This is for whatever’s happening in South Korea or Syria. I know very little about either, so have at it.
Here are a couple international items that probably didn’t make the major news sites.
In Mexico, a Volaris (low-cost carrier) flight from León, Guanajuato (central Mexico) to Tijuana, Baja California (near San Diego) had a hijacking attempt. The hijacker claimed that he and his family were being threatened. The important point on this is that he did try to get into the cabin (and apparently had the door partially cracked), and was threatening a flight attendant with a pen, but the passengers subdued him. The plane landed in Guadalajara, left him in care of the authorities, and headed to TJ. I can’t recall the last hijacking attempt in the US but this shows that after about noon on 9/11 everyone knew what to do if their plan was the subject of a hijacking attempt, never mind the 20+ years of “heightened security” that we’ve all been subjected to. My diagnosis of the path of the current malaise, resentment, etc. starts with our security theater over-reaction to 9/11, continues through the botched Iraq War, makes a sharp turn through the financial crisis of 2008 and then COVID hit. It’s been a shitty century so far, and the Republicans have done a great job of both being a big reason that things suck, and also hanging that around Democrats’ necks.
One of the things I learned by reading Sarah Jeong’s writing about the South Korean coup / autogolpe attempt was that Koreans drink raisin tree tea as a hangover preventative, and it works. Here’s the science on the active ingredient, DHM, which gooses the liver to produce more enzymes to digest alcohol, increases the efficacy of those enzymes, helps guard against fatty liver and reduces the release of inflammatory agents. And you can get it at H Mart. I plan on picking some up the next time I’m there, and I’ll report back on how it works. It will be a selfless effort on my part on behalf of all of you who still drink.
J. Arthur Crank
So geese don’t get hungover? The things you learn on this fine blog.
Joy in FL
Since this is an open thread, I’ll post that I just ordered my Pets of BJ 2025 calendar. The post with the links is a couple posts earlier than this one, for anyone who wants to order their calendar.
rikyrah
Jay in Kyiv (@JayinKyiv) posted at 3:06 AM on Mon, Dec 09, 2024:
Russians getting kicked out of the Sarin airbase in Northern Syria this morning, a large convoy.
This probably doesnt bode well chances that Putin will be allowed to keep his bases in Tartus and Latakia, which will seriously slow Russia’s ongoing takeover of Africa. https://t.co/oMxHxENfGj
(https://x.com/JayinKyiv/status/1866046755709833400?t=9bVQSgNtCc3Uj_7VIH0N5Q&s=03)
Belafon
One of the interesting things about the leader of the rebels taking over Syria is that he is completely cutting off Iran. The tradeoff of ending Iran’s support for Hezbollah is Syria will no longer have access to weapons from Iran. Part of what will be interesting is to see who he allows to fill that need.
Trollhattan
Your intermittent reminder that not every in Malibu is a great day.
I see it bearing down on Pepperdine University, which we visited a year ago and I became completely smitten with the campus. This is a hard thing to contemplate.
Trollhattan
Instead of booting Adams, maybe New York just puts an attack dog on him instead. You be you, New York.
Ohio Mom
Something that works against fatty liver? I hope some otherwise despicable pharma company is running with this.
Lots of psychotropic meds make you gain weight and that can lead to fatty liver and eventually, cirrhosis. It’s not just drinkers that need to guard their livers — not that drinkers don’t deserve good health too.
mountainboy
….Koreans drink raisin tree tea as a hangover preventative, and it works. Here’s the science on the active ingredient, DHM, which gooses the liver to produce more enzymes to digest alcohol, increases the efficacy of those enzymes, helps guard against fatty liver and reduces the release of inflammatory agents……I plan on picking some up the next time I’m there, and I’ll report back on how it works. It will be a selfless effort on my part on behalf of all of you who still drink.”
I rarely comment here, but this is news that I may actually benefit from :-)
Thank you for your selfless effort. I look forward to hearing how the experiment goes.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@mountainboy: Happy to help. The hardest part of this is going to be finding the stuff on the shelves at H Mart. That place is wall-to-wall tea, soy sauce, etc. — overwhelming.
Betty
Could someone share this with Pete Hegseth? Seems he needs the help too.
Geminid
There is a lot of good reorting on Syria out there. London-based Middle East Eye has a lot of good reporting on developments, including articles by Ragip Soylu and Michael Weiss.
