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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   2216 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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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.

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