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 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.
some excerpts:
German article
Not looking too good for the great social democratic welfare state of Germany.
But nothing else should be expected from a SPD led government.
Wer hat uns verraten?
What the hell is happening there. Shut it down please, just shut it down until we can figure out what the hell is going on.
There are multiple crises and policy failures, leading to the usual right-wing "solutions" getting promoted by all sorts of opportunists. Couple this with the fact that the there is no opposition to the left of the current centrist government, so there is no institutional support for protests or media campaigns and so on.
The peace movement used to be linked to the Greens (and that whole complex of Green-aligned media and institutions), which have gradually moved part of it into the imperialist camp, while the rest is marginalized. The SPD has done the same for the worker's movement since forever. The Greens have also played the environmentalists, though they at least are still protesting and increasingly denouncing them. The regime and media have recently become increasingly xenophobic and hostile to immigrants. I assume they think they can stop the rise of the far-right AfD this way. Again, the Green leadership have kneecapped the movement by switching sides and endorsing "compromise" (= capitulation) with the fascists. The base seems pretty unhappy, but this has happened before and I don't expect anything to come of it.
Meanwhile, The Left party has split into a nationalist, anti-"woke" and kinda anti-imperialist liberal socdem party, and a kinda pro-imperialist "we want to govern" liberal socdem party, which surely would repeat the Green party trajectory if it had any traction. There might be some invisible socialists hiding among these people, maybe. The media and schools have done an amazing job of teaching enlightened centrism and moralism, so there's not a lot them anyway.
Meanwhile, the issue with the Ukraine war etc. has been taken up by the far right, making the radlibs afraid of saying anything, lest they be seen agreeing with them. The media encourages this framing in an attempt to stifle left-wing opposition. Same for mainstream media criticism: They've successfully rallied those people to defend the fucking genocidal propaganda machine from far-right "Lügenpresse" allegations.
The AfD also takes public anger over mounting problems with wages, inflation, infrastructure etc. and blaming it on immigrants, environmentalists, some big "globalist" conspiracy and so on. The Greens get a lot the anger, though for the wrong reasons. It's actually quite the symbiotic relationship, that one: the Greens can pretend to defend the environment and immigrants from the far right, while doing absolutely the opposite, and the AfD can rile up the bigots with a nice willing scapegoat.
they never purged the nazis, least surprising thing ever tbh
The Iron Law of Bourgeois Electoralism: Any incoming imperial core administration is going to be worse than its predecessor, regardless of party affiliation and campaign promises.