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Niger
Don’t count the French out yet! President Macron has continued to call for the reinstatement of President Bazoum and has claims he will “back” (militarily?) ECOWAS if they intervene directly. Bloomberg has some choice words:
France’s stand is somewhat hypocritical.
For decades, Paris has been happy to sit back when coups were staged that suited its interests. Just two years ago, it effectively backed a bloodless putsch in Chad, one of the European nation’s most important military allies. It also continues to partner with strongmen across central Africa, including Paul Biya in Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo’s Denis Sassou Nguesso, who’ve held power for decades.
Anti-French sentiment . . . contributed to a spate of coups across western and central Africa over the past three years, with eight of the nine power grabs occurring in territories Paris once controlled.
If anything, the hostile relations between France and Niger’s junta could play into the soldiers’ hands, helping increase support and entrench their rule.
Yesterday the military government of Niger actually arrested a French elected official, the Counselor for French Citizens Abroad (which doesn’t sound like an elected position). Apparently Counselor Jullien hadn’t left the country despite being ordered to by the junta, because he / the government of France doesn’t recognize their authority. Seems inadvisable.
Chile
Chile commemorated the 50th anniversary of the coup of Salvador Allende and the start of the military dictatorship last week in a spirit of surprising divisiveness. The brutal military dictator who replaced him, Augusto Pinochet, still retains a surprising amount of supporters, mostly for his role in restoring the Chilean economy (which has less to do with him being all that great and more to do with Allende being exceptionally comparatively bad). The issue has become so politicized that everyone just picks a side at this point, the Chilean right has refused to attend any commemorative events for the coup or to sign a joint commitment to democracy, even though many of them very likely disapprove of dictatorship as well.
Recent releases of declassified information have shed some more light on America’s role in the coup. There wasn’t that much more to really add, everyone knew America had messed around in Chilean elections, communicated with the military and approved of a coup even if they didn’t pull the trigger, and that they held close relations with the military dictatorship of Pinochet in the following years. AOC, a long time for advocate for declassifying the Chilean files, has called upon the Biden Administration to apologize for America’s role in the coup (Obama famously refused to do so during his own term).
Colombia
I previously reported on Insight Crime’s assessment of President Boric’s Total Peace initiative on violent crime, which found that clashes between the government and the cartels had decreased, but intra-cartel conflict was worse than ever. They have now released a similarly damning follow-up report on trends in the drug industry under Petro, following the announcement on the new National Drug Policy:
The policy is based on two main principles, "oxygen" and "asphyxiation." The first aims to relieve the pressure on those who have borne the brunt of the so-called "war on drugs" -- small coca growers and consumers -- by encouraging them to voluntarily substitute their coca crops with legal alternatives and by promoting a public health approach to the consumption of psychoactive substances.
The second principle directs security forces to key flashpoints of the drug trade by boosting their ability to interdict drug shipments and destroy drug processing infrastructure. Additionally, the “asphyxiation” strategy aims to capture key members of drug trafficking gangs and increase investigations into related money laundering and corruption.
However, coca production has currently reached an all time high under the Petro Administration approach thus far, of which the National Drug Policy is mostly just an expansion. Combined with the Administration’s seeming inability or unwillingness to combat the cartels, who are only expanding their territory as well, it is difficult to see why this policy would arrest recent trends in coca production. Petro came to power on an upswell of revolutionary energy as the first ever left wing President of Colombia, but buffeted by scandals in his administration, failure to push initiatives through opposition stonewalling, and general record on crime and the drug trade, his popularity has plummeted to only 33%.
North Korea
Russia and North Korea recently held a summit where reportedly talks of North Korea endorsing Russia in the Ukrainian war would be exchanged for weapons transfers, likely ballistic missile technology or reconnaissance satellites. US officials have warned against proceeding with this.
Cambodia
Cambodia’s 38 year lasting dictator (#3 in the world!) Hun Sen, has officially stepped aside and his son Hun Manet has taken power. Manet recently laid out his vision to lift Cambodia up to high-income country status by 2050.
The vision involves developing human capital, the digital economy and inclusivity and sustainability, he said, referring to it as the "pentagon strategy".
In a country once riven by decades of war, Cambodia has now evolved to a lower-middle income nation with economic growth rates of 7%, he said.
Manet is now holding his first bilateral visit, to where else but China, where the two nations will be celebrating 65 years of (tumultuous) ties:
In August, Hun Manet met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Phnom Penh, where he pledged to promote agriculture, manufacturing, economic and trade investment and cooperation in practical areas such as tourism and education.
He also reaffirmed his government’s “unchanged position” on the one-China policy and non-interference in China’s internal affairs regarding Taiwan, Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong…
China is Cambodia’s biggest trading partner, with US$11.6 billion in trade between the two countries last year, according to Cambodia’s customs department.
