It’s possible that the US deliberately labelled the targets as Islamic State to fit a political narrative at home. This ties into Trump’s earlier accusation of ‘Christian genocide’ – much like his ‘white genocide in South Africa’ claims in mid-2025. Allegations about both countries have been thoroughly debunked, but could resonate among evangelical and conservative US constituencies.

Such narratives could endanger fragile security situations in Africa and fuel sectarian tensions, especially in places like Nigeria, with a history of ethno-religious distrust and violence. They can also alienate local communities, who are vital for intelligence and counter-terrorism cooperation.

...

Questions remain about sovereignty and equality in US-Africa security partnerships, as well as about how foreign interventions not attuned to local contexts can backfire on affected African countries and communities

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/42984194

The survival of Cuba’s socialist project remains one of the most critical holdouts against hemispheric domination, making its defense a global litmus test for sovereignty.

by Isaac Saney
Feb 7, 2026

The struggle to defend the Cuban Revolution—to preserve Cuba’s independence, sovereignty, and right to self-determination—is not simply the struggle of a small Caribbean nation resisting a powerful neighbour. Nor is it confined to the geographical contours of an island of eleven million people. It is, rather, a struggle with profound and incalculable consequences for Latin America, the Caribbean, and the global fight for justice, human dignity, and the right of peoples to live free from imperialist diktat.

...Cuba asserted the radical proposition that a small, formerly colonized country could chart its own path, control its own resources, and prioritize social justice over foreign capital. That defiance, more than any specific policy or alliance, has been the enduring “crime” of the Cuban Revolution.

I found an old external hdd with a bunch of unformatted media and wanted to import to my library quickly... Jellyfin does metadata collection pretty well (as of the most recent version, old versions were pretty bad at it) but requires a specific naming convention, e.g. Film Title (1900) - so, during some down time I wrote a quick little utility program in Go (so you can compile it regardless of platform) and a little registry script to add it to the right click menu if using windows.

For example, say you have a folder Manos.the.Hands.of.Fate.1966.1080p.REPACK.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.x264 containing a file 34535sdfs23sfg-some-complicated-hash-sdfgsdf.mp4, after installing this utility program you could right-click on the folder and select Rename Downloaded Media after which the folder would be renamed Manos the Hands of Fate (1966) and the contained file renamed to Manos the Hands of Fate (1966).mp4 as this is the format Jellyfin expects.

Nothing ground breaking here but wanted to share - hopefully this saves one of you a few minutes/hours of formatting!

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations said Monday it’s waiting to find out how much of the nearly $4 billion the United States owes the world organization the Trump administration intends to pay and when the money will arrive.

The U.S. Mission to the United Nations confirmed that U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz said the Trump administration planned to make a significant down payment on its arrears in a matter of weeks, with the final amount still to be determined. His comments were first reported by Reuters.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned last week that the world body faces “imminent financial collapse” unless its financial rules are overhauled or all 193 member nations pay their dues, a message clearly directed at the United States.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7617558

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/26509

A progressive organizer beat the odds against millions in outside spending to win the special primary election for a congressional seat in New Jersey, offering a promising sign to left insurgents in the coming midterms and revealing a severe miscalculation on the part of the pro-Israel lobby.

Former Rep. Tom Malinowski conceded the race in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District on Tuesday to Analilia Mejia, former political director for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, after initial results showed a slim margin between the two candidates for several days.

Mejia won “despite being outspent essentially ten-to-one by not just AIPAC and outside groups but also the New Jersey political machine,” said Antoinette Miles, state director for the New Jersey Working Families Party. Mejia previously led the group, which backed her campaign and helped organize her field operation.

[

Related

AIPAC Donors Fail to Elect Last-Minute New Jersey House Pick](https://theintercept.com/2026/02/04/aipac-new-jersey-israel-lobby-donors/)

“No one would really categorize this district as being a left district,” Miles said, pointing to the race as a sign progressive candidates can connect with voters in more moderate districts. A Republican represented the district until 2019, when former Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen retired and former Rep. Mikie Sherrill was elected.

With the deck stacked against Mejia and little public polling in the three months since Sherrill vacated the seat to take office as New Jersey governor, there was no clear front-runner in the race. Internal polling in the final weeks of the race showed Malinowski and Mejia pulling ahead and almost equally matched, with New Jersey Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way further behind in third place, according to a source with knowledge of the data.

Rather than targeting Mejia, the pro-Israel lobby spent more than $2 million against Malinowski, likely splitting moderate voters, while known pro-Israel donors directed funding in Way’s favor. United Democracy Project, the super PAC for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, spent on ads attacking Malinowski, and AIPAC donors flooded Way’s campaign with more than $50,000 in the final weeks of the race. The strategy, which UDP said was meant to help them elect the more pro-Israel candidate because Malinowski had previously questioned the provision of unconditional aid to Israel, appeared to backfire, as some observers predicted.

“This election is a clear rejection of AIPAC by Democratic voters — AIPAC’s spending and support for candidates is becoming a kiss of death in Democratic primaries because of the work our movement has done to expose them,” said Justice Democrats spokesperson Usamah Andrabi. The group did not endorse in the race but said Mejia’s win was a positive sign for the left as midterms progress.

