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.
Western Ukraine supporters when you don’t think that every Ukrainian aged 14 - 75 should be sent to die
Der Spiegel’s got a banger cover for Germany’s 75th anniversary: “Nothing Learned?”
Chaser: apparently this is because they aren’t supporting Israel enough
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Another bank capitulates to the demands of Palestine Action:
https://twitter.com.com/Pal_action/status/1791244062332240064BREAKING: After sustained global action, Scotiabank slashes it’s former $500million investment in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons firm. Actions will continue until Elbit is bankrupt
War trophy from the anti-French riots:
https://twitter.com/war_noir/status/1791866361783660820A protester (on the left) can be seen with a rare “Steyr HS .460” anti-materiel rifle which was captured during the raids.
Thousands march in Dublin calling for end to violence in Gaza
Thousands of people took part in a rally in Dublin city centre on Saturday calling for an end to the violence in Gaza.
The event was organised by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), and was supported by more than 100 Irish civil society groups.
The group said the event was staged to call “for an end to Israel’s genocidal assault on the people of Gaza, and for the Irish Government to take action to hold Israel accountable”.
Protesters assembled at 1pm at the Garden of Remembrance on Parnell Square, before marching from there to Leinster House for a rally outside the Dáil. A number of speakers criticised the Government’s “empty words” on Israel following its actions in response to the October 7th attack by Hamas, and called for concrete sanctions against the state.
Those taking part in the rally carried flags, wore Palestinian attire, and chanted slogans including “free, free, Palestine” and “ceasefire now”.
Speakers include IPSC chairwoman Zoë Lawlor and Irish Palestinian Zak Hania, who was trapped in Gaza until recently.
Every time we destroy an American plane, I feel sad for the American citizen
Because I know that America will spend the money that was supposed to provide healthcare to build another planehttps://twitter.com/Ahmed_hassan_za/status/1791230963998933286
The US removed Cuba the list of countries not fully cooperating against terrorism, also known as the Not Fully Cooperating Countries (NFCC) list, State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel confirmed on Wednesday. Patel said that the circumstances leading to Cuba’s designation as an NFCC have changed since 2022.
The NFCC list is part of the State Department’s annual assessment of international cooperation in counterterrorism efforts, and countries on this list may face restrictions on certain types of aid and exports of defense-related goods and services.
Cuba was initially placed on the NFCC list in 2020 due to its refusal to collaborate with Colombia on extradition requests related to members of the National Liberation Army (Spanish: Ejército de Liberación Nacional, ELN), a designated terrorist organization. The Cuban government did not formally respond to the extradition requests for ELN leaders filed by Colombia after the group claimed responsibility for the 2019 bombing of a Bogotá police academy that killed 22 people and injured 87 others.
https://www.jurist.org/news/2024/05/us-r
I just wanna take this moment to reiterate how fucking stupid the way the DSA delegation behaved towards Cuba was given that they’re still helping leftist groups like this. Incredibly unserious people.
- colonists attacking and destroying gaza aid with cover from the cops who do nothing.
Strange things happening in Argentina (
)Unrest in Misiones as hundreds of officers protest in front of police building
The Milei administation has created a crisis committee and pledged to send 200 military officers
Hundreds of teachers and police officers demanded pay raises outside a Misiones police building for the second straight day on Saturday, raising alarms in the national and provincial administrations. Some 2,000 demonstrators put up tents to cover themselves from the drizzle outside the police radio command in Posadas, the provincial capital. People and police cars were still pouring into the streets on Saturday afternoon. Less than a hundred meters away, teachers held a separate demonstration that included burning tires.
(More inside the spoiler)
spoiler
“You can see close to six hundred active [officers], some with their faces covered and some in uniforms — I counted 21 police cars and 30 other cars,” Pablo García, a journalist from the Info Tierra Colorada media outlet present at the protest, told the Herald. He added that retired police officers and their families also took part in the demonstration.
The national security ministry created a crisis committee to coordinate efforts with the provincial government. The ministry announced that the national government would send 200 military police to help quell the incidents. A spokesperson for the national Interior Ministry told the Herald that they are waiting for provincial governor Hugo Passalacqua to provide instructions as to how to proceed.
