Very sorry about this one, guys.
For reasons that I'm currently unsure of, the database decided to eat itself. I'm giving it something like 40/40/20 "hacker", "postgres bug", or "host glitch".
The site currently has two different backup methods. The manual backup triggers whenever I do a site update; the last site update was on 1/31. The automatic backup is supposed to be daily, and I check it once in a while to make sure it's working. It's been working literally ever since before the main Motte site was launched . . . and it broke on 2/4. Good timing, thanks, system.
In theory, the quality-contribution system captured all reported quality contributions during this time. I'll try to retrieve those. Any opinions on whether I should just go ahead and repost them, or whether I should send them to the person so they can repost them?
I do have a dump of a bunch of text snippets that are all that was left of the database. If you remember some phrases you used I might be able to retrieve parts of lost posts. That said, someone's tried this with a few posts and got 0/2, so absolutely no promises here. Feel free to ask though! If you want to take data recovery more seriously, make a copy of your browser cache, which can then be pored over to find people's posts. I'm not totally sure how important this is, but I bet at least a few people will be sad to lose effortposts they made.
I've fixed the backup issue and set up better monitoring so it will yell at me if it fails again. I've also temporarily increased backup frequency to hourly, just in case there's some serious stability issue right now that I'm not aware of. The good news is that this shouldn't happen again, at least with as much lost data. But that doesn't really fix this one.
Apologies again.
This too shall pass.
If you’re on twitter a lot(like I am) you might have heard of this recent trend of people praising Osama Bin Laden.
It’s one of the more popular topics at twitter in the week leading up to Thanksgiving. If you searched for Bin Laden on twitter during that time, you’d have seen pages and pages of people talking about the trend.
This seems to goes beyond just talking about blowback, which is the idea that foreign intervention often ends up making you enemies. Apparently some people are unironically saying that Bin-Laden was right, or even that he was justified in carrying out 9/11. It’s good to understand blow-back, but there’s no justifying what Bin Laden did.
To the casual twitter user, this might seem like a disturbing trend. A lot of people are seemingly defending Bin Laden. But something about this phenomenon is strange to me. If so many people are unironically defending Bin Laden, then why haven’t I encountered any of them in the wild? I have encountered people in the wild talking about blowback, but so far, every post I’ve seen where someone is actually defending Bin Laden was brought to me by someone else.
If encountering an ideologue “in the wild” means that you’re encountered them first hand, then encountering them second-hand is analogous to encountering them in a zoo. If you go to an actual zoo, you can be sure that you’ll see some lions, tigers, elephants, gorillas, and any number of exotic animals. However you’d be hard pressed to find those same animals out in the wild. Even if you go to their known habitats, actually seeing one isn’t always a frequent occurrence.
When people share the posts of their ideological opponents, they tend not to share the more reasonable posts. They’re motivated to share the most outrageous ones they can find so that they make their opposition look bad. They’re also trying to drive engagement, and outrageous posts are good at driving engagement.
The first twitter post I referenced in this entry was brought to you by Libs of TikTok. Libs of TikTok is a conservative social media personality that’s dedicated to sharing the most outrageous-looking posts and actions on behalf of liberals. Usually they focus on trans issues, but over the past few months they’ve been posting about Israel–Hamas war. Libs of TikTok is a sort of ideological zoo. Just like you can go to a real zoo to see the lions and elephants, you can go to one of Libs of TikTok’s social media accounts to see the people who praise Bin Laden.This is not to say that Bin-Laden-praisers don’t really exist. They clearly do exist. A lot of people have encountered them, and you can probably go track down some of those posts right now if you really wanted. But they might not be as frequent as they seem. Libs of TikTok, and other similar accounts signal-boost the ones that do exist. They present a distorted view of the ideological landscape, and make things like Bin-Laden praising seem more common then it really is.
This an application of Alyssa Vance’s Chinese robber fallacy: There are over 1 billion Chinese people. If one out of every ten thousand of them are robbers, that would result in more than a hundred thousand Chinese robbers. That’s a lot of robbers, and if someone wanted to make you think that Chinese people were robbers, they could easily share true examples of Chinese robbers until your attention span was depleted, even if only 0.01% of them actually were robbers.
No outright fake news is needed in order to have this effect. If given a large enough world, there are almost always enough examples of a rare ideology to cherry pick in order to make it seem like a common one.
There are many other examples of zoos on the internet. Reddit_Lies on Twitter is a zoo. /r/ChoosingBeggars on Reddit is a sort of zoo. The algorithms on the typical social media site, that feed you the most high-engagement content have the effect of a zoo. Even a normal news publication is a sort of natural zoo. The news doesn’t tell you about every day normal events. It tells you about rare, exceptional events. As John B. Bogart said, "When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news."
I will admit sense-making based entirely on your personal experience isn’t perfect. Perhaps the reason I don’t encounter Bin Laden supporters in the wild is because of my personal internet habits. A lot of the discourse seems to mention TikTok, which I don’t use. Everybody is in a bubble of some sort, so relying only on your personal experiences does have it’s flaws. But it’s still better than relying on a source that’s distorted in a particular direction.
It’s perfectly fine to do your sense-making based on second-hand information, but you have to be mindful of the forces that bring that information to you. You should understand how the information might be manipulated, intentionally or even unintentionally. You should be aware of the motivations your sources have, and the ways in which they’re likely to spin information. You should understand how they can cherry pick true information in order to distort the bigger picture. If you don’t, then you may find yourself an easy target for manipulation.
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 a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum might be interested in. Feel free to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the UN General Assembly, or even just whatever you’re reading.
Nagorno Karabakh
On Tuesday Azerbaijan launched a major offensive into Nagorno-Karabakh. They describe the operation as “anti-terrorist” and have accused the Armenian army of shelling them, which Armenia denies.
At least five people were killed, including a child, and 80 people were injured, amid artillery, missile and drone strikes by the Azerbaijan military, according to Armenian state news…
Tensions have been simmering around the region for months, after Azerbaijani troops blockaded the Lachin corridor in December, cutting off the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia and preventing the import of food to its roughly 120,000 inhabitants.
Russian peacekeepers, who deployed to Nagorno-Karabakh under the terms of the 2020 ceasefire, have been tasked with preventing a fresh conflict breaking out. But Moscow has been accused of being unable or unwilling to intervene to protect Armenia, its long-term ally, in the face of continuing aggression from Azerbaijan.
The conflict has now reached a ceasefire with Azerbaijan claiming complete military control of the territory.
(For background: a long time ago Nagorno-Karabakh (or Artsakh) was an autonomous oblast under the Soviet Union. The area was mixed ethnically between Armenians and Azeris and when the USSR fell both Armenia and Azerbaijan went to war over the future of Artsakh (with Armenia supporting its independence). Armenia won and pretty significant ethnic cleansing drove much of the local Azeri population out. The area remained officially Azeri but de facto independent until 2020 when Azerbaijan conquered much of it back. The area is now pretty solidly ethnically Armenian (post all the ethnic cleansing) and it was very much a hostile occupation so it was probably inevitable that conflict would bubble up again in one way or another.)
