Report alleges that 21,000 workers have died in eight years working on "Saudi vision 2030"

Two summaries of the allegations.

A report that a US Navy Aircraft carrier was nearly struck by an apparent Houthis anti-ship missile over the summer

I happened to see this earlier today:

By some accounts, an ASBM or other missile arrived at a very shallow trajectory, with minimal warning, without a chance for interception, and splashing down around 200 meters from the Eisenhower. Details gathered from interviews with Yemen-focused U.S. and U.K. intelligence officers for this study. Names of interviewees, and dates and places of interviews withheld at interviewees’ request. The Houthis propagandized the carrier’s departure. See “America’s withdrawal from the Red Sea confirms the fall of the myth of Washington’s great power”

Tonight:

U.S. B-2 bombers and other aircraft struck five underground Houthi weapons storage locations in parts of Yemen that the Iranian-backed rebel group controls

And from earlier this month: 

China rejected pleas from the United States to take joint international action against Houthi attacks on international shipping, a senior American diplomat said, and encouraged the rebel group to attack the ships of other countries rather than its own.

Just noticed the first episode of "The Little Drummer Girl" is free on Amazon Prime, and I think the entire series is free on the Roku Channel

I watched it when it originally aired, and loved it. Just popped into my head:

Another Red Sea Diving Hotel op. The Hungary-based company was an Israeli front and even transacted with real customers apart from Hezbollah. pic.twitter.com/EGlXDLpWdE

— Michael Weiss (@michaeldweiss) September 19, 2024

That excerpt is from the NY Times, which says the "pagers began shipping to Lebanon in the summer of 2022."

Far-right lawmakers and protesters broke into an Israeli detention camp to try to disrupt efforts by the military police to investigate soldiers’ reported abuse of prisoners

CNN:

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said earlier in a statement that its Military Police Criminal Investigation Division (MPCID) was formally looking into the “suspected substantial abuse of a detainee” at the shadowy base, where prisoners from Gaza have allegedly been held under extreme conditions.

...

“The break-in at the Sde Teiman Base is extremely serious and against the law,” ... the IDF’s Chief of the General Staff, said in a statement Monday, adding that the military was “working to restore order at the base.”

Somewhere between "dozens" and "hundreds" of pilgrims have died in Mecca during this year's hajj on account of heat

The NY Times is sticking with "dozens" right now. But The Guardian says:

At least 550 pilgrims have died during the hajj, underscoring the gruelling nature of the pilgrimage which again unfolded in scorching temperatures this year.

...

Each year tens of thousands of pilgrims attempt to perform the hajj without securing official hajj visas in order to save money, a more dangerous undertaking because these off-the-books pilgrims cannot access air-conditioned facilities provided by Saudi authorities along the hajj route.

A Houthi drone resembling a simple skiff "piloted" by mannequins struck a cargo ship

Photos and summary here:

The video also shows security personnel taking no action against the USV.

One is seen looking at it through binoculars while two guards hold their Hecker and Koch G3 rifles pointing inexplicably straight up instead of at the USV. The three watch as it steadily approaches for about 30 seconds.

Some tips on how the Iran helicopter crash site was geolocated

This @CNN news blog mentions @Nrg8000's work geolocating the site of yesterday's fatal helicopter crash in Iran.

"It was first geolocated by Nathan Ruser, an analyst on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's CTS team".

👀👉 https://t.co/uhxPFrM4i0 https://t.co/HiBVA9moQj

— ASPI Cyber, Tech & Security (@ASPI_CTS) May 21, 2024

A quick BTS post on tips for geolocating this. In climate and biomes like this the thicker tree-growth is always (in the N hemisphere) on the northern slope of the hills, which made it immediately clear the camera was facing W, and since it was a helicopter crash into the side of…

— Nathan Ruser (@Nrg8000) May 20, 2024

The initially reported search area was apparently around a 10km2 triangle between Uzi, Sungun and a forest shrine, with the wreckage being found ~12 hours later in the very middle of that area. To take that long to find it suggests that Iran's SAR capabilities are sorely lacking,… pic.twitter.com/Szcq5q4seF

— Nathan Ruser (@Nrg8000) May 20, 2024

Some good details in this lengthy interview about recruiting Iraqi scientists after 9/11

Statecraft:

Even getting things like cars from Halliburton was difficult: they had a rule at the time that you had to drive around white unarmoured Suburbans with Texas plates that had to be washed every week. And that was just insane because that was the surest way to get killed. So we went out to the open car market. 

...