It is also Cambodia’s largest lender, supplying loans to finance airports, roads and other infrastructure projects. Beijing owns 37 per cent of Phnom Penh’s US$10 billion in foreign loans, according to the latest figure by Cambodia’s Public Debt Statistical Bulletin.
China has also been helping Cambodia upgrade its Ream Naval Base, raising concerns in Washington that it could be used an overseas outpost by the Chinese military.
Both countries denied the claim, with Beijing saying the project was aimed at improving the Cambodian navy’s capability and was in line with the laws of both countries.
Southeast Asia
I’ve reported that the Biden Administration has been furthering/cementing diplomatic relations or security collaboration across Asia, including Japan, Korea, India, the Phillipines, Vietnam, and potentially Thailand.
Biden himself chose not to attend the ASEAN summit this year and sent VP Harris instead, continuing a pattern of handling Asian relations mostly on a bilateral basis (he met with the Thai government during the same timeslot; it’s also worth noting that next year ASEAN will be chaired by Laos, a close China ally). In other ASEAN news, Al Jazeera reports on the disharmony of the organization reaching a recent peak.
Thailand’s outgoing military-led government broke ranks with the bloc, which collectively had decided to suspend Myanmar’s generals from top meetings, and embraced the neighbouring country’s regime with support from China.
Then, last month, Myanmar’s coup leaders expelled East Timor’s top diplomat in Yangon after the Timorese joined a long list of countries in meeting with Myanmar’s National Unity Government (NUG), set up by removed and elected lawmakers mostly associated with now jailed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi...
The bloc also faces continuing challenges over the disputed South China Sea where there has been scant progress on a much-talked-about code of conduct.
The Philippines last month accused China of using water cannons to attack resupply vessels off Second Thomas Shoal. China’s release of a new map depicting its expansive claims has also caused upset.
“ASEAN’s silence on key issues, particularly the ongoing crisis in Myanmar, calls the bloc’s relevance into question,” said ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights co-chair, Charles Santiago, in a September 3 statement.
ASEAN is an economic block, not really a diplomatic / military coordinating framework, and it can’t pass anything without the unanimous consent of all its members, so it really may just not be suited for handling regional issues of this sort.
Contrary to well-established popular opinion, I'm not actually right about everything. I'm human and, sometimes, I make mistakes or otherwise fundamentally change my opinion on a topic. When I first sat down to write this list, one of the items was substantive enough to inflate into its own stand-alone post (Defunding My Mistake). Although unintentional, this does carry the misleading implication that the mistakes I make are exclusively of the rare and soul-searching variety. My original intent was to analyze errors in order to showcase how banal or even reasonable they can be. Part of my goal here is to nudge the act of acknowledging one's errors into the realm of the common & boring, and away from the tearful confession elicited only through torture. I hope to encourage others that it's OK and maybe even admirable to admit errors.
What follows is an incomplete listing, and my primary goal here isn't just to delineate what but to provide a detailed account for why. When picking examples to highlight, I wanted to cover a diverse palette of failure scenarios and so they're not intended to be a representative sample. Also, please note that if I offer an explanation for why I made a mistake, it shouldn't be interpreted as an excuse to shirk responsibility.
Paper Rips 4 Allah
I'll spare you the novel I could write about how and why I abandoned Islam and instead I'll focus on one particular incident. I must have been around 14 years old or so, wandering the stacks at the local library, when I encountered a Chick tract about Islam called Allah Had No Son. Chick tracts were widely distributed pocket-sized short comic book strips intended to impart evangelical Christian messages, typically through combative and antagonistic messaging.
The tract basically argues that Islam is a false religion because it was based on repurposed tribal moon deities. I have no idea how much of this is true and don't care, but my reaction at the time was livid anger. Here I was encountering some new information about a topic I was (fanatically) enthusiastic about but instead of "hmm that's interesting" I responded by making it my mission to scour the rest of the library and rip up any other Chick tracts I could find. I remember my heart racing and this distasteful feeling that I had somehow been mind-poisoned by a comic strip, and I did all I could to wipe my thoughts clean as if it was a radioactive waste clean-up mission.
That cleanliness desire is what I remember most, the notion that I couldn't even entertain the "noxious" ideas even just to mount a rebuttal because the risk of an incurable infection was too great. And so my only recourse was to suppress and bury. I see this burial reflex in full-grown adults today and all it reminds me of is a shaken 14 year-old thinking he's saving the world from damnation by ripping up paper.
Wrong About Wrong About
I was a big fan of Sarah Marshall & Michael Hobbes's You're Wrong About podcast, listened to dozens of their episodes, and heartily recommended it to others. My impression of the two is that they were unusually diligent reporters who devoted an incalculable amount of research behind each episode. I recall at one point they claimed each individual 1 hour-ish episode took 8 to 10 hours to record and was preceded by several weeks of research. This claim seemed and remains totally credible to me, because I can't imagine how else they would have been able to release sixteen hour-long episodes on the OJ Simpson case full of obscure minutiae without first having read several books on the topic.
