THE US, MANILA AND BEIJING

Philippine Army and United States Army Pacific officials and personnel during the opening ceremony of Exercise Salaknib at Fort Magsaysay, Nueva Ecija. (PHOTO FROM THE PHILIPPINE ARMY, story on https://globalnation.inquirer.net/231093/2-us-ph-armies-war-games-kicks-off)America is likely to become over-stretched militarily.   –Editor Can the US and the Philippines get Beijing to back off? On…

View On WordPress

Salman Rushdie has just published Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder. In August 2022, he was giving a talk at the Chautauqua Institution in New York. Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old from New Jersey, rushed the stage and stabbed him 15 times. It was astonishing that Salman survived. He lost the sight in one eye and sustained terrible injuries, but he’s still with us and he’s still writing, and unlike Hadi Matar, he’s still worth hearing.

We think of fanatics as stalkers with an obsessive knowledge of their targets.  Like the antisemites who compile lists of Jews in the media or the homophobes who so focus on the details of gay sex they might almost be closet cases

Most terrorists and bigots are not like that. They are like soldiers in an army who kill and hate for no other reason than tradition or men in authority have told them to kill and hate. If we were less fascinated by the pseudo-glamour of violence, we would see them for what they are: dullards and jerks.

In Knife Salman is almost as angered by the sheer lazy stupidity of his wannabee assassin as his violence.

“I do not want to use his name in this account. My Assailant, my would-be Assassin, the Asinine man who made Assumptions about me, and with whom I had a near-lethal Assignation … I have found myself thinking of him, perhaps forgivably, as an Ass.”

The ass “didn’t bother to inform himself about the man he decided to kill. By his own admission he read barely two pages of my writing and watched a couple of YouTube videos”.

That was enough, apparently, along with a little light indoctrination in the Levant.

We know from Matar’s mother that her son changed from a popular young man to a moody religious zealot after visiting her ex-husband in the Hezbollah-controlled town of Yaroun in Lebanon, a mile or so from the Israeli border.

“I was expecting him to come back motivated, to complete school, to get his degree and a job. But instead, he locked himself in the basement. He had changed a lot. He didn't say anything to me or his sisters for months.”

Salman quotes a wonderfully perceptive line from Jodi Picoult

“If you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.”

Rushdie is openly contemptuous, as he has every right to be.

“I see you now at twenty-four,” he writes, “already disappointed by life, disappointed in your mother, your sisters, your father, your lack of boxing talent, your lack of any talent at all; disappointed in the bleak future you saw stretching ahead of you, for which you refused to blame yourself.”

This has always been the way. Readers old enough to remember 1989 when the Ayatollah Khomeini ordered Salman’s execution for writing a blasphemous satire of Islam’s origin story in the Satanic Verses,will know that Khomeini had not read it. Nor had the furious demonstrators in the streets or the regressive leftists and Tory ministers who upbraided him for the non-crime of causing offence.

Those of us who had read the book pointed out that it was a magical realist fiction which contained sympathetic accounts of the racism Muslim immigrants in the UK suffered. Indeed, the Tories of the day loathed Salman, we continued, because of his confrontations with official racism.

But after a while we fell silent. Pleading with his enemies felt demeaning. It gave them undeserved credit, as if they were reasonable people, who could be swayed by evidence rather than just, well, pillocks.

In Knife Salman attempts an imaginary conversation with his persecutor.

OK, he says, Islam, unlike Judaism and Christianity, holds that man is not made in God’s image. God has no human qualities, it says.

But isn’t language a human quality? To have language, God would have to have a mouth, a tongue, vocal cords and a voice, just like a man. The terrorist’s understanding is that God cannot be like a man, however. So, God could not have spoken to Gabriel in Arabic. Gabriel must have translated his message when he came to the prophet.

The angel made it comprehensible to Muhammed by delivering it in human speech which is not the speech of God.

Thus, the version of Islamic instruction Matar received in his basement when he switched from playing video games to listening to Imams was an interpretation of a translation.

“I’m trying to suggest to you that, even according to your own tradition, there is uncertainty. Some of your own early philosophers have suggested this. They say everything can be interpreted, even the Book. It can be interpreted according to the times in which the interpreter lives. Literalism is a mistake.”

For a while, Rushdie says he wants to meet Matar again at the trial, as if he wants to have the argument in the flesh.

He tells a story about Samuel Beckett, which could only have happened to Samuel Beckett.

Beckett was walking through Paris in 1938 when he was confronted by a pimp named Prudent, who wanted money from him. Beckett pushed Prudent away, whereupon the pimp pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the chest, narrowly missing the left lung and the heart.

Beckett was taken to the nearest hospital, bleeding heavily. He only just survived.

You will never guess who paid for his treatment. James Joyce, of course, he did.

Anyway, Beckett went to the pimp’s trial. He met Prudent in the courtroom, and asked him why he had done it. This was the pimp’s reply: “Je ne sais pas, monsieur. Je m’excuse.” (I don’t know, sir. I’m sorry.)

But the more he thought about it, the less Rushdie had to say to his enemy. The idea that you can have theological arguments with a man who wants to kill you for writing a book he hasn’t even read felt ridiculous.

Although popular culture is full of stories about murderers, and true crime podcasts top the charts, killers and fanatics are nearly always less interesting than their victims. More often than not they are just thick. Nasty and vicious, but thick first of all.

We are about to see the stupidity of fanatics deployed on a mass scale. Two thirds of Republican voters (and nearly 3 in 10 Americans) continue to believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, and that Joe Biden was not lawfully elected. They think it because that is what Trump told them to think.

Islamists told Matar that Salman was an apostate, and that was all he needed to know. Trump told Republicans the election was stolen and ditto.

If Republicans were consistent people, they would not vote for Trump in 2024. What would be the point? They would have every reason to fear that the deep state would rig the 2024 presidential election as it rigged the 2020 presidential election.

But they will vote for him because, once again, that is what he tells them to do.

In the end there is a limit to how much attention you can pay the vicious and the stupid.

They are not interesting enough, as Rushdie concluded with marvellous disdain as he contemplated the life sentence Matar will face.