We bought a car and decorated with local style. We put on stickers that said, “I love Iraq,” put on the air freshener with the plastic half pulled off, and started working on figuring out who the scientists were and who we were supposed to work with.

...

I was flying back to the embassy in Kuwait, filling up a backpack with $20, $30, $50 thousand in cash, signing for it personally, and then flying to Iraq and running this $2 million program, entirely in cash.

...

I found out that a group of female librarians actually put their lives at stake to defend this library and prevent the looters from going in and destroying and carting off the books. 

Some clever bureaucratic jujitsu described, too.

After only six months, an English soccer player sacrificed millions to escape his three-year contract to play in Saudi Arabia

The Mail's headline:

How Jordan Henderson's £350,000-a-week Saudi dream turned into a nightmare: His family struggled to settle despite living in Bahrain, playing in front of as few as 696 fans... and abandoning his promise to 'grow the game' after just six months

From an article last week: 

Many within the industry have little sympathy, and believe – should Henderson go – he will have ‘ruined it’ for other English players. There was a nervousness among Pro League officials over paying big money for players from England, a view that the English are notoriously poor travellers. 

Qatar sentenced eight Indian nationals, hired to train Qatar naval personnel, to death for allegedly spying

CNN:

Hundreds of thousands of Indians provide a large proportion of Qatar’s more than 2 million strong foreign workforce – which accounts for 95% of labor in the gas-rich Gulf state

The CNN write-up doesn't say who they were allegedly spying for. Reuters says it was Israel:

The ruling comes as Doha is trying to negotiate with the Palestinian militant group Hamas for the release of over 200 hostages seized during its Oct. 7 rampage in Israel, which is pummelling Gaza with aerial strikes in response.

The case involving the eight Indians, who were working on a submarine project with a private company for the Qatari authorities, could also become a diplomatic headache for New Delhi, which depends heavily on Qatar for its natural gas needs.

The Popular Front podcast is very good

From May, "Has Palestine's Third Intifada Already Begun?"

*From March: "Israel Is Courting Disaster"

"At least 100 killed and 240 others wounded" in drone attack on a graduation ceremony at a military college in Syria

Those numbers are from Al Jazeera, which had the most recent post on the attack. The suspicion is the attack was actually a little late because senior officials had already left.

*From 2020: A mysterious drone strike on marching cadets was caught on film

I thought the storm videos from Mecca I was seeing on Tiktok were too absurd to be real, but no, I guess it really was that windy and chaotic

@mohamedomer846 #عاصفه_رعديه 😨😨#مكه_الان ♬ الصوت الأصلي - بـدر الـمـشـاري 💫

Al Jazeera:

[The] spokesman for the National Center for Meteorology, posted ... that the storm brought gale-force winds exceeding 80 kilometres (50 miles) per hour

A few more clips below:

Americans were caught trying to smuggle hundreds of pounds of Fruit Roll-Ups into Israel, which is experiencing "a dire shortage of the snack due to a TikTok craze"

Times of Israel:

Why did he fill two checked bags with Fruit Roll-Ups? “It has something to do with ice cream,” the man’s voice says.

The man was almost certainly referring to a viral TikTok trend, ongoing since at least March, in which users of the video social network wrap the sweet, sticky roll-up around a small scoop of ice cream, which then freezes over and becomes hard and crunchy.

*Previously: Greatest living pool cue maker sentenced after pleading guilty to helping smuggle elephant ivory

Netanyahu announced the creation of a "National Guard" controlled by National Security Minister Ben-Gvir

CNN really hides that development way down in its summary of today's events.

From his Wikipedia page:

When he came of age for conscription into the Israel Defense Forces at 18, he was exempted from service by the IDF due to his extreme-right political background

...

In 1995, a few weeks before the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Ben-Gvir came to public attention for the first time when he appeared on television brandishing a Cadillac hood ornament that had been stolen from Rabin's car and declared: "We got to his car, and we'll get to him too."

...

In 2007, ... he was convicted for incitement to racism

Fireworks fired at people protesting the right wing's planned subjugation of Israel's judiciary

From police minister to police violence victim in a few months.

Meanwhile, the *current* police minister is a former criminal with convictions for supporting terror and racism.

So it goes. https://t.co/cGAj7yMJN0

— Arieh Kovler (@ariehkovler) March 23, 2023

Two summaries of today's protests from Israeli papers. ABC:

In a first step of the overhaul, Netanyahu’s parliamentary coalition approved legislation that would protect the Israeli leader from being deemed unfit to rule because of his trial and claims of a conflict of interest. Critics say the law is tailor-made for Netanyahu and encourages corruption.

