Saturday 16 March 2024

FROM this week’s news ON: politics & democracy, and international affairs [Note: Content Warning - links to distressing reports on this topic. 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 thiis 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: 

  • “UN an ‘unsinkable compass’ for humanity, says top EU official”   https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147492   ““The UN remains a landmark in the turmoil, a lantern in the thick fog through which we search our way every day, trying to look for a solution – it is a ray of light, a sign of hope,” Josep Borrell, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, told ambassadors at the Security Council”   This is a little simplistic, given the problems of the veto in the Security Council and its proven political limitations, but it does a humanitarian role   


 

  • “Myanmar’s civil war: Landmines have maimed thousands of civilians | SBS Dateline”   https://www.sbs.com.au/news/dateline/article/thet-shin-lost-his-leg-to-a-landmine-joining-thousands-of-civilians-whove-been-maimed-in-myanmars-civil-war/6oq3rlnsj   “Myanmar is the only nation in the world whose military actively uses landmines against its own civilian population.   ...   Armed actors from both sides of the conflict, including parts of the resistance, are increasingly deploying mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to both protect territory and attack opponents.   ...   Myanmar is not a party to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty that prohibits the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel mines, and is one of only two countries, along with Russia, that actively uses them”  

 



  • “Michael Pascoe: Politics drives poor policy, and forsakes principle on Palestine”   https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/opinion/2024/03/16/australia-unrwa-gaza-israel   ““Good policy makes good politics” was a Paul Keating maxim. The corollary is that politics without principle makes bad policy.   ...   Acting on principle rather than politics in the face of human tragedy should be for our own self-respect, how we hope our nation will be seen and not be embarrassed by it.   Time and again, betraying principle has a way of coming back to bite us.”   


  • “ ‘If anything happens, it's not suicide’: Boeing whistleblower's prediction to family before death”   https://youtu.be/sA44FFi95PA?si=Wk-kYG3hFd6Te9Ra   This is gravely concerning. If adequate evidence exists, charges must be laid - in any case, commercial cultures that lead to such discussions must be changed into something healthy and respectful  



 

 

  • “Michael Pascoe: Facebook & Co, the great tax avoiders”   https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2024/03/13/michael-pascoe-facebook-tax-avoidance   “It is frankly hilarious to witness the Prime Minister, lesser ministers and media titans howling over the miserly $70 million Mark Zuckerberg is declining to (mainly) pay our biggest media companies when his Meta outfit also is declining to pay the Commonwealth a vast multiple of that.”   

 

 

From ACLED’s dashboard: 

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

Large decrease in violence (this does NOT mean no violence is happening, only that it has decreased):   Colombia,   Mali,   Burkina Faso,   Benin, Niger,   Nigeria,   Cameroon,   CAR,   DRC,   Sudan,   South Africa,   Mozambique,   Madagascar,   Iran,   Afghanistan,   Pakistan,   India,   Bangladesh,   Indonesia,  

Moderate increase in violence:  Venezuela,   Ethiopia,   Syria,  

Large increase in violence:   China,   Somalia,   Haiti,  


From the Early (mass atrocity) Warning Project   map:

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

Highest risk:   Guinea,   Mali,   Burkina Faso,   Niger,   Nigeria,   Chad,   Egypt,   Sudan,   Ethiopia,   Somalia,   Yemen,   Republic of Congo,   DRC,   Uganda,   Angola,   Tanzania,   Mozambique,   South Africa,   Syria,   Iran,   Afghanistan,   Pakistan,   India,   Nepal,   Bangladesh,   Tajikistan,   China,   Thailand,   Laos,   Indonesia,  

Consistently high risk:   Sudan,   Ethiopia,   India,  

Increasing Risk:   Burkina Faso,   Tajikistan,  



My links for activism post may aid any activism you may decide to do on any/all of these. If you do, don’t get too fixated on specific instances of problems - important though they may well be: take a moment to also consider the broader issues these incidents and groups of incidents may suggest/reveal. Note: as with other mass murderers/serial killers/and the like, violent extremists and other evil people/groups crave publicity, so I refuse to give that to them - including not using their names (which is a policy adopted by good law enforcement and media for other mass murderers - as I can do as I am a secondary news source: the name(s) are in the primary sources if people wish to know them).

 

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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