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alula @alula.bsky.social · 4d

Famine in Tigray: Hunger and Humiliation worldpeacefoundation.org/publication/...

Famine in Tigray: Hunger and Humiliation - World Peace Foundation

Famine in Tigray was not only about biological deprivation but also about humiliation and dehumanization, including Tigray's middle class.

worldpeacefoundation.org

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alula @alula.bsky.social · 5d

Is that better or worse than the president apparently communicating to his cabinet through Truth Social dms

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alula @alula.bsky.social · 11d

Everyone angrily replying to you in favor of harassment not realizing they are the baddies 😂

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Jay 🦋 @jay.bsky.team · 11d

You could try a poster’s strike. I hear that works

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Ian Carrillo @iansociologo.bsky.social · 11d

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Why Underachievers Dominate Secret Police Organizations: Evidence from Autocratic Argentina
Adam Scharpf and Christian Gläßel

Autocrats depend on a capable secret police. Anecdotal evidence, however, often characterizes agents as surprisingly mediocre in skill and intellect. To explain this puzzle, this article focuses on the career incentives underachieving individuals face in the regular security apparatus. Low-performing officials in hierarchical organizations have little chance of being promoted or filling lucrative positions. To salvage their careers, these officials are willing to undertake burdensome secret police work. Using data on all 4,287 officers who served in autocratic Argentina (1975-83), we study biographic differences between secret police agents and the entire recruitment pool. We find that low-achieving officers were stuck within the regime hierarchy, threatened with discharge, and thus more likely to join the secret police for future benefits. The study demonstrates how state bureaucracies breed mundane career concerns that produce willing enforcers and cement violent regimes. This has implications for the understanding of autocratic consolidation and democratic breakdown.

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alula @alula.bsky.social · 12d

If Biden is the reason, what good is a deal if it doesn’t outlast Trump being in office?

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Aaron Ross Powell ☸️ @aaronrosspowell.com · 12d

My wife is an elementary gifted ed specialist. The idea that gifted kids either don't exist or don't benefit from gifted education services is both wrong and harmful to those kids. Phasing out gifted programs is stupid. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/n...

Mamdani Says He Would Phase Out N.Y.C. Gifted Program for Early Grades

www.nytimes.com

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alula @alula.bsky.social · 12d

Freeze tuition and cap the number of students who actually pay full price

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alula @alula.bsky.social · 13d

Thank you for your hard work on this!

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Zecharias Zelalem @zekuzelalem.bsky.social · 17d

THREAD: this investigation took up over half my year, but it's here in @thecontinent.org:
A Djiboutian drone strike in January was depicted as a army operation targeting rebels. It was actually a massacre of civilians. The bloodshed & coverup implicating Ethiopia, Djibouti, France & Turkiye.
#OSINT

The Continent 27 SEPTEMBER 2025 | ISSUE 215
15
INVESTIGATION
The Djiboutian massacre
Ethiopia won’t acknowledge
Djibouti drones killed eight people on the other side of its
border with Ethiopia. Djibouti claimed they were terrorists.
Ethiopia said nothing. This investigation found that some of
the dead were Ethiopians, revealing another episode in Addis’s
tendency to let its neighbours kill its citizens with impunity.
Crossing the line: Djibouti’s bombs landed inside Ethiopia, killing civilians – not armed fighters.
zecharias zelalem
On 30 January this year, a drone manned
from Djibouti dropped a bomb on a
funeral gathering in Siyaru, a remote,
semi-arid village near the Ethiopia
Djibouti border. As rescuers rushed in, a
second bomb dropped. And then a third.
At least eight people were killed,
including three children. Several
others were injured. Given the village’s
remoteness, the incident might have
gone unreported if graphic images of
the dead hadn’t spread across Ethiopian
social media.
A statement from the Djibouti’s
defence ministry said the drone struck
rebel fighters from the Front for the

Restoration of Unity and Democracy
(Frud), a Djiboutian political party with
a military wing. It has been fighting for
Afar interests in Djibouti since the 1990s.
The Afar are a community split by the
colonial border separating Ethiopia,
Djibouti, and Eritrea.
“Eight terrorists were neutralised on
site,” said a Djibouti military statement.
“Unfortunately, collateral damage
among Djiboutian civilians in the area
has been documented.”
International media, including Voice
of America, Agence France Presse, and
Radio France Internationale reported
this version of events.
Now, new findings from an open
In recovery: Mariam Mohammed Abdullah was
injured in the drone strike.
source investigation by The Continent
reveal a different reality.
The bombs landed inside Ethiopia,
not in Djibouti, and civilians – not armed
fighters – were killed. That distinction
matters. It shows Ethiopia is once again
tolerating a foreign military targeting its
own citizens, as it did with Eritrea during
the Tigray conflict.
A transparent lie
Even before the ink could dry on the
Djiboutian military’s statement, The
Addis Standard and human rights groups
in Djibouti were emphatic that the strike
had actually occurred inside Ethiopia’s
Afar region. But Alexis Mohamed, an
adviser to Djiboutian President Ismaïl
Omar Guelleh, rubbished these reports
in now-deleted social media posts.
The Continent got to work to figure out
what really happened. Over the course
of eight months, we collected eyewitness
testimonies, interviewed human rights
activists in Ethiopia and Djibouti, and
examined images and footage from the
strike. Our findings align with those of
Djiboutian activists, who pinpointed
Siyaru in Ethiopia’s Afar region as the
site of the strike.
The ammunition residue found on the
night of the strike confirms the bomb
was manufactured by Roketsan, a state
run weapons manufacturer in Türkiye.
Former US army explosives expert
Trevor Ball identified t…

