Saturday 6 January 2024

FROM this week’s news ON: politics & democracy, and international affairs

[Note: Content Warning - links to reports on bigotry/hate, violence/abuse/war. Reader discretion is advised]  

Note: CONTENT WARNING - some of this content is about upsetting, disturbing or triggering events & attitudes. Seek competent help - including professional - if you need it. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that linked articles may contains names and/or images of deceased people. READER CAUTION IS RECOMMENDED! For anyone distressed by anything in this post, or for any other reason considering seeking support, resources are available in Australia here, here, and here. In other nations, you will have to do an Internet search using terms such as “mental health support - <your nation>” (which, for instance, may lead to this, this, and this, in the USA, or this, this, and this, in France [biased towards English-language - my apologies]), or perhaps try https://www.befrienders.org/. 

Note: in my “from the news” posts, quotes are shown italicised and blue, my comments are in a different shade of blue, and “good” items are shown in green. I have loosely grouped the posts where such seemed reasonable, but that is subjective (i.e., my opinion - others are free to disagree), and challenging, as some posts belong in multiple “groups”.

From this week’s news on politics & democracy, and international affairs (note: I may continue to add links for a few days, possibly up to a week, after these are published), and noting the conflicts, listed here, for instance, and other global; issues, such as those listed here, that may not have made it into this weeks news: 

  • “Sudan is the Worst Crisis in the World That Receives The Least Amount of Attention”   Global Dispatches   “As we enter 2024, the conflict in Sudan is shaping up to be one of the worst crises in the world. Nearly 7 million people have been displaced, hunger is widespread and a hallmark of this civil war has been ethnic cleansing that may have crossed the threshold to genocide. Despite being a calamitous catastrophe, Sudan has not received much media attention, nor sustained high level engagement by policy makers, particularly in the West.  To begin 2024, I am bringing you my conversation with Kholood Khair, the founder and managing director of Confluence Advisory, a think and do tank formerly based in Khartoum. We kick off discussing her analysis of why conflict broke out in April between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. We then discuss how this conflict evolved to the point where the Rapid Support Forces appear to very much have the upper hand and why international diplomacy has thus far failed to end this civil war.”    Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/global-dispatches-world-news-that-matters/id593535863?i=1000640332436  

 

  • a series of YouTube shorts show the problems of the USA by comparison with life in Germany:     “School Safety: USA v. Germany”   https://m.youtube.com/shorts/IEQFpi2K0WQ   Obviously Germany, as with most (not all - consider war zones) of the rest of the world, is better     and     “Studying USA Propaganda in Germany”   https://m.youtube.com/shorts/A3iV1kNX3MI   This covered current propaganda such as US (alleged) “exceptionalism”, the “American dream”, and “how US citizens have been led to have a lack of self-critical awareness to how their ideals have failed”. Details of the textbook used are included     and     “Money Saved by Immigrating to Germany as a U.S. American”   https://m.youtube.com/shorts/krIjX1ma4Hs   This highlights how backwards and third rate the US approach to health care and workers is  




From ACLED: 

For week   2nd - 8th December (note that this is several weeks behind current events owing to the time required to collect and analyse data):  

Large decrease in violence:  Venezuela,   Ghana,   Burkina Faso,   Niger,   Nigeria,   Cameroon,   CAR,   Ethiopia,   Madagascar,   Afghanistan,   Pakistan,   India,   Burma/Myanmar,   Indonesia,  

Moderate increase in violence:   Somalia,  

Large increase in violence:  Russia,   Türkiye,   Sudan,   


From the Early (mass atrocity) Warning Project:

Currently experiencing mass killing:   Nigeria,   CAR,   Sudan,   South Sudan,   Ethiopia,   Somalia,   DRC,   Syria,   Iraq,   Pakistan,   India,   Burma/Myanmar, 

Highest risk (2022-23):    Chad, Yemen,


My links for activism post may aid any activism  you may decide to do on any/all of these.

 

Assumptions / basis 

In writing this, I have assumed / started from the following: 

  • this blog states quite clearly that it is about political and human rights matters, including lived experience of problems, and thus I will assume readers are reasonable people who have noted the content warning in the post header;

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:

  • there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”; 
  • I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.

 

If they are of any use of interest, the activism information links from my former news posts are available in this post. 

 

If you appreciated this post, please consider promoting it - there are some links below.

Remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing, and all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering”.

Copyright © Kayleen White 2016-2024     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike basis   https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/  

 

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