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Bulletins and News Discussion from March 10th to March 16th, 2025 - The New World Struggles To Be Born; Now Is The Time Of Proxy Wars - COTW: Myanmar

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:

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1K comments

  • According to Al Masirah TV (Yemeni/Ansarallah owned TV channel), there have been US airstrikes targeting the captured "Galaxy Leader" ship docked in Yemen, as well as airstrikes in Hodeidah tonight. No other attacks reported as of 00:00 UTC.

    More US airstrikes in Al Jawf Governorate, and the Yemeni Armed Forces are set to release an important statement at 1:40 UTC, 20 minutes from now.

    Statement from the Yemeni Armed Forces Brigadier General Yahya Sare'e:

    Twitter source

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    It seems as if Yemen has been able to reduce the intensity of the US airstrikes compared to yesterday by launching an attack against the US carrier group. No direct hits reported though. Anti Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBMs) used for the second time in 24 hours, they must have been stockpiling these weapons for a situation like this.

    Lots of military movement within the continental United States in the last hour, 9-12 mid air refueling and support aircraft with the "GOLD" callsign are airborne. The "GOLD" callsign is usually used for Coronet missions to and from the continental United States in an eastward direction. These are long distance refuelling missions to support aircraft that can't fly the full distance without multiple fuel stops. So a number of mid air refueling tankers provide the other aircraft with lots of small fuel stops along the way, topping up the other aircraft multiple times in the flight. In short, the US Air Force might be deploying a large number of fighter or bomber aircraft to the Middle East for further operations against Yemen and Ansarallah, given that the Yemenis are not backing down. Wichita is where a refueling squadron is based, and the USAF's B-2A Spirit stealth bombers are based in Missouri.

  • If the Liberal Party of Canada has been ensured another electoral victory through their surge in popularity in response to Trump's annexation threats, it would be extremely funny that Justin Trudeau had resigned just a few weeks prior.

  • Danish state TV is now live broadcasting "a national conversation" where "top ministers, leading politicians, experts and correspondents" meet to talk about "how Denmark and Europe should navigate a world in disarray", in response to the coming end of the Ukraine war and the ascent of the Trump regime in Washington. European elites are afraid that Daddy America is going to leave them alone and they're losing their shit.

    It is as deranged a display of cope and paranoia as one could expect. It started out with short statements from highschoolers and random citizens, telling how scared they are of all insecure future. Then, to set the mood, a choir of high schoolers sang a very beautiful and emotional hymn that is often sung at funerals.

    A state media correspondent in Ukraine tells viewers such gems as "Ukrainians have no option but to continue fighting" and tell how random Ukrainians approach him unsolicited to say thanks for Danish support. He also tell that these Ukrainians ask him why the west is so afraid of the Russians, in years of war they could only take a little part of Ukraine so they should be no match for the collective west.

    An "expert" tells that Russia can't win, citing the allegedly slow rate of territorial advance and that "Ukraine can't lose" as long as NATO keeps arming them.

    However, the correspondent admitted that people in Ukraine know that Crimea and the Donbass are lost.

    The powerful head of Denmark's "Moderate Party"-controlled Foreign Ministry Lars Løkke Rasmussen is butthurt over American attempts at ending the war. He claims that Russia is on its knees and claims that "We had all possibilities if we had stood firm!" still dreaming of a military victory.

    The Nordic hermit kingdom's leader Mette Frederiksen also provided bangers such as "There is nothing Ukrainians or the rest of Europe wants more than peace ... But peace can also be dangerous". She claimed that "a so-called peaceful solution in Russia's favour" would mean that Russia would withdraw, rearm and attack Europe again.

    Both Frederiksen and Rasmussen kept going on about how necessary the planned military spending spree and the coming expansion of forced military service for both young men and women are.

    At no point did anyone challenge the idea that war with Russia is imminent unless we build a death star. Nobody talked about how to find a way for the west to live in peace with it's neighbours. Nobody mentioned the role of NATO expansionism in the start of the Ukraine war.

    Then there's was an emotional song about love, dedicated "to all the worried young people".

    I could not watch any more beyond this.

  • Latest statement by the Yemeni Armed Forces Brigadier General Yahya Sare'e, on last night's attack on Yemen and the response to it.

    Twitter source

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    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.

  • The Trump administration has updated the rules for issuing visas to several countries. According to Reuters Visas permanently suspended for:

    Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.

    Partial suspension for some types of visa (tourist, student, among others):

    Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar and South Sudan.

    Countries recommended for partial suspension if they do not correct deficiencies within 60 days:

    Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Belarus, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritania, Pakistan, Republic of Congo, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Turkmenistan and Republic of Vanuatu.

