Israeli Getting Serious Out There, Con't

 Some truly good news out of Gaza today: Israel has agreed to daily humanitaria pauses in its attack to allow more Palestinians to escape Northern Gaza.

In a crucial breakthrough for the global effort to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza, Israel has agreed to daily, four-hour pauses in fighting across northern Gaza, the White House said Thursday.

U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the Israelis had committed to announcing each four-hour window at least three hours in advance starting Thursday. Israel also was opening a second corridor for civilians to flee the areas being pounded by Israel's military campaign aimed at wiping out Hamas after the brutal Oct. 7 attack on border communities, with a coastal road joining the territory’s main north-south highway, he said.

Pauses in the fighting have been taking place intermittently for days while tens of thousands of civilians flee northern Gaza for the south. The U.S. and several other nations have been urging Israel to provide more time for safe passage and for the safe flow of humanitarian aid into war-battered Gaza.

Kirby also said the pauses could help the effort to win freedom for at least some of the approximately 240 hostages, including several Americans, held by Hamas and other militants since the war began. President Joe Biden told reporters he asked the Israelis for a “pause longer than three days” in talks about freeing the hostages.

So the Biden administration was able to negotiate a daily pause window and a second escape route. I'll take it, frankly. This will save lives.

We'll see how many. 

The Squad Steps In It Again, Con't

Most of the time it's not fair to compare the members of The Squad, House Democrats on the far left, to the bombthrowers, insurrectionists. and terrorists on the GOP far right like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Bobert or Chip Roy. I say "most of the time" because House Democrat Rashida Tlaib absolutely crossed a big red line on Palestine and Israel and got deservedly rung up by her House colleagues.

The House passed a GOP-led resolution on Tuesday to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib over comments critical of Israel and in support of Palestinians amid Israel’s war against Hamas.

The move amounts to a rare and significant rebuke of the Michigan Democrat, who is the first Palestinian-American woman to serve in Congress. The vote was 234 to 188 with four Republicans voting against and 22 Democrats voting in support of the censure resolution.

The resolution, which was introduced by Georgia GOP Rep. Rich McCormick, advanced earlier in the day after a Democratic-led effort to block the measure failed.

Tlaib has defended herself against the censure attempts, arguing that they are an effort to silence her and saying that her “colleagues have resorted to distorting my positions in resolutions filled with obvious lies.”

Following the vote to advance the censure resolution, Tlaib delivered an emotional speech on the House floor and argued that her criticism of the Israeli government should not be conflated with antisemitism.

“It is important to separate people and governments. No government is beyond criticism. The idea that criticizing the government of Israel is antisemitic sets a very dangerous precedent, and it’s been used to silence diverse voices speaking up for human rights across our nation,” she said.

She grew emotional and had trouble speaking after she said, “I can’t believe I have to say this, but Palestinian people are not disposable.”

“We are human beings just like anyone else,” she said after a long pause, during which Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota stood up to comfort her and put her hands on Tlaib’s shoulder as the congresswoman braced herself against the podium.

After the House voted to block a resolution from GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to censure Tlaib last week, Greene put forward a new version of the resolution that drops a reference to a pro-Palestinian protest at the Capitol as an “insurrection,” which had made some Republicans uncomfortable. But McCormick’s resolution had been expected to have more support from Republicans because the language is narrower and more tailored to recent events.

A censure resolution is one of the most severe forms of punishment in the House, which has historically been saved for the most egregious offenses such as a criminal conviction. A censure does not remove a member from the House and carries no explicit penalties beyond a public admonition.

Most recently, the House voted to censure Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California in June, a key lawmaker in the Democrats’ congressional investigations into former President Donald Trump.

In addition to the Republican criticism directed at Tlaib, a number of Democrats have been critical of the congresswoman over her defense of the pro-Palestinian chant “from the river to the sea.”

The Anti-Defamation League describes the chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” as “an antisemitic slogan” and “rallying cry (that) has long been used by anti-Israel voices, including supporters of terrorist organizations such as Hamas.”

Tlaib has defended the phrase, writing on X, “From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate. My work and advocacy is always centered in justice and dignity for all people no matter faith or ethnicity.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said, “Of course I do,” when asked by CNN on Monday if he has concerns over Tlaib’s use of the chant.

Both censure resolutions reference the chant. McCormick’s resolution states that it is “widely recognized as a genocidal call to violence to destroy the state of Israel.”

Republicans censuring Adam Schiff earlier this year was a prime example of their hateful nonsense. But I'm siding with the ADL on this one. They know exactly what documenting antisemitism looks like, and Tlaib trying to pass this off as an "aspirational chant" is quite frankly, bullshit of the highest degree. The Squad keeps catching primary challengers, and deservedly so.  

Yes, Israel has killed over 10,000 Gazans in their ground invastion. They are terribly wrong for doing this.

But you don't get to act like a Hamas terrorist in Congress and use a wildly documented call for the extermination of the Jewish State, folks. Full stop.

Israeli A Serious Problem Here, Con't

While the Israeli ground war ramps up and the death toll in Gaza is now well over 8,000, the world is not standing idly by as Palestinians are bombed and Israelis are hit with rockets, and while the most obvious candidate and route for this disaster to expand is Hezbollah and Iran, it turns out the more immediate threat may in fact be Turkey.

President Tayyip Erdogan addressed hundreds of thousands of supporters at one of the largest pro-Palestinian rallies since the Israel-Hamas war began, courting his Islamist political base a day ahead of the centenary of Turkey's secular republic.

"Israel has been openly committing war crimes for 22 days, but the Western leaders cannot even call on Israel for a ceasefire, let alone react to it," Erdogan told the crowd in Istanbul, who waved Palestinian flags.

"We will tell the whole world that Israel is a war criminal. We are making preparations for this. We will declare Israel a war criminal," he said.

In an hour-long speech, Erdogan also repeated his assertion that Hamas was not a terrorist organisation, describing Israel as an occupier.

Turkey has condemned Israeli civilian deaths caused by Hamas's Oct. 7 rampage through southern Israel, which killed 1,400, but Erdogan this week called the militant group Palestinian "freedom fighters".

He also criticised some Western nations' unconditional support for Israel, drawing sharp rebukes from Italy and Israel.

Unlike many NATO allies, the European Union and some Gulf states, Turkey does not consider Hamas a terrorist organisation. It has long hosted its members, supports a two-state solution and has offered to play a role in negotiating the release of hostages abducted by Hamas during the Oct. 7 assault.

Political analysts said Erdogan was keen to reinforce his criticism of Israel's bombardment of the Gaza Strip and to overshadow Sunday's celebrations marking Turkey's secular roots.

Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat and director of the Centre for Economic and Foreign Policy Studies, an Istanbul-based think-tank, said Gaza's worsening humanitarian crisis and pressure from political allies had prompted Erdogan to sharpen his rhetoric.

Turkey "will protect its principles and share these with the international community, but it needs to do this with a more delicate diplomacy if it expects to play such a diplomatic role," Ulgen said.

The heads of allied nationalist and Islamist parties - which helped Erdogan secure victory in tight May elections - attended the rally at Istanbul's old airport. Erdogan criticised opposition parties for not calling Netanyahu a "terrorist" and for using the same term with reference to Hamas.

Needless to say, a NATO ally coming in on the side of Hamas against Israel right now would be the definition of catastrophic. Erdogan spouting saber-rattling rhetoric is one thing, but if this gets worse, or gets military, all bets are off. 

Turkey could in fact be the key to brokering a cease fire, but not if Ankara continues down this path.

Of course, there's always the usual suspects who could make things worse as well

We'll see.

Israeli Getting Serious Out There, Con't

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu failed miserably to protect the Jewish state from Hamas, and whether it was intentional or not, the world will pay a heavy price in the weeks and months ahead.

