The temperature in Delhi the other day was insane, glad it wasn't humid since it's only a matter of time before north India starts hitting wet bulb temps and thousands drop dead in the streets. Hope you can get out soon friend, it's such a shame it never took the Chinese path. Such a vibrant place.
Well it looks like all the rumblings of a BJP collapse were wrong. Exit polls are finally allowed to be reported in India and it's now widely expected Modi and the BJP will do much better than expected. Many are stating they might get a two thirds majority, allowing for constitutional changes. Not good folks. https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-votes-final-phase-elections-both-modi-rahul-gandhi-eye-victory-2024-06-01/
Trump serving like a six month sentence in Rikers would be potentially the funniest outcome possible. Winning the Presidential election from a jail cell would be the icing on the cake. Getting stabbed in a prison fight and bleeding out on election night would be the true dream. 
He will wiggle like he's never wiggled before. God tier wiggling.
I actually emailed the guy who wrote this article because I too tried desperately to find anything on our lovely Clung. He sounds like a really funny pessimist in the vein of Cioran. I'll reply here if the author ever replies with a source.
Yeah anecdotal reports I read in the FT line up with this, the BJP thinks they might be in a wee bit of trouble. Inshallah Modi loses.
Yeah I'm going to be Congo posting for the foreseeable future as I work my way through Gérard Prunier's primer on the 21st century's deadliest conflict. To the surprise of nobody, in reading Africa's World War I've regrettably discovered that the first and second Congo Wars were indeed in part proxy wars between the French and the Americans for control over the DRC's vast mineral wealth. Obviously a lot more complicated than just a proxy war, and it involved dozens of state and non-state actors, but the French tried desperately to uphold the Mobutu regime in Zaire whilst the Americans poured money and even American troops into Kagame's RPF to overthrow Mobutu. If you'll remember, Mobutu (leader of Zaire after the CIA/Belgian assassination of mildly leftist Lumumba in the 60's) was allowing the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide to re-arm in refugee camps on the Zaire/Rwanda border. The following excerpts are from pages 118-120
The U.S. government did not sound very keen to get involved, declaring, “We want to co-operate with our partners in solving the crisis in Eastern Zaire. But we must make sure that these plans are sound, logical and that they would work.” This was partly a result of the Somalia syndrome and also partly due to the fact that other segments of the U.S. government were physically supporting the operation without making that fact public. As the crisis unfolded it became obvious that decision making in Washington was taking place at several levels simultaneously and that they were not always in agreement with each other. But the general tone of the U.S. approach to the crisis was of support for the Kigali regime and its actions; U.S. Gen. George Joulwan, head of NATO, even described General Kagame as "a visionary."
After the taking of Bukavu, whose last defenders had been FDD Bu¬rundian guerrillas, the mixture of RPA and Congolese rebel troops pushed southward. They were soon joined by a group of about sixty African American mercenaries. According to English-speaking Zairians who had occasion to talk with them, they had been privately recruited in the United States and flown to Uganda, from where they had been taken by road to Kigali and later to Bukavu. The way their passage from the United States had been facilitated by Customs and police suggested undeniably that they were on some kind of unofficial government mission. They were soon battling the FDD at Mwenga and Kiliba.
It was increasingly obvious that the refugees had become political pawns. France and the pro-Mobutu West African francophone states pretended to back a multinational intervention force (MNF) to save the refugees; what they really wanted was to save Mobutu. On the opposite side the United States was dragging its feet on the MNF question (and Rwanda was openly opposing it) because it was increasingly collaborating in trying to bring Mobutu down, while not caring too much about what would happen to the refugees, or even, in the case of Rwanda, wanting them back under control, dead or alive. Similarly among foreign NGOs and political parties, pro-Hutu groups saw the refugees as innocent lambs about to be slaughtered, while the pro-Tutsi groups saw them as largely killers who were getting their comeuppance.
On November 8 fighting started around Mugunga, and UN Secretary General Boutros Ghali called for the rapid creation of a multinational intervention force, fearing the possibility of “genocide by starvation.” In spite of frantic diplomatic activity from Paris, negotiations were still bogged down. The British press made “the West” in general responsible for the delay, while the French press clearly accused the United States.
Yeah, that's definitely a lot of it. Also Africa is largely outside the circuits of capital aside from direct resource extraction, so it matters less to the imperial core than say the Middle East or Asia.
Thanks for the link to that article, it was really good. Further clarifies a lot of what I was reading. Interesting that it places the author of the book, Gérard Prunier, as a "pro-RPF" academic despite his writing portraying the RPF in an extremely unflattering light. In Africa's World War he writes extensively about how the RPF essentially pulled the genocide card to have unrestricted power to do mass reprisal killings at a large scale to shore up their own power base with little regard for the Tutsi survivors or moderate Hutus who helped to shelter many Tutsis.
