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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   2257 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 11, 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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Ireland

More suspicious fires on real or rumoured asylum accomodation. I think the story is getting to the point where every instance of arson or accidental fire in one of these places is going to be reported as an attack (to be fair to the media this is more a conclusion you're pointed towards rather than a direct claim, but one case of police not treating a fire as suspicious was omitted by the Irish Times and reported in other papers), but since the police keep mentioning their investigating of far-right rumours online there is something of political substance to fires that may have had no political motive.

Last Sunday at Sandyford, Dublin. Article claims that there were online rumours circulating about the building, the Department of Integration is checking whether they had any plans for the place, police are investigating and haven't said whether or not they're treating it as suspicious.

The early hours of Tuesday the 9th of January in Buncrana, Donegal. This building was certainly an asylum centre and was the first building that was actually occupied. Some people have been taken to hospital over smoke inhalation. Police have said that the fire was likely started within the building, but online commenters are pinning this one on our new domestic terrorists.

There was also a far more direct political angle to this story. Fianna Fáil councillor Noel Thomas and a person known to another FF councillor Seamus Walsh were subject to dawn raids by police in relation to a fire that took place in Galway in December. Thomas and Walsh were criticised by party leader Michael Martin for making criticisms of the government's immigration policy in December. Walsh's comments about the raid are fairly radical for a politician:

“I will never while there is breath in me cooperate with the guards on anything.

“My wife is some woman, she has been with me 43 years and she is well used to me and politics but this broke her. She burst out crying.

“I’m not a man who goes running to the press – I avoid the press in fact. But this was cynical and came about from (political) pressure being applied.

“They feel like if they can break Noel Thomas and myself that he will frighten other councillors into their way of thinking.

And finally some good news for the moderates I guess. Two buildings in Carlow and Mayo that were earmarked to host male asylum seekers will now be hosting 'families and children' after local, peaceful protests. These families will still be asylum seekers, but I guess it's much harder to protest over 50 women and children being brought in than 50 single males.

Ecuador

New President Daniel Noboa has started things off with a huge focus on law and order in response to the rise of organized crime in recent years (“The murder rate quadrupled from 2018 to 2022, while last year became the most violent yet with 7,500 homicides in the country of about 18 million people.”) . He has begun by announcing a referendum on new policies dealing with crime:

The referendum would seek approval from voters on lengthening prison sentences for serious crimes like homicide and arms trafficking, among others, as well for Ecuador's military to eradicate international criminal groups operating in the country, according to Noboa's letter to the court.

Noboa has also now announced the construction of two new maximum security prisons, with a not-exactly subtle nod to Bukele’s policies over in El Salvador:

He said the buildings would be exactly the same as a prison built by El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, who has led a controversial crackdown on gangs in his Central American country.

"The prisons will allow for the division, proper isolation of people," said the 36-year-old Noboa, who took office in November, speaking in a radio interview.

"For all the Bukele lovers, it is an identical prison," to those he has built, added Noboa.

To make even more room, Noboa says they will also deport over a thousand foreigners in prison back to the surrounding countries they came from (no word on those receiving countries feel about it). By design the new prisons will be on the coast, far away from the heart of the worst of the violence, in hopes it will make it harder for gangs to liberate their members.

Speaking of which, the leader of the notorious Los Choneros cartel was just liberated from prison by his fellow gang members. People are freaking out, probably understandably, and Noboa has declared a 60 day state of emergency for the leader to be found. Having only just come out of a prolonged state of emergency under Noboa’s predecessor Lasso, apparently it’s a state Ecuadorians must get used to. Given that the previous state of emergency gave the military powers of internal law enforcement, I guess it makes the whole referendum a little redundant.

The cartels have responded in kind with major prison uprisings holding over 130 prison staff hostage and ghastly footage of them breaking into a news broadcasting station and holding the staff hostage on live TV. President Noboa has now declared they are at war with the cartels and have detained hundreds of alleged gang members. It's been a really crazy few days.

So just taking a look at this leader that got busted out.

He was serving a sentence of thirty-four years in the Litoral Penitentiary for organized crime, drug trafficking, and murders.

Those are some pretty serious crimes. What I don't understand is why the prison sentence? This isn't the first time he's been busted and cartels are totally wrecking a large portion of the continent (and more importantly for Ecuador, Ecuador). Why not try him and execute him? I would think in 1800s America if he had done the same crimes he'd have gotten a short trial and a quick death. Are they worried about escalating a war between the government and the cartels, where both sides execute prisoners? Or are they really just trying to be humane here?

Ecuador released the Monster of the Andes, known as perhaps history's most prolific serial killer, after a 16 year sentence because that's all they were legally able to give him:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_L%C3%B3pez_(serial_killer)

He was supposed to report into authorities periodically, but obviously that never happened. Who knows how many people he killed afterwards?

So their judicial system is kind of a clown show.

Ecuador hasn't had the death penalty since 1897. They can't (legally) execute him without changing the constitution.

Wow, I did not know. That is a very bad thing considering the conditions they live in now. It may be that only prosperous countries can afford to be humane. That being said, that's pretty early for getting rid of capital punishment, right? I wonder how many other countries could say that. Feels like we didn't start caring about people living or dying until after World War II.

Edit: Holy cow, looking at this map on this page is pretty shocking to me. How could so many non-European countries get rid of it? Looks like for South America, Ecuador was late to the party, if anything. Damn. Like I said, I think pretty much everywhere that's not western Europe or a Commonwealth country could probably benefit from the death penalty.

That color scheme is hilarious. Clearly lets you know which side Wikipedia prefers.

Russia is an abolitionist-in-practice? Man, they really need to improve their building codes, I'd never buy an apartment with windows or a bathtub there.

They didn't hand down any death sentences between the first Chechen war and the Ukraine invasion, apparently. All those journalists dying in suspicious circumstances were extrajudicial.

When any outside observer can, with minimal cynicism required, attribute their deaths to FSB agents or other goons sanctioned by the government, I consider that a distinction without a difference. You might argue that it could be at the behest of individual oligarchs, but Russia can be accurately described as an oligarchy.

Oh will no one rid me of this meddlesome journalist?

That having less concern about regime critics being murdered by "random thugs" who will never be investigated than murderers being sentenced to death is stupid doesn't mean it's impossible to draw the distinction.

More comments

You might want to refresh your history knowledge. Europe wasn't particularly early in abolishing the death penalty. Ironically for this subthread, several Central / South American countries were among the first.

They abolished it in the same way Russia abolished it, which is to say they merely altered the means by which state-sanctioned executions take place.

