glykosymoritis
LightNews LightNews
banner
glyko.bsky.social
glykosymoritis
@glyko.bsky.social
170 followers 14 following 2.8K posts
A political diary: For a democratic secular masterless and borderless world; for individual and social autonomy*; for lifelong democratic civic education with democratic aim, the creation of participatory democratic citizenry. (Castoriadis*) #glykoreads
Posts Replies Media Videos
glyko.bsky.social
Doha is where the two ends of the horseshoe get too close to each other to tell them apart. Whether someone is evil is entirely subjective. But that Tucker Carlson & Ravi Agrawal are both wrong on the facts is the plain, objective truth. And the truth still matters www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/...
H ILLARY CLINTON IS NOT BACKING DOWN ON HER INSISTENCE that social media is giving young people a false picture of the Arab-Israeli conflict and that this phenomenon deserves a large piece of the blame for the way Gaza radicalized Americans. TikTok, especially but not solely, she said at a conference organized by Israel Hayom, "is where they were learning about what happened on October 7, what happened in the days, weeks, and months to follow. That's a serious problem. It's a serious problem for democracy, whether it's Israel or the United States, and it's a serious problem for our young people." Engaging in "reasonable discussions" with younger folks became "very difficult because they did not know history, they had very little context, and what they were being told on social media was not just one-sided, it was pure propaganda." These viewers "are seeing short-form videos, some of them totally made up, some of them not at all representing what they claim to be showing." All of this is true, and the former secretary of state knows that it is true. Which is why, when pressed on her comments this week at the Doha Forum in Qatar-which is one of the more significant sources of that disinformation-she held her ground. Her questioner, Foreign Policy magazine editor Ravi Agrawal, condescendingly asked Clinton "How are you reflecting on your words and the controversy around it?" Clinton's response was appropriate: "Well, I think it is a provable fact that most Americans and an even bigger percentage of young Americans get their news from social media. If that is controversial, then people are not paying attention." Why, Agrawal wanted to know, was that such a bad thing? Clinton answered that in her many conversations with students (she teaches a course at Columbia) and activists, "they did not always know why they were saying what they said." This is an unusually lucid characterization of the problem. It's worth expanding on the idea that these young anti-Israel people don… On December 2, Mare Rowan made a speech at the 50th annual Wall Street Dinner of the UJA-Federation of New York, of which Rowan is currently board chairman. Rowan is also CEO of the Apollo Global Management investment firm and one of the most influential figures in the fight against anti-Semitism in American higher education. Immediately after October 7, he was critical of the University of Pennsylvania, where he chairs the prestigious Wharton School. "Why is UPenn repeating tragic mistakes of the past? Words of hate and violence must be met with clear, reasoned condemnation, rooted in morality from those in positions of authority," he wrote. But last Tuesday's UJA address was arguably just as significant-both because of what Rowan said about incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani and because of what others didn't say in the wake of the event. "I don't think we have to wait to know, someone who uses antisemitism in their campaign, and normalizes antisemitism, is our enemy," Rowan said. "We need to be the ones to call him out, we need to say it." That was the comment that caused by far the most controversy, as Mamdani's progressive supporters pouted and took to their fainting couches. Brad Lander, the New York political scene's foremost enabler of Mamdani, raged at Rowan on social media, as did others in the progressive camp. It certainly was newsworthy but probably more for the line that Rowan delivered next: "And I know that UJA, as it relates to the Jewish community, is going to do that."
