Tessera
Folgen

Spencer Ackerman

@attackerman.bsky.social

Journalist & author of REIGN OF TERROR: HOW THE 9/11 ERA DESTABILIZED AMERICA & PRODUCED TRUMP, contributor to Zeteo. Sometimes I write comics too. Subscribe to FOREVER WARS for ‘natsec’ journalism: https://www.forever-wars.com Signal: attackerman.81

2936 Posts89791 Follower1522 Folgt
Spencer Ackerman@attackerman.bsky.social · yesterday

I wrote yesterday: "Oil markets might even be easier to manipulate [than the general public], since they're inflected with the motivated reasoning of people who own capital and demand it appreciate in the short term. Tomorrow's problems are for broke boys to worry about."

US says deal to open Hormuz possible ‘today or tomorrow’

US Treasury chief says deal would include freedom of movement for commercial ships, as another vessel hit in Hormuz.

aje.news

Murshed Zaheed@murshedz.bsky.social · last wk.

👀 "there is one fight Mamdani has ducked, and tens of thousands of New Yorkers cannot afford for him to duck it anymore." - @attackerman.bsky.social challenges @mayor.nyc.gov to "protect New Yorkers from ICE" by "pressuring" NYPD's holdover commissioner - billionaire heiress Jessica Tisch.

The End of TPS for Haitians Is A Moment of Truth for Zohran Mamdani

Will 'municipal socialism' stand by as ICE snatches, cages and deports tens of thousands of New Yorkers? Or will it resist?

forever-wars.com

Spencer Ackerman@attackerman.bsky.social · last wk.

There’s a fight that @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social has been deferring. Now that TPS for Haitians is gone, he can’t defer it any longer. The road to abolishing ICE begins with local obstruction — not just the noncooperation of so-called sanctuary laws. And not taking it risks discrediting socialism.

The End of TPS for Haitians Is A Moment of Truth for Zohran Mamdani

Will 'municipal socialism' stand by as ICE snatches, cages and deports tens of thousands of New Yorkers? Or will it resist?

forever-wars.com

Gregk Foley@gregk.co.uk · last wk.

I wanted to cover the piece in this week's newsletter, but I don't really have anything of value to add to Spencer's own reporting and remarks which, as always, are thorough and razor-sharp. Hopefully he won't mind me sharing these excerpts and encouraging you to subscribe to Zeteo for the rest.

It is no longer a surprise that Somalia garners little attention. But it should be scandalous, because such neglect has permitted the U.S. military to wage an adjunct forever-war against jihadists in Somalia for 20 years, ever since a U.S.-backed and long-forgotten Ethiopian invasion in 2006. That ties Somalia with the 2001-21 Afghanistan war as America’s longest foreign conflict. But since the U.S. fights in Somalia without conventional ground forces, it has never faced any pressure to demonstrate success, let alone end operations. The U.S. war in Somalia has become a signal case of the so-called “War on Terror” launching an imperial police action uninterrupted by any need to justify itself. In another six months, this invisible, politically frictionless campaign will rank as the longest foreign war the U.S. has ever fought.But there’s also been a transformation in Somalia strikes during Trump’s second term. A great deal of them have not been launched against al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda-aligned insurgency in the Somali south that the U.S. has bombed but never broken for two decades. As Anderson’s testimony indicated, many strikes now target ISIS’s Somali branch in the north. So far this year, Sterman counts 39 U.S. strikes against al-Shabaab and nearly as many, 33, against ISIS, with another two strikes against unclear targets. (On the phone with me, Sterman counted 38 al-Shabaab strikes, but AFRICOM took another one against the group a few days after we spoke.) William Walldorf, a senior fellow at Defense Priorities, wrote in a July 14 paper that “most” of the second Trump administration’s Somalia strikes have come against ISIS-Somalia, not al-Shabaab. The fact that ISIS-Somalia exists at all represents a failure of the U.S. war in Somalia. The group broke off from al-Shabaab a decade ago, after al-Shabaab sided with al-Qaeda over ISIS at the peak of the mid-2010s attempted caliphate in western Iraq and eastern Syria. Rather than the split sapping the energy of both, each has persisted, though hardly equally. Sterman observes that ISIS does not have the “history of holding populated territory” that al-Shabaab very much does. Biden took only “two or three strikes and operations” against ISIS in Somalia, Sterman notes. Now, even as Trump has escalated against al-Shabaab, AFRICOM is simultaneously pursuing an al-Shabaab-sized campaign against ISIS, in a different part of the country. That’s why Sterman considers what Trump has done to represent the launching of a new war in Somalia and not just an escalation of the old.Gen. Anderson, who like Bolduc commanded special operations in Africa, has spoken like he wouldn’t mind a third target. While the increase in airstrikes tends “to be what gets a lot of the news” in Somalia, there was another adversary drawing his notice, Anderson said during a February press briefing. “As we see the Houthi threat – smuggling weapons into Somalia, supporting al-Shabaab and the increased cooperation there – we’re looking at ways to increase that domain awareness of our partners so they can protect their borders and help secure those sea lanes and reduce that threat that goes across the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea,” he said. (I’m so old that I remember when the Yemenis that the U.S. accused al-Shabaab of collaborating with were al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.) On the one hand, Anderson, as the commander of an oft-neglected military command, could be attempting to draw in resources devoted to the major conflict in which the U.S. is engaged. Thus far, AFRICOM has not announced any strikes on any Houthi targets. But it also sounds like the groundwork for turning Somalia into a staging area against Iran’s Ansarallah ally, with the Houthis now declaring the gateway to the Red Sea closed to Saudi oil exports like the IRGC has closed the Strait of Hormuz.‘Something That Just Emerged Out of the Policy Processes’ The cheapness with which the Trump administration – like its three predecessors – prices Somali life in Somalia mirrors the cheapness with which the Trump administration prices Somali life in America. The deadly swarm of ICE into Minnesota late last year came after demonizing the Somali community there as a criminal one. “I don’t want them in our country. Their country’s no good for a reason,” Trump said in a Dec. 2 White House rant that described Somalis as “garbage” that the country should stop taking in. Weeks before ICE killed Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, its agents were tackling those they presumed to be Somalis into the snow and arresting them regardless of their citizenship. A rideshare driver and U.S. citizen, Ahmed bin Hassan, went viral when ICE, including gas-canister-toting commander Greg Bovino, stopped him based on his accent. In Somalis, MAGA sees a community that represents a trifecta of backgrounds the War on Terror and broader American history have accustomed them to find threatening: Black Muslim immigrants. The violence of ICE mirrors the violence of AFRICOM.
Gregk Foley@gregk.co.uk · last wk.