Previous attempts to bring back the death penalty in Latin America have resulted in cartels killing literal hundreds of random people in protest at the possibility being floated, and in Mexico cartels have taken entire cities hostage to prevent extradition to the United States of leaders who would be charged with a capital offense.

It may well be that reinstating the death penalty is the right move for countries with cartel problems on the whole, but few leaders have the cajones to accept schoolbusses full of orphans being slaughtered on live TV for talking about it.

Wow! I did not know this either! Violence enforced humanitarian stances are something. I don't even know how you would go about fixing this...

I guess this is a life lesson that you should never let go of the death penalty. Just quietly stop using it if you don't like it any more.

The cartels have responded in kind with major prison uprisings and ghastly footage of them breaking into a news broadcasting station and holding the staff hostage on live TV. It's been a really crazy few days.

I wouldn't mind them hanging around as debate moderators, especially if they're strict about time keeping. Shooting an Uzi next to someone's ear works better than muting mics!

I am curious to see how a genuine "tough on crime" policy plays out, now that we have multiple ongoing experiments. Some people might still like to believe that violence and repression can never work when it comes to reducing crime, whereas it's obvious to me that if it doesn't, you're not using enough, or at least employing it on the wrong targets. Bukele somehow didn't manage to shut up all the doubters, but at least other people in power have noticed and that seems to have overruled a lot of institutional inertia and learned helpless handwringing.

It'll be interesting to see what Noboa does next. He ran on and for now seems to be pursuing a genuine tough on crime policy, but there are a fair amount of people who suspect his family of having cartel ties as well. His family is a banana shipping magnate and banana shipments are the primary way (that we/Europe have caught at least) that the Ecuadorian cartels have been moving drugs. The cartels are more recent in Ecuador but at least in more established countries like Colombia (1, 2) and Mexico it's normal for them to spend significant sums backing friendly candidates to the Presidency.

Bukele somehow didn't manage to shut up all the doubters,

In fairness it's a lot easier to lock up all the criminals when they've tattooed "bad guy" on their face. The real trick is just to have such a permissive approach to crime that gang members feel comfortable labeling themselves, then you can swoop em up all at once. Fwiw though, Bukele does have a string of copycat candidates running/or who ran in elections across Central and South America, though not all of them successful.

There are very few important political actors in Central America who doesn’t have some sort of ties to some drug crime. It’s typically more useful to think of the “cartels” (what a weird name when you think about it) as public-private partnerships between the drug entrepreneurs and different levels of the government. The real difficulty these states have fighting against cartels doesn’t have anything to do with regular policing problems. It’s the challenge of organising the state apparatus to fight parts of itself. Army against police departments, judiciary against army, central government against provincial governors etc is how it usually goes. There is a reason why these states get a new “totally not corrupt this time” police department every 5 years to investigate the other police departments. “Cartel”s are often just a part of the state organism

I think the meaning of a genuine tough on crime policy is very different in Ecuador or El Salvador where the crime problem is organised crime where sane people have chosen to persue criminal careers because they are more attractive than legal careers, versus a place like the US where most of the crime we are worried about is committed by drunks, druggies and mentally ill people.

If the gangs are credibly threatening the State's monopoly on violence (and busting a gang leader out of jail counts), then fighting them is more like war than policing.

I agree that long jail sentences don't act as a great deterrent for U.S. criminals, but they are still extremely valuable. Why? Because there is immense value to keeping the worst of society isolated during their most violent years.

Most criminals do not commit only one crime. They tend to commit dozens. The typical murderer will be a career criminal with several serious crimes. If we arrest and jail people for armed robbery or assault, we reduce the pool of potential murderers. Three strikes laws worked great in this regard.

As the prison population increased from 1980–2010, the crime rate fell.

As the prison population decreased since 2010, the crime rate rose.

Could you provide some citations on "typical murderer will be a career criminal"? Are you saying that murderers are generally violent people who tend to commit other crimes like assault (which I can believe), or specifically that they pursue crime as a career (i.e. serial robbers, shoplifters, etc.)?

Are you saying that murderers are generally violent people who tend to commit other crimes like assault

Yes.

or specifically that they pursue crime as a career (i.e. serial robbers, shoplifters, etc.)?

No, I don't believe they are primarily motivated by money. I think they are just violent people.

Could you provide some citations on "typical murderer will be a career criminal"?

You're going to be hard pressed to find an academic study on this matter for the usual obvious reasons. But the newspaper is full of anecdotes of killers being arrested who already have dozens of convictions which in a city like Seattle means hundreds of crimes.

Here's a stat from an earlier time (2002) https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/ascii/vfluc.txt

"Sixty-seven percent of murderers had an arrest record."

This does seem unbelievably low to me. I remember an earlier study out of Wisconsin that said the average murderer had already been arrested SIX times before committing the murder. Unfortunately, this seems to have been memory holed.

Are you saying that murderers are generally violent people who tend to commit other crimes like assault

Yes.

or specifically that they pursue crime as a career (i.e. serial robbers, shoplifters, etc.)?

No, I don't believe they are primarily motivated by money. I think they are just violent people.

Makes more sense. Because yeah, there are places where most murder is by actual career criminals - organised crime, in particular - but I was strongly under the impression that the West wasn't in that category.

"Sixty-seven percent of murderers had an arrest record."

This does seem unbelievably low to me. I remember an earlier study out of Wisconsin that said the average murderer had already been arrested SIX times before committing the murder.

Both can be simultaneously true, because there are some murderers who have been arrested literally hundreds of times and that drives up the mean. In particular, psychopaths. Quoting from Without Conscience:

Many of the antisocial acts of psychopaths lead to criminal convictions. Even within prison populations psychopaths stand out, largely because their antisocial and illegal activities are more varied and frequent than are those of other criminals. Psychopaths tend to have no particular affinity, or “specialty,” for any one type of crime but tend to try everything. This criminal versatility is well illustrated in the television program, described earlier in this chapter, in which Robert Ressler interviewed G. Daniel Walker. Following is a brief exchange from that interview:

“How long is your rap sheet?”

“I would think the current one would probably be about twenty-nine or thirty pages.”

“Twenty-nine or thirty pages! Charles Manson’s is only five.”

“But he was only a killer.”

What Walker meant was that he himself was not only a killer but a criminal of enormous versatility, a fact of which he seemed very proud. He openly boasted of having committed more than three hundred crimes in which he had not been caught.

I think he means that it's the other way around.

A career criminal is much more likely to commit all sorts of crime. Locking them up for their other crimes won't reform them or deter like-minded people outside but while locked up it will prevent them from continuing to do crime, including possibly murder.