Canada
This was written right after things happened, see @self_made_human’s in depth comment in the main thread for more discussion.
Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau has accused the Indian government of assassinating a Sikh community leader on Canadian soil. The man in question, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, was a Canadian citizen residing in British Columbia, and a prominent advocate for “the creation of Khalistan, an independent Sikh nation carved out of areas including the Indian state of Punjab." These views have led the Indian government to label him as a “wanted terrorist”. India had a fraught relationship between Sikh dissidents and the government in the past, and the present day Indian government has criticized the behavior of the Canadian Sikh community, but this would be an unprecedented escalation. It’s entirely unclear what the evidence is though beyond confidential Canadian intelligence reports.
Canada has expelled an Indian diplomat “whom [Foreign Minister Joly] described as the head of India’s intelligence agency in Canada.” India has responded by expelling a Canadian diplomat in turn. India has also issued a travel advisory warning its citizens in Canada to “exercise caution” - pretty cheeky if you ask me.
Their ongoing trade deal negotiations now seem permanently dead as well; they were paused earlier, apparently because of suspicions surrounding the assassination. If the trade deal had gone through “Industry estimates show the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between Canada and India could boost two-way trade by as much as $6.5 billion, yielding a GDP gain of $3.8 billion to $5.9 billion for Canada by 2035.”
As NYTimes notes, Indians are not only sizable minority population in India at around 4%, but the New Democratic Party, which currently props up Trudeau’s coalition, is led by a Jagmeet Singh, a Sikh himself. The current coalition has the NDP offering to support the liberals through 2025 as long as they work on NDP priorities. Significantly this forced Liberals to fund the NDP’s primary plank of federal dental care, despite the fact that it cost over double what it was projected. Needless to say, their support is important and will factor into Canada’s response in this situation.
Taiwan
Taiwan will be holding elections in January and it’s looking to be a fraught one in the context of increased Chinese belicosity. The incumbent Democratic Progressive Party will be facing stiffer challenges to their rule as party leader President Tsai Ing-wen is no longer eligible to run due to term limits. Instead they’ll be running Vice President Lai Ching-te, a historically pro-independence politician (which may make some voters nervous about more escalation with China).
The primary opposition candidate, Hou Yi-Hi running for the Kuomintang party (the traditional nationalist party of Chiang Kai-Shek, ironically less anti-China than the DPP) , published an op-ed in Foreign Affairs arguing for his candidacy. The tl;dr is greater dialogue with China while also increasing the military and deepening relationships with allies.
Terry Gou, the billionaire founder of Foxconn, has also announced his second Presidential bid. In 2020 he ran (“declaring he was instructed by the sea goddess Mazu in a dream to contest the election”) in the KMT primary and lost, now he will be running as an independent, which may split KMT’s voters. Currently he is probably the most pro-Chinese candidate.
The Taiwanese People’s Party (actually a pretty centrist party) will also run their leader Ko Wen-je but they get like no votes.
CNN notes that if DPP were to win a third term this would be “unprecedented” in the history of Taiwanese democracy, but that only started in like 1987, so not actually that hard to beat previous records.
Sudan
The Sudanese conflict continues to rage on with over 4 million displaced and 200,000 killed, but media coverage has mostly lost interest. Last month military officials spoke about a negotiated agreement to end the war, but as far as I can tell it hasn’t manifested (and there have been several ceasefires already established and violated). The army has also paid recent visits to Qatar and Eritrea to discuss the conflict.
The millions who remain in Khartoum and cities in the Darfur and Kordofan regions have faced rampant looting and long power, communications and water cuts.
Reports of sexual assaults have increased by 50 percent, said UN population fund official Laila Baker
Large swaths of the country have been suffering from an electricity blackout since Sunday, which has also taken mobile networks offline, according to a statement from the national electricity authority
Seasonal rains, which also increase the risk of waterborne diseases, have destroyed or damaged the homes of up to 13,500 people, the UN estimated.
Foreign Affairs writes a very good piece on the conflict updating (to the best of our ability to know what’s happening) on the present status quo in Darfur:
Darfur is without cellphone or Internet access, making it a black hole for information. But it appears that the RSF has also taken over Zalingei, the capital of central Darfur and the largest city of the Fur ethnic group. The militia commander has moved into the governor’s office. One by one, Darfur’s towns are falling to the RSF. The cattle-herding Arab tribes of eastern Darfur, which had tried to remain neutral in the earlier war, now find themselves with no option but to ally with the RSF. Rural aristocrats, whose writ once determined tribal policy, are now subject to the diktats of young militia commanders. Last month, nine senior chiefs declared support for the RSF.
So far, the most powerful of the former rebels—including Minni Minawi of the Sudan Liberation Movement—have stayed out of the fight. They fear the RSF, but they do not trust the intentions or the capacity of the army and have accused Burhan’s government of neglecting Darfur’s urgent humanitarian needs. Others have joined forces with the beleaguered army to defend key cities. How long the former rebels can stay neutral is uncertain, especially as the targeted communities need protection. Darfuri communities’ self-defense units urgently need international support to create safe zones in cities and displaced people’s camp.
The RSF has also swept across neighboring Northern Kordofan. Its conquest of the main city of al-Obeid was only thwarted by mass demonstrations by its residents. RSF paramilitaries are moving eastward to reinforce their fight for Khartoum, as trucks laden with the capital’s looted goods rumble in the opposite direction.
They also offer a retrospective tracking the present day conflict in Sudan through its roots in the 2003 Darfur genocide, and even farther back through the spillover effects of the Chadian civil war of the 60s and Libyan invasions of Chad in the 70s and 80.
Japan
During Kishida’s time in the US for the UN General Assembly he reportedly held a summit with Iran and intentionally avoided one with Ukraine. In more major diplomatic meetings, on September 26, Japan will meet with China and Korea to hold the first trilateral summit ever. Japan and Korea have only recently restored their diplomatic and trade ties, so they will likely be approaching the summit from a mostly united front on the one thing they really agree on: countering China.
A little over a year ago Shinzo Abe was assassinated by a guy with a homemade pipe gun and some schizophrenic accusations that Abe was in bed with the Korean "Moonies" cult. It turns out his accusations weren’t so schizophrenic after all and not only was Abe connected with the Moonies, like his father and his father’s father before him, half of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party had some ties with them. This turned into a gigantic scandal; the Atlantic offers a great retrospective with some eye popping details about the extent of the Moonies’ influence within Japanese democracy.