The problem here is Hobbes specifically, his selective devotion to the truth, and why I didn't notice it before. Freddie deBoer's list reserved a scathing paragraph for Hobbes:
The quintessential 2022 liberal is someone who does not want to achieve anything, but rather to be something - an ally, a friend to the movement, one of the good ones. Achieving is beyond the point; the point is to occupy a space of existential goodness. For people like Hobbes, politics is not a thing you do but a thing you are. And what Hobbes is, naturally, is a guy who already knows the answer to every question.
As an illustrative example, see how credulous Hobbes is towards spurious claims which just happen to flatter his preconceived conclusion that Jesse Singal Bad. By far Hobbes's most telling confession comes from the 2018 You're Wrong About episode on the murder of Matthew Shepard. Amazingly, the transcript remains up (emphasis added):
My longtime obsession with this case and the debunking is about our use of symbols and our use of cases to illustrate larger phenomena. You saw this a lot with Michael Brown actually, and with Trayvon Martin. That those cases come out. It's horrible. That's used as a tag to talk about police killing African Americans at wildly disproportionate rates. And then everybody pops out of a trashcan and is like, actually Michael Brown, it looks like he fought back against the officer. Or maybe Trayvon Martin was shoplifting that day. And they try to complicate the narrative of this anecdote on which we've hung this larger trend. And frankly, who fucking cares? Maybe everything that the racists say about the Michael Brown case is true, and maybe everything they say about the Trayvon Martin case is true. That does not negate the fact that statistically speaking African Americans are more likely to be killed by police than white people. So, it really doesn't matter whether they are correct about their "debunking" of these cases. But to make a trend interesting, to make a trend important, you have to tie it to these events. And then we get into these events being more complicated than they seem at first, which fucking every event is more complicated than it seems at first. [...] And so then we start to complicate this narrative and then the entire edifice of the social problem falls apart. They say that cops are killing black people at disproportionate rates, but I read on Breitbart that like this Michael Brown kid was fighting with the officer, and the whole thing gets swept away. And I think it's just something human and a huge weakness of journalism that you have to tie bigger trends to these stories. And then once the story gets debunked, the trend gets debunked. [...] The thing that I think is really hard for people to incorporate is that even if all of the debunking about Matthew Shepard was true, or even more true, let's say he was trying to sell them meth and he was this huge meth kingpin, and he's just this terrible human being, it still doesn't stop the fact that he's gay and he got murdered. And it still doesn't stop the fact that homophobia in 1998 in America was a huge problem. And that many gay people were killed or beaten up or harassed or whatever due to their sexuality. So even if the debunking of the Matthew Shepard case was true, it doesn't negate the larger point.
Hobbes, an alleged journalist, admits it is acceptable to circulate factually false narratives if they happen to be in service towards a broader morally true mission. I hadn't listened to that episode but if that was admitted to in 2018, why didn't I notice the problem earlier? Partly it's because I assumed that diligence is completely incompatible with dishonesty. The other part is that Hobbes is not uniformly averse towards questioning sacred cows. In 2019 for example, during Pride month no less, he was willing to unambiguously reject the "A transwoman threw the first brick at Stonewall" canard, although admittedly not without some gratuitous and familiar excuse-making:
I think a lot of this putting Sylvia and Marsha back into the Stonewall narrative is completely understandable because they are much more representative of Stonewall, then the hot white 2% body fat people that have typically been celebrated for this kind of event.
So what now? By Hobbes' own admission, I can't trust his work on any subject since I can never know if he's relaying something factually true or just morally true. But did I go back and scrutinize everything else I picked up from listening to YWA? No. That kind of forensics is just not practical and also, Hobbes isn't just operating an opposite day machine where he reflexively relays the opposite of whatever his research says. I'm willing to wager that he's factually accurate the overwhelming amount of the time, but all you need to fully pulp your credibility is admit you're willing to bend the truth sometimes.
Legal Forecasting
I wrote about the bombshell revelation during the Proud Boys trial of an FBI agent caught lying in her testimony. I included a prediction of sorts: "My assumption is that the prosecutor will dismiss charges against Nordean in a feeble attempt to make this go away." Gattsuru righteously pointed out that this did not happen; the trial continued and all defendants were found guilty.
