With permission from @Five@slrpnk.net, this post is created to post several fundraisers for Palestinians who are currently living in havoc-wreaken Gaza. I really hope that you can share the words, spread the messages and donate what you can for the struggling families and individuals in the territory. All the pictures included in the pose were taken directly from the corresponding gofundme pages. I added descriptions of the images for visually impaired people, but my descriptions are, in a large part, purely speculations.
I've gotten most of my information from the FB page Free Watermelon NOW. They're constantly updating the fundraisers they know, as well as the situations of Gazan people they're able to contact. You could follow them to receive updates. The page is Vietnamese, so you might need a translation tools.
Feel free to contribute to the post by commenting fundraising projects for Palestinians that you know, or you can just post them independently. Share some love, spread the messages, donate, and always remember:
MUTUAL AID IS SOLIDARITY.
Fundraiser for Abdul Karim and his family. They need money to fund the evacuation from Gaza strip and build a new life in safety and peace. The situation is getting really desperate for his family, as the war will continue to claim more people in his family if they could not receive the much needed financial aid to seek refuge in Egypt.
His fundraiser is advancing very slowly and in desperate need of more donations. Please go to the gofundme page, read his story, and share some love!
Update: His cousin, Bassam, had been captured and tortured by the IDF back in the Novemeber of last year. He was released but couldn't reunite with his family in North Gaza, as he was forced to go South. Bassam is currently taking refuge in Karim's house, while his wife and children are facing severe starvation during the ongoing famine in the north. He doesn't have a gofundme so Karim will receive donation on his behalf.
You could read more of Bassam story on this FB post by Free Watermelon NOW. The page's admin has been contacting Karim and posted Bassam's story back in July.
!The picture of Abdul Karim posing in front of yellow-ish walls.
The picture of Abdul Karim posing in front of yellow-ish walls.
!His two children !His two children
His two children
!A picture of a group of people, presumably his family, walking in the refugee camp.
A picture of a group of people, presumably his family, walking in the refugee camp.
Fundraiser for Kholoud's family.
She's a 30-year-old divorced widow sharing a family with 2 young children, Salem and Sara. They became homeless after their house was bombed in an airstrike.
Kholoud holds a Bachelor's degree in Primary Education, so she remains hopeful about providing her children a safe and healthy environment to grow up in, despite devastating condition they're enduring in Gaza
More details on the fund's distribution, go to her gofundme page
!The image of Kholoud's two children
The image of Kholoud's two children
!An image of her two children next to a QR code to the link of her gofundme.
An image of her two children next to a QR code to the link of her gofundme.
Yazan is a 16 years old Palestinian boy from Khuza'a, a southern Gazan town, and his family of 7. As the eldest son he carries the responsibility of fundraising for his family of seven. They were displaced multiple times during the course of last several months due to relentless bombing campaign of Israel.
The money will be used to fund their evacuation from Gaza strip. For more details please go to his gofundme page, and spread some love.
The fund is sponsored by Michelle Boukousohn,a community organizer based in New York city.
And follow his instagram page for more updates or just send him words of support: https://www.instagram.com/yazan_.gaza. He is a kind boy with resilient hope for a better future for himself and his sisters.
!Yazan standing next to a moving vehicles with lots of stuffs on it.
Yazan standing next to a moving vehicles with lots of stuffs on it.
!Yazan amidst fellow displaced peoples' tents in Rafah
Yazan amidst fellow displaced peoples' tents in Rafah
!Yazan helping rebuild his family's temporary shelter, after evacuating to Al Mawasi from Rafah
Yazan helping rebuild his family's temporary shelter, after evacuating to Al Mawasi from Rafah
!Yazan's difficult living circumstances due to displacement
Yazan standing against the background of a setting/rising sun on a settlement camp
Hofiza is 18 years old, 25 people that he knows, including his childhood love, his uncles and their families, were matyred in the midst of the ongoing genocide. He and his family of five want to use the fund raised to cover the cost of crossing border and setting up a new life in Cairo, Egypt, before going to Turkey. You could see more details about how the fund is allocated by going to his gofundme.
Two guys, one of them is presumably Hofiza himself, cheerfully point at the wall with a piece of graffiti with the slogan "From the River to the sea, Palestine will be free", his name and his friend's (?) name, written on it, along with a Palestinian flag and two slices of watermelon
!Images of devastated buildings Images of devastated buildings !A photo collages with images of devastated building, selfies of people, and food.
