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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   1430 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"

I'm surprised you didn't raise the Russian-captained Chinese-flagged ship that dragged it's anchor for 100 miles in the Baltic Sea, cutting the Baltic Sea undersea cable between German and Finland and Sweden and Lithuania.

The ship is currently surrounded by NATO vessels, with various European countries raising the rather pertinant point of sabotage. For which there a number of interesting things to say- this is neither the first case of probable Russian sabotage in Europe in recent years, but the timing and the nature are interesting in the context of the recent Ukraine posturing- but it's also interesting on the question of Chinese involvement, if any.

Especially given the Russian ruble tumble, which appears to be a foreign exchange issue given that they banned foreign currency purchases for the rest of the year, which itself followed a systemic Chinese premium charge of Rubles-for-Yuan from this summer

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