Ethiopia & Somalia

A follow up to last week’s post about Somaliland trading Ethiopian access to their ports for Ethiopia recognizing them as a country (and giving them a stake in an Ethiopian airline, but the diplomatic coup is really what they wanted). The current Somali President Abdi has stayed in power in excess of term limits and recently got some terrible press for civilian deaths in a conflict between the government and a dissident group, so this treaty is a bit of a hail mary to keep himself in power/good graces. Is it working? Surprisingly hard to say.

There have been big (peaceful thus far) protests in Somaliland and the country seems divided about whether they support or oppose the deal, ironically because people are divided about whether it boosts sovereignty by getting foreign recognition, or compromises sovereignty by letting foreign troops use their land. The Defense Minister has actually now resigned in protest over stationing Ethiopian troops on Somali(land) soil. It sounds like there’s also some dispute over the territory belonging to his clan, or at least them perceiving that it belongs to them, so there could well be issues in the future even if he didn’t get his veto over the policy now.

Somalia proper is of course furious with Ethiopia, recalling their ambassador and demanding arbitration in both the United Nations and African Union. This is all complicated by the fact that, as covered previously here, Ethiopia has not exactly been building good region relations anywhere else lately either. Their new dam threatens the water supply of both Egypt and Sudan, and Egypt has already come out publicly supporting Somalia’s position in the conflict. It may not end there either.

Eritrea and Egypt will also be concerned with Ethiopia’s having a major naval presence in the strategic Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, observers say.

And in Djibouti, which charges Ethiopia about $1.5 billion a year to use its ports, observers say that the loss of such income could lead to instability for President Ismail Omar Guelleh, who has benefited from that cash inflow during his more than two decades in office.

Given that the Red Sea is already highly chaotic right now, this really isn’t an ideal time to make things even more complicated. Mercifully, it would probably take a long time for any of this to move forward anyway, and a treaty hasn’t actually even been finalized; all Ethiopia and Somaliland have now is a memorandum of understanding.

Red Sea

Speaking of the Red Sea, things still look chaotic there. The US issued a “final warning” to the Houthis to stop attacking or face reprisal, which the Houthis immediately defied by attacking the next day. It’s been a week since then and it’s unclear to me if the west has escalated in any specific way.

Otherwise, tanker traffic still looks remarkably stable though the shipping behemoth Maesrk has recently put a pause on the route for their vessels though, despite the US sinking three Houthi vessels that attacked Maersk ships.

Don’t worry though, Sri Lanka has now announced they will join Operation Prosperity Guardian.

stop attacking or face appraisal

I think you meant "reprisal" rather than "appraisal"

haha i did, thank you

if the west has escalated in any specific way.

We now have an answer: https://www.foxnews.com/world/us-uk-coalition-strike-iran-backed-houthi-targets-yemen-spate-ship-attacks-red-sea

We sure do. It definitely feels like we're slipping more and more into a regional war, though maybe that's overly dramatic.

I don't think there will be something that looks like full-blown war, because there doesn't seem to be any western targets there for Houthis to strike beyond ships, and the US wouldn't go into a full scale invasion there, especially not in an election year. Some bombings would be enough to show Biden still has some cojones left, and I don't think it would go beyond that. More likely, there would be a repeat loop of what is already happening - Houthis attack some ships, the West does a dozen of warnings, then bombs something, rinse, repeat.

The US issued a “final warning” to the Houthis to stop attacking or face appraisal, which the Houthis immediately defied by attacking the next day.

Someone ELI5- the US, UK, Latin Europe, Israel, etc all want the straight open and to crush the houthis. All of them individually outgun the houthis by a lot and like 3/5 top navies in the world are literally in a formal alliance committed to keeping the straights open. There are major friendly bases located nearby for the US/UK.

Why haven’t the houthis gotten, well, anything? It would be one thing if stopping them turned out to be harder than it seemed but no one has tried. Why?

I don’t know if this is part of the calculation but Saudi oil infrastructure is extremely vulnerable to Iran made missiles/drones launched from Yemen. They have done some attacks in the past but if things really escalate then houthis have very real retaliation options

A few things:

  1. The media describes the Houthis as “rebels” but they control 85 percent of the urban parts of Yemen. The “legitimate government” is confined to some mountain and desert strongholds. For all practical purposes attacking the Houthis is like going to war with an actual country.
  2. Saudi Arabia has been bombing the Houthis for years with American assistance. It hasn’t done much. There’s a good chance this will escalate into an invasion and a lengthy ground campaign.
  3. The Houthis actually have pretty good weaponry from Iran. And possibly very good weaponry from Russia. No European leader wants to get one of their cruisers murked with hypersonic missiles and be politically on the hook for the deaths of 400 sailors.

The media describes the Houthis as “rebels” but they control 85 percent of the urban parts of Yemen. The “legitimate government” is confined to some mountain and desert strongholds. For all practical purposes attacking the Houthis is like going to war with an actual country.

This looks true, which I hadn't picked up on when I'd first skimmed wikipedia.

Where do you gather information for things like this?

This looks true, which I hadn't picked up on when I'd first skimmed wikipedia.

apparently wikipedia authors are anti-Houthi so they don't show it

A quick glance on "Yemen population density" and comparison with areas controlled by Houthis will do

I very strongly doubt that the Houthis have current top of the line equipment from Russia. The ability to hit a corvette or two I’ll buy, but they’ve been fighting Saudi Arabia, which does carpet bombing with precision munitions. Not actually evidence of having great long range strike capabilities.

For all practical purposes attacking the Houthis is like going to war with an actual country.

If anything, that seems to be rather good than bad for prosecuting the war. For somebody like the West, it's much better to have a war with an actual proper country than a bunch of vaguely defined rebels. It's much easier to pressure the country into making some kind of a deal - after hitting their soft points, which any country has aplenty - than hunting down every single last cave dweller in the desert, without even knowing if there are more or where they are. If they are like a country, they have offices, stores, ports, materials, etc. - all this can be hit and destroyed. The bigger the target, the easier it should be to strike it, not? And then, the carrot can be presented - if you stop the stupid shit, maybe we'll let you have your country and run it as you please.

No European leader wants to get one of their cruisers murked with hypersonic missiles

Not even Russia is dumb enough to give those guys something like that, and also it's not a magic wand - it needs to be used properly to strike a warship, and the likelihood of anybody there knowing how to do stuff like that is null. Russian "advisors" probably could pull it off but Russia has enough trouble to be actively involved in another war right now. They are buying weapons from places like Iran and North Korea, not selling them.

For somebody like the West, it's much better to have a war with an actual proper country than a bunch of vaguely defined rebels.

Wouldn't they need to have recognize Houthis as legitimate government to do so?