Guatemala
Since underdog Bernardo Arévalo’s upset victory in the election, the establishment has pursued a series of pretty much everything they can do to overturn the results of the election. Most recently the Attorney General had federal agents raid the electoral tribunal office and seize all the ballot boxes. Arévalo won with a pretty commanding 60% and pretty much everyone has condemned the government’s moves to oppose it, from the Organization of American States to the European Parliament to the United States.
Thousands of protestors have been marching in Guatemala City, particularly from the indigenous community, in support of Arévalo and calling for judicial officials to resign.
Colombia
I’ve covered several weeks of people reporting on Gustavo Petro’s failures on cartel violence, the drug trade, and getting his bills passed, so here’s a more positive take from Jacobin (obvious bias is obvious). His failures to pass his primary legislative goals through they chalk up to opposition stonewalling (which is 100% true). Even so, they argue, he’s achieved quite a bit and despite his overall popularity falling, this is reflected in some 90% of his coalition’s voters still supporting him.
On the economy, most conservative analysts predicting he would steer them into economic chaos and hyperinflation (in fairness, with more of a legislative mandate he certainly would have passed higher levels of spending). Instead, Petro inherited high unemployment and inflation rates and has overseen them come steadily down even as he continuously raised minimum wages, expanded housing subsidies for low income buyers, and passed land redistribution. This has decreased poverty and raised living standards, especially for the poorest Colombians. On the environment, he’s also passed ambition funding for the preservation of the Amazon where previously there was nothing allocated.
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts, Podcast Addict, and RSS.
In this episode, we discuss information addiction.
Participants: Yassine, Jason, Neophos, Shakesneer. Credit to Internaut for the inspiration.
Links:
None. Go outside.
Recorded 2023-05-08 | Uploaded 2023-06-03
Here's an essay I wrote. It's mostly sketching out the general case without going into case studies. I realize people like to bring things down to reality but it didn't feel right for this essay.
Arthur has an oil well. Caleb has the skill to refine the oil. Without the oil the skill is useless. Without the skill to refine the oil the oil is useless. How do they share the profits that come from selling the refined oil? How do they negotiate the split of the profits?
One might imagine that Arthur could choose from many oil engineers and select the one that will give him the best deal, and Caleb could find the oil well owner that will give him the best deal, and supply and demand would meet in the middle through ordinary market forces. In practice this isn’t always how things go. Sometimes one side doesn’t have any other potential partners. Sometimes, for one reason or another, neither side does. If there’s only one seller and one buyer, that’s known as a bilateral monopoly. In the case of the oil well it’s less a matter of buyers and sellers and more about two business partners who can’t profit without the other.
In such cases, negotiation turns into a game of chicken. If Arthur offers Caleb a split that Caleb thinks is unfair, Caleb can refuse it, in which case the oil stays in the ground and neither side gets paid. Likewise for an unappealing deal that Caleb offers to Arthur. If one side wants 95% of the profit, the other side could reject the deal, even if it means no profit for either of them. That’s not irrational, it’s just the only way to exercise leverage in such a situation.
So far so obvious. But here’s the thing that I want to call attention to: in a simplified model, the deal that will go through is one where the wealthier business partner gets a larger cut of the profits. In a market with only one buyer and one seller, the side with the highest willingness to cancel the deal has the most leverage, and the richer side (theoretically) needs the money less. Horribly ugly, but also utterly reasonable. In many cases we may wish it were otherwise, but if the poorer business partner cancels the deal too often out of indignation and pride that’s not so great either.
It might seem like the situation I described with only one buyer and one seller is unlikely to occur, but consider the situation in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez: Chavez couldn’t fire all the domestic oil engineers and replace them without greatly hampering oil production and disrupting the workings of the entire country, and the oil engineers couldn’t go work somewhere else without uprooting their lives and going to an entirely different country. Venezuela didn’t have a monopoly on oil, and the oil engineers didn’t have a monopsony on oil engineering, but the costs for switching partners were high enough that somewhat similar effects were in play, I think.
Mood board:
The national pride of poorer countries as a recurring factor in geopolitics
Oil negotiations between Iran and Britain in the 1950s
Hugo Chavez firing all the oil engineers in Venezuela
Hollywood Strikes
The likelihood that both sides will think that what they bring to the table in the deal is the key ingredient in the process and therefore more valuable.
Additional thought:
What would it look like if the richer side needed the money more? Could that ever happen? Maybe there could be situations where the richer party has “farther to fall” than the poorer party. For instance, if the richer side of the equation has a lot of valuable businesses that need capital injections in order to stay afloat, and the poorer side of the equation can just continue with a meager but stable lifestyle.
https://absenceofweather.substack.com/p/fair-and-unfair-in-bilateral-monopolies
While the Ukraine war has been sidelined by the Israel/Palestine conflict flaring up (there can apparently be just one ongoing war in public consciousness), I've been long interested in finding more about the original Donbass war starting from 2014, so I decided to read a book from the pro-Russian side, 85 Days in Slavyansk by Alexander Zhuchkovsky (I guess the best-known one of such memoirs.) It's not what I'd call a work of high literature, but the style and translation was serviceable, and the described events were highly interesting, so the book was a breeze.
The book describes the event that really turned the post-Euromaidan pro-Russian protests (“Antimaidan”/”Russian Spring”) into a war; the occupation of Slavyansk by a small group of militants led by Igor Girkin (“Strelkov”), the battles with Ukrainian army and volunteer groups like Azovites after that and the eventual withdrawal from the city after Ukrainian pressure got too high. The author was not in the city right at the beginning but became a volunteer fighter at a later stage and has interviewed militants who were there (and are still alive). Some parts of the book give a “macro” view of the conflict, but much of it just recounts individual battles and, to some degree, life at the city.
Some things I thought while reading it:
While an obvious point, it’s hard to miss how the (blatantly, unapologetically) one-sided perspective makes the author describe things differently when the sides do them. When Ukrainians kill civilians, it shows their idiotic, brutish nature, when the separatists kill civilians, well, war is war, cruelty is sometimes needed etc. When Ukrainians make a maneuver wearing Russian symbols its duplicitous, when the separatists do a maneuver while flying the Ukrainian flag it's smart. "Ukraine" is a fake nation invented by Austrians and Poles but the flash-in-the-pan "Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic" which briefly existed in the 1918 is crucial to understanding the current situation in Donetsk. And so on.
All of this doublethink is to be expected, but what stuck with me was that Zhuchkovsky finds it ridiculous that Ukrainians would describe him and other Russian volunteers in Donbass as "mercenaries" - of course they would not fight for money as a cause - but then, when there are soldiers crying out in English or Polish in the Ukrainian ranks, the only explanation he can find is that they are, indeed, mercenaries. This is a mental block that I've continuously encountered in pro-Russian narratives; they can understand for sure why a Russian patriot would volunteer in Donbass, they can even at some level understand why an Ukrainian would volunteer to fight (because his mind has been eaten up by the ghost of Bandera), but the idea that a foreigner could fight and die for Ukraine simply because he believes in the Ukrainian national cause seems impossible. Must be that they're mercenaries or Western ops!