A photo collages with images of devastated building, selfies of people, and food. !Presumably images showing his current diet, cookie(?) and boiling beans(?)
Presumably images showing his current diet, cookie(?) and boiling beans(?)
Fundraising for Muhammad Al-Shaer's family.
Aside from Muhammad Al-Shaer and his sister, the lives of entire family were claimed by the war in Gaza.
His leg is injured by the war, leading to him being unable to provide for his sister and daughter, Eileen and Dima. They are in a very vulnerable situation, in which access to food, drink, and safety is not readily available. Please share some love if you can, as he'd written "Every donation, no matter the size, is a beacon of hope in this dark hour".
You can read his story on the gofundme page.
A wide picture consisting of three smaller ones. The picture on the right depicting a house in ruin, with the caption: "My old house, where I was bombed by the occupation", the picture in the middle is the Muhammad Al-Shaer picture, with the caption "My brothers were killed I was injured", the last one is the picture of his younger sister, with the caption "My younger sister Eileen (10).
His leg, covered in a cast
!An image of him lying in a hospital bed.
An image of him lying in a hospital bed.
Vietnamese translation of "Oh Rascal Children of Gaza" by Khaled Juma, by Hoài Phương, who is the admin of FB page Thơ Palestine. You could find the English version here
Thơ Palestine is the FB page with the mission of preserving Palestinian poems and translating them to Vietnamese, but you could also follow them for updates on Palestinian families and people that various FB pages are currently fundraising.
The picture is a part of a collaboration project between Free Watermelon Now, Thơ Palestine, and Steven Quốc Võ. There is a video with Quốc Võ's voice narrating the English version of the poem over the illustration. You could see it on Free Water Melon FB page.
Follow them at:
Steven Quốc Võ on IG: @thgquoc
Eh, they don't care precisely because they believe they have the privilege to shield themselves, and their descendants from environmental catastrophe. Luxurious fallout bulkers are built right now to do just that: protect themselves and their children from iminent threats, be it mob riots or tsunami or nuclear fallout. They don't give a shit about the rest of us, and why would they? What do they have to gain from caring about us, it's just not in their interest to do that when they could afford to survive through this and we don't. They've already won the logic of the free market in a bloodthirsty, capital-centric world then surely they earned their superiority, and their place as the true, deserving heirs of the Earth reborn. Looking through their eyes, it's just natural selection.
This is a post created to showcase the solidarity of Vietnamese artists with the Palestinians through the hashtag #VIETNAMwithHandala. The movement is still relatively obscure but is getting more and more attention from the Vietnamese art community.
#VIETNAMwithHandala is a subset of a larger movement on the Internet #withHandala. Artists around the world participate in the movement by drawing their characters standing still with their back turned towards the viewers, in the recognizable pose that Handala, a cartoon character, has in several artworks created by Paslestinian political cartoonist Naji Al-Ali. The movement has a strong presence across various social media. You can find more information about the movement by searching #with Handala, but most Vietnamese participants are active on Facebook. I believe that the earliest record of the movement in Vietnam could be traced back to this post by R-Posting.
You could also check out other Southeast Asian artists works that follow this hashtag by searching #SEAwithHandala.
So, without any further ado, here they are:
nobody is free until everybody is free. Artist: hà nguyễn
Từ sông sâu ra biển lớn, và Palestine sẽ được tự do!. Artist: Chung Tịch Bất Mị
Artist: Dulce Coco
Tis nothing much but its honest work. Artist: Đỗ Phúc
"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free". Artist: Lan Hoàng
Artist: Mai Mỹ Bảo
Political much? Always has been
Ellie stands with Palestine. Artist: Minh Đăng
If you know any other Vietnamese artists who participate in the movement, you're more than welcome to link them in the comment section. Please follow, and participate in the movement #withHandala.
I'm not really sure, or, well, at least AI in what people tend to associate with nowadays. I think a solarpunk future is a future where degrowth is a main ethos for the development of the society. AI, as it currently exists, relies on global scale exploitation of not just artists, writers, but also people in the Global South living in abject conditions and are forced to accept mentally and physically damaging jobs to help "AI" to exist in the first place. Using AI, as far as I know, also comes with huge environmental costs simply because of how energy intensive it is to run and train its huge dataset. So the existence of stuffs like ChatGPT or Midjourney is a no go, unless "human ingenuity" could do something like being so cost effective energy wise that technology like that would require way less energy to run, or somehow the colonization of the universe would happen, but for the latter to happen will neccesarily require the kind of economy that centers growth above all else like capitalism.