"Here we stand: the man who failed to kill an unarmed seventy-five-year-old writer, and the now 76-year-old writer. Somewhat to my surprise, I find I have very little to say to you. Our lives touched each other for an instant and then separated. Mine has improved since that day, while yours has deteriorated. You made a bad gamble and lost. I was the one with the luck… Perhaps, in the incarcerated decades that stretch out before you, you will learn introspection, and come to understand that you did something wrong. But you know what? I don’t care. This, I think, is what I have come to this courtroom to say to you. I don’t care about you, or the ideology that you claim to represent, and which you represent so poorly. I have my life, and my work, and there are people who love me. I care about those things.”

Michigan's Dearborn, that has been labelled America's Jihad Capital has been witnessing many pro-Hamas, anti-America and anti-Israel rallies.

Chants of Death to America and Death to Israel were hurled at the International Al-Quds Day rally held in Michigan on the last day of Ramadan.

"Imam Khomeini, who declared the International Al-Quds Day, this is why he would say to pour all of your chants and all of your shouts upon the head of America," Tarek Bazzi, a Michigan-based activist linked to the Hadi institute, said in a video from the rally.

The activist went on to claim that US is "one of the rottenest countries that has ever existed on this Earth," while arguing to eliminate the entire American "system."

"It’s not just Genocide Joe that has to go," Bazzi said, referring to President Biden. "It is the entire system that has to go. Any system that would allow such atrocities and such devilry to happen and would support it – such a system does not deserve to exist on God’s Earth."

When Bazzi asked his audience, when "fools" ask them "if Israel has the right to exist," they chant "Death to Israel" is "the most logical chant shouted across the world today."

The remarks were followed by chants of "Death to Israel" from protesters in the crowd. Soon after, Israeli flag was desecrated at the pro-Palestinian event held on the last Friday of Ramadan in Dearborn. 

Protesters were even heard chanting "Free Palestine" and "From the river to the sea," a controversial phrase classified as "hate" by many American Jews. 

Dearborn called America's Jihad Capital by WSJ

According to US media Dearborn has become a "hotbed of hate for many years, with the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) Executive Director Steven Stalinsky calling it America's Jihad Capital. 

Almost immediately after... and long before Israel began its ground offensive in Gaza,' Stalinisky wrote, 'people were celebrating the horrific events of that day in pro-Hamas rallies and marches throughout Dearborn.'

The city witnessed huge protests against US President Joe Biden last month, with activists from the town encouraging Democrats to vote "uncommitted" instead of supporting the president’s re-election bid.

"This type of extremism, this type of rhetoric, this type of division … threats of violence was a Middle East thing, it seems like a lot of that was limited to the Middle East, and now it’s come to our doorstep," Rep. Phil Green told Fox News Digital

Green said the majority of Dearborn’s citizens are peaceful and don’t promote violence, but he acknowledged the movements bubbling up from the town are worth monitoring closely for lawmakers.

How the James Webb Space Telescope has revealed a surprisingly bright, complex and element-filled early universe – Podcast

by Daniel Merino and Nehal El-Hadi of The Conversation

If you want to know what happened in the earliest years of the universe, you are going to need a very big, very specialized telescope. Much to the joy of astronomers and space fans everywhere, the world has one – the James Webb Space Telescope.

In this episode of “The Conversation Weekly,” we talk to three experts about what astronomers have learned about the first galaxies in the universe and how just six months of data from James Webb is already changing astronomy.

The James Webb Space Telescope successfully launched into space on Dec. 25, 2021. After about six months of travel, setup and calibration, the telescope began collecting data and NASA published the first stunning images.

One of Webb’s nicknames is the “first light telescope.” This is because Webb was specifically designed to be able to see as far back as possible into the earliest days of the universe and detect some of the first visible light.

You can see these galaxies in the images NASA has released. Jonathan Trump, an astronomer at the University of Connecticut, is on one of the teams working on some of the early James Webb data. He was watching the release of the first images live and noticed some things many nonastronomers might have missed. “In the background, behind these beautiful arcs and spirals and massive elliptical galaxies are these tiny, itty-bitty red smudges. That’s what I was most interested in, because those are some of the first galaxies in the universe.” This compound image shows some of the earliest galaxies ever seen, highlighted by the small boxes in the images on the left and right, and shown up close in the images in the center. NASA, ESA, CSA, Tommaso Treu (UCLA), CC BY-SA

To see any of these galaxies from the earliest days of the universe would be exciting, but right off the bat, Jeyhan Kartaltepe, an astronomer at the Rochester Institute of Technology, found something exciting when she started digging into the data.

“One of the things we’ve learned is that there are more of these galaxies than we expected to see.” In addition to working on identifying these early galaxies, Kartaltepe has been using Webb’s incredible resolution to study their structure and shape. “We expect there to be discs because discs form pretty naturally in the universe whenever you have something that’s rotating. But we’ve been seeing a lot of them, which has been a bit of a surprise.”

In addition to noting the shape of the galaxies in the early universe, astronomers like Trump are starting to be able to assess the chemical composition of these galaxies. He does this by looking at the spectrum of light James Webb is collecting. “We look at these distant galaxies and we look for particular patterns of emission lines. We often call them a chemical fingerprint because it really is like a particular fingerprint of particular elements in the gas in a galaxy.”

The universe started with just hydrogen and helium, but as stars formed and fused elements together, bigger, heavier elements started to emerge and fill in the periodic table as it is today. And just like Kartaltepe, Trump is finding evidence that things were happening faster in the early universe than astronomers expected. “I would’ve guessed that the universe would have struggled to make the periodic table and build up things. But that’s not what we found. Instead, the universe seems to have proceeded pretty rapidly.” This photo shows Webb’s first deep-field image, a long exposure of a small part of the sky revealing thousands of galaxies, many of which are too faint for even Hubble to detect. NASA/STScI

The discoveries coming out of James Webb are already changing how astronomers think of the early universe and challenging much of the existing theory. But the truly exciting part is that we are just beginning to see what this telescope is capable of, as Michael Brown, an astronomer at Monash University, explains.

“I’ve been on science papers that have used literally just a couple of minutes of data,” Brown says. “The image quality is just so good that a couple of minutes can do amazing things.” But soon Webb will begin to do follow-up surveys, take deep-field images and stare at parts of the sky for days and even weeks. Over the coming months, years and decades, Webb is going to keep giving astronomers plenty to work on, and astronomers like Brown are excited. “There is just all this complexity there, and we are barely scratching the surface. This will be the stuff that people who are students now are going to devote their careers to. And it’s going to be marvelous.”