Obviously I cannot see the future so why should this failed prediction be on me? Well it's mostly a reminder that I should stay in my lane. One of the things I (hopefully) offer in my writing on legal topics as a criminal defense attorney is the background experience necessary to contextualize events, like how there's nothing at all remarkable about a defendant pleading not guilty at arraignment (dramatic headlines notwithstanding). I frame conversations with my real clients with similar qualifications, something like "While I can't predict the future, I have done hundreds of sentencings and I would be very surprised if X happened instead of Y." Neither my readers nor my real clients should have any business listening to what I have to say if I continue to fuck up my crystal ball.
It's possible for a prediction to be wrong but still be reasonable when offered at the time, and it remains possible that I would be vindicated by some future appeal decision. Even so, that would be an instance of being accidentally correct. I should not have made that prediction (no matter how weakly-worded it was) for a couple of reasons:
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My criminal defense experience is overwhelmingly in state court, not federal court. I lack the necessary context to confidently interpret events in the latter. Let's just say that it's much easier to catch a state prosecutor tripping with their pants down.
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My own bias as a defense attorney (and really, virtually the only time I get to do something useful at work) is to make hay out of the government's fuck-ups, only to thereafter be dispelled of the festivities once the prosecutor's reply brief comes in. In the Proud Boys case I relied entirely on just the defense motion as the prosecutor's response had not yet been filed.
Hopefully I can keep my limitations in mind...but who can predict the future?
Overestimated Immunity
In the same post above, I claimed that Qualified Immunity was "practically speaking, basically absolute immunity with a few extra steps". QI is definitely one of my hobby horses that I've written extensively about and yet, curiously, I never looked into how prevalent it is. Had I been asked at the time to predict how often QI is granted as a shield against §1983 civil lawsuits, I probably would have said around 80%. The real answer (thanks to Gdanning) is somewhere between 57% and 3.7%.
Regardless of what the real answer is, the fact that I never bothered to look it up was a big mistake on my end. All it took to answer the question was the same cursory research that I regularly excoriate others for not doing. I think this error was paradoxically the result of my enthusiastic interest on the topic. Once you're drowning within an issue it's much easier for the availability heuristic to take over. Something similar happened to Matt Walsh when he erroneously claimed on Rogan's show that "millions of kids" were on puberty blockers.
DoNotTrust
DoNotPay used to advertise itself as the World's First Robot Lawyer, now it's has rebranded into just Your AI Consumer Champion. The reason for the rebranding might have something to do with how DoNotPay's CEO, Joshua Browder, was exhaustively exposed as a flagrant fabulist by Kathryn Tewson, and he's the target of a lawsuit by the same.
When I first heard of DoNotPay, it was within the context of deploying a chatGPT-like agent on a company's customer support chat system in order to dispute bills and the like. That idea was and remains perfectly plausible (customer service reps are trained to follow a script after all) and so when Browder made news with his ridiculous $1 million SCOTUS offer I said that the stunt risked hurting DoNotPay's "promising product".
It was a tweet that barely got 100 views but I didn't have enough information to make that declaration. I also feel a bit sore about this one because I shelved my usual skepticism on a topic within my wheelhouse and got outscooped by Tewson on a major story. Darn.
"The Law That Created The Internet"
I already wrote about this a while ago. I used to be a §230 devotee but reading Gilad Edelman's article changed my mind about whether the federal law is as necessary to the existence of the internet as I thought it was. There's no shortage of arguments in favor of §230 but one errant thought I completely failed to follow up on is investigating how exactly the rest of the world handled the issue. Presumably not every country in the world copied §230 verbatim and yet the world-wide web still exists. I didn't dwell too long on that question and shelved it away with some glossed-over "maybe that's why all the tech companies are in the U.S.".
The other question I failed to pursue was if we were to assume that a world without §230 would be as cataclysmic as its proponents argue, why would it stay that way? The whole point of the internet was allowing people across the globe to communicate. It seems patently implausible that if §230 did not exist everyone would just shrug and stoically accept a world where everyone is too spooked by the threat of defamation lawsuits to allow any user-generated content. Admittedly this is on dodgy aspirational ground in the vein of "we'll figure something out" but it illustrates how helpful it can be to contemplate how exactly people (including legislators) will respond and not just assume they'll sit and helplessly awwshucks while the fire burns. I still think §230 is a good solution but it was a failure of the imagination to assume it was the only solution.
The other mistake I made on this subject was to reflexively reject §230 criticism, even in areas where I lacked the subject-matter familiarity. I did this in response to a claim that §230 overruled anti-discrimination law; a claim I confidently rejected as patently ludicrous but one which ended up being correct.
See? That wasn't that bad was it? I am still alive. Please call me out on any errors I haven't acknowledged! I am so grateful towards the people that do this. There's my entire Substack archive and here's also a spreadsheet with all my Motte posts from Reddit if that's easier to search. Never hesitate from flogging that whip, wah-pah!
