Gongol.com Archives: November 2024
November 19, 2024
What was the point of taking Hong Kong?
The lead sentence from the BBC says in a flat tone, "A Hong Kong court has sentenced key pro-democracy leaders to years in jail for subversion". But the real story should be said something like this: "A Chinese court has used a 2019 law imposed by the central government to send 45 pro-democracy leaders from Hong Kong to prison for 4 to 10 years each". ■ The way the Communist Party treats Hong Kong, it is a wonder that it ever fought to take the territory in the first place. Promises of "One country, two systems" have been viciously jettisoned (in a way that ought to be particularly alarming to anyone who fears an involuntary annexation of Taiwan).
Threads drops a huge early lead
Despite starting with the backing of Facebook (and its enormous reach to potential members), Threads has been overtaken by Bluesky in the number of active daily users in the United States. And it's happened thanks to Bluesky basically tripling its active user base in three weeks. It's never enough just to have a head start.
Sabotaged cables in the Baltic Sea
Germany's defense minister says two telecommunications cables were cut in the Baltic Sea -- one between Germany and Finland, and one between Lithuania and Sweden. And he says it wasn't an accident. This is a story that tests how much attention the world is capable of paying to hybrid or gray-zone hostilities: Activity that doesn't quite meet the standard to be called warfare, but far more belligerent than not. ■ Finland, officially, is "not jumping to conclusions yet", but the reality is that two like incidents of such a scale happening in close succession hardly looks like the mere impact of chance. And it isn't hard to guess which country with a presence in the Baltic region might be interested in harassing the neighbors. ■ There's a fundamental asymmetry to this kind of behavior: It's almost always vastly cheaper to cause damage than to repair it. And for the malicious actor who manages to cause the problems while remaining just barely cloaked enough to avoid outright attribution, it can be an efficient way to introduce a little bit of mayhem to its rivals. Not enough to merit a full-blown counter-response, but enough to cause something between nuisance and real pain: Death by a thousand papercuts. ■ Fundamentally, that's how reasonable people can recognize which side is closer to right in any kind of rivalry: The side that behaves more constructively, working towards commonly-agreed rules and norms, aiding more than it tears down, is probably the one on the side of right. But that doesn't preclude showing firmness in addition to being right. Someone caused the damage in the Baltic Sea, and consequences ought to follow. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, "Pardoning the bad, is injuring the good."
Fraud comes hard for older Americans
The Federal Trade Commission has released a report estimating that older Americans may have been scammed for as much as $61 billion in 2023, including 4,600 who were taken for $100,00 or more.