 

Hamas’ massacre of more than 1,400 Israelis and kidnapping of over 200 others on Oct. 7 was more than a national tragedy for Israel — it was also a massive intelligence failure. Now, as Israel goes to war against Hamas, vital questions abound: Why didn’t Israeli leadership see this coming? If Israel defeats Hamas, what will take its place? And what are the odds that Israel’s greatest ally, the United States, could get pulled into a direct role in the conflict?

Amos Yadlin has unique insights into all these questions. The 71-year-old former Israeli intelligence chief, who oversaw the destruction of Syria’s nascent nuclear program and the serial sabotage of Iran’s, has emerged as a key voice on the crisis, briefing members of Israel’s war cabinet. For the last 12 years, he’s served as the head of Israel’s highly influential Institute for National Security Studies, and he remains a security eminence grise.

In a new interview with POLITICO Magazine conducted via Zoom over two days last week, Yadlin offered a useful window into official Israeli thinking on the escalating war — from solutions to the ongoing hostage crisis to the challenge of avoiding Palestinian civilian casualties.

Yadlin made clear that Israel’s policy in this war was not simply to retaliate for the massacre or weaken Hamas, but to definitively end the jihadist group’s 16-year rule in Gaza.

“We are going to destroy Hamas, as Nazi Germany was destroyed,” he said, adding that Israel would mount a global assassination campaign against Hamas leaders akin to the one it launched following the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.

Aligned politically with the country’s center left — he was the Labor Party’s candidate for defense minister in the 2015 elections — Yadlin attributed much of the blame for the catastrophe to the national distraction of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s push to overhaul the country’s judiciary: “Netanyahu got all the warnings — from his defense minister, from the chief of staff, from the head of intelligence, from the head of Shin Bet and from independent writers like me, like others — that this is weakening Israel deterrence and endangering Israeli national security.”

Complicating matters in recent days, the Israeli media has been abuzz with reports of internal Israeli government deliberations over a second front with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, with the defense minister and other Israeli officials reportedly advocating a preemptive strike on the militant group and the U.S. cautioning against it.

Yadlin said Hezbollah’s “very cautious” behavior indicated a low likelihood of a second front developing. But while declining to go into details, Yadlin — who is privy to recent discussions between U.S. and Israeli officials — hinted that, in the event Hezbollah were to initiate a full-blown war with Israel, the U.S. might join “shoulder to shoulder” with Israel: “If Hezbollah attacks first, don’t be surprised — the U.S. may participate in this war.”

 

So yeah, expert after expert agree on two things: Bibi dropped the ball, and that the odds of a much bigger -- if not global -- conflict are ridiculously high as a result. This should all look familiar to Americans after 9/11, because we're headed down the same path with the same results.

Meanwhile, the ground invasion in Gaza is getting underway.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Friday that they are "expanding ground operations" in the Gaza Strip, according IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.

“In addition to offensive operations we carried over the past few days, the IDF ground forces are expanding their ground operation this evening,” Hagari said.

“Hundreds of thousands of IDF soldiers are all around the borders of the state — in the air, ground, and the sea — to protect the state," he added.

The announcement comes as CNN reports a large series of explosions rocked Gaza City on Friday night. 

 

Gaza is without power, telecommunications, or internet and is being bombed to ashes.

Large swaths of buildings around Gaza City, Beit Lahya and Beit Hanoun have been destroyed. A big amount of the damage that CNN was able to confirm is in northern Gaza.

Hundreds of craters across northern Gaza have also been identified.

CNN was able to identify the areas of destruction in Gaza through satellite imagery from Planet Labs, and by working with Synthetaic — a company that utilizes AI to identify and classify data, including satellite imagery.

Using imagery of the entire Gaza Strip from Planet Labs, Synthetaic is analyzing and comparing it through its proprietary AI-driven Rapid Automatic Image Categorization (RAIC) system, looking for destruction such as damaged and destroyed buildings, as well as impact craters. Aided by what RAIC identified as destruction, CNN is taking the Planet Labs imagery and conducting its own analysis to independently confirm the destruction.

The result is a snapshot of the destruction that's occurred across Gaza.

 

Hundreds, if not thousands of foreign nationals remain trapped. 

More than two weeks of intense negotiations to evacuate foreign nationals out of Gaza have yielded few signs of progress, leaving hundreds of desperate civilians stranded inside the war-torn strip of land as Israeli ground operations expanded amid a barrage of airstrikes on Friday.

Multiple sources involved in the diplomatic talks tell CNN that the effort to open a key border crossing in southern Gaza remains stymied by Hamas’ control of the enclave, Israel’s blockade and bombing, as well as Egyptian security concerns.

Now that the Israeli defense forces have announced an expansion of their ground operations, the situation for civilians and foreign nationals who remain trapped in Gaza has become even more dire. Aid officials and other individuals on the ground had expressed fears even before the expansion of operations that nowhere in Gaza was safe, and despite US officials saying they were working with Israel to establish civilian safe zones, such areas have not been fully stood up.

People who have family in Gaza told CNN on Friday they have not been able to make contact with them after communications went down in the strip amid the barrage of strikes.

Negotiators have been furiously working to find a solution to appease Egypt’s concerns about refugees entering the country through the Rafah crossing in southwestern Gaza, the border between Egypt and the Sinai. Complicating things are Israeli and American claims that Hamas has blocked the way out, as well as the inherent difficulties that come with processing thousands of people who claim to be foreign nationals.

The US had also been rushing to negotiate the release of hostages held by Hamas ahead of the incursion, talks that the US government insisted will continue amid Friday’s intensified airstrikes.

The Biden administration said Thursday it was hopeful that a deal will be reached in the coming days to allow US citizens to evacuate Gaza through Egypt, though the State Department had previously issued an alert saying the crossing into Egypt would open but it never did.

 

The catastrophe continues as the UN demands a cease fire, falling on deaf ears in Tel Aviv and Washington.

 

The U.N. General Assembly approved a nonbinding resolution Friday calling for a “humanitarian truce” in Gaza leading to a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers, the first United Nations response to the ongoing war.

The 193-member world body adopted the Arab-drafted resolution by a vote of 120-14 with 45 abstentions after rejecting a Canadian amendment backed by the United States. It would have unequivocally condemned the Oct. 7 “terrorist attacks” on Israel by Hamas and demanded the immediate release of hostages taken by Hamas.

The votes came part way through a list of 113 speakers at an emergency special session on Israeli actions in occupied Palestinian territories. Jordan’s U.N. Ambassador Mahmoud Hmoud, speaking on behalf of the U.N.’s 22-nation Arab group, had called for action on the resolution because of the urgency of the escalating situation on the ground.

The Arab group went to the General Assembly after the more powerful 15-member Security Council failed to agree on a resolution after four attempts over the past two weeks. While council resolutions are legally binding, assembly resolutions are not, but they do serve as a barometer of world opinion.

 

Things always get darker right before it goes pitch black.

Sunday Long Read: Black Lives Still Matter

Black Lives Matter in America, but I can't blame Black folk for leaving a country that never wanted us as anything more than slaves while we wait for the end of the Civil Rights era. Our Sunday Long Read icomes from the LA Times, where the Blaxit is happening, Black folks leaving a country that has wanted us gone all our lives. Some of us are gone for good, moving to other countries where we're Black folk are treated like -- wait for it -- actual human beings.

 

Filmmaker Jameelah Nuriddin was locked down in Los Angeles during the pandemic, watching as the nation convulsed in protest over the murder of George Floyd, when she had an epiphany: “America does not deserve me.”

As a Black woman, Nuriddin always tried to work twice as hard as those around her, thinking: “If I’m smart enough, pretty enough, successful enough ... then finally people will treat me as a human being.”

But as she grieved yet another unarmed Black man killed by police, she decided she was done trying to prove herself to a society that she felt would never really love her back.

So Nuriddin, 39, packed her bags and left.

She ended up in Costa Rica, in an idyllic beach town on the Caribbean coast that has become a hub for hundreds of Black expatriates fed up with life in the United States.

