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

News from gaza are fucking horrifying
- This shit has been making me even more unhinged and filled with rage. I'm going full misanthrope because the entire fucking world who would have the power to stop this refuses to do anything. No more fucking excuses, if you have the power to pressure Israel to stop, you're either pro-genocide (sitting by and doing nothing) or you're against it (doing ANYTHING other than just tut-tuting Israhell)
  I can't think of anything but massive retaliatory violence against every genocidal freak who cheers this on.
  
  i try to distract myself, idk, as a small bean i just hope i can produce all the available justice i can through the rest of my life.
- the world (minus the Axis of resistance) has already proved they will do nothing. The only thing left for Gaza is to endure. a dark day for humanity
  
  The pal action still does its work (relatively safe one as well, if go by prison time received), the people serving pentagon pizzas haven’t yet radicalized enough, the people brewing coffee for new york crimes columnists - the same, there is plenty of work to be done without flashy actions. (People driving around blinken house could make a radical realization).
  
  Yeah it seems like UK law is much less severe for their crimes. Similar actions in the US would probably get the death penalty to "set an example"
  
  they (in usa) got 2 months though (but much harsher initial threats).
  
  Wow I thought it was just UK didn't realize they did anything in US. What was the US action?
  
  i think they did new hampshire plant found initial reporting: https://mondoweiss.net/2024/02/palestine-action-activists-hit-with-felony-charges-over-new-hampshire-elbit-protest/
  there was a letter address to write and stuff, think they got in november 2 months so should be out by now
  (their twitter handle got banned and they started going by unity of fields in usa, but heavily suppressed)
  *their small sentence is likely connected that they didn't do anything truly hurting bottom-line, but christ that's something more goal-oriented
  
  Ahh I see, yeah they didn't even enter the building and damage anything. This happened under Biden regime as well. I have a feeling it would be harsher now, especially if they actually got inside to do anything
  
  hypothetically speaking, plans for electricity and ventilations are somewhere in municipal offices, and one doesn't need to plan to get caught explicitly (which is pal action mo, which somewhat shields them if i understand their logic correctly, which makes them trespassers/property destructors and not terrorist cell in the eyes of the law)
  
  yeah the activist model is all about getting caught for publicity sake and sometimes to fight in court to force new rulings. I often think about the group that broke into the FBI office, stole the COINTELPRO evidence, released it, and disappeared. wish we had some more of that but it is hard to get away with in the age of security cameras and cell phones
  
  while average hypothetical criminal think they are much smarter than they are, one shouldn't overestimate the security of a factory in bumfuck nowhere with 20 people making precision gyros as well.
  think about your own place of work, or penetration testing, and how much of a fuck they give when nothing ever happened for 50 years
  
  Fuck this evil fucking world. Fuck thsi world fuck this world fuck this world fuck this world.
  FUCK THIS WORLD
  HUMANITY IS NOT WORTH SALVAGING IF THIS IS ALLOWED TO HAPPEN
  FUCK
  WHEN'S THE METEOR GONNA STRIKE EARTH AND KILL EVERYONE. OR THE SUN FINALLY ENGULFS THE EARTH
  HOLYT FUCK JUST START EVERYTHING OVER, CLEAN SLATE AND ALL.
  I HAT ETHIS WORLD SO FUCKING MUCH
  
  This would also kill everyone in Gaza. If seeing people suffer and die upsets you, the response should not be a belief that people should die on a larger scale, but that you should be looking for the people that are also opposed to suffering and death to try to create something that uplifts people. New futures are built through the dedicated application of human imagination: not through wishful (or vengeful) thinking, but through a conscious effort to create better possibilities.
  There are billions of people on this planet, and wishing death on all of them is what the fascists are doing. Please try not to join them in that line of reasoning.
  
  for what it is worth, I think most people know this is evil, but are so suppressed and alienated that they don't know how to affect it.
  But colonial regimes have historically intenified their violence proceeding their defeat. maybe something will break soon with all this international panic, probably not in the west but maybe in the muslim world or somewhere else. This is too vast and public a crime to past without consequence
  
  But colonial regimes have historically intenified their violence proceeding their defeat
  I try to keep that in mind, but I can't help but think "what if this is the exception? WHAT IF THIS IS THE EXCEPTION!?" Partly of my own anxiety of this whole ordeal, and partly because anytime someone tries to compare this to past anti-colonial struggles that succeeded, there's always that one person who goes "Well the situation is not a 1-1 exact match so no the comparison is stupid"
  
  Israel feels it has no choice to finish its genocide in Gaza, and the Palestinians there that have no where else to go or have not bought their way out, are willing (perhaps resigned is a better term) to be martyred there. Wars have two phases, the combat itself and the brokering of peace.
  After the war, there will be investigations, estimations. The vanity of Israel is the belief their country will return to normalcy. But no matter how well Israel tries to hide the carnage, even if it bars the international community from investigating, the census numbers won't lie.
  There will be fewer Palestinians in Gaza and people will be affirmed of conclusions already drawn; indeed, action would have been taken had we a nominally functional liberal democracy. But because the state is already heavily suppressing and destroying the ideology of liberal democracy to protect Israel and its campaign of genocide, it proves that resistance and protest are working because the US state is forced to abandon its facade of liberalism to ensure its commitment to empire. It also proves that the current mode of protest and demonstration has to persist and expand into economic boycotts, sanctions, and social humiliation.
  Israel's post-genocidal society may mirror states like the 19th century US or post-communist purge Indonesia where their killers and genocidaires are sanctified and glorified. But their society is stained with the genocide and people won't forget what we saw Israel, the US, and the West did.
  History is made, and you are right to hold this view point that Israel's defeat, admonishment, or punishment are not set in stone but there in lies the question: what is to be done? I think (hope, rather) BDS will be the focus and gain momentum to do what violence did not accomplish.

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