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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   1016 thread views

Transnational Thursday for June 5, 2025

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

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Some news items this week:

AI generated video might be directly optimizable for attention, in a way that is more scary than Tiktok

Statement from U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Transforming the U.S. AI Safety Institute into the Pro-Innovation, Pro-Science U.S. Center for AI Standards and Innovation

In conducting these evaluations, CAISI will focus on demonstrable risks, such as cybersecurity, biosecurity, and chemical weapons.

^ Sad day for black swans

AI required by court order to save logs?

Chinese couple charged with smuggling a biological pathogen into the U.S.

Floods in Nigeria kill over 150 people

Iran FM preparing response to potential nuclear agreement, holds call with IAEA head.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Rejects U.S. Nuclear Deal Offer

Interesting brief, similar to Sentinel

Israel strikes Syria after projectiles fired, holds Sharaa responsible

The spokesperson for China's Ministry of National Defense, Zhang Xiaogang, responded to recent comments made by the U.S. Secretary of Defense at the Shangri-La Dialogue, criticizing the U.S. for its negative portrayal of China and its military presence in Asia. Zhang condemned the U.S. for its hegemonic approach, inciting tensions in the region, and undermining China's sovereignty, particularly regarding Taiwan and the South China Sea.

Zhang emphasized that the Taiwan issue is China's internal matter and warned against any U.S. interference. He asserted China's commitment to defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity, while also highlighting China's intent to resolve disputes peacefully in the South China Sea. The statement depicted China as a proponent of peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific, opposing any form of hegemonism that disrupts regional harmony.

China's 'Silent Hunter' laser gun shooting down Ukrainian drones

US Simulates Missile Strikes on Warships at China Choke Point

'Corpses rotting in the Nile' as cholera tears through Sudan  – Dominican Republic Post

Sudan's New PM Dissolves Caretaker Government One Day After Taking Office

Death toll in Nigeria jumps past 200

Ukraine and Russia agree to swap dead, wounded troops but report no progress toward ending war

'Balochistan, KP remain epicentres as Pakistan records 85 attacks in May'

'New red line': India, Pak generals exchange warnings at Shangri-La

Al-Qaida affiliate attacks Mali army bases as junta struggles to contain jihadist threat

Indonesia's health ministry issues warning over COVID-19 surge in Asia

Niger Flood: Death toll rises to 150, Tinubu asks NEMA to activate Emergency Response Centre

Trump Asks Congress to Rescind $8.3 Billion in Foreign Assistance

Trump on Musk

Elon was "wearing thin," I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!

Elon and Trump fighting

Who detected vaccine-derived polio in samples from children in Morobe (Papua New Guinea)

US vetoes UN Security Council demand for Gaza ceasefire

NB.1.8.1 covid variant

EpochAI database of datacenters

Whatever happened with this?

A nuclear strike on Britain is a real possibility. Here's what we need to do. Grr

Another week, another humiliation for Britain.

https://thecritic.co.uk/exclusive-osborne-to-give-elgin-marbles-to-greece/

The Critic understands that George Osborne, Chairman of the British Museum, has agreed to give the Elgin Marbles to Greece.

The move is unlikely to be blocked by the Government since the Prime Minister has expressed several times his commitment “not to stand in the way” of a deal between the Greek government and the British Museum.

In order to give the Marbles to Athens permanently, the government would need to amend the British Museum Act 1963 which prevents the deaccession of items. But it is thought that Osborne’s plan to give them away on loan would side-step this requirement.

Since the Greek government claims legal ownership of the sculptures, it is extremely unlikely that they would ever return to Britain.

Spain has to be salivating at this point, not to mention Argentina. There's oil in the Falklands.

I am fine with returning art, but I would object to returning Gibraltar or the Falklands. They seem very different to me.

True, though there is a precedent in the recent handover of the Chagos islands.

Secretly based?

Last Sunday, a 22-year-old man walked into a small shopping centre in Fairgreen, Co. Carlow and began discharging a shotgun into the air. The police and bomb squad were quickly called, but the man in question turned the gun on himself. To the best of my knowledge, the only other person injured at the scene was a young girl who tripped while fleeing from the scene and skinned her knee.

That's not the interesting part of the story - the interesting part is how it was reported upon. The Irish police (Garda Siochána) were extremely quick to clarify that the perpetrator was a white Irishman:

The Garda Press Office issued four press releases over the next 24 hours which provided a full picture of what happened, including a precise timeline of events, the extent of injuries (including to a young girl), and – most notably – a description of the perpetrator as a “white adult Irish male” on Sunday night.

It was unusually direct by the standards of the Garda press office, which tends only to offer the most basic details around crimes, in part out of sensitivity towards victims and their families.

The decision followed a similar move by police in Merseyside less than a week previously, after a man drove into a crowd of football fans celebrating Liverpool’s Premier League title win in the city.

The incident in Liverpool saw the same kind of misinformation spread as in Carlow, with false claims that the ramming was a terrorist attack and that the suspect was a person of colour being shared on social media.

