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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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.
Anyone seen that clip of Antony Blinken
playing Neil Young’s “Rocking In The Free World” on an electric guitar with a random Ukrainian band? The USA is really trying to do the whole “blue jeans and rock and roll revolution” propaganda again, three plus decades later.
Found some YouTube links for those that want to see
https://youtu.be/ZsK3M9gXmos
https://youtube.com/shorts/atbVtlSFl_M
Its so good. The song is an indictment against western imperialism and here we have the secretary of state of the usa using it to encourage a proxy to continue to feed men into the gears of the MIC.
Is it? I’ve only ever heard the “it was made as an anti-soviet song”, is that incorrect? I know nothing about it.
We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler machine gun hand
We’ve got department stores and toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn, got roads to drive
Apparently Blinken left this part out of his little jam
Hahahahaha. Does he just do the chorus or something? (I can’t bring myself to watch it.)
I haven’t wathed the whole thing either and there’s not enough money on the whole planet to make me lol
Its essentaily “are we the baddies” The people of the “free world” are told “better dead than red” and that “america is the great satan” is directed against americans and not america’s government. The “Free World” they sing about has Junkie mothers whos kids will get no help, empty political buzz words, destructive environmental policies.
Neil Young would spit on this demon.
Jeez dude. At least Billy Boy used a saxophone and pretended he was Black. SMH Blinken still livin’ in the 1980s.
EDIT: Oh god. In Ukraine, even. I missed that at first. Holy shit. Almost too perfect.
This guy is basically the acting president of the USA given Biden’s mental state, and this is what he does on his visit to Kiev. Bill Clinton wannabe as you said. Liberals should be reminded that they are voting for this guy as president if they vote Biden.
TBH I see where you’re coming from, but I think that might actually backfire. Liberals don’t know much about Blinken. What they do comes from pretty selective sound bites. And they don’t even have to consciously come up with excuses for all the racist and genocidal shit that comes out of his mouth just about every time he hits the podium, unlike Biden. What they’ll see is a boring
oldperky-and-young-compared-to-Biden white guy they know almost nothing about other than his name and that he’s associated with the parts the liberal mainstream propaganda have valorized about the running of the bureaucracy. I honestly think the image they’d get of him would be exactly what liberals want out of a politician (“bureaucracy SHOULD BE boring” tripe). He’d be their wet dream of a president, and we’d need to embark on a whole new uphill battle of education to sway them from that, so we’d be starting three steps back right out of the gate.It’s actually interesting and says where they mentally believe the empire still is. They’re not even living in the 90’s. It’s the late 80’s with a decaying USSR and American soft power at an all time high.
🎶🎶🎶We got a kindler gentler machine gun hand 🎶🎶
Is this some weird flexing, like what the fuck
Bush I, our monarch at the time, used to call himself a “compassionate conservative” and he called for a “kinder, gentler America” while at the same time trying to terrify whites into thinking all black prisoners were going to get out on parole and kill them.
“thousand points of light” was Bushspeak too
The song is actually written to be critical of the USA, but obviously these state department ghouls do not understand that.
Paul Ryan + Rage Against The Machine moment. But donkey-branded this time.
It’s satire
And who is the target of this? ukrainians being gentler hands? american overlords? russian overlords? who is he satirising in this moment in kf?
Oh sorry, I thought you meant Neil Young, not Blinken lol
Dolph Lundgren ditching the Soviets because he heard “Good Golly Miss Molly” in Red Scorpion is seared into my brain.