Not really, it just needs to have the same set of vulnerabilities as legitimate governments, or at least a sizeable subset of them.

IIRC the Biden administration was quite critical of the Saudi-Houthi war that mostly occured during the Trump administration, which was frequently decried as "genocide in Yemen" (I get the sense now this was largely from a crowd that started protesting in early October about violence against Palestinians) and actually managed to broker a ceasefire starting in 2022.

As it stands now, I sense there would be a lot of partisan (left) outcry about bombing a group waving flags that say "Death to America" who are also firing missiles at American ships. So, like the Obama administration in Syria, we're sending lots of "final warnings" and tutting sternly. Perhaps we'll launch a few missiles or bombs at some point, but it doesn't seem likely to impress the importance of Free Navigation on anyone watching.

Don’t worry though, Sri Lanka has now announced they will join Operation Prosperity Guardian.

A sensible decision, though a token one from my understanding of their naval prowess. Funnily enough, they're likely one of the nation's least affected by the closure of the Suez route, since even shipping taking the Horn usually passes by them. I would assume they still see negative effects from increased costs and decreased traffic.

Maybe they are useful as logistical support/base/place to store captured terrorists?

Or is it pure "hey, this is multinational coalition and not only USA"?

I would wager it's mostly optics, and that's not necessarily something to be too cynical about, the world showing a united front is reassuring, even if in the case of Sri Lanka it's more flag waving as better armed navies do the work.

As for detention facilities or the like, I haven't heard of any such arrangement, and I don't see why they'd be a good choice really. For terrorists, I assume there's closer places at hand that don't ask too many questions. Too out of the way for somewhere to dump economic migrants, and they're not notorious for sending illegal immigrants either.

Bosnia

Bosnian Republika Srpska’s long-time secession sympathizing leader Milorad Dodik has been kicking up extra dust lately. He’s been in the news for the past few years for threatening to withdraw from all of the country's federated institutions, like the court system and military, and for threatening to arrest the international peace envoy, and so forth. This Monday he illegally held a public celebration for Serbian independence day, banned by the court system for discrimination (and the legacy of the Serbian led ethnic cleansing in Bosnia). His intentions were pretty clear:

Bosnian Serbs are already "mentally integrated" into Serbia and would gladly support independence from Bosnia, their political leader Milorad Dodik told AFP just ahead of a controversial "national holiday"...

"We do not want to stay here," Dodik, president of Republika Srpska (RS), told AFP on Monday.

The US responded to this slight in traditional hegemonic fashion by flying two fighter jets over Bosnia. Dodik has waffled on claiming he wants secession outright but doesn’t seem to be backing down from the fight in general:

“I am not irrational, I know that America’s response will be to use force … but I have no reason to be frightened by that into sacrificing (Serb) national interests,” Milorad Dodik, the president of Bosnia’s Serb-run part, told The Associated Press in an interview Friday.

Japan

A follow up to the fundraising scandal that has rocked Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party and forced the resignations of the party Policy Chief, the Minister of Trade and Industry, and the Chief Cabinet Secretary. Prosecutors raided LDP offices a few weeks ago and on Sunday made their first arrest of an involved politician, a Congressmen and ex-Vice Minister of the Education Ministry. Amazingly, Kishida hasn’t been canned by his party yet, despite this, the Moonie funding scandal, and the assassination attempt (yes, that doesn’t seem like a fair thing to fire a PM for, but Japan historically changes leaders at the slightest sign of worsening vibes). Still, his days may be numbered if party popularity keeps falling (consistently sub 20% recently). Combined with the recent plane crash that killed 6 people and the brutal earthquake that’s piled up over 160 bodies so far, it’s been a really rough few weeks both for Kishida and for Japan.

France

French leftist Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne has resigned on Macron’s request from her position. Her replacement is the young (youngest PM ever actually) Gabriel Attal, also originally from the Socialist Party. Polls say Attal, who rose to prominence during the Covid pandemic and went on to be the Education Minister, is one of the most popular politicians in France. Macron is likely hoping through his appointment to absorb some of that popularity himself in the wake of a series of hard ball policy pushes, from the pension reform to the immigration bill, combined with the backdrop of rising living costs. It still remains to be seen if Macron will reshuffle other members of his cabinet.

Also:

Macron, 46, and Attal have a combined age just below that of Joe Biden, who is running for a second term in this year's U.S. presidential election.

Rude.

The sole political action that wikipedia listed him as doing is to ban abayas, an article of clothing worn by some muslims, from public schools.

It's funny to me that that makes him appeal to conservatives more, as my instinctual response is to see that as terrible, as I value religious liberty being a thing. But it looks like France already banned wearing crosses in public schools.

Myanmar

The conflict in Myanmar has been heating up more and more with the coalition of ethnic militias working together since October steadily gaining ground on the junta government. In the northeastern Shan state especially, towns are falling to the rebels throughout Operation 1027 (named for the date of the start of the military push). China has warned its citizens to withdraw and the military has released thousands of prisoners in hopes of garnering good will with the public. For the first time people seem to be saying a rebel victory is essentially assured, which would have been insane only a few years ago. Whether that means the junta actually losing control of the whole country, or just of the ethnic breakaway states remains to be seen.

How does everyone feel about it? Well, Myanmar is something of a soft pariah state in Southeast Asia, but also most national governments regionally don’t like the idea of successful coups. China in particular hates the conflict because it happens right on their border, affects Chinese citizens, and sometimes attacks have even landed over the Chinese border. They also don’t want to deal with any kind of refugee crisis. On the other hand, the “Alliance of Three Brotherhoods” is highly pro-China (as is the government) so a victory on their part wouldn’t mean the country realigning or anything. Chinese is allied with the junta but hasn’t helped them much in the conflict either, what’s really important to them is that the conflicts ends and stability is restored. America likewise doesn’t have great options. America is opposed to the junta for obvious reasons, but the ethnic militias aren’t likely to be any more pro-American and none of our allies surrounding Myanmar really want to deal with a potential refugee crisis either.

What are Israel's goals in Gaza at this point, and what have they achieved towards them at this point? I've sort of lost track and would like to catch up.

The official goal is dismantling Hamas infrastructure and destroying their military capacity. The second official goal is freeing the hostages, though nobody actually knows how to achieve that. The former though is simpler - just divide Gaza into squares, go square by square, find anything that looks like it belongs to Hamas, destroy it, find anybody who is holding weapons, destroy them if they don't drop the weapons quickly enough, otherwise rope them in as prisoner. The north of Gaza is pretty much captured and being cleaned up, the middle is pretty much captured too, the south is still in progress. There's a lot of stuff to be done there, so it'll likely take time. Nobody really knows what to do after IDF will establish military control over the whole Gaza - which will likely happen soon, finds all Hamas caches they could find (which will also happen soon) and captures or kills all Hamas members that are stupid enough to keep actively resisting. Since it's probably still months away, the official position is "we'll think of something by then".

