Image of destruction in Mandalay, Myanmar, from Al Jazeera.
As if the ongoing civil war wasn't enough, Myanmar has now been struck by a very powerful earthquake, resulting in 2000 deaths and thousands more injured as of the time of writing. Estimates are that the death toll could reach 10,000. Infrastructure like roads and bridges are damaged, and the hospitals are overwhelmed. The earthquake struck during Eid prayers, resulting in even higher casualties as several mosques collapsed. 20 million people already required humanitarian assistance in Myanmar, and now the situation there will be even worse. International rescue teams have rushed into the country, and aid is being raised, though with USAID experiencing the... changes that it is, the United States will be of even more limited help than usual. So far, China has sent $14 million, while USAID has supplied $2 million. In Thailand, the death toll seems considerably lower, though there has still been significant damage; a skyscraper under construction collapsed in Bangkok.
Myanmar is located very close to the boundary between the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates. In particular, the country is divided in two by the north-south oriented Sagaing fault. This fault is typically strike-slip; that is, each side of the fault moves horizontally past each other. The earthquake's depth was 10 kilometers, which is pretty shallow, and its proximity to the surface amplified the felt force of the earthquake. Additionally, the soft soil in this region tends to further amplify seismic waves through a process called liquefaction. Combine all this with the lackluster building codes due to many years of impoverishment and civil wars, and this explains why the death toll, and the expense to the country in general to repair damage, will probably be extremely high.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
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 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.
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.
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.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
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.
What's up with Yanis? He's been having the weirdest takes on the LePen conviction
https://bsky.app/profile/yanisvaroufakis.bsky.social/post/3lloeygmz222h
And
https://unherd.com/newsroom/yanis-varoufakis-marine-le-pen-election-ban-is-ludicrous/
Thinking that what the dems did wrong was not go hard enough on Trump seems laughable. They demonized him but also let him get away with doing a bunch of illegal shit. Is the lesson there not to demonize him? When has a fascist ever been defeated "politically"? He's saying it would somehow be better for the "left" in France if they let LePen get away with embezzlement.
Doesn't surprise me tbh, just opportunists being opportunists. The only reason he sounds so radical left usually in public speaking is because he has actual communist opposition in Greece that he has to contest with. If you look under the carpet though at what his party is doing, for example in unions, it is plain as day that they don't believe at all in what they preach.
Now that I've read Losurdo's Western Marxism, he definitely fits in with the intellectuals that Losurdo criticizes. Shame, because I found his analysis insightful at times
Tldr: "centrists" figured out that you can use test the limit of lawfare to create precedent to crush all opposition party legally.
The point is that centrists consolidating power like this isn't a good sign and that the only reason we're beginning to see these mechanisms used against the right is because there is no left
What Macron is doing and what happened in my country where the second round was annulled won't slow down fascism one bit,and will have severe repercussions down the line
Merely going after right wing figureheads and not creating a left populist alternative won't fix the problem
Don't get me wrong,I dislike both her and Georgescu,but I would rather not celebrate too loudly if I celebrated along with pro NATO eurolibs, because this ultimately serves only them and it will do nothing to stop the problem
I agree that it wont stop fascism. At least holding her accountable makes it seem like she actually is a fascist, unlike the Dems crying that Trump is a fascist but also being super soft on him. So I think this is a good thing, even though its clearly not enough. My expectation is there will be another far right figure that will take her place if she can't run.
they would be delusional to think that fascism is defeated for good just because LePen is barred from running
The French left is electorally comparable to the right, so I don't know how much that tracks.
Only if you sum up every left of center-right party, Melenchon's electoral alliance included the former ruling socialists (demons) who regained A LOT of seats and pro-eu greens. That's the only way they could get that results and capital understands they only need to get the socialists to become the dominant force in that alliance to denute it of the radicalism of melenchon and his party.
Meanwhile the RN is the RN and they get those results on their own. Also, fyi the RN got the most actual votes in the last election, the NFP only won in terms of seats due to an alliance with the center and tactical voting.
So it makes sense why they'd try to lawfare the right since it's the actual challenge to the centrist estabilishment right now, the fact that centrists accepted voting for NFP candidates against RN candidates is proof of that.
Methinks Macron's personality is all that the center has right now and they were very scared they wouldn't have anyone in 2027 to even put up a fight against Le Pen.
yea, because Erdogan is a right-wing shitbag going after liberals and (some) leftist opposition.
two things are not the same. i can understand if the argument is that it would/could be used against leftists in France, or that the right wing is done with this one trick, but idc about 'misusing' the legal system, that itself isn't the issue.
It will be used against leftists regardless. I hate that argument that "we can't repress the right because they might do it back to us" when historically the right has always been repressive of the left