Don't you wonder what is happening in the world?

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

There is a whole world out there.

John Bolton was fired. We are still at war with the Taliban. Brexit is not coming together. Netanyahu wants to "annex" a large segment of the West Bank.

Women still have shitty lives in much of the world. No, it's not about school uniforms.

In just the most recent cases, on September 7, a revolutionary court sentenced six labor rights activists to sentences ranging from 14 to 19 years. On August 27, the lawyer for a 22-year-old woman who had protested compulsory hijab announced that she had been sentenced to a total of 24 years. On July 31, a revolutionary court sentenced three other women detained for protesting compulsory hijab laws to sentenced ranging from 11 to 18 years.

On August 24, the lawyer for Kioomars Marzban, a satirist who has been in pretrial detention for a year, tweeted that his client has been sentenced to 23 years. Similarly over the past two weeks, a journalist and an activist arrested during a peaceful May day protesthave been sentenced to more than 10 and 11 years in prison, respectively.

In each case, if the sentence is upheld, the person will have to serve the harshest sentence among the charges for which they have been convicted.

The campaign to support the prisoners of Haft Tappeh (sugar cane company) reported the September 7 sentences, including for Ismael Bakhshi, a prominent labor rights activist sentenced to 14 years, and Sepideh Gholian, a journalist and labor rights activist, sentenced to 19 years and 6 months. Both have been held since January 20.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/09/10/iran-draconian-sentences-rights-defenders

Conflict between South African individuals and other African countries' individuals is becoming a problem. North Korea is firing missiles on a daily basis.

What else is going on in the world?

Major conflicts as observed by direct violent fatalities in 2019...

Afghanistan conflict - 32k
Mexican Drug War - 17k
Syrian Civil War - 8k
Yemeni Crisis - 21k
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yeah, stuff really hasn’t been better. The death sucks, but there used to be more senseless death. About the only thing of note is the Western Hemisphere’s apparent desire to revisit the 1920s. The ‘08 crash apparently just whetted the appetite to relive the past.

 

[Deepak]

On the plus side, I can ask my radio to play Kenny G - just as long as I let it listen to me having sex.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Yeah, stuff really hasn’t been better.

I am feeling pretty ignorant and isolated. We have a constant news cycle about democrats, republicans, trump, identity politics, and conservatives being triggered. Even if you look at BBC, NPR, or Google News, the coverage isn't where the priorities ought to be. We're all hysterical and dramatic and fed by instant gratification. I do feel like we're on the road to Idiocracy. I didn't want to be so negative and I just want to say we (and I mean I) need to focus more on what matters.

 

[Trausti]

Yeah, stuff really hasn’t been better.

I am feeling pretty ignorant and isolated. We have a constant news cycle about democrats, republicans, trump, identity politics, and conservatives being triggered. Even if you look at BBC, NPR, or Google News, the coverage isn't where the priorities ought to be. We're all hysterical and dramatic and fed by instant gratification. I do feel like we're on the road to Idiocracy. I didn't want to be so negative and I just want to say we (and I mean I) need to focus more on what matters.

Well, there's your problem. Turn off the "news." Now is perhaps the best time in human history to be living. Things are pretty good and getting better.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Yeah, stuff really hasn’t been better.

I am feeling pretty ignorant and isolated. We have a constant news cycle about democrats, republicans, trump, identity politics, and conservatives being triggered. Even if you look at BBC, NPR, or Google News, the coverage isn't where the priorities ought to be. We're all hysterical and dramatic and fed by instant gratification. I do feel like we're on the road to Idiocracy. I didn't want to be so negative and I just want to say we (and I mean I) need to focus more on what matters.

Well, there's your problem. Turn off the "news." Now is perhaps the best time in human history to be living. Things are pretty good and getting better.

Perhaps you didn't read the op.

 

[southernhybrid]

I've tried posting things about the rest of the world, but I rarely get more than a few replies. Plus, many of the thread in the political section here, would be better suited in social science or some other place.

But, here's a world news story, if anyone cares about this issue.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/world/middleeast/netanyahu-israel-west-bank.html

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said Tuesday that he would move swiftly to annex nearly a third of the occupied West Bank if voters returned him to power in the election next week, seizing what he called a historic opportunity from a sympathetic White House to give Israel “secure, permanent borders.”

His plan to annex territory along the Jordan River would reshape the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and would reduce any future Palestinian state to an enclave encircled by Israel.

Mr. Netanyahu’s rivals on the left and right largely greeted the announcement, made in the heat of a campaign in which he is battling for survival, as a transparent political ploy.

Mr. Netanyahu said he planned to annex all Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and that he would move immediately after forming a new government to annex the Jordan Valley, a strategic and fertile strip of territory along the border with Jordan that runs from Beit Shean in northern Israel to the shores of the Dead Sea.
SIGN UP

He said he wanted to capitalize on what he called the “unique, one-off opportunity” afforded him by the Trump administration, which has expressed openness to Israeli annexation of at least parts of the West Bank.

