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.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
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.
I'm genuinely surprised by how there is no public outrage over the cops breaking into university campuses and beating students over protests, let alone when the National Guard participates. It's just so weird to me.
Why am I saying this? Because normally, universities have some sort of immunity against certain actions of the state. For example, in Argentina it is outright illegal for cops to be inside university grounds and university authorities cannot call on the cops to enter their building unless it's for some extreme situation like someone taking hostages, bomb threat, etc. There's a funny story that happened once where I study, a cop (off duty, but still in uniform) entered our university to take her girlfriend out as she left classes (I hope she found someone better, cops don't deserve love), immediately as he walked in students began to yell at the guy, telling him to fuck off and leave. He was forced out, students reacted like when your body reacts to a disease or something. Years ago, several schools and universities rebelled against the government's attempt to "centralize education" (cover up for some privatization) by taking their own universities and self-managing them. Despite the clear conflict, the cops were not able to set foot in the campuses, and when they did there was quite the outrage over it.
Back in Medieval times, when universities first appeared in E*rope, there was a big debate among the state and the scholars (members of the church all of them, basically) wether the university could be intervened or not. In Paris, the authorities tried to intervene on their university but the students and their teachers carried out what is known as literally the first student strike, they simply left the city and went to study and debate elsewhere, leaving Paris without it's prestigious institution for about 4 years. When they returned, the state pledged to respect the university's integrity, it's programs and whatever happens inside it's a matter of the students and the teachers. They gained an immunity, so important in medieval times.
Yet in the US it appears this traditional immunity doesn't exist, cuz the pigs can force their way into the campuses, destroy encampments and arrest everyone, and the public is absolutely content with this. The US is literally worse than medieval Paris ffs.
With this said, keep in mind that universities are definitely intervened by the state. Then, we can conclude that these education bodies are forced to become a grotesque servant of the state. It must be freed.
US universities are largely owned and run by the same people that run the US military industrial complex, the weapons companies, silicon valley, and all the other trash.
Damn, I wish! Yeah, in the U.S. it's the opposite of that. Many colleges and universities have police academies, and their pigs-in-training get the school as their playground. I remember it was actually controversial back in the...1990s I think?...when schools starting arming their baby pigs with real firearms. No, schools (and that must include K-12 now with their fucking "resource officers" which schools reneged on kicking out at the end of BLM) are fucking Cop Central. And that dovetails with schools—especially in poor and predominantly non-white districts—being a part of the "school-to-prison pipeline" where Black children in particular are criminalized for existing and given the fast track right into the criminal injustice system (often schools are even built with prison-like building architecture, and "inner city" ones have TSA-like security complete with metal detectors at their entrances).
We've got a lot of fucking work to do.
Schools in the US are not for the purpose of education.
American universities have their own dedicated police forces, it's a whole different beast in 2024 Burgerland
Are they also armed with M4s and drive around in ex-USMC MRAPs like the Sheriff of bumfucknowhere?
Jeez, despite the hardships I have to face every fucking day of my life, I am indeed glad I was born here and not in the US.
In my experience it's mostly golf carts and the occasional cop car. I don't think they're the ones dealing with protestors, or at least not alone. It does normalize the presence of police on campus though.
As far as I'm aware, there's a lot of overlap of university cops also working for the local PD in some capacity as well.
One of the big things after 9/11 was streamlining communication and cooperation between cops at every level from local to federal. Whenever anything big happens they'll bring in hordes of cops from all across the state or even from other states.
Yeah cooperation definitely occurs regardless. I meant that the university cops are also just the actual local cops who are more or less just taking more hours by working at the university.
Yeah. During California wildfires, cops basically allocate themselves a whole lane of freeway for their caravans from county to county (so they can "hunt looters" of course). And the state calls this fucking "mutual aid"! Get that word out of your filthy fucking mouths!
During the school shooting in Uvalde, didn’t they call in state police to do nothing alongside the local police while kids were murdered? That’s some coordination.
University cops are there just to make sure athletes and white boys get away with their crimes, particularly sexual assault. For suppressing dissent, they call in the local police.
Not generally, but at least where I was they have no issues calling in city cops who do have all this stuff.
The very idea of cops not being allowed anywhere, except Indian reservations, is mind boggling to me. I can’t even imagine it. Surprised other countries have that immunity.
Our leaders encourage and advocate, regularly, violence against critics of the empire. Murdoch media amplifies stochastic terrorism.
Perfectly find when fascists bring their trailers to dump shit and piss all over protesting environmental regs or semi convoys block roads for anti immigrant and mask bullshit though.