Scott Alexander’s review of a 2015 biography of Elon Musk. Elon Musk, to me, is one of the world’s most confusing people. He’s simultaneously both one of the smartest people in the world, creating billions of dollars of value in companies like Tesla and SpaceX, and one of the dumbest, in burning billions on Twitter. Scott’s review I think is a good explanation of what’s up with Musk.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
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Argentina
Turbo-libertarian Javier Milei has gotten into some trouble for his running mate Victoria Villarruel, who has been a long time apologist for Argentina’s Dirty War and as a lawyer defended officers accused of crimes against humanity. She claims the mass disappearances were understandable and necessary to defeat leftist terrorists (who had mostly been extinguished by the time Videla took power in 76 near the very beginning of this era of state terrorism). This has understandably drawn the ire of Argentina’s human rights organizations and isn’t just an issue of the past - if Milei wins she will be in charge of the police and armed forces.
Separately the Economist wrote a rather scathing article arguing that the IMF had been radically lowering its lending standards to put up with Argentina’s endless monetary mismanagement. At the rate they’re heading, no matter who wins the election it may be too late to save the currency crisis.
The United Kingdom
Politico reports on leadership difficulties in Britain. The Tories have been receiving a drubbing in the polls, recently lost two by elections, and apparently concluded a ministerial reshuffle without generating much excitement. All this is a challenge for PM Sunak and doesn’t reflect well on next year’s election:
Sunak’s supporters are keen to highlight that he’s chalked up some big wins since taking office less than a year ago. He produced a solution to the Northern Ireland trade deadlock, started to carve out a new image for Britain on the international stage, presided over slowing inflation, and passed a flagship bill aimed at cutting undocumented migration. But these limited successes just may not cut it for voters. Two-thirds of people think Sunak has achieved “only a slight amount” or nothing at all in his premiership so far, according to polling for POLITICO by PR firm Redfield and Wilton.
Speaking of leadership woes, following Nicola Sturgeon’s exit and SNP’s ongoing scandals, much of the oomph seems to have been taken out of the independence movement:
A recent Survation poll suggested the SNP could lose almost half the 48 seats it won at the 2019 Westminster election, with Labour picking up 24 — a dramatic improvement on opposition leader Keir Starmer’s current total of one, and a major boost to his hopes of entering Downing Street at next year’s general election.
I’m not really a Britain watcher and I know we have a fair amount of users who are so input would definitely be appreciated.
Spain
The left and right remain in deadlock in Spain’s never ending post election hangover. The conservatives were the frontrunner in votes and their leader Feijoo is currently attempting unsuccessfully to form a party. Feijoo actually proposed to the Socialist party that they collaborate on legislation if they allow him to come to power, which the socialists of course rejected.
Currently they still hold the top chance at winning a third party to their coalition because the third parties are mostly regional outright or quasi independence movements that are incompatible with a more nationalist coalition. However, the Catalan party Junts has now formally outlined their demands to support the left. They will require full amnesty for their leader Carles Puigdemon, who is in exile following the illegal Catalan independence referendum. Until now this has been a nonstarter for leftist PM Pedro Sanchez and Junts have already said they won’t accept an exchange of amnesty for police officers accused of brutality in the wake of the referendum, which has been thus far the only idea proposed to sweeten the hard-to-swallow demand.
Thailand
To summarize the mess so far, two anti-military, anti-monarchy parties were big winners in the last election. One of them was more genuinely radical / progressive, the other was kind of the family party of the last two leaders that the military coup’d. For understandable reasons the latter party, Pheu Thai, were at first seen as a more serious enemy, and their incredibly popular shadow leader Thaksin Shinawatra has been exiled since the his 2014 coup.
However, the more radical (and popular) Move Forward party came to be seen as a more serious threat to the military-monarchy rule so the powers that be blocked them, and ended up coalitioning with Pheu Thai and let them pick a palatable, non-military PM in exchange for Thaksin being allowed to return. The King has now formally pardoned almost all of Thaskin’s sentence.
There are two ways to look at the conclusion to this saga. One is that populist forces have become so powerful that the military was forced on its back legs to sacrifice some power and even ally with their old enemy. The other is that the military has so skillfully entrenched their power that they have co-opted their historical enemy as an ally and handily crushed their only real threat. I tend to lean towards the latter explanation but you can differ.
Separately, I have previously used Thailand as an example arguing against people who think American foreign policy is guided by an urge to push progressivism everywhere. The Thai military basically just steamrolled a progressive democratic movement and we didn’t say anything, because what we really care about is whether they’ll lean towards us or China. At the time I argued it was very unlikely that Thailand made their move without letting the US know first, and that we should expect to see our countries grow closer, not farther apart following this arc. Early signs of this shift, the Thai PM has said he will also skip ASEAN and use that time to hold security talks with the United States.
I’ve been covering this election saga for a while and now that it’s basically concluded I probably won’t update on Thailand too often, unless they do something crazy (which they well might!) so thanks for following this with me.