She now spends her days working for U.S. clients from chic cafes, leading healing ceremonies at a local waterfall and trying to figure out who she is, exactly, outside of an American context.

“It’s like leaving an abusive relationship,” she said of exiting the United States.

The expats forging new lives in Puerto Viejo are part of a wider exodus of Black Americans from the U.S. in recent years, with many leaving for reasons that are explicitly political.

Exhausted by anti-Black discrimination and violence back home, they are building communities in countries such as Portugal, Ghana, Colombia and Mexico.

Often referred to as “Blaxit,” which combines the words “Black” and “exit,” the movement has been boosted by social media, where influencers share inspirational posts about their odysseys abroad and challenge others to join them.

It is also aided by a new industry of businesses that provide relocation services specifically for African Americans, and by Facebook and WhatsApp groups such as “Black in Bali,” “Black in Tulum” and “Brothas & Sistas in Mexico City,” whose members share tips on everything from how to pay local bills to where to find good hairstylists.

There are no official statistics on how many have left the country. But academics say it may be one of the most significant emigrations of African Americans since the first half of last century, when many Black artists decamped to Europe.

The late writer James Baldwin, who was part of that earlier wave, said he moved to France in 1948 “with the theory that nothing worse would happen to me there than had already happened to me here.”

Seven decades later, the U.S. is still grappling with racism, with Black people twice as likely as white people to be killed by police and Black workers earning less on the dollar than their white counterparts. In Florida, a new law forces teachers to downplay the impact of slavery, and across the country, far-right activists are seeking bans on books touching on Black history.

Americans of all races have been leaving the U.S. thanks to the pandemic shift to remote work. But for Black Americans, many of whom were distraught over the political and racial divisions the pandemic years highlighted, the decision to move abroad is about more than just saving money or having an adventure.

“It gave people time to question,” said Chrishan Wright, who launched a podcast in 2020 that documented her move to Lisbon. She now works as a relocation consultant and is helping about a dozen families restart in Portugal. They are mostly Black professionals with children, she said, in search of “a better quality of life without the emotional and psychological strain.”

 

Why stay in an abusive relationship with a country that has been trying to kill us for 400 years? I don't have an answer for that. But for more and more of us, the search for that answer is taking us outside America, and frankly I don't find anything wrong with that. "Nobody loves America like Black folk" the saying goes, "But America never loved us back."

 

When you fall out of love, there's increasingly little reason to stay.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.  Even ex-pats.

Hunting The Hunter, Con't

With a House Republican-caused government shutdown now less than 72 hours away, those self-same House Republicans are concentrating on the real issues: Hunter Biden's tax records.

 

Republican members of the House Ways and Means Committee released more than 700 pages of IRS whistleblower documents Wednesday, providing ample fodder for the newly launched House GOP impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden that will center on his son Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.

Democrats were quick to push back, asserting that GOP lawmakers cherry-picked information that gives a distorted view of the allegations against the Bidens.

Following the committee’s 24-17 party-line vote to release of the documents to the public, Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) asserted that the new materials — which include an assortment of business tax returns, interview transcripts and emails between investigators and prosecutors — show that Hunter Biden used his father’s lofty political standing as part of a global family influence-peddling scheme.

“This evidence makes clear Hunter Biden’s business was selling the Biden ‘brand’ and that access to the White House was his family’s most valuable asset,” Smith said.

Democrats panned committee Republicans for focusing on the impeachment effort as a government shutdown looms on Sunday that could put millions of federal employees out of work. Ranking Member Richard Neal (D-Mass.) said in his opening statement at the closed-door session that the whistleblower testimony consisted of uncorroborated allegations and heavily redacted documents cherry-picked by the IRS whistleblowers.

“Why waste precious time that could be put toward keeping the government open? Other than to distract from reality,” Neal said in the statement he provided reporters, noting that there’s pressure on Republican tax writers to release the material before House Oversight Committee James Comer’s (R-Ky.) first impeachment hearing, scheduled for Thursday morning.

 

Except of course, the documents don't actually show he was selling access to the WHite House. They showed he was in business with foreign nationals, which is okay when fraudster Donald Trump does it, I guess. 

Again, you'd think Jason Smith would look at the tax info from Jared (the Gallaria of Crime) Kushner and Ivanka Trump, which actually does show massive pay-for-play White House influence peddling to the House of Saud to the tune of $2 billion, but nobody on the R side seems to care about that.

Alas, today's impeachment hearings are more important. I guess when Grandma and Grandpa stop getting government checks, somebody might notice.

The Road To Gilead Does Not Go Through Mexico

With a new sweeping legal ruling where Mexico's Supreme Court has decriminalized abortion in all states in the country this week, our southern neighbor is now infinitely more enlightened than America is on women's rights.

Mexico’s Supreme Court threw out all federal criminal penalties for abortion Wednesday, ruling that national laws prohibiting the procedure are unconstitutional and violate women’s rights in a sweeping decision that extended Latin American’s trend of widening abortion access.

The high court ordered that abortion be removed from the federal penal code. The ruling will require the federal public health service and all federal health institutions to offer abortion to anyone who requests it.

“No woman or pregnant person, nor any health worker, will be able to be punished for abortion,” the Information Group for Chosen Reproduction, known by its Spanish initials GIRE, said in a statement.

Some 20 Mexican states, however, still criminalize abortion. While judges in those states will have to abide by the court’s decision, further legal work will be required to remove all penalties.

Celebration of the ruling soon spilled out onto social media.

“Today is a day of victory and justice for Mexican women!” Mexico’s National Institute for Women wrote in a message on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. The government organization called the decision a “big step” toward gender equality.

Sen. Olga Sánchez Cordero, a former Supreme Court justice, applauded the ruling, saying on X that it represented an advance toward “a more just society in which the rights of all are respected.” She called on Mexico’s Congress to pass legislation in response.

But others in the highly religious country decried the decision. Irma Barrientos, director of the Civil Association for the Rights of the Conceived, said opponents will continue the fight against expanded abortion access.

“We’re not going to stop,” Barrientos said. “Let’s remember what happened in the United States. After 40 years, the Supreme Court reversed its abortion decision, and we’re not going to stop until Mexico guarantees the right to life from the moment of conception.”

The court said on X that “the legal system that criminalized abortion” in Mexican federal law was unconstitutional because it “violates the human rights of women and people with the ability to gestate.”

The decision came two years after the court ruled that abortion was not a crime in one northern state. That ruling set off a slow state-by-state process of decriminalizing it.

Last week, the central state of Aguascalientes became the 12th state to drop criminal penalties.

Abortion-rights activists will have to continue seeking legalization state by state, though Wednesday’s decision should make that easier. State legislatures can also act on their own to erase abortion penalties.

For now, the ruling does not mean that every Mexican women will be able to access the procedure immediately, explained Fernanda Díaz de León, sub-director and legal expert for women’s rights group IPAS.

What it does do — in theory — is obligate federal agencies to provide the care to patients. That’s likely to have a cascade of effects.

Díaz de León said removing the federal ban takes away another excuse used by care providers to deny abortions in states where the procedure is no longer a crime.

It also allows women with formal employment who are part of the social security system and government employees to seek the procedure in federal institutions in states where the abortion is still criminalized, she said.

Díaz de León and officials at other feminist organizations worry that women, particularly in more conservative areas, may still be denied abortions.

“It’s a very important step,” Díaz de León said. But “we need to wait to see how this is going to be applied and how far it reaches.”

The battle to decriminalize the state laws will continue, but I don't see how they will survive in the wake of this ruling.

And yet in the US, we're headed for more bans and more evidence that the country being divided into states where a woman has a right to her own reproductive system and states where she 100% does not is unsustainable federally.

I expect a federal ruling is going to come sooner rather than later where there's five votes to say that the availability of abortions in blue states is infringing upon red state bans, and that it's the blue states who are wrong and that the whole thing has to go. That's the endgame.