This episode was produced by Katie Flood and Daniel Merino, with sound design by Eloise Stevens. It was written by Katie Flood and Daniel Merino. Mend Mariwany is the show’s executive producer. Our theme music is by Neeta Sarl.

You can find us on Twitter @TC_Audio, on Instagram at theconversationdotcom or via email. You can also sign up to The Conversation’s free daily email here. A transcript of this episode will be available soon.

Listen to “The Conversation Weekly” via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed, or find out how else to listen here.

Daniel Merino, Associate Science Editor & Co-Host of The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation and Nehal El-Hadi, Science + Technology Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

An embrace of queer identity and intimacy, the newly installed exhibition 'Habibi, the revolutions of love' showcases and questions the ideas surrounding queer love in the Arab world and beyond, countering orthodox perceptions through creativity.

Florence Massena 08 February, 2023

In a colourful setting on level -1 of the Arab World Institute (IMA) in the heart of Paris, installations, videos, paintings, drawings, designs and embroideries are showcased until February 19 under the title Habibi, the revolutions of love.

The exhibition focuses on queer love and expression in the Arab world, as well as Iran and Afghanistan, shedding light on an often taboo topic in the countries the artists come from.

The exhibition itself is far from a narrow portrayal of love under oppression.

It goes through motions and narratives, embracing more complex issues such as exile, politics, survival, intimacy and finding happiness, either at home or abroad.

The selection of more than 20 artists, sometimes gathered in collaborations or collectives, from very various countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Algeria, Jordan and Tunisia, bring to life a lot of creativity and desire.

The exhibition turns easily into a conversation between the artists and the themes, which answer each other with harmony and subtlety.

The project itself was born from conversations led between curators and contemporary artists during and after the IMA’s exhibition Divas, from Oum Kalthoum to Dalida back in 2021.

“There were these constellations of themes that could be explored setting up around us, and we have seen a lot of interrogations on genders and sexualities,” Elodie Bouffard, the exhibition curator alongside Khalid Abdel-Hadi and Nada Majdoub, told The New Arab. “It kind of imposed itself on us!”

The choice was not to focus on geography and lead a “country by country” organisation, but instead to highlight the creations’ quality and make it a topic among the others as it is often done in an institution such as IMA.

“The artistic expression is itself enough, led by a new scene that will certainly make the contemporary scene of tomorrow,” Elodie said.

“We made sure to see what united the pieces, and we saw that it goes beyond the topic of sexuality. Some cross paths, some clash with their activism and others are more playful, some are feminists… The queer topic is the line that allows us to question the ideas of norms, social identities, body’s politicisation, the question of surveillance as well as the way others perceived you, notably through the European gaze.”

Despite the choice to open to many countries and artists, Lebanon is overly represented, through the presence of many Lebanese artists but also artists who lived and worked in Beirut for a few months or years.

“In Lebanon, you have a lot of personalities, many spaces dedicated to cultural interventions as well as an activist History through organizations like Helem for example [first LGBTQIA+ rights organisation in the Arab world] that did a lot for LGBTQ+ struggles,” Elodie explained. “All of this combined makes Lebanon an unavoidable place to work and exhibit for queer artists from the region.”

This is the case of Alireza Shojaian, an Iranian artist born in 1988 and who lived a few years in Beirut before moving on to Paris in 2019. “I was an artist in Iran but my art was sitting in my closet,” Alireza told The New Arab.

“In Lebanon, I could create and be exhibited, there is freedom and space to do that there and that’s why it’s so represented in that exhibition. You know, the first time I was exhibited was in another Arab country! I often feel that the Iranian authorities try to prevent us to travel to the rest of the region so that we don’t find the spaces of expression that exist.”

The main work he is exhibiting is a big mural called The Mirror, a self-portrait representing his suspended time in Beirut through the city in the background, his identity through the books on the shelf and his state of mind, a lingering sadness as a person in exile.

It also represents five photographs on the mirror, one of an intimate moment of his life, one of his military service, Bashasha and a friend by 1950s Lebanese photographer Heshem el Madani, US gay activist and politician Harvey Milk, as well as Two Men Dancing, a photograph from Robert Mapplethorpe, from a 1980s performance piece entitled The Power of Theatrical Madness.

Shojaian felt important to participate in such an exhibition, first because of its location: “It’s in an institution dedicated to the Arab world and the topic LGBTQ+ has always been neglected there. It is important to show that this topic exists in the Arab world, and towards the West to also remind them where the laws and rules against homosexuality come from, that maybe they can help.”

Most of the official status in the Arab world on homosexuality was taken during the British and French mandates and occupations, for example in Lebanon as a colonial relic from the early 1900s. “It is also for me, as an Iranian, because I am able to give my voice to the thousands who can’t speak up in my country,” Alireza added.

Also quite political, Tunisian artist Aïcha Snoussi, born in 1989 and currently living in Paris, decided to tackle the tough topics of the people who drowned during the crossing of the Mediterranean sea through a big installation, as well as the troubles of the world through a self-portrait, pensive in her room. “The two works echo each other,” she told The New Arab.

“Multiplicity on one side, with more than 700 bottles filled with old paper, archives, inks and organic elements. The uniqueness on the other side, that of a canvas made of the same materials but recounting the chaos of the world from within.”

In the exhibition, Aïcha also noted the themes of exile, history, archives, memory, transmission and struggle, which are according to her “intimately linked to that of the body, its representations and these evanescences”.

“These sensitivities and trajectories give rise to new narratives, which are relatively under-represented in art but also in queer culture, and therefore necessary,” she added. “It is also a visibility that sends a message of power and resistance to those who recognize themselves in it.”

Other artists chose to address those themes of both love and exile through a more intimate approach, such as the Lebanese visual artistic duo Jeanne & Moreau, composed of Lara Tabet and Randa Mirza.

They set up a bedroom displaying pictures and videos they exchanged during their long-distance relationship time as well as when they started living together, first in Lebanon then in France, through crisis, exile and changes in their approach to art and each other.

“First we were apart, there was a desire of seduction, then the 2019 crisis in Lebanon with an economic collapse and then the explosion of the Beirut port,” Lara Tabet told The New Arab.

“At the same time as those repeated crises, our relationship changed too. We decided to exhibit a bedroom, where a lot of intimate things are renegotiated, which also represents a delicate balance between the idyllic privilege of living as a nomad and the harshness of forced exile, as well as domesticity.”