All signs point to Israel continuing the war until at least the middle of 2024. Eg. the budget that was approved last week includes an additional 50bn shekels (on top of the 30 bn approved for the war in a previous 2023-24 war budget), which most folk assume mean 4-6 more months of war. Israel is debating and negotiating, this week, what that means in terms of goals and how the rest of the war will be fought. Updates likely to come this weekend or sometime next week, after Blinken completes his tour and finishes speaking with all the local leaders

Their stated objective is to eradicate all traces and operational capabilities for Hamas. That's a very nebulous goal - the armed portion of Hamas has somewhere around 20-25k members according to CIA's factbook. The organization is fragmented, though - and the political arm may have hundreds of thousands of supporters. Support for the palestinian side of the war, if not explicitly Hamas, has spread into the West bank, and there have been some brutal IDF operations there too. Especially the younger population in the west bank is becoming more and more restless, so there's a chance there will be further operations and escalation. Some estimates for the number of small arms and other weapons in the Gaza strip are as high as 400-500k, with many other tribes or armed groups potentially supporting Hamas, and participating in the war. So it seems like the IDF has enough plausible deniability, budget, and rope, to continue for an arbitrarily long period of time and with a wide range of potential activities. It will likely take a significant amount of combined internal and international pressure comes to bear before they are forced to call the war over and stop.

As far as specific goals - at the very least, there seems to be a systematic search for and dismantling of large underground facilities and tunnels, that Hamas and other organizations have built up over 20+ years. The IDF seems to be following a pattern of brutal bomb, drone attack, underground and urban combat, killing thousands of soldiers (most recent estimates are at 10000+ dead or captured combatants, and with close to 2000 of those listed as captured). It's impossible to estimate what percentage of the underground facilities have been destroyed so far, or how many are left - no one seems to know for sure how many there are or where to find them all. It seems likely that Israel is leaning heavily on captives and on its intelligence resources to, in real time, systematically scan each area, find and then eradicate the operational and military facilities - including any in the west bank. Estimates have something like 30-40% of all above ground buildings in Gaza destroyed, so far.

As far as political pressure to stop - conservative estimates are at a minimum of around 15000 palestinian civilians dead, with more than half the fatalities being under 18. There seems to be recent, rapidly increasing pressure on Israel to stop the ground offensive. While the US and others are not calling for an explicit cease fire, they are more and more aggressively calling for a stop to the civilian death toll. EU based pressure is complex, but follows similar broad strokes as US pressure - initially starting as pressure towards a ceasefire or end to civilian casualties. For the last 10-15 years, EU has been the primary source of aid to cover the cost of housing and infrastructure in Gaza (including significant funding for Israeli owned construction firms and companies to do the work). Billions of dollars' worth of infrastructure, built via primarily EU provided foreign aid, is being levelled by the IDF, and that part of the narrative seems to be getting more air time in the EU than in the US. Also, with Turkey/Israel relations worsening and attacks from Hezbollah/Lebanon in the north of Israel intensifying, news in the EU is seeing more talk about avoiding an escalation of the conflict than what's coming from the US. For context, Turkey could have been a candidate for brokering some sort of peace or path towards an end of the war, after the Egyptian led negotiations collapsed - but that seems less likely to happen now.

Also related to political pressure - Israel is aggressively preventing any kind of aid from going into the region, when it thinks it might be used in support of the war. They have been using an algorithm I think of as "detain on first transgression" at the border. At the first sign that a truck carries something that could theoretically be used to manufacture weapons or support war infrastructure (eg a single large pipe that could be an ingredient in a rocket, or a solar panel stored on the roof of the truck), the entire truck is sidelined or detained. This approach is extremely unpopular internationally and there has been constant pressure on the Israeli government to allow more aid in.

While there is overwhelming support, internally, for Israel to continue the war until the destruction of Hamas (polling at close to 90%), it's unclear what that means in practice, and internal pressure to stop the civilian casualties is mounting. Pre-war protests included slogans demanding a stop to the subjugation of the palestinian people; some are starting to question whether the war is just about destroying Hamas in the current format and at this point.

Israel's government is debating how to respond to all of this pressure, both internally and with foreign diplomats, this week. Blinken and others are in the region right now, meeting and acting as messengers and go betweens between all involved. The initial Israeli position seems to be that they've mostly achieved their objectives in the North, and aid and reconstruction can start there. In the south, their initial pitch seems to be to continue for as long as necessary, implicitly attempting to do the same thing(s) as in the North, but potentially slower, more methodically, and with fewer casualties and brutality. Specifics and final details are still up in the air and likely won't be updated publicly until, at the earliest, this weekend, but probably next week.

Related - South Africa presented it's case that Israel is engaged in genocide against Palestinians today, with rebuttals scheduled for tomorrow. While very visible and having a lot of public attention and interest, it's unclear what, if anything, directly practical can come of this lawsuit. ICJ lawsuits are not enforceable, and any consequent political pressure is likely to come after some of the decision making has finished.

For additional context - Israel was at a turning point internally before the war started, with some calling the state close to civil war. PM Netaniahu is facing criminal charges, and the trial is on hold while the war is going on. Support for him to keep his job post war is polling at around 15%. Many government decision makers, including the PM, are seen have a vested interest in continuing the war for as long as possible

Israel is aggressively preventing any kind of aid from going into the region

This is obviously false, there are numerous photos and videos of hundreds of aid trucks rolling into Gaza (and Hamas taking over them and shooting at residents trying to get to them before Hamas does), and there are Jordanians doing air supply drops (obviously with Israel approval). It is true that Israel limits the amount of supplies and the kind of supplies, because they know (and it is true) that Hamas is going to control and benefit from them, but it is absolutely false that Israel is preventing "any kind of aid" from going into Gaza.