The mass demonstrations began after a group of teachers — who had been protesting for roughly a month — broke into the provincial legislature on Thursday. Close to 3:00 a.m. on Friday, police officers started arriving in squad cars and began burning tires in front of the radio command headquarters. They later gave the tires to the teachers, who used them for their protests.
Although some reports stated that protestors had seized the building, the police spokesperson showed the judge on duty, Ricardo Balor, that the protest was limited to the exterior and that the radio command was operating normally. The police are being represented in salary negotiations by retired officers since active officers are not allowed to form a union. Teachers, on the other hand, have had a plethora of unions, but most of them are under an independent group with no legal representation. According to García, the police are not on strike as officers are still on duty in the rest of the city.
“More than salaries”
Teachers and police are demanding a 100% pay raise, claiming that they have lost more than 50% of their purchasing power in the last eight months due to inflation rates. The Misiones government announced a 15% raise for the police, meaning monthly salaries of AR$467,759 (US$494) for officers and AR$558,778 (US$617) for sergeants. According to Misiones teachers, they are the worst-paid in the country, amid rampant inflation that reached a 280% interannual rate in April. “A new teacher in the province is currently earning around AR$240,000 (US$254 at the official exchange rate) [a month]; those with the highest seniority earn AR$394,000 (US$416),” he said in an interview with the AnRed media outlet.
The situation has worsened since the national government eliminated certain transfers to provinces. Among those benefits is the Teachers’ Incentive National Fund (FONID, in Spanish), which was used to pay part of the teachers’ salaries. However, Passalaqua is still close to Javier Milei. After meeting with Interior Minister Guillermo Francos in April, the deputies that responded to him voted in favor of Milei’s omnibus bill. “We will help to the extent that they help the people from Misiones, mutual governance. Quid pro quo,” Passalaqua said at the time to the La Nación newspaper.
García said he did not think the conflict would end soon, stating that the protest goes “beyond salaries.” The police spokesperson, for instance, is demanding an “amnesty” for officers involved in the protests, given that they would face disciplinary measures because they cannot legally hold demonstrations.
As for teachers, he said that they “are coming from various points of the province.” “They say that schools that don’t have toilets or fans, that they have stopped serving breakfast [for students in need] or paying janitors,” he said. “Fundamental issues are being discussed.”
So, pigs are revolting in the province of Misiones, which borders Paraguay to the west and Brasil to the north and east. Usually, you don’t want your little pigs to protest (let alone strike) because you know, that’s a big issue, as these people are armed, they have military-like cohesion and have training. So you’d want to fix this issue ASAP. But in the anpcap wonderland that is Argentina, none of this happens. And the Ministry of Security answers by sending a force of militarized police to confront the local pigs. So pig-on-pig violence might be happening soon, I’m just gonna
As for the teachers, power to them. And I hope this Gendarmería force arriving at the province isn’t meant for them.
Now, these pigs and literally fuck off and die, even though they joined the teacher’s protest if they get a raise sooner than later they’ll be smashing their heads at the orders of their governor. So fuck them. Also, police from the northern provinces are known for being notoriously bad (surprise, I know), not only they have shit training (some officers are even illiterate) but they’re also ridiculously corrupt, like officers actively engaging in drug trafficking and human trafficking (especially women, and you know where that ends) activities, let alone tortures and disappearances, so they can fuck off and die a horrible death.
ACAB.
South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands, urged the court to order "the immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of the Israeli army from the entire Gaza Strip.”
South Africa urged the United Nations’ highest court on Thursday to issue an order to stop the Israeli attack on the city of Rafah as part of its case accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.
It said that the attack on Rafah “must be stopped” to ensure the survival of the Palestinian people.
Vusimuzi Madonsela, South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands urged the court to order "the immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of the Israeli army from the entire Gaza Strip.”
The two-day hearings at the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, come after South Africa last week asked for additional emergency measures to protect Rafah. More than one million Palestinians have taken refuge in the southern Gaza City.
