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 Tuesday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
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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.
The three things I think could actually be feasibly used to take out the tunnel networks (aside from taking the L and just sending most of your army down there to get murdered but eventually take them all out) are, in order of effectiveness, a) nuclear weapons; b) thermobaric bombs; and c) bunker busters. I just can't imagine how Hamas could possibly have seen flooding being used against their smuggling tunnels by Egypt a few years back, and not gone "Hm, if this isn't a problem we've already sorted out, then we really should get on that if we're actually going to try and do this major attack to draw Israel in to cripple and humiliate their army and lead to a Palestinian state one way or another." Like, it's one of those very obvious and basic issues that you should expect your enemy to try and do - so failing to mitigate it in an operation that has so far been marked by its very good planning and foresight and preparation would be very odd. If Israel had developed some superweapon in the last year, then obviously Hamas might not have the time or resources to counter it, but flooding tunnels to kill the people in there was something tried against the Viet Cong half a fucking century ago, and honestly has probably been a thing for centuries before that in more limited places.
I'm a little confused why the bunker busters haven't seemed to have done that much - of course, it could be total chaos down there with collapsed passages and we just don't know - but it's probably some combination of sufficient depth and Israel just not knowing where to drop them.
Thermobaric bombs seem pretty promising, so the fact that they haven't tried them yet is interesting. I don't believe the faux concern about civilians for a second, they would totally drop a thousand of them on Gaza while doing the Fortnite default dance if they thought it would work and that the rest of the Resistance, most notably Hezbollah, wouldn't start blasting and destroying the country. I'm unsure what's going on with them not trying them, at least not that we know of. Russia has used them in Ukraine, but if they were really THAT effective against soldiers in fortified positions, then we wouldn't still be talking about fucking Avdiivka. I don't know how many civilians still live there that could also be hit by them, but approaching 2 years of this war, it can't be THAT many, right? And what about in trench systems that are away from notable settlements? If thermobaric bombs are that great, why aren't they used there? I don't really know, a military guy would have to tell me.
Nukes and the problems they would generate go without saying of course. I'm unsure how much damage a nuclear blast above ground would cause to people in relatively unreinforced tunnels or bunkers (there's certainly stone or concrete there from the images, but not layers of steel or lead or whatever). Dropped in the tunnels, well, I don't see how you'd survive that even from quite far away, so long as you're in the same tunnel network. Though idk, maybe you'd have to get the nuke pretty deep in there to ensure the energy stays mostly in the tunnel, and that might be an issue all by itself. But this seems like a thing where if we actually have to seriously discuss this, we should probably be preparing for the end of the world and not be on Hexbear.