One of the arguments I've had often with pro-Russians is what events served as "triggers" for the war. Pro-Russians frequently finger the transfer of power after Euromaidan ("the NATO coup") and Odessa to claim that the separatist uprising was an internal development with scant external Russian influence, but when I've pointed out what has seemed to me be the absolutely most crucial trigger - the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea - it has often been dismissed, almost as if it had no effect on the events in the East.
Well, Zhuchkovsky's book certainly seems to confirm my view. While the Euromaidan is discussed rather perfunctorily and Odessa basically gets a sentence confirming it increased agitation and recruitment among separatist, but this just boosted an ongoing process, the Crimean invasion is constantly referred as a major separatist point of reference, something that made both locals and foreign volunteers confident that if they just stuck at Slavyansk hard enough the Russians would surely do the same as in Crimea and annex the Donbass republics. Which they eventually did, of course, but not within the time schedule the original volunteers had imagined.
In addition to the Crimean invasion, the other thing that, in Zhuchkovsky's narrative, led to the whole thing happening was one man - Strelkov. Strelkov is a virtual prince among men, a great leader who can do almost no wrong (the book has a mandatory sentence saying that "Strelkov made mistakes" but never really points out what these mistakes were), a great man against time who pretty much single-handedly creates Donbass out of nothing. In a way, with a lot of "smart" analysis talks about cultures and economic forces and whatnot, it's always refreshing to see someone come out with “Nah, that stuff’s there, of course, but in the end, it comes down to this one guy.”
I’ve seen some controversy on whether the 2014- Ukrainian war was a civil war or if a Russian invasion is the proper term, and one of the arguments for the idea that it at least started as a civil war was that most of the separatist fighters were locals, with volunteers from Russia and elsewhere only being like 30% of the fighters, according to the book. Even that is something of an uncomfortable argument, especially considering that Russian troops were directly being dispatched to the area as “volunteers” prior to Minsk, but if basically all the most important actors in getting the conflict going, especially the most important one, came from Russia, wouldn’t that be the most important thing to look at?
One of the least clear thing about the book is the level of Russian state involvement in the whole affair. In some parts of the book, the author says that the Russian state had nothing to do with them and the shady “backers” even tried to dissuade them, in other parts there are references to Glazyev and Aksynyov and other Russian state figures egging them on and promising support – with implication that this at least couldn’t have happened without some tacit approval from Putin. I get the feel the Russian system was using these guys as chaos agents and to force Ukraine to have to accept Donetsk autonomy and veto on foreign affairs. The Russian state created an illusion that they’d send the Russian army to help the volunteers, and then left them high and dry for eight years.
There are certain patterns in Finnish history that come to mind – Bolsheviks egging the Finnish radical socialists to start a revolution in 1918 and then, when they did that, offering almost no aid at all after some initial weapons supplies due to Brest-Litovsk, leaving the Finnish socialists to get brutally crushed. The guys in Slavyansk also seem comparable to Finnish “kinship warriors” immediately after that, right-wing volunteers who went to East Karelia in 1919 to take over the area with at least some backing from some sectors of the Finnish society, but then receiving no aid from the Finnish state after that and similarly getting eventually wiped out.
In the end, from my perspective it's basically like one of those "What if the good guys were the bad ones and the bad ones good ones?" fiction book reworkings. Reading the book, I can get the sense that what these guys are doing is, at some level an enterprise taking a lot of courage and gumption, and they’re ready to die for ideals – those ideals simply are, from my point of view, bad, especially for the ones like Strelkov who are doing all of this to revive Russian monarchical imperialism, an ideology that could easily conceivably threaten Finland’s existence as an independent country (and would certainly do it for nearby nations like Estonia and Latvia). Being heroic, courageous, and demonstrating manly valor for a bad idea is, in the end, worse than being a coward that accomplishes nothing for the same ideal!
Even the locals who could be excused as fighting for their specific homes and region against an army that’s bombing those regions got into an enterprise that just, in the end, led to eight years (and counting) chaos and misery for those regions, which are still a target of fighting. Even if the only evidence of what has happened was this book, reading between the lines (and occasionally lines, too), one gets the sense that the whole region has been thrown into a chaos – even if Strelkov’s guys might have possessed some discipline, there are constant references to random looters and marauding Cossacks wrecking shit up for the lols.
Of course, in the end, these people got what they wished for – large parts of Donbass, and other parts of Ukraine besides – have been annexed to Russia, and the current chances of Ukraine making short-term gains in these areas, let alone taking them over entirely, seem remote. So that’s a point for the Margaret Mead “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world” quote. Whether that change is good? Well, the quote never promised that…
Take I wrote on increasing calls in Republican and bi-partisan spaces for a Military intervention into Mexico against the Cartels, and why this would inevitably lead to armed conflict within America itself, along with a possible death spiral of instability in the wider North American region.
What makes great literary figures? Is it their fancy glasses? Maybe writing five million words? Is it their alcoholism and penchant for sarcasm? The jury is still out.
What we do know is that from the stoa and Aristotle's Lyceum in Athens all the way to the Inklings which produced Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and other great works, famous writers that shake the foundational values of their time need a group. They need a coordination mechanism to push them to become more ambitious, skilled, and disciplined.
We have many aspiring writers here. Many brilliant, clear thinking, skeptical minds who love to discuss relevant topics of the times, and try to work out ways to improve our ideas. People who hope to refine our understandings and abstractions, to ultimately help guide us out of the spiritual crisis of modernity.
After reading @urquan's recent post about the pointlessness of the Motte, my thoughts immediately jumped to defend this place, this bastion for witches who are ruthlessly curious, and tragically fall through the cracks of polite society. However, I realized that he had a point. We could be doing more as a community, we could aim higher.
What is the point of the Motte? We have accumulated a staggering amount of human capital here - I'm convinced we have many brilliant contributors, and probably far more lurkers who, with the right push, could become a massive positive force in the fight to understand the human condition. Are we here simply for infotainment, as some have suggested? Or can we coordinate to make a difference in the world?
I'd argue the latter. To that end, I'm putting out a call for a writing group formed of Mottizens. Ideally we get four to five members who are ambitious, and who want to write serious non-fiction essays similar to posts in the Culture War thread. If you have a blog outside of the Motte where you post that's great, or if you just want to increase the quality of post and discussion on this site, that's great too.
Due to the nature of this forum, the group requires strict anonymity. We'll have to rely on an honor code at first, but there must be no doxxing or sharing of identities outside of the meetings. The plan right now would be to coordinate through discord, and have one meeting per month, for 1.5 to 2 hours. This meeting will take place over voice chat, and you will be required to submit one piece every month. We will critique the submissions and give each other guidance on how to improve our writing.