December 9, 2025 at 7:31 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Unapologetic American Jewry is the future: Herzog’s message to American Jewry was to be steadfast, unapologetic, and to be able to recognize those who seek its harm. That message is, thankfully, catching on. www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/... By @sethamandel.bsky.social
On December 2, Mare Rowan made a speech at the 50th annual Wall Street Dinner of the UJA-Federation of New York, of which Rowan is currently board chairman. Rowan is also CEO of the Apollo Global Management investment firm and one of the most influential figures in the fight against anti-Semitism in American higher education. Immediately after October 7, he was critical of the University of Pennsylvania, where he chairs the prestigious Wharton School. "Why is UPenn repeating tragic mistakes of the past? Words of hate and violence must be met with clear, reasoned condemnation, rooted in morality from those in positions of authority," he wrote. But last Tuesday's UJA address was arguably just as significant-both because of what Rowan said about incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani and because of what others didn't say in the wake of the event. "I don't think we have to wait to know, someone who uses antisemitism in their campaign, and normalizes antisemitism, is our enemy," Rowan said. "We need to be the ones to call him out, we need to say it." That was the comment that caused by far the most controversy, as Mamdani's progressive supporters pouted and took to their fainting couches. Brad Lander, the New York political scene's foremost enabler of Mamdani, raged at Rowan on social media, as did others in the progressive camp. It certainly was newsworthy but probably more for the line that Rowan delivered next: "And I know that UJA, as it relates to the Jewish community, is going to do that." Meanwhile Isaac Herzog, Israel's president and a scion of the Labor left, was in New York last night and delivered an equally unapologetic speech to Yeshiva University. In New York City, Herzog said, "We see the rise of a new mayor-elect who makes no effort to conceal his contempt for the Jewish democratic state of Israel, the only nation state of the Jewish people." Notice the word "Jewish" twice in that one sentence. The attempts by anti-Zionist groups to shame Jews into severing their history and heritage from their modern identity must fail. Herzog slammed Mamdani's justification for an antiSemitic mob that descended on a Manhattan synagogue that was hosting an event about making aliyah. The incoming mayor had suggested the shul was facilitating the violation of international law by talking to prospective emigrants to a sovereign state. Herzog pulled no punches: "Delegitimizing the Jewish people's right to their ancient homeland and their age-old dream of Jerusalem legitimizes violence and undermines freedom of religion. This is both anti-Jewish and anti-American." Well said. Mamdani, let's remember, is still vowing to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which would be a truly lawless act. Herzog and Netanyahu were once political rivals, but that could not possibly matter less at the moment. Herzog's message to American Jewry was to be steadfast, unapologetic, and to be able to recognize those who seek its harm. That message is, thankfully, catching on.
December 9, 2025 at 7:20 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Whether we see our reflection in others—past and present—or, like Boddice, insist on difference, the compulsion to ask this question, again & again, marks us. Maybe to be human, at the most basic level, is to be curious about other humans. archive.ph/ubjsq By @galbeckerman.bsky.social #food4thought
The idea of "experiential relativity," as Boddice calls it—a recent paper also referred to his approach as "historical neurodiversity" —might seem squishy and postmodern. It's a kind of thinking that questions whether anything is real-the sort of speculation that might emerge from a dorm room late at night. The reaction is understandable. But Boddice is interested in some very real things: the brain and the body, and the way they interact with culture to produce experience. His approach reminded me of the philosopher William James, who also didn't believe that human emotions are "sacramental or eternally fixed," as he wrote in his 1890 book, The Principles of Psychology. Whereas the prevailing thought was that an internal feeling generates outward response-I'm sad, therefore I cry-James thought the causality was all wrong. In his schema, what happens first is an external stimulus. This triggers a bodily response, and only then does an internal process of interpretation assign meaning to that response. I might see
December 8, 2025 at 8:57 AM
glyko.bsky.social
#Israel: Druze enlistment hit 85%, and Bedouin service remains high at 60%+. Most notably, Golan Druze motivation is 6 times higher and Arab Christian enlistment has tripled in the last year, driven by both the Hamas attack and regional conflicts www.jpost.com/jerusalem-re... By Dana Ben Shimon #IDF
Israel’s minorities are joining the IDF in growing numbers | The Jerusalem Post
Two years of war have seen a rise in military enlistment from Israel’s minority communities.
www.jpost.com
December 8, 2025 at 7:23 AM
glyko.bsky.social
See how a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could unfold: An amphibious assault to conquer the island democracy would be one of the toughest military operations to pull off archive.ph/WZVfu #Taiwan #China
archive.ph
December 8, 2025 at 7:15 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Luxury antisemitism is poisoning Eurovision: The Palestine flag-waving lotus-eaters simply require Jews to shut up archive.ph/KOYzz By Camilla Long #antisemitism #PopCulture #Eurovision2026
As for the Jews — well, that is the big one. We are required, of course, to hate the stump-toothed "fascist" goblin Nigel Farage for allegedly hissing in the manner of a gas oven towards a Jewish future Bafta winner while a boy at school. But then also feel completely great that entire countries want to openly spread Jew hatred, most recently by withdrawing from the Eurovision song contest. Ireland, Slovenia, Spain, the Netherlands - none of their broadcasters want to be there if Israel is, citing the "appalling loss of lives in Gaza". So, again, which is it?
