February 3 update: Ukrainian domestic travails; Canadian Tar Sand nightmare; Bolsonaro fils; Hasbara on steroids

Another rough week out there for anyone with a conscience, as the war in Ukraine and the Israeli genocide-in-process roll on, with the Ukrainian top general facing the axe from President Volodymyr Zelensky hard on the second anniversary of the Russian invasion, more than 27,000 Palestinians dead in Gaza as the Israeli government mounts a suspiciously thin campaign to gut the UNRWA relief agency that provides critical aid and legal status. Broadening American retaliation against what they claim are Iranian proxy forces throughout Iraq and Syria late this week also make for sobering reading. Keep your heads up.

Still neck-deep in two reporting projects, one of which should run this week on Bay Area politics and money. Not a typical area I focus on, but sometimes it's good to branch out. It'll make sense by Friday, I promise. The second project is more sprawling (if possible) and deals with the far right. Wish there was more I could say at the moment but will file an update by mid/late next week.

BLEEDING EDGE JOURNALISM

-Every so often, you come across a long form piece that manages to rise above the formulaic features that sadly dominate American magazines. Masha Gessen's deeply reported, sharply written exploration of Ukrainian society's fatigue, democratic drift and struggles with an emerging class of oligarchs is in turns gripping, inadvertently hilarious and uplifting. Though Gessen's reporting trip for the New Yorker was last fall, the salience of this report is evergreen. Just this week, a high-ranking defense official was suspended over his involvement in an alleged $40 million munitions graft scheme.

-Remember somewhere in the distant past when Canada was perceived as the gentler, kinder, greener North American nation? It's safe to say that reputation is dead and buried, in large part thanks to the Alberta tar sands, a vast oil deposit deep into Canada's northern forests that requires obscene amounts of energy to extract and results in scorched-earth devastation to the region. The Guardian had an eyepopping item about a recent study in Science on the scale of pollution from the Canadian tar sands, which is in the range of 1,300% to 6,300% higher than officially reported. Those are not typos. Petrochemical firms have a huge amount to answer for, particularly since they had science as far back as the 1950s about the role of fossil fuels in causing anthropogenic global warming.

-The tropical Trump/military junta worshipper Jair Bolsonaro has had it rough since getting bounced from office in favor of Lula da Silva in October 2022. A violent but failed attempt to emulate Trump's January 6th erstwhile insurrection fell flat, and the finger-pistol fascist could similarly face criminal charges in between hospital visits. Last week, the villa where Jair and his two politican sons (one of whom just happened to be in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021...) was raided by federal police. Tom Phillips of the Guardian reported the warrants served targeted the ex-president’s second son, Carlos, whose offices in Rio’s city hall and beachside mansion in Rio de Janeiro were also raided. Carlos is suspected of illegally receiving classified intelligence from Bolsonaro's former spy chief. The broader clan is suspected of running a parallel intelligence agency loyal to Jair. During Bolsonaro's term in office, his intelligence chief, Alexandre Ramagem, used Israeli-made spyware (almost certainly NSO Group) to surveil the president's political opponents.

-Turkey has become a major conduit for Russian oil to the European market and circumvent western sanctions imposed over Vladimir Putin's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. President/autocrat/dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a maniac at home but an absolute Machiavellian when it comes to international relations, and is cynically using the carnage across the Black Sea to bolster Turkey's flagging economy, which he has done so much to tank needlessly in the past decade. As usual, excellent Financial Times reporting from Tom Wilson and Adam Samson.

The Turkish terminal helping disguised Russian oil reach Europe

Dörtyol facility booms as Moscow’s refined fuels are shipped to western buyers despite EU embargo

-There's been increasing pushback towards claims of sexual assault and other atrocities allegedly committed by Hamas during their October 7, 2023 assault on Israel that left more than 1,200 dead, hundreds kidnapped and triggered a genocidal campaign of revenge that is stretching into its fourth month. An investigation by Aaron Rabinowitz at Ha'aretz examines the role of Zaka, an Israeli volunteer medical service, in circulating many of the above allegations, which largely formed the basis of a highly contested New York Times 'expose' that might just be coming apart at the the seams a la Caliphate.

FILM OF THE WEEK - Martin Scorsese is not only one of the greatest living film directors, but also works to restore and preserve seminal films from around the globe. Lütfi Ö. Akad's 1966 lost gem Hudutların Kanunu (Law of the Border) was a collaboration with the one and only Yilmaz Güney, a phenomenal Kurdish actor, writer and director from the Adana region who acted in scores of movies and directed seminal works like Yol (The Road, 1978) and Duvar (The Wall, 1982). In this distinctly Turkish take on the American Western, Güney plays a hard-up smuggler in Southeastern Turkey who struggles to make a better life for himself and his son in the face of corruption, entrenched class divides and the grinding poverty that long characterized much of rural Anatolian life.

BOOKS - A twofer this week in light of the broadening Middle Eastern conflict, which is now stretching into Iraq and Syria. Kim Ghattas' Black Wave is a deep exploration of the decades of tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia which has shaped many of the fault lines and conflicts in the region.

Sam Dagher's Assad or We Burn the Country is a more focused account that attempts to make sense of the Gordian Knot that more than a decade of civil war and insurgency have wrought on Syria.

Both accounts get beyond the pulse-racing headlines that've accompanied the tit-for-tat retaliation between Iranian proxies and American armed forces over U.S. support for Israel's siege of Gaza. There's a lot beneath the surface here. Don't miss either one.

MUSIC - If you've not heard it, John Coltrane's "lost' album "Both Directions At Once" is a terrific record to zone out to. We could've used another twenty more years of 'Trane's mastery but each of his albums sounds fresh every time I put one on.