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There they lie day after day, night after night, in a state of utter sensory deprivation, with nothing to distract from their wounds and pain. In the midst of this, Israeli medical interns can use their exposed, vulnerable flesh as a canvas for experimentation.

According to one whistleblower, the detention centre has quickly gained a reputation for being “a paradise for interns”.

There, they are allowed to use Palestinians as little more than lab rats and encouraged to carry out medical procedures they are not qualified to perform.

A whistleblower told CNN: “I was asked to learn how to do things on the patients, performing minor medical procedures that are totally outside my expertise.”

Such procedures were frequently done without anaesthesia. Unlike doctors in Gaza, Israeli doctors have ready access to painkillers. It is a choice not to use them.

Image is of a flag ceremony to commemorate the launch of Operation Barkhane, which has since officially been terminated after its failure.

Chad, a country in north-central Africa, borders a lot of active geopolitical areas - Niger to the West, Libya to the North, Sudan to the East - but is scarcely discussed itself. I'm not really knowledgable enough to give anything like a decent history, but the recent gist is that the country was ruled for three decades by Idriss Déby until he was killed in battle in 2021 while fighting northern rebels. Idriss was part of a few wars - such as the one against Gaddafi in Libya, and also the Second Congo War. While he was initially elected democratically in 1996 and 2001, he then eliminated term limits and just kept on going.

After his death, Chad has been ruled by his son, Mahamat Idriss Déby. In early May 2024, elections began which were meant to result in the transition from a military-ruled goverment to a civilian-ruled one. Needless to say, Mahamat won the election - with 61% of the vote. Both father and son have been on the side of the French and the US, whereas the opposition is against foreign colonizers and has attempted to put pressure on the government in numerous ways to achieve a more substantial independence. France maintains a troop presence in Chad, and it's something of a stronghold for them - when French troops were forced out of Niger, they retreated to Chad. However, it's not clear even to the people inside Chad what precisely the French are doing there. I mean, we know what their presence is really for - imperialism and election rigging - but in an official sense, they don't seem to be doing much to help the country materially. What is clear is that they like to intervene on behalf of the ruling regime and against rebels a whole lot - the most interventions by France in any African country, in fact.

The United States, so keen on human rights and democracy in so many places around the world like Russia, Iran, and China, have - for some strange reason! - decided for the last 30 years that they can live with a couple dictators and wars in the case of Chad. In fact, various American state propaganda firms like the ISW and Washington Post have warned the current government about the Wagner Group interfering with the country and spreading anti-Western sentiments as in the rest of the Sahel.

Things are very tough for Chad. They are among the poorest countries in Africa and host about one million people fleeing from nearby conflicts, which is a pretty large number when Chad has a population of about 17 million.

With the French Empire fading, they are beginning to run out of places to retreat to in Africa. Macron, in January, said that his defense council had decided to reduce troop presence in Gabon, Senegal, and the Côte d'Ivoire, though has maintained troop levels in Chad and Djibouti. Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet from France, anti-empire sentiments are boiling to the surface in New Caledonia/Kanaky, which is unfortunate for the French military as they really need that island, both for the massive nickel reserves, but also as an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Pacific just in case a conflict with China pops off.

The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.

The Country of the Week is Chad! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

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Ukraine is cutting off consular services for its male citizens who live outside the country. The measure aims to force men back home to serve in the military, but some doubt its efficacy — and legality.

"Good thing that I got my passport last year in Cologne and don't have to go back to the consulate," said Oleg from Kyiv, who didn't give his last name. Today, he lives with his wife and three children in Germany. That was his reaction to a statement from Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba announcing that male citizens of military age who currently live outside Ukraine will no longer have access to full consular services. The measure is primarily aimed at individuals who have not registered with the military.

"Living abroad does not relieve a citizen of his or her duties to their homeland," Kuleba wrote Tuesday on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, adding that he called for the measures to guarantee, "fair treatment of men of mobilization age in Ukraine and abroad."

How the fuck do we defend something as a "just war" when the citizens are desperately trying not to die in it???

Spoiler: no one cares except nerds

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/-320-million-us-naval-pier-collapses-in-gaza--drifts-to-ashd

https://x.com/terrence_str/status/1794419632427995474?s=46

Pope Francis paved the way for the canonization of the first saint of the millennial generation on Thursday, attributing a second miracle to a 15-year-old Italian computer whiz who died of leukemia in 2006.

Carlo Acutis, born on May 3, 1991, in London and then moved with his Italian parents to Milan as a child, was the youngest contemporary person to be beatified by Francis in Assisi in 2020.

Acutis, who died of acute leukemia on Oct. 12, 2006, was put on the road to sainthood after Pope Francis approved the first miracle attributed to him: The healing of a 7-year-old Brazilian boy from a rare pancreatic disorder after coming into contact with an Acutis’ relic, a piece of one of his T-shirts.

According to Vatican News, the second miracle recognized on Thursday is related to a woman from Costa Rica, who in July 2022 made a pilgrimage to Acutis’ tomb in Assisi to pray for the healing of her daughter, who had suffered severe head trauma after falling from her bicycle. The young woman started showing signs of recovery immediately after her mother’s plea.

so the vatican has all of this kids clothes preserved as relics and they cut off pieces of his t-shirts so they can mail them to cancer patients. just imagining like, spongebob, batman, metallica t-shirts being guarded as holy relics in rome for centuries to come.

Archive

The USDA-approved lab authorized to test the milk for the H5N1 bird flu virus called the farms to seek their permission to examine the milk, then also declined to test the milk for bird flu when the farmers did not grant it.

“[The farms] are aware of what a nonnegative test would do to their business,” said Brandon Dominguez, the Veterinary Services Section Head at the Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic laboratory in College Station, Texas. “They asked that we do not run the test.”

After NPR reported that the USDA had confirmed the agency does not require labs to have permission from farms to test milk samples for bird flu, Amy Swinford, the director of the Texas A&M lab, added that another reason the lab could not perform the test is that reporters did not provide the premise identification numbers for each of the farms. Those numbers are not publicly available; reporters did include the license numbers of each of the farms when they submitted samples for testing.

The lab and the farms’ refusal to test samples of raw milk comes as scientists have criticized the federal government for being slow to collect and report information about the virus. There has been no widespread testing of dairy workers to understand how many may be infected, no mandate that dairy farms test their herds if they aren’t moving cattle between states, and no clear testing data to support federal authorities’ warnings of a potential threat of bird flu in raw milk that people drink.

Head in the sand: what could go wrong?

Note: this has technically been the law for a few years but it was not enforced, esp during COVID, nor did many smaller hotels have the software needed to even enter foreign names. Certain chains had a 3 character limit on the name field and because guests legally had to register their ID, they couldn't accommodate. Other short stay hotels wrongly assumed they needed special licenses to house foreigners like long term accommodation.

Rose Brooks is now the first unionized domestic violence shelter in the state. Organizers say they hope the union helps stabilize an industry with high levels of burnout and turnover.

Workers at the Rose Brooks Center in Kansas City voted Thursday to become the first unionized domestic violence shelter in Missouri. More than two-thirds of eligible workers at one of Kansas City’s largest and oldest shelters opted to unionize with the Laborers Local 955.

The vote was 27-18, though shelter leadership has contested one ballot. The union includes workers who handle community programs, patient care, housing and economic services.

Maret Miller has been with Rose Brooks for about a decade, starting as a volunteer. She said the union effort began because shelter management did not respect workers’ insights on how to improve shelter operations.

“We're the ones answering the hotline 24/7,” Miller said. “We're the ones that are seeing people when they first come into the shelter. We are talking to survivors at the scene of a crime. We touch on a lot of different areas of the community and often those are in very stressful, dire situations.”

The 45 employees began their union campaign last year and petitioned to unionize in April.

In response to the lawsuit, American said in a court document that it would dispute the family’s claim by showing that any injuries the 9-year-old girl suffered were caused by the girl’s “own fault and negligence, were proximately caused by (her) use of the compromised lavatory, which she knew or should have known contained a visible and illuminated recording device.”

Nawaf Salam, the head of the International Court of Justice: “Israel must immediately hold its military offensive of any other action in the Rafah governorate which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza, conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2611919

this was an interview between contributing editor Ann Garrison and Execute Director of Friends of the Congo Maurice Carney.

on May 19, 2024, he [Christian Malanga] died in a quixotic coup attempt involving a force of some 50 armed men and lasting for all of three hours in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa. Reports are that three of his men and two Congolese police officers were also killed, and that the rest of the men were arrested.

On the same day, in a more serious and significant undertaking, two Morehouse College professors [Samuel Livingston and Cynthia Hewitt] held up a Congolese flag behind President Joe Biden as he addressed the 2024 graduating class.