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Bulletins and News Discussion from March 31st to April 6th, 2025 - Magnitude 7.7 Earthquake Hits Mandalay

Image of destruction in Mandalay, Myanmar, from Al Jazeera.

As if the ongoing civil war wasn't enough, Myanmar has now been struck by a very powerful earthquake, resulting in 2000 deaths and thousands more injured as of the time of writing. Estimates are that the death toll could reach 10,000. Infrastructure like roads and bridges are damaged, and the hospitals are overwhelmed. The earthquake struck during Eid prayers, resulting in even higher casualties as several mosques collapsed. 20 million people already required humanitarian assistance in Myanmar, and now the situation there will be even worse. International rescue teams have rushed into the country, and aid is being raised, though with USAID experiencing the... changes that it is, the United States will be of even more limited help than usual. So far, China has sent $14 million, while USAID has supplied $2 million. In Thailand, the death toll seems considerably lower, though there has still been significant damage; a skyscraper under construction collapsed in Bangkok.

Myanmar is located very close to the boundary between the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates. In particular, the country is divided in two by the north-south oriented Sagaing fault. This fault is typically strike-slip; that is, each side of the fault moves horizontally past each other. The earthquake's depth was 10 kilometers, which is pretty shallow, and its proximity to the surface amplified the felt force of the earthquake. Additionally, the soft soil in this region tends to further amplify seismic waves through a process called liquefaction. Combine all this with the lackluster building codes due to many years of impoverishment and civil wars, and this explains why the death toll, and the expense to the country in general to repair damage, will probably be extremely high.

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1.1K comments

  • I met my wife's zoomer cousins today for Eid and they're all watching YouTube streams of iShowSpeed touring China. I looked up some of the highlights of those streams and I genuinely believe that shit is more effective for the improvement of China's image amongst zoomer youth than a thousand articles by academic leftists titled "China's prosperity boom" or whatever. Zoomers are watching and being impressed by how clean the cities are, the fact that the stream doesn't lag in a high speed train in a tunnel, by how well-mannered Chinese youth are, and even trivial stuff like knowing about the Great Wall of China for the first time. 🇹🇼🇺🇦-bio creatures are seething in twitter replies about the evil SeeSeePee paying Speed to do these streams, while he's chilling in the Chinese mountains learning Shaolin kung fu by a nice Chinese dude named Master Liang. The world has truly changed, no amount of leaflets and protests has even a fraction of the effect of one stream of this Speed guy eating spicy noodles while doing backflips in the Forbidden City next to Mao's mausoleum.

  • The age/diversity gap between the "Hands Off" and pro-Palestine protestors in DC is really interesting.

    I recommend looking up images of both and comparing them. You would expect there to be some difference, but the reality is jaw-dropping.

  • Israel previously claimed that the ambulances "approached suspiciously" with their headlights and emergency lights off. Video proves otherwise.

  • It still kind of stuns me every time I realize the camp the migrants are being taken to is within driving distance from me. I’ve been in that area many times. Even dated a woman who worked for Bukele when he was mayor of San Salvador. At the time she was convinced that he would solve the crime problem for good and had a personal investment in it after she experienced attempted SA from a gang member. She ended up giving my personal info to his fans years later and they’ve been threatening me since then lol

    When it was being built I stopped by to see the site and said it wouldn’t be long before Guatemalans were sent there under the false premise of being related to gangs. Looks like that came true. I should really do a write-up on the Northern Triangle. It’s receiving a lot of attention now and some of the takes make me realize just how little about the region people know.

  • Incredible headline

    • Funny they're showcasing a PzH2000... it had a TERRIBLE combat record in Ukraine. Germany planned to sell like 100 of these pieces of shit to Ukraine, a bunch arrived and began combat trials. But soon after entering combat they had to be shipped back to Germany to replace their cannons as they suffered immense wear due to constant use -- the thing is that the germans never planned to have this vehicle fire dozens upon dozens of times each day in high intensity conflicts, far from it actually, so the cannons wore down. It couldn't even compete with soviet/russian made field artillery or SPGs... it's useless.

    • Too late the Mud Wizard has already claimed the land.

    • I’m no history expert, but…

  • So I think I will preemptively say this since some people have posted about Trumps whole trade war thing working.

    So the big one.....

    "What if he's right and industries will move to the US?"

    It is extremely unlikely because of a few things:

    'You can only build a massive factory if you know those tariffs are here to stay.'

    That means the USA will have to keep those tariffs for a long time. Building a large factory like one that can employ thousands of people takes several years, training those will again take years. We can look at the TSMC plants that were built in Japan took 3 years to build and get going. This means those tariffs that incentivize capitalists to move production have to do so because they know that those tariffs will be there for 10 years.

