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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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  • 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.

  • US airstrikes continue on Yemen for the 21st night in a row, with two airstrikes reported in Saada Governorate, around an area known to contain underground facilities, east of Saada city.

    Two statements by the Yemeni Armed Forces earlier today:

    No ballistic missiles at Israel, just a long range Sayyad one way attack drone, called 'Yaffa" for this operation. The Shark F360 drone is a mix of a quadcopter and winged drone, to allow for vertical takeoff and landing. It's a pretty small fully electric drone about 1.75m long, with a wingspan of 3.6m. Wonder how one got into Yemen in the first place. Mossad or CIA agents?

    The B-2s are operating in Yemen now, and we have uncensored satellite imagery of weapons loading taking place on the B-2s. I've updated my post on it here, with the uncensored imagery.

    Al Masirah TV twitter

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  • NYT: U.S. Strikes in Yemen Burning Through Munitions With Limited Success

    President Trump said this week that Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen have been “decimated by the relentless strikes” that he ordered beginning on March 15.

    But that’s not what Pentagon and military officials are privately telling Congress and allied countries.

    In closed briefings in recent days, Pentagon officials have acknowledged that there has been only limited success in destroying the Houthis’ vast, largely underground arsenal of missiles, drones and launchers, according to congressional aides and allies.

    The officials briefed on confidential damage assessments say the bombing is consistently heavier than strikes conducted by the Biden administration, and much bigger than what the Defense Department has publicly described.

    But Houthi fighters, known for their resiliency, have reinforced many of their bunkers and other targeted sites, frustrating the Americans’ ability to disrupt the militia’s missile attacks against commercial ships in the Red Sea, according to three congressional and allied officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.

    In just three weeks, the Pentagon has used $200 million worth of munitions, in addition to the immense operational and personnel costs to deploy two aircraft carriers, additional B-2 bombers and fighter jets, as well as Patriot and THAAD air defenses to the Middle East, the officials said.

    The total cost could be well over $1 billion by next week, and the Pentagon might soon need to request supplemental funds from Congress, one U.S. official said.

    So many precision munitions are being used, especially advanced long-range ones, that some Pentagon contingency planners are growing concerned about overall Navy stocks and implications for any situation in which the United States would have to ward off an attempted invasion of Taiwan by China.

    The U.S. strikes, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth named Operation Rough Rider after the troops Theodore Roosevelt led in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, likely could continue for six months, officials said.

    A senior Pentagon official late Thursday pushed back on the assessments described by the congressional and allied officials.

    The senior official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said the airstrikes had exceeded their goal in the campaign’s initial phase, disrupting senior Houthi leaders’ ability to communicate, limiting the group’s response to a handful of ineffective counter strikes, and setting the conditions for subsequent phases, which he declined to discuss. “We’re on track,” the official said.

    Someone is lying here to the NYT about how this bombing campaign is actually going. Based on what @MarmiteLover123@hexbear.net has been reporting, specifically on the latest and greatest bunker busters being dropped from B-2s, I suspect it's Trump/Pentagon officials, but there's money and political implications to all of this. Depleting US munitions means more money for defense contractors. All I can say for sure is that Yemen continues to learn why Americans don't have healthcare.

  • An update on the bombings of the "Amad Tunnels" in Yemen. Satellite imagery has been released, showing a 100m/330ft+ long gash in a mountain in the Amad area. Only one aircraft in the US fleet carries a bomb big enough to make such a huge hole in a mountain, the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber with the GBU-57 MOP bomb. So B-2s are being used in Yemen now. This also explains the censored satellite imagery of the B-2s at Diego Garcia, they were being worked on for missions. Expect official confirmation soon from US news sources.

    Twitter link showing the satellite imagery

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    Image of the 100+m gash:

    How the site usually looks like on Google Maps, the gash would be just below the pin. You can also see the tunnel entrances along the main road:

    Attempt to provide a measurement for context:

    Official confirmation just in from CNN. Abdul Malik al-Houthi (the leader of the Ansarallah/Houthi movement) also commented on the use of B-2s in his latest speech.

    B-2 bombers out of Diego Garcia are also being used against the Houthis, and an additional aircraft carrier as well as several fighter squadrons and air defense systems will soon be moved into the Central Command region, defense officials said this week.

    The CNN article makes an error in munitions use though, the US Navy is using SLAM-ER cruise missiles, not JASSM cruise missiles.

    More confirmation: the uncensored satellite imagery of the B-2s at Diego Garcia has been released, weapons loading in progress:

    Given that the bombing of the Amad Tunnels took place on the morning of April 1st, Rybar were correct in their statement about B-2 bombers being used in Yemen.

    Just checked, Rybar said the bombings tool place during March 29-30, a bit early.