Soylu is Middle East Eye’s Istanbul bureau chief. He began his career as a journalist in 2010; the Syrian Civil War began the next year and Soylu has observed and reported on events in Syria ever since.
Regional news sites Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya also provide solid reporting on Syria. Since Al Jazeera is owned by Qatar, it might also convey the policies of the Qatari government on Syria. The same is true in the case of Al Arabia and Saudi Arabia. But they are otherwise objective and reliable news sources. Anyway, Qatar and Saudi Arabia want pretty much what the Syria people need: a stable and competent government in Syria.
I’m sure there are other good sources too. But events have happened so fast i hardly have time to read any long-form reporting at all, and instead have been getting my news off of Twitter, particularly Ragip Soylu’s account and news aggregator Clash Report.
Salty Sam
@@mistermix.bsky.social: It’s available on Amazon…
Geminid
@Belafon: Turkiye has a robust defence industry and they will likely meet the needs of a new Syrian government. Most of Syria’s armaments are of Russian origin anyway.
Iran has mainly been shipping weapons through Syria, to supply Hezbollah. That organization will suffer without a pipeline to Iran, but under Security Resolution 2601 passed in 2006, Hezbollah isn’t supposed to have heavy weapons anyway.
The Israeli/Lebanese ceasefire agreement signed last month basically requires implementation of Resolution 2601. The Lebanese government never could do that because Hezbollah outguns Lebanon’s army. Also, Hezbollah has assasinated politicians who have spoken out against Hezbollah’s dominance over Lebanon’s civil government.
catfishncod
@Geminid: Agree on Türkiye as the first source of materiel and logistics. In external terms it hits the sweet spot of the Syrian no-longer-rebels: sort of NATO, but not really NATO; sort of Islamist, but not really Islamist. It also fits the largest faction’s political strategy, which is probably related to their proximity to the Turkish border.
However, I’m not sure the Syrian rebel factions will want to depend on the Turks too much. At some point their price for support will undoubtedly include hostility to the federalist-pluralist-multiethnic autonomy in Rojava, as part of their consistent anti-Kurdish policy. For anyone sitting in Damascus, there’s much to lose and little to gain from *more* internal conflict.
Iranian support was based on the regime’s base in the Shi’ite-derived Alawite sect. All the rebel factions are either secular, multifaith, or Sunni. Iran is no longer an option, but the Gulf states certainly are, as is China. The West is likely to have a few toeholds but little more.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Salty Sam:
But I have an excuse to go to H Mart! I love that place, even though it intimidates me.
Sally
I find excellent discussions of international calamities on Ukraine: The Latest. They discuss Syria as it involves the Russians, and they have very experienced, real, journalists. The other podcast from the same Telegraph group is Battle Lines. They discuss many issues, including Syria and South Korea.
Geminid
@catfishncod: I would read what Turkiye’s President Erdogan and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan have said since Assad fell before deciding that Turkiye’s Syria policies are in conflict with that of Syria’s leaders. They both have affirmed Turkiyes desire for a pluralist Syrian state and explicitely include Syria’s Kurds in this model. Interestingly to me, Fidan’s father is Kurdish.
The way I see it, Turkiye’s beef is not with the Kurds as such, it’s with the YPG militia that dominates Rojava. Turkiye correctly regards the YPG as a branch of the PKK separatist organization with which they have been fighting since 1984.
Many of Syria’s Arabs who live under YPG control also have a problems with the YPG, and fighting between Arabs and the YPG in towns like Deir Ezzor in the Euphrates Valley is some of the last of this civil war.
That is a one of problems that the HTS-led emergency government needs to resolve soon, and I think they will. It alsos an area where the US can help, since our Army has a ~800 soldier advisory mission in Northeastern Syria.
They may be somewhat challenged when it comes to intelligence though, because the YPG just shot down a $20 million American surveillance drone. When the Kurdish guys posted pictures of what they thought was the wreckage of a Turkish Akinci drone, a bunch of military bloggers quicky identified it as an American Reaper. This is was embarrassing for the US, but people on Turkish Twitter found it hilarious.
As for the future status of Rojava, where most but not all Syria’s Kurds live, an obvious model is Iraqi Kurdistan which borders Rojava. The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) there is the closest to self-rule Kurdish people have ever achieved, and this?autonomy is guaranteed by Iraq’s constitution.
It so happens that Turkiye and that government have very amicable diplomatic and trade relations. In fact, relations are so amicable that the KRG put out plenty of Turkish flags this summer when R.T. Erdogan visited Erbil, their capital city.
