Saturday, 27 April 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: 

  • “Do we suppress authoritarians’ speech before they suppress us?”   https://johnmenadue.com/do-we-suppress-authoritarians-speech-before-they-suppress-us/   “The efforts to crush protest if Trump wins in November and the goals of the interrupted conference are part of an interconnected global authoritarian movement. Whether we suppress the authoritarians’ speech before they suppress us is a matter we must confront.”    My answer is YES - when it becomes hate speech, or incites violence, or is stochastic t_rr_r_sm, and that is a lot of what that ilk do. Keep in mind this:   “The Paradox of Tolerance disappears if you look at tolerance, not as a moral standard, but as a social contract. If someone does not abide by the terms of the contract, then they are not covered by it.” (inspired by “Tolerance is not a moral precept” by Yonatan Zunger)   On this topic, also consider this:   “Longstreet and How Much Work Remains to Be Done - War on the Rocks”   https://warontherocks.com/2024/04/longstreet-and-how-much-work-remains-to-be-done/   “Longstreet was also the only major Confederate figure who participated in enforcing the political settlement the Union imposed on the secessionist states. While a slaveholder, racist, and traitor to the Union, he nonetheless believed that having lost the war, the seceded states had a responsibility to uphold the terms of surrender and accept the consequences of unsuccessful rebellion   ...   Longstreet differed with Lee over strategy, but properly deferred to his commander — and that criticism of his wartime performance begins in earnest only after the war, when his post-war political choices affronted the emergent storyline of the defeated Confederacy.   ...   As a post-war elected leader in New Orleans, Longstreet hired black soldiers as police and led voter registration drives for blacks. And he physically defended the Black community during the 1873 Colfax massacre, which was the single bloodiest day during Reconstruction.”   Also,   “Violence in our churches”   https://theaimn.com/violence-in-our-churches/   This discusses violence between competing bigotries, as well as the effect of hateful bigotries on the rest of the community    “WhatsApp and the Wakeley riot: how a messaging platform became a fake news broadcaster”   https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/27/whatsapp-and-the-wakeley-riot-how-a-messaging-platform-became-a-fake-news-broadcaster   “On the night of the alleged stabbing of a Sydney priest, the spread of misinformation escalated violence faster than news outlets could report the story”   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/26/australia-government-misinformation-bill-social-media-x   “We must target the root cause of misinformation. We cannot fact check our way out of this.   ...   Collective concerns such as the public interest, human rights and community responsibility can’t compete with the profit motive, and in practice are not prioritised by digital platforms.   ...   But here is the good news: we do have the capacity to target this problem at its source. In lieu of dismantling capitalism and doing away with the profit motive entirely, one of the best tools we have at hand to put a stopper in the flow of data that fuels so many of the harmful consequences of digital platforms - including misinformation – is to create and enforce strong privacy protections.”   Interesting - and encouraging   and   “In Portugal, we’re celebrating 50 years of freedom. So why is the far right creeping back?”   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/25/portugal-50-years-far-right-carnation-revolution-democracy   “Today, we remember the 1974 Carnation Revolution. But as memories of dictatorship fade, anti-democratic forces are on the rise”   Lack of memory is a major problem - and that it occurs is a criticism of education   See also   “The Ideological Coup: How Far Right Kahanist Extremists Became the Face of Israel”   https://www.juancole.com/2024/04/ideological-kahanist-extremists.html  





From the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance’s (International IDEA)  Global State of Democracy (GSOD)’s democracy tracker initiative: 

for the month of March, 2024  (note that this is a few weeks behind current events owing to the time required to collect and analyse data):  

improvements have occurred (last month) in (for details follow each hyperlink):   Bosnia and Herzegovina (improved electoral integrity, negotiations on access to the EU),   Canada (collective rights of Indigenous Peoples),   Honduras (accountability),   Latvia (NGOs, young people),   Norway (agreement regarding windfarm),   Papua New Guinea (tribes sign historic ceasefire),   UK (hate crime law in Scotland),  

declines have occurred (last month) in (for details follow each hyperlink):  Argentina (press freedom, gender equality, denialism),   Benin (raised threshold for being a candidate),   Bolivia (backlash against a whistleblower),   Cameroon (opposition banned),   Chad (key opposition figures banned),   China (new “security” law in Hong Kong),   Haiti (security crisis prompts PM’s imminent resignation),   DRC (death penalty),   Ecuador (genetic database of prisoners),   Georgia (anti-LGBTQIA+, electoral changes),   India (crackdowns on opposition and “citizenship”),   Lesotho (abuse of prisoners),   Mozambique (insurgency violence, extradition treaty concerns),   Burma/Myanmar (conscription by the junta),   Nicaragua (restriction on political expression),   Peru,   Russia (fifth term for Putin, indiscriminate response to violent extremism event),   Senegal,   Slovakia (anti-corruption office closed),   Venezuela (opposition candidate unable to register),   Việt Nam (secret directive curbing rights),   Israel (reasonable grounds genocide is being committed in Gaza);   

watching (for details follow each hyperlink):   Guatemala,   Moldova,   USA,   Panama,


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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