to Egypt after getting owned in 1979-82; c) getting owned by Hezbollah and losing what is now southern Lebanon in 2000; and d) getting owned by Hezbollah again in 2006, when the group was tiny compared to the colossus it now is.
If you ever decide to be generous enough here I think when they say "officials" then it is a different class of people than I believe the actual NATO field commanders and military chain.
Part of me wants to believe that the actual NATO command structure isn't this clueless and incompetent but rather this was entirely a combination of being fed "intelligence" that just said exactly what you wanted to hear(i.e at some point dissenting reports were denied and hidden as it would go against the narrative) and the fact this entire plan was probably devised at a very high level which means a lot of clueless politicians and literal armchair generals giving advice.
Like the usual IT job where management says they want product with feature X which is clearly impossible, but the team is given a deadline and says fuck it.
I imagine if there was such a strategy group made for this all then they clearly said fuck it, we know its impossible, we know Ukraine wont have time to train or air power or whatever, but if management wants a plan to conquer Crimea in 60 days then they'll get their "plan".
This is why I'm a bit cautious about dunking on shit like the F-35 endlessly, as if its a reflection of the entire US military. Of course it reflects the issues in so many ways, but if you get NATO armored divisions in Ukraine today, we would have WW3 and Russia would have a serious actual tough fight here.
Obviously that wont happen but for example, the US has thousands of F-16s but they refuse(d) to give them to Ukraine, or delay as much as possible. They give shit little by little and I can't quite understand why, ignoring the MIC grifters(javelin/TB2 drone shit), beyond the obvious fear of escalation, on some level they believe Ukraine isn't worth it which is so contradictory.
Which goes back to the point, if the US actually thought this was worth going into WW3 over then maybe Ukraine would have a chance? But they don't think its worth giving Ukraine all the good shit that actualy somewhat works and its good news for us, but it should not be a sign that western military is all shit is what I'm trying to say.
History is littered with empires that suffer military defeat from hubris. There are enough stupid things and weaknesses in ukraine's own power to paper over the systemic weaknesses in the NATO approach to war with Russia/peer combat. I'm sure there are some defense analysts here and there that are not braindead and who are learning the actual lessons from this conflict, but do not underestimate the sheer momentum of 2 trillion dollars a year spent on this extremely entrenched set of interests and boondoggles. It will take more than a few lone voices that understand material reality to turn the ship.
Further, don't look at this military defeat as a true loss for the powers that be. Yes ukraine has been wrecked, but it was a puppet anyway, they don't give a shit about a bunch of excess slavs. Yes the nato war machine suffered loss of prestige, but the case for rearming and buying all new stuff has never been stronger since Europe pissed all over Russia and flushed their existing materiel. What are the golf course countries going to do, go buy alligators from russia and chengdus from China? Fuck no, general dynamics and Raytheon are still the only game in town even if buyers know they are overpriced. That's the price of being a vassal.
The purpose of the war machine is to facilitate financial capital, not to win wars with peers. The US will not learn the military lessons of this conflict (dirigisme, industrial capacity, limits of propaganda, how to fight with air parity or worse) until the military industrial complex fails to meet its primary aim of facilitating wealth transfer. That is still at least one and probably two direct crushing defeats on the America military away from happening. That is to say, not close.
Huh. What stops Raytheon then? They pretty much own America, so there’s no way that spanking America would stop them directly…
I think their fortunes would suffer if the US suffered a direct military defeat.