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Transnational Thursday for December 4, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Just wanted to note some news coming out of Vietnam

  1. There has been a lot of flooding in the last month or so in Vietnam.
  2. The incompetency of only giving 2 hour warning for residents downstream of the dam release can easily be painted as downstream of the messy re-organization that Vietnam went through, something I talked about 4 months ago
  3. I am myself not plugged into the situation but this is all within the context of a military vs police political fight in Vietnam. Currently the police is in ascendant because the current general secretary risen up from the police.
  4. A highly morbid story about consensual sexual decapitation, cannibalism, and snuff film dubbed "The Vietnamese Butcher" brew up and exploded all over the Vietnamese interwebs the last few weeks. The "Butcher" has been arrested btw.
  5. Which brings us to the conspiracy theory that 4 is actually just part of the fight in 3, which is to distract the masses from looking deeper into 1 and 2, because there is unconfirmed news that the "Butcher" was some kind of minor government official, possibly from the military.

Personally, I was shocked by my fellow compatriots and wondering if judging by the Japanese penchant for bizarre deaths, maybe I can enjoy good Vietnamese comics in a few decades or so.