this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
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Swedish authorities say they have detected a Chinese ship moving near two telecoms cables that failed within hours of each other on the Baltic Sea bed in recent days.

Prosecutors in Stockholm have launched a preliminary investigation into suspected sabotage, hours after Germany dubbed the cable failure part of a β€œhybrid operation”.

On Sunday morning at about 10am, Swedish authorities registered problems with a data cable under the Baltic Sea from the Γ–land island to Lithuania. At 4am on Monday, telecoms operators in Finland and Germany reported problems with another cable called C-Lion-1.

Both cables were damaged in the Swedish economic zone, prompting prosecutors in Stockholm to take the investigation lead.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Lemmy.ml users incoming to tell me how that's actually the EU's fault

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 days ago (1 children)

EU dresses up so slutty I just had to act.

They should hold that boat indefinitely and close the gap in Kattegat for all Russian vessels.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

And Chinese, NorK (are there any?) vessels

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

They seem to have a decent fleet of fishing vessels, but all their foreign trade on water seems to be with China, via The Yellow Sea

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (4 children)

ever since i started using lemmy all I've heard is bad things about that instance so I don't understand why we don't just defederate from them? This is a genuine question to anyone with the answer, thanks!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I started there. It's tiring when every international political discussion boils done to China/Russia good because NATO bad. .ml is subtle about it and does a lot of word game shit you see in right wing media. They maintain enough plausible deniability to remain federated. The defederate instances were the one using slurs.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Yes, they are more subtle in parroting propaganda, but they block everyone who is only slightly critical of China/Russia. They are the same people.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

@[email protected] This puzzles me, too. That instance is a cheap propaganda instance that has been banned by Reddit some time ago for a good reason. I don't know why we don't defederate.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's the instance admined by the authors of Lemmy itself. The official forum is [email protected]. It's a bit disingenuous to ask to defederate from them, unless we want the already tense relationship with the authors of the software to break entirely.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Well Lemmy is open source, isn't it? So someone could just make a fork of it, can't they?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Of course they could but that's not free. Forked projects are a lot of work. Maybe it would be easier to go for a different software, such as kbin. Or maybe the defederation goes over just fine and arrangements are found easily. I don't know. My point is there's a social component to defederating that's likely a bit bigger than just shutting out Russia/China enjoyers.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

My point is there’s a social component to defederating that’s likely a bit bigger than just shutting out Russia/China enjoyers.

I have to disagree. It's not just this community's "West bad, Russia/China bad okay" hypocrisy and the fact that they convey their narrative and their narrative only (everything else gets immediately blocked, while they accuse others literally of 'double standards'). One of my main points is that they support Russia's war in Ukraine, which is a genocide. It's the only community that openly supports an attempted genocide.

[Edit typo.]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

That's a response to an argument I was not making. I share your non-enthusiasm about .ml.

I was talking about the social cost of locking out the creators of Lemmy. It's reasonable to argue that that social cost is worth bearing. But it's imo unreasonable to pretend it doesn't exist.

However, I would caution that .ml is the standard instance that many people start out at, because that's the site promoted from Lemmy's GitHub and from join-lemmy:org. There are reasonable people caught among the unreasonable ones.

I'd object to [.ml] being the "only community that supports an attempted genocide" [emphasis mine], for two reasons:

  • The Grad and Bear instances also exist and are more consistently pro-Russian. They are already defederated from e.g. feddit.org, precisely because there is no social cost associated with defederating them.
  • I find it hard to accept this stance of absolute moral superiority. What the Russian government inflicts on Ukraine is atrocious but not entirely unparalleled.

[Edith: formatting]

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What the Russian government inflicts on Ukraine is atrocious but not entirely unparalleled.

What does that mean? The aggressor here is Russia, they started the war unprovoked. What exactly is 'unparalleled'?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I was talking about genocide and offensive wars in general, not the context of this particular war.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

So what does that mean? If .lm communities openly support Russia's war in Ukraine, is it a 'stance of absolute moral superiority' to condemn this because the same happens elsewhere? (It should be a matter of course, but just to mention it: We must condemn genocide everywhere, no matter where it happens.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I am admittedly having a hard time putting my contention with this into words in a way that makes sense. I may have chosen the wrong hill to die on. In which case, sorry for that "absolute moral stance". I do think the remainder of that comment holds up, though.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

So it's the only community that is openly supporting genocide, right? That's obvious I guess.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Absolutely not. I mentioned the Bear and Grad servers before. I am pretty sure you'll find niches supporting the Gaza war or supporting other genocidal conflicts.

Since .ml is the server advertized to people via join-lemmy:org, it also attracts a more diverse crowd, so not every user there is a tankie.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 39 minutes ago

No, not every user is a tankie there. I perfectly agree with that. Many users are unaware when they join the server.

But those who are responsible there are the same or at least have the same mindset like the Bear and Grad servers.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

I feel used to the internet being full of stupid nonsense, so I just ignore .ml's share, and in a way it's a refreshing balance to the usual genre from e.g. .world and Reddit. Usually it's either run-of-the-mill echo chamber or respectful discussion.

But there's lots of good stuff on .ml too. I'm glad to still be federated.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It’s just a ridiculous trope, a preemptive threat against posting a non-mainstream stance.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Wasn't .ml the second largest instance at one point?

[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Oh no... Russia has dragged China in WW3, hasn't it?

[–] [email protected] 32 points 5 days ago (1 children)

China did this same shit well before Russia brought them into the war.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 days ago (2 children)

There was a pipeline damaged last year under circumstances that seemed to be challenging to rule as accidental. China claimed responsibility, but claimed it wasn't intentional, but it seems they ignored all communication attempts made to the ship and that the amount of time they dragged anchor along the seabed would have been impossible to not notice.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Being that was after the war started, I wouldn't list that as anything other than a possible attempt to cause gas shortages and economic damages to Ukrianes support.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I'm inclined to agree. Both events seem to involve too many coincidences for it to be unintentional. I have no idea how they would prove this, and moreso what the official response would be.

I'd be very curious to see a video or write-up of how the investigation is done and if there is any deep sea forensics work.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Yeah it would be hard to prove it wasn't just an idiot dragging many thousands of pounds behind them. But at 60-70 meters deep is deeper (but not unheard of) of a depth for a ship to lay anchor.

For them to then start going again while dragging the anchor and not realize the ship is moving incorrectly for a long distance seems impossible.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

This particular instance is sounding more malicious as it seems they have the same ship at the right location to have caused the damage on 2 occasions now. I haven't gotten to read any updates since they were pinning down the ship's location data yesterday to see if they've found even more showing this was intentional.

We have had recentish events though where we have had extreme disruption caused by ships with the Ever Given in the Suez and the Dali collapsing the bridge to the Baltimore ports due to human error. The Baltimore incident has a nice write up on the investigation, going through the ship maintenance, questioning different people, and going through the ships's black box data.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Thank you. This is news to me. I just hope there were repercussions because such an "oopsie" should still lead to having to pay for the damages done.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

I haven't found anything past the August updates I linked. Someone more local might be able to chime in if there're some non-English updates out there that I can't find.

I can't imagine it's quick or easy to do repairs in the middle of the sea. 😧

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

I've been thinking one of the motivations for the invasion of Ukraine was to secure a larger food supply to keep China fed through an all out trade war. Them shutting down exports to the west might be enough to destabilize things sufficiently to change the world order once the dust settles. Especially if combined with the invasion/destruction of Taiwan.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 days ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

Oof. They might be doing this to throw oil on the fire.