Israel, which has denounced South Africa’s claim that it is violating the 1949 Genocide Convention as baseless, will respond on Friday. In previous filings it stressed it had stepped up efforts to get humanitarian aid into Gaza as the ICJ had ordered.
Last week, South Africa called for additional emergency measures to protect Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where more than a million Palestinians are sheltering.
It also asked the court to issue an order to Israel to allow UN officials and organizations providing humanitarian aid, as well as journalists and investigators, to enter the Strip without hindrance. She added that Israel has so far been ignoring and violating the orders previously issued by the court.
“From the beginning, Israel’s intention has always been to destroy Palestinian life and wipe them (the Palestinians) off the face of the earth,” South African lawyer Thembeka Ngcukaitobi said. Rafah is the last place.
- Fortune article
Text
The Justice Department on Thursday announced the arrests of three people in a complex stolen identity scheme that officials say generates enormous proceeds for the North Korean government, including for its weapons program.
The scheme involves thousands of North Korean information technology workers who prosecutors say are dispatched by the government to live abroad and who rely on the stolen identities of Americans to obtain remote employment at U.S.-based Fortune 500 companies, jobs that give them access to sensitive corporate data and lucrative paychecks.
The fraud is a way for heavily sanctioned North Korea, which is cut off from the U.S. financial system, to take advantage of a “toxic brew” of converging factors, including high-tech labor shortage in the U.S. and the proliferation of remote telework, Marshall Miller, the Justice Department’s principal associate deputy attorney general, said in an interview. The Justice Department says the cases are part of a broader strategy to not only prosecute individuals who enable the fraud but also to build partnerships with other countries and to warn private-sector companies of the need to be vigilant about the people they’re hiring. FBI and Justice Department officials launched an initiative in March and last year announced the seizure of website domains used by North Korean IT workers.
“More and more often, compliance programs at American companies and organizations are on the front lines of protecting our national security,” “Corporate compliance and national security are now intertwined like never before.”
The Justice Department says the conspiracy has affected more than 300 companies — including a high-end retail chain and “premier Silicon Valley technology company” — and generated more than $6.8 million in revenue for the workers, who are based outside of the U.S., including in China and Russia.
The three people arrested include an Arizona woman, Christina Marie Chapman, who prosecutors say facilitated the scheme by helping the workers obtain and validate stolen identities, receiving laptops from U.S. companies who thought they were sending the devices to legitimate employees and helping the workers connect remotely to the company.
According to the indictment, Chapman ran more than one “laptop farm” where U.S. companies sent computers and paychecks to IT workers they did not realize were overseas.
At Chapman’s laptop farms, she allegedly connected overseas IT workers who logged in remotely to company networks so it appeared the logins were coming from the United States. She also is alleged to have received paychecks for the overseas IT workers at her home, forging the beneficiaries’ signatures for transfer abroad and enriching herself by charging monthly fees.
The other two defendants include a Ukrainian man, Oleksandr Didenko, who prosecutors say created fake accounts at job search platforms and was arrested in Poland last week, and a Vietnamese national, Minh Phuong Vong, who was arrested Thursday in Maryland on charges of fraudulently obtaining a job at a U.S. company that was actually performed by remote workers who posed as him and were based overseas.
It was not immediately clear if any of the three had lawyers.
Separately, the State Department said it was offering a reward for information about certain North Korean IT workers who officials say were assisted by Chapman. And the FBI, which conducted the investigations, issued a public service announcement that warned companies about the scheme, encouraging them to implement identity verification standards through the hiring process and to educate human resources staff and hiring managers about the threat.
Not shocked that the media is now trying to push the narrative that Hamas is abandoning Gazans because they are no longer providing government services and are now focusing on insurgency. Where exactly would the political wing of Hamas provide services? Schools? Bombed out. Hospitals? Bombed out. Government buildings? Bombed out. They said that Hamas is willing to keep up the insurgency at any cost. Well yeah no shit, Israel is fucking carrying out a genocide against its people and shows no signs of slowing down.
Death to America. Death to Israel.
I TOLD you dawg. I told you about helicoptersdeleted by creator
