this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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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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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.
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More telegram channels here for those interested.

Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.

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Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
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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.


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[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 60 points 11 months ago (4 children)

https://www.semafor.com/article/12/07/2023/xi-jinping-tightens-control-over-chinas-finances

This outlet was founded by the former Editor in Chief of Buzzfeed News.

Full article textXi Jinping tightens control over China’s financial system

Dec 7, 2023, 5:04pm GMT

Karina Tsui

In an effort to assert greater dominance over the country, the Chinese Communist Party announced Thursday that financial institutions should move away from “Western financial theory” and abide by Marxist principles.

In a paper published in Qiushi, the party’s official theoretical journal, Communist officials note that a “capitalist ideology and social system” creates “a huge gap between rich and poor” and also “triggers recurring economic and financial crises.”

Officials said that financial institutions should “strike a fine balance between functionality and profitability” but that “functionality always comes first.”

Financial analysts are concerned that, even as Beijing welcomes foreign business, such transactions will be subject to strict government oversight.

Politics will “further dictate China’s finance,” a professor at the University of Hong Kong told the New York Times, “effectively moving China even closer to how it was before the reforms started in 1978.” Since the death of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist Party showed signs of liberalizing society, including in the economy, and financial institutions were encouraged to pursue profits. But as Xi rose to power, he vowed to reverse reform. Thursday’s announcement shows that Xi is working towards formally cementing party ideology in the country’s financial system, though the paper did not address how leadership will tackle its ongoing financial crisis.

“Centralized and unified leadership” over financial affairs is key to solving issues in China’s financial institutions, said Beijing’s central bank governor Pan Gongsheng. In a People’s Daily article, Pan said that enterprises manage financial resources ineffectively and oversight from the party will provide them with “political and institutional advantages.” But in recent comments to bankers in Hong Kong, Pan also warned that China’s economy was embarking on a “long and difficult journey” away from its traditional means of growth — property and infrastructure investment.

[–] GenderIsOpSec@hexbear.net 30 points 11 months ago (1 children)

"Financial institutions should move away from fairy tales and look to the actual reality"

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 28 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If they start getting vocal about this and we see more and more western media reporting it factually instead of pretending China is capitalist it's going to get real spicey in the ideological world soon.

[–] dumpster_dove@hexbear.net 24 points 11 months ago

a spectre is haunting the West

[–] emizeko@hexbear.net 28 points 11 months ago

In an effort to assert greater dominance

:projection:

[–] star_wraith@hexbear.net 25 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Oh cool, it looks like you can read Qiushi in English.

I’m trying to do something new: I want to try and follow along with what the CPC themselves (or adjacent groups/individuals) have to say about current and future socialism in China. I’ve kinda realized that for years now, all I’ve read of Chinese socialism mostly just comes from westerners defending them (a la Roderic Day’s China Has Billionaires essay). And nothing wrong with that per se, that essay is great. But I’ve realized my entire knowledge of socialism in China rests mostly on people who aren’t involved. Finding “primary” sources is hard and it’s not always in English, but Qiushi seems like a good start?

[–] Kaplya@hexbear.net 23 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Chinese politics is very opaque. I’m Chinese and have been trying to make sense of all this for decades, and I still don’t consider myself having a good grasp on what the leadership is thinking (and I doubt anyone does unless you have connection to high-ranking party officials).

The impression that I get is that decisions are made on ad-hoc basis and responding (quite dynamically, admittedly) to the changing global events. For example, after the 2009 global financial crisis China went all in on property market boom to keep their economy afloat. There had been a lot of leftist critiques against this move (many had been calling for a reorientation toward internal circulation instead of continuing the focus on export economy since the early 2000s), and only now we are seeing it all played out with the property market crisis that China is facing today.

But yes Qiushi is a relatively decent place to get a glimpse of what the Marxist theorists say, but China also relies on a very diverse range of experts (including many Western i.e. neoclassical and Austrian school economists) so it is far from guaranteeing if they will contribute to the decision-making process, if at all. We really don’t know how the decisions are made, we can only infer from the outcome afterwards. This is why I don’t trust what any of the “China watcher/expert” says nor will you see me making predictions about what China is going to do.

[–] bazingabrain@hexbear.net 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Would you mind expanding on the opaque nature of chinese politics? Are they opaque because its complex and the government is made of many layers, comittees, etc? Is it opaque by design to discourage western shitters getting involved with spies? Because of the sheer size of the government (necessary since china is so massive)? It's really rare to see non western voices on China so I'd appreciate it if you could expand on it a bit more if willing (or if youve got the time and energy hah!)

[–] Kaplya@hexbear.net 28 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Opaque as in we really don’t know how they arrive at a certain decision, and that’s largely due to a lack of (visibly) coherent set of ideology. For example, I feel much more confident in predicting how US and Europe will react to certain events because there is a very defined neoliberal ideology that drives the decision-making process.

China claims to be Marxist (and I believe that) but there are many decisions that simply don’t conform to our understanding of Marxism, and this is why among Marxist circles here there’s a joke about anything that we don’t understand what the government is doing can be attributed to 特色 (lit. special characteristics, i.e socialism with Chinese characteristics). It is socialism if the government says it is lol. And a lot of neoliberal brainworms injected into those decisions for sure.

In a way, this allows China to respond quite dynamically to the changing global events, but at the same time we (as leftists) also see many mistakes that would lead to problems down the road. I have already mentioned the property market boom, which was accompanied by many public infrastructure building (good) and a lot of new housing with no prospective buyers (the financing mechanism between local government and the property developers created such a condition where local officials can “cheat” GDP growth by building lots and lots of empty houses and sucking in capital investment that would have been better spent elsewhere to develop the economy).

A lot of the decisions made in the early 2000s were predicated on a scenario where the West doesn’t actively seek to decouple from China, and somehow this could go on forever (how many times people have told me that “we have so much to learn from America” and “we can prosper together with America” lol). It wasn’t until Trump’s trade war in 2018 that we start to see the panic about a possible decoupling event with the US. Many on the left had been calling for a shift towards “internal circulation” since decades ago. Now you can make the argument that growth would probably have been slower, and the poverty alleviation effort would have been more gradual, but it would also have made the Chinese economy much more resilient and less vulnerable to Western sanctions, as it is still strongly dependent on export rather than internal consumption.

Where China still has its major advantage is that the central bank is still run by the state (literally right next to the ministry of treasury) instead of independently run by private bankers as in most other countries. We are seeing them semi-reluctantly using this advantage to deal with the emerging crisis but there is still too much neoliberal brainworms that is restraining them from fully utilizing it as an effective weapon/tool to solve the economic problems in the country.

Still, governing 1.4 billion people is no joke and developing such a populous country from a poor agrarian economy to a modern industrialized state is no easy feat, and stability is always prioritized over chaos (you’d understand this given how the government reacted during the Tiananmen Square incident). And the end of the day, the people can’t really influence what the government is doing and all you can do is to 相信国家 (trust the country i.e. the government) to act in your best interests lol.

But ultimately China needs a set of clearly defined ideology that truly distinguishes itself from Western capitalism like what the USSR did. (There is a reason that despite all its flaws, I still deeply admire the USSR because they genuinely attempted to create a true alternative to capitalism).

[–] LesbianLiberty@hexbear.net 5 points 11 months ago

Replying to come back later ❤

[–] RyanGosling@hexbear.net 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I recently watched a Vice documentary on Chinese organized crime groups helping launder money for Mexican cartels

They say that Chinese elites are helping the cartels because they want dollars, and the CPC’s crackdowns on businesses are making it harder for them to get dollars legitimately lol