The installation combines intimacy inside and activism outside for their country, the crisis inviting itself into intimacy through the destruction of their Beirut apartment during the August 2020 explosion.

Sexuality, struggles, identity and perception of yourself go across the narratives IMA exhibited in an explosion of themes, freedom and colours in an expression space where audiences often associate pain and shame.

MPOCC renamed Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil KUALA LUMPUR: THE Malaysian Palm Oil Certification Council will now be known as the Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil, with a view to strengthen it as a world-class certification. Johari said during a bilateral discussion between the ministry and the European Union regarding the bloc' s Deforestation-free Regulation and MSPO, Malaysia had... NOR AIN MOHAMED RADHI [email protected] KUALA LUMPUR: THE Malaysian Palm Oil Certification Council (MPOCC) will now be known as the Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO), with a view to strengthen it as a world-class certification. Plantation and Commodities Minister Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani said the rebranding was one of the government's initiatives to enhance the palm oil certification scheme. "Efforts to promote MSPO will be further enhanced with the launch of the MSPO Strategic Action Plan 2024-2026. "It encompasses three main strategies, namely building a robust and trustworthy sustainability certification scheme, ensuring industry players' compliance and adding value to MSPO certification, as well as expanding recognition and acceptance of MSPO," he said at the Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil 10th Anniversary Celebration and Hari Raya do. His speech was read by ministry deputy secretary-general (strategic planning and management) Datuk Abdul Hadi Omar. Present was MSPO chairman Datuk Dr Suzana Idayu Wati Osman. Johari said during a bilateral discussion between the ministry and the European Union regarding the bloc's Deforestation-free Regulation (EUDR) and MSPO, Malaysia had received positive feedback regarding its efforts to reduce deforestation rates. "The EU has also provided meaningful recognition of Malaysia's commitment to sustainable commodity production," he said. At the event, MSPO also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with four higher education institutions, namely IIUM Higher Education Sdn Bhd, Persatuan Regenerasi dan Kelestarian Alam, Felcra College and City University. Ten MSPO Youth Ambassadors from each institution had been selected to promote and raise awareness among other students about MSPO certification. Johari said MSPO must adapt and respond effectively to evolving global priorities to enhance the value of the nation's palm oil sector. He said the ministry would ensure continuous improvement of the MSPO certification scheme to remain relevant in meeting international sustainability standards, particularly regarding traceability, deforestation-free practices, legitimate land ownership and good labour practices. "I welcome the MSPO 2.0 standards, an initiative to enhance certification credibility by incorporating new elements such as high conservation value, social impact assessment, greenhouse gas emissions and measures to address forced labour and child labour issues," he said. Johari also emphasised the need for effective engagement sessions with stakeholders, such as policymakers, consumer associations, non-governmental organisations and traders, to raise awareness about Malaysia's initiatives and commitments. "Through these steps, MSPO will gain recognition from the international business and consumer community. "MSPO must actively participate in local and international forums or conferences, particularly those addressing sustainability or the global cooking oil industry." Johari said all palm oil from MSPO-certified producers must bear the MSPO logo on products sold both domestically and internationally. "This is crucial to establish MSPO as a credible certification body and enable the government to be a primary defence against negative perceptions of the palm oil industry." Johari highlighted that over the past 10 years since the establishment of MSPO, efforts by the government and industry players in elevating sustainability standards had yielded results. He said up to last month, 4.94 million hectares, or 87.4 per cent of the oil palm plantation area, along with 407 out of 446 palm oil mills and 151,152 smallholders, covering 542,215ha, had received certification. "Additionally, MSPO has received various recognition and signed several MoUs with stakeholders in purchasing countries, such as Japan, China, India, Mongolia and the Philippines. "MSPO has also signed an MoU with the Halal Development Centre to promote the country's palm oil products in the global halal market." Johari added that considering the direction of palm oil-importing countries, sustainability agendas were increasingly becoming priorities in their policies. "These policies, such as the EUDR, play a role in influencing the demand patterns of other countries for sustainable palm oil. "Therefore, the implementation of sustainable practices can provide economic value to the country's palm oil products." He also emphasised that since the establishment of MSPO, it had successfully ensured that the country's palm oil industry fully complied with sustainability practices as part of its commitment to addressing climate change, biodiversity conservation, greenhouse gas emissions, and good labour practices. "The MSPO certification scheme can provide assurance to buyers regarding compliance with international sustainability standards."

Politica Giorgia Meloni? “Io a questa signora darei un consiglio di essere meno infantile e di crescere”. Il ritorno di Salman Rushdie in Italia per la prima volta dopo l’attentato subito il 12 agosto 2022 coincide con una critica alla presidente del Consiglio. Ospite del Salone del Libro di Torino, lo scrittore indiano naturalizzato britannico ricorda il processo subito da Roberto Saviano per aver definita “bastarda” la leader di Fratelli d’Italia, che ha portato alla condanna per diffamazione dell’autore di Gomorra, e attacca: “Ho sentito del contenzioso. A rischio mio personale devo dire che i politici dovrebbero farsi la pelle un po’ più dura perché un politico al giorno d’oggi oltre ad avere grande potere ha anche molta autorità – è stato il ragionamento di Rushdie – Quindi è normale che qualcuno tra la popolazione ne parli direttamente, magari male, anche usando una brutta parola come quella che ha usato Roberto”. Quindi il “consiglio” di “essere meno infantile e di crescere”. L’autore de I versetti satanici ha perso la vista da un occhio e non può più usare una mano dopo essere stato accoltellato a New York, un’aggressione che gli è costata alcuni nervi recisi e altre 15 ferite alla schiena e al busto. Lo scrittore si trovava sul palco della Chautauqua Institution per tenere un discorso sulla libertà artistica, quando venne attaccato da Hadi Matar, 24 anni, ritenuto dalla polizia vicino all’estremismo sciita. In tribunale Matar si era dichiarato non colpevole, spiegando di aver tentato di uccidere lo scrittore per i suoi scritti giudicati offensivi verso l’Islam. Nel 1989 l’allora ayatollah iraniano Ruhollah Khomeini emise una fatwa ordinando l’uccisione di Rushdie: lo ritenne colpevole di blasfemia nei confronti di Maometto. Con Saviano, Rushdie presenterà il suo ultimo libro “Coltello. Meditazioni dopo un tentato assassinio”, con il quale ha raccontato la sua terribile esperienza: “Questo ritorno in Italia per me significa un’ulteriore vittoria. Ero stato qui un mese prima dell’attentato, eravamo tornati negli Usa poco prima. Eravamo stati in Sardegna, Umbria, Capri, un po’ a Milano e a Roma. Era appena finito il tempo della pandemia ed era piacevole riuscire a tornare in un paese così bello. Il ritorno di oggi in Italia è la chiusura del cerchio”, ha detto lo scrittore. “Starò in Italia per un po’, poi andrò a visitare altri paesi europei. Ora è meglio non essere in America – ha aggiunto – Altri libri? spero proprio di sì, non so cosa sarà. Ho pubblicato due libri in due anni, ora faccio una pausa”. Articolo Precedente Arresto Toti, su La7 Alessandra Mussolini se la prende con i giornalisti: “Questo non è fare informazione ma gettare fango sul centrodestra” Articolo Successivo Mattarella: “La Costituzione riguarda tutti da vicino. È una conquista e va conosciuta, amata, difesa”

