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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   1244 thread views

Transnational Thursday for November 28, 2024

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

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Some items I'm tracking this week:

Austria didn't pay for Russian gas, as a remedy for an arbitration award. This ends Austria's 50 year dependence on Russian gas, mid-winter.

Anti-NATO nationalist won the first round of Romanian presidential election. Calin Georgescu, who has praised Putin's regime and blamed the military-industrial complex for the war in Ukraine, secured over 22.9% of the vote, surpassing pro-western candidates Lasconi and Ciolacu.

Israel <> Hezbollah ceasefire

As a case study for negative impacts of technology, apparently the introduction of Facebook groups allowed larger-scale cooperation in Myanmar to a much larger extant than before, and contributed/enabled/made possible the Rohinya genocide.

Aljazeera looked at whether aid workers are being tagetted, given that relatively many (281 in 2024) were killed this year, articularly in Gaza. This could be important, because killing aid workers potentially makes catastrophes much worse.

Further protests in Pakistan about releasing Imran Khan

His wives kept dying mysteriously. His secret poison: Insulin

William Dale Archerd was a charming sociopath who married frequently, drank highballs, and despised 9-to-5 employment. He was a natural salesman who married seven women from 1930 to 1965, sometimes not bothering to divorce the previous one. Archerd was finally arrested in 1967 for a series of murders carried out using insulin injections to mimic fatal illnesses.

Israel and Lebanon instituted a ceasefire, which was then broken. However, Lebanese are returning to their abandoned homes

Per Biden's announcement of the ceasefire, it is between the governments of Lebanon and Israel, and their respective security forces. It doesn't seem to bind Hezbollah?. Over the next 60 days, the Lebanese Army and the State Security Forces will deploy and take control of their own territory once again. Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon will not be allowed to be rebuilt.

Food conditions continue to worsen in Gaza, in part because Israel has been blocking aid

The US and Japan are High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) on Japan's Nansei islands to defend Taiwan in case of a Chinese invasion, as reported by Voice of America.

Trump team weighs direct talks with Kim Jong Un. Meanwhile, in his final meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this month in Peru, Biden asked for Beijing to use its leverage to reel in North Korea.

Documents declassified by the US reveal a list of assassination targets authorized/ordered by Putin

North Korea reveals uranium enrichment facility for the first time. DHL cargo plane crashed just outside the Vilnius airport, killing the Spanish pilot and injuring the three other crew members. Lithuania cannot rule out terrorism.

If Trump introduces tariffs against other nations, inflation in the US would go up, and other countries would likely retaliate.

Bird flu found in sample of California raw unpasteurized milk sold to the public. group of access leaked api access keys to OpenAI's Sora model in protest to considering themselves "free PR"

As a case study for negative impacts of technology, apparently the introduction of Facebook groups allowed larger-scale cooperation in Myanmar to a much larger extant than before, and contributed/enabled/made possible the Rohinya genocide.

This isn't really news, I remember Facebook being blamed for enabling the Rohingya genocide several years ago.

Wouldn't any communication platform work the same way? I mean, you can coordinate on Twitter or good old webforum or even call-in BBS for that matter (yes, I am old enough to have used one). What's so special in Facebook? Yes, maybe this particular group used Facebook. But they could have used any other means with the same result.

The real reason is Facebook was being blamed by democrats for the 2016 election loss, so they stuck them with every accusation they could find.

I don't think it's about 2016 specifically or only. Any valuable resource that is not under the control of The Party must be either brought under control or destroyed. It doesn't matter if it's being used by The Enemy currently or not, and what for - anything that is not under control is a threat, and must be dealt with. That of course is true for Facebook too. One of the basic tenets of socialism is centralized control (for the good of the masses, of course!) and in modern informational society, obviously, this means control over the flows of information.

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