December 8, 2025 at 7:07 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Hamas leader rejects disarmament: Khalil al-Hayya says Hamas will keep its weapons until a Palestinian state is established and opposes international forces operating inside Gaza, deepening the standoff with Israel and complicating Trump’s proposed second phase of the ceasefire deal
Hamas leader rejects disarmament, resists US stabilization plan for Gaza
Khalil al-Hayya says Hamas will keep its weapons until a Palestinian state is established and opposes international forces operating inside Gaza, deepening the standoff with Israel and complicating Tr...
www.ynetnews.com
December 8, 2025 at 6:43 AM
glyko.bsky.social
The making of libels: Logos, Ethos, Pathos.
Libels are not lies. Lies are untruthful statements. Libels are defamatory accusations that use snippets of truth to run an intensive propaganda campaign against a group of people to inflict significant harm on them. nayalekht.substack.com/p/the-making...
The Making of a Libel: An Explainer ETHOS PATHOS LOGOS @Naya_lekht Libels are not lies. Lies are untruthful statements. Libels are defamatory accusations that use snippets of truth to run an intensive propaganda campaign against a group of people to inflict significant harm on them. There are several definitions of the word libel, but few reveal how a libel functions. In a recent lecture I gave on the history of the blood libel and the modern genocide libel, I realized that every enduring libel relies on the interplay of three elements: ethos, logos, and pathos. Borrowing from Aristotle's framework of rhetorical persuasion, these three appeals, an authority figure, logical structure, and moral force, must coexist and reinforce one another. Their integration is what gives a libel its power. In the era of antizionism, accusations such as genocide, colonizer, apartheid, baby-killer, and ethnic cleansing function as libels designed to activate the full triad of persuasion: ethos, logos, and pathos. The genocide libel, for example, has been leveled against Israel since its founding. Most recently, it acquired a semblance of institutional credibility when South Africa filed a genocide case against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on December 29, 2023, supplying the accusation with its ethos. As with the blood libel and the Doctor's Plot libel, a concrete event, in this case, the deaths of thousands of Gazans, served as the supposed evidence, providing the libel with its logos. And because the charge of genocide evokes profound moral outrage, pathos becomes the final mechanism that locks the libel into place. Indeed, throughout history, the pattern has been consistent: • Jews in Medieval Europe were not just accused of killing Christian children; they were said to crave their blood. • Stalin did not merely frame Jewish doctors as negligent; they were described as "murderers in white coats," animated by an inner hatred of the Soviet people. • Israelis and often Jews collectively are not accused of military wrongdoing; they are framed as baby killers, genocidal colonizers, Nazi-like. Most importantly, libels predict the violence that will follow against the group they demonize: Escalation Timeline: Anti-Jewish Libels and Violence ace Loe tell Conspiracy toss bore Volesse Sere 1905 (State Sarined cod Loan 1915 1920 war 1925 1930 1935
December 7, 2025 at 8:37 AM
glyko.bsky.social
RSF massacres left Sudanese city ‘a slaughterhouse’, satellite images show: Up to 150,000 residents of El Fasher are missing since North Darfur capital fell to paramilitary Rapid Support Forces www.theguardian.com/global-devel... #Sudan #ElFasher
While the final death toll of the massacre remains unclear, British MPs have been briefed that at least 60,000 have been murdered in El Fasher. Sarah Champion, chair of the Commons international development select committee, said: "Members received a private briefing on Sudan, at which one of the academics stated: 'Our low estimate is 60,000 people have been killed there in the last three weeks.'" As many as 150,000 residents of El Fasher remain unaccounted for since the city fell to the RSF. They are not thought to have left the city, and this grisly development comes amid increasingly gloomy speculation about their fate.
December 7, 2025 at 8:11 AM
glyko.bsky.social
'Only a miracle can end this nightmare': Eritreans fear new #Ethiopia war.
Tewolde has fought multiple times for #Eritrea, one of the most closed societies on Earth, and is now praying another war is not about to break out with neighbouring Ethiopia. www.modernghana.com/news/1454021...
