West Bank residents report persistent growth of Israeli settlements

September 24, 2025

West Bank locals report ongoing Israeli settler expansion — An Israeli outpost in the West Bank, which a local said has increased to include two tents

A valley of olives and drones: life at the edge of an expanding settlement

The buzz of a drone cuts across a late afternoon sky that ought to be full of birdsong and the scent of crushed olives. Instead there is the metallic tang of fear and the dust of bulldozers. In the West Bank towns of Turmus Ayya and al‑Mughayyir, an ancient landscape of terraced groves and stone houses is being remade—by tents, by trucks, by men with guns and by machines that rip rooted trees from the earth.

“This was supposed to be my father’s retirement. He came here from California and planted these trees with his own hands,” says Yasser Alkam, a man in his forties whose palms still smell faintly of oil when he speaks. “I have the title papers. I have the documents. But the paperwork means very little when someone points a gun at you and says ‘leave or else.’”

There is a rhythm to his words: a long, slow breath, then a detail. “Two weeks ago there was one tent,” he tells me, looking down the dusty lane. “Now there are two—one on the right, one on the left. It keeps spreading, inch by inch.” Above us, the drone hovers, sentinel and witness, as a settler on a nearby hill watches and his machine mirrors every movement.

When trees become currency

Six kilometres away, in al‑Mughayyir, the scene turned from intimidation to outright erasure. Locals counted the stumps and the empty hills; they say more than 10,000 olive trees were bulldozed, hundreds of hectares stripped bare. “They took our history,” says Marzouq Abu Naem, deputy head of the al‑Mughayyir municipality. “Those trees would have produced about 5,000 gallons of oil. At $150 a gallon, that’s a lifetime of income gone—gone with the roots.”

The arithmetic is stark: 5,000 gallons multiplied by $150 equals roughly $750,000 in lost revenue that, for a small farming community, would have funded schools, repairs, the medical bills of elderly parents. But the loss is not merely economic. “People collapsed in grief when they saw the land,” Abu Naem says. “These trees were our calendar. They marked births, weddings, funerals. You cannot replace a thousand-year‑old olive with a sapling and say the grief is over.”

Days after my visit, locals reported another attack. A man who was wounded in the confrontation later died of his injuries; his funeral, sombre and angry, threaded through narrow lanes where children still play among the stones. In these regions, grief and politics are braided together; every funeral echoes with old injustices and new fears.

On the ground: tents, patrols and the normalisation of outposts

The tents Yasser describes are part of a wider pattern. Outposts—often declared illegal even under Israeli law—appear on ridges and in valleys, sometimes with the protection of night patrols and the visible presence of the Israeli military by day. “We see soldiers, then settlers, then earthmovers,” a farmer from Turmus Ayya told me, hands inked with years of olive pressing. “It feels like watching a slow occupation of space.”

According to Israeli data and international monitors, settler populations in the West Bank and East Jerusalem number in the many hundreds of thousands; their expansion, years in the making, has accelerated in recent months. The past year, beginning 7 October, has seen a marked increase in tensions and violence across the occupied territories, with independent observers noting a surge in attacks on Palestinian communities and their property.

“There is a sense of impunity now,” says Rana Haddad, an aid worker who has documented incidents across the region. “When bulldozers arrive after confrontations, or when new tents appear on private land, it’s not just the buildings that change—the rules of space and belonging shift, quietly but irreversibly.”

Voices from different sides

Not everyone sees this as dispossession. “We are building homes, creating safe places for our people,” one settler told a reporter, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We are farmers too; we want to work the land.” Yet the scenes on the ground—armed confrontations, drone surveillance during interviews, the uprooting of centuries‑old groves—leave many Palestinians feeling besieged.

“I returned from California because I believed in this land,” Yasser says. “My American friends would say: why risk it? I would tell them about the olive trees, about the stone walls my grandfather built. But what good are memories when your land is being taken while the world watches and says little?”

Olive trees as a ledger of culture and climate

Olives are not merely crops in the West Bank; they are a cultural ledger. The harvest—stolen from children who learn to carry baskets before they can read—is a season of songs and jokes, of women beating nets against branches, of the first dark, bitter oil cooling in jars. Olive oil is served not only at meals but at weddings, presented as a blessing, poured over bread and into the mouths of infants on feast days.

There is also a climate dimension. Olive trees are drought‑resistant and part of a sustainable, very old agricultural system that helps stabilise the soil. Bulldozers that remove them accelerate erosion and make hillsides less resilient to increasingly erratic weather. “You don’t just lose fruit—you lose a buffer against climate extremes,” notes Dr. Laila Barghouti, an agronomist who has worked with smallholders in the region.

Questions for the reader, and for the world

What does it mean to protect cultural landscapes when political forces prize land as strategic advantage? How do you quantify the worth of a tree that has seen generations and named children? These are not abstract questions. They are answered in the crumbling walls of a family home, in the silence where a grove once stood, in the little jar of oil that will no longer be sold at market.

International law frameworks and appeals from human rights groups have yet to halt the spread of outposts or the bulldozing of groves. Calls for independent monitoring and for accountability echo in diplomatic corridors, but on the ground, families keep harvest calendars and wait for seeds to sprout in places they hope will not be taken again.

As you read this from wherever you are—city apartment, coastal town, highland village—consider how closely land and memory are bound for so many people. And ask: when a community loses its trees, what does the rest of us lose? A landscape of olives is, in many ways, a map of belonging. When that map is erased, the story that remains is one of absence and, for those who love the hills, a profound longing to be let back in.

Zelensky: No Security Guarantees, But Weapons and Allied Backing

hanad

September 24, 2025

No security guarantees but 'weapons, friends' - Zelensky — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addresses the United Nations General Assembly

At the United Nations, a Wartime President Warns the World: “Weapons and Friends”

On a cool autumn morning in New York, the General Assembly chamber felt oddly small for the magnitude of the conversation inside it. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, stood again before the world — his fourth address as a wartime leader — and offered a message that was less a diplomatic appeal and more a wake-up call: global security today rests on two uncomfortable pillars, he said, “weapons and friends.”

It was not a flourish but