Yeah the role of the French is insane. Protecting the Hutu genocidal leaders because they're useful to the French imperial project, propping up Mubuto who in turn aided the Hutu Interahamwe in the refugee camps in Zaire. All the while the Americans accept RPF talking points hook line and sinker, letting them carry out reprisal atrocities with virtual impunity.
I do actually think the situation there is far more complex than Palestine. There's so many interconnected actors, racial ideologies, artifacts of colonialism, and disparate militias and rebel groups all carrying out killings with varying degrees of "justification." Like there aren't really "good guys" in the same way as there are in Palestine. The RPF who rolled in to stop the genocide didn't really care about Tutsis in country, and often pursued military actions that avoided stopping the genocide proper, and carried out a massive wave of reprisal killings not based on any sense of punishing those who actually carried out the genocide but rather shoring up their own power base, as they were "Ugandan" Tutsis in exile from Rwanda for decades.
So in light of the recent situation in Goma where a third Congo War might be kicking off, I decided to start reading a book about the first and second Congo Wars, the latter of which is the 21st century's deadliest war (5+ million dead) that myself and seemingly nobody else knows fuck all about. The book is called Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe by Gérard Prunier, a French scholar of the African Great Lakes region. I wish I could find a book by an African scholar, but doesn't seem like there's much out there in English.
Anyway, outside of some weird colonial European habits (he has extensive footnotes for why he claims that the Rwandan people are raised to heavily respect and obey authority) it's pretty good. He spends much of the book decrying how the so-called international community didn't give a shit about any of this because it wouldn't make them any money, and how in general Africa is just ignored. I'm only a hundred pages in, and we've just covered the background of post-genocide Rwanda and holy shit, I cannot emphasize enough how much of a nightmare it was. Insane reprisal killings of mostly innocents whilst the actual Interahamwe (the militias who carried out the genocide) fled to Zaire and started raising an army again in UN run refugee camps to reconquer Rwanda. No international Nuremberg style courts at all. An exile Tutsi population that came back to Rwanda and subsequently condemned the Tutsi who survived the genocide as "collaborators" because they didn't die. UN troops watching as RPF troops slaughtered thousands of civilians en masse. People accusing other people of genocidal acts so they could steal their house, corpses littered on the side of the road rotting for weeks. A pervasive societal numbness to violence and atrocity that very clearly leads directly into what kicks off the Congo Wars. Reading this book is difficult because after like ten pages I'm exhausted with the depravity and the failure of our demonic world to care.
Interesting report on the North Korean-Russian relationship that only seems to be growing. Obviously take this with a grain of salt because the source is "US intelligence officials" but it seems to have a lot of folks in Washington troubled. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/are-russia-north-korea-planning-october-surprise-aids-trump-rcna153828
The Biden administration is increasingly concerned that the intensifying military alliance between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un could vastly expand Pyongyang’s nuclear capabilities and increase tensions in the Asia-Pacific region, six senior U.S. officials told NBC News.
U.S. intelligence officials believe Putin is providing North Korea with nuclear submarine and ballistic missile technology in exchange for Pyongyang’s sending Russia large amount of munitions for its war in Ukraine, the senior U.S. officials said. North Korea provides Russia with more munitions than Europe provides to Ukraine, including millions of artillery shells.
Officials are also concerned that Russia might help North Korea complete the final steps needed to field its first submarine able to launch a nuclear-armed missile.
Pyongyang has long sought a long-range ballistic missile able to fly thousands of miles and then re-enter the atmosphere with the payload intact. U.S. officials warn that Russia could now be helping it achieve the final steps. A nuclear-capable missile with survivable re-entry vehicles would present a significant challenge for U.S. missile defense systems.
Personally I'm hoping the Russians give the North Koreans some hypersonic glide missile tech. Scenes when the North Koreans have a weapons tech the Americans have failed to develop for over a decade would be too good to miss.
Problem is if the PLN does a blockade of Taiwan, good luck getting any weapons in. If you think the Houthis are shutting down the Red Sea, wait until you see what the People's Liberation Navy can do! Supply chains are vitally important for this kind of strategy. Likewise, Taiwan's cities are all on one coastline surrounded by mountainous jungle. There's nowhere for prolonged defensive lines or anything like that.
I love cacio e pepe but dandan noodles or Lanzhou beef noodle soup blows it out of the water
I will say that I donated to this same campaign and was not blocked by any anti-fraud, so it's probably bank specific or even semi-random.
