Bulletins and News Discussion from December 4th to December 10th, 2023 - The Legacy of Kissinger - COTW: Laos
Bulletins and News Discussion from December 4th to December 10th, 2023 - The Legacy of Kissinger - COTW: Laos
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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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.
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10 years ago, on December 8, 2013, a monument to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was destroyed in Kyiv by a crowd of fascist thugs.
spoiler
The monument was created by sculptor Sergei Merkurov for the USSR pavilion at the World Exhibition in New York (1939). On December 5, 1946, on the 10th anniversary of the Stalinist Constitution, it was installed in Kyiv, becoming a symbol of the city restored after the fascist defeat.
The figure of Lenin, 3.45 m high, was made of red polished granite and installed on a cylindrical pedestal 6.8 m high and 1.88 m in diameter. The monument itself is made of a rare material - Karelian quartzite, which was used to build the Mausoleum in Moscow.
Lenin’s words are carved on the sides of the pedestal: “With the united action of the Great Russian and Ukrainian proletarians, a free Ukraine is possible, without such unity there can be no talk of it” and “They will never defeat the people in whom the workers and peasants for the most part recognized and felt and saw that they were defending their own, Soviet power - the power of the working people, that they were defending a cause whose victory would provide them and their children with the opportunity to enjoy all the benefits of culture, all the creations of human labor.”
On the evening of December 8, 2013, the monument was toppled from its pedestal by neo-Nazi participants in the Maidan using a cable wound around the sculpture. When it fell on the asphalt, the sculpture's arm and head broke off. After this, vandals began to smash the monument with sledgehammers.
The Lenin monument is not just a piece of granite. This is a symbol of the ideas of social liberation, equality, true democracy, a symbol of the movement towards a new society without rich and poor, without poverty and exploitation, without fascism and wars. We are convinced that the fascist junta in power will be expelled from Kyiv and Ukraine, and the monument to Lenin will definitely be recreated in the same place where it was erected by the Victorious heroes of the Great Patriotic War.
No Nazis in Ukraine.
In this case, they're destroying the statue because the history of the modern state of Ukraine, founded at the insistence of Lenin over protest, is somewhat inconvenient for their narrative.
Real Ukraine wasn’t tried until 1991
And then Crimea immediately started trying to secede and never really stopped.
How dare Lenin vastly expand Ukrainian territory to give us control of the warm water Black Sea ports!
the fascists/liberals won so hard against communism that they have to keep destroying the statues and symbols and violently repressing anyone who brings up the ideology because they are so scared shitless of it coming back lmfao
It will come back in shaa Allah and it will be better.
I wish a very happy “getting a grenade dropped into the muddy trench you’re huddling in” to everyone in that crowd.
Its nice to think these people would have been the first to sign up to fight and knowing that 99% of the soldiers from the first wave of volunteers aren't around any more.