If you're interested, please reply to this post, or PM me. If I get a large amount of interest, I will be selecting for prior reputation and contributions to the Motte, as that's one of the only markers available to me of someone's talent and/or discretion. If you desperately want to join but haven't contributed much, send me a sample of your writing.
In an ideal scenario if we get far too many folks interested, I'd be happy to help others coordinate similar groups. That's a good problem to have.
I'd like once more to emphasize the opportunity we have here at the Motte. It's rare to find so many intelligent and clear thinking people in one place. If you think the modern world is deeply flawed, and care about truth and good solutions to the problems our world faces, I urge you to take action and contribute something to the collective human race's efforts to correct our course.
Regardless of what you decide, it's an honor to be a part of this collection of miscreants as always. Remember that enough smart people coordinated together to solve problems can change the world. It may be the only way the world changes.
Stay strange, stay skeptical, and remember to seek light over heat.
Long take I wrote on what sustains a cultures values and the dream of a "Dark Bill of Rights" that could be unalterable and untarnish-able, like the 1400 year long tradition of Sharia.
My review of a shockingly great business film that appeared out of nowhere, and how it's themes strike at the core of startup culture and the key questions around technology and business in an incredibly way.
I thought the Origins of Woke was a great book personally, although I shared a few of Scott's criticisms. Namely I thought it was a little weird how focused Hanania was on making sure workplaces be more conducive to finding sexual partners, and how much he cared about funding women's sports received. But overall I thought the book was great and captured a major causative factor of how Woke is so incredibly strong.
When people aren't allowed to acknowledge the flaws of Wokeness in the workplace or their employees will get sued, it creates an immense chilling effect. That's probably not the sole cause of wokeness, there are other factors like supporting impoverished minorities being a very convenient luxury belief to signal how much of a good person you are, but Hanania convinced me it was a major factor.
Well, the site got dumped. I have a bad habit of hoarding tabs, and I've got two pages worth of posts still open, so I'm going to copy-paste them here in raw text so people can salvage what they can. Anyone else who still has pages open, feel free to join in.
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).
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These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.
Quality Contributions to the Main Motte
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@gog:
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Contributions for the week of January 22, 2024
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.
These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.
Quality Contributions to the Main Motte
Contributions for the week of October 30, 2023
Contributions for the week of November 6, 2023
Contributions for the week of November 13, 2023
Contributions for the week of November 20, 2023
Contributions for the week of November 27, 2023
We seek to understand the world, but it's made harder when part of it is hidden from us.
Leaked documents, represent a kind of ground truth, showing how the world really works. Telling us what's for sale, what the real agendas are, how powerful spies are, and how coordinated governments are. They are almost the opposite to conspiracy theories, as they present observations that can prune conspiracy theories.
But there are too many documents to read, so let's compare notes. What surprised you and caused you to update your view of the world?
Feel free to give a low effort reply, it's better than nothing.
Submission statement: Adam Mastroianni examines why scientific discovery seemingly avoided low-hanging fruit for so long.
For example, why did the Ancient Egyptians know how to calculate the volume of a truncated pyramid 4,000 years ago, but medieval European thought that meat transformed into maggots until 1668? Why were ancient people able to make significant mathematical discoveries, while still demonstrating ignorance about basic real-life processes?
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 a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum might be interested in. Feel free to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the Ukraine War, the Canada-India beef, or even just whatever you’re reading.
Haiti
The Dominican Republic has closed its border with Haiti (tbh surprised this took so long) over the construction of a Haitian canal that:
Officials in the Dominican Republic say the project will divert water from the Massacre River, which runs in both countries, and violate the 1929 Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Arbitration.
Presumably the spillover of lawlessness was also a concern.
The details of a Kenyan led multinational intervention force for Haiti are finally being hammered out. Kenya will pledge 1000 troops; America will pledge $100 million to the operation, and has also now signed a defense agreement with Kenya to help them combat the Jihadi group Al Shabaab. This has taken a remarkably long time (it still hasn’t been finally approved by the UN) given that President Moïse was assassinated two years ago and the country has been in semi-anarchy since. It is definitely less than ideal to use a country whose soldiers don’t speak French and is currently dealing with charges of police brutality in the ICC, but it’s something I guess.
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt held the second round of talks over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which would double Ethiopia’s electricity generation but Sudan and Egypt are both worried would imperil their water supply. Unfortunately the talks seemingly brought the countries no closer to an agreement. According to Ethiopian President Abiy, the dam is now fully ready to be brought into operation - hopefully they work something out soon! There is supposed to be one more round of talks, which so far all the parties are still willing to attend.
Fighting seems to have flared up again in the Amhara region, where the ethnic militia Fano has been in rebellion over Abiy’s attempt to integrate it into the national armed forces.
Poland
Poland will be holding elections on the 15th, along with a general referendum on migration on the same day. Don’t know much about it and would be interested to hear from others:
While in 2019 PiS won 43.6% of the vote, the party is now several percentage points below that level of success at 38% as of 9 September, according to the latest POLITICO poll. Trailing behind Pis is Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition party - Koalicja Obywatelska - with 30% of the vote and the far-right Confederation Freedom and Independence - Konfederacja Wolsność i Niepodległość - with 11% of the vote. The current polls suggest that PiS, which has been ruling Poland since 2015, might look for a coalition partner to form the next government as it fails to reach an overall majority, though it’s still unclear where it will find one.
Nagorno-Karabakh
Azerbaijan has fully reasserted control over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia has warned against harming Armenians, but the 2000 Russian peacekeepers who were put in place to end the 2020 conflict do not seem to have the capacity or interest in helping them (The Azeri President Aliyev apologized to Putin for killing some of them and it’s apparently chill). This is likely the culmination of the past three years - Russia didn’t do much to help Armenia in the 2020 conflict either, and since then Armenia withdrew from CSTO and have sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Recently the Armenian President said publicly that they cannot rely on Russia to defend them anymore and had begun conducting joint military drills with the US.
Iran has warned against “border changes,” which is interesting. Iran doesn’t want to derail the overland routes they've invested in to be built across Armenia, and has also historically been a weapons supplier for the country (in part because Azerbaijan receives weapons from Israel). But they have something of a delicate game to play when challenging Azerbaijan, due to their own ~16% Azeri minority on the border. Previous President Rouhani made it a major initiative to improve relations with Iranian Azeris (some of whom are very integrated and others of whom occasionally protest) by allowing Azeri to be taught in schools, recognizing Nagorno-Karabakh as Azerbaijan territory, and staying out of the 2020 conflict. Still, however, Azerbaijan regularly accuses Iran of favoring Armenia and tensions have never really disappeared.
Meanwhile, a pretty big chunk of the population in Nagorno Karabakh seems to be reading the room and heading for Armenia now that the Lachlin corridor is open.
Some 28,000 people — about 23% of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh — have fled to Armenia since Azerbaijan’s swift military operation to reclaim the region after three decades of separatist rule. The mass exodus caused huge traffic jams. The 100-kilometer (60-mile) drive took as long as 20 hours.
