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PaperclipPerfector  19hr ago (text post)   208 thread views

Transnational Thursday for August 27, 2026

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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Just random Vietnamese news that broke out into the international news circuit:

A Vietnamese-American 24 year old came back to Vietnam for a banking internship and was raped by a Vietnamese from a rich and politically connected family. Typical SEA corruption/incompetence/cynicism shenanigans occur with the Vietnamese police and even the US embassy. Fortunately, this American citizen's dad is also rich and politically connected to ....Ted Cruz. The perpetrator has been arrested. I expect the VN government will throw the book at him to calm this slight diplomatic incident.

An 18 year old girl was ran over in a traffic accident by former vice chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the National Assembly. It is incredibly high profile and there are worries of protests from the younger generation that draws comparison to Nepal/Indonesia. I personally don't think it will matter in the long run.

Vietnam defended ASEAN Championship for soccer in the most bizarre manner where Thailand scored all 4 goals of the match, 2 goals and 2 own goals. I just wanted to linked this picture of Infantino reacting to the scoreline because the second own goal was scored in the last minute of extra time. Truly great stuff.

So I bet a college kid on reddit that I could find an upcoming edm or metal show in their town because they were whining about how nobody throws parties any more. But the joke's on me because their college town is Damascus, Syria. My US-defaultism strikes again...

Given that I stand to lose a substantial amount of izzat if I can't substantiate my boast, do any of the esteemed members of this forum know how I can get hooked into the syrian underground music scene without actually flying there? My AI-and-google-fu has only got me to the facebook pages of bands/DJs that went defunct pre-2025 at the best and pre-covid at the worst.

I'm sure you must have seen this recent-ish article https://www.gqmiddleeast.com/article/syrian-nightlife-parties-dance-floors-of-damascus

From what I know of party-goers/ravers, there is no way there isn't a party at least every weekend that the underground would know. Also I bet it's going to be instagram where you can truly find the cool parties.

Is there Fiverr or the like in Damascus? Perhaps you could hire a venue, producers, and a few amateur musicians to put on a minimum viable metal show. I have no information, but I would guess that cost of services there are low, such that you could still come out ahead if you win the bet, depending on how much you value izzat.

This is the way. Literal win-win.

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