Imo, Solarpunk technology should be local and open source and easily understandable for communities and individual to use, the factor of being environmentally friendly is also very significant and I don't think AI infrustructure would guarantee to fullfill those requirements.
That's the reason I would never understand the obsession with nuclear power or AI techinology of some solarpunk enthusiasts. These are all infrastrcutures that requires a degree of centralization of human and resouces, which drastically constrasts what solarpunk should be about. A solarpunk future is not fully automated luxury communism, but a low tech communism that still guarantees the well being of all. Low tech does not exist simply because of accessiblity, but also the capital E Environment.
Furthermore, the basic issue of human creativity being ripped off is also a thing that should be addressed. I don't belive in intellectual property, but we shouldn't need IP to protect arists from exploitation without consents. A solarpunk world is a world that respect human autonomy, so if an artist do not consent for their works to be used in training AI, their wish will be respectfully followed through. As an artist in art communities, I don't think that many people are fond of submitting their works to an AI so that others could code a drawing, so the dataset required for AI would not be enough, thus render AI useless. That's just creatives though, maybe scientists and researchers would hold different views? If that's the case, circle back to the question of energy intensity inherent in AI technology.
That's just AI in a very specific sense though, I don't know what constitute an AI. If AIs are just machines that can beat human at chess, or to predict patterns of local weather, or regulate irrugation system for farming, or organize documents, then sure, there's no reason why it should not exist in a solarpunk future. But the existence of such machinery should be put under scrutiny. If an AI could not be operated without significant environment impact, it has to go. Impressive techonology is not just codes, it's also very real, very material hardware that possess impressive processing power, and with it, impressive amount of energy, resources, and human power.
To address your AI specificly: I think your AI is HUGE, and I'm not confident about its place in a solarpunk world. Your AI would exist in some versions of communism, but solarpunk? I don"t think so.
Thank you, I'm intending to do more re-post like this :") I'm not really familiar with how lemmy works so I think there should be cautions with how I interact with small instances like ours, but it seems to be fine :")
Btw, really appropriate usage of that expression in this context, even though it's not exactly what Vietnamese would use.
I hope this is not too resources intensive for our instance? @Five@slrpnk.net
Here are some notable comments from Save Tam Đảo under the post: "Chiếc sân của nhà hàng Thiên Đường
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"Sun Group
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"Con đường giữa rừng nguyên sinh
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"Đoạn cuối của con đường bê tông khi mới xong
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"Lán của người trông coi cho Sun (Sun Group)
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"Toàn cảnh con đường xuyên rừng đau đớn 13 km
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"Dòng suối Tây Thiên chưa bao giờ đục như thế này
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"Nhà hàng Thiên Đường ngày xưa, đã trở thành lán công nhân ở. Câu chuyện về nhà hàng này cũng nhiều điều hay. Nhưng có lẽ cũng liên quan đến Sun Group
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"Con đường bê tông đã để hoang hơn 1 năm nay, và sắp tới Sun sẽ dùng nó để chuyên chở vật liệu
"[Tin liên quan] đại ka này là người ký phê duyệt ĐTM của dự án Tam Đảo 2 của Sun Group và khu đô thị Cần Giờ của Vin vừa ‘được’ nghỉ hưu sớm.
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Because I've seen Vietnamese progressive pages disappearing in real time so I try my best to conserve them to the best of my ability.
Bởi vì mình đã chứng kiến các trang Facebook mang tư tưởng ở tiến bộ ở Việt Nam biến mất nên mình sẽ cố gắng để lưu lại chúng ở đây.
Save Tam Đảo is an Environmental Conservation Organization in Vietnam.
This is a re-post from one of Facebook posts on Save Tam Đảo page. For some reasons I could not find the link of the original post so I urge you to visit the page to read them first hand.
Here is the original post:
CÙNG XEM LẠI NHỮNG HÌNH ẢNH Ở KHU VỰC LÀM DỰ ÁN CỦA SUN GROUP
Đây là một hành trình chứng kiến những đau thương nhất của VQG Tam Đảo của chúng tôi từ cuối năm 2017.