How quickly we get there depends on a lot of things, but the more Republicans get into power, the faster this handbasket goes to hell.

 

Increasingly, America is the outlier rogue nation that other, more civilized countries are warning their own people about, and with good reason.

Last Call For The Revolutions Will Be Televised

In the last six weeks, Niger overthrew its western-friendly government causing EU to scramble for possible sanctions,  and now Gabon's five decade long Bongo dynasty has been deposed.

Military officers in Gabon said they were seizing power Wednesday, just minutes after President Ali Bongo was declared the winner of a controversial election marred by violence and allegations of vote rigging.

The officers who appeared on state television Wednesday announced the closure of borders and dissolved state institutions including the Senate, National Assembly and Constitutional Court. They said in a later statement that Bongo was under house arrest.

Bongo, who was seeking a third term in office, came to power following the death of his father, Omar Bongo, in 2009, after more than four decades in power. Both men were key allies of the oil-rich country’s former colonial power, France, and the family is believed to have amassed significant wealth — which is the subject of a judicial investigation in France.

Gabon is generally considered more stable than other countries that have experienced unrest in recent years, but it now appears set to join a growing list of junta-led states — including Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea, Mali and Sudan — that create a geographical belt of turmoil across sub-Saharan Africa.

Rebel soldiers in Niger deposed the country’s Western-allied president, Mohamed Bazoum, on July 26 amid political upheaval, a rise in Islamist extremism and growing Russian influence across the region.

Britain, France, Germany and the European Union announced the end of aid to Niger after the ouster, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States could follow suit. So far, President Biden has not labeled the situation a coup.

A key regional bloc, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), said in August that it was prepared for military intervention and had decided on a “D-Day” for intervention — though it did not give a date and said diplomacy was still possible.

Coup supporters in Niger’s capital, Niamey, as well as in neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali, have been spotted waving Russian flags, and experts say uncertainty around the coup leaders’ motivation may hamper Western attempts to restore Bazoum through diplomacy.

The coup has also thrust the fate of Niger’s uranium to center stage as experts say European countries may have to grapple with the effects on the nuclear industry — especially in France, which evacuated European nationals from the country but has resisted an ultimatum from the coup leaders for its ambassador to leave.

 

The sub-Saharan belt of revolutions, coups, and juntas stretches coast-to-coast from Guinea in the West to Sudan in the east, to show you just how expansive this has been in the last two-plus years.

 

The world may be focused on Ukraine and Europe right now, but Africa is where the seeds of change are spreading like wildfire, and they are being watered by blood and tears.

Russian To Final Judgment

Vladimir Putin wasn't going to leave Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin around as a loose end much longer, not after Wagner's putative revolt against Putin's rule earlier this summer was shut down in under 24 hours and as widely expected, apparently that loose end got snipped Wednesday.

 

Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passenger list of a plane that crashed in Russia's Tver region on Wednesday, according to the press service of Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency.

Ten people were killed in the crash near the town of Kuzhenkino, including Prigozhin.

"An investigation has been launched into the crash of the Embraer aircraft, which occurred tonight in the Tver region. According to the list of passengers, among them is the name and surname of Yevgeny Prigozhin," the department said in a statement.

Among the 10 dead were three crew members and seven passengers. The seven passengers were identified as Sergey Propustin, Evgeniy Makaryan, Aleksandr Totmin, Valeriy Chekalov, Dmitriy Utkin, Nikolay Matuseev and Prigozhin.

The crew was identified as Cmdr. Aleksei Levshin, co-pilot Rustam Karimov and flight attendant Kristina Raspopova.

The Federal Air Transport Agency said the plane was en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in a statement, "The demonstrative elimination of Prigozhin and the Wagner command two months after the coup attempt is a signal from Putin to Russia's elites ahead of the 2024 elections."

President Joe Biden has been briefed on the plane crash in Russia, according to the White House.

Biden told reporters he didn't "know for a fact what happened, but I'm not surprised."

"There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind, but I don’t know enough to know the answer," he told reporters in Lake Tahoe, where he is on vacation.

 

I mean it's possible that Prigozhin is still alive somewhere, but I'm pretty sure whatever plans Putin has for him at this point, he wishes he had been killed in a plane crash if that's the case. 

Russian officials are basically going SURE IS A SHAME HE'S DEAD, ALEXA PLAY BACK IN THE USSR right now, and I strongly doubt we'll ever really know what happened.

But Putin knows, and brother, he's not telling.

Last Call For Talking It Out

With Niger's military junta now firmly in control of the country, US diplomacy is springing into action to try to limit the volatility in the region.

Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland met with some of the members of the military junta in Niger Monday – a significant diplomatic push to restore democratic rule in what has been a key US partner nation.

Nuland met with Gen. Moussa Salaou Barmou, the self-proclaimed chief of defense, and three colonels supporting him for more than two hours for “extremely frank and at times quite difficult” conversations, she said.

Nuland is the highest level US official to meet in person with the military putschists. Her trip to the capital city of Niamey – made at the request of Secretary of State Antony Blinken – comes less than two weeks after members of Niger’s presidential guard seized power and a day after the deadline set by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for the military junta to restore democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum to power or risk a military intervention.

Nuland told reporters Monday that the US “kept open the door to continue talking” and urged Barmou and his allies “to hear our offer to try to work with them to solve this diplomatically and return to constitutional order.”

“I hope they will keep the door open to diplomacy. We made that proposal,” Nuland said. “Their ideas do not comport with the Constitution. And that would be difficult in terms of our relationship if that’s the path they take, but we gave them a number of options to keep talking and we hope they take us up on that.”

Nuland noted that she was not granted a meeting with the self-proclaimed new leader of Niger, General Abdourahmane Tiani, “so we were left to have to depend on Mr. Barmou to make clear again what is at stake.”

The US was pushing for a negotiated solution in Niger, Nuland explained, but “it was not easy to get traction there” because the putschists “are quite firm in their view of how they want to proceed.”

Nuland said she was frank about what is at risk if they do not reverse course and that she explained “very clearly” the US’ legal responsibilities if the military takeover is formally declared a coup, telling them that “it is not our desire to go there, but they may push us to that point.”

The US is required under law to cut foreign and military assistance to the Nigerien government if a formal coup designation is made. On Friday, Blinken announced the US had paused certain assistance.

“That assistance will affect development aid to the government, security aid to the government. It’s a significant amount,” State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said Monday.

 

The last thing we need is another forest fire to try to put out with US troops, so I'm hoping very much that Nuland can find the price for the Niger junta to accept. Something tells me however that the US doesn't have nearly as much leverage right now than it did, say, in January 2021 before Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

 

We'll see.

 

Last Call For Ukraine On The Membrane, Con't

Once again, Russia is threatening global nuclear holocaust if Ukraine is successful in retaking the Donbas region from Russia's already illegal invasion.

 

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Russia would “have to” use nuclear weapons if Ukrainian forces threaten Russian territory in their ongoing counteroffensive, in a message on his social media accounts Monday.

Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons during the war.

“Imagine if the offensive, which is backed by NATO, was a success and they tore off a part of our land, then we would be forced to use a nuclear weapon according to the rules of a decree from the president of Russia,” he said Monday.

“There would simply be no other option. So our enemies should pray for our [warriors’ success]. They are making sure that a global nuclear fire is not ignited,” he added.

Medvedev was apparently referring to Russia’s nuclear weapon use policy, signed by Putin in 2020, that says Moscow may deploy nuclear weapons Russia’s nuclear weapons “when the very existence of the state is put under threat.”

Russia has illegally annexed entire regions of eastern Ukraine amid the war, claiming they are now part of Russia’s homeland. Ukraine has also recently ramped up attacks on Crimea, which Russia has occupied since 2014, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv would increase attacks within Russia.