Emirates NBD Asset Management establishes its first Public Fund in DIFC Business Economy and Finance

• Investors receive access to feeder funds and master funds domiciled in highly regulated jurisdictions • The new Public Fund bolsters Emirates NBD Asset Management as one of the largest local asset managers in the UAE     Emirates NBD Asset Management, the asset management division of Emirates NBD, a leading banking group in the MENAT (Middle East, North Africa and Türkiye) region, has strengthened its commitment to the UAE’s goal of developing the country’s asset management sector, by establishing its first public fund in Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) named FundStar (OEIC) PLC.    As an entity regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), Emirates NBD Asset Management has set up FundStar as an umbrella fund that will host a number of feeder funds and master funds across a broad range of asset classes and geographies, including equity and fixed income, as well as multi-asset strategies in both conventional and Shari’ah-compliant forms.    Being a licensed fund, FundStar shares will be promoted through a public offering to onshore retail investors in the UAE, in line with the existing Memorandum of Understanding between three different regulators, namely the Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA), the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) and the DFSA. By investing in FundStar sub-funds, investors will have access to professionally managed portfolios across a wide range of asset classes and geographies. Also, the Feeder Sub-Funds within FundStar will provide retail investors with the opportunity to access foreign funds domiciled in highly regulated jurisdictions with proven track records such as Luxembourg. Investors will benefit from low entry investment amounts of USD 1,000/AED 1,000, daily liquidity and income generation on a quarterly basis.   Michail Samawi, Senior Executive Officer (SEO) at Emirates NBD Asset Management, commented: “As the UAE’s regulatory environment continues to evolve, Emirates NBD Asset Management is proud to create a Public Fund that complies with the current prevailing regulations, and strengthens the relationship with our customers by offering them access to professionally managed funds domiciled in renowned, highly regulated jurisdictions.”   He added: “FundStar adds to our portfolio of locally regulated solutions that support the investment goals of our retail investors. As one of the largest asset managers in the UAE, Emirates NBD Asset Management is using its expertise to provide innovative products, while supporting the growth of financial markets in the region.”   Tariq Chaudhary, Group Head of Wealth Management at Emirates NBD, commented on the launch: “The Launch of FundStar comes at a very critical juncture in the investment landscape of the UAE. We are delighted with the launch of an onshore eligible platform that provides locally regulated solutions to support the investment goals of a large number of our retail investors.”   Marwan Hadi, Group Head of Retail Banking and Wealth Management at Emirates NBD, said: “As a financial institution that leads the region in innovation and technology, we are proud to launch FundStar, a local platform that will utilise our regional and Shari’ah-compliant capabilities to offer best-in-class solutions to the regional investor while reflecting our commitment to supporting the growing needs of financial markets in the region.”   FundStar (OEIC) PLC allows investors to participate in conventional and Shari’ah-compliant forms, in regional and global fixed income portfolios and equities, as well as offers access to world-class asset managers through several risk-profiled, multi-asset funds.  Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News. Source link via The Novum Times

Salman Rushdie — Knife + 'Oz'

P.S. Salman Rushdie’s new memoir, “Knife,” about the attack on his life during a literary event at the Chautauqua Institution, in New York, in 2022, is out today.

Last year, Rushdie told David Remnick how he was recovering, physically and emotionally, from the incident.

“There is such a thing as P.T.S.D., you know,” he said. “I’ve found it very, very difficult to write. I sit down to write, and nothing happens. I write, but it’s a combination of blankness and junk, stuff that I write and that I delete the next day. I’m not out of that forest yet, really.”

Salman Rushdie's 'Knife' review: Author addresses attack, vulnerably

Salman Rushdie is the author of "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder."

In the final pages of his new memoir, Salman Rushdie, the award-winning author who famously endured a fatwa after his 1988 novel, “The Satanic Verses,” was condemned as blasphemy against Islam and who, 30-plus years later, survived a horrific stabbing that left him blind in his right eye and riddled with health challenges, shares the greatest damage he has suffered so far.

“I’ve become a strange fish, famous not so much for my books as for the mishaps of my life,” he observes.

“Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder” is many things, not the least of which is a reminder that the India-born and England-educated Rushdie — author of 15 novels, three essay collections, a book of stories, a work of reportage and a previous memoir — is a writer in full command of his talent.

A slim but powerful bookend to “Joseph Anton,” Rushdie’s dense 2012 memoir of the fatwa years, “Knife” captures the musings of an older, more contained soul, grateful for family and friends, and chasing optimism.

The memoir is steeped in Rushdie’s love for his wife, the novelist, poet and photographer Rachel Eliza Griffiths; his sons Milan and Zafar; his sister, Sameen, and her children; and the literary community that has supported him.

He recognizes that their care and attention, along with the public rallies and readings held in his honor and on behalf of free expression, have been essential to his survival.

After so many years in hiding during the height of the fatwa, Rushdie ultimately embraced a high-profile public life, with celebrity friends and lovers, appearances in film, and deep associations with organizations such as PEN America that celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.

Chatty and observant, “Knife” is stuffed with references to all sorts of literary works that bolster Rushdie’s free-ranging thoughts, from Voltaire’s “Candide” to Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.”

But it also feels intimate, as if the author has pulled each reader into a quiet corner to share the trauma and drama of his recent years.

In part, “Knife” is an attempt to understand what that violent attack on August 12, 2022, was about.

