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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   737 thread views

Transnational Thursday for June 6, 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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France

Macron dissolved the national assembly and called a snap election after being clobbered by the National Front Rally in the EU parliament, which I didn't know until now was a thing he could do. Considering what's happening across the channel as well this is definitely shaping up to be a year of major political shakeups across Europe.

Gaza

Israel managed to rescue four hostages from Hamas. Thankfully they didn't shoot them by accident this time.

Iran

A list of candidates to replace the late President Raisi has been approved by Iranian religious authorities. None of them are familiar to me, but the claim is that they are sticking to religious conservatives as one might expect.

Burkina Faso

Russia's foreign minister Lavrov took a trip to Africa recently, pledging military support for anti-insurgency operations in several nations as part of the Wager Group's Russian Africa Corps' growing presence across the continent that is securing vital mineral and political (i.e. UN votes) resources and displacing western nations (France in particular) that used to fill this role.

The elections for the European parliament are running from yesterday until Sunday. I'm on my way to vote.

I'm failing to muster enough motivation to go and vote.

Edit: Went after all.

Me too. But I will be voting for my local far right party. At least there is a chance to sow some minor chaos.

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