Medvedev was vague about what land would risk a nuclear response if lost. He has frequently telegraphed his threats of nuclear warfare, often bolstering actions or declarations from Putin, including when the current Russian president last fall said nuclear weapons were “not a bluff.”

Putin has doubled down on his nuclear blackmail in recent months, transferring tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus. The weapons have a smaller yield upon detonation than larger weapons of mass destruction, but they still have devastating capabilities.

Putin has in part justified the transfer of the tactical weapons because the U.S. holds low-yield nuclear bombs in European allied nations.

This is not the response of a rational nation-state, and it goes well beyond saber-rattling. This is going into the armory, collecting all the one- and two-handed swords, dropping them on a metal floor at the same time and recording the noise for future broadcasting in the same way that requests to Twitter's PR department are returned with the poop emoji.

It's a bluff, but one that should be accompanied with consequences by the global community.

Where On Earth Is Qin Gang?

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang has been AWOL for the last month or so, and now he's officially been replaced in the post by his predecessor, Wang Yi.

 

China’s foreign minister Qin Gang was dramatically ousted on Tuesday after a prolonged absence from public view and replaced by his predecessor in a surprising and highly unusual shake-up of the country’s foreign policy leadership.

The sudden move, approved by the top decision-making body of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, comes as mystery has swirled around the fate of Qin, who has not been seen in public for a month.

Qin, 57, a career diplomat and trusted aide of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, had only been appointed foreign minister in December after serving as China’s ambassador to Washington.

No reason has yet been given for Qin’s departure but his predecessor Wang Yi will now step back into the role, authorities confirmed.

Wang, who was foreign minister from 2013 to 2022, now serves as director of the foreign affairs arm of the ruling Communist Party, a position which makes him China’s top diplomat.

The appointment of the new foreign minister occurred during a meeting of the China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee meeting on Tuesday. The meeting was abruptly announced on Monday in a deviation from usual precedent.

The sudden move comes in the middle of a busy and important diplomatic period for China following its emergence from its pandemic isolation earlier this year and as Beijing tries to mend strained relationships with international partners.

The high-profile diplomat has not been seen in public since June 25, after he met with officials from Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Russia in Beijing.

In his last public appearance, a smiling Qin was seen walking side by side with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko, who flew to Beijing to meet with Chinese officials after a short-lived insurrection by the Wagner mercenary group in Russia.

 

That last paragraph is the real story, "Chinese Foreign Minister Goes Missing After Meeting With Russians." Whatever Qin's fate actually was, the Chinese aren't saying and neither are the Russians.

Just another reminder that for all the fiction about BRICS taking over as the new economic and military supergroup, the reality is that both China and Russia are in economic tatters right now, and the rest of BRICS is in even worse shape.

That of course includes their diplomatic corps.

Last Call For Ridin' With Biden, Eurotrip Edition

President Biden will be in Europe this week, visiting King Charles III of Britain on the way to a NATO summit in Lithuania where Ukraine and Sweden's entry into the group is the top billing.

President Joe Biden begins a five-day swing through Europe on Sunday with a focus on NATO gathering later this week in Lithuania, as allied countries look to boost support for Ukraine and the possibility of Sweden's approval to join the military alliance.

"We're looking forward to a busy week in Europe. And we're looking forward to the president being able to further solidify, strengthen and give momentum to the strong united alliance that has been standing up so effectively against Russian aggression," White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters Friday afternoon.

The president begins his trip in London, where he will meet King Charles III at Windsor Castle on July 10, the first time Biden will meet with the king since his coronation. First Lady Jill Biden represented the United States at the coronation with their granddaughter Finnegan in May.

"While in London, he will meet with King Charles at Windsor Castle and engage with a forum that will focus on mobilizing climate finance especially bringing private finance off the sidelines for clean energy deployment and adaptation in developing countries," Sullivan said Friday.

Biden is also expected to meet with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak -- the sixth time the leaders will meet in the past six months. They last met at the White House in June.

From London, Biden heads to Vilnius, Lithuania, to attend the 74th NATO summit -- which is expected to center around the alliance's support for Ukraine amid Russia's ongoing invasion.

"Ukraine will not be joining NATO coming out of this summit," Sullivan stressed, but he added there will be discussion of "what steps are necessary as it continues along its path."

"Vilnius will be an important moment on that pathway towards membership because the United States, our NATO allies and Ukraine will have the opportunity discuss the reforms that are still necessary for Ukraine to come up to NATO standards. So, this will, in fact, be a milestone. But Ukraine still has further steps it needs to take before membership in NATO," Sullivan added.

Ukraine's counteroffensive is underway and has allowed their forces to regain territory in the southeast, but President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he'd like it to be accomplished sooner. He's repeatedly asked the U.S. for F-16 fighter aircraft, which he says would give them an "opportunity to move faster."

The Biden administration had resisted that request but is now working with allies to train Ukrainians on F-16s and eventually help get them jets for the war.

The NATO summit also takes place with an additional member, Finland, after being approved in April, and a lingering question of whether Turkey and Hungary will drop objections to Sweden joining the alliance.

 

The real draw here is what Ankara wants from NATO to allow Sweden to join, because as Vox's Jen Kirby explains, it's complicated, man.

All NATO members must approve new ones, so Erdoğan’s opposition is effectively a veto. The Turkish president is not alone; Hungary’s Viktor Orbán is also holding out, but Hungary has signaled it won’t be the final roadblock. Erdoğan has continued to insist that Sweden has not done enough to crack down on people in Sweden with ties to Kurdish militants and other groups that Turkey has deemed terrorists.

Sweden has tried to appease Turkey, including passing a new anti-terrorism law that went into effect June 1. But Erdoğan’s definition of terrorists is pretty expansive, and often includes dissidents and others critical of his regime. And even if Turkey has a case, Sweden has to follow due process and rule of law and can’t just, say, extradite a bunch of people on a whim. A recent Quran-burning outside a Stockholm mosque has added to tensions, as Turkey interprets these as Sweden’s permissive attitude toward anti-Islamic protests rather than freedom of speech.

Sweden, alongside NATO allies, has been doing some furious diplomacy to try to persuade Turkey to approve Sweden’s bid. Swedish and Turkish officials talked Thursday, with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg saying they made “good progress” but issues remained unresolved. Stoltenberg will meet Monday with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and Erdoğan, a day before the Vilnius summit kicks off.

Until then, the impasse prevails. Which means the thing everyone really wanted to happen — that Sweden would join NATO, becoming its 32nd member — might not happen this week in Lithuania. This will deny NATO its unity narrative in Vilnius, something the alliance very much wants to project.

But it is more than just the storyline: Sweden is cooperating and planning closely with NATO, but it remains outside the alliance, and its mutual defense protections. If Erdoğan won’t budge here, after everyone shuttling to meet with Turkish officials, after Swedish concessions, and during the military alliance equivalent of the Super Bowl, it’s not clear when he would — which could leave Sweden stuck outside the alliance at time when NATO is trying to redefine and reinvigorate itself amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

 

The proverbial Siberian Kodiak in the room is of course Putin, whom Erdogan wants to keep on his good side as much as he wants to be buddies with Biden.  We'll see if diplomacy can get things moving this week in Vilnius.

P.S. Can you imagine the disaster that would be Trump in the White House right now at this juncture?

Russian To Judgment: Well That Was Fast

Friday night's coup in Russia was over by Saturday night, as Putin supposedly has cut a deal with Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group mercs, but at this point both Putin and Prigozhin, and the war on Ukraine, are both on borrowed time and everyone knows it.

 

A short recap of the past 24 hours in Russia reads like the backstory for a fanciful episode of Madam Secretary or The West Wing. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the brutal convicted criminal who leads the Wagner mercenary group, declared war on the Russian Ministry of Defense and marched into the city of Rostov-on-Don. He then headed north for Moscow, carrying his demand for the ousting of Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. The city went on alert.