Gabon
After Gabon’s coup against the re-elected Ali Bongo, General Brice Oligui Nguema has risen to power as the new “interim” president. While on the surface this is the end of the 56 years of rule by the Bongo family, Nguema is actually cousins with President Bongo, leading the opposition leader to accuse the whole thing of being a sham to keep the family in power. Either way, the General has his work cut out for him:
The freeze on hiring since 2018 and the suspension of a salary before the civil servants are given a posting are just two issues that have made the job more precarious, unionist Sima Bertin says.
"Three major issues come immediately come to mind. First, the administrative situations of teachers must be regularized. The second is the regularization of their financial situation, including the payment of arrears. Last but not least, the pension should be indexed to the teachers' remuneration systems',' the Syndicat de l’éducation nationale member listed.
Nguema has promised to return the country to civilian control with free and fair elections but, uh, no timeline yet. Rwanda and Cameroon have responded to the coup by reshuffling their own defense forces and seem to be wary of more instability spreading.
Slovakia
Slovakia will have a parliamentary election on September 30th. This is earlier than normal because the last election was only in 2020, which saw the rise of the anti-corruption populist Igor Matovič, who proceeded to mismanage things so badly that he is apparently now the most distrusted politician in Slovakia with various polls showing 88% to 91% of the population rating him as distrustful. He was succeeded by Eduard Heger who struggled to maintain momentum through stillwater budget negotiations and ultimately lost a vote of no confidence in December, leading to a vote in January to reform the constitution to allow for early elections.
Right now the previous leader of the left wing coalition, SD, is in first place, trailed by a progressive party likely willing to coalition with them, and trailed comfortably by everyone else.
China
China’s second largest real estate giant after Evergrande, Country Garden, may default on their debts as well, turning a bad real estate -driven recession even worse.
This came as the crisis-hit company reported a record $6.7bn (£5.2bn) loss for the first six months of the year…
Country Garden also announced it had missed interest payments on bonds that were due this month. However, it added it was still within a 30-day grace period to make the payments.
It is also reportedly seeking to extend a deadline for the repayment of another bond…
Problems in China's property market - which includes everything from building homes to industries making the goods that go in them - is having a major impact as it accounts for around a third of the economy.
China's real estate industry was rocked when new rules to control the amount of money big real estate firms could borrow were introduced in 2020.
Evergrande, which was once China's top-selling developer, racked up debts of more than $300bn as it expanded aggressively to become one of the country's biggest companies.
Its financial problems have rippled through the country's property industry, with a series of other developers defaulting on their debts and leaving unfinished building projects across the country.
BBC adds more detail in a small retrospective:
The country's astonishing growth in the past 30 years was propelled by building: everything from roads, bridges and train lines to factories, airports and houses. It is the responsibility of local governments to carry this out.
However, some economists argue this approach is starting to run out of road, figuratively and literally.
One of the more bizarre examples of China's addiction to building can be found in Yunnan province, near the border with Myanmar. This year, officials there bafflingly confirmed they would go ahead with plans to build a new multi-million dollar Covid-19 quarantine facility.
Heavily indebted local governments are under so much pressure that this year some were reportedly found to be selling land to themselves to fund building programmes.
On the other hand, a series of articles seems to be praising Hauwei’s advances in the just released chip, in spite of sanctions:
Jefferies analysts said TechInsights' findings could trigger a probe from the U.S. Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, create more debate in the U.S. about the effectiveness of sanctions and prompt the Congress to include even harsher tech sanctions in a competition bill it is preparing against China.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
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The goal of this thread is to coordinate development on our project codenamed HighSpace - a mod for Freespace 2 that will be a mashup between it and High Fleet. A description of how the mechanics of the two games could be combined is available in the first thread.
Who we have
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@FCfromSSC - 2D/3D artist
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@netstack - developer, tester, and suggester of great ideas
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@Mantergeistmann - writer
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@Southkraut and @RenOS - didn't formally join the team, but in appreciation for their feedback I am granting them the rank of Consultant
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Me - developer
Who we need
The more the merrier, you are free to join in any capacity you wish! I can already identify a few distinct tasks for each position that we could split the work into
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developers: “mission” code, “strategic” system map code
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artists: 2D (user interface), 3D (space ships, weapons explosions)
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writers: worldbuilding/lore, quests, characters
What we have
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An official Highspace Github Org and Repository
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An official Highspace Wiki
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Concept art for several ship types, curtesy of @FCfromSSC
And we've made some attempts to import them into the game, just to see how they'd look:
- Interceptor: Mission Editor, In-Game
- Cruiser: Mission Editor, In-Game
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A proof of concenpt for “strategic” system map we jump into on start of the campaign. It contains a friendly ship and 2 enemy ships, you can chose where to move / which enemy ship to attack.
