"Let's go through with Brexit-we will just export all our stuff to our friends in the USA"

I don't engage in frame-by-frame analysis because it doesn't impact my or anyone else's views. An armed violence worker shot someone. The chattering class will dissect, oh the foot was there, and the gun was there, and the whatever whatever. Most of the media will say "it's a close case."

Captain it's Wednesday

Nicolás Maduro Charged With Felony Oil Possession

ugh

🧵1/6 After the El Fasher massacre, I identified a large UAE-aligned influence operation on X promoting the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Around 19,000 accounts showed strong indicators of automation - bots marcowenjones.substack.com/p/i-found-19... #Sudan #Dysinfluence

No amount of UN managerial plastic language around a „humanitarian reset“ will be able to absorb c. 15bn dollars of cuts; the UN system is doing itself a huge disservice by pretending it can absorb these cuts as some of the worst crises in the 21st century need urgent attention.

Always remember that government spending is a political choice; there is no fixed amount of aid. You can support Ukraine *AND* increase humanitarian assistance or aid to Africa, but increasingly right-leaning governments in Europe are presenting dangerous binary choices for their global engagement

When a military dictatorship sells valuable natural resources ordinary people will not benefit, exhibit 952: "Fewer than 15,000 people will be needed to run the mines, the ports, and the 670 km railway specially built to allow exports"; Rio Tinto is happy, though...

FRANCE 24 and Mother Jones have won a UN journalism award for their reporting on the testimony of #Gaza Humanitarian Foundation contractor Anthony Aguilar. www.france24.com/en/americas/...

The next UNHCR commissioner will most likely not be a European! Exciting news!!

The body of USAID is barely cold, but the academic dissection already begins ;)...on a more serious note: This sounds like an excellent project with a great team (limited to 2 years, but at least a 100% position (not always the norm at German universities...).

Americans have community colleges, great public universities and world-class Ivys…but they want to „disrupt“ the system so they can sell tickets to individual lectures with no discussion and praise this as a democratic form of education…

"Last week, Kenya became the first country to join a new US-sponsored health agreement that grants Washington unprecedented access to Kenyan health data for the next 25 years. (...) In exchange, Kenya receives $1.6 billion over 10 years" www.linkedin.com/pulse/kenya-...

#GivingThursday is the day when even the most obscure organization that never sends out anything bothers to send an email asking for money…real delete- and unsubscribe-fest in my inbox…

Analyzing 500k Chinese theses & linking them to 60k public sector officials, new paper finds that "plagiarism is pervasive & predicts adverse political selection (dishonest individuals are more likely to enter & advance in the public sector); dishonest individuals perform worse when holding power"

"Anybody can study/learn from anywhere at any time & at any stage of their professional career" is not the inclusive answer it may appear, but another desperate message from the UK higher ed sector looking for a future & money; as always, all of this is expressed in managerial plastic language

[EN] #ArchivesduCrash 📖 The Crash team invites you to (re)discover “Humanitarian action in situations of occupation”, a Cahier by Xavier Crombé published in 2007. 👉 Find this Cahier on our website: msf-crash.org/en/war-and-h...

🗓️ The aid system is losing legitimacy. Join us for our Annual Event on 4 Dec as we explore how humanitarians can rebuild a narrative that admits flaws, shifts power to marginalised voices and defends core principles – while resonating with both donors & crisis-affected communities → buff.ly/9p4ZKZG

@andypsumner.bsky.social and @stephanklingebiel.bsky.social ask: What does the #GlobalDevelopment architecture look like in this world five years from now? The experts see four stylised visions emerging in competition. Which is most likely to prevail? 🔗 policybrief.org/briefs/compe...

In today's "evidence-based policy-making" case study I am almost certain that 250m+ GBP will be spent to renovate Hammersmith Bridge into a car-friendly crossing again...

They line up perfectly.

The humanitarian NGO medico international has adopted a three-pronged strategy towards humanitarian aid: to defend it, to criticize it, and to overcome it. I propose to adopt a similar perspective regarding development cooperation" From our blog www.developmentresearch.eu?p=2231

This is not the worst book we've ever read but it is the meanest episode we've ever done.