    Even with a 50% tariff it will still be cheaper to import than to produce locally.

    I feel like this one is self explanatory but like I'm sorry but the only way those factories come back is if the USA increases its prison population, aka its pool of slave labor, at least tenfold. Something which I doubt the USA can actually do, not because it lacks the capacity for cruelty but simply because it lacks the capacity with all the gutting of the government.

    Once counter tariffs start the US' own industries will get hit hard.

    The US currently imports iron to turn it into steel, Iron imports are already part of those tariffs so now the cost per iron has gone up by 50%, making it more expensive to produce which cuts into profit margins which are further cut into because other nations will just tariff US steel back, essentially this hurts any industry that needs to import to start producing much more than the people in government probably think.

    I mean effectively shutting down trade means that the US economy will have less goods in the economy per worker.

    That means US workers will be effectively poorer even with a job in the absolute best case scenario that is not going to happen. Which once it starts to crystallize will get the hogs out and yelling about stuff and unless Trump does do some fascist grab of power, he'll lose pathetically to some democrat called Chak Tham Greenly because Trump didn't deliver the treats. Which means those tariffs are on a 4 year timer.

    So with there being a 4 year timer most companies and capitalists will see the writing on the wall if Trump continues. What I think is that a lot of capitalists are currently deep in denial but that torpor will only stick around for so long, and as much as it pains capital to leave the current hegemon it's not like capital always was centered around the USA at one point it was centered in London, capital will move and make it's new nest somewhere else.

    Edit: I should also add that the TSMC plant was ONE plant and not a total reorganization of their economy and again about a thousand people, magnitudes smaller than what Trump is trying, and with construction goods readily available and not being you know also tariffed.

  • 24 years ago, PLA pilot Wang Wei defended our air space against an intruding US Air Force aircraft. During the confrontation, the American aircraft veered into his J-8II fighter. Resulting his death. Every April 1st, Chinese citizens would go to his grave and place models and pictures to report on the progress of our Air Force. This year, his grave was adorned with images of our 6th gen fighters. Source

  • Most destructive administration in modern history and the Democrats just beat the record for talking.

    Doing it without even having any actual bill to stop is like going to the basketball court on a day off and dancing around in front of the net when the other team isn't there, and then claiming you played great defence. And then losing to the other team when you actually play.

  • While everyone's enthralled by Trump's performance, the entity bombed another school killing dozens including children

    “ Islamic Resistance Movement - Hamas Press Release:

    The heinous massacre committed by the occupation army when it bombed the Dar al-Arqam School east of Gaza City, which sheltered thousands of displaced people. The attack resulted in dozens of martyrs and more than 100 wounded, the majority of whom were children and women. This constitutes a new brutal crime through which the fascist occupation government continues to target innocent civilians, as part of its genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip.

    These heinous crimes—committing brutal massacres, escalating forced evictions, imposing a policy of starvation, and closing the crossings to all necessities of life—are the elements of genocide defined under international law. They are being perpetrated by the war criminal Netanyahu and his fascist government, with criminal American political and military cover, making the US administration a direct accomplice in its perpetration.

    The unjustified international failure to play the required role in stopping the genocide and holding Zionist war criminals accountable is a stark expression of the collapse of the system of values ​​and laws that the international community has long championed, in the face of the horrific crime committed in the Gaza Strip, in full view of the world.

    What is required today from all international actors, and from our Arab and Islamic countries, is to break the silence and take immediate action to halt the horrific massacres against civilians and the humanitarian catastrophe being created by the fascist occupation in the Gaza Strip. They must work to hold Zionist war criminals accountable and prevent their impunity. Thursday: 05 Shawwal 1446 AH Corresponding to: 03 April 2025 AD”

  • All the recent attention on El Salvador is a good time to point out that Bukele is Palestinian and likes to position himself as “one of the good ones” referring to Hamas as “animals” and making a point to say that he’s a Christian Palestinian.

  • Defense for Children International has received the autopsy of 17-year-old Palestinian-Brazilian dual national Walid Ahmad, the first child to die in Israeli prisons. Ahmad reportedly likely died from starvation, dehydration, and infections due to prolonged malnutrition and medical neglect.

  • Flight attendants on how deportees were treated on deportation flights
    https://xcancel.com/propublica/status/1907599803531546650

    THREAD: Last year, ProPublica started receiving tips from an unusual kind of source: flight attendants.

    They said they'd worked on deportation flights for ICE, and they could tell us what it was really like on board.