Vốn là những người thích leo núi chúng tôi có những hành trình chinh phục ba đỉnh Tam Đảo, được ngắm những biển mây, cây cối xanh mướt, chúng tôi thuộc hết những đoạn đường mòn bắt đầu từ nhà sàn có tên là nhà hàng Thiên Đường. Tôi còn nhớ như in lần ngủ qua đêm ở ngay khu Tam Đảo 2, khi đó chỉ có hai anh em, ngủ qua đêm ở đây đúng là một trải nghiệm có một không hai, nửa đêm trời rất lạnh chỉ có tiếng gió rừng, tuy nhiên xung quanh lại rất sáng như hàng trăm ngọn nến, anh Phương (người bản địa) đi cùng tôi nói rằng đó là phản quang từ lá khô, đến khoảng 2h sáng thì biển mây từ phía Thái Nguyên tràn sang, lướt qua chỗ chúng tôi, trông như tiên cảnh.
Sáng sớm, ánh nắng chiếu lên thảm rêu xanh phủ khắp cánh rừng từ ngọn cây cho đến những tảng đá tạo thành một khung cảnh vô cùng kỳ diệu…
Và còn nhiều lần khác, chúng tôi đi bằng nhiều con đường khác nhau để lên khu Tam Đảo 2, sau đó mới chinh phục ba đỉnh, cho đến ngày Sun Group cho làm cánh cổng cấm người qua lại.
Những hành trình ấy khiến chúng tôi yêu Tam Đảo thêm rất nhiều, hình ảnh về rừng cây nguyên sinh, những chú lợn rừng, gà gô hay thỏ mà chúng tôi thi thoảng vẫn bắt gặp. Nhưng rồi dần dần về sau hình ảnh đọng lại trong tâm trí chúng tôi là hàng loạt cây gỗ bị chặt hạ, con đường mòn chúng tôi hay đi bị máy xúc, máy ủi san phẳng, những hố cáp treo được đánh dấu khắp cánh rừng.
Xin được khẳng định lại rằng, khu vực Tam Đảo 2 là khu rừng đẹp và quý giá nhất của Vườn Quốc gia Tam Đảo, là một tiên cảnh của hạ giới, nó xứng đáng được bảo vệ cho tất cả mọi người và thế hệ sau, chứ không phải quây lại để dành cho một số người tham lam giàu có. [Xem bài viết này tồn tại được bao lâu nhé, mọi người có thể lưu lại trước khi bài bị biến mất hoặc page bị bay màu]
I really hate how privileged people in the cities would jump at the opportunity to criticize the migrant workers looking for better chances in foreign countries. They don't use harsh words against the government and corrupted authorities for facilitating the situation that allows this phenomenon to happen in the first place, or the predatory labor broker business for employing shading tactics, or domestic factories with draconian, oppressive policy against workers in the homeland, or foreign enterprises for praying on the desperate migrant workers. Noo, it's never been something outside of average people's control that cause this to happen, it's always due to their lack of nationalism and refusal to build the career for themselves on the soil of motherland.
To be clear, it's always fanatic nationalists who hold on to this kind of hateful rhetoric. Some people still look back at the heroic past of Vietnamese resistance force against imperialist powers in 20th century and the victory our ancestors have gained that pave the path for our independence, and believes that people who are not willing to sacrifice everything for the nations don't deserve that liberation. They hold that views to look down upon the migrants from Africa and Middle East, for fleeing the country instead of staying and building/fighting for the better. It's no surprise that when the tragedy of deceased Vietnamese migrants on the Essex truck came to light, they'd jump at the first opportunity to berate the poor souls for daring to leave the great Viet.
And again, it's a fringe idea in Vietnam and most people still understand the complicated nature of the situation.
Anyway, I've been reading Al Jazeera for updates on Israel-Palestine conflicts but remain skeptical of its journalism due to the fact that the publication is funded by Qatari government. But this is a really good article about a subject that I'm quite familiar with.
Tommy Lawson Palestine, platitudes and silence November 16th, 2023
A brief article by Tommy Lawson discussing how an anarchist's understanding of nationalism must be nuanced in the context of imperialism, and how simplistic devotion to the rejection of nationalist ideal of oppressed people would weaken the global resistance against reactionary forces.
