“Teodoro ‘Teodorin’ Obiang, the son of Equatorial Guinea’s president who is also the country’s vice president, has an Instagram account resembling that of an influencer and not a possible future head of state. For example, when he visited New York for the UN meetings last September he posted a video showing off his $75,000 a night penthouse. Typical posts include flashy cars, boats, motorcycles, or foreign vacation locations. Seldom does he post anything to do with his own country or its people. In power since 1979, his father, President Obiang Nguema is currently the longest serving head of state in the world. His current legacy project is to relocate the country’s capital from Malabo on Bioko island to Ciudad de la paz on the mainland. Teodorin is the embodiment of Equatorial Guinea’s squandered oil wealth. For nearly three decades the country has been a textbook example of growth without development.” (Ken Opalo/The Africanist Perspective)
“With its four-piece bathroom suite, queen-size bed and mini fridge, the untidy prison cell of the notorious leader of the Los Choneros gang, José Adolfo Macías, could have been in a hotel instead of one of Ecuador’s largest prison complexes. This is ‘better than at home… [he] lives like a king,’ a soldier exclaims in the second of several videos showing Macías’ room and personal grassy courtyard, filled with half a dozen of his pet fighting roosters. The videos, shared with CNN, were taken in La Regional prison and filmed by members of the military last year. In another video shot inside Macías’ prison cell, a colorful mural depicting the gang leader better known as ‘Fito,’ warns ‘silver or lead.’ The phrase, popularized by Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, offers the grim choice of taking a bribe or being shot – a possible warning to prison staff. The clips offer more evidence to the stark reality that Ecuador’s prison system has turned into the headquarters for criminal groups that have amassed foot soldiers and influence across the country, experts say. In less than a decade, organized crime has turned the relatively peaceful country into one of the most dangerous places in Latin America.” (CNN)
“Israel is facing growing international pressure over its war against Hamas, with key allies calling for an end to its onslaught in Gaza amid a massive humanitarian crisis. The U.S., which has traditionally supported Israel — including using its veto power to block previous ceasefire efforts by the United Nations Security Council — has put forward a draft resolution at the UNSC calling for a temporary ceasefire. In Brazil, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva recalled his ambassador to Israel and compared Israel’s military campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust, a statement Israeli officials decried as antisemitic. Meanwhile 26 European Union member states warned Israel against an attack on Rafah, a crowded Gazan city on the border with Egypt where 1.4 million displaced Palestinians have taken shelter.” (semafor)
“The New York Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger said Monday that the White House is ‘extremely upset’ about its coverage on President Joe Biden’s age but the newspaper will ‘continue to report fully and fairly.’ ‘We are going to continue to report fully and fairly, not just on Donald Trump but also on President Joe Biden,’ Sulzberger said in an interview with The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. ‘He is a historically unpopular incumbent and the oldest man to ever hold this office. We’ve reported on both of those realities extensively, and the White House has been extremely upset about it.’ Criticism over coverage of Biden’s low approval ratings and, more especially, Biden’s age has sparked disapproval both from the Biden campaign and some members of the press. News stories of Biden’s age gained even more traction among the press as special counsel Robert Hur wrote in his recent report, entirely without prompting, that Biden was ‘an elderly man with a poor memory.’” (Kierra Frazier/Politico)
“What makes a great television show? There may be as many types of excellence as there are excellent shows. Series can wow us with how broadly they changed society, from “Seinfeld” redefining American slang to ‘Mad Men’ bearing all the hallmarks of an early-21st-century TV Golden Age to ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ making daytime viewers feel part of a special club of millions. Or they can feel like closely held secrets, always ready to welcome curious viewers for the first time, like ‘The Leftovers’ or ‘Enlightened.’ They can bring together insights about a rapidly shifting society with humor that stands the test of time, like the shows created by Norman Lear, who died this month at age 101. And they can dazzle us with spectacle or entrance us with intimate character moments — or, if they’re ‘The Sopranos,’ they can do both.” (Variety)
“FIRST, THERE IS THE HAT—the iconic two-cornered emblem of the Napoleon myth. Joaquin Phoenix wears it crooked; then it falls off; then Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) gets to wear it. In Russia, he tears at the hat in anger and at Waterloo it is finally punctured by an English musket ball. Such a bold deflation of Napoleonic iconography should be welcome. What does Napoleon mean to the French? Imagine what a mix of Henry VIII and Churchill would mean to the British: symbol of national unity; alibi for ruling-class legitimacy; and pretext for sycophancy, saber rattling, and empty rhetoric. It’s true that Napoleon has relatively few national monuments in his honor and far fewer Avenues and Boulevards to his name than de Gaulle—or for that matter most of his own generals—but he is still one of the great national symbols, a status the current president, Emmanuel