Edit: Reports are saying it's up to almost 75% of the population that have now fled.
Kosovo
Speaking of breakaway republics and peacekeeping operations, a group of Serbians opened fire on Albanian policemen, who then returned the favor. The shootout left at least four dead and has further inflamed an increasingly tense situation:
Kurti accused the Serbian government on Sunday of logistically supporting “the terrorist, criminal, professional unit” that fired on Kosovo Police officers. Vucic denied the allegations, saying the gunmen were local Kosovo Serbs “who no longer want to withstand Kurti’s terror.”
President Vučić has demanded the UN deploy a peacekeeping force to take over the nation’s security. There is already a pretty large UN contingent in Kosovo, so I guess mainly he’s asking for a change in their scope of operations. The two countries are supposedly in the process of normalizing relations but it sure doesn’t look too likely at the moment.
Bolivia
Do you remember the coup in Bolivia? Long time socialist President Evo Morales was forced out of office after big protests against voting irregularities. A wacky lady named Jeanine Áñez took power in the wake and started promptly committing massacres. Áñez held off elections as long as possible until they ultimately resulted in Morales’ Movement for Socialism party re-winning the Presidency under his protege Luis Arce.
A lot of people at the time claimed it was a coup; further analysis of the voting records seems to indicate maybe they weren’t actually irregular, and there were suspicions that the west wasn’t wild about Bolivia closely guarding its nationalized lithium ion deposits - suspicions notable lithium-ion fan Elon Musk didn’t help by responding, for some reason, “We will coup whoever we want. Deal with it!” Ironically, Acre has just announced that he will open up Bolivia for lithium extraction from foreign companies.
Either way, things may be coming full circle with Morales returning to the palace after all - he just announced that he will be running in the 2025 election. Acre hasn’t actually formally announced that he himself will be running again, but it’s unlikely that he’ll step aside just because Morales wants him to - the two have experienced a rift over the past few years, with Morales accusing Acre of hounding him with bonus corruption charges. Acre’s justice department will certainly be challenging Morales’ candidacy, but probably deservedly so - he’s already exceeded the constitutional limits on the number of terms you can serve.
Egypt
And speaking of leaders exceeding term limits, Egypt has announced new elections this December. Current President Abel Fattah Al-Sisi will be running again following amending the constitution to abolish term limits and increase terms to six years up from four. He won his last two elections with nearly 100% of the vote and jailed the last guy who was a serious challenge to him, so most likely he will win this one as well and govern till at least 2030.
The economy overall has been trending downwards. To make up for a lack of financing Egypt has been trying to coax a deal out of the IMF, who wants them to devalue their currency. They’ve now devalued three times in the past year but really the IMF wants them to switch to a floating rate regime that would accurately reflect their currency’s value.
Adding to economic bad news, to many Egyptians’ surprise they have now become embroiled in America’s latest political scandal around Senator Robert Menendez taking Egyptian bribes. This has led to increasing calls to withhold more aid from Egypt, which couldn’t really come at a worse time.
Uganda
Uganda has been resuming its own role of staying real active in its neighbors’ affairs. Recently they conducted a series of airstrikes against the Islamic State in the DRC (killing approximately “a lot” of fighters). This is part of a multiple decades old conflict - the Allied Democratic Forces is a 90s era Islamist rebel group from Uganda that was eventually driven out into North Kivu and has been attacking Uganda from a distance ever since, allegedly with the support of previous president Joseph Kabila. Recently the AFD joined the broader ISIS umbrella of jihadis and the DRC and Uganda agreed in 2021 to jointly crack down upon them. Since the conflict resumed Uganda has claimed to have killed over 600 jihadis already and has asserted the movement is on its last legs.
President Mosevini also recently offered to help mediate unification talks with Somalia and Somaliland; Somaliland promptly told them to kick rocks.
Spain
The vote to see whether conservative leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo could become Prime Minister was held Wednesday, and he failed to cross the threshold of 176 votes. This means socialist PM Pedro Sanchez most likely now gets his chance to form a government, but with the Catalan independence party making strict demands of amnesty Sanchez doesn’t honestly seem much closer to winning either. The most likely result right now seems like another election getting held.
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 Ukraine War, or even just whatever you’re reading.
Pakistan
The Intercept claims that leaked documents show the US approved via cable of the coup against Imran Khan (who has now been sentenced to three years in prison and five years of being banned from politics). Reportedly this was because Khan wouldn’t back the US in the Ukrainian conflict with Russia, as well as his general anti-American stance on most foreign policy issues; since Khan’s ouster the interim military gov has helped to arm Ukraine. Wall Street Journal pushes back against this narrative:
the evidence that Washington precipitated Mr. Khan’s downfall is laughably thin. Mr. Khan lost power after falling out with his former patron, then army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa. Gen. Bajwa didn’t need U.S. permission or help to do what Pakistani generals have done for decades: boot civilian leaders from government…
the purported cable is Pakistani, not American. A Pakistani smoking gun can’t establish American culpability. The idea that the U.S. was busy plotting regime change in distant Pakistan in the midst of a major war in Europe is far-fetched. And who would try to oust the leader of another country by telegraphing it in advance through a diplomat? As for Pakistan’s modest contributions to the Ukrainian war effort, these were always in the army’s domain and would have happened regardless of who was prime minister.
Reality is much more prosaic. Mr. Khan and Gen. Bajwa famously clashed in 2021 when Mr. Khan failed in an attempt to overrule Gen. Bajwa over the appointment of a new head of the army’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. By March last year, it was common knowledge in Pakistan that the army had decided to get rid of Mr. Khan through a no-confidence vote, George Mason University political scientist Ahsan Butt points out in a phone interview. The idea that Gen. Bajwa needed a green light from Washington to defeat Mr. Khan makes no sense. “That’s just not how Pakistani politics works,” Mr. Butt said. Khan supporters may find it hard to accept, but over the past decade U.S. interest in Pakistan has declined precipitously, spurred by alleged Pakistani perfidy in the war on terror, the continuing U.S. pivot to India, and the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
No idea who is correct here.
United States + Asia
Recently Joe Biden has made significant progress on cementing Obama’s seemingly stillwater pivot towards Asia. In January the United States and India announced the Critical and Emerging Technology (ICET) pact and in June agreed upon a significant military aid package replete with significant technology transfers. Last week Bidenheld the first ever trilateral summit at Camp David between America and recent bitter rivals Japan and Korea to agree on lasting security cooperation. Both countries in turn have strengthened their ties with NATO lately (Korea is the second largest arms dealer to Poland atm, believe it or not) and Japan has also agreed to expand its own military materiel transfers to countries friendly to this growing alliance, including Malaysia, the Philippines, Bangladesh and Fiji . Biden has also now agreed to sign a strategic partnership with Vietnam. With China’s own economy looking rocky, this past month has represented an impressive expansion of American diplomatic ties with the Indo-Pacific.