The global humanitarian system is disintegrating in real time; this is the reality for @unhcr.org: 1. UNHCR is ending 2025 with $1.3 billion less than last year, a 30% workforce reduction, and 185 offices consolidated or closed. (1/x)

Can I quietly ask we stop talking about what "AI" *could* do in education and identify instead what's actually happening with AI in education? I'll start...

Dear journalism students, when the assignment requires you to write a piece that makes the perpetrator look like the victim, get inspired by the summary below…

📝 More than 300,000 refugees live in Kakuma camp in northern Kenya, an isolated and arid region, shut away from the rest of the country, depending on a faltering aid system for survival. These poems by Peter Kidi explore that tension ⬇️ buff.ly/tDBYPxB

“Abundance”

Sharing the Sudan issue of Transition Magazine with you with essays, analysis and art work by Sudanese writers and artists. transitionmagazine.fas.harvard.edu/home/current...

A good summary of what’s going on in Tanzania, and how we got here:

Powerful image. They are delivering humanitarian aid in the capital of the United States of America-and as problematic as Huffington's "Third World America" was even in 2010 it is a phrase that captures some of the current downward dynamics relatively accurately...

Once more from yesterday: My newsletter was about how hurricanes kill people long after the wind and water is gone, how that will probably be worse in Jamaica, and how the media has already moved on from one of the worst storms to strike land in recorded history. Please subscribe!

That was my first thought as well "thank God for 'investors' they have a brilliant track-record of doing good"

These are problems we often see with private education in developing countries...the US is really losing so many features of an OECD country these days...

"Another war looms, one that could pit Tigrayans against each other. I fought once to defend my people; I will not fight again in a war that will destroy what remains. That is why I left." @thecontinent.org

The World Bank Group is planning to reorganize its research functions. The results could be even uglier than the powerpoint: an end to independent research at the institution and conflicts of interest all over... New blog with @eeshani.bsky.social, link in reply.

This is a pretty grim story about the new humanitarian realities in some parts of Africa-especially when Russian involvement is part of the problem…

The UN system is in crisis so appointing another white male European politician from a former top-notch colonial power to a top job at UNDP is really sending out a strong message about reform, localization & decolonization! www.politico.eu/article/form...

Modern "development" is often a lose-lose scenario as Filipino workers will eventually be replaced by something cheaper, older workers in Japan lose jobs or jobs that could have filled by migrants moving to Japan; in the end, energy companies & AI platforms are the only ones making money...

I did a conversation about my book, The Second Emancipation, with Kola Tubosun, at Africa House, in Harlem. Watch it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZarM...

"Corporate universities, coding bootcamps, and professional certification programs are already moving faster than traditional institutions"-yep, the good, ol' "LinkedIn, MOOCs & micro credential will destroy higher ed" line I have heard about for at least 10, probably 15 years now...

Interested in the transitory nature of academia and how this shapes scholarship on internationalism? Come along to our virtual conference, 'Blind Spots and Buzzwords in Internationalism' on 5th and 6th Nov 👁️. Get your tickets here: www.eventbrite.com/e/blind-spot...

📚 Recommended reading for all those interested in objectivizing again the discussions about supply chain laws, instead of following polemic debates about "bureaucratic monsters": @ecchr.bsky.social's report "2 Years of the German Supply Chain Act" out now in ENG! 👉 www.ecchr.eu/en/publicati...

"The longer autocrats stay in power, the worse they become" www.economist.com/leaders/2025...

The BBC used to do journalism, but nowadays makes the breaking story about the Peace Prize about a man who didn’t win it…

In a new article for @worldpeacefdtn.bsky.social, GDI's Teklehaymanot G. Weldemichel (@tekgw.bsky.social) writes about the silenced story of urban hunger that has accompanied Tigray's war, famine and genocide. Read here: worldpeacefoundation.org/publication/...

Who doesn't remember all those times when "lucrative gold mines" led to "development"??