Ah no, I just used Google Translate and rectified any errors in translation that didn't make sense or have weird expression (There are some Vietnamese sentences that does not share the same structure with normal English grammar), which is just about 10% of the entire article. I really don't deserve any credit for this really :")
(NLĐO) - Dự án khu đô thị tại khu 10B do Công ty TNHH Đỗ Gia Capital đang đổ đất trực tiếp, không có kè vây xuống khu vực biển thuộc vùng đệm Di sản thiên nhiên thế giới vịnh Hạ Long, vùng bảo vệ 2 của Di tích quốc gia đặc biệt vịnh Hạ Long
The urban area project in area 10B by Do Gia Capital Co., Ltd. is pouring land directly, without embankments, into the sea area in the buffer zone of the World Natural Heritage of Ha Long Bay - special protection zone no. 2 in Ha Long Bay.
On the morning of November 6, talking to Nguoi Lao Dong Newspaper, the leader of the Ha Long Bay Management Board said that the unit had sent a document to the Quang Ninh Department of Natural Resources and Environment, the Quang Ninh Department of Culture and Sports and the Cam Pha City People's Committee to organize a coordinated inspection into the Urban area project in Area 10B in Quang Hanh Ward, Cam Pha City.
A series of limestone mountains were surrounded to make "rockeries"
According to people's feedback, recently, local people discovered that on the Ha Long - Cam Pha coastal route, the section passing through Ha Phong - Cam Pha ward, a series of "tiger pouncing" trucks appeared following each other, carrying soil and stones for leveling for the Urban Area Project in Area 10B (Urban Area 10B) showed signs of overload without a single tarpaulin covering, causing dust and dirt to be scattered all over the road surface.
To implement the 10B Urban Area project within the boundaries of Quang Hanh ward, Cam Pha City, the investor, Do Gia Capital Co., Ltd. (address in Cam Pha City) poured soil to create a road more than 1 km long. from the coastline of Ha Long - Cam Pha to the sea. Notably, many rocky mountains are surrounded to form "rockeries", and the soil and rocks are leveled, making the sea water turbid and discolored.
The leader of the Ha Long Bay Management Board further informed through environmental monitoring work along the coast of Ha Long Bay (September 19) that the urban area project in area 10B by Do Gia Capital Co., Ltd. is pouring land directly into the sea area of the buffer zone of the World Natural Heritage of Ha Long Bay, protection zone 2 of the Ha Long Bay Special National Monument without any embankment.
Dumping soil directly into the waters of Ha Long Bay without environmental protection measures will pollute the water environment, affecting the ecosystems of natural heritage areas - special national monuments in Ha Long Bay.
This violates regulations on environmental protection and heritage protection according to the Law on Environmental Protection, the Law on Cultural Heritage, and the project's environmental impact assessment report approved by the People's Committee of Quang Ninh province.
The project encroaches on Ha Long Bay for a kilometer from the Ha Long - Cam Pha sea boundary
Confronting with the incident, the Ha Long Bay Management Board requested the Quang Ninh Department of Natural Resources and Environment, the Quang Ninh Department of Culture and Sports, and the Cam Pha City People's Committee to inspect and request construction units to comply with the law on environmental and heritage protection. At the same time, there must be solutions to prevent substances that pollute the environment and ecology of Ha Long Bay.
Quang Ninh Department of Construction also requested Do Gia Capital Co., Ltd. to comply with the design documents and construction permits that had been evaluated and licensed. They are required to have appropriate construction measures to ensure water circulation in the areas of sea mangroves on both sides of route No. 1. The company must take actions to minimize the impact on the overall landscape and environment of the World Natural Heritage Ha Long Bay
It is recommended that the People's Committee of Cam Pha City perform the state management function on construction order for the 10B urban area project: Inspect and supervise the construction process to ensure compliance with design documents, construction permits that have been appraised and licensed, and environmental impact assessment reports approved by the People's Committee of Quang Ninh province; promptly take measures to prevent and handle violations of construction order and activities that affect the environment and landscape of the world natural heritage of Ha Long Bay.
According to the project's environmental impact assessment approval, the People's Committee of Quang Ninh province stated: "The total project area is about 31.8 hectares, of which 3.88 hectares is in the buffer zone, area 2 of the World Natural Heritage of Ha Long Bay. The scale of project items includes: 451 villas and adjacent houses; rough construction and finishing of the exterior of 52 villas. There are also commercial and service projects. , including 7-story hotels. The population is estimated to be roughly 2,524 people."
Ha Long Bay Management Board affirmed that the location of the 10B Urban Area project is located in the buffer zone of Ha Long Bay.
This land has a starting price of 1,145.3 billion VND and Do Gia Capital Co., Ltd. won the auction for the right to use the land with an auction value of 1,192 billion VND (46 billion VND higher than the starting price).