This report by @attackerman.bsky.social in @zeteo.com on the US's invisiblised, 20-year war in Somalia is very worth your time, connecting that fruitless (and still expanding) anti-terror war with the Trump admin's dehumanisation of Somalis at home, as well as the (again, expanding) War on Iran.

Why Is No One Talking About the ‘New War’ Trump Is Waging in Somalia?

While the administration hounds Somali immigrants at home, it’s pummeling Somalia with an ‘unprecedented’ volume of airstrikes, but you might not know it given the silence from our media and Congress.

zeteo.com

Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 2w ago

New from 404 Media: a leaked document shows the surveillance tech at ICE's fingerprints. We obtained the document, called "ICE Wide Analytical Tools" and are publishing it in full here. It includes everything from phone location data, to facial rec, to tracking cars www.404media.co/leaked-docum...

Leaked Document Shows the Surveillance Tech at ICE’s Fingertips

From phone location data, to social media monitoring, to online undercover tools, a document obtained by 404 Media lays out the surveillance tech available across ICE agency wide.

404media.co

Gil Durán@gilduran.com · 2w ago

Politico's owner is giving Peter Thiel an award. Semafor just added more tech billionaires to its Silicon Valley suck-up advisory board. Now comes the Economist's "Insider" interview with Elon Musk, sponsored by Anthropic. The sorry state of business/tech journalism in one stunning image.

screenshot of Economist "Insider" newsletter, an interview with Elon Musk...sponsored by Anthropic
Stephen Miles@spmiles42.bsky.social · 2w ago

If you're not reading @attackerman.bsky.social, you're doing it wrong. His latest is a much needed expose on Trump's massive increase in warmaking, only not in Iran, in Somalia. In the last six months Trump has launched more attacks on Somalia than Biden did in his entire presidency. Read more 👇

"We Initiated, Basically, A New War" in Somalia (Director's Cut)

PLUS: American Prestige x FOREVER WARS on the war against the left—a left Rubio says belongs to Cuba, which he thinks will scare you

forever-wars.com

Spencer Ackerman@attackerman.bsky.social · 2w ago

Look what AFRICOM is already doing on the other side of the continent:

"We Initiated, Basically, A New War" in Somalia (Director's Cut)

PLUS: American Prestige x FOREVER WARS on the war against the left—a left Rubio says belongs to Cuba, which he thinks will scare you

forever-wars.com

Brian Finucane@bcfinucane.bsky.social · 2w ago

Sure, why not another military adventure in World War Trump? Amongst other questions raised by this reporting is whether the executive branch considers JNIM and IS Sahel to be within the scope of the 2001 AUMF. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...