“This is a clear sign that the Democratic electorate is desperate to elect new leaders — like the dozen of working-class champions we’re supporting in primaries this cycle — that aren’t bought by AIPAC, crypto, AI, or any other corporate lobby that has created the intentionally weak and ineffective Democratic Party failing us in Congress right now,” Andrabi added.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Malinowski pointed to AIPAC’s influence in the race.

“Analilia deserves unequivocal praise and credit for running a positive campaign and for inspiring so many voters on Election Day,” Malinowski wrote. “But the outcome of this race cannot be understood without also taking into account the massive flood of dark money that AIPAC spent on dishonest ads during the last three weeks. I wish I could say today that this effort, which was meant to intimidate Democrats across the country, failed in NJ-11.”

On Friday, United Democracy Project issued a statement signaling it’s still paying close attention to the race ahead of the general election in April.

“The outcome in NJ-11 was an anticipated possibility, and our focus remains on who will serve the next full term in Congress. UDP will be closely monitoring dozens of primary races, including the June NJ-11 primary, to help ensure pro-Israel candidates are elected to Congress,” UDP said in a statement posted on X.

Some corners of the Democratic establishment are also reeling from the results of the race. After spending close to $2 million to back Way, the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association has not made any public statements since results started rolling in on Thursday evening. DLGA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In an email to supporters on Thursday night, the Democratic National Committee prematurely congratulated Malinowski on winning the race. The release was later removed from the DNC website.

The Democratic establishment hasn’t recently had to run in competitive primaries in the district, Miles pointed out, while progressives had been preparing for this moment.

“That says something about the shift that is happening in New Jersey right now,” Miles said. “This is the first race — at least at the congressional level — in which there is an open primary, the possibility for better candidates to run, the possibility for new ideas, and the machine is being tested.”

The post AIPAC Just Helped Put a Bernie Sanders Alum in Congress appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

West is Pest

I was given a wallet today and I've already put some money in it. I don't know what other things I should put in it, maybe my ID.

I just thought I'd let people know that you can watch the winter olympics on Sky Open, which is a free channel Sky has. If you have actual Sky I think you have more options over what events you can watch.

But yeah, Freeview channnel 8 or via Three Now app. I think you might be able to watch online here if you log in to three now,

We already have one silver and one bronze: https://www.olympics.com/en/milano-cortina-2026/medals

Which puts us as 7th per capita 😁: https://www.medalspercapita.com/

Unless we don't get to count the broken one.

Communicating with AI agents (like OpenClaw) via messaging apps (like Slack and Telegram) has become much more popular. But it can expose users to a largely unrecognized LLM-specific data exfiltration risk, because these apps support ‘link previews’ as a feature. With previews enabled, user data can be exfiltrated automatically after receiving a malicious link in an LLM-generated message -- whereas without previews, the user would typically have to click the malicious link to exfiltrate data. For example, OpenClaw via Telegram is exposed by default. Test any agent / communication app pairing below!

Ring's 'Search Party' is dystopian surveillance accelerationism.

Archived version: https://archive.is/20260210192450/https://www.404media.co/with-ring-american-consumers-built-a-surveillance-dragnet/

TikTok deportation propaganda is fast becoming the new border wall. States, platforms and algorithms are fusing into a single machine. This is turning deportation into bingeable content, burying resistance in the feed, and replacing physical walls with algorithmic control. Local populism dies and global spectacle rules

The Department of Homeland Security is using a repurposed $55 billion Navy contract to convert warehouses into makeshift jails and plan sprawling tent cities in remote areas.

Facebook's new AI features let users animate their profile pics, restyle their Stories and Memories, and add backgrounds to text posts.

Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/10/facebook-adds-new-ai-features-animated-profile-photos-and-backgrounds-for-text-posts/

Google on Tuesday expanded its "Results about you" tool to let users request the removal of Search results containing government-issued ID numbers -- including driver's licenses, passports and Social Security numbers -- adding to the tool's existing ability to flag results that surface phone numbers, email addresses, and home addresses.

Might have just been my parents but I remember ironing clothes being so integral to life during childhood but I think I've ironed maybe a dozen things as an adult. What happened?

Covertly filming women on nights out to upload the videos to social media should be made illegal, the Liberal Democrats have said.

The party has put forward a private members' bill calling on the government to update voyeurism legislation to prevent the content from being posted online for profit.

It said the bill would clamp down on what it calls "a covert filming epidemic" and wants the government to force social media platforms to remove such content and permanently ban repeat offenders.

It comes after a BBC investigation exposed dozens of accounts on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram. The videos focused almost entirely on women, filmed without their knowledge and taken from low angles or behind, sometimes revealing intimate body parts.

The government said covert filming of women and girls was "vile" and vowed to stop people profiting from it.

The BBC investigation identified nearly 50 women who had been filmed without their knowledge.

Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's co-conspirator, invoked her Fifth Amendment rights after being called to testify in front of the House Oversight Committee.

Saying he had advised his client not to testify, Maxwell's attorney David Oscar Markus bluntly said in a statement that "Maxwell is prepared to speak fully and honestly if granted clemency by President Trump," according to NBC.

"Only she can provide the complete account" Markus said, per NBC. "Some may not like what they hear, but the truth matters. For example, both President [Donald] Trump and [former] President [Bill] Clinton are innocent of any wrongdoing. Ms. Maxwell alone can explain why, and the public is entitled to that explanation."