@sstrangio

Southeast Asia Editor at @Diplomat_APAC. Author of IN THE DRAGON’S SHADOW (https://xitter.cf/t.co/8O3IV7E78T) and HUN SEN’S CAMBODIA (https://xitter.cf/t.co/pdYCsY6Evm).

 Adelaide, Australia
sebastianstrangio.com/
Joined July 2009
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1.8KMedia
Sebastian Strangio retweeted
Sebastian Strangio@sstrangioOct 24
They're calling it the covertest op of all time
Secretary Marco Rubio
@SecRubioOct 23
To those who seek to create positive change in Cuba - now is the time. The disappointment of failed promises, corruption, and the privileged lives of only a few; seize this opportunity to create the change you desire through a discrete partnership with the CIA.
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Sebastian Strangio retweeted
Elliot Kaufman
@ElliotKaufman615h
New: Sources from three countries confirm that the Trump Administration has advocated Viktor Orbán for UN Secretary-General. The US has encouraged Orbán to enter the race, even bringing him the initial idea of a joint U.S.-Russia-China candidacy. WSJ: wsj.com/opinion/viktor-orban…

Opinion | Viktor Orbán, U.N. Secretary-General?

Trump officials push the idea of a U.S.-Russia-China joint candidate.

wsj.com
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They're calling it the covertest op of all time
Secretary Marco Rubio
@SecRubioOct 23
To those who seek to create positive change in Cuba - now is the time. The disappointment of failed promises, corruption, and the privileged lives of only a few; seize this opportunity to create the change you desire through a discrete partnership with the CIA.
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Sebastian Strangio retweeted
Lorcan@Lorcan_LovettOct 22
After years of campaigning, Kim Aris spoke to his mother, Aung San Suu Kyi, for the first time since she was detained following #Myanmar’s 2021 military coup. “Hearing her voice again means more to me than words can express,” he said. #whatshappeninginMyanmar
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Sebastian Strangio retweeted
Xianyang City Bureaucrat
@XianyangCBOct 22
Singapore doesn't advertise itself as the true heir to the Chinese imperial technocracy but there are signs
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Exactly what the markets were hoping to hear
Stanley Widianto@stanleywidiantoOct 21
"I simply say to the MSCI: the Indonesian nation fears no one and will not be cowed," Prabowo said, adding: "We possess strength, we have courage, we are willing to make sacrifices, and we refuse to surrender." reuters.com/world/asia-pacif…

Prabowo accuses MSCI of trying to intimidate Indonesia after market rout

Global index provider MSCI was trying to "intimidate" Indonesia but the country would not ‌be afraid, President Prabowo Subianto told his cabinet on Wednesday, striking a combative tone in his first...

reuters.com
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Amusing to learn that Japanese officials came up with the idea of the "thought leader" in the 1940s while theorizing the position of "subject races" within the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
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Sebastian Strangio retweeted
Andrew Levidis@Andrew_LevidisOct 20
A revealing map if you look closely enough. How the Republic of China conceived of Asia at the beginning of the 1960s, just over a decade after the civil war. The borders and geographic imaginary hint at Asia’s counterrevolutionary and conservative solidarities.
The True Size of Maps@TrueSizeOfMapsOct 19
Map of Asia published in Taiwan, 1960
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Sebastian Strangio retweeted
Simon Kuestenmacher
@simongerman600Oct 20
You've read a lot about how much China reduced extreme poverty but without much international recognition Indonesia hasn’t been far behind the Chinese! Respect.
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Sebastian Strangio retweeted
John Attridge@John_AttridgeOct 19
The author is dead! (Crowd cheers) But the author function lives on (crowd boos) Rather than attributing the text to a single origin point, we as critics must map the complex web of institutions and power relations that constitute "authorship" (crowd yawns, disperses)
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Sebastian Strangio retweeted
The Straits Times
@straits_timesOct 16
Four killed fighting wildfires in Indonesian national park: Ministry bit.ly/4zA6VEc

Four killed fighting wildfires in Indonesian national park

They were overwhelmed while battling flames on Oct 15 in the Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park. Read more at straitstimes.com.

straitstimes.com
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Right. And there are actually two layers of dysfunction: ASEAN govts' reluctance to go after the agribusiness interests that are to blame for much of the burning, and ASEAN's reluctance to transgress the principle of sovereignty.
aidil@climateaidilOct 16
This is why the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution is a failure. They would rather maintain the status quo between politicians & corporations than systemically address decades of forest fires, peatland degradation & haze. National, corporate interests come first.
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If Indonesia won't bring its own corporate interests to heel it's hard to see how ASEAN can do it.
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Sebastian Strangio retweeted
Gregory Brew
@gbrew24Oct 16
One of my favorite popular theories from early in the war was the notion that attacking Iran was part of Trump's grand strategy to deprive China of its sources of oil--moving against Venezuela and then Iran in sequence. Anyway, China's response to the war was to cut its oil imports, which it did with little trouble. Meanwhile, the US will be buying diesel from Russia.
Tommy Vietor
@TVietor08Oct 15
Quite funny to look back at how stupid the cheerleading for the Iran war was from The Free Press. For example, this commentary couldn't have been more wrong.
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Sebastian Strangio retweeted
Dara Mech
@MechDara1Oct 16
Pictures from UNTAC period – The United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) was a peace mission established by UN Security Council Resolution 745 in February 1992 to carry out the 1991 Paris Peace Accords....
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Sebastian Strangio retweeted
Matthew Yglesias
@mattyglesiasOct 15
Characters are not your friends theargumentmag.com/p/the-boo…
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Sebastian Strangio retweeted
The Diplomat
@Diplomat_APACOct 14
Malaysia’s government will raise the issue of transboundary haze at an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers’ meeting ahead of the bloc’s 49th Summit in Manila next month. buff.ly/Z8tb4RR
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Sebastian Strangio retweeted
The Diplomat
@Diplomat_APACOct 14
According to the UNODC, Southeast Asian seizures of methamphetamine hit a new record of 349 tons in 2025, up from 236 tons the year before. In 2015, regional seizures captured just 65 tons. thediplomat.com/2026/10/sout…

Southeast Asia Has a Serious Drug Problem

Southeast Asia’s drug labs are pumping out unprecedented amounts of meth and other synthetic drugs.

thediplomat.com
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Russians made great art both before and after the Revolution, so how much we can credit the Soviet authorities as such is an interesting question. They poured money into the arts but also enforced a stifling political conformity.
Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbiOct 14
The Soviets believed all art is political, and produced seven decades of shitty art
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There's also a bit of a survivorship bias at play here (in a perhaps literal sense under Stalin); most of the Soviet realist slop produced after 1917 has been rightly forgotten.
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"All art is political" is true in the banal sense that everything is produced in a certain social and political context and reflects those contexts in various ways. But not all art is (or need be) political in an explicitly partisan sense.
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This is important because I feel like the first observation is often used to make an argument for the worst sort of "topicality" in art.
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