    In assessing the military impact of the US campaign, I'd say that the US has stopped Ansarallah from launching ballistic missiles at Israel for now, countered the unmanned aerial systems (cruise missiles and drones) threat with new weaponry and tactics, and suppressed their air defences to some extent, but Ansarallah are still able to shoot down slow flying drones like the MQ-9 Reaper, and Anti Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM) capability appears to remain intact, given that the US Navy Carrier Strike Group is not coming within 700km of Yemen. As long as Ansarallah have ASBM capability, they can blockade the Red Sea. This a key capability that Ansarallah cannot allow to be degraded or lost. It's the backbone of their ability to carry out naval blockades. Ansarallah are set to unveil a new variant of their "Red Sea" missile based off of Iranian artillery rockets (so around 140km range) just for this purpose.

    All in all this is another warning shot to Iran, the US just put a 400ft long crater in a mountainous bunker in Yemen. The GBU-57 MOP is a serious threat to underground facilities. I did a post on it here.

  • 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.”

  • Updated figures on US military movements to the Middle East region and the ongoing airlift operation. There has been a lot more cargo/transport aircraft, along with mid air refueling aircraft, that have made the trip since I last posted. A total of 85 transport/cargo aircraft, and 10 mid air refueling aircraft, have made trips over the last week to the ME region.

    Glossary:

    C-130 Hercules: small propeller driven transport aircraft, max cargo capacity of 42,000 lb (19,000 kg).

    C-17 Globemaster III: Medium sized strategic airlift aircraft, max cargo capacity of 170,900 lb (77,519 kg).

    C5-M Super Galaxy: Largest cargo aircraft in the USAF inventory, max cargo capacity of 281,000 lb (127,459 kg)

    KC-46 Pegasus: mid air refueling aircraft, maximum amount of fuel available for transfer is 207,672 lb (94,198 kg).

    KC-135 Stratotanker: mid air refueling aircraft, maximum amount of fuel available for transfer is 200,000 lb (90,719 kg)

    A potential total of almost 15 million lbs (6.8 million kg) of cargo. A lot of the latest flights have been out of Fort Sill in the United States, home to the 31st Air Defense Artillery Brigade, who operate, train, and perform schooling on the Patriot and THAAD air defence systems. Not mentioned in this graphic is a C-17 flight to Diego Garcia from Yokota Air Base in Japan, home to both US forces and the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, who operate E-2C Air Early Warning aircraft, and Patriot PAC-2 and PAC 3 air defence systems.

  • 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.

  • US airstrikes continue on Yemen for the 20th night in a row, with airstrikes reported in Saada Governorate.

    There has also been simultaneous Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon, Gaza and Idlib, Syria. A Hamas official and his family were reportedly killed in Lebanon, the strikes in Gaza are the most intense since the resumption of the genocide. Little information on Syria.

    I'm expecting information on strikes in Yemen to be more sporadic now, since the latest Ansarallah advisory to Yemeni citizens not to discuss ongoing airstrikes, enacted yesterday.

    Text reads: Warning...

    Filming airstrikes serves the enemy.

    Operational Security is very important. Do not serve the enemy in good faith.

    Further messages said: We call on all our fellow citizens in Yemen to strictly prohibit photographing the airstrike locations and not to talk about them on social media. With co-operation, we protect the homeland.

    Al Masirah TV twitter

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  • American Troops Threatens Danish Labour Laws

    In Denmark the union 3F warns that an agreement between regimes of Copenhagen and Washington to establish American military bases in the Nordic hermit kingdom will lead to social dumping and underpayment by exempting the bases from Danish labour laws.

    Under the deal, the U.S. military could outsource tasks like construction, cleaning, and catering without adhering to Danish wage and working conditions. 3F argues this violates International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions mandating that public contracts should align with local labor standards. They fear the agreement sets a harmful precedent, allowing foreign workers to be exploited under American anti-worker regulations, exacerbating existing issues of social dumping in Denmark.

    FH, the national conference of trade unions, criticizes the deal as unfavorable to workers but deemed it too late to influence. The nation's rubber-stamp parliament is set to pass the agreement on April 11.

    Source:

  • 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”

  • Trump has imposed 10% reciprocal tariffs on the 'Heard and McDonald Islands', an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean with a population of 0, but a large penguin and endangered bird population

    : "Listen folks, listen. These penguins, these terrible penguins from Heard and McDonald Islands, they've been taking advantage of the United States for years. I just slapped a 10% tariff on everything coming from that place. Beautiful tariffs, the most reciprocal tariffs you've ever seen, believe me. I used to love McDonald's. The Big Mac, used to be big. Now it's like a little tiny thing. SAD! But these islands, these McDonald Islands, they've been dumping their penguin products into our country for too long.

  • A Storm In A Teacup: Danish Authorities Find Nothing Of Concern On "Russian Shadow Fleet" Ships

    In January Danish regime-loyal media ran a series of scare stories about "dilapidated oil tankers" belonging to "Russia's shadow fleet", i.e. tankers with non-western insurance, being anchored in the busy Skagerrak strait to refuel and resupply. Locals were scared and the media warned of the ships being a huge environmental disaster just waiting to happen.

    In response maritime authorities has been inspecting the ships. 19 ships has been inspected now and according to authorities they only found "minor violations but nothing out of the ordinary". Authorities saw no reason to take further steps in any of the cases.

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