So why are the Garda announcing the perpetrator's ethnicity, you ask? To combat "misinformation" and "uninformed speculation":

The Dublin riots in November 2023 were fuelled by a deluge of speculation about the identity and motive of the man who carried out a knife attack at a school near Parnell Square.

The Southport riots last year in England followed the same grim pattern, when far-right groups seized on speculation about the identity and motive of the man who fatally stabbed three children.

Both instances were preceded by hours of silence from police and officialdom, which created an information vacuum in which speculation and conspiracy theories were able to take hold.

On each occasion, speculation dampened much more quickly after both police forces provided additional information about the background of the perpetrators.

...

The strategy denied bad actors the ability to hijack the narrative and acknowledged a basic truth about modern social media: in the absence of facts, fiction will flourish.

I know this word has been abused to death over the past decade or more, but I really cannot think of any word which better captures the feeling I am feeling right now. I feel like I am being gaslit. A full year and a half after the stabbing in Parnell Square which sparked the Dublin riots, in an article specifically about the Garda's sensible decision to get ahead of conspiracy theories by disclosing demographic information about the people who perpetrate crimes - and The Journal still cannot bring themselves to mention that the stabbing in Parnell Square was committed by an Algerian Arab. They still cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that the Southport stabbings were committed by a black Rwandan. They'll wax lyrical about the "deluge of speculation" which followed these horrific crimes, without once mentioning that much of this "uninformed speculation" turned out to be entirely accurate.

But some people aren't happy about this strategy:

But although it worked this time around, it’s a tricky strategy that’s not without its downsides.

Several far-right accounts online accused Gardaí and Merseyside Police of being ‘too quick’ to say that the suspects in Carlow and Liverpool were white locals, with the implication that this was an act of political messaging rather than public clarity.

What is so confusing about people objecting to a blatant double standard in how crimes are reported upon? What is so objectionable about a standard in which all crimes are reported upon in the same way regardless of the perpetrator's ethnicity or national background?

The next time a similar major incident occurs and Gardaí or British police don’t — or can’t — release identifying information about the suspect(s), it’s easy to see how the decision not to do so will be seized upon.

The public may take the lack of information as confirmation that the suspect is foreign or non-white, and may end up believing bad actors or others who are speculating about what has happened.

Gosh, how might they arrive at that idea, I wonder? It's not like the article in which this sentence appears mentions four distinct crimes, and only provides any identifying information about the two perpretators who were white natives while conspicuously avoiding mentioning anything about the perpretrators of the other two crimes.

At this point, all I can say is that, at least in Ireland and the UK (and probably in a great deal of the rest of Europe as well), Coulter's Law is no longer just a journalistic convention, but actually an official public policy.

There's also some strange news that the Gardai gave guns to this man (though not the gun he used in the attack). Why would the police give guns to a man facing firearms charges?

What the hell. Some kind of entrapment scheme?

I feel like I am being gaslit.

You are. It's not a theory, conspiracy or otherwise. It's not a political argument. It's the reality. There's a war going on - an informational war. The one side is the governments, the deep state (of any nation), the "elites", the press, the academia, the entertainment complex, the "opinion makers", the "fact checkers", all that crowd. On the other side, there are people who want to take informed decisions by themselves, based on their own values, desired and goals. They former do not want to allow the latter to do that. For their own good, of course, because they consider themselves smarter, more educated, more moral, more progressive, more... everything good, so it's only natural that they would take the decision making power from the rubes. This is what you are witnessing. It's for your own good. If you disagree, well, welcome to the other side.

Frankly I suspect European authorities might be straight up lying about the identities of suspects now. I’ve clocked two suspiciously terrorist-like attacks on the last few weeks (a vehicle ram attack in the UK and a mass stabbing in Germany) where the authorities immediately announced that it was committed by a white European. I can’t confirm the Germany one but the on the scene video of the UK attack was ambiguous, the guy looked like he could potentially be English, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he was Syrian or Egyptian either.

I don't have a particularly high opinion of British police, but, per Bounded Distrust, I'm not enough of a conspiracy theorist to think they would frame an innocent man for a terror attack just because the real perpetrator was of the wrong ethnicity. It invites the question of why this wasn't done for any of the high-profile public acts of violence committed by non-white non-natives in the recent past (Southport, 7/7, the murder of David Amess, Reading, London Bridge X2 etc.).

They don’t necessarily have to frame anyone though. Just announce a fictitious perpetrator.

The guy who allegedly did the Liverpool attack has been remanded in custody.

Do we know for sure that the recent Liverpool one was an “attack”? Is there a known or accused motive? I admittedly have not paid much attention to the story but my first impression when it happened was that he might’ve just been very drunk.

My understanding is that he intentionally drove into a crowd of pedestrians, but it wasn't political or a nihilistic mass murder: he was just on a lot of drugs. It doesn't appear to have been an accident.

If they actually did this, it probably would have been by declaring a European ODC the real culprit.

I am highly suspicious of such a thing in a country with jury trials, but that’s how you’d go about it.

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