Notices by petrescatraian (petrescatraian@libranet.de)

Shock and awe

This is what I would describe what I felt when hearing the news that the #US invaded #Venezuela and took #Maduro as a #hostage. It is nothing short of something comparable to what happened when #Russia invaded #Ukraine with the same purpose - of triggering a regime change and turning it into a #puppetcountry - by force.

I remember even today that I took a day off from work, waiting for a desk to be delivered to my place. I woke up relaxed in that morning and I turned on the mobile data on my phone, waiting patiently to be bombarded by notifications. I got a message from a friend of mine, telling me that Russia was fighting in Ukraine. I replied to him that yeah, I know, in Donbass, right? (or something like that) - to which he replied something along the lines of "no, bro, they literally attacked Ukraine, they're in Ukraine" and sent me a link to some live reporting.

It was just as the #pandemic was getting over, most people got their shots, and we were hoping to go back to normal. We were hoping the world would go on with the ensuing post-war system that held largely well and ensured some prosper (albeit unequal) economies. The fact that a permanent member of the UN Security Council directly invaded a sovereign nation - even more so, for land grabbing reasons - changed that. I remember walking in the University Square here in Bucharest and trying to figure stuff out of what happened - my first thought was, "this world will simply not return to what it was. The old order and everything I learned about conflicts was no longer applicable".

#Trump's invasion (as I cannot really say America's invasion since the Congress didn't authorize this) of Venezuela, followed by the swift capture of its leader had an expectable outcome - not only the latter was smaller and not really surrounded by allied countries, but the #USArmy is a better trained, gunned and more effective army than that of the #Russians - but still equally shocking, given that outcome. Regardless of the motives of Trump's action (be it #drugs, #oil and whatnot), this paints a gloomier picture. What we're seeing in #Venezuela is the practical, real world application of Trumpo-Putinist doctrine, so far only expressed in words by the #POTUS when it came to #annexing #Greenland, #Canada or #Panama. It is the doctrine that was the standard in the #internationalsystem until #WW1 and the doctrine that was only starting to be abandoned after WW2, when a (apparently) more solid international organization - the UN, that is - was created to keep the order and make wars preventable. It is the doctrine that says that #mightisright and whoever has the weakest army risks being swallowed by the one that has the strongest. It is the very opposite of what our #postwar world was built on.

Maduro is not a leader to cry about. Even far from it. He's been ruling his country with an iron fist, suppressing dissent, repressing opposition and getting human rights to a low that probably even Putin would only dream about, let alone Trump himself. Yet what happened in Venezuela does not guarantee it a stable democracy, freedom, human rights. Because Trump cares nothing about these things - he showed it at home, he showed it in US #bluestates and #bluecities, he showed it by allying and bending down to dictators like Xi and Putin. What happened in Venezuela was a display of force. And it will inadvertently be a positive signal for #dictators around the world that they can do whatever they like on other countries' lands.

Right now, #EU is the strongest remaining guarantor of a #lawbasedorder. Canada, Australia, the UK, New Zealand and the democracies of the Far East are more like regional players.

Beyond these events, a couple of questions arise: What did we do to end up in this terrible situation? Could the US Democrats come back to power this year and successfully flip the situation? Or Europe? Or at least will Europe be able to keep the rule-based order to some extent at least? Or are we doomed already?

@HistoPol For #Friendica, try asking on either !helpers, !admins or !developers. You might get better help from there.

@FediTips

• Hello Kitty! Train 😫👎
• Hello Kitty! Yurt 😃👍

@gamingonlinux I'm also following a few communities on Lemmy: @gaming @games @linuxgaming @lowendgaming @progressbar95 (this one is very specific, don't know how it made its way here) @flashpointarchive

In addition, there are some accounts that sadly have gone inactive as of late: @itchio @Valheim

I made this post so I can pin it. I'll perhaps add it to my profile view if I need to pin other posts and no longer have room for anything else.

1. Why is your profile restricted? Why are you using restricted profile(s)?
I restricted it myself. As you might have noticed from the page you've arrived at, I am not on Mastodon. I am on a different social platform called Friendica, which looks more like Facebook, but is able to communicate with Mastodon as well (hence why you can still see my content and reach me). Friendica has a special setting that restricts anonymous viewers (that are not logged on any Friendica server) to see your content. Don't worry about this, you can still see my content if I make it public.

2. Okay, I saw your post, but I cannot access it, the link you put is still showing as restricted
That is, perhaps, because I added a title to it - it's a thing that Friendica allows you to do. Whenever I do this, any post can be seen on Mastodon only as a link to the post on my server and with the title as the post caption/description. If you're curious why, a possible, more technical, explanation for this behavior, could be this (I'm not an IT person myself, so I can't really tell if this is the one or not, but it seems plausible). Tl; dr. of this: Mastodon thinks I posted an article, even though all I did was to create a regular post with a title. If this is the case, let me know through a comment under the said post, and if I set it as public in the 1st place (or if you're part of the desired audience), I'll copy & paste the content in a reply. Bear in mind that my profile is intended to be only semi-public. I'm not a public person, I'm not doing anything special for the society, I'm only a random guy from Romania laying my thoughts on the web for people to see.

3. Alright, but why are you creating titled posts in the first place if no one on the Fediverse/Mastodon can read it?
I only do it if I'm posting to a Lemmy community or a Kbin/Mbin magazine. There, titles are kinda mandatory (especially on the latter which treats threads - i.e. titled posts - and microblog - i.e. non-titled posts, standard posts from Mastodon - differently) - bear in mind, if you're not already aware, that the Fediverse is more than Mastodon. It's a collection of decentralized projects that anyone can set up for others or themselves. Mastodon, Friendica, Kbin, Mbin and Lemmy are only some of these. If I'm intending to have my posts visible on microblogging platforms (including Mastodon), I'll just not use titles for them, generally (as I did with this post). Otherwise, my general rule of thumb is to only add a title when I want to synthesize the idea/the topic I'm about to share. Again, I'm not doing it so often, only did it a couple of times since I got here so far.

Thanks for attending my TED Talk, the public questions session is now open. 🙂

@notjustbikes Meanwhile, the only themed train in our country is this:

Out of curiosity, do you plan to visit the Balkans as well, since you're in Europe? There's plenty to say about trains in these countries, and plenty to criticize, so you can surely get a lot to create content about. 😁

@0x815 If there's a protest I don't like, it must absolutely be a coup (attempt)

@PolandIsAStateOfMind

@hazelnot you give consent when you publicly post something online. In fact, guess what, I can see your profile and whatever you publicly post without even logging in to your instance. How? I use a web browser.

Did you also give your consent to an obscure 3rd party app to display your content inside it? No. Let's just ban them all then, just like Xitter and Reddshit did, or like Meta/Faceshit did in the 1st place.

Oh, it's so great when we have stuff to help us reach content, from friends, from people we follow, but God forbid someone else reaches our content from other parts of the internet. Those that want that are just techbros.

@jsit It seems photomatt@mastodon.social has added Mastodon under the websites section. For Gravatar to verify you, you need to add it under the verified accounts section (see my example)

@tchambers

@thanius oh, okay. Well, it still counts as their account though if it's controled by them, right? 😁

@FediFollows @euronews