That really blew some minds among the Kurdish diapora and their Western supporters, but the KRG pursues the interests of its own people and not the desires of Westerners and diaspora Kurds. The KRG doesn’t like the PKK either, and their Pesh Merga militia seem to treat PKK fighters as outlaws.
Erbil-based Rudaw English has some good reporting on these matters, and on Iraqi Kurdistan in general. I find it a fascinating place. It’s well governed and relatively peaceful. It’s poor, though and needs economic development. A peaceful and democratic Syria could help in that respect.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: There is not a single faction in Syria that is democratic. The HTS itself is hard authoritarian. If Al-Jolani can establish & sustain a multi-ethnic/cultural/confessional federalist state, that would be a miracle.All the more so if he can pull a Pail Kagame. That would be a boon to the Iraqi Kurds, too.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: You may be selling Syrians short. Oz Katerji knows Syria in a way you and I do not, and he is not so pessimistic as you. Neither is Ragip Soylu who observes Syria from right next door. Katerji happens to be in Syria now, and is reporting “on the ground.”
This is a novel situation for the Middle East, and unlike the others that I see Western “experts” try to use as templates for their analysis. Fortunately, Syria is no backwater and its story will be well reported in coming weeks and months. I intend to keep an open mind. That costs me nothing and I learn better that way.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: If by “democratic” you mean a ethnically/culturally/confessionally pluralistic Syria, at least the different factions are mostly making the right noises. If you mean liberal democracy, I see no basis for this prognosis, especially given the way al-Jolani has run Idlib. Elections alone do not make a liberal democracy. See Iraq.
YY_Sima Qian
This is not at all surprising, & I would venture to guess that more than a quarter would have felt the social &n professional pressure to profess a more confrontational view of the PRC. The current moral panic gripping DC incentivizes threat inflation & hawkishness, that is where the professional rewards & advancements lie. Only a quarter is willing to admit it, or they don’e see it as “pressure”, but just the way the DC game is played.
YY_Sima Qian
Taiwan almost certainly will be a dangerous flashpoint during the 2nd Trump Presidency, given the way he had played the Taiwan card the 1st time around & now surrounded by an even crazier group of über-hawks & militarists/hegemonists. I think Van Jackson has a good survey of the new landscape:
Preserving the status quo across the Taiwan Strait for as long as possible has been the modus vivendi since the US-PRC normalization in the 70s, & remains the only formulation that can hope to maintain cross-Strait peace going forward. It is the only tiny overlapping area in the Venn diagram among the PRC, Taiwan & the US. It allows Beijing to continue to imagine that eventual unification is still possible, it preserves Taiwan’s de facto independence (which the vast majority of Taiwanese consistently value the most), & it aligns w/ the official US position of preventing Taiwan’s forceful absorption into the PRC (as well as the undeclared position of indefinitely preventing Taiwan’s absorption into the PRC, peacefully or otherwise). It is the formulation that all 3 sides can tolerate, however grudgingly.
The problem is that the status quo has always been ill-defined, & all 3 sides are doing their salami slicing to erode the ambiguities that make the status quo viable. There needs to be a new 3-party understanding where Taiwan refrains from overt assertions of de jure independence (whether under the guise of “Taiwan” or “Republic of China”), cross-Strait cultural & economic exchanges encouraged, the PRC refrains from coercive actions & grey zone activities, the PRC no longer prevents or tries to veto Taiwan’s participation in international organizations that do not require de jure statehood, the US continues to arm Taiwan for its self-defense, but refrains from defining Taiwan as a bulwark for its PRC containment strategy & not allow US-Taiwan relationship to take on the trappings of official diplomatic relations & military alliance.
Even when the pro-independence Tsai won the Taiwanese Presidency in 2016, she had taken a cautions approach to cross-Strait relations (although hemmed by the more extremist pro-independence supporters of the DPP), Beijing took a skeptical but wait & see attitude. Then Trump junked the prior understandings & unabashedly played the Taiwan card to pressure Beijing. Tsai, having failed to find a new modus vivendi acceptable to both Beijing & her hardline pro-independence base, embraced the US side in the new Great Power Competition, for domestic electoral advantage. Beijing, already paranoid about Tsai’s & the US’ intentions, 1st ramped up economic pressure on Taiwan, then military coercion. & the dynamic has been that of an interactive downward spiral since. Biden has tried, haltingly, to arrest that dangerous momentum, but at other times pouring oil onto the fire himself.
