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.
The Country of the Week is Laos!
As mentioned in the preamble, feel free to post or recommend any material related to Laos, whether from a thousand years ago or yesterday. You can post it anywhere in the thread, but you can also reply to this comment if you wish.
If you’re feeling particularly ambitious and want homework, you could take on any or all of these questions (no reward, but I’ll be very proud of you):
- Who are the main political actors? Are they compradors, nationalists, international socialists, something else?
- What are the most salient domestic political issues; those issues that repeatedly shape elections over the last 10, 20 years. Every country has its quirks that complicate analysis - for example, Brexit in the UK.
- What is the country’s history? You don’t have to go back a thousand years if that’s not relevant, and I’m counting “history” as basically anything that has happened over a year ago.
- What factions exist, historically and currently? If there is an electoral system, what are the major parties and their demographic bases? Are there any minor parties with large amounts of influence? Independence movements? Religious groups?
- How socially progressive or conservative are they? Is there equality for different ethnic groups, or are some persecuted? Do they have LGBTQIA+ rights? Have they improved over time, or gotten worse?
- What role do foreign powers play in the country’s politics and economy? Is there a particular country nearby or far away that is nearly inseparable from them, for good or bad reasons? Is their trade dominated by exports/imports to one place? Are they exploited, exploiters, or something in between?
- If applicable, what is the influence of former colonial relationships on the modern economy and politics?
- Is the country generally stable? Do you think there will be a coup at some point in the future, and if so, what faction might replace them?
The previous country was Burkina Faso.
This is our Geopolitics Reading List so far! Please chime in with suggestions!
General Theory:
- Super Imperialism, by Michael Hudson.
- Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis, by John Smith.
- Superexploitation and the Imperialist Drive of Capitalism: How Marini’s ‘Dialectics of Dependency’ Goes beyond Marx’s ‘Capital’, by Andy Higginbottom.
- Capital Volume 3 Lecture Series, 32 videos, 10-15 minutes each, by Andy Higginbottom.
- World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction, by Immanuel Wallerstein.
- Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire, by Radhika Desai.
- Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy, by Radhika Desai.
Canada:
- Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination, by Tyler Shipley.
Chile:
- 1000 Days of Revolution: Chilean Communists on the Lessons of Popular Unity (I cannot personally find an online version).
- Santiago Boys Podcast, analyzing Allende’s government and Cybersyn.
Lebanon:
- A History of Modern Lebanon, by Fawwaz Traboulsi.
United States:
- Drug Cartels Do Not Exist: Narcotrafficking in US and Mexican Culture, by Oswaldo Zavala.
Venezuela:
- Objective Conditions in Venezuela: Maduro’s Defensive Strategy and Contradictions Among the People, a longform article by Steve Ellner.
CW: Death
Cops in Spokane just executed someone for allegedly trying to shoplift from a walmart.
It’s got all the hallmarks, “gun was found on the suspect,” “both officers injured,” “the suspect tried to tase me!”
Another fun story from the f-35 train wreck saga:
The Air Force is trying to save 2 severely damaged F-35s by merging them into a single ‘Franken-bird’ aircraft
The US Air Force on Thursday said its engineers in Utah are trying to restore two damaged F-35s by rebuilding them into one fully operational stealth fighter.
While military engineers have attempted similar restorations with other aircraft, the project to create what maintenance experts called the “Franken-bird” is the first among F-35s, the Air Force said in a statement.
To assemble the Franken-bird — an F-35A Lightning II — the Air Force said it’s put together a “dream team” of experts from Lockheed Martin, the F-35 Joint Program Office, the 388th Fighter Wing, and the Ogden Air Logistics Complex.
One of the jets they’re working on saw its landing gear collapse in June 2020, while the other F-35 suffered an engine fire in 2014.
No seriously,
The aircraft that caught fire is estimated to have sustained $50 million worth of damage, with the rear two-thirds of its body burned, per an Air Force report at the time.
Now, the Air Force said it’s trying to replace the damaged nose of the F-35 that was damaged in 2020 with parts from the jet that caught fire.
“All of the aircraft sections can be de-mated and re-mated theoretically, but it’s just never been done before,” said Scott Taylor, Lockheed Martin lead mechanical engineer, in the statement. “This is the first F-35 ‘Franken-bird’ to date. This is history.”
Taylor said the Franken-bird team has been documenting the project meticulously, hoping their work can develop standard repair procedures for other F-35s in the future.
Lol
The team is working out of Hill Air Force Base near Salt Lake City, where engineers had to design and build “entirely new, unique specialized” equipment, tools, and fixtures to perform the repairs away from the F-35 plant in Texas, the Air Force said.
They’re trying to mormonize the f-35 lmao
All of this can fit into a Conex cargo container so it can be transported and used for other purposes in the future, Taylor said.
The project is estimated to take around five years to complete, even with the team now being months ahead of schedule. It was conceptualized in January 2020, according to Taylor, and is set to be finished in March 2025, according to the Air Force.
Two more years before we hear news of this one crashing
A single F-35A costs around $70 million to manufacture, according to Lockheed Martin.
The name Franken-bird is also a reference to the Franken-tiger fighters that the US Navy bought in the late 2000s. Northrop Grumman engineers created the Franken-tiger by replacing the nose of an F-5E built for Switzerland with the nose of an F-5F.
Psst - this isn’t stickied to the homepage.
Footage of the High Court of Justice in Gaza getting demolished | Al Jazeera
Israeli media has published footage of the moment the High Court of Justice building in central Gaza was blown up on Sunday.
The video, verified by Al Jazeera, has been published by multiple organisations, including Kann News here:
I couldn’t figure out why the hell Israel would destroy a high court building. Maybe Hamas’s top secret Mecha Army or something is under the building?
Seriously though - I googled and I couldn’t find a reason. I went to The Times of Israel update page that covers the explosion gave no explanation about why. I guess hasbara is now basically “Fuck Gaza,” albeit expressed more politely.