The original statement was:

Israel is aggressively preventing any kind of aid from going into the region, when it thinks it might be used in support of the war

So I think both my original, and your take are 100% true - I don't believe there is a contradiction. Even if I steelman your point, I don't see a contradiction. Say, for the sake of exercise (this extremely simplified and abstracted, so don't take cheap shots against the simplification; I think is close enough to reality get my point across though):

  • Assume 90% of all trucks are allowed to pass and 10% are held back since they might be used to support the war. I'm trying to steelman your point - daily numbers vary widely, and seem to average 20% held back (again, I'm steelmanning your point here so using IDF numbers for 80 trucks through on average, when 100 are required)
  • Assume that the algorithm for holding them back is correct (there are multiple eye witness accounts, including eg. the BBC interviewed US senators visiting the crossing). That is, a truck that is held back is held for a while, and not allowed to return to its origin or be reusedd
  • The war has been going 100 days
  • It takes around 100 trucks a day to supply gaza

Assuming (for illustration; this is a model of what's going on that helps make the problem visible. The truth is different, but not in ways which invalidate this logic) 100 trucks try to cross each day, that's 10 held back each day, and held back trucks are never released - that would be around 1000 trucks stuck at the border by now. 1000 trucks is more than 50% of the entire trucking capacity for Egypt. Looks like Egypt has ballpark 1850 trucks available for all transportation needs in the country

Now try doing something like the above with the real numbers and estimates, and the more complicated truth of what's actually happening with trucks @ border. You should be able to more easily see the problem

So I think that all of the following statements could (trivially) be all be true at the same time (exercise for the reader to figure out if they are):

  • occasionally a significant number of trucks pass (maybe hundreds in total are allowed in at a time, every once in a while, possibly after they've had time to be more thoroughly inspected and risky materials have been removed or something)
  • only a relatively small % of trucks are stopped each day, on the chance they carry weaponisable material. Average 20%
  • the aggregate # of trucks making it through is high, but not nearly enough to prevent catastrophe
  • truck access is lumpy enough to cause catastrophe even if both the average and aggregate numbers are significantly increased ("on average, sufficient fuel is available to operate a hospital generator" is not exactly the same as "sufficient fuel makes it through each day")
  • the algorithm used to decide how many trucks pass aggressively prevents access
  • No need for anyone to (intentionally) be doing anything cruel or evil. None of this requires bad actors, on either side of the fence - it's sufficient to assume moloch

If you assume this is Moloch at work, you'll quickly see that the issue can be addressed as a coordination problem. So there are multiple very very easy ways to make the algorithm less aggressive or more effectively work within its limits - for example:

  • the "Berlin Algorithm": trucks which are denied entry could be sent back to origin (instead of detained, creating bottlenecks), where dangerous materials can be removed
  • more clear information, in advance, about what might cause a truck to be turned around
  • more conservative decisions on the side of the folk loading the trucks. Or more consistency - eg. put all the solar panels on one truck, that way only solar panels get turned around (and not, say, a truck full of food that also carries a solar panel)
  • completely unload the trucks that have been denied, near the border. That way they can go back for more materials (and not be a bottle neck). Once certain materials are accepted in, re-load them into trucks

Also, with Turkey/Israel relations worsening and attacks from Hezbollah/Lebanon in the north of Israel intensifying, news in the EU is seeing more talk about avoiding an escalation of the conflict than what's coming from the US.

Turkey - Israel relations are complex but Turkey is one of the most staunch supporters of Hamas in the region, much moreso than Egypt or the Gulf powers. Turkey and Iran have a strained relationship over the Azerbaijan / Armenia conflict (in which it and Israel are mostly on the same side) but it’s not really that simple there either.

The most important dynamic is that neither Turkey nor any Arab state’s leaders want war with Israel, but a substantial portion, perhaps the majority, of the Arab public do and more generally they’re extremely hostile to Israel.

I don't mean to scare you with the sudden appearance of a notification from a moderator in your inbox.

I would actually like to laud your comment, and especially contrast it to this particular one:

https://www.themotte.org/post/824/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/178573?context=8#context

Which happened to be warned (very politely) by @netstack, and would have warranted one from me if he hadn't been first to the punch.

Said ignoble comment included:

Right now is a balancing game in how far they can go without critical consequences, with a heavy experimental lean towards killing as many men, women, and children as possible, while maximizing destabilization.

And hence (and for other reasons) met with:

Please be proactive when making an inflammatory claim. That means providing stronger evidence.

I consider your comment here to be a sterling representation of how to go about that, and hope that @SoonToBeBanned takes heed, presuming he doesn't intend his username to end up a self-fulfilling prophecy one day.

And this is coming from someone who is profoundly unsympathetic to the Gazan cause, not that I try and let that affect my moderation decisions. But if someone wishes to go about making such claims, then I point to your comment as how to do that. The AAQC this garnered already (hence why it was a "report" in the mod queue) seems well warranted to me. I will supplement it with my own.

(On an unrelated note, I prefer to be the kind of mod who offers carrots as well as sticks, if the odd person finds my positive feedback heartening. Especially for relatively new members here, I think they deserve recognition for grokking how this place works, or ought to work, without anyone needing to hit them on the head first haha)

Thanks! Any comments on the general style of the post? I was aiming for more conversational, and leaving the references in the links. Though I'm considering switching in general to more of @Soriek's style and including direct quotes from the references (eg from an npr link above )

Domestic politics may play a role in how Netanyahu wages the war in Gaza.

Israel's military has appointed a team to investigate the security failures that resulted in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, and Netanyahu is expected to face questions about his own responsibility. Netanyahu's corruption trial will convene at a quicker pace beginning this month, and polls show his government has lost between a third and a fourth of its public support during the war.

"If it was up to Netanyahu, this would continue for quite some time," says Reuven Hazan, who teaches politics at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. "For Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza, even with a victory, means he has to start dealing with the political issues at home and the legal issues, which he does not want to."

I like your style! No need for everyone to sound like me. Honestly I partially include more direct quotes because I'm extremely busy these days. If I had more time I would do more personalized writeups for each country, which I still try to do where I can or for the countries I know more about.

I like the direct quotes; it feels a bit more honest - reporting on the source separately from the analysis, or something like that

I think your style is entirely fine! @Soriek seems to prefer a more neutral, judgment free style to his reporting, but that is by no means a necessity. You are more than welcome to present both the facts and the value judgements/hypothesis you ascribe to them, all we ask is that if the latter can be deemed inflammatory (sorry that there's no objective standard, but we mods do try our best), then the former backs it up in proportion.

Which you did, very well, so any further changes in your style are yours to choose.

Netanyahu is trying to deliver on part of the "Greater Israel" plan by killing or expelling the Palestinians, esp. from Gaza. You're repeating "Israeli" propaganda about things like impeding aid due to weapons and fighting Hamas, when in reality it's clear from things like the evidence presented in the genocide case, it's about killing the Palestinians.

There is not much evidence for those 10K+ dead or captured being actual combatants, and you can see "Israel" hasn't captured many more hostages (not that they actually care about them, recently it was admitted they applied the hannibal directive on Oct 7th). "Israel" needs to flaunt these #'s to make it look like they're succeeding.

"Israel" is trying to escalate with Hezbollah and cause a wider war bringing in the US. It's been unsuccessful so far but tensions continue to rise.