Why did a 24-year-old man rush the stage of the Chautauqua Institution amphitheater in upstate New York, where a 75-year-old Rushdie was about to discuss the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, and stab the author, repeatedly, for 27 seconds?

By way of an answer, Rushdie offers an imagined conversation between him and his alleged assailant, whom he refers to as “A.”

(In the real world, the alleged assailant is named Hadi Matar; state and federal trials are still pending.)

This bit of fiction tucked into a memoir that is, by definition, non-fiction, is a retaliatory act, a way of wielding language like a blade, carving out the possible influences and motives of a young man charged with a heinous crime.

During this imagined conversation, Rushdie speculates that “A.” has spent a lot of time in thrall to imaginary universes.

“In those universes, the universe of Call of Duty, death is everywhere but it isn’t real,” he writes. “You kill many, many people, but you also kill nobody.”

Rushdie asks “A.” where he first discovered God.

From “Imam Yutubi,” “A.” replies, adding that God has “many faces, many voices. But they all tell the truth.”

Rushdie explains to “A.” that he has discovered only “interpretations” of the word of God, “acts, we might say, of translation” that necessarily contain uncertainty.

“Some of your own early philosophers have suggested this,” the author tells “A.”

“Your Yutubis from the centuries before YouTube. They say everything can be interpreted, even the Book. It can be interpreted according to the times in which the interpreter lives. Literalism is a mistake.”

Safe to say, in this fabricated conversation, Rushdie wins every argument.

It’s worth noting that Rushdie’s stabbing took place within months of the Oscars ceremony where Will Smith strode onstage and slapped Chris Rock (March 2022) and the Hollywood Bowl event where Dave Chappelle was assaulted onstage by a man carrying a knife that looked like a gun (May 2022).

While Rock and Chapelle did not sustain the grave physical injuries that Rushdie did, in all three cases the fourth wall was breached, and artists and free speech attacked.

As Rushdie begins the process of healing, he realizes he wants to talk about what is happening to freedom and freedom of expression in the United States, his chosen home.

“I thought only about survival, by which I meant not only staying alive, but getting my life back, the free life I had so carefully built over the last 20 years,” writes Rushdie, who is long settled in New York City. Several pages later, he adds: “If you are afraid of the consequences of what you say, then you are not free.”

“Knife” also follows Rushdie’s corporeal journey through hospitalization and rehabilitation for deep wounds to his right eye, face, mouth, neck, left hand, chest and thigh. The details are not for the squeamish.

During his first days at the trauma center in Erie, Pa., he describes his right eye as “hugely distended, bulging out of its socket and hanging down on my face like a large soft-boiled egg.”

Later, he articulates the pain of having his eyelid stitched shut, of having a catheter inserted to help him urinate.

Survival and distance let him capture these moments with clarity and even, incredibly, comedy.

Despite the violence that sent Rushdie to the hospital, “Knife” is remarkably void of bitterness and existential hand-wringing.

Instead, there’s an emotional elegance at work, a quiet resolve that accompanies Rushdie’s physical frailty and determination to live.

Through it all, Rushdie’s godlessness remains intact.

Although his body of work is deeply engaged in religion — not to mention politics, history, fantasy, myth, magic and more — he has never felt the need for religious faith to help him comprehend the world.

What he does need, as he writes in “Knife,” is for society to make the distinction between private faith and publicized ideology, because in his view, “the private faith of anyone is nobody’s business except that of the individual concerned. I have no issue with religion when it occupies this private space and doesn’t seek to impose its values on others. But when religion becomes politicized, even weaponized, then it’s everybody’s business, because of its capacity for harm.”

Even Rushdie admits that his survival and recovery from such a brutal physical attack have been miraculous.

As a godless man, he doesn’t quite know what to do with this realization, but he’s brave enough to share it with readers and to sit, vulnerably, in a profound paradox.

“No, I don’t believe in miracles,” Rushdie writes, “but, yes, my books do, and, to use Whitman’s formulation, do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I don’t believe in miracles, but my survival is miraculous. Okay, then. So be it.”

.

With 3 Words, Salman Rushdie Just Explained a Simple Yet Profound Lesson in Being Interesting

In the modern era of communication, when every word counts--be it in a tweet, a corporate email, or a branding campaign--simplicity is key.

Yet, simplicity doesn't have to mean dullness.

Salman Rushdie, in his recent Masterclass, challenges writers and communicators of all kinds with a potent directive:

"Don't use adjectives."

This simple, three-word tip might seem counterintuitive, but it offers a profound lesson in creativity and engagement.

Adjectives, those words that traditionally paint our prose with color and detail, can also hinder our ability to engage an audience.

Rushdie suggests that by stripping away these descriptors, what initially appears as a limitation forces a more vivid and concrete expression.

Without relying on adjectives like "green" or "beautiful," a writer must work harder to convey the essence of the scene or object, leading to storytelling that is not just descriptive, but evocative.

Leaders, be vivid

Consider a leader describing a future project to their team.

Instead of saying, "This will be an exciting, innovative, and impactful project," removing the adjectives could reshape the delivery:

"This project pioneers new technologies to transform our industry and redefine customer experience."

Notice the shift?

Michigan: Anti-Israel Protesters Chant ‘Death to America’ on International Al-Quds Day

Anti-Israel protesters in Dearborn, Michigan, closed out Ramadan by chanting, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” during an International Al-Quds Day rally.

Video of the protest went viral on social media Sunday, showing activists condemning both Israel and America in the harshest of terms. Activist Tarek Bazzi of the Hadi Institute said chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” were only logical.

“Why are our protests on the International Day of Al-Quds, why are they so anti-America?” he asked. “Why don’t we just focus more on Israel and not talk so much about America? Gaza has shown the entire world why these protests are so anti-America. Because it’s the United States government that provides the funds for all the atrocities that we just heard about.”

“Imam Khomeini, who declared the International Al-Quds Day, this is why he would say to pour all of your chants and all of your shouts upon the head of America,” he later added.

University of California faculty and other staff could be banned from publishing political statements, including those stemming from the Israel-Hamas conflict, on university websites and other university channels under a policy that UC’s board of regents could consider as soon as Thursday. The consideration of such a policy comes after some units, including at least two ethnic studies departments, posted statements on their websites last fall supporting Palestine and condemning Israel.

