@hex@kolektiva.social2026-07-22 11:37:14
Popular Front recently did a piece on the current conflicts in Ethiopia:
https://popularfront.substack.com/p/everything-you-didnt-know-about-the
It's a good primer for anyone who's unfamiliar, but is definitely lacking if you know any Ethiopian folks or pay attention to much news out of the Horn of Africa.
The interplay between authoritarian liberal nationalism, as represented by Abiy Ahmed and his government, and tribal federalism , represented by various tribal factions, reads to me very similarly to the liberalization of Europe (enclosure of the commons, a push to sacrifice ethnic identities for nationalist ones, etc). Like the liberalization of, say, France, it's a lot more complicated than "old thing bad, new thing good."
Liberalism was violent and authoritarian. It often sacrificed leftists. Liberalism's focus on borders and national identity led directly to pogroms and Nazism. Similarly, liberalization of Ethiopia has led to genocide and ethnic cleansing.
People think of "the terror" in France as a leftist thing, but it wasn't. It was a Liberal thing, centrist extremism, carried out against right and left.
I understand that tribal federalism is also not a good system, but I don't have a ton of depth so I'm not going to try to explain it. During the European Liberal revolutionary period of 1848, ethnic minorities would often side with some monarch or emperor against liberalism out of fear of liberal nationalism. It makes sense to support a system that's bad if your other option is a nationalism that erases your identity.
But even in Europe at that time, anarchism offered an alternative but that alternative often also drew from simply a different branch of liberalism that also suppressed culture and identity. Today the world is different. Democratic Confederalism offers a solution to *exactly* this problem, tested for more than a decade in Syria and developing now in Myanmar.
But the cross pollination between Syria and Myanmar in terms of fighters really made the ideological cross pollination possible. I don't think anything like that is happening now in Ethiopia.
Eurocentrism makes it easy to ignore what's happening now, but Addis Ababa is the seat of the African Union Commission. Ethiopia is a major military power in the region, so these developments carry a lot of weight. Especially as the US collapses and the world becomes more multipolar, the development of regional powers like Ethiopia will have a big impact on how that part of the continent develops.
If any folks are more familiar with Ethiopia than I am (which shouldn't be hard since I'm basically not), please correct me or add context if anything is missing or wrong.
@Sustainable2050@mastodon.energy2026-06-23 19:08:22
UN commission of inquiry finds that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza by deliberately targeting children
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0jy96w6pw2o
@Mediagazer@mstdn.social2026-07-23 06:51:03
UK PM Andy Burnham keeping Lisa Nandy on as culture secretary renews pressure over potential streaming license fees and puts the WBD deal back in the spotlight (Max Goldbart/Deadline)
https://deadline.com/2026/07/lisa-nandy-big-decisions-…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2026-07-21 17:26:50
Just finished "Snake-Eater" by T. Kingfisher (@…). I'd read and thoroughly enjoyed her "Digger" webcomic, and found this book to be quite enjoyable too. There's something indelibly heartwarming about an anxious character growing to feel more comfortable and self-assured, especially when escaping and unlearning emotional abuse, and I'm certainly a sucker for heartwarming characters. I like the way that Kingfisher has taken time to talk about and try to avoid cultural appropriation, in a way that I feel is reasonable, although of course I'm not an expert judge of the nuances and I'm biased by having liked the book, so I'm willing to be told things are complicated in that regard it others judge differently. I also really liked the window dressing of a vaguely solarpunk future society, in a book that's not at all about that society. I'd love to see Kingfisher write something focused on how that society could work (or maybe she already has?).
Probably going to look up some of Kingfisher's fantasy books soon.
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon
@raiders@darktundra.xyz2026-04-23 19:52:42
Derek Carr Gets Blunt About Raiders’ Klint Kubiak Decision https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/las-vegas-raiders/derek-carr-blunt-klint-kubiak-decision/
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.it2026-06-21 01:35:35
This is a Very Good Comment. https://bsky.app/profile/roguesecunit.bsky.social/post/3mor6tjz7rk2m
The rest of the alt-text:
"...I bring this up here is because of a quote from her mother: “The option of a single-user restroom did not resolve her dist…
@cdarwin@c.im2026-06-21 17:06:13
The attack on a girl’s elementary school in the Iranian town of Minab was one of the US military’s deadliest civilian bombings in decades.
But nearly four months on, the Pentagon has produced no answers about why the military fired a Tomahawk cruise missile into a school on the first day of the war,
killing at least 175 people,
mostly children.
Some critics doubt that the Pentagon ever will, or will bury the results under classifications to keep the worst mistakes se…
@memeorandum@universeodon.com2026-05-18 18:05:36
The administration has detained 400,000 immigrants: What do we know about their children? (Maria Cancian/Brookings)
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-administration-has-detained-400000-immigrants-what-do-we-know-about-their-children/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260518/p81#a260518p81
@Sustainable2050@mastodon.energy2026-07-21 20:01:06
Scottish pro-Palestine activist arrested for reading poem about Gaza. In a threatening way...
https://www.thenational.scot/news/26290837.scottish-pro-palestine-activist-arrested-for-reading-poem/
@cdarwin@c.im2026-07-21 14:46:47
The Trump administration’s cuts to the largest global H.I.V. program last year resulted in sharp drops in both prevention efforts and treatment for the people most at risk from the disease, according to the first large survey of organizations that had received the funds.
The findings show a grimmer picture of the impact of the cuts than the State Department’s data, released in April,
which seemed to suggest that the program had helped to treat about as many people last year as it…