    I guess Trump is not going to remove the sanctions against Eritrea anymore, also what did Laos, Cambodia, East Timor and all those Islands ever did to the US to deserve this?

  • President Masoud Pezeshkian: 'America can assassinate me, let them try, but they will never be able to stop Iran'

    • Telegram

  • A power outage occurred in the National Electric System due to a high power fluctuation. The causes and magnitude of the incident are being investigated. The Cuban Ministry of Energy and Mines reported that around 8:15 p.m. tonight, a failure at the Diezmero substation caused a significant loss of generation in western Cuba and, with it, the failure of the National Electric System, SEN. The recovery process is already underway.

    President Miguel Diaz-Canel has announced that intensive work is underway to restore stability to the SEN (National Electricity System). "Since last night and into the early morning, we have been in constant communication with Minister Vicente de la O. Several provinces have already set up their microsystems, and the generating units are beginning to synchronize", president said.

    Saturday Marcha 15 / 4:00 PM - Power restoration begins in Havana Small areas of Havana Center, Cerro, and San Miguel del Padron now have power in Cuban capital city. The western microsystem has been operating since early afternoon. Decisions have had to be made based on new analyses, using more complex alternatives that slow down the restoration process.

    The aforementioned areas have a demand of 6.3 MW, which represents approximately 1.5 percent of the capital's customers. This is a small sample, but it demonstrates the effectiveness of the strategies implemented to restore service through this western microsystem, which will operate until its development is synchronized with the rest of the microsystems in the center and east of the country

  • Iconic comrade Leila Khaled has been hospitalized with an Intracranial hemorrhage (ICH). Sending sincere prayers and good vibes to our heroic comrade.

  • President Donald Trump has signed an executive order cutting funding to the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which fully funds and oversees the global media outlets, Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Radio Free Asia (RFA).

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  • The U.S. has carried out attacks targeting Ansarallah in Yemen in response to the group announcing it will once again close the shipping lanes to the Red Sea, due to Israel cutting off humanitarian aid into Gaza.

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  • Fun article in the FT this weekend about Germany's military recruitment failures. Highlights:

    As a podcaster and freelance journalist, Ole Nymoen admits he enjoys freedom of expression and other democratic rights in his home country of GERMANY. But he would not want to die for THEM. In a book published this week, Why I Would Never Fight for My Country, the 27-year-old argues ordinary people should not be sent into battle on behalf of nation states and their rulers — even to fend off an invasion. Occupation by a foreign power might lead to a “shitty” life, he told the Financial Times. “But I’d rather be occupied than dead.” Nymoen, a self-described Marxist, does not claim to be representative of Generation Z in Germany. But his stance — and his striking honesty about it — taps into a wider questions facing Europe as it re-arms on a scale not seen since the end of the cold war.

    But, while those funds are helping to plug gaps in arms and equipment, one of the biggest remaining issues is manpower. Germany’s armed forces commissioner, Eva Högl, this week warned the country was not closer to its goal of having 203,000 active troops by 2031, as the overall size of the armed forces slightly declined last year, partly because of a high number of dropouts. A quarter of the 18,810 men and women who signed up in 2023 left the armed forces within six months.

    Christian Mölling, Europe director at the Bertelsmann Foundation, estimates that German troop numbers need to rise from 181,000 today to 270,000 in the years ahead in order to reach Nato targets — and fill gaps left if American forces stationed in Europe withdraw.

    While a recent survey by the pollster YouGov found 58 per cent of Germans would support a return to conscription, only a third of those aged between 18 and 29 felt the same way. Nymoen, himself a Die Linke voter, is deeply suspicious of Europe’s race to re-arm. It was all very well for European leaders to sound belligerent, he said. “The thing is that, in the end, it’s going to be me in the trenches.”

  • Mass US airstrikes in Yemen, which are still ongoing. Sana'a, Hodeidah, and now Saada are being targeted. Though it's unclear if Hodeidah was targeted now or in the days before, with Al Arabiya reporting strikes on March 11. Or it could be Al Arabiya leaking future US military actions, again. 9 civilians are said to have been killed, with 9 injuries. Targets are said to be air defences, Ansarallah military members (at their homes or in command and control facilities) and Ansarallah military bases.

    The Guardian

    Al Jazeera

    AP News

    Al Mayadeen English

    I've reverse image searched and done Error Level Analysis (ELA) on both images below, they appear to be legitimate.

    Lots of videos of ammunition depots exploding around Saada on Arabic twitter with lots of secondary explosions, unable to verify them at this time.