Prigozhin and his men came within 125 miles of the capital—that is, closer to Moscow than Philadelphia is to Washington, D.C. He then said that a deal had been struck and that Wagner’s forces were turning around to avoid bloodshed. Apparently, however, the blood Prigozhin saved from being shed was his own. If the “deal” announced by the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov accurately reflects an actual settlement, Prigozhin has in the space of a day gone from being a powerful warlord to a man living on borrowed time in a foreign country, waiting for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inevitable retribution.

According to Peskov, Russia is dropping all charges against Prigozhin, who must now go into exile in Belarus. Wagner fighters who did not take part in the rebellion will be given amnesty, and then they will sign contracts that will bring them under the control of Shoigu’s Ministry of Defense. I suggested yesterday that Shoigu’s attempt to seize Wagner’s men and dissolve the force might be one of the reasons Prigozhin went on the march. This outcome is a defeat of the first order for Prigozhin, who has now lost everything except his life.

We can at this point only speculate about why Prigozhin undertook this putsch, and why it all failed so quickly. One possibility is that Prigozhin had allies in Moscow who promised to support him, and somehow that support fell through: Perhaps his friends in the Kremlin got cold feet, or were less numerous than Prigozhin realized, or never existed at all. Prigozhin, after all, is not exactly a military genius or a diplomat; he’s a violent, arrogant, emotional man who may well have embarked on this scheme huffing from a vat of his own overconfidence.

Nonetheless, this bizarre episode is not a win for Putin. The Russian dictator has been visibly wounded, and he will now bear the permanent scar of political vulnerability. Instead of looking like a decisive autocrat (or even just a mob boss in command of his crew), Putin left Moscow after issuing a short video in which he was visibly angry and off his usual self-assured game. Putin reportedly worries a great deal about being assassinated, and so perhaps he wanted to hunker down until he had more clarity about who might be in league with Prigozhin. But whatever the reason, he vowed to deal with Prigozhin decisively and then blew town, probably to his retreat at Valdai, in a move that looked weak and disorganized.

Bringing in President Aleksandr Lukashenko as a broker at first seemed an odd choice on Putin’s part, but it makes a bit more sense in light of the supposed deal. The Belarusian autocrat could personally vouch for Prigozhin’s safe passage; Lukashenko has no connections in Moscow that are more important than Putin; he does not live or work in the Kremlin and so he was a secure choice to carry out Putin’s terms; he owes Putin his continued rule and has no reason to betray him. Also, sending in Lukashenko was something of a power move: Putin is a former intelligence officer, and in that world, Prigozhin is merely a scummy convict. The two men were friendly before this, but they were not equals. It would have been a huge loss of face for the president of a great power to negotiate with his former chef in person.

Prigozhin gets to stay alive, at least for the moment, but his life as he knew it (and maybe in any sense) is over. Putin, however, is now politically weaker than ever. The once unchallengeable czar is no longer invincible. The master of the Kremlin had to make a deal with a convict—again, in Putin’s culture, among the lowest of the low—just to avert the shock and embarrassment of an armed march into the Russian capital while other Russians are fighting on the front lines in Ukraine.

Prigozhin drew blood and then walked away from a man who never, ever lets such a personal offense go unavenged. Putin, however, may have had no choice, which is yet another sign of his precarious situation. All of the options were terrifying: Ordering the Russian military to attack armed Russian men would have been a huge risk, especially because those men (and their hatred of the bureaucrats at the Defense Ministry) have at least some support among Russia’s officers and political elites. Killing Prigozhin outright was also a high-risk proposition; with their leader dead and the Russian military closing in, the Wagnerites might have decided to fight to the death.

This wound to Putin’s power goes deep, but how deep is difficult to gauge for now, especially because we do not know whether Shoigu or Gerasimov still have their jobs. And although the rebellion has taken Wagner off the field in Ukraine, Putin may still seek to cover this ignominious moment by escalating Russia’s brutality there. But two things appear certain. First, Putin has suffered a huge political blow, and he has survived by making deals both with Prigozhin and with his own colleagues in the Kremlin that are, by any definition, a humiliation. And second, Yevgeny Prigozhin has changed the Russian political environment surrounding Putin’s war in Ukraine.

Prigozhin’s rebellion and its effects will last beyond today, but how long he will live in Belarus—or stay alive in Belarus—to see how the rest of it plays out is unclear.

 

At this point nobody knows how this will end, and anyone who says they do is lying. But the current situation in both Ukraine and Russia is untenable. We've already seen one massive crack in the dam. More are coming. And Ukraine now has even more of a reason to fight back.

Last Call For Nobody's Business But The Turks, Con't

Turkey has once again elected Tayyip Erdogan as president, as his relentless two-decade rule continues.

President Tayyip Erdogan extended his two decades in power in elections on Sunday, winning a mandate to pursue increasingly authoritarian policies which have polarised Turkey and strengthened its position as a regional military power.

His challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, called it "the most unfair election in years" but did not dispute the outcome.

Official results showed Kilicdaroglu won 47.9% of the votes to Erdogan's 52.1%, pointing to a deeply divided nation.

The election had been seen as one of the most consequential yet for Turkey, with the opposition believing it had a strong chance of unseating Erdogan and reversing his policies after his popularity was hit by a cost-of-living crisis.

Instead, victory reinforced his image of invincibility, after he had already redrawn domestic, economic, security and foreign policy in the NATO member country of 85 million people.

The prospect of five more years of his rule was a major blow to opponents who accused him of undermining democracy as he amassed ever more power - a charge he denies.

In a victory speech in Ankara, Erdogan pledged to leave all disputes behind and unite behind national values and dreams but then switched gears, lashing out at the opposition and accusing Kilicdaroglu of siding with terrorists without providing evidence.

He said releasing former pro-Kurdish party leader Selahattin Demirtas, whom he branded a "terrorist," would not be possible under his governance.

Erdogan said inflation was Turkey's most urgent issue.

Kilicdaroglu's defeat will likely be mourned by Turkey's NATO allies which have been alarmed by Erdogan's ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who congratulated his "dear friend" on his victory.

 

At this point, Turkey walking away from NATO, Ukraine, and the EU seems more likely than not. Putin has been wanting to peel off Ankara from NATO for a while now, and with Erdogan having secured power for a fifth term, that's the immediate issue.

Turkey is the second-largest NATO military, behind the US. If they decide to pull the plug on arming Ukraine, it's going to be a bloody summer.

Meanwhile, domestically, Erdogan won based on promises to fix inflation. The world markets don't believe him for a moment.

The Turkish lira sank to a fresh record low Monday as incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdogan secured his victory in the 2023 presidential election, extending his rule into a third decade in power.

The currency briefly touched 20.0608 against the greenback at around 11 a.m. Monday morning local time, surpassing a low seen last week. It was at 20.0913 against the dollar near 12:45 London time.

“We have a pretty pessimistic outlook on the Turkish Lira as a result of Erdogan retaining office after the election,” Wells Fargo’s Emerging Markets Economist and FX Strategist Brendan McKenna told CNBC.

McKenna forecasts that the lira will reach a new record low of 23 against the dollar by end of the second quarter, and then 25 as early as next year. It has lost some 77% of its value against the dollar over the last five years. He expects Turkey’s unorthodox monetary and economic policy frameworks to remain in place going forward.

Turkey’s monetary policy places an emphasis on the pursuit of growth and export competition rather than taming inflation, and Erdogan endorses the unconventional view that raising interest rates increases inflation.

“The current set up is just not sustainable,” said BlueBay Asset Management’s Senior EM Sovereign Strategist Timothy Ash via email.

“With limited FX reserves and massively negative real interest rates the pressure on the lira is heavy,” Ash continued.

Istanbul’s main index, the Turkey ISE National 100 gained roughly 4.31%.

Credit default swaps, which measure the cost of insuring exposure to Turkish debt, also spiked.