The proposal is causing an uproar among some faculty who say it would repress their academic freedom and question how it would be enforced. UC officials behind the idea, though, say it is necessary to ensure that the opinions of certain individuals or groups of faculty aren’t mistaken for the opinions of UC as a whole. SF man who brutally murdered 3-year-old granted parole

“When individual or group viewpoints or opinions on matters not directly related to the official business of the unit are posted on these administrative websites, it creates the potential that the statements and opinions will be mistaken as the position of the institution itself,” regent Jay Sures, who helped develop the proposal as chair of the regents’ compliance and audit committee, said during Wednesday’s regents meeting.

The effort is the latest fallout from the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas and Israel’s military response in Gaza, which has triggered sharp responses from pro- and anti-Israeli groups. The policy does not specifically mention any particular issue, but some faculty see it as an attempt to prevent them from discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Since the fall, the website for UC Santa Cruz’s critical race and ethnic studies department has displayed a statement calling on “scholars, researchers, organizers, and administrators worldwide” to take action “to end Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” The website for UC San Diego’s ethnic studies department includes several statements and commentaries. One statement says the ethnic studies community at UC San Diego supports Palestinian people and their “freedom from an apartheid system that seeks to dehumanize them in unconscionable ways.”

Sures last fall also sharply criticized a letter by the UC Ethnic Studies Council. In the letter, the council said official UC communications denouncing Hamas for its Oct. 7 attack on Israel distorted and misrepresented “the unfolding genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and thereby contribute to the racist and dehumanizing erasure of Palestinian daily reality.” Sures wrote a public response to the council saying the letter “is rife with falsehoods about Israel and seeks to legitimize and defend the horrific savagery of the Hamas massacre.”

One regent, Hadi Makarechian, acknowledged during Wednesday’s regents meeting that the regents were considering the issue because “some people were making some political statements” related to Palestine and Hamas.

Christine Hong, a professor of critical race and ethnic studies at UC Santa Cruz, said during the public comment portion of the meeting that the regents are attempting to “repress academic freedom” and disallow “any critical study or discussion of Palestine.”

“Your emissary, regent Jay Sures, declared war on ethnic studies,” Hong added.

Sures maintained Wednesday that the policy isn’t meant to impede free speech and that he believes there “are many avenues” for faculty to share their viewpoints.

“I’m not so sure that it needs to go on the landing pages of departmental websites,” he said.

The final language of the policy that the regents could vote on isn’t yet known. According to their agenda, regents were scheduled to vote Wednesday on a policy stating that “official channels of communication, including the main landing pages of websites, of schools, departments, centers, units, and other entities should not be used for purposes of publicly expressing the personal or collective opinions of unit members or of the entity.”

That language was criticized for being too ambiguous, including by two key UC law professors who urged the regents to reject the proposal. The professors — Ty Alper of UC Berkeley and Brian Soucek of UC Davis — each previously served terms as chair of the UC Academic Senate’s university committee on academic freedom. As chairs, they helped develop a 2022 recommendation by the Senate that faculty departments should be allowed to issue opinionated statements.

In a letter to the regents, Alper and Soucek said the proposed policy “raises more questions than it settles.” Do official channels include a department’s social media pages, even though those aren’t UC-hosted websites? Do emails sent by a dean or department chair count as official channels? Are faculty departments violating the policy if they were to sign a public statement hosted on a website not operated by UC?

Acknowledging that the language was indeed ambiguous, UC staff during the meeting amended it and presented two different options to regents. Under the first option, faculty departments would be banned from expressing opinions only on the “main landing pages” of university websites. The second option featured language that would extend the ban beyond the landing pages and to other websites, at the discretion of a university administrator.

But those options also caused confusion and debate among regents and UC officials.

“Even if it’s not on the main landing page, if someone says, this is the official viewpoint of Department X on this political issue, I think you could interpret some of this language to say, we also don’t want people to do that,” Howard Gillman, the chancellor of UC Irvine, said Wednesday while addressing the regents.

Some regents and officials also suggested that the policy include language that university departments should have designated opinion pages on their websites, and that any political statements or other opinions should be limited to existing on those pages.

Sures agreed to work overnight with fellow regent Lark Park and UC’s general counsel, Charles Robinson, to further revise the policy and return Thursday with a new action item. By possibly banning faculty departments from making political statements, UC’s new policy could run counter to the 2022 Academic Senate recommendation, some faculty say. Lithium-ion battery causes fire on Google campus in Mountain View

At that time, the Senate’s academic council and university committee on academic freedom agreed that “departments should not be precluded from issuing or endorsing statements in the name of the department,” noting that freedom of expression as well as academic freedom are “core tenets of the UC educational mission.” The Senate took up the issue after UCLA’s Asian American studies department published a statement expressing solidarity with Palestinians and denouncing Israel.

In a social media statement Wednesday, the Berkeley Faculty Association said the idea to ban departments from making political statements was already considered and rejected by the Academic Senate in 2022. The faculty association also questioned how the new policy would be enforced and urged the regents to reject it.

“Who gets to decide what is a political statement and who will be responsible for policing the websites and social media accounts of academic units? We urge the Regents not to approve a dangerously ambiguous policy which raises alarming questions about governance and academic freedom,” the faculty association wrote.

Play review (long post)

Review: In ‘Russian Troll Farm,’ You Can’t Stop the Memes

An unlikely dark comedy imagines the people pushing #PizzaGate, Donald Trump and who knows what next.

No one misses the early days and dark theaters of the Covid pandemic, but the emergency workaround of streaming content was good for a few things anyway. People who formerly could not afford admission suddenly could, since much of it was free, and artists from anywhere could now be seen everywhere, with just a Wi-Fi connection.

That’s how I first encountered “Russian Troll Farm,” a play by Sarah Gancher intended for the stage but that had its debut, in 2020, as an online co-production of three far-flung institutions: TheaterWorks Hartford, TheaterSquared in Fayetteville, Ark., and the Brooklyn-based Civilians. At the time, I found its subject and form beautifully realized and ideally matched — the subject being online interference in the 2016 presidential election by a Russian internet agency.

“This is digitally native theater,” I wrote, “not just a play plopped into a Zoom box.”

Now the box has been ripped open, and a fully staged live work coaxed out of it. But the production of “Russian Troll Farm” that opened on Thursday at the Vineyard Theater is an entirely different, and in some ways disappointing, experience. Though still informative and trenchant, and given a swifter staging by the director Darko Tresnjak, it has lost the thrill of the original’s accommodation to the extreme constraints of its time.