What I keep asking for the crowd which claims Israel wants to get rid of the Gazans and doesn’t care how it does so, ergo genocide- why are civilian casualty figures in the Gaza campaign so much closer to US military operations than to Russian ones? Russia kills more Ukrainian civilians it theoretically wants to incorporate into its citizen body by accident than Israel is doing to Palestinians it wants rid of entirely(and I’m entirely willing to believe reports like Israel negotiating to deport them all to the Congo, even if I think the evidence is in short supply). Why? Israel is going to get about the same amount of condemnation from about the same people no matter what it does short of opening up another Auschwitz, so the balance of evidence is in favor of Israel not trying to commit a genocide and putting at least some effort into avoiding civilian casualties.

I'm broadly sympathetic to this point of view. For example, Mearsheimer has an essay about it, with a bunch of footnotes to back him up: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/death-and-destruction-in-gaza

It is rather disturbing to see children singing "within a year we will annihilate everyone and then we will return to plough our fields" in a well-made, high-value music production. Even Snopes couldn't find any way to fact check it into the ground.

Why is "Israel" in scare quotes? Whether you believe that the Israeli government should be destroyed or not, it clearly currently exists and clearly currently controls territory.

Some people have their own facts, and denying the existence of Israel is, unfortunately, only a small part of a myriad of falsities from which their worldview is composed. Pretty much everything they know and say about Israel is false, but they can't help themselves and reveal it by denying even the most obvious of facts - such as the very existence of the state of Israel. It is actually a good thing - it clearly indicates people that are not going to be open to reasonable argument.

I just got back from visiting Iraq, and thought I'd share my thoughts. My wife is Iraqi, so visiting family was our main reason for going.

  • My wife's sister had visited us the week before in Switzerland with her boss (let's call him "Haji") and his daughter. Haji is a real estate mogul in Baghdad. He sent one of his henchmen to meet us at the gate in Baghdad airport (yes, he went backwards through luggage claim and passport control), so that the border police wouldn't ask annoying questions about my wife being married to a potential non-muslim. We cut through the queue, he rang some higher-up, all was well. He dropped us off at the airport later as well. Again, jumping to the front of queues, talking to the guy there, talking on the phone, no problems. It was quite embarrassing.

Government and Politics:

  • When my wife was around 10 years old, her family home was appropriated by Saddam Hussein's cousin. After the fall of Saddam, some newly-rich Shia groups moved in. We tried to go see her childhood home, but the neighbourhood entrances were guarded by guys with guns. Apparently you need to live there or be visiting someone in order to be allowed in. Bear in mind this blocking of streets by armed thugs is not government-sanctioned. This district is now just a Shia faction stronghold and they'll do what they like.

  • There were other differences between this district and others. A lot of billboards had a picture of Soleimani, usually with the words "We will not forget the blood of our martyrs". There are a lot of posters of Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei. I knew that the Iranian influence here was strong, but for it to be that brazen was surprising to me. There were also many pictures of Muqtada Al-Sadr, with him looking angry in each one. He's an interesting character. Another place where the Shia/Iran influence is noticeably strong is in Karbala, a holy Shia city Southwest of Baghdad.

  • There were some pretty big protests a couple of years ago, and people seem to think that this scared the government enough to start investing in infrastructure and allowing some liberalisation.

  • The day before we flew out, the Americans carried out another drone strike on a militia leader. My wife heard the explosion from the vehicle she was in, but was still fairly far away. We were mildly worried about my European-looking face as we went to the airport, but all good.

Baghdad City:

  • Traffic lights mostly don't exist, or if they do, they usually don't work, and if they do work, they are generally ignored. At some busy intersections,a traffic cop stands and directs traffic, and his directions are mostly heeded.

  • Cutting into and across traffic is generally necessary, and the drivers trust each other to be aware enough. Compared to when I was in India, cars tend to not be covered in dents. People are generally not overly selfish.

  • Cars are modded in myriad ways. One taxi I saw had a countdown timer on either side at the back, which would emit a bright series of flashes upon reaching 0. A scooter had flashing blue and red lights, surely outlawed in most developed countries.

  • Armed men in uniform are all over the city. On many intersections, there is a pick-up with a machine gun mounted on top, and usually a guy standing behind it, with a bunch of other guys with big guns and big moustaches in uniform loitering around.

  • Baghdad has footpaths, but they're not really usable. They're occupied by generators or vehicles. This means one generally has to walk on the street.

  • Parking lots highlight how cheap labour is. One evening we drove the car to a parking lot which would normally accommodate around 30 cars. There were 2 employees working there. We received a piece of paper from them, and they parked the car in such a way that other cars were blocked in. By parking in this way, they could accommodate about 8 more cars. It all seemed very inefficient to me, but I guess they're cheap.

Food and Stores:

  • We found a store in the mall called "Swiss Market". Given that I live in Switzerland, I thought I'd test its authenticity. They had all sorts of (non-alcoholic) German beers, standard softdrinks, but no Rivella. The only Swiss thing I found was Lindt. The store "American Candy" appeared to my untrained eye to fit the bill. "German Bazaar" seemed to mostly be Italian and Chinese brands. We didn't even bother with "Swedish Pharmacy". "English Home" didn't sound particularly appealing, but still more so than "Wankids". "Shopping Shop" I took at its word.

  • Restaurants generally give enough free appetisers to fill one's stomach by themselves. We were already overfed and generally not hungry by the time we got to restaurants, so after we ordered a main, we ended up eating about a third of all the food that had been brought out.

  • Fancy restaurants generally play Western music. One particularly expensive restaurant was playing a string version of Despacito when we arrived, and 10 minutes later I realised that once again Despacito was playing, this time with the oboe playing the melody. Classy stuff.

  • The food is delicious, albeit a bit fatty.

People:

  • For a population I assumed to be traumatised from the last decades of conflict, 3 things surprised me:

    • A lot of fake gun toys for kids
    • Valorisation of military
    • Amount of fireworks on NYE

  • People speaking English was rare. No taxi drivers we met could speak more than a few words, as far as we could tell.

  • Botox seemed to be very common among mid-upper class women. Exaggerated fat lips and high cheekbones, which would not be popular in the West.

  • My wife explained that most Iraqis do not have hobbies to the same extent as people in Europe. Going out and meeting for food is something they like to do.

Other:

  • The 'Adan' (call to prayer) is less grating than the church bells of Europe.

  • Leaving clear plastic wrapping on things is really common. Oftentimes the entire interior of a car will be plastic-wrapped like it came from the factory. Displays with bubbles all over the protective film. My sister-in-law's dental clinic had plastic all over the instruments. Here that would be considered tacky.

