Image is from Wikipedia’s article on the war..
I’ve wanted to cover Myanmar for a while now but haven’t had the needed knowledge to write much more than “This situation really sucks.” After doing a little reading on the situation, I feel even more confused. A decent analogy is the Syrian Civil War, at least while Assad was in power (though it’s still pretty true today) - many different opposition groups, some co-operating with the United States, others not. The main government supported partially by an anti-American superpower, but who could live with that government collapsing if there are deals to be made with the group coming into power. A conflict kept going and exploited at least partially by the United States and other imperial core powers, though with plenty of genuine domestic animosity and desires for political independence.
Recently, the Myanmar government - the mainstream media uses “junta”, which is probably accurate despite the connotations - has promised elections at the end of 2025. This doesn’t seem likely to happen, and even if it did, how this would work in a country as war-torn as Myanmar is unclear. The government is losing territory and soldiers at a quick pace; they now hold only 21% of the country, though that 21% does at least comprise many of the cities. It’s difficult to get a handle on the number of people affected because civil wars and insurgencies have been ongoing in some shape or form for decades, but we’re talking at least millions displaced and thousands of civilians killed.
Here’s a comment by @TheGenderWitch@hexbear.net from fairly recently that covers the situation in Myanmar:
comment
The military government of Myanmar is losing to the Rebel Groups, and badly. https://www.voanews.com/a/myanmar-s-rebels-closing-in-around-junta-into-fifth-year-of-civil-war-/7958145.html
somethings really afoot though, news about myanmar from western outlets and channels have suddenly all remembered myanmar exists and written quite a lot about them in the last few days. Its suspicious, it could be capitalists trying to signal their want for US involvement in the civil war. It could also be a targeted propaganda campaign already pre planned in order to make sure people are clued into the conflict.
I think this seems to be another Assad situation. The Military government is pretty unpopular domestically and is losing quite a bit of ground. I would be surprised if they lasted to 2027. Supplied by both Russia and China, theyve been able to keep some flow of weapons, but are suffering a lot from manpower issues. Conscription has been enacted, but conscripts are a poor replacement for trained soldiers. According to reports, they only hold about 21% of the land and are losing lots of territory. They also have extended their emergency rule for another 6 months, throwing doubt on the ability to follow through with their 2025 election. They’ve lost large amounts of territory, thousands of soldiers, and 2 regional commands. They’re not dead yet though, as they have some ability to retake some territory and win some battles, but again 21%. Rebels currently are making steady progress towards the second largest city in the country.
while I don’t like the rebels, they are western aligned, they have popular support and are allied to many of Myanmar’s ethnic minority defence groups. Im wondering who really has the power in this situation though, since many of the gains seem to be made by the Ethnic armies, not the NUG. This revolutionary energy could be fueled to establish a socialist federation, but won’t, and the popular revolutionary energy is fueled toward the NUG. It’ll probably be another pro-west bourgeoisie democracy. It will probably then turn against the ethnic rebels and we’ll end up basically where myanmar was pre coup. Probably will have a strong military influence on politics as well, since the rebel forces seem to be made up of officers and very little political groups. By then, people will be extremely tired of war and more likely to accept any conflict resolution than another civil war. In the midst of “It Happened” stands a stronger, unmovable “nothing ever happens”. Would be neat if the Communist Party of Burma could somehow come out on top, but they have only around 1000 soldiers and don’t control a large amount of territory.
China’s interests in the region are still secure, but siding with the Junta is a bad idea, one I understand though. China doesn’t want a western aligned power to take over a china aligned state, and is trying to make sure their economic investments in the area are protected and their mineral income is continued. They have deep ties with many Ethnic Minority states, especially on their border, and the NUG forces, mostly again to protect infrastructure investments and keep the minerals flowing. They might flip back to the NUG as the Junta starts collapsing over the next year or so, especially since the new US administration seems to be really cutting back on foreign aid. The General in charge of the rebel government forces complained quite a bit about how much aid ukraine got and how much he wanted that aid. He was basically begging for anti aircraft systems “like in ukraine” lol. China could definitely swoop in and back the rebels, which while hurting their reputation, is probably the best move long term. China’s only interest is to keep Myanmar from being pro-west, keep control of Myanmar’s mineral flow, and protect other investments in the area.
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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 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.
People already clowning on his corpse lmao
what a piece of shit
Yeah the fact that there are just random people who would do that in the street says a lot about this piece of shit.
Good. Fuck im
Yemen has BANNED the import of BURGERS. We salute the People of Yemen and Ansar Allah in their brave campaign against treatlerism.
*comprador treatlerism, specifically.
This is a human rights violation and I support US efforts to airdrop happy meals into the afflicted territories
even imagining a burger can lead to ruin, many such cases
import substitution time
This seems to be more of a ban on imported pastries and bread than anything else for self sufficiency.
🍔
Unlimited Genocide on international burgerism
Just watched Justin Podur’s video from yesterday. I’ve always appreciated his thoughts over the last 1.5 years because he seems to always have a realistic take.