Spain
Previously I’ve covered that the left and right wing coalitions in Spain are both sitting with 171 votes and are both courting the tiny regional parties to give them a majority. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez seems to be gaining ground and has now struck a deal with the Catalan independence party Junts to approve their preferred Catalan socialist candidate to preside over Parliament. To clarify, this does not actually give Sanchez the support he needs to remain as Prime Minister (yet) but allows Parliament to start forming committees, passing laws, etc. Junts had been holding out for amnesty for their leader-in-exile Carles Puigdemont but they seem to have dropped these demands at the moment in exchange “for new measures promoting the use of the Catalan language in the Spanish parliament and the creation of a special committee tasked with investigating surveillance of Catalan separatists.”
The King has now asked Alberto Núñez Feijoo, head of the center right People's Party which won the most votes, to form a government, which at the moment he surely cannot do. Unless he pulls together a last minute alliance, if he loses then Sanchez will get his chance to form a government.
Guatemala
The build up to the election on Sunday was particularly fraught, with a number of anti-establishment candidates banned and the government attempting at the last minute to disqualify underdog Bernardo Arévalo after he qualified for the runoff. Arévalo, son of the first democratically elected President of Guatemala, has now sailed through and won the election with a commanding 58% vs 37% and will be the next leader of Guatemala. This is a surprisingly positive outcome after months of democratic backsliding. The runner up, Sandra Torres, has now come second place for her third election in a row. Arévalo’s agenda is oriented around anticorruption. He is a member of the moderate left* so he will pursue progressive reforms and infrastructure spending but continue to be allied with the US and opposed to Nicaragua & Venezuela. He can expect to still deal with obstruction from the courts and rival parties but President Giametti has already recognized him as the new President elect.
*It should be said that Sandra Torres was also relatively, running for the social democrat party - what distinguishes them aside from her stricter stance on crime is mostly loyalty to / rejection of the country’s elites.
Ecuador
The Ecuadorian election was held on Sunday in the midst of escalating cartel violence and political assassinations, including of one of the Presidential candidates. The Democratic Socialist party made it to the runoff under Rafael Correa’s protege, Luisa González, who will face against an outsider businessman named Daniel Noboa who is the heir to a major banana exporting company. The result will bring either Ecuador’s first woman president or its youngest president ever, though either of them will only govern for a year and a half to finish Guillermo Lasso’s term before a new election must be held. The major issues in debate for the runoff election will be cartel violence and the economy.
Separately, Ecuador finally ended an issue in debate for six years by voting in a referendum to ban the state oil company from drilling in a significant stretch of the Amazon.
Thailand
The populist, anti-military party Pheu Thai has finally formed a government by coalitioning with the military (and nine other parties) after all. This is a highly controversial coalition as the success of Pheu Thai (and the now marginalized Move Forward) was based around a support base sick of rule by the military and the monarchy. Real estate tycoon Srettha Thavisin will be the new Prime Minister, which at least ends the literal military leadership of Chan-o-cha. I’ve mentioned before that people should expect US-Thailand relations to get better rather than worse following the military blocking the actual underdog Pita; the nomination of US-educated Thavisin will likely further cement that.
Following Pheu Thai, formally coming to power, Thailand’s incredibly famous former PM Thaksin Shinawatra has now returned after being deposed in a coup in 2009 and exiled ever since. He was arrested hours after landing but most likely will be released soon, as part of the deal for Pheu Thai working with the military (the Thaskin family is still very influential in Pheu Thai; his daughter was a possible candidate for PM).
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe held elections yesterday. The results haven't been released (voting has actually been extended for another day). My assumption, though I would love to be proved wrong, is it will result in a victory for the Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF: Robert Mugabe’s party which has won all nine elections since 1980.) Incumbent President Emmerson Mnangagwa is only the second post-colonial leader, having taken power from Mugabe in a coup in 2017. In yesterday’s election he was squared off against Citizens Coalition for Change’s Nelson Chamisa and Mnangagwa’s victory is a repeat of their same match up in 2018. The economy has been so bleak that many Zimbabweans leave the country to find work in other parts of southern Africa, where they often face discrimination (notoriously so in South Africa). If ZANU-PF remains entrenched, this will likely not improve any time soon.
Gabon
On Saturday the people of Gabon will go to the polls. Nineteen different candidates are running but the presumed victor will likely be 14 year incumbent Ali Bongo Ondimba, latest leader of the wildly corrupt Bongo family which has ruled Gabon for over half a century.
This is a general catch all thread for people who want to talk about international relations or foreign policy. Pretty much anything is welcome, whether people want to give updates from other countries, talk about the Ukraine War or some other current event that’s grabbed your attention, or even just share any interesting books or articles you’ve been reading lately. I like to get the ball rolling with some general coverage of a bunch of countries, including some I think people here will be generally interested in and some people might not already follow too closely.
Spain
Following the ruling Socialist party’s poor May performance in municipal elections, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez dissolved parliament and called new snap elections. Spain will now be heading to the polls on the 23rd amidst a month of heatwaves and flooding.
The center right Popular Party (PP) is currently in the lead, trailed by the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). A PP victory raises the spectre of a coalition with Vox, one of Europe’s newest far right parties, who are currently polling similarly with the far left Sumar, the most likely ally for the PSOE. A conservative victory seems like the most likely outcome but it’s still too soon to say.
Ghana
Ghana recently split its four administrative regions into six. This might not sound like a big deal but the border lines split several ethnic enclaves apart. Despite the fact that these regions don’t actually have self-governance or anything, the divisions ended up being extremely contentious and the security forces had to deployed in the Volta region to deal with growing ethnic unrest.
Senegal
The last few months have been stressful in Senegal, with a high profile sexual assault case disbarring the main opposition leader from running for their upcoming election. All eyes were on current President Macky Sall, to see if he planned on running for an illegal third term. Amid mounting deadly protests he has finally announced that he will actually retire at the end of his term, leaving the field wide open.
Zimbabwe
The ZANU-PF party in Zimbabwe has held power since independence in 1980, with the current President taking power right after Mugabe via a coup and then a fraudulent election. New elections are next month featuring the same opposition candidate as the last one. Unfortunately there are already worrying signs that they won’t be free and fair, with the opposition Citizens Coalition for Change having members arrested and rallies banned.
Various growth reports for Zimbabwe have actually been decent, though inflation is still gonzo high at 175% YoY and Zimbabwe’s government health insurer for federal employees seems to be collapsing due to mismanagement.
Japan
Following Japan reestablishing trade relationships with Korea the previous week, Europe has finally lifted their 2011 post Fukushima restrictions on Japanese food imports. Japan and Ukraine also held a summit in Lithuania Wednesday where Zelensky is expected to further request Kishida’s assistance in rebuilding Ukrainian infrastructure. This is a normal role for Japan to fill as they are the second largest aid donor in the world and have quite a bit of infrastructure experience.