“We haven’t had such an opportunity since the Six Day War, and I doubt we’ll have another opportunity in the next 50 years,” Mr. Netanyahu said at a news conference in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan. “Give me the power to guarantee Israel’s security. Give me the power to determine Israel’s borders.”

See, almost everything is about Trump!

 

[southernhybrid]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/world/middleeast/turkey-syria-refugees-erdogan.html

GAZIANTEP, Turkey — Turkey, which for eight years has welcomed millions of Syrian refugees, has reversed course, forcing thousands to leave its major cities in recent weeks and ferrying many of them to its border with Syria in white buses and police vans.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is pushing a radical solution — resettling refugees in a swath of Syrian territory controlled by the United States and its Kurdish allies. If that does not happen, he is threatening to send a flood of Syrian migrants to Europe.

Mr. Erdogan has long demanded a buffer zone along Turkey’s border with Syria to keep out Kurdish forces, whom he considers a security threat.

But he has repackaged the idea for the zone as a refuge for Syrians fleeing the war — pushing it as resentment against Syrians in Turkey has increased, and a Syrian and Russian offensive in Syria has sent hundreds of thousands more refugees fleeing toward the Turkish border.

None of the other powers involved in the war in Syria has wholly agreed to the idea, but Mr. Erdogan is demanding immediate access to the territory or threatening to take it himself. If not, he said, he would “open the gates” for large numbers of refugees to head into Europe as they did in 2015.

The European Union has given Turkey about $6.7 billion since 2015 to help control the flow of migrants. But Turkey, which has given sanctuary to 3.6 million Syrians, says the migrant problem is growing exponentially.

I will be honest and say that I don't read as much world news as I do American news, but I do try to keep up with what's going on in the rest of the world.

 

[Jarhyn]

Yeah, stuff really hasn’t been better.

I am feeling pretty ignorant and isolated. We have a constant news cycle about democrats, republicans, trump, identity politics, and conservatives being triggered. Even if you look at BBC, NPR, or Google News, the coverage isn't where the priorities ought to be. We're all hysterical and dramatic and fed by instant gratification. I do feel like we're on the road to Idiocracy. I didn't want to be so negative and I just want to say we (and I mean I) need to focus more on what matters.

Well, there's your problem. Turn off the "news." Now is perhaps the best time in human history to be living. Things are pretty good and getting better.

Ah yes, the good old fashioned Barbrady maneuver:

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I can't even read anymore. I re-read the OP title and came across with a much better understanding of the OP. My brain is just going to heck. Please ignore previous comments in here.

Yes, Turkey has gone down the road to the dictator, Israel is run by a minority power guy who apparently wants to make things as bad as possible for the Palestinians, Myanmar is a joke, Egypt is still under a military Junta (no Arab spring), there are issues with the Kurds that needs to be addressed, especially seeing how they've played ball with the US.

 

[Jarhyn]

Things are getting good, but BECAUSE people are still paying attention and still being "whiny bitches". Doubt is the foundation of progress. Against both marching authoritarianism and things like advancement of trans rights

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Things are getting good, but BECAUSE people are still paying attention and still being "whiny bitches".

I'm talking about Netflix going up a $1 a month, mustard on a burger outrage whining.

The right-wing is in an absolute frenzy because... ?

 

[Jarhyn]

Things are getting good, but BECAUSE people are still paying attention and still being "whiny bitches".

I'm talking about Netflix going up a $1 a month, mustard on a burger outrage whining.

The right-wing is in an absolute frenzy because... ?

Because they don't know how to apply doubt to their own worldview.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I've tried posting things about the rest of the world, but I rarely get more than a few replies.

Agreed. I have had the same experience here. I used to start threads about events elsewhere in the world but they were never the ones that got replies. I accepted a while back that this is an American board and Americans are insular.

 

[Worldtraveller]

I've tried posting things about the rest of the world, but I rarely get more than a few replies.

Agreed. I have had the same experience here. I used to start threads about events elsewhere in the world but they were never the ones that got replies. I accepted a while back that this is an American board and Americans are insular.

It would probably help if you read the article.

Probably. But I don't care enough to be quite honest.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

That was from a thread about Rachel Maddow, about America. Wasnt it? So what's your point? 99% of threads here are about that country.

 

[Worldtraveller]

That was from a thread about Rachel Maddow, about America. Wasnt it? So what's your point? 99% of threads here are about that country.

The point, which you (as usual) miss, is the irony of you whining about people not responding to your threads when you blatantly say you won't even be bothered to read an article on a thread you are participating in. But I wouldn't expect you to get such a simple point. You're consistent and predictable, at least.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Turns out that the internet, which was supposed to archive our culture and facilitate a meeting of the minds, has led to toxic echo chambers.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Turns out that the internet, which was supposed to archive our culture and facilitate a meeting of the minds, has led to toxic echo chambers.

I think capitalism is also a factor.

 

[prideandfall]

Turns out that the human nature, which some people inexplicably believed was supposed to archive our culture and facilitate a meeting of the minds, has led to toxic echo chambers.

fixed that for you.

blaming 'the internet' for simply being a distillation of what humans really are is akin to blaming the wheat plant for your uncle being an alcoholic.