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.
There is nothing that indicates the weakening of the empire’s financial power. The only time weakness appeared in the US financial system was during the initial months of the Fed hiking interest rates in 2022 (in response to the inflation caused by the sanctions against Russia when it invaded Ukraine), which caused many countries to look to BRICS for an alternative system, but that window of opportunity had long closed by now.
Biden literally just sent out a $100 billion “foreign aid” package to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan that will make its way into dollarizing the rest of the world. I don’t see BRICS coming up with anything that is remotely challenging the dollar dominance. Multilateral trading in national currencies aren’t going to make even a slightest dent to the depth of dollar entrenched in the capital and investment market. If anything, BRICS New Development Bank continues to hand out dollar loans, which only serves to dollarize their own countries! What in the actual fuck.
And no, there is a reason the world moved away from gold standard and Bretton Woods. And it has nothing to do with dollar hegemony. Stalin took the USSR off gold standard and was able to catch up with Western imperialist powers precisely because it was able to spend unlimited amount of money to drive rapid industrialization. Post-Bretton Woods US did the same to out-spend everyone, turning itself into a de-industrialized financial powerhouse and control the world market through financial prowess.
In other words, dollar will sink gold in an instant. No country tying their fiscal space to the gold (which has limited quantity) can possibly out-spend a fiat currency like the dollar (which can be printed in unlimited amount).
China is doing what it is doing because its economy is still very largely dependent on export. The latest EV overproduction is just one of the many problems that China has to tackle after being stuck in this export-led economic model. If they cannot sell their EVs and recoup their cost, then a very large amount of Chinese labor and resources just went into waste. If Chinese workers get paid less, it’s going to screw with their domestic consumption. If Chinese EV manufacturers can’t make a profit, then it’s going to screw with their investment in green technology. I don’t think people realize how much the world is praying for the US not to go into recession, because that’s going to send massive economic shockwaves across the world.
So what is the way out for China? I am already sounding like a broken record, but it’s actually quite simple: China’s investment (supply side) is already through the roof, exports (external demand) are plateauing as the US meddles in how countries conduct their trade and with China going into overproduction problems itself, so where else can should the money go into? Clearly, we don’t want the money to go into the virtual sector i.e. banking and real estate which is another problem that China is facing today.
There is only one place left to go: domestic consumption (internal demand). This kills two birds with one stone: by removing its reliance on the US trade policy (no need to export to the West anymore) and by creating a domestic consumption market that is self-sustaining.
Welcome to sub imperialism:
Samir Amin’s diagnosis of worst-case racial capitalism, Patrick Bond, 11 November 2023
For whatever reason, it has been decided that directly challenging the Western imperialist economic system is not on the agenda as of yet for the alliance. I hope that it will be on the agenda soon.
As for China: “Remaining out of financial globalisation is an important weapon in your hands; do not offer the weapon to your enemy!”
I think you are measuring the US by their own standard instead of applying more realistic standards.
Biden sends out billions of billions of dollars to Ukraine but what actually does that buy them, because it doesn’t buy them for example artillery shells, or missiles or tanks. It certainly doesn’t buy them manpower or victory so what good does that aid do exactly?
The US dollar increasingly has the problem that there’s nothing left to buy, the reason why a company like Tesla was worth as much as the three big car companies combined while producing 0.01% is not because Elon Musk is a super genius but because you could buy Tesla it was a thing that Investors could buy and so much we see now as Capitalism being idiotic is because all those companies and investors and capitalists have all the money in the world and absolutely nothing to buy anymore, the reason why Bill Gates and Blackrock are buying up farmland is because well you can buy it, the reason shitty start ups like WeWork can get billions of dollars is because finally some bank or company can spend their money on something.
The US dollar is reaching a real point where it increasingly becomes apparent that it doesn’t buy you everything, the more the US goes for their chosen strategy the less valuable the US dollar becomes because you can’t use it to buy things anymore.