Macron, seems keen to nurture. Though careful to recall Napoleon’s ‘faults’ during the 2021 bicentenary of Napoleon’s death (arbitrary power, the reestablishment of slavery, the death toll of the Napoleonic wars across Europe), the French president nonetheless paid passionate tribute to the ‘builder and the law-giver’ responsible for France’s civil and penal codes and (not in so many words) its centralized state apparatus. As Macron emerged from the turbulence caused by his widely loathed pension reforms, he declared: ‘We have ahead of us a hundred days of appeasement, unity, ambitions, and action in the service of France’—a reference to Napoleon’s last campaign, Les Cent-Jours, though perhaps an infelicitous one given how that campaign ended. Such bogus allusions to the Napoleon myth, designed to secure popular docility, have not been unusual in France over the past 200 years. But, though the Napoleon celebration creates the conditions for deflation and almost necessitates it, Ridley Scott fails to make full use of that opportunity: for all its effortful deflation, Scott’s Napoleon is not as subversive—nor as refreshing—as it might have been.” (NplusOne)
“Wisconsin had the most unfair political maps in the country. Now they’re among the fairest. Ever since 2010, when Republicans swept into power, they have used redistricting to draw highly favorable maps and squeeze out the Democrats. Even when Democrats won the most number of votes statewide, Republicans held a supermajority in the state legislature, and seven out of ten congressional seats. This is the story of how Democrats, working tirelessly under the leadership of state party leader Ben Wikler, forced a change and restored fairness to the system. It’s not only an inspiring story of what is possible, but another blueprint for how other states that are currently unfairly gerrymandered and under the control of a GOP supermajority can still wrest away control and return it to the people where it belongs.” (Jay Kuo)
“The MAGA cult is essentially a cult of Mammon. Trump’s comfortable white middle-class adherents (who, contrary to popular opinion, outnumber his low-income followers) worship Trump not only because he’s released them to air their politically incorrect grudges. The fake billionaire represents their idea of what it looks like to inhabit the highest possible echelon of the American Dream. Trump is simultaneously the poor man’s idea of rich and the truly rich man’s idea of a waterboy, the useful tool who will press their deregulatory schemes in Washington. As apostle of Mammon to the rabble, he can appear to be shaking up the system, while codifying forever tactics for manipulating and amassing capital unimpeded by the U.S. government. In his first three months in office, Trump quietly deregulated the financial industry, stripped Obama's climate change rules from fossil fuel producers, and, before the year was out, lowered taxes for the superrich. And he still played to the cheap seats. On the stump, he croons like Frank Sinatra - syrupy, Rat Packish. Every campaign stop stadium platform is a flashback to The Sands in 1962. It doesn’t matter whether what he says is fragmented, demented, or psychotic. His followers roll over, blissed out, insensate.” (Nina Burleigh/ American Freakshow)
“Long before it was reported, at the end of January, that Volodymyr Zelensky had decided to replace his popular Army chief, Valery Zaluzhny, the Ukrainian counter-offensive of 2023 had devolved from attempted maneuvers to mutual recriminations. The arrows pointed in multiple directions: Zelensky seemed to think that his commander-in-chief was being defeatist; Zaluzhny, that his President was refusing to face facts. And there were arguments, too, between Ukraine and its allies. In a two-part investigation in the Washington Post, in early December, U.S. officials complained that Ukrainian generals did not follow their advice. They tried to attack in too many places; they were too cautious; and they waited too long to launch the operation. The Ukrainians, in turn, blamed the Americans. They delivered too few weapons and did so too late; they insisted on their tactics even when it was clear these were unsuitable for the terrain and the opponent; and they did all this from the comfort of Washington and Wiesbaden, rather than from the trenches, tree lines, and open fields where Ukrainian soldiers gave their lives.” (Keith Gessen/TNY)
“On a chilly day in March 2022, Grant Williams stepped out of his Infiniti SUV and walked through the snow and hail to the middle of the basketball court in the Stapleton projects to see the new Wu-Tang Clan ‘W’ emblem painted at its center. The logo was yellow against the black asphalt, the same colors used on the group’s first album. The design was laid down in the fall, but Grant hadn’t seen it. As the road manager for Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah, Grant spent weekdays working from home booking flights and calling promoters and weekends on tour. ‘We [Grant and Ghostface] always had this plan and we were gonna do some type of music together,’ Grant said. COVID-19 made touring over the last two years a stop-and-start affair. ‘We only have a few dates left,’ he said. ‘I wish I was back on the road so I could just knock it out.’ The pause gave him a chance to go back to Staten Island, catch up with old friends, and visit the housing project where at 11 years old, he met Dennis Coles, aka Ghostface Killah. ‘My mother and his mother; his family and my family, we’ve always been tight,’ Grant said. ‘Me and Ghostface are more like brothers.’ On the benches, which used to line the courtyard inside Stapleton, Grant says he and Ghostface once sold crack. On those same benches, the two gathered the raw material for what would become one of the most heralded rap careers in the genre’s history. With Grant by his side, Ghostface began to stitch together arresting narratives of growing up in poverty and selling crack to survive.” (J Brian Charles/Truly Adventurous)