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    More airstrikes in the past few minutes targeting Dhamar city and Ans district, and in Saada, according to Al Masirah TV correspondents stationed in Dhamar and Saada. The airstrikes are still ongoing across Yemen, the air raids have been renewed.

    More airstrikes in the Al Bayda and Hajjah governorates. This is probably the largest aerial campaign carried out by US CENTCOM forces against Yemen since the start of their campaign against their actions in the Red Sea. US reconnaissance aircraft took off from bases in Bahrain, the UAE and Qatar.

    Third round of US airstrikes in Saada now.

    From footage released by US CENTCOM on social media, we can see that the US Navy is using 2000lb BLU-117 bombs with GBU-31 JDAM guidance kits, and AGM-154 JSOW stand off cluster munition dispensers. Collateral damage and civilian casualties are inevitable if these weapons are used in populated areas...

    Warning: severely injured/dead civilians, including children. The victims of tonight's US airstrikes, Al Masirah TV

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    Airstrikes now in Marib Governorate.

    Fourth round of airstrikes in Saada.

    Another round of US airstrikes in Sana'a. The airstrikes in Yemen have been going on for over 6 hours now. New videos from CENTCOM show the use of Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missiles, launched from US Navy ships.

    The power station in Dahyan, Saada, was apparently targeted.

    Renewed airstrikes in Sana'a Governorate, now 7 hours into the US CENTCOM bombardement of Yemen.

  • AmeriKKKa has expelled the South African ambassador Ibrahim Rasool and declared him persona non grata - Voice of the Cape

    According to a media statement by the EFF, they completely agree with "the characterization given by ambassador Rasool that the American president is the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan". No one else has managed to successfully cause Trump's ego to flatline like he just watched Air Force One crash into the Trump Tower.

  • Them dems have done it and your average lib is more ready to radicalize than ever - they're actually actively radicalizing, we just need to direct it to revolutionary organizing.

  • Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says the war with Russia may be close to ending. "Now we have a good chance of ending this war quickly and securing peace. We have solid understandings on security with our European partners. Now we are close to the first step in ending any war. Silence." Zelensky said.

    Donald Trump claims that thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are surrounded by Russian troops in Kusrk and asks Putin to “preserve lives”. "At this very moment, thousands of Ukrainian troops are completely surrounded by the Russian military, and in a very bad and vulnerable position. I strongly urge President Putin that their lives be spared. This would be a horrible massacre, not seen since the Second World War. God bless them all," Trump said.

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  • Interesting article attempting to understand why Mahmoud Khalil was chosen:
    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2025/03/the-curious-case-of-mahmoud-khalil/

    The simple truth is that anybody working in good faith in the British Embassy in Lebanon can be no friend of the resistance to Israel. Everything the British Embassy do in Lebanon is intrinsically linked to the overriding goal of promoting the interests of Israel, particularly through weakening Hezbollah, and this is especially true when it comes to programmes into Syria running out of Beirut.

    So how did Khalil move from British government operative to Palestinian student activist?

    And then, why on earth did the Trump regime pick him for its first high-profile deportation?

    I can see three plausible explanations for Khalil’s behaviour:

    1. He was never pro-British but was infiltrating the Embassy for the Palestinians
    2. He was never pro-Palestinian but was infiltrating the protest movement for the British government
    3. He was not very political but was moved recently to activism by the genocide in Gaza

    Of these, option 3) seems to me the most plausible, though all are certainly possible.

    It would be a delicious irony if the Trump regime had arrested a British agent by accident, but this seems to me unlikely. I do not think MI6 would run a Palestinian agent in the USA without informing the CIA – although they may have done if there were a specific concern that the CIA would leak the identity.

    If Khalil were a British agent he could have been arrested for protection if there were concerns he had been “made”, or he could have been arrested because the Americans found out and were furious at not being informed. But I do not think these are the likely scenarios.

    It seems to me much more probable that a once-complacent Khalil changed his mind and became more – righteously – radical due to the genocide in Gaza.

    In which case the motive for choosing him as the target for arrest is very plain. Both the US and UK will be worried about revelations Khalil might make about support to jihadists in Syria from his time working on this in Lebanon. Whisking him into incommunicado detention, whilst maximum pressure is applied to persuade him to keep silent, is then an obvious move.

    It is important for freedom of speech and for the rights in general of immigrants in the USA that Mr Khalil is free. It is obviously profoundly important for him and his family. I do not want anything I have written to detract from that.

    But the puzzle of why such an extremely complicated target for the test case was chosen, when there exist far lower-hanging fruit, is one that needs to be considered. I hope I have offered some possible lines of thought you find useful.

1041 comments