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alula @alula.bsky.social · 14d

An example from right around the first Iron Man movie www.latimes.com/entertainmen...

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Brad Heath @bradheath.bsky.social · 16d

EXCLUSIVE: The number of people charged with breaking federal drug laws dropped to the lowest level in decades this year after the Trump administration ordered enforcement agencies to focus on deporting immigrants, a @reuters.com review of court dockets found.

www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

Chart showing the decline in the number of people charged with federal drug offenses.

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alula @alula.bsky.social · 16d

They released a picture of one of the suspects.

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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 16d

The idea that the "beer summit" was a point of radicalization for right-wingers is utterly incomprehensible.

When the right broke, according to the right

"That's what radicalized you all?"

smotus.substack.com

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 16d

Most people who write about politics, right or left, have internalized the concept of the Trump supporter as the authentic american Volk and so many of their conclusions proceed from that
bsky.app/profile/qjur...

Quinta Jurecic @qjurecic.bsky.social · 16d

separate from everything, the idea that 2020 was a squeaker but 2024 represents a historical mandate will simply be the death of me

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alula @alula.bsky.social · 18d

Not that taking these positions now wasn’t the right thing to do and also good politics but aren’t Dems still trusted less on immigration than Trump? Seems like taking the “moderate” position 2-3 years ago would’ve helped prevent Trump’s return in the first place.

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Sara Haghdoosti @shaghdoosti.bsky.social · 19d

Though nice to see Jon Finer and Philip Gordon catch up to bare minimum of where activists and the public have been for nearly two years on restricting US arms to the Israeli government, their article erases their own role in abetting the Netanyahu government’s genocide.

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alula @alula.bsky.social · 18d

Posts from 2019

alula @alula.bsky.social · 20d

If the FBI was still run by the normie Republican they appointed last time, there wouldn’t be a trust issue with most libs. You don’t appoint Kash Patel bc you care about the other half of the country believing what you say.

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Marwood @marwoodlennox.bsky.social · 21d

This should remind you of when Thabo Mbeki said vegetables could cure AIDS.

The Associated Press @apnews.com · 22d

BREAKING: President Trump promotes unproven ties between Tylenol, vaccines and autism without new evidence.

Trump promotes unproven ties between Tylenol, vaccines and autism without new evidence

President Donald Trump is using the platform of the presidency to promote unproven ties between Tylenol, vaccines and autism without giving new evidence.

bit.ly

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alula @alula.bsky.social · 22d

thought this was an interesting comment

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 22d

"kristi noem and corey lewandowski, who we can confirm are not only dating but running DHS together"

absolutely cursed sentence

Ryu Spaeth @ryuspaeth.bsky.social · 22d

So many crazy details in Ben Terris's story about Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski, who we can confirm are not only dating but running DHS together: nymag.com/intelligence...

Who Really Runs DHS?

Kristi Noem is the face of Trump’s police state. Corey Lewandowski is the muscle.

nymag.com

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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 28d

It's funny that Ta-Nehisi Coates actually pulled off the "retreat into the fortress of solitude so every time you emerge to say something it feels like a big deal" thing that Barack Obama tried but failed to pull off in his post-Presidency

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onekade @onekade.bsky.social · 28d

I’ve seen arguments that the fascists don’t need a reason to use the power of the state to punish their political opponents. I disagree strongly with this sentiment. Public opinion absolutely matters. They can and will get away with more attacks if people buy into their lies about collective guilt.

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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · Sep 12

oh wow, almost as if the whole thing was a blatant lie that was obviously cooked up from the start, and should have been reported as such by any responsible news organization.

Isaiah Bishop @isaiahbishop.bsky.social · Sep 12

www.reuters.com/world/us/fed...

Exclusive: Fed Governor Cook declared her Atlanta property as “vacation home,” documents show

A loan estimate for an Atlanta home purchased by Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor accused of mortgage fraud by the Trump administration, shows that Cook had declared the property as a “vacation home,” according to a document reviewed by Reuters.

www.reuters.com

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