“(Ezra Klein) was deeply wrong last Friday, with a 4,000-word stem-winder, ‘Democrats Have A Better Option Than Biden,’ laying out why Democrats must replace President Joe Biden as their presidential nominee because he is showing signs of age on the campaign trail—not as president, mind you, but as a candidate. Klein isn’t suggesting new folks jump into this year’s primaries; it’s too late (he’s right about that). Rather, they should pick the nominee at…wait for it…a brokered convention in Chicago, which Klein argues would dominate the news, showcase the Democrats’ deep bench of leaders, and broadcast their commitment to democracy, with which Donald Trump’s coronation in Milwaukee that same month would be an obvious, negative contrast … Democrats are going through a primary, even if it’s a faux-primary: Yes, Dean Phillips is a joke, Marianne Williamson dropped out, and delusional RFK, Jr. decided an independent candidacy backed by Trump donors was the better idea. But it’s a primary nonetheless; everyone was free to run. The idea that Dem powerbrokers muscled folks out of the race is as dumb as it was in 2016, when the same was said about Hillary Clinton. Ambitious Democratic politicians sized up the odds both cycles, and concluded they couldn’t win. Senator Bernie Sanders sized it up differently in 2016, and almost won.(If anyone has examples of Biden operatives muscling out strong Democrats who wanted to run this year, please contact me. Or Klein, since he has a bigger platform.)” (Joan Walsh/The Nation)
“I was also happy to discover that Austin was a progressive blue island that reflected the politics of my youth. And as I reluctantly gave up my musical ambitions to the reality of my limited talent, I drifted into politics, ultimately working for the Democratic icon Ann Richards, who became the state’s governor in the 1990s. (The two of us would later be partners at a political consulting firm.) But Richards’s talent and success masked a broader reality: Texas, even when it was ruled by Democrats (think of the long reign of LBJ), was always deeply conservative. Indeed, when you look back from 2024, my adopted home hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office in nearly three decades. As I grew older, my progressive edges dulled and I found myself attracted to the ‘compassionate conservative’ message articulated by a Republican candidate for governor, George W. Bush, son of the Texas-dwelling president who had called for ‘a thousand points of light’—communities of kindness. There was no question that Bush II was conservative. Even so, many of his ideas and policies were viewed through a humanitarian lens. He pushed for enlightened immigration reform and leaned heavily into educational programs that would see ‘no child left behind.’” (Mark McKinnon/VF)
“Alexey Navalny, a dissident and the political nemesis of Russian President Vladimir Putin, spent the past few years of his life behind bars but still managed to stay connected to the outside world. Letters from the final months of his life, obtained by The New York Times, show that Navalny, who'd been imprisoned since January 2021, managed to stay on top of current events — including in the US. In a letter sent to a friend, a photographer named Evgeny Feldman, Navalny said former President Donald Trump's agenda for a second term was ‘really scary,’ according to the Times. He said if President Joe Biden were to have a health issue, ‘Trump will become president,’ adding: ‘Doesn't this obvious thing concern the Democrats?’” (Kelsey Vlamis/BI)
“For the past four years, the LockBit ransomware group has been on an unrelenting rampage, hacking into thousands of businesses, schools, medical facilities, and governments around the world—and making millions in the process. A children’s hospital, Boeing, the UK’s Royal Mail, and sandwich chain Subway have all been recent victims. But LockBit’s hacking campaign has come to a juddering halt. A sweeping law enforcement operation, led by police at the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) and involving investigators from 10 forces around the world, has infiltrated the ransomware group and taken its systems offline. Graeme Biggar, the director general of the NCA, says the group has been ‘fundamentally disrupted.’ The law enforcement operation, called Operation Cronos, has taken control of LockBit's infrastructure and administration system, seized its dark-web leak site, accessed its source code, seized around 11,000 domains and servers, and obtained details of the group's members. ‘As of today, LockBit is effectively redundant,’ Biggar said at a press conference in London, appearing with law enforcement officials from the FBI and Europol. ‘We have hacked the hackers,’ he says.” (Matt Burgess/WIRED)
“Ruby Franke, 42, previously pleaded guilty to accusations of starving and abusing her children. She appeared in court on Tuesday along with her former business partner Jodi Hildebrandt, 54, who received an identical sentence. The judge sentenced both to serve four terms of one to 15 years each. How much time they will ultimately serve will be determined by the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole. The two women were arrested in August 2023 after Franke's malnourished 12-year-old son climbed out of a window at Hildebrandt's house in Ivins, Utah. Police said the child then ran to a neighbour's house and asked for food and water. He had lacerations from being tied up with rope, according to police records. Franke racked up more than two million subscribers to her YouTube channel 8 Passengers which was full of strict parenting advice.” (BBC)