Bulletins and News Discussion from May 13th to May 19th, 2024 - The Blazing Furnace - COTW: Vietnam
Bulletins and News Discussion from May 13th to May 19th, 2024 - The Blazing Furnace - COTW: Vietnam
An image of a Central Committee meeting in Hanoi. Image taken from this article.
General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng implemented an anti-corruption campaign in 2016 called "blazing furnace" in shorthand. Since then, the fire has ripped through both politicians and businesses, up to even the Presidency. Nearly 200,000 party members, 36 Central Committee members, and 50 police/military generals have been disciplined since the initiative began. In 2018, Dinh La Thang, the former party chief of Ho Chi Minh City, became the first sitting Politburo member to be criminally charged, and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. In 2023, President Nguyễn Xuân Phúc was implicated in a corruption scandal and resigned. He was replaced by Võ Văn Thưởng, who was then also caught in a corruption scandal a year later in March 2024, making him the shortest serving President in Vietnamese history. The Presidency is current headed by Võ Thị Ánh Xuân while they find a new President; she also took that role in 2023.
The ousted leaders tend to also be part of the more West-friendly, technocratic faction inside Vietnam, either reflecting how these people also tend to be more easily corrupted, or how the Communist Party is slowly moving away from a foreign policy which allies itself with the West (as Vietnam has comprehensive strategic partnerships with several Western countries), or some combination. Of course, this shouldn't be overstated - Vietnam has maintained a close friendship with China for years, and both incumbent leaders are intimately familiar with anti-corruption campaigns and how and why they must be conducted in order to deliver maximum public benefit.
America clearly desires Vietnam to pick their side, because America strongly desires another vassal state in East Asia like the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan to further encircle and isolate China. And so the headlines and commentary of Western state propaganda like Radio Free Asia, the BBC, WaPo, Business Insider, etc reveal their increasing annoyance with Vietnam's government. They often couch this in the standard "objective" economics language); about how removing leaders who foreign investors were reassured by might mean economic pain for Vietnam ahead. As Bhadrakumar noted in 2023, perhaps the BBC revealed their intentions the best:
Reading Vietnamese politics is always difficult — the Communist Party makes its decisions behind closed doors. But hard-line General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, who was given an unprecedented third term at last year’s party congress, appears to be consolidating his authority by ousting senior officials seen as more pro-Western and pro-business. Officially this is all happening in the name of fighting corruption,.. but it’s indicative of a power struggle at the top of the party… the likely rise now of more security-focused officials to the top of the party will be bad news.
Even a quick google search right now will show a bunch of articles by clearly nervous Westerners: Why Vietnam’s Escalating Anti-Corruption Campaign Might Backfire because, as we all know, only authoritarian regimes are vulnerable to things like public opinion and discontent, while Western "democracies" are insulated from such petty phenomena. Leaders here can have disapproval ratings of 60-70% and not even the slightest consequence will happen to them - a real sign of democratic freedom and justice over those primitive regimes in the East! Or, take: ‘Blazing Furnace’ Turns Vietnam Into Another Chinese Province; China turning both Russia and Vietnam into their provinces in just two years was a real diplomatic masterclass. Or, back in 2022: Vietnam's 'blazing furnace' crackdown burns $40 bln off stocks. Not the stocks! Anything but the stocks!
If your actions as a leader are pissing off Bloomberg, you are going in the right direction.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Vietnam! 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.
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Dutch student intifada update Tuesday May 14
Over the weekend Dutch universities set up a protocol on how to deal with campus protests. University boards complained about having to talk with anonymous students who hide their faces. So in the protocol they added that they will only meet with students who will show their face and ID. They also repeated that staying overnight on campus ground is not allowed, and that police forces will be used when necessary. So they are ignoring the demands of students and staff about allowing peaceful protest and avoiding police to interfere on campus.
Groningen, Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Maastricht joined the Dutch student intifada yesterday and set up encampments on university grounds!
Maastricht university board has said that they do not want police on campus and thus that the encampment can stay.
Groningen, Nijmegen and Eindhoven encampments were also not attacked by police during the night and thus still there. Groningen board did threaten to use police force at first.
I think that there wasn’t enough riot police to intervene in all these cities as they were already busy beating Amsterdam students.
Amsterdam is still going strong and occupied another building on Monday. Riot police entered the building in the afternoon, after which the students and staff went elsewhere to protest. All UvA buildings will be closed for the next 2 days. During the occupation 4 people dressed completely in black entered the occupied building and started breaking computer screens and other expensive stuff. They were also the ones who started to create barricades against wishes of protest organisers which was probably the reason why the riot police came so early.
Other university cities (including Utrecht) had protests as well but no encampments.
All encampments communicate mostly through instagram and you can find them by searching for ‘[city] encampment’.
4 people dressed completely in black entered the occupied building and started breaking computer screens and other expensive stuff. They were also the ones who started to create barricades against wishes of protest organisers which was probably the reason why the riot police came so early.
Even if these guys aren't cops they are doing exactly what the cops want. Black Block can get fucked.
Only four? They're definitely cops.
Yeah that’s definitely possible. There is clear proof that there are undercover cops among the protesters. However, this particular group seems to have a lot in common with zionist/right extremist counter protesters we’ve seen before in Amsterdam but also in Groningen. On twitter/X there are small groups of right extremists who try to organise sabotage attempts to the protests. They all dress fully in black similar to the saboteurs yesterday.
