“Moscow’s current position towards the PMC is to distance itself from Wagner, be it through officials or Russian state TV coverage. For instance, the latter now demonises Prigozhin by comparing him with Adolf Hitler. Additionally, they hint at his connections with the Western intelligence services and accuse him of corruption. This contrasts with the active praise of the group’s efforts over the last several months and the prior strategy of almost complete denial that the Kremlin had demonstrated until the group’s recognition. A similar dynamic could be observed during the coup in Niger too. Whilst Lavrov called it unconstitutional, Prigozhin characterised the situation as the final stage of Niger’s anticolonial struggle. Also, he stated that ‘the former colonisers do not wish to let go of Africa.’ Instead, he claims they wished to “fill it up with terrorists and conduct enormous and ineffective security operations to maintain control” (Grey Dynamics).
“The experts shook the snow globe of their vast professional expertise, yet the debate over Putin’s intentions never settled on a conclusion.But in Silicon Valley, we had already concluded that Putin would invade—four months before the Russian attack. By the end of January, we had predicted the start of the war almost to the day. How? Our team at Rhombus Power, made up largely of scientists, engineers, national security experts, and former national security practitioners, was looking at a completely different picture than the traditional foreign-policy community. Relying on artificial intelligence to sift through almost inconceivable amounts of online and satellite data, our machines were aggregating actions on the ground, counting inputs that included movements at missile sites and local business transactions, and building heat maps of Russian activity virtually in real time. We got it right because we weren’t bound by the limitations of traditional foreign-policy analysis.” (Stanley McChrystal and Anshu Roy/Foreign Policy)
“So, it turns out I was wrong that Vivek Ramaswamy is getting substantial support among the Republican base, even though he is openly Hindu. And that, to me, what makes it particularly striking and is that he’s peddling an ethnonationalist vision, which really is in very stark contradiction, I think, to his own family’s story of immigration to the United States.” (Peter Beinart)
“A common style of this coverage is the safari to ‘Trump Country,’ in which journalists from various outlets, most of whom live in big metropolitan areas, go to a rural community or Rust Belt town and talk to Trump voters, often white, working-class men in diners. The resulting articles are often tautological—basically ‘Trump Supporters Support Trump’—and framed as if explaining to liberals who might think that Trump’s failures will cause some voters to abandon him that they won’t.” (Nicholas Grossman)
“I wanted to bring up ‘Dreamland’ because the author wrote about our role in the opioid crisis and then in his new book, ‘The Sum of Us’ he has a chapter dedicated to Portsmouth. And one of the lines of that chapter says, something like ‘If Portsmouth led the nation into the opioid crisis, it is now leading it out with its innovation and recovery efforts.’ And I just think, you know, we had all this media around our descent into that madness, but just a little about how we have responded to it with such care and innovation.” (Olivia Weeks/The Daily Yonder)
“Coup traps were a major part of West Africa’s political history for much of the period between 1960-2000 — and continue to hang like a cloud over their processes of political development. It is striking that among the West African countries with histories of coups, Ghana is the only one that appears to have definitively escaped the coup trap and fully civilianized it’s politics. Despite its idiosyncrasies, Ghana’s experience offers important lessons on how to escape coup traps.” (Ken Opalo)
“The conventional wisdom asks: How can Donald Trump simultaneously participate in all these criminal trials and run for president? The question misses the point of Trumpism, of the creation and propagation of those famous ‘alternative facts’ of which Kellyanne Conway spoke lo those many years ago, and of the power of fascist spectacle over its adherents. The trials are the campaign. To Trump’s followers, nothing else will matter.” (Michael Tomasky)
“The goal is to soften the blow for anyone who clicks over to ‘Cost of Attendance’ on the Columbia Journalism School website, only to feel their blood pressure hit the roof when they see a dollar sign next to the number 126,691. That’s the tab for this year’s full-time nine-and-a-half-month master of science program, including tuition ($75,348), fees ($9,521), and living expenses ($41,822). I told Cobb that when I entered the MS program in 2007, the total cost was something like $67,000, which I took out in loans. I emerged on the other side working at The New York Observer—a highly coveted job, for sure, but one that paid a humble $28,000. Starting salaries have grown since then, but not as much as the cost of the program, never mind the cost of living in a city where you’re most likely to find a decent journalism job.” (Joe Pompeo)
“But as we know from prior episodes of this podcast, some white Southerners saw the world of privilege and violence they lived in and recoiled from it. One of them was Catharine Drew Gilpin, the daughter of two old Virginia families. Born in 1947, her youth unfolded during the phase of civil rights activism and massive resistance inaugurated by Brown. Increasingly, she looked at the society surrounding her beautiful Shenandoah Valley family home and understood that a world which expected her to uphold its values, and take her place as a well-behaved young lady, was wrong. As she grew up, she joined the ranks of Southern white women who have fought to make the United States a more democratic and just nation.” (Claire Potter)
“In Maine, lobsters are heading north and some lobstermen are moving into kelp farming. On the West Coast, fishermen are worried about a blob of warm water developing off the Oregon and Washington coastlines, fearing a repeat of an ocean heat wave that devastated salmon harvests from 2014 to 2016. The heating of the world’s oceans is disrupting ecosystems and industries that depend on the sea for life. This summer, nearly half the world’s oceans are experiencing a marine heatwave, defined as warmer than 90% of previous temperature observations on the same date, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Mediterranean Sea reached a record 87 degrees in July, attracting stinging jellyfish and lionfish, while threatening coral reefs and tropical marine life nearby. “ (Eric Niiler)
Mama’s Royal Cookbook (Christina Oxenberg)
“Tim ‘Doc’ Anderson didn’t know his stand-in cornermen on fight night at the Myriad Convention Center in Oklahoma City on December 3, 1992. Before the match, the 34-year-old heavyweight was given water from paper cups, but it tasted strangely sweet. He was assured it was sugar. He was made to wait inside the ring for his rookie opponent, Mark Gastineau, for 45 minutes, perhaps long enough for drugs to take effect. It felt like an eternity. His vision started to play tricks. Lights and objects left tracers. In the ring, his adversary became three, and a straight right became several.” (VICE)
“But observers tell Al Jazeera that Wagner’s battle-tested fighters are too valuable to just be disbanded and let go. What and who is left of Wagner is already being torn apart by Russia’s military, intelligence services, state-run corporations and private military companies (PMCs) financed by Kremlin allies or oligarchs – and even Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko may get his share. Since 2014, Wagner employed thousands of experienced fighters of starkly different backgrounds. Some graduated from elite military and intelligence units, some fought for Moscow in Chechen wars, and some hailed from criminal groups that mushroomed in the former Soviet Union in the 1990s. Last year, Wagner enlisted tens of thousands of inmates from Russian jails who were promised hefty paycheques and presidential pardons, but were largely used in what is known as ‘meat marches’ on Ukrainian positions.” (Mansur Mirovalev/Al Jazeera)
“Prince Andrew was driven to church in Balmoral by Prince William Sunday—in clear view of the waiting photographers—after months of ostracization following allegations about his entanglements with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. ‘Andrew won’t ever have the same ceremonial role within the family, he is no longer and never will be a working royal. That is clear,’ a friend of the king told The Daily Beast. ‘But he is part of the family. He is the king’s brother. He has not been found guilty of any crime and I think it’s fair to say that the king is making it clear that he won’t turn his back on his brother.’” (TDB)