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A somewhat actual-game-like workflow. Attacking a ship launches a mission where the two ships are pitted against each other. If you win, the current health of your ship is saved, and you can launch the second attack. If you clean up the map you are greeted with a “You Win” message, or “You Lose” if you lose your ship.
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A “tactical” RTS-like in-mission view where you can give commands to your ships.
Updates
I didn't have as much time to work on the mod as I would like this month, but I managed to update the System View. It now has camera movement and zoom, but more importantly it is now a view of an actual solar system (our's to be precise).
Neither the sun, nor the planets currently do anything - they don't move, they don't block your movement, you can even fly right into them - but they do look cool in my opinion. I also added ship grouping (separate from the idea of merging fleets into Battle Groups) in case the zoom-out is so big, the icons start running into each other. It's still a bit glitchy, but it gets the job done.
What's next
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I'd like to continue working on the System View. @netstack wanted to add real-time ship movement, with pausable/fast-farwardable game time, and planet movement feels like a natural extension of that. I'd also like to add orbit calculation and movement for the ships. After that, I'd implementing various forms of obstacle mechanics - you won't be able to fly into, or through the planets,
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If I get tired of the System View, I might work on the Tactical View improvements I mentioned in the last thread: subsystem status, beam cannon charge status, and a handier way to give advanced commands. The scripting API also allows you to add objects to the background, so I'd like to calculate the appropriate positions for suns and planets, based on your location in the System View.
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
Quality Contributions in the Main Motte
Contributions for the week of July 31, 2023
Contributions for the week of August 7, 2023
Contributions for the week of August 14, 2023
Contributions for the week of August 21, 2023
Contributions for the week of August 28, 2023
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from around the world. Feel free to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the BRICS expansion or the Prigozhin assassination, or even just whatever you’re reading.
Gabon
Last week I reported that Gabon’s election would almost certainly result in a victory for Ali Bongo, current heir of the Bongo family that has dominated Gabon since 1967. He did win, but apparently the military had other ideas, because they have staged yet another African coup and declared themselves in power. This is a little different than the coups that have happened in democracies, because Gabon was basically a dictatorship with a thin veneer of fake elections, but represents another startling addition to the trend of coups.
Brazil
Lula has been somewhat stymied so far in his agenda by his Worker’s Party’s minority in the legislature:
Despite progress on certain bills – including the passage of looser limits on public expenditure, and approval in the lower house of long-awaited tax reform – Lula has suffered a series of parliamentary defeats. Lawmakers thwarted plans to roll back privatisation of the water and sewerage sector, before stripping powers from the environment and newly created indigenous affairs ministries.
He seems to have now hammered out a larger coalition with two right wing parties that previously supported Bolsonaro, the Republican Party and the Progressive Party (I know, I swear it’s on the right). The details aren’t fully finalized yet but it seems that both parties will get cabinet positions, and possibly one of them the administration of Brazil’s state owned bank, Banco do Brasil. In exchange they will help support Lula’s spending packages and measures at environmental protection and worker’s and minority rights. It’s a pretty unique coalition and presumably these parties will still not give Lula a blank check, so it will be interesting to see how things go.
Colombia
President Gustavo Petro was elected on a “Total Peace” platform to significantly reduce conflict with the country’s cartels and revolutionary groups through peace talks and by legalizing some drugs. There have been some big successes, including a ceasefire with the ELN and ongoing negotiations with the active remnants of FARC (Petro’s previous organization). However, Insight Crime has released a rather critical assessment of Total Peace overall, based off this (Spanish language) think tank report:
During its first year, the Petro government has overseen a significant reduction in confrontations between state security forces and armed groups…
Between July 2022 and August 2023, there were fewer than 100 clashes, while in 2021 there were more than 170…
But not everything is positive. The report's data show that disputes between the country's main armed groups have increased as they look to maintain and expand their territorial control. Clashes between armed groups have grown by 85% during Petro's first year in office, making it the highest figure in the last decade.
During this period, the ex-FARC mafia, ELN, and AGC have reinforced their ranks. Their combined total membership is now 7,620, according to the report. They are also supported by a network of at least 7,512 people, exceeding the figures reported in previous years, which averaged 6,000…
Although homicides have decreased by 1.5% in comparison to the last year under former president, Iván Duque (2018-2022), violence has continued unabated in the departments where armed groups have a strong presence.
The island of San Andrés and the departments of Sucre and Vaupes, where the AGC and the ex-FARC mafia have operations, have seen homicides increase by 72%, 59%, and 50% respectively. Bolivar and Putumayo also saw increases of between 10% and 20%.
