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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   752 thread views

Transnational Thursday for September 19, 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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https://x.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1838055063073489144

Chinese stocks have been treading water for over 30 years, Indian stocks up 13x, yet even the biggest China doomers have to admit a lot more wealth was created in China than in India over the period.

I understand many of the key businesses are state-owned enterprises - does this mean that state-owned industry is the way to go? Are they all just busy building new factories and selling shares to finance more development? Or have the MBAs who stripmine companies for shareholder value been kicked out of China? Is this what market socialism looks like, capitalism without profits returned to investors?

Completely bizarre, I have no explanation.

Some spicy news from Russia, straight from the 90's. First, some backstory:

Wildberries is the biggest internet marketplace in Russia. It was founded back in 2004 when the owner of a medium-sized internet provider, Vladislav Bakalchuk, agreed to help his wife Tatiana start her own business because she was tired of sitting at home with the kids. The new business soon outgrew his old one and by 2024 their purple signs could be found in every Russian town. Like all modern companies, it tried to own nothing: other companies sold goods via their website, all these signs pointed to delivery endpoints owned by independent franchisees. The only thing they had to own were the logistics, as there was simply no other company able to process so many orders. Vladislav owned the property management company while Tatiana owned the retailer itself.

In January 2024 one of the largest Wildberries warehouses caught fire and burnt down. It was a massive blow to the company, as even though it owned nothing, it still owed money to the companies whose were destroyed by the fire. In addition, as it always happens, the fire uncovered some irregularities in how the warehouse was managed, who exactly declared it fire safe, the legal status of the warehouse workers etc.

Now we're entering into the realm of rumours and speculation. Reportedly, Tatiana started looking for someone who was willing to spot her a few hundred million to cover her losses and also solve the criminal aspect of the whole fire-related mishap. That someone turned out to be Suleiman Kerimov, an old fox who made his money in the 90's and 00's and is now the senator from Dagestan.

In June 2024 two major announcements were made: Wilberries announced its merger with Russ Outdoor, the largest outdoor advertising company in Russia (formerly Murdoch's News Outdoor), Tatiana would get 65% of the new company while the owners of Russ would get 35%. Everyone was shocked, since being the largest outdoor advertising company in Russia is nothing compared to being the largest internet retailer. Even Vladislav was shocked, but he was even more shocked when Tatiana announced she was divorcing him.

More rumours and speculation: Russ Outdoor is a private company nominally owned by Grigoriy Sadoyan, but sources say its CEO Robert Mirzoyan is affiliated with aforementioned Kerimov. There were also rumours that Tatiana fell in love with Robert, but I consider them astroturfing to explain why the deal was so unequal. More likely, a part of the plan was saddling Vladislav with all liabilities related to the fire, both civic and criminal, and then helping him in exchange for a more Tatiana-friendly partition of their shared property.

And now we're getting closer and closer to the present day. With Tatiana having found a patron, Vladislav decided that he needed one as well. And he found one in the face of Ramzan Kadyrov, who recorded a video with Vladislav, promising to reunite him with his family and save their business from meddlesome crooks.

On the 18th of September Vladislav, accompanied by his new Chechen attorney and Chechen hired muscle (various champion wrestlers, boxers and karatists) tried to enter the offices of Wildberries to ostensibly discuss the contract for new warehouses. The security wouldn't let them in, some glass was broken, some shots were fired, two security guards ended up dead, police detained everyone, didn't charge Vladislav with anything yet.

Now it turns out the security guards were Ingush, and since the two republics have no love left for each other since 2018, when Kadyrov managed to redraw the border between the republics in his favour, there's a real possibility of a vendetta.

The lesson of the story is that beyond the gloss of modern technology and internet unicorns you still have the same old Russian business with shady Caucasian fixers holding the real power and business deals being accompanied by gunshots and gym rats.

Russian Jeff bezos linked up with an Islamist mma fighter alien contactee, in the middle of a messy divorce, and now his wife’s hill folk thugs are fighting his in an office building.

Did not have that on my bingo card.

Here is a dump of some stuff I'm keeping track of; happy to get thoughts on any of it. Warning that these can look pretty worrying when joined together, but stuff of similar severity happens about every week. The context for these is that I'm trying to anticipate crisis that could spiral out of hand, and I have alerts and software that processes large amounts of news and highlights some of the more worrying ones.

A United Nations statement by the UK https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-increased-military-cooperation-between-russia-iran-and-dprk-poses-an-unacceptable-threat-to-global-security-uk-statement-at-the-un-security-cou

Pagers exploded, killing many Hezbollah terrorists https://x.com/HilzFuld/status/1836051026673119719 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/17/dozens-of-hezbollah-members-wounded-after-pagers-explode-in-lebanon Here are some expert opinions: https://freebeacon.com/national-security/what-experts-make-of-israels-ingenious-hezbollah-pager-attack/

Israel has been re-establishing deterrence since it was badly undermined last Oct. 7. Like the recent assassinations in Lebanon and Iran, and Israel’s attack on some Iranian air defense sites in April, this attack is meant to remind Hezbollah of Israel’s technical sophistication and its willpower. Israel is trying to make it clear to Hezbollah and Iran that it does not fear escalation. Hezbollah will respond, but this attack will make them realize they are more vulnerable than they think