Mehari, an Eritrean in his 30s, fought in the Tigray war, where his army was accused of horrific war crimes. "Young people are fleeing en masse to Ethiopia... and to Sudan to avoid a possible war," he told AFP. Another Eritrean, Luwan, left the country several years ago and now lives in an east African country, which she did not want to name for fear of reprisals against her family back home. She says her family are terrified after a relative was summoned to a meeting and told to "prepare herself, her sons and daughters because she was told Abiy will start a war against her and the Eritrean people", ', she said.
December 7, 2025 at 8:06 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Why does A.I. write like … that?
If only they were robotic! Instead, chatbots have developed a distinctive — and grating — voice. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/m... By Sam Kriss #AI
If we're going to turn over essentially all communication to the Omniwriter, it matters what kind of a writer it is. Strangely, A.l. doesn't seem to know. If you ask ChatGPT what its own writing style is like, it'll come up with some false modesty about how its prose is sleek and precise but somehow hollow: too clean, too efficient, too neutral, too perfect, without any of the subtle imperfections that make human writing interesting. In fact, this is not even remotely true. A.l. writing is marked by a whole complex of frankly bizarre rhetorical features that make it immediately distinctive to anyone who has ever encountered it. It's not smooth or neutral at all — it's weird.
December 7, 2025 at 6:14 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Labour is slow-marching working people to populism: The challenge for this govt. is to convince voters the system works for them. A country that does not serve its working generations cannot be surprised if they look for answers elsewhere, however destructive the solutions on offer. archive.ph/uqHnu
If Brexit ought to have taught the UK one thing, it was that once people no longer feel the system is working for them they will be open to radical - even self-harming - alternatives. Nine years on from that referendum, ever larger numbers feel they live in a country that is letting them down. And this feeling is especially acute among younger workers, the later millennials and early Gen-Zers turning in rising numbers to populist parties both left and right. Yet last week's Budget showed a government plodding steadfastly towards the guns of electoral showdown. Keir Starmer did not create this problem - the damage done by the Conservatives cannot be overstated - but it is making matters worse. The consequences are far wider than just for Labour. Capitalist liberal democracy relies on a belief that the interests of ordinary voters are sufficiently aligned with the interests of the more successful. The shares of the pie, of course, are unequal but the have-nots must see a path to becoming haves; the have-somes to having more. The chance of a home, a job that more than covers the bills, prospects for their children and so on: this is the stake in the system that creates that alignment of interests and embeds political stability. The central crisis of western politics since the financial crisis has been the erosion of this promise. For what happens to liberal democracy and the capitalist model when rising numbers question if they will ever have that stake? We can see an answer in the levels of support for insurgent parties peddling nonsense economics. Nigel Farage's Reform UK has led in the opinion polls for most of the year. Meanwhile, the charismatic new leader of the Greens has taken his party to second place among 25- to 49-year-olds, advocating defiance of the markets with an inflationary borrowing spree and taxing the richest out of the country. All of which brings me back to last week's Budget. Any government with an interest in long-term political stability ought to be thinking hard about why so many young people are wandering into the arms of economic populists. The overriding mission must be to do whatever it takes to get the economy motoring. Yet after a brief pick-up, real household incomes are set to stagnate once more over this parliament. For all the things it is getting right (planning reform, more investment in infrastructure), over two Budgets and almost 18 months Labour has added costs and regulation to business and increased taxes on working people. Its response to the cost of living is more state support (or enforced minimum wage rises) but the priority now has to be growth. Stagnating living standards and reduced prospects can in the current climate only drive people towards populism.
December 7, 2025 at 6:02 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Egypt and EU stepping up preparations to dispatch Palestinian police force to Gaza: Diplomats push back at claim Hamas members to be part of new body, as Cairo trains thousands of recruits and Brussels looks www.timesofisrael.com/egypt-and-eu... #FreeGazaFromHamas
Cairo and Brussels, which have been involved in prior training of Palestinian police along with Jordan, are now working to add additional cohorts of officers to those pre-existing initiatives, primarily made up of Gazans, including former officers in the territory still on the Palestinian Authority payroll, the officials said. Officials who spoke to the Times of Israel insisted that the new force will be free of Hamas-affiliated personnel, but a report this week quoting an unnamed Palestinian official indicated that members of the terror group could continue to police Gaza as part of the newly installed body.