Now, w/ Trump set to return, Beijing’s overbearing & aggressive posture hardened, & a more ideologically pro-independence Lai in Taipei, I do not see any prospect for a new modus vivendi any time soon. For all my criticisms of Biden’s foreign policy, he & his team can be relied upon to try to prevent crises from getting out of hand, even if their policies had contributed to precipitate them in the 1st place. to sure Trump & his band of circus freaks, carnival bakers & cynical charlatans are willing or able to do the same.
YY_Sima Qian
@YY_Sima Qian: What is happening in the 1st Island Chain now (gift link below):
This major exercise is not meant as a reaction to Lai’s trip to the Pacific Island states via Honolulu & Guam, it would have been planned long before the trip, & Lai’s travel arrangements had followed long standing protocols & kept to a relatively low profile. I am not sure it is even meant to intimidate Taiwan. This is the PLA working to meet Xi’s command that it develop the capability to invade Taiwan by the Centennial of the PLA in 2027. Of course, even a “successful” invasion will still be enormously costly for the PLA, even more costly to the PRC economy, & leave Taiwan in ruins. Furthermore, capability does not equate to intent.
This is the latest of a series of major exercises this year. The 1st in May (timed after Lai’s inauguration) simulated a joint fires strike (land & sea launched ballistic/cruise missiles, long range rocket artillery, air strikes, etc.) campaign against Taiwan. The 2nd Oct. (timed after a fairly pugnacious speech by Lai on the anniversary of the founding of the Republic of China) simulated a blockade of Taiwan (by the PLAN & the China Coast Guard). Both had been conducted in the areas immediately adjacent to Taiwan & involved only the Eastern Theater Command. The 3rd one (now timed after Lai’s 1st trip abroad) is practicing major joint operations across services (PLA, PLAN, PLAAF, PLARF & CCG) & across much greater geographic areas (East China Sea, around Taiwan & South China Sea) encompassing Northern, Eastern & Southern Theater Commands. There is little information to date on the nature of the exercises, but I think we can reasonably assume they involve practicing counter-intervention against US forces based on Japan, Okinawa, & carrier battle groups in the South China Sea.
This is likely signaling to the incoming Trump Administration not to cross any of Beijing’s red lines, & take care in playing the Taiwan card.
YY_Sima Qian
Wild if true. I haven’t found any corroboration from SK MSM in English, but the Blue Roof account has been pretty reliable through the autogolpe drama:
The most concerning part about the coup attempt was not Yoon going rogue, but that a least a number of senior SK military officers went along w/ it.
YY_Sima Qian
Curiouser & curiouser:
YY_Sima Qian
Wilder & wilder. Which are the untainted police left to conduct these raids into the various police departments?
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian:
I tried to find the context in which I used “democractic” so I could better respond to your comment about what I meant by the word, and I am at a loss. I did not use the word at all. It could be you thought I implied it, but I do not argue by implication, or at least I try not to.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: You ended #17 with “free and democratic Syria will help with that” (as in poverty in Kurdish regional government in Iraq). I don’t necessarily disagree with the sentiment, but a peaceful Syria will do. I don’t see a democratic Syria on the horizon, even less than Egypt, Yemen, or Tunisia after the Arab Spring. An illiberal, managed, sham democracy maybe.
Gloria DryGarden
Grateful to see a post for other international news and discussion. This is valuable, and it’s going to matter a lot.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: Thank you for the correction, although I’d like to think I am expressing more than sentiment. ButI still think you may be selling the Syrian rebels short, and maybe the Syrian people as well.
But like most people, I had given Syria little attention before last month. I am looking to people who have for pointers; people Ragip Soylu, Oz Katerji and Hassan I. Hassan of New Lines Magazine.*
And for now the events are what matter to me, not predictions which I was not making in the comment you refer to. I said a free and Democrstic Syria “could” help Iraqi Kurdistan, not that it will.
* I’m still making my mind up about Sham News though.
Geminid
@Geminid: Reporting this morning is that the YPG militia have been thrown out of the city of Deir Ezzor and HTS claims control. HTS also has reportedly seized control of nearby oil fields and an important border crossing to the wast on the Iraqi border.
This would put HTS in contact with Daesh/ISIS. It will be intersting to see how that works out.
@catfishncod: