news

My nepo son is your VP.

Prabowo, who was a former lieutenant-general and commander of the army’s special forces known as Kopassus, who were accused of human rights abuses, including the 1998 torture of 22 activists who had opposed former ~~leader~~ genocidaldictator Muhammad Soeharto, Prabowo’s former father-in-law.

Abraham said he had planned to return to Israel the day after the closing ceremony, but that he changed his plans during a stop-off in Greece, when he learned that Israeli media outlets were describing his speech as antisemitic, with some citing German officials.

As well as receiving death threats on social media, Abraham said several individuals turned up at his family members’ home in Israeli, causing them to vacate the premises out of fear for their safety.

Abraham’s Palestinian film-making partner, Basel Adra, said during Saturday’s ceremony that he struggled to celebrate his film’s success while people in Gaza were “being slaughtered and massacred”, and urged Germany to cease arms exports to Israel. Abraham said he was concerned for the safety of Adra, who has since returned to his village in the West Bank, which is surrounded by Israeli settlements. Claudia Roth, Germany’s federal commissioner for culture, at the Berlin film festival

“Basel lives under occupation and the army or settlers can take revenge against him at any moment,” Abraham said. “He is in much greater danger than me.”

The backlash against the Berlinale ceremony in Germany also involved calls for the resignation of the minister of state for culture, Green party politician Claudia Roth, who was seen applauding Abraham and Adra’s speech in footage of the event.

German minister says she clapped Israeli film-maker, not his Palestinian colleague, at Berlinale

TL;DR: CIA maintains 12 secret bases near the border with Russia since 2014, Gladio 2.0 anyone?

Link

CW for the topic: self-harm

"Many of us like to ask ourselves, "What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?" The answer is, you're doing it.

Link - CW: self-harm

Archive link

The war in Sudan has so far been marked by a lot of incompetency and mismanagement by government forces (the SAF). After months of bitter fighting, in late 2023, the opposing Rapid Support Forces suddenly expanded their control towards the southeast of Khartoum after not a lot of resistance, most notably taking the city of Wad Madani. This led the SAF supporters and officials to panic and point fingers at each other about what the hell the army is even doing, while RSF soldiers looted the city.

These victories led to a short period in late December and early January where diplomacy and peace talks were considered, but such attempts fell apart. The leader of the RSF visited various African countries, including meeting Paul Kagame in Rwanda, to boost his legitimacy. Then, the RSF attacked into South Kordofan and consolidated their hold on other areas.

The Sudanese capital of Khartoum sits on a river which divides it from the city to its west, Omdurman (see the post image). The SAF and RSF have been fighting over this grand urban area for the whole war, with the RSF holding most of Khartoum (with an entirely cut-off SAF force holding on in the center), with a similarly cut-off SAF force also in eastern Omdurman, up against the river. For 10 months, this force has been under siege - but no longer. In perhaps the first actual W of the war for the SAF, they finally managed to break the siege a week ago, pouring supplies in. This leaves a section of the RSF now cut off, though Omdurman is still not under full SAF control (and, who knows, the whole situation could once again go badly for the SAF).

Meanwhile, the Sudanese socioeconomic situation has completely collapsed, with potentially a 20% fall in GDP and 8 million people displaced, with 2 million from Khartoum alone. 18 million Sudanese, or about a third of the population, is in acute hunger, and 20 million children are out in school. The refugees streaming out of the country are causing knock-on effects in neighorboring countries like Chad. Nobody is even really counting the dead anymore.

Red is the government forces, the SAF. Blue is the RSF opposition. Other colours are various factions.

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

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

Sunday's briefing is here.

>The IIT established that the chemical payload was deployed by artillery from areas under ISIL control.
>No other entity possessed the means, motives, and capabilities to deploy sulfur mustard as part of an attack in Marea on 1 September, 2015.
>The IIT was able to reconstruct the organisational structure and chain of command that led to the use of chemical weapons by the Islamic State in Marea on 1 September 2015.

Tax credits, unemployment, dying industries, alienation, profits!! We got em all.

https://archive.is/aKpkt

I popped into Sainsbury’s this week to buy tea bags. It took some time out of my working day, but I had read of potential shortages and my family hates to run out of tea. It turned out to be a false alarm: the supermarket’s shelves were packed with boxes of the stuff, from PG Tips to Twinings and Tetley Tea.

This paragraph screams IM FUCKING BRITISH

Tetley admitted last week that its stock of tea was “much tighter than we would like it to be” because vessels sailing through the Red Sea are being attacked by Houthi rebels protesting the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. There is little problem of production in India or Kenya, but tea is taking longer to arrive as container ships are diverted away from the Suez Canal and around the Cape of Good Hope.

Good. Nothing is more American than fucking with the British and sending their tea straight into the sea

God bless the Ansar Allah

My trip was self-defeating, given that supermarkets tend to run out of stock more when shoppers panic than because of endemic shortages. But we have been made jumpy by the pandemic and the supply chain inflation that followed. I used to be confident that tea, coffee, rice and cereals would be there without fail but it now takes discipline to remain calm.

Americans panic-buy toilet paper, Brits panic-buy tea.

Honestly I think the American hogs have their priorities more in order than the British.

Shut up bidet gang, I know.

Cocoa could be next. The price of cocoa powder and hot chocolate in UK shops rose 25 per cent in the year to January (more than confectionery). Cocoa futures are at record levels because West Africa, from where most cocoa comes, has been affected by extreme weather and crop disease. Many of the 6mn small farmers who tend cacao trees globally face hardship.

Westerners only giving a shit about climate change when it effects their treats, more news at 10

The cost of food and drink has increased sharply in general but the disruption to cocoa, coffee and tea is especially instructive. These beverages were early products of empire and the trade routes established by the British East India Company and other merchant adventurers. They were first enjoyed as exotic luxuries in the 17th century, then gradually became part of everyday life at home and work.

May it follow the course of your empire

The strains are emblematic of the fragility of globalisation and the smooth production and transport of consumer products from the global south to Europe and the US. Arabica coffee is back in surplus after a price spike in 2021 due to drought and frost in Brazil, but lower grade robusta beans from Vietnam are in short supply, not helped by the troubles in the Red Sea.

Love to ignore the fucking drought in Central America that's also fucking the Panama Canal, but please tell me more about how it's the Palestinians fault for not offering their lives on a silver platter

There is an irony in tea being transported the long way around Africa, rather than via the Suez Canal. It was the opening of the canal in 1869 that put an end to the “tea races” of clipper sailing ships such as the Cutty Sark to bring tea supplies from China to the west as rapidly as possible. As soon as steam ships could cut thousands of miles off the journey, sailing became redundant.

What a shame for the tea racists

Victorians used to celebrate the arrival of new tea from Shanghai in London and prices would drop as the clippers docked. There is less excitement about refreshment now: a tea bag is a tea bag and it is easy to forget how far processed leaves in branded packets have come. What was an adventure has turned into a routine bit of logistics.

What was a bloody journey of imperialism has become a part of the day to day droll

But it is time to wake up and smell the coffee. The Suez Canal will probably be able to resume normal operations in time, but a vital trade route will remain a tempting target for attackers. The Panama Canal has also had to limit passages, in its case because of drought. It is getting hard to ensure safe and easy navigation for ships that have been loaded with products for our consumption.

Oh look he finally mentions Panama.

It is also more difficult to fill up those vessels without fail. Agricultural commodities were always volatile, with good growing seasons one year and failures the next. But climate change increases the risks and is making it difficult for farmers and farm workers to earn a consistent living. They have less capital to invest in trees and bushes, and less reason to carry on trying.

Not mentioning they're paid fractions of pennies for what their products are actually worth, but that'd be talking about imperialism again

Cocoa is suffering the effects. It was originally consumed as a drink in England until the 19th century turn to solid chocolate. Higher cocoa prices presage the same impact on confectionery later this year. Growing conditions have been so problematic in countries such as Ghana and Nigeria that farmers cannot harvest enough cocoa pods from their trees to be processed into butter for chocolate makers.

sad violin noise for the poor British chocolate makers

Hedge funds have not been helping by speculating on even higher cocoa prices, but the underlying crisis is real. Even well-meaning measures can have unintended effects: a new EU law meant to discourage deforestation could lead to the destruction of coffee and cocoa being stored in European warehouses. The intention is laudable but the consequences may be perverse for vulnerable African growers.

Fuck off mate

Few brands that sell these products now ignore such things: every box of tea bags in Sainsbury’s bore a logo from an organisation such as Fairtrade or the Rainforest Alliance. They make more effort than before to ensure that life is sustainable for growers and plantation workers on whose efforts they, and we shoppers, depend.

"Sustainable"

But the old empires of coffee, cocoa and tea are getting fragile amid climate change and the interruption of global trade routes. The price of their weakness is already becoming obvious, and the supermarket shelves may not always stay full.

MUH TREATS

Here's his tweet:

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have both published major stories making grave, incendiary allegations that aided and abetted Israel’s lie-filled justifications for the mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza. The substance of these stories, rooted in unsubstantiated/unverified narratives, has been the focus of intense public scrutiny because of questions surrounding their veracity. But there are also significant ethical questions involving some of the authors of these stories and their previous ties to Israeli propaganda efforts.

Both stories were co-authored by anti-Palestinian figures posing as objective journalists. The NYT story “Screams Without Words” asserted there was a systematic, widespread rape and sexual violence program conducted by Palestinians on October 7. Among the issues with this story, which relied heavily on innuendo rather than documentable facts, is the family of one of the alleged victims disputing the accuracy of the Times piece and stating they were interviewed under false pretense for the story. For more on the scrutiny of this story, see:

https://mondoweiss.net/2024/01/family-of-key-case-in-new-york-times-october-7-sexual-violence-report-renounces-story-says-reporters-manipulated-them/

https://theintercept.com/2024/01/28/new-york-times-daily-podcast-camera/

The co-author of the Times story, Anat Schwartz, has “liked” multiple tweets supporting genocidal actions in Gaza (she has since deleted her X account). Among these was a statement cited by the ICJ as a statement of possible incitement to genocide. Along with another co-author, Adam Sella, Schwartz pressured an October 7 witness into cooperating with the Times story, saying it was “important… to Israeli hasbara” (propaganda). Schwartz appears to have only started working as a reporter in November 2023. See here:

https://twitter.com/zei_squirrel/status/1761249450998022442

https://twitter.com/lailaalarian/status/1761367812583444891

https://twitter.com/talulasha/status/1747763918032773627

The WSJ story “Intelligence Reveals Details of U.N. Agency Staff’s Links to Oct. 7 Attack” laundered dubious Israeli propaganda painting UNRWA, the most vital humanitarian organization operating in Gaza, as a Hamas front organization whose members directly participated in the October 7 attacks.

The WSJ story served as a delivery service for Israeli allegations that even the US government now says it cannot confirm. This story was a crucial piece of propaganda employed to justify the gutting of UNRWA funding by the US and other governments. The co-author of this story, Carrie Keller-Lynn, served in the Israeli military with her close friend whom she credits for developing social media strategy for the IDF during the 2009 Gaza war. Keller-Lynn was also an anti-BDS activist while in university in the US. After photos of her in IDF uniform began circulating, Keller-Lynn locked her X account and previous articles and podcasts detailing her history and views were scrubbed from the internet. See here:

https://twitter.com/jeremyscahill/status/1752702933848993908

https://lithub.com/journalism-as-a-front-of-war-on-american-media-and-the-ideology-of-the-status-quo/

These are serious ethical issues, on top of the mounting questions about the accuracy of the stories themselves, that both the NYT and WSJ should publicly address. These publications have great impact on both policy and public understanding of this war. How do they justify allowing such figures to operate as supposedly independent arbiters of the facts?

Contrast this situation—allowing anti-Palestinian figures to write consequential “news” articles, not opinion pieces, for major US publications— with the cases of Palestinian and Arab journalists, and journalists in general who have expressed sympathy for the plight of Palestinians, being told they cannot cover the war because of concerns about their objectivity.

For a broader examination of the way Israel has engaged in a systematic propaganda campaign about the events of October 7 and beyond, see my recent piece, “Israel’s Ruthless Propaganda Campaign to Dehumanize Palestinians:”

https://theintercept.com/2024/02/07/gaza-israel-netanyahu-propaganda-lies-palestinians/

The brokest hoes be the loudest

Rutland resident Jack Crowther has been a longtime critic.

“You’re putting a drug, a medicine, in our water to treat tooth decay without the informed consent of the people,” Crowther said.

"Mandrake, have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of water?"

"THEY'RE PUTTING MEDICINE IN THE WATER!"

Also related, a Richmond, VT waterworks employee secretly lowered fluoride levels in the town's drinking supply for a decade.

EDIT: I should've updated this a month ago, but the town voted to keep fluoride.