Five-year CDS were trading at around 664.18 basis points, marking a 20% climb from the 550 basis point level prior to the run-offs, according to Refinitiv data.

These developments reflect market participants’ belief that orthodox policies, which were promised by the political opposition, were the only way to get the Turkish economy out of a potential crisis, said Selva Demiralp, a professor of economics at Koç University.

Meanwhile, MarketVector’s CEO Steven Schoenfeld wrote in an e-mail. “If the Lira continues to plunge and inflation surges again due to the policy of inappropriately-low interest rates, we could see a repeat of the ‘flight to safety’ allocation to Turkish equities by local investors which moved the market sharply higher in 2022.”

 

So nobody's happy in Turkey right now except, of course, for Erdogan.

Sunday Long Read: Record Breaking

Like everything else in the internet age, the Guinness Book of World Records has had to make some adjustments over the years, and while the record-keeping keeps on keeping on, not everyone is happy with the new official record of superlatives, as The Guardian's Imogen West-Knights records for us in this week's Sunday Long Read.

 

A couple of summers ago, I went to the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin. I’d spent a lot of time in the city before, but I’d never visited the brewery. The tour is good. You can learn about how barrels are made, get your face printed in the head of a pint and, at the end, have a drink in a bar with a 360-degree view of the city. But what stayed with me most was something I saw there by accident.

One of the exhibit rooms was closed off, but only partially. Curiosity got the better of me, and behind the door, I found a room that was empty but for a table. On the table, there were a handful of editions of the Guinness Book of Records. I hadn’t thought about this book since I was in primary school. Back then, the Guinness Book of Records meant a big, brightly coloured, hardback volume containing 500-odd pages of pictures of people doing things like growing their hair very long or juggling knives. These were books that children gleefully unwrapped on Christmas Day and argued over with their siblings. As I flicked through the old editions – 1994, 2005, 2012 – I thought about the connection between Guinness the stout and Guinness the book for the first time, as well as a hundred questions I hadn’t thought to ask as an eight-year-old marvelling at the man with the stretchiest skin or the most needles inserted into his head.

Even now, in the age of YouTube and TikTok, when you can catapult yourself into fame, riches and recognition for feats of all kinds with nothing more complicated than your phone, the Guinness Book of Records continues, somewhat incredibly, to exist. The book, which since 1999 has gone by Guinness World Records, is still an overwhelming blizzard of wacky pictures and hard data.

But the company that publishes the book, also called Guinness World Records, is not the same as when I held my first annual, the green and silver 2002 edition. Sales of the book have declined in recent times, and the company has had to find new ways to make money – not all of which have met with the approval of the GWR old guard. When I spoke to Anna Nicholas, who worked as the head of PR for the book in the 80s and 90s, she lamented how things had changed: records are now more sensationalist, she said, to meet the demand of an audience that can see extraordinary things whenever they like on social media. “Guinness seemed to have had no issues with shamelessly and unapologetically selling out its devoted audience,” claimed one once-ardent fan in a 2020 blogpost.

It is strange to think of Guinness World Records – a business named after a beer company, which catalogues humanity’s most batshit endeavours – as the kind of entity that could sell out. At first glance, it seems like accusing Alton Towers or Pizza Express of selling out. But the deeper I delved into the world of record breaking, the more sense it made. In spite of its absurdity, or maybe because of it, record breaking is a reflection of our deepest interests and desires. Look deeply enough at a man attempting to break the record for most spoons on a human body, or the woman seeking to become the oldest salsa dancer in the world, and you can find yourself starting to believe that you’re peering into humanity’s soul.

 

I certainly remember having a copy of the GBWR as a kid picked up at a Scholastic Book Fair and man I wore that thing out, fascinated by the trivia and pictures of the bizarre, but fame, even obscure Guinness records fame, still comes at a price.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith has issued a subpoena for Trump's foreign business dealings during his White House tenure, implying that Trump's illegal trove of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago may not have only been shown to foreign entities, but that Trump directly profited from them, something I've been saying was a distinct possibility from the start.

 

Federal prosecutors overseeing the investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of classified documents have issued a subpoena for information about Mr. Trump’s business dealings in foreign countries since he took office, according to two people familiar with the matter.

It remains unclear precisely what the prosecutors were hoping to find by sending the subpoena to Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, or when it was issued. But the subpoena suggests that investigators have cast a wider net than previously understood as they scrutinize whether he broke the law in taking sensitive government materials with him upon leaving the White House and then not fully complying with demands for their return.

The subpoena — drafted by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith — sought details on the Trump Organization’s real estate licensing and development dealings in seven countries: China, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, according to the people familiar with the matter. The subpoena sought the records for deals reached since 2017, when Mr. Trump was sworn in as president.

The Trump Organization swore off any foreign deals while he was in the White House, and the only such deal Mr. Trump is known to have made since then was with a Saudi-based real estate company to license its name to a housing, hotel and golf complex that will be built in Oman. He struck that deal last fall just before announcing his third presidential campaign.

The push by Mr. Smith’s prosecutors to gain insight into the former president’s foreign business was part of a subpoena — previously reported by The New York Times — that was sent to the Trump Organization and sought records related to Mr. Trump’s dealings with a Saudi-backed golf venture known as LIV Golf, which is holding tournaments at some of his golf clubs. (Mr. Trump’s arrangement with LIV Golf was reached well after he removed documents from the White House.)

Collectively, the subpoena’s demand for records related to the golf venture and other foreign ventures since 2017 suggests that Mr. Smith is exploring whether there is any connection between Mr. Trump’s deal-making abroad and the classified documents he took with him when he left office.

It is unclear what material the Trump Organization has turned over in response to the subpoena or whether Mr. Smith has obtained any separate evidence supporting that theory. But since the start of their investigation, prosecutors have sought to understand not only what sorts of materials Mr. Trump removed from the White House, but also why he might have taken them with him.

Among the government documents discovered in Mr. Trump’s possession were some related to Middle Eastern countries, according to a person familiar with Mr. Smith’s work. And when the F.B.I. executed a search warrant in August 2022 at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, among the items recovered was material related to President Emmanuel Macron of France, according to court records.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to emails seeking comment. A Trump Organization spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

If there is such a link, and Jack Smith is definite;y digging into it, Trump will have literally been caught selling out his country to foes like China and to NATO allies like France and Turkey to line his own pockets, and that's not going to end well for him at all. Even the MAGA faithful will have to find some hesitation to back Trump selling state secrets to Beijing.

Which would mean of course that all of Trump's "China Joe" talk was -- surprise! -- projection of his own criminal activity.

If Smith's excavation pans out, this is how Trump gets what he deserves. And if Trump gets re-elected, killing this probe is his first order of business.

A Case Of Information Insecurity

Heads are set to roll after a suspect entered Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan's home, having gotten past his Secret Service detail undetected.

 

The U.S. Secret Service is investigating how a man entered the home of President Biden’s national security adviser in the middle of the night roughly two weeks ago without being detected by agents guarding his house, according to three government officials.

The unknown man walked into Jake Sullivan’s home at about 3 a.m. one day in late April and Sullivan confronted the individual, instructing him to leave, two of the people briefed on the incident said. There were no signs of forced entry at the home, according to one of the people.

Sullivan has a round-the-clock Secret Service detail. But agents stationed outside the house were unaware that an intruder had gotten inside the home, located in the West End neighborhood of Washington, until the man had already left and Sullivan came outside to alert the agents, the two people said.

The intruder appeared to be intoxicated and confused about where he was, according to people briefed on the incident. There is no evidence the person knew Sullivan or sought to harm him, they said.

In a statement, the Secret Service said it has launched an investigation into the incident and how the intruder accessed Sullivan’s home undetected.

The agency said that it considered the security breach a matter of significant concern.