December 7, 2025 at 5:50 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Man jailed in UK for sending antisemitic abuse to Jewish lawmaker: Kevin Smith, 61, sent roughly 300 texts and three voicemails to the office of Labour MP Alex Sobel, who said the messages were deeply disturbing and left him fearing for his and his family's safety. www.reuters.com/world/uk/man...
Man jailed in UK for sending antisemitic abuse to Jewish lawmaker
A man who sent hundreds of abusive messages to a Jewish lawmaker in Britain, including references to "killing Jews," has been jailed for eight weeks, prosecutors said on Thursday.
www.reuters.com
December 6, 2025 at 7:14 AM
glyko.bsky.social
After Spanish police and Europol’s counter-terrorism section arrested three suspected members of the Base – a globally proscribed neo-Nazi terrorist group – in Castellón province, its American leader living in Russia was defiant and signaled further actions. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
The group's presence on the Iberian peninsula underlines how its American brand of extremism, glorifying hyper-violence and modeling itself on an armed insurgency against the state, continues to popularize and be exported abroad. Nazzaro and the Base are also suspected of harboring links to Kremlin spy agencies and aiding their broader sabotage efforts. Experts were shocked at the level of organization and the arsenal of weaponry the cell was able to achieve inside of Europe.
December 6, 2025 at 7:06 AM
glyko.bsky.social
#HongKong: Young activists suffer in silence.
Five years after a Beijing-imposed national security law reshaped Hong Kong, two young ex-prisoners discover a freedom defined by an unsettling silence. www.dw.com/en/hong-kong... #communism #authoritarianism
In 2025, as the government marked five years since the national security law's introduction, arrests slowed but control deepened. New education initiatives monitor students' online speech, while candidates for district-council elections must pass loyalty reviews, and former prisoners — though technically free — describe living under unseen surveillance. Meanwhile, earlier this month, the government announced plans to install tens of thousands of Al-equipped cameras across the city by 2028 — part of a "SmartView" network officials say will enhance public safety. For many Hong Kongers, it feels like an extension of the same system, Kelly said.
December 6, 2025 at 6:55 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Assad’s archive of death: Photographs of more than 10,000 regime victims capture a campaign of torture and mass murder in haunting, meticulous detail. www.icij.org/investigatio... By Nicole Sadek and @karriekehoe.bsky.social #Baathism #TheDamascusDossier
The Damascus Dossier photographs are a harrowing sequel to a cache of images depicting prisoners killed between 2011 and 2013, which were smuggled out of Syria more than a decade ago by a military defector codenamed Caesar. The Caesar photos set off a series of international prosecutions and sanctions against the Syrian government, serving as evidence in the first-ever torture trial against the Assad regime, in Germany, in 2020. That case resulted in the life imprisonment of Anwar Raslan, a former Syrian colonel, who was linked to at least 4,000 cases of state-led torture, and the 4½/2-year prison sentence of Eyad al-Gharib, a former officer, for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity. The photos also inspired a U.S. law known as the Caesar Act, which levied sanctions against Assad and the Syrian government and authorized the State Department to collect evidence on and prosecute perpetrators of war crimes in Syria. In 2014, Caesar, who earlier this year revealed himself as Farid al-Madhan, the former head of the forensic evidence department with the military police in Damascus, offered background on the photos to a team of international prosecutors. He told them that military officers were tasked with photographing bodies to prove that orders of murder had been carried out. The photos were also used to produce death certificates, without the families having to see their loved ones bodies, he said. In most cases, those government-issued death certificates falsely listed the inmates causes of death as "cardiac arrest" or "cardiorespiratory arrest." Despite all the evidence, Assad's government denied the validity of the Caesar photos.
December 6, 2025 at 6:42 AM
glyko.bsky.social
“The protocols of the elders of anti-Zion” is the 2.0 version of the conspiratorial antisemitic original. docemetproductions.com/protocols-of... By Andrew Pessin #HistoricalPoliticalMemory #antisemitism #conspiracism
The irony, of course, is that all the attention paid to the Protocols-believed by tens of millions, to this very day, to be factual-obscures the increasingly apparent fact that there actually does exist a global conspiracy, albeit in precisely the opposite direction. Sometimes working together, sometimes working in parallel, sometimes centrally directed, sometimes dispersed, sometimes secretly, sometimes very much in the open, collectively there is an enormous body of individuals, organisations look, and governments who have all been working toward the same inglorious end for well over a century now. It's not that the dastardly Jews are conspiring to subjugate or eliminate the peoples of the world. It's that the peoples of the world (or at least enormously large constituents thereof) are actively conspiring to subjugate and (in all too many cases) to outright eliminate the Jews.