It is known that Do Gia Capital Company Limited was established on November 18, 2021 with a charter capital of 200 billion VND, led by Mr. T.H.T. be a director. However, by December 30, 2021 (the time the People's Committee of Quang Ninh province recognized the winning results of the land use rights auction), this business was only "42 days old" and had eliminated 8 serious opponents to win the auction for a land with a value of trillions dong.
Through research, it is known that in the past few years, UNESCO has repeatedly warned that Ha Long Bay Heritage is under a lot of pressure from tourism activities, shipping and especially rapid urbanization in several areas of Quang Ninh, causing the bay environment to be affected.
Here in Vietnam we're losing winter very quickly, it's getting warmer and shorter every year. Winter is the only time in Vietnam when weather is mildly comfortable compared to the rest of the year so losing it sucks so hard.
Ngọt - CHUYỂN KÊNH (sản phẩm này không phải là thuốc) lấy ra từ album 3 (tuyển tập nhạc Ngọt mới trẻ sôi động 2019) Nhạc & Lời: Ngọt Trình bày: Ngọt Phối khí: Ngọt Nguyễn Hùng Nam Anh Phan Việt Hoàng Nguyễn Chí Hùng Vũ Đinh Trọng Thắng Keyboard: Hoàng Chí Trung Dàn nhạc Saigon Metropolitan Biên ...
Good song and good band :")
Ngày bắt đầu cắm cọc trên sông chặn những con tàu hút cát, người dân ven sông Bồ tuyên bố họ sẵn sàng đi tù.
A Tale of the Valiant Fight of Local People in Huong Tra District, Hue City Against Sand Pirates.
Writing in English is not my strong suit, but I will try my best to summarize the article for people unfamiliar with Vietnamese. However, I strongly suggest you to read the article yourselves with the assistance of translation tool. The author has a very compelling jounalistic language which makes reading it is such a treat.
In the context of sand pirates becoming increasingly aggressive in their exploitation of sand in many rivers, which leads to the accelerated erosion of lands around them, people living around the Bồ River began to push back since it started to affect their livelihood and swathes of lands have collapsed. The seemingly innocuous sand extraction from Tuan Hai Company, whose activity is permitted by the local authority, had turned their lives upside down.
Initially, they appealed to the local authority to do something about the problem but there was no change, so they took matters into their own hands and began establishing a team to actively supervise any unusual activities on the river. Once they noticed a boat that sucked the sand outside the legally defined zone, they pursued the boat, forced it to go with them and handed the people inside to the local police force. However, there had been at least 10 sightings of illegal sand extraction activities since the establishment of the supervising team, all of them were handed to the local authority to take care of but nothing changed. They decided to take a more proactive approach when things got too far.
They began constructing bamboo spikes to prevent sand extraction boats from entering. People from other villages where impact of sand extraction could be felt also joined in the endeavor by providing money and manpower. It was a collective effort from the start to the finish, from purchasing blocks of rocks, cutting the bamboos, to securing the bamboo spikes on the river. Men, women, children, and the elderly all participated in the activity. The local authority tried to intervene multiple times by saying that the people were violating the water traffic law and demanding them to have a meeting to lessen the heat, but the villagers refused to budge.
"If we are wrong then you are more than welcome to arrest us. People are ready to be jailed," they said when confronted by the local authority.
The fight did not stop on the river, they also kept track of illegal activities on the bank. One night they noticed trucks full of sands and handed them to the local authority, but this time they insisted on supervising the process of handling the case themselves.
After 14 days, in response to the heated fight on the Bồ River, the Ministry of Resources Environment opened an investigation (with the supervision of the villagers) and discovered evidence of Tuan Hai Company having been involved in illegal sand extraction. The amount of sand extracted by the company was found to be several times larger than the amount permitted in the licensing record. The company was fined 1.6 billion VND by the People's Committee and had to take measures to recover the land to its initial state.
The fight against sand pirates did not stop there. Villagers living in the downstream of the Bồ River also had to participate in a similar fight by deploying the same tactics, but on a much larger scale. In May of 2020, they constructed an entire bamboo bridge to prevent sand extracting boats from entering.
Israel, by helping develop industry within the “Socialist” Republic, ensures it has another market to trade its goods in. Not only that, but factories like the one mentioned prior help create a flow of capital from Vietnam to Israel, directly benefiting the bourgeoisie. — Left-Communist Group of Vie...