“While the protectee was unharmed, we are taking this matter seriously and have opened a comprehensive mission assurance investigation to review all facets of what occurred,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in the statement, in response to an inquiry from The Washington Post. “Any deviation from our protective protocols is unacceptable and if discovered, personnel will be held accountable.”

Guglielmi said the Secret Service has deployed additional security precautions for Sullivan and around his home, pending the completion of the investigation.

The White House declined to comment.

 

Pretty scary moment there and I'm glad nobody was hurt, but yes, the results of the investigation need to include the agents who allowed this to be put somewhere else. This is not a job you say "Well, oops" on especially when National Security Advisers have been targeted in the past.

Hopefully the investigation will offer improvements and better operational guideline for the next team.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

Turns out part of those Discord leaks from last month where an Air Force reservist allegedly blabbed US military documents on Ukraine to his right-wing gaming buddies included information on PMC outfit Wagner Group offering to help Ukrainian forces because the Russians left the Wagner mercs they bought  high and dry to die in Bakhmut.

 

In late January, with his mercenary forces dying by the thousands in a fight for the ruined city of Bakhmut, Wagner Group owner Yevgeniy Prigozhin made Ukraine an extraordinary offer.

Prigozhin said that if Ukraine’s commanders withdrew their soldiers from the area around Bakhmut, he would give Kyiv information on Russian troop positions, which Ukraine could use to attack them. Prigozhin conveyed the proposal to his contacts in Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, with whom he has maintained secret communications during the course of the war, according to previously unreported U.S. intelligence documents leaked on the group-chat platform Discord.

Prigozhin has publicly feuded with Russian military commanders, who he furiously claims have failed to equip and resupply his forces, which have provided vital support to Moscow’s war effort. But he is also an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who might well regard Prigozhin’s offer to trade the lives of Wagner fighters for Russian soldiers as a treasonous betrayal.

The leaked document does not make clear which Russian troop positions Prigozhin offered to disclose.

Two Ukrainian officials confirmed that Prigozhin has spoken several times to the Ukrainian intelligence directorate, known as HUR. One official said that Prigozhin extended the offer regarding Bakhmut more than once, but that Kyiv rejected it because officials don’t trust Prigozhin and thought his proposals could have been disingenuous.

A U.S. official also cautioned that there are similar doubts in Washington about Prigozhin’s intentions. The Ukrainian and U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

In an interview with The Washington Post this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would not confirm the contacts with Prigozhin. “This is a matter of [military] intelligence,” he said. The Ukrainian leader also objected to airing classified information publicly and said he believed that the leaks had benefited Russia.

But there is no debating Prigozhin’s bitter frustration with the grinding fight in Bakhmut. He has complained, publicly and privately, that the Russian Defense Ministry has not given his fighters the ammunition and other resources they need to succeed. Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, has seen some of the bloodiest fighting of the war. Over the past few months, in a grinding back and forth measured by city blocks, Ukrainian and Russian forces have taken steep casualties.

Prigozhin, who promised to take control of the city by May 9, in time for Russia’s Victory Day celebrations, has recently threatened publicly to pull his forces out of the fight.

Other leaked documents reveal Russian Defense Ministry officials privately wondering how to respond to Prigozhin’s criticism of the military’s performance and his demands for more resources, which they apparently conceded were not illegitimate grievances. The documents also speak to a power struggle between Prigozhin and top officials, including Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

Against that tense backdrop, Prigohzin has carried on a secret relationship with Ukrainian intelligence that, in addition to phone calls, includes in-person meetings with HUR officers in an unspecified country in Africa, one document states. Wagner forces provide security to several governments on the continent.

The leaked U.S. intelligence shows Prigozhin bemoaning the heavy toll that fighting has taken on his own forces and urging Ukraine to strike harder against Russian troops.

 

Now, don't get me wrong, using mercenary groups composed of veterans in wars to bolster troops is a military strategy as old as human warfare itself. But so is turning on your employer when you leave the mercs in a hole to sacrifice themselves to save your own men.

War, war never changes, as the man once said.

Last Call For Chinese Firing Drill, Con't

As tensions between China and the US continue to worsen, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced today two Chinese nationals operating out of a Chinese police outpost in Chinatown, NYC were arrested for conducting foreign police operations on US soil.

 

Two men were arrested early Monday on federal charges accusing them of conspiring to act as agents of the People’s Republic of China in connection with a police outpost operated in Manhattan’s Chinatown, officials announced in a news conference.

The outpost, which court papers say was operated by Chinese security officials, is one of more than 100 Chinese police operations around the world that have unnerved diplomats and intelligence officials. The case represents the first time criminal charges have been brought in connection with such a police outpost, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

The charges against the men, Lu Jianwang, 61, and Chen Jinping, 59, grew out of an investigation by the F.B.I. and the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn into the Chinatown outpost, which conducted police operations without jurisdiction or diplomatic approval.

“Today’s charges are a crystal clear response to the P.R.C. that we are on to you, we know what you’re doing and we will stop it from happening in the United States of America,” Breon S. Peace, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said in announcing the charges with other officials. “We don’t need or want a secret police station in our great city,” he added.

Last fall, F.B.I. counterintelligence agents searched the outpost’s offices, located on the third floor of a nondescript building at 107 East Broadway, indicating an escalation in the global dispute over China’s efforts to police its diaspora far beyond its borders.

Officials in Ireland, Canada and the Netherlands have called on China to shut down similar operations in their countries. The F.B.I. raid in New York was the first known example of authorities seizing materials from one of the outposts.

It could not be immediately determined whether the men had lawyers. Mr. Lu, who is also known as Harry Lu, lives in the Bronx and maintains a residence in China. Mr. Chen lives in Manhattan. Both men are U.S. citizens.

In 2018 IRS filings, Mr. Lu was listed as the president of a nonprofit organization called the America Changle Association NY, whose offices housed the police outpost. A criminal complaint unsealed Monday said the group was formed in 2013 and lists its charitable mission as a “social gathering place” for people from the Chinese city of Fuzhou. The complaint says Mr. Lu serves as the association’s general adviser and Mr. Chen as its secretary general.

The two men were charged with obstruction of justice and accused of destroying text messages between themselves and their handler at China’s Ministry of Public Security in October 2022, around the time of the F.B.I. search, as well as conspiring to act as agents of the People’s Republic of China without registering with the Justice Department, as the law requires.

The charges were announced later Monday at a news conference in Brooklyn by Mr. Peace; the F.B.I. assistant director who leads the New York office, Michael Driscoll; and the Justice Department’s top national security official in Washington, David Newman.

The complaint accuses the men of assisting the Chinese government. Since 2015, according to the charges, Mr. Lu participated in counter-protests in Washington, D.C., against members of the Falun Gong, a religion prohibited under Chinese law.

More recently, the complaint says, they have helped operate the police outpost for the Fuzhou Municipal Security Bureau, a branch of the nation’s Ministry of Public Security, the nation’s intelligence, security and secret police.

When news of the search in Lower Manhattan was first reported in January, the Chinese Embassy in Washington downplayed the role of the outposts, saying they were staffed by volunteers who helped Chinese nationals perform routine tasks like renewing their driver’s licenses back home.

But The New York Times reviewed Chinese state news media reports in which the police and local Chinese officials described the operations very differently.

The officials, cited by name, trumpeted the effectiveness of the offices, frequently referred to as overseas police service centers. In some of the reports, the outposts were described as “collecting intelligence” and solving crimes abroad without the involvement of local officials.

Those public statements left it murky who exactly was running the offices. In some instances, they were described as being led by volunteers; in others, by staff members.

 

Yeah, these "Help Centers" are straight up Chinese police outposts used to keep tabs on Chinese dissidents living abroad.  The fact that these centers are operating out in the open and conducting intelligence operations in broad daylight might be something of an issue, and it's not just here in the US that these outposts exist, either.

I'm glad that the DoJ is moving to interfere with these outfits. NYC can't be the only one in the US, either.

It's time to shut them all down, frankly.