The 'Adan' (call to prayer) is less grating than the church bells of Europe.

That's the most surprising part for me.

I grew up in a 33-33-33 Hindu-muslim-Catholic neighborhood, so both the Church bells and Adan are familiar sounds. Adans are sung. So they've always sounded more intrusive and distracting to me. The church bells last less than 30 seconds, have no words and ring out with a pleasant decay. The sounds have a generally warm timbre. (for the lack of a better phrase). On the other hand, the throaty and nasal composition of the adan feels sharp.

I wonder if the adan in Iraq is qualitatively different, or I'm just observing some level of internalized bigotry.

In small Swiss towns church bells are very loud and (obviously) very regular. Bells don’t ring every hour but every 15 minutes, all day.

So I can completely see how the Adan might seem less intrusive compared to Swiss church bells (where the person visiting Iraq lived), given it’s only a few times a day.

That makes a lot of sense. Where I lived, the church bells only rang twice a day.

Is the call to prayer broadcasted via speakers?

Yes. It can be a bit of a cacophony if you're equidistant from 3 mosques.

I have nothing very interesting to add but just wanted to say this was a very interesting post. That's interesting that posters of Al-Sadr are still common. Did you have any impression of how people felt about him or Al-Sudani?

Al-Sudani, no idea really, I think the common people basically think that non-corrupt people are driven out of politics pretty quickly, so if you're high up in politics, you're very corrupt.

Al-Sadr, I didn't really talk to anybody about him except for my wife. She's mostly negative, but also has mixed feelings, especially because he urged his supporters to join the protests a few years ago. It's not just posters though. You can see pictures of Al-Sadr on the back of taxis or tuk-tuks. It's clear he still has a lot of popular support.

Actually, a note I forgot to add about corruption:

  • My wife's sister's husband works in the foreign ministry, and until recently he had some money-controlling responsibilities. He gave those up because he was being threatened due to not accepting some bribes.
  • My MIL and SIL have a dental clinic together, and occasionally customers refuse to pay as they're members of some militia or organised crime syndicate. There's not much that can be done about that.

They had all sorts of (non-alcoholic) German beers, standard softdrinks, but no Rivella.

Finding Rivella outside of Switzerland (and Germany/Austria where some stores carry it) is hellish, the main UK importer shut down a few years ago, shipping costs are insane and the one time I tried it arrived and the carbonation had gone and the bottles were very close to the expiry date. I haven’t tried in the US but it seems to be similarly difficult.

The 'Adan' (call to prayer) is less grating than the church bells of Europe.

I am offended. Do you really not like church bells?

We live up the hill from the church in our village, putting its bell tower at window level for us, and are regularly woken up by its pealing. It goes on for too long at (seemingly) random times. Hourly chiming in a mountain village is fine, but daily life with loud bells isn't all that fun.

We had terrible sleeping habits in Baghdad, but the Adhan didn't wake us up. I'm not sure how I'd feel about it long-term.

European Union

From the golden age of decentralization of 1945, today we live in a times of local autonomy being on the decline. The latest example coming from the spat between Brussels and Budapest. Europeans may be familiar with various accusations the EU and western Europeans make against the present Hungarian government (corruption, lack of rule of law).

Such violations are used as the justification for removing franchise of the Hungarian representative in the EU Council(1). This move comes after Hungary vetoed the latest package of EU aid to Ukraine.

The exact paragraph Hungary is accused to be in breach of is Article 2 of Treaty on European Union. The article in question is vague and sufficiently motivated adversary could find a case against every EU member state, so the only conditions are political, which are specified in Article 7.

In more fun EU news, EU Commission member from Greece, has called upon the US singer Taylor Swift to promote voting in EU Parliament election among the subset of her fans which is allowed to vote in these election. That he called upon an American singer shows that Rammstein was right. For while there still exists Bulgarian, Finnish, and Portugese musicians, their reach is limited to their own countries, and even there US artists are more popular.

(1) The three major organs of EU are: EU Parliament (directly elected, comparable to the US House of Representatives, but with less populous states given slightly more seats per capita), EU Commission (comparable to the Government in a parliamentary system, with each country given a minister/secretary, but who doesn't represent and isn't supposed to act in the interest of the country which proposed her), and the EU Council (comparable to the US Senate before it's members were directly elected, the Council's members are heads of governments of EU member states).

For while there still exists Bulgarian, Finnish, and Portugese musicians, their reach is limited to their own countries, and even there US artists are more popular.

Nonsense, looking at quickly googled stats for Poland I see in top 10 mostly Polish artists and "artists". One list where foreign one was top 1 she was Canadian.

This user has blocked you. You are still welcome to reply but you will be held to a higher standard of civility than you would be otherwise

WTF? Why I am going to be held to a higher standard of civility just because @some mass blocks everyone?

At the old place abuse of the blocking feature was itself a moddable offense; I’ve never seen anyone actually get modded for responding to @some despite him blocking literally everyone for no apparent reason. Stands to reason that that form letter may not be 100% literal in this particular case.

I wonder what the site looks like to him, with so many comments gone. (I assume that's what it does, I've never blocked someone myself.)

Comments are hidden but it seems that trace of comment is still visible (I just decided to block @some in a matching response, especially as I remember repeated strong claims completely mismatching reality, likely they made more similar but not on topics I know well)

For while there still exists Bulgarian, Finnish, and Portugese musicians, their reach is limited to their own countries, and even there US artists are more popular.

No, not really. The top 5 singles and albums for the last week in records in Finland, at least, were entirely Finnish artists (I don't know most of them but then again I'm almost 40), and this list of best-selling music artists is also in great majority Finnish. Taylor Swift is actually pretty invisible here, it's only due to the massive media attention in America making her a thing in the US that I've recently seen some mentions of her by locals.

Same thing in Sweden. Only one artist in the top 10 was non-swedish in 2023.

Top 10 2023:

  1. Ikväll Igen – Bolaget
  2. Kan Inte Gå – Bolaget
  3. Tattoo – Loreen
  4. Flowers – Miley Cyrus
  5. Rid Mig Som En Dalahäst – Rasmus Gozzi, Fröken Snusk
  6. Har Dig – Yasin
  7. Can't Tame Her – Zara Larsson
  8. Banan Melon Kiwi & Citron – Hooja
  9. Josefin – Albin Lee Meldau
  10. Hälsa Gud – Miss Li

Wait, are both #1 and #2 songs about liquor stores?

That's the artist. Both the songs are about being extremely drunk though..

To be clear though, I've not listened to any of the songs of the list even once until now except for the Loreen song during Eurovision.

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