December 6, 2025 at 6:30 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Hillary Clinton isn’t wrong about the role that TikTok and other social media play in the spread of anti-Israel propaganda, but it’s clear now that there is something worse than brain-melting short-form agitprop: the elite celebrities of the arts. www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/...
Margaret Atwood, Ian McKellen, Richard Branson, Sting, Brian Eno, and of course Mark Ruffalo and Sally Rooney-among many others-have announced their support for a campaign to free arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti from the Israeli prison in which he is serving consecutive life sentences for the murder of innocents. I have written before about why freeing Barghouti is a silly idea supported by silly people, but it is now clear that this campaign is still growing in popularity and will continue to do so. Indeed, the campaign has specifically chosen to appropriate Nelson Mandela's name in a transparent attempt to launder Barghouti's legacy of evil. "History shows us that cultural voices can shift the course of politics," says Eno. "Just as global solidarity helped free Nelson Mandela, we all have the power to accelerate the day that Marwan Barghouti walks free. His release would mark a turning point in this long struggle and bring much-needed hope to all of us." Well that's just about the worst thing a person can say about Nelson Mandela, and I don't know what the man did to deserve the insult. Anyone in the public who might have taken this crew's previous nonsense seriously might want to reconsider now that these "cultural voices" have explicitly equated Mandela with an unrepentant terrorist convicted for organizing the drive-by shooting of a Greek Orthodox monk. That's just one of the civilian deaths for which Barghouti is behind bars.
December 6, 2025 at 6:07 AM
glyko.bsky.social
We like to outsource in #Ireland. For decades, we’ve outsourced our health and housing problems to “charities”. Very rarely has this outsourcing worked. For longer still, we’ve outsourced our security to the UK, USA & NATO. www.irishpoliticsnewsletter.ie/p/ireland-ne... #RussiaUkraineWar #defense
Ireland likes to think of itself as a small, heroic little Republic in a dangerous world, a plucky emerald bauble bobbing bravely against the choppy seas of transatlantic geopolitics, humming ballads about defeating imperialism. At the same time, the hundreds of Russian ghost ships glide past the fibre-optic cables that pulse under the waves like the nervous system of some enormous, comatose digital god. In hard geopolitical security terms, Ireland is closer to a pampered child at the end of a well-policed cul-de-sac. The big houses in the local neighbourhood pay for the private security, the floodlights, the patrols that keep the wolves from the manicured lawns. The neighbours also keep installing new locks, new cameras, new alarms, while Ireland props the front door open with a copy of its non-existent neutrality proclamation and grandly calls it a principle. Naively thinking that hostile fascist powers respect principles. The miracle here is that the Irish child is rich. Not just "grand, can afford the round" rich, but a statistical hallucination of prosperity, GDP per head swollen by corporate tech and pharma behemoths taking advantage of our favourable tax laws. Multinational money is sluicing through the country like rainwater off a tin roof. On paper, this is one of the wealthiest corners of the globe; in practice, when you look for the instruments by which serious states insist on their continued existence, you find a handful of ships, some overstretched soldiers and sailors, and a nonexistent ability to defend ourselves. The richest family on the street, no locks on the door, but very strong opinions about the ethics of locksmithing. Every cul-de-sac has one of these families. They vaguely understand that an underlying danger exists; they have seen the footage from Ukraine, the shards of tower blocks, the sudden hot light of artillery in the distance, but they cannot permit the thought that any of this belongs to the same world as their own. For them, war is not a material process but a sort of moral failing, something that happens in regrettable countries to people who did not read the right poetry. The Irish version is called neutrality. It pads around the house in its socks, murmuring about the triple locks and the UN, telling anyone who will listen that it does not "do" sides, while its internet traffic crosses cables that are explicitly defended by other countries' navies and its skies protected by its former colonial masters in the UK. An Irish solution to an Irish problem.
December 6, 2025 at 5:56 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Whatever we might make of what Witkoff, Trump, Dmitriev & Kushner have been up to, at least let’s avoid the indecency of calling it a “peace” plan: In exchange for betraying Kyiv, the U.S. would gain preferential access to Russia’s frozen sovereign wealth fund nationalpost.com/opinion/trum...