At the national level, kidnapping have risen by 77% and extortion by almost 15%. In both cases, these are the highest figures in the last decade and contrast starkly against the goals of Total Peace
China
Things continue to look bleak in China. The government has stopped reporting youth unemployment numbers. Evergrande (the real estate giant from the fiasco in 2021) had their stock fall by another 80%, leaving them (if I read correctly) at under 1% of their value as of three years ago. China does appear to be taking a few scattered steps to address the situation:
Also on Monday, China halved a 0.1% tax on stock trading to "invigorate the capital market and boost investor confidence".
Major share indexes in Hong Kong and mainland China rose after the news. The move came days after the country's central bank cut one of its key interest rates for the second time in three months, in the face of falling exports and weak consumer spending.
Time writes on the global ripple effects, some negative:
Global investors have already pulled more than $10 billion from China’s stock markets, with most of the selling in blue chips. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley have cut their targets for Chinese equities, with the former also warning of spillover risks to the rest of the region.
Asian economies are taking the biggest hit to their trade so far, along with countries in Africa. Japan reported its first drop in exports in more than two years in July after China cut back on purchases of cars and chips. Central bankers from South Korea and Thailand last week cited China’s weak recovery for downgrades to their growth forecasts…
as the world’s second-largest economy, a prolonged slowdown in China will hurt, rather than help, the rest of the world. An analysis from the International Monetary Fund shows how much is at stake: when China’s growth rate rises by 1 percentage point, global expansion is boosted by about 0.3 percentage points…
Many countries, especially those in Asia, count China as their biggest export market for everything from electronic parts and food to metals and energy.
The value of Chinese imports has fallen for nine of the last 10 months as demand retreats from the record highs set during the pandemic. The value of shipments from Africa, Asia and North America were all lower in July than they were a year ago.
…and some positive:
It’s not all doom-and-gloom, though. China’s slowdown will drag down global oil prices, and deflation in the country means the prices of goods being shipped around the world are falling. That’s a benefit to countries like the U.S. and U.K. still battling high inflation.
Some emerging markets like India also see opportunities, hoping to attract the foreign investment that may be leaving China’s shores.
Pakistan
The Islamabad High Court (not the Supreme Court, but kind of like the equivalent of a circuit court for the Islamabad Capital Region) has suspended Imran Khan’s prison sentence and ordered that he be released. This is still evolving and the government is resistant for now, insisting he needs to remain in jail for now. It remains to be seen how things will progress.
Zimbabwe
Predictably, the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) won last week’s election, keeping their 43 year hold on power steady. Incumbent President Emmerson Mnangagwa AKA The Crocodile, who took power from Mugabe six years ago in a coup, will continue to govern. South Africa and the US have acknowledged criticisms of the election but have for now called for peace. Under the constitution this is Mnangagwa’s last legal term. Most people think he will try to run again anyway, though he’s currently 80 so it’s up in the air whether he will even be alive in 2028.
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan met to negotiate over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GRED) across the Nile. Ethiopia put nearly $5 billion into GERD and would be able to generate vast amounts of electricity for its energy-deprived populace, but it would reduce the flow of water to Egypt and Sudan (the Nile is the only major river that actually runs south-to-north) which Sudan is wary about and Egypt considers an existential threat to the 85% of its water supply that comes from Ethiopia. The latter two nations are demanding a legally binding agreement as to how the dam will be operated, filled, and maintained. Ethiopia, uh, doesn't want to do that. Reportedly no progress was made; the next round of talks will happen in Addis Ababa with the hypothetical deadline for an agreement in October.
Also, updates on the Ethiopian conflict in the Amhara region, following President Abiy’s attempt to integrate the Amhara paramilitary Fano into the overall military (mirroring his political project to integrate the ethnic political parties into one coalition loyal to him):
"At least 183 people have been killed in clashes since July, according to information gathered by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights", the OHCHR spokeswoman continued…
"We are very concerned about the deterioration of the human rights situation in certain regions of Ethiopia", said Marta Hurtado, stressing that the state of emergency gives the authorities wide powers.
In particular, it allows them to arrest suspects without a court order, impose curfews and ban public gatherings, she detailed."We have received reports that more than 1,000 people have been arrested throughout Ethiopia under this law.
Many of them are young people of Amhara ethnic origin suspected of being supporters of Fano", she said."Since the beginning of August, massive house-to-house searches have reportedly taken place", she added."We call on the authorities to put an end to the mass arrests, to ensure that any deprivation of liberty is subject to judicial review, and to release those arbitrarily detained", she said, calling on all those involved in the conflict "to put an end to the killings, other violations and abuses".
NPR also has a retrospective on the conflict of the past few years, “How did Ethiopia go from its leader winning the Nobel Peace Prize to war in a year?”, which I’m partially sharing because the guest is one incredibly named GEBREKIRSTOS GEBRESELASSIE GEBREMESKEL.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
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Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
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Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
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Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
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Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
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Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
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Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
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Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