CW: sexual violence
There has been a fair amount of public uproar over Japan’s outdated laws on sexual harassment and violence, which has led to a flurry of reforms. They raised penalties for taking nonconsensual sexual photos of someone to up to three years in prison, expanded the definition of assault to require consent (as opposed to physical resistance) and expanded the statute of limitations, and raised the age of consent to 16 from 13, where it has stood since 1907 (it was often higher at the individual prefecture level).
This continues in Abe’s footsteps of making Japan a generally better country for women and is newsworthy on its own, but I also bring it up to show how Japan’s continuously dominant party, the Liberal Democratic Party, has remained in power so long. They’re a big tent party that’s held together by cliques based on personality rather than policy, which allows them to practice a fair amount of policy flexibility to the advantage of draining away popular wedge issues. Basically whenever they hear the opposition find an issue that’s popular with the public they say “actually we’re totally into this idea.” Then they take the lead on passing it to strip away any momentum the opposition would have gotten off of it. Or, if they don’t actually want to pass it, they just say it’s in committee for a while and release various bulletins about their plans. This has the downside of keeping one party entrenched in power (plus some other electoral shenanigans, like if the LDP calls elections only they will know in advance and have been preparing), but has the advantage of keeping the party actually decently responsive to democratic public sentiment.
Turkey
In recent months, Sweden has made efforts to meet Turkey’s demands, amending its Constitution, passing new counterterrorism legislation and agreeing to extradite several Turks who stand accused of crimes in Turkey. But Swedish courts have blocked other extraditions, and Swedish officials have said that they cannot override their country’s free-speech protections.
Turkey was in rare form this week, throwing another wrench in the Swedish NATO ascension process by bringing up a new demand to greenlight Sweden: that Turkey be allowed to join the EU. Turkey having made almost no progress on their EU ascension goals meant this could only happen if the EU waived nearly all of their normal requirements. The US replied that it supported Turkey’s “aspirations”.
Turkey has finally relented, seemingly, after negotiations that are not yet fully clear, and Sweden will be joining NATO.
Erdogan will also meet soon with Putin over the grain deal from last year, which is set to expire next week. Russia has expressed unwillingness to extend the deal, which could throw another crisis situation wide open if the world loses access to Ukraine’s grain exports (“the U.N. argues that it has benefited those [developing world] states by helping lower food prices by more than 20% globally”).
Due to Turkey’s negotiating leverage here and with Sweden they’ve gained themselves quite a bit of influence, if not much in the way of good will. Erdogan will be visiting the Gulf later this month, where he has also been building alliances, particularly with Qatar.
Colombia
The recently concluded ceasefire between the government and the rebel group ELN has finally come into effect, with both the rebels and the armed forces halting attacks. Ideally it is supposed to last six months, which would be the longest period of peace since the 60s. This is a major victory for Colombia and for President Gustavo Petro, whose administration thus far has been wracked by corruption scandals and stillwater reforms. They are now separately entering into negotiations with the much smaller conflict with a faction of FARC that rejected the last peace agreement.
A new legislative session will start soon and he plans to re-submit his pension and labor reforms laws. The Finance Ministry has also released their new budget with some ambitious spending raises which critics say might exceed budgetary rules Colombia has in place to reduce their deficits. The Central Bank has held steady on interest rates this month and is anticipated to begin to cut them soon as inflation recovers.
Brazil
Lula looks to be on his way to pass a major consumption tax reform that previous administrations have failed on. It remains to be seen if it can pass the Senate but even a surprising amount of conservative law makers voted in favor. Lula has successfully continued his campaign to replace the Central Bank governors with his allies in hopes of driving them towards interest rate cuts, and also successfully elevated his personal lawyer to the Supreme Court.
At the recent Mercosur summit he pushed for Bolivia’s ascension and for “the Mercosur trade bloc to advance in talks for deals with Canada, South Korea and Singapore, while aiming to increase commerce with other countries in Latin America and Asia…In addition to those three nations, Lula said, Mercosur could also "explore new negotiation fronts" with China, Indonesia, Vietnam and countries in Central America and the Caribbean. The Brazilian leader reaffirmed he is committed to completing the trade agreement struck in 2019 between the bloc and the European Union, but again called some addenda proposed by EU 'unacceptable'."
Guatemala
In excellent headlines today we have “Top tribunal certifies Guatemala’s election result minutes after another court suspends party”.
Guatemala’s Supreme Court has given the thumbs up to the first round of elections but the Attorney General has now suspended the anti-corruption underdog Bernardo Arévalo. As best as I can tell, their constitution forbids suspending a candidate mid-election.
Thailand
Thanks to @cake for the breaking news update, Thailand's underdog progressive candidate, Pita Limjaroenrat, has been blocked from the office of the Prime Minister by the military-appointed senate.
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.
These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful. But first, we have a special AAQC recognition this month! If you caught last month's quality contribution report, you may have seen @Soriek's first "International Update." Well, there were five Thursdays in June this year, and Soriek didn't miss one. Pulling multiple Quality Contribution reports on a regular "feature" of the Culture War thread is impressive and bespeaks substantial community appreciation of this user's efforts. Bravo, @Soriek!
We now return to your regularly scheduled programming!
Quality Contributions in the Main Motte
Gex and Sender
Contributions for the week of May 29, 2023
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of June 5, 2023
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of June 12, 2023
Contributions for the week of June 19, 2023
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of June 26, 2023
Islamic Exegesis
I'd guess the vast majority of you read Astral Codex Ten regardless of whether it gets posted here, but Scott's latest culture war (adjacent) post is not to be missed.
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.
These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.
Quality Contributions in the Main Motte
Contributions for the week of October 2, 2023
Contributions for the week of October 9, 2023
- "While the YIMBYs didn't get everything they wanted, they got a lot of it, and they are very happy."
Contributions for the week of October 16, 2023
Contributions for the week of October 23, 2023
@rallycar-jepsen and @KMC:
- This comment on racial identity, @KMC's reply, and @rallycar-jepsen's response.
Contributions for the week of October 30, 2023
Some People Did Something (Israel Edition)
- "To investigate, I started with the Red Cross's articles: 'Access for Humanitarian Relief to Civilians in Need' and 'Starvation as a Method of Warfare'"
- "Kinoite's Strategic Plan: A Legal War and a Heartless Peace"
@anatoly on:
@screye on:
Some of you (OK so like... three of you) may remember the last time I ran a survey on political values; I was really happy with the responses everybody gave me at TheMotte, and now a few other people I know who post on Substack are wanting to use the results to answer some questions of their own. So long story short, here's another poll:
Don't worry if you think you're unusual and might skew the results - in fact we'd very much appreciate your perspective, whatever it is.
Thanks guys!