Oh my god, Luna Oi is such a propaganda machine for the Vietnamese government, and I say this from the perspective of a Vietnamese leftist.
Well, to be fair, I'm not good at law, but I think anyone with half a brain could see that the law is only good for workers when it could be realistically enforced. Yes, Vietnamese workers have rights, lots of them, but it would be ridiculous to say that words on legal papers alone could arm workers with a powerful arsenal of arguments and resources to fight for their rights. We have to keep in mind the sheer imbalance of power between the workers and the capitalists at all times, since when workers appeal their case to the court, most of them cannot afford the money to hire a good lawyer while the capitalists have legions of legal consultants and lawyers backing them up. It's not uncommon for a worker to represent themselves, and no, Vietnam does not have any system to assign a mandatory public defender for destitute people, which reduces the possibility of workers winning a case drastically. Even if they manage to bring the case to the court collectively, the procedure is still very lengthy and complicated and the cost of going through them is money and time, which most workers don't have. They barely get by with the wages and benefits of the company, asking them to suck it up for a prolonged legal battle that could very well last for 2 years is downright unreasonable.
Strike is another story altogether. Luna said that strikes require permission from the labor union and this is very true. However, let's stop for a second and really think about the fact that workers need permission to strike in the first place, doesn't that sound ridiculous? Why would they have to entrust the right to strike to another body of authority? What if they decided to refuse? The workers should just drop the case and go back to work peacefully then? You might say that the union will not refuse because it's a democratic institution and has to follow the will of the masses. However, in order for that argument to work, labor union have to be independent institution without the influence of both company leadership AND the state, because if the leading party decide to adopt a neoliberal policy, they would have every incentive in the world to mess with the democracy of the labor union and what could be the easier way to do it than subduing all unions under the control of the state? Yes, I'm saying this because all unions in Vietnam belong to the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour, an organ of the Vietnamese Communist Party whose current interest is to develop the economy by accumulating capitalistic wealth, not to protect worker's interests. This makes Vietnamese labor unions very prone to corruption and backstage vote rigging. There's no guarantee that a labor union could really present the interest of the worker. In Vietnam, the union's practical role is not to reel up workers to fight the factoríe, but to extinguish the intensity of their struggle so that Vietnam doesn't become a place that foreign investors would actively avoid.
Luna said something very interesting: most strikes are illegal because Vietnamese workers don't bother to ask for permission, which is debatable. Why doesn't she consider that there is a very real possibility that most strikes are actively declined by the union leaders? Vietnamese workers have been striking since Doi Moi and established a labor struggle history of their own, there must be more structural reasons why wildcat strikes are preferable than just their individual failings to be more knowledgeable about labor law. In fact, the laws are actively making it very difficult for the workers to strike. Aside from asking for permission, they would have to make sure that they are asking for benefits, not rights, striking for rights is illegal, and good luck differentiating the two because the Labor Code doesn't do that for you. Before they could ask for permission to strike, workers must negotiate with their employers in a process called meditation. The employers could sit on their asses for 30 days without going to the negotiation session to prolong the battle with the employees. And like I said earlier, time is of the essence because they have to accept not having any money to live during the entire process.
We have to address the elephant in the room too: Workers in a lot of capitalist countries also have rights, sometimes even more rights than their Vietnamese counterparts. Labor laws in Germany, Finland or more progressive states in America are way more comprehensive and the mechanism through which workers's rights are protected in those countries is way more developed. Vietnamese workers have suffered a lot and it's so disingenuous on Luna's part to present her video in a way that frames American laborers are way more miserable than us. I could not overstate how wrong this is enough when workers in factories throughout Vietnam, especially in special economic zones, have to live through abject working conditions but can not quit their jobs or protest about it. The power dynamic is heavily skewed towards the capitalists because the government is kissing their feet or inviting them to destroy our land. There is a reason why Vietnam is an attractive place for foreign investors and it's absolutely not communism. Vietnam is not a socialist paradise, but just another victim of neo-colonialism like the rest of the Global South.
@Five, I really respect your effort to maintain the vitality of many progressive communities on Lemmy, but you can noy promote Luna Oi if you also support anarchism. The narratives she pumps out are very harmful for the left because her videos are purely dogmatic propaganda that promotes a vision of socialism based on an opressive, authoritarian regime. Vietnam is a capitalist, authoritarian country that have attempted multiple times to attack progressive movements by framing them as reactionary.