And sadly, he seems rather pessimistic about the current situation with Gaza and Yemen. It looks like Israel wants to resume war and genocide - not just in Gaza, but in Yemen and Lebanon as well. And while the US was previously holding them back a bit, they seem to be all on board now with being a partner in death and destruction. The prospects for continuing a “ceasefire” seem pretty grim right now.
New Canadian Prime Minister Carney orders review of F-35 purchase plans. This comes along with a whole lot of public comments about wanting much closer ties to Europe in general, and especially the EU. I really really really hate to say it, but given his experience in the European business world, he’s probably going to be well-received by the European ruling class as a reasonably-trustworthy “one of us”.
I felt dirty typing that. I wonder if he’s bound for a Churchill-like role. A despicable scumbag for the his whole life, except for a brief period where his cutthroat instincts and his rabid nationalism were applied to fight a greater enemy.
what do you even say:
President Masoud Pezeshkian: ‘America can assassinate me, let them try, but they will never be able to stop Iran’
- Telegram
The race is on: Will the US kill everyone on the planet or will the planet kill the US
Latest statement by the Yemeni Armed Forces Brigadier General Yahya Sare’e, on last night’s attack on Yemen and the response to it.
full text
The American enemy launched a blatant aggression against our country in the past hours with more than 47 airstrikes, targeting several areas in the governorates of Sana’a, Sa’dah, Al Bayda, Hajjah, Dhamar, Ma’rib, and Al Jawf, in which The American enemy committed a number of massacres, resulting in the martyrdom and injury of dozens, In a preliminary toll.
In response to this aggression, the Armed Forces carried out a specific military operation targeting the American aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and its warships in the northern Red Sea with 18 ballistic and cruise missiles and a drone. This operation was jointly carried out by the missile force, the UAV force, and the naval forces.
The Yemeni Armed Forces wil not hesitate to target all American warships in the Red Sea and in the Arabian Sea in retaliation to the aggression against our country. With the help of Allah Almighty, the Yemeni Armed Forces will continue to impose a naval blockade on the lsraeli enemy and ban its ships in the declared zone of operations until aid and basic needs are delivered to the Gaza Strip.
This American aggression will only increase the steadfastness, faith, and resilience of beloved Yemen and its steadfast, faithful, and struggling people.
The Anti Ship Ballistic Missiles are back finally, but as suspected/known already, no hits/impacts on the US Navy warships. Apparently one of the projectiles (ballistic missile, cruise missile or drone) hit the Sinai Peninsula, likely after missing the US Navy warships.
In the past hour their has been more movements by the US Air Force reconnaissance aircraft and RAF refueling aircraft on FlightRadar24 similar to last night, highly likely we’ll see more US airstrikes on Yemen tonight… Also the USS Harry Truman is being resupplied by two C-2 Greyhound aircraft out of Bahrain.
Only airstrikes reported so far were targeting the captured ship “Galaxy Leader”, docked in Yemen.
More airstrikes reported, I’ll continue on in a seperate comment.
I missed this until now but there was a major tailings dam failure at a mine in Zambia last month. This is a really poor one, it sounds like there was a lot of acidic, heavy metal laden waste that went into the downstream environment.
archive - https://archive.is/Te73M
The spill happened on Feb. 18 when a tailings dam that holds acidic waste from a copper mine in the north of the country collapsed, according to investigators from the Engineering Institution of Zambia.
The collapse allowed some 50 million liters of waste containing concentrated acid, dissolved solids and heavy metals to flow into a stream that links to the Kafue River, Zambia’s most important waterway, the engineering institution said.
Here is a more technical discussion with before and after pics: https://eos.org/thelandslideblog/chambishi-tsf-1
I don’t know the history of sino metals and this particular mine, like whether the mine existed and was bought by them or if sino metals designed it and started it themselves, but in any case this was absolutely the fault of the engineers and staff running the facility. Safe water storage is a critical aspect of dam operation and by running the system without it, this failure was way worse than it could have been. Regardless of who pays the price in dollars, it’s the people, animals and environment of the kafue river that pays the real price.
the headline of this article is accurate - copper is a bigger bottleneck for electrification than rare earths: https://www.npr.org/2025/03/16/nx-s1-5327095/copper-rare-earth-minerals-mining-electronics
comprador moment when the suzerain can’t complain themselves
Imagine talking about a not having a national mandate when even in September last year 89% of Palestinians wanted Abbas to resign and more than 60% supported the dissolution of the entire Palestinian Authority.
IMO the funniest thing about this is that Elon sucks at video games!
UK, US and Israel have been doing fighter and bomber exercises together. Likely target is Iran.
CNN… Agreeing that Khalil’s case is his rights being violated still misinformed on his views. Even compared him to KKK and bought into the trump smear campaigns. I hope some libs see that and realize that CNN is not serious some are tbh because musks “roman salute” is still not widely condemned there. Comedy
I’ve mentioned it a few times before, but it’s insane how the West just memory-holed Ukraine summarily executing one of its own negotiators early in the war (and insane that they did it). That’s should have been (and should still be) a huge deal, but nah. Ukraine even buried him with honors, admitting he wasn’t some Russian spy, but after that it’s like it never happened.
In the liberal mind there are no good or bad actions, only good or bad people. Ukraine is the epic ubermensch god-state so everything they do is automatically justified.