Not that it is any less relevant in ours; fake news will surely be as prominent in the 2024 election cycle (is Taylor Swift a pro-Biden psy-op?) as it was in 2016. That’s when, as Gancher recounts using many real texts, posts and tweets of the time, trolls at the Internet Research Agency — a real place in St. Petersburg, Russia — devised sticky memes and other content meant to undermine confidence in the electoral process, sow general discord, legitimize Trumpism and vaporize Hillary Clinton.

Egor (Haskell King) is a friendless, robotic techno-nerd who just wants to win the microwave oven that’s a prize for productivity. Steve (John Lavelle) is a Soviet revanchist who calls the Enlightenment a mistake and Gorbachev the “world’s biggest cuck.” Nikolai (Hadi Tabbal) is a moony screenwriter manqué who thinks what he does is evil but still wants “to do a good job at it” — causing Steve, who went to junior college in California, to deride him as a “human latte” and a “performative bookstore tote bag.”

The fourth troll is the newbie, Masha (Renata Friedman). A disillusioned journalist who took the job at the agency for the pay, she wants nothing more than to move to London and recover from Russia by doing yoga. Naturally she becomes the focal point of several interconnected bids for love and dominance among Steve, Nikolai and Ljuba, whose bureaucratic fury belies a troubled emotional life beneath.

The snappy dialogue draws moderate laughs, often by squeezing banal office politics against the scarier kind. (“No Nazi content unless specifically requested by supervisor,” Ljuba warns the others.) But though Gancher subtitles the play “a workplace comedy,” you may in the end be left wondering what’s funny. The trolls’ various schemes for advancement and connection all end disastrously, as many in the audience surely feel the election did, too. Nor does it help that the cast works so hard to get a response from the audience, sometimes annoyingly demanding participation and thus a kind of complicity.

Complicity was not of course possible in the no-longer-available 2020 streaming production, which required viewers to process it on the fly, in much the way they process social media, deciding for themselves what to laugh at — and what to ponder, repost or trash. Lacking that formal congruence, the live “Russian Troll Farm” has a temperature problem: Instead of cool, it feels overheated; instead of suggestive, prosaic.

It was likewise unsettling, in 2020, that you never quite knew where the characters existed, except in the electronic ether; now, on Alexander Dodge’s white box set, they are fixed in a highly specific, nonvirtual space, with ergo chairs and a photo of Putin. Likewise, the ear-scratching interstitial noise (by Darron L West and Beth Lake) and strobey light (by Marcus Doshi) and projection effects (by Jared Mezzocchi) are almost too gorgeously professional, failing to reproduce the deliberate crudeness of the original’s fuzz, pixelation and green-screen blur.

Crudeness is key. Not only does it elicit the poetry of Gancher’s writing, which despite its shiny surface has depth; it is also expressive in itself, because crudeness is a hallmark of the trolls’ greatest hits. Egor considers his English spelling mistakes (“libral” for “liberal”) a useful way of promoting engagement. People who comment on the errors are merely being pulled even farther into the web — and the whole point of the troll farm, as an author’s note points out, is “to stir up trouble.”

At that, it succeeded, though Russia has no patent on trolls. Indeed, the Internet Research Agency shut down last year, collateral damage from the Wagner Group rebellion, but fake news has never been riper. It’s just more local. I suppose “Russian Troll Farm” wants us to consider whether we would participate in its strange, chaotic economy of lies if given the opportunity — and a microwave.

Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy Through Feb. 25 at Vineyard Theater, Manhattan; vineyardtheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.

Jesse Green is the chief theater critic for The Times. He writes reviews of Broadway, Off Broadway, Off Off Broadway, regional and sometimes international productions. More about Jesse Green

A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 9, 2024, Section C, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Even in Person, They Just Can’t Stop the Memes. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Think tank: Pressure from Emirates could pull Sudan back from edge of abyss In brief:

SPLM-North, led by Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, has agreed to meet with the civilian anti-war coalition known as Tagadum, and proposed an agenda for discussion.

RSF troops allegedly shot at a crowd of civilians Tuesday in the town of al-Ma’iliq, which is halfway between Khartoum and Wad Madani, killing one civilian and injuring others, according to Emergency Lawyers.

RSF soldiers claimed they downed a drone in Khartoum yesterday

A fight between members of the Rapid Support Forces resulted in the killing of two troops in Arkaweet neighborhood of Hassahissa in Jezira State, according to the Hassahissa Resistance Committees.

Leaders of two Darfur armed groups, Al-Tahir Hajar (GSLF) and Al-Hadi Idriss (SLM-TC), have arrived back in El Fasher, North Darfur, following international travels. Sources affiliated with the two movements denied rumors that they intended to negotiate the evacuation of the army garrison from El Fasher. Both of these leaders were expelled from the Sovereignty Council by SAF Commander-in-Chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, after they refused to take sides in the ongoing war.

The International Food Policy Research Institute has published a research paper about the impact of the war on smallholder farmers, based on a survey of thousands of farmers. Among the conclusions: “The most notable challenge that prevented farmers from planting was the lack of finance to buy agricultural inputs such as seeds and fertilizers or to hire farm labor. The cost of inputs, especially improved seeds, is… (now) higher for most farmers across the country.”

Fighting in the Kadroo area of Khartoum Bahri resulted in several deaths among combatants on January 8, according to videos from the area. Fighting also has intensified in central Omdurman; we will publish a map with more details soon.

As reported by Ayin (report in Arabic), thousands of cancer patients face an unknown fate after the closure of the National Cancer Institute in Wad Madani, which treated not only local patients but also many patients who had fled fighting in Khartoum. The cancer statement shut down last month after the Rapid Support Forces attacked and pillaged the city. Only one hospital in Sudan still provides chemotherapy and and hormonal treatment services: Merowe Medical City.

New: IJN Move or Kind Hearted Anwar Visiting Hadi?

Online discussions revolve around whether Anwar Ibrahim’s visit to the Institut Jantung Negara (IJN) is a sudden IJN Move to woo PAS leader Hadi Awang to support him in Parliament where, apparently, according to rumours, he lost his majority. Hadi is receiving treatment at IJN and Anwar visited the institution to check on a former advisor Ziauddin Sardar when he heard the PAS leader was also at…

View On WordPress