Black Block [sic] can get fucked.
Chris Hedges has entered the chat.
I haven’t seen this discussed anywhere… but are Dutch universities similar to American ones in that there usually aren’t classes during the summer, and students typically return home? I’m concerned the campus movement in the US will fizzle out just from the fact that schools are shutting down for the summer. Hoping that it can keep going strong outside the US.
Yeah there is a summer break from July of 2 months for students (not for staff). However a lot of students are still studying during those 2 months because of summer schools, thesis or other projects outside of regular courses.
Honestly I would be surprised if the protesters keep the momentum going until July. But at the same time I also didn’t expect there to be any such protests at all so I find it very hard to predict how long they will last and if they will succeed in forcing the universities to break their ties with Israel.
Oof. I'm sorry, but scolding people to "stay peaceful" is some giganto-brained libshit, and people on Hexbear should know better.
Am I scolding people to stay peaceful? Personally I think provocation is definitely needed to make sure the protests don’t get ignored. But in Amsterdam there are clear signs of a very small group of people (as far as I can tell 4) trying to sabotage the protest. There is videos of them walking around the building and beating the shit out of every equipment there. They were very clearly not part of the protest because they were hostile towards everyone else that was present.
Edit: and the info about the barricades I literally got from the organisation itself. They did not want to escalate too much because of lack of medics, so they decided to occupy the building and use human chains instead of heavy barricades because in past protests barricades have proven to be used by police to create very dangerous situations.
Being hostile towards everyone present that tries to talk to them about breaking things is fairly typical Western "anarchist" behavior.
Okay. So there were people who weren't interested in the same tactics as the peaceniks. I'm sorry, but that's 1. fine, and 2. pretty shitty to just imply they're cops. Doesn't sound like the cops needed the excuse of destroying the very property they exist to protect in order to use force. When do cops ever need that? "Outside agitator/agent provocateur" shit, while it can very occasionally happen, is mostly nonsense. When it DOES happen, the response is immediate. Someone "throws something at the cops" and they immediately storm in and crack heads. And you're never going to keep that from happening by trying to prevent anyone from throwing shit at cops (or from destroying property, or whatever), or by whining about it afterwards. You're going to do it by defending yourself against the cops, as you always would. Don't do their jobs for them, by trying to police people yourself.
Y'all need to respect a diversity of tactics. The way to protect yourselves from that putting you into too much risk is to separate yourselves from it and take different actions. Practice good opsec. And don't shit on people who are taking the radical action you are too chicken shit to, or don't feel you have the resources to. Others can make their own decisions. Worry less about optics and wielding some kind of authority over others, and more about getting your own shit done.
On the whole of it, the university that's contributing to genocide losing some expensive equipment is actually just fine. More than fine.
There’s literally a group of right extremists who post their sabotage intentions on twitter and who wore those exact same clothes at the protest last week (and yesterday in another city). There are other people who use extreme forms of protest but I don’t single them out because they are actual protesters who are there for the same cause. I’m mentioning this group because they very clearly did not come there to protest against a genocide and were hostile towards the protesters. In the other instances they attacked protesters and destroyed the encampments so idk why you’re defending them.
I'm not defending them. I'm pointing out that your stance in your first comment was absolutely awful. There was nothing there about "right-wing extremism". Direct quote of you:
During the occupation 4 people dressed completely in black entered the occupied building and started breaking computer screens and other expensive stuff. They were also the ones who started to create barricades against wishes of protest organisers which was probably the reason why the riot police came so early.
Yes, it sounds better now that I've given you pushback and you've surfaced new details. I'll assume those details are actually produced in good-faith instead of simply manufactured to try to recoup your position. And even given that assumption there's some pretty bad assumptions and takes, such as:
- Assuming everyone dressed in black is part of the same group or ideological bent: your "in other instances" is apparently assumption based on them "dressing the same" (all in black).
- Literally you: "Hopefully this can set an example for Amsterdam and Utrecht, as we see each time that the protests have all been peaceful until the police or a group of zionists shows up." THIS, right here, is a peacenik, self-policing thing. Right here. This is entirely independent of you seeing some right-wing extremist group. It's you wanting people to stay peaceful. Period.
EDIT: And that last, by the way, tends to kind of undermine the details you come up with later, and your assertion that you "think provocation is needed". There's also the fact that another user replied to you with "Black Block can get fucked" (without, apparently, knowing it's not a proper name, how to spell "bloc", etc.). I see you gave no pushback there—lending your tacit agreement instead—and did choose to clap back to someone saying "don't try to scold other people into being peaceful". Anyway, I'll leave it at this comment+edit. It's the same thing I see out of liberals all the time, and the mainstream media, and even nominally leftist content producers who just can't but equivocate with nonsense like "condemning Hamas" and asserting very proudly that BLM, student protests, etc. are peaceful until antagonized (pointing that out isn't a win, because THEY SHOULDN'T BE!!!). So that's where I'd like you to actually listen to and hear what I'm saying. Take that back to your own actions, if you will. Of course you're going to have to apply your own observations and experiences to a situation, but please, please, please mind that the first cop we must kill is the one in our own heads, and he's never quite as dead as we think he is.
My first reaction to you was not meant to convey that I disagreed with you or intended to ‘clap back’, I was honestly hoping for a response that would point out where I was scolding people into being peaceful (which you now did and I’m grateful for that).
All right. Fair enough. Take care.