The law to protect Netanyahu passed in a 61-47 vote in the 120-seat Knesset, or parliament, after a debate that ran through the night. It stipulates that a prime minister can only be deemed unfit to rule for health or mental reasons and that only he or his government can make that decision.

...

 secular opponents to the changes fear they will open the door to religious coercion. They also object to exemptions granted to ultra-Orthodox men from military duty, which is mandatory for most Jews.

Israel's current public security minister:

a settler in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has faced charges of hate speech against Arabs and was known to have a portrait in his living room of Israeli-American terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers and wounded 125 others in Hebron, in the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre. He removed the portrait after he entered politics. He was also previously convicted of supporting a terrorist group known as Kach, which espoused Kahanism, an extremist religious Zionist ideology

...

When he came of age for conscription into the Israel Defense Forces at 18, he was exempted from service by the IDF due to his extreme-right political background

...

In 1995, a few weeks before the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, [he] came to public attention for the first time when he appeared on television brandishing a Cadillac hood ornament that had been stolen from Rabin's car and declared: "We got to his car, and we'll get to him too." 

British "Police and the security services have foiled 15 plots by Iran to either kidnap or kill British or UK-based individuals it considers 'enemies of the regime'"

Guardian:

The toll of attempted assassinations and abductions was made public hours after a London-based Iranian broadcaster announced it had moved operations to the US after mounting safety concerns against its journalists from Tehran.

...

Last November, armed vehicles were deployed outside the Iran International studios in Chiswick, west London, after “severe and credible” threats were made against two of its UK-based channel’s journalists.

It's a story from last month, but one I learned about from this thread asking questions about the announced Iran-Saudi Arabia rapprochement:

8. How will this deal impact Iran International, the Saudi-supported satellite TV channel that has become the most watched news channel inside Iran? Tehran has been actively trying to assassinate exiled Iranian journalists working for Iran International. https://t.co/x3HsMh2AjF

— Karim Sadjadpour (@ksadjadpour) March 10, 2023

"Nearly 50 squadron leaders" met with the with the head of the Israeli Air Force to protest the Netanyahu government's plan to weaken the courts

NYT, which says, "Both sides have accused each other of attempting a coup":

A plan by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to severely curtail the powers of Israel’s Supreme Court has prompted weeks of demonstrations, rattled the country’s technology sector and raised fears of political violence

...

[Military leadership] is most concerned about unrest within the Air Force, with reserve duty pilots increasingly upset over the government plans, the officials said. They also fear that they may be asked to engage in illegal operations, and that restraints on Israel’s judiciary may strengthen foreign calls to prosecute them in the International Criminal Court, the officials said. Reserve duty pilots often lead Israel’s regular airstrikes on Syria and the Gaza Strip, and would be involved in any major Israeli attack on nuclear facilities in Iran.

(They also ran an essay by Michael Bloomberg titled "Israel Is Courting Disaster")

"Qatar 'corruption' scandal rocks EU Parliament"

Politico:

A top MEP [Member of the European Parliament] has been suspended from her party after police launched an investigation into alleged illicit lobbying activities by Qatar

...

Qatar is accused of targeting officials “with a significant political and/or strategic position” at the Parliament, sending them “substantial amounts of money”

...

Belgian investigators are looking into whether Qatar sought to influence positions in the Parliament in ways that “go beyond classic lobbying”

...

[The MEP], one of the parliament’s 14 vice-presidents, recently called Qatar a “frontrunner in labor rights” after meeting with the country’s labor minister

CNN:

Searches carried out as part of the inquiry resulted in the seizure of roughly 600,000 Euros ($632,000) in cash

"The main difference between the luxury and non-luxury seats at this year’s World Cup is alcohol"

NYT:

[The ban on the sale of alcohol] didn’t affect the flow of free beer — or free champagne, Scotch, gin, whiskey, wine and other drinks — available to non-regular fans in the V.I.P., V.V.I.P. and hospitality areas. The rules, it seemed, did not apply to them.

At a $3,000-a-seat hospitality lounge at Al Bayt during the U.S.’s game with England, for instance, the bar menu included Taittinger Champagne, Chivas Regal 12-year-old whisky, Martell VSOP brandy and Jose Cuervo 1800 tequila.

...

In all, there are five tiers of “hospitality” in the stadiums

...

The most exclusive suite is the Pearl Lounge, right above the halfway line at Lusail Stadium, which offers each guest an “exceptional commemorative gift.” There is also, according to someone who has been in it, a suite at Al Bayt that, for some reason, boasts a retractable bed and a bathroom equipped with a shower.