    Most of the flight attendants hadn't knowingly signed up to help deport people. When they took their jobs, they’d expected to fly VIPs to glamorous locales.

    Then the airline started working for ICE, and many or most of their passengers were detainees, people in chains.

    We spoke with 7 current and former Global Crossing Airlines crew members. Their accounts were consistent with one another and aligned with what’s in legal filings and other records about ICE Air—important because neither GlobalX nor ICE answered any of ProPublica's questions.

    The flight attendants’ training classes hadn't prepared them for this, they told us.

    One flight attendant said: “They never taught us anything regarding the immigration flights... They didn’t tell us these people were going to be shackled, wrists to fucking ankles.”

    The flight attendants said there were new rules to follow, though:

    •Don’t talk to the detainees.
    •Don’t feed them.
    •Don’t make eye contact.
    •Don’t walk down the aisles without a guard escorting you.
    •Don’t sit in aisle seats, where detainees could get close to you.

    One flight attendant described needing to give emergency oxygen to a little girl traveling with her parents on a deportation flight. The girl had collapsed with low oxygen saturation and a high fever, and the flight was diverted back to the US. But when paramedics rushed on only the mom was allowed to join the little girl as they took her to the hospital, the flight attendant said.

    The flight attendant said the dad had to stay, and that he was going to be deported without the rest of his family, without knowing if his daughter would live.

    Three flight attendants said they did get some rare guidance on how to run evacuations on deportation flights from ICE Air pilots.

    “Just get up and leave” after you open the exit door, one recalls a pilot telling him. “That’s it... Save your life first."

    “It was as if the detainees’ lives were worthless,” another said.

    The flight attendants who spoke with ProPublica believed those lives were not worthless. That, many of them said, is why they no longer fly for ICE Air—and why they shared their stories.

    Though we didn’t hear from GlobalX, then-CEO Ed Wegel did address deportation flights in 2023.

    “In the time that we've been flying, we've not seen any inhumane treatment,” he said. "There have been threats made to our crew members...But we haven't seen any mistreatment at all.”

  • imagine: a slammer post with the text 'the economy will stop'. JDPON Don is fully dripped out. He is standing next to a stock market chart from the 1929 crash. The line drops below the x-axis, cratering into a pit that goes straight to hell. He is standing in 'boomtown'. A US bomber is leveling the city

  • Cuba Inaugurates 21.8 MW Solar Park in Remedios - Telesur English ::: spoiler Article Currently, authorities are also building photovoltaic solar parks in Anton Diaz, Santo Domingo, and Encrucijada. On Friday, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, Revolutionary Commander Ramiro Valdes, and Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy inaugurated “Remedios,” a photovoltaic solar park (PSF) with a generation capacity of 21.8 megawatts (MW) in the province of Villa Clara.

    Composed of 42,588 solar panels covering an area of 32 hectares, the Remedios PSF is one of the largest of its kind in Cuba, featuring seven inverters and 1,638 tables. After completing testing protocols, this facility was synchronized with the National Electric System (SEN) on March 16.

    The energy generated by this park can supply the demand of the municipalities of Remedios and Caibarien, said Villa Clara Governor Milaxys Sanchez, who highlighted that the Remedios PSF will allow for savings of up to 8,000 tons of oil annually. Villa Clara will significantly increase its energy generation capacity once all the parks located in the province are completed.

    Currently, Cuban authorities are building the Santa Clara Battle PSF in Anton Diaz, the Bermejal PSF in Santo Domingo, and the Calabazar de Sagua PSF in Encrucijada. Together, these clean energy facilities will provide 2,000 MW to the national energy system.

    The text reads, “Three large photovoltaic parks already inaugurated, five more in the remainder of March. Cuba will definitely win! Tear down the blockade.” The text inside the photo reads: “The sun cannot be blocked.”

    The construction of the Remedios PSF began at the end of April 2024 with land clearing, soil studies, and the creation of temporary facilities. The Villa Clara Electric Company assumed the project as the main stakeholder.

    On Thursday, Energy Minister De la O Levy stated that the completion of six new photovoltaic parks is expected, which will collectively provide 21.8 MW. These PSFs are located in Granma, Artemisa, Villa Clara, Holguin, Matanzas, and Ciego de Avila.

    In February, authorities had already put into operation sites in Havana, Alcalde Mayor, Abreus, and Cienfuegos. In this way, Cuba is advancing its goal of transitioning toward the use of clean energy and the recovery of the National Energy System.

    This year, the incorporation of approximately 46 parks with a capacity of 21.8 MW, along with others corresponding to lower-capacity programs, is planned. With this, Cuba would add 1,200 MW to improve energy demand coverage at the national level. :::

    Finally some good news

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