Initially 2k, now up to 4k. https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1836097128747151422 Images: https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1836061232433930309 Iranian ambassador to Lebanon also injured Here is a video in a hospital: https://x.com/WachtelDan/status/1836038754756145515

WhiteHouse meeting on mpox https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/09/16/readout-of-white-house-convening-on-mpox/ https://www.state.gov/digital-press-briefing-u-s-government-support-to-the-global-response-to-mpox/

Big google could hack https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/researchers-uncover-rce-exploit-in-google-cloud-millions-of-servers-at-risk https://www.tenable.com/blog/cloudimposer-executing-code-on-millions-of-google-servers-with-a-single-malicious-package

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-president-hijab-women-morality-police-b2613978.html

https://www.thepoultrysite.com/news/2024/09/czech-republic-reports-avian-influenza-outbreak H5N1 outbreak in the Czech republic. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/czech-republic-reported-bird-flu-outbreak-farm-woah-says-2024-09-16/

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/houthi-official-says-us-offered-recognize-sanaa-government-us-official-denies-2024-09-16/

Reuters on secret service https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-apparent-trump-assassination-attempt-highlights-secret-service-strains-2024-09-17/

Putin to increase size of Russian army https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-orders-russian-army-grow-by-180000-soldiers-become-15-million-strong-2024-09-16/

In a decree published on the Kremlin's website, Putin ordered the overall size of the armed forces to be increased to 2.38 million people, of which he said 1.5 million should be active servicemen.

Speculations about how they did this https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1836113607572230358

WHO flags limited mpox testing in epicenter DRC https://www.voanews.com/a/who-flags-limited-mpox-testing-in-epicenter-drc-/7784829.html suggests that actual number of cases is higher

Israel says missile from Yemen fell in central Israel https://www.yahoo.com/news/israeli-army-says-missile-yemen-052624033.html

First conviction under Hong Kong's new national security law for wearing "seditious" T-shirt https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/first-conviction-under-hong-kongs-new-national-security-law-wearing-seditious-t-2024-09-16/

Iran hanged Baloch liberation group leader https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/06/20/iran-executes-jundullah-founder-abdul-malik-rigi/

Follow up attacks with walkietalkies https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/lebanon-pagers-explode-hezbollah-israel-09-18-24-intl-hnk/index.html

Militants in India's Kashmir are proffessionalizing https://tribune.com.pk/story/2497064/iiojk-intensified-militancy-and-the-bewildered-indian-army

UNICEF aiming to fundraise 58M https://reliefweb.int/report/democratic-republic-congo/unicef-global-mpox-preparedness-and-response-children-september-2024-february-2025 salhattab@unicef.org

North Korea test-fired ballistic missiles in latest military display, neighbors say https://apnews.com/article/north-korea-ballistic-missile-tensions-af75c31d24dc53b0ae0db7260458563b

Meta and Youtube ban Russia Today https://countercurrents.org/2024/09/meta-platforms-and-youtube-ban-rt-worldwide/

Gavi to buy 500,000 mpox vaccine doses from Bavarian Nordic https://www.yahoo.com/news/gavi-buy-500-000-mpox-084946643.html

More details on the exploding pagers https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/world/middleeast/israel-exploding-pagers-hezbollah.html

One thing I’ve not seen talked about much is that the pager attack is a likely indicator that Israel is about to invade Lebanon. This was likely an initial softening-up attack before a ground invasion, not just an isolated act of harassment. Israeli media is also announcing special security zones in north central Israel which would also indicate an invasion. There have also been Israeli troop and equipment deployments to the north, and various statements from the government indicating an imminent invasion.

Increasingly convinced that polar access is going to become a wedge issue for the Russian-Chinese alliance: Russian fisheries practices have generally leaned towards conservation and effective management of existing stocks and I don't particularly get the sense that they're down to let China go scorched-earth in their EEZ or even in international waters where straddling stocks are a problem.

Russian fisheries practices have generally leaned towards conservation and effective management of existing stocks

Interesting. Perhaps this is bigoted of me but my general impression of Russian institutions would have led me to assume they'd take a far more recklessly extractive approach. Glad to hear that's not the case.

Yeah, it surprises a lot of people, but Russia has had really successful longstanding agreements with the US and Norway dating back well into the Soviet era. Generally speaking, Russia's willing to align with its neighbors against more exploitative third parties (historically Poland and Japan, but possibly China in the future).

How you managed to classify Poland as exploitative here?

(unless it is about dimitriada approximately billion years ago)

Polish supertrawlers were the fleets that first exploited the Peanut Hole (the small stretch of the Sea of Okhotsk that was out of Russia's EEZ until 2013 I believe) and were also pretty active in the Donut Hole (the stretch of the Bering Sea outside of the US and Russia's EEZs) until both ended up being closed. It was kind of surprising to learn about it at first because they kinda get smol beanified due to their history but especially in the post-Soviet era they've been a pretty substantial third party presence in international fisheries (Also, as someone currently taking an imperial Russian history class I fw the Time of Troubles reference heavy)

Interesting. I guess that balances say 0.01% of what Russians have stolen during WW II.

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