For good reason, historians do not refer to the Nazi-Soviet protocol of Aug. 24, 1939, as a German "peace plan." Also negotiated in secret, and named after Adolf Hitler's foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and his Soviet counterpart, Vyacheslav Molotov, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - formally titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics — cleared the way for the Third Reich to invade Poland, with Moscow's collaboration. The upshot is that the "peace plan" Trump ordered Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll to deliver to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was almost entirely a Russian concoction. If Zelenskyy didn't sign it by American Thanksgiving, Trump said, he'd be on his own and he could "fight his little heart out." When the bombshell disclosures made it clear that the Witkoff-Dmitriev pact contained mostly Putin's terms for Ukraine's surrender, European leaders demanded a halt to Trump's sabotage. The "peace plan" required Ukraine's total capitulation — a surrender of Crimea and great swathes of Eastern Ukraine to Russia, a subjugation of NATO to Russian demands for Ukraine's permanent exclusion, a massive reduction in the size of Ukraine's military, the prohibition of any NATO troops on Ukrainian soil, a U.S.-enforced pardon for Putin for all his war crimes, a return of Moscow to the G7, and a lifting of all sanctions on Russia.
December 5, 2025 at 7:02 AM
glyko.bsky.social
A man hired for a grenade attack got cold feet at the last minute when he realised the target was the Israeli embassy in Denmark, he told a Copenhagen court, with the bombs finally being lobbed into the yard of a neighbouring house. www.dawn.com/news/1957633 #terrorism
Swede says he got cold feet over attack on Israeli embassy
COPENHAGEN: A man hired for a grenade attack got cold feet at the last minute when he realised the target was the...
www.dawn.com
December 5, 2025 at 6:53 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Hamas coerced Gaza aid groups by designating ‘guarantors’ inside them: Pro-Israel watchdog NGO Monitor says declassified documents it obtained show how terror group surveilled staff at international organizations, used administrators as liaisons www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-coerce... #Hamas #Gaza
Hamas surveilled the staff of foreign nonprofits in Gaza and designated local "guarantors" approved by the terrorist group to manipulate them, according to a report released on Wednesday. The report from the pro-Israel watchdog NGO Monitor showed how Hamas kept detailed notes on the staff of NGOs, or nongovernment organizations, in Gaza, including their finances, their family relationships, their piety level, and whether they were sympathetic or connected to the terror group. The report was based on internal Hamas documents from 2018 to 2022 — before the latest war in Gaza — which the IDF obtained in the Strip and declassified, NGO Monitor said.
December 5, 2025 at 6:49 AM
glyko.bsky.social
United Nations paid $11M to Syrian security firm owned by Assad intelligence services, documents show: For over a decade, U.N. aid agencies poured millions into the company despite warnings from human rights advocates. www.icij.org/investigatio... #UN #Baathism #Shorouk
This is no ordinary security company. During Syria's civil war, the United Nations paid Shorouk at least $11 million to provide security services to protect U.N. offices, from its de facto headquarters at the Four Seasons Hotel in Damascus to regional hubs. Now, internal Shorouk documents reveal that the company was secretly owned by the intelligence services of former President Bashar Assad's regime. Even as the United Nations poured money into the firm, those intelligence services were engaged in a violent campaign to crush any opposition to Assad.
December 5, 2025 at 6:44 AM
glyko.bsky.social
#India will pay about $2 billion to lease a nuclear-powered submarine from #Russia, according to people familiar with the matter, finalizing delivery of the vessel after roughly a decade of talks just as President Vladimir Putin makes a visit to New Delhi. archive.ph/IE06V
Modi has moved to boost ties with Russia and China in recent months, asserting India's strategic autonomy after US President Donald Trump hit the nation's goods with punitive tariff rates of 50%. Modi's government is currently negotiating a trade deal to reduce those duties, which were imposed as part of Trump's push to pressure India to stop buying Russian oil as he looks for leverage on Putin to end the fighting in Ukraine. Ahead of Putin's visit, India's Chief of Naval Staff Dinesh K. Tripathi told reporters this week that the commissioning of the attack submarine would be expected soon, without providing details. The submarine would be larger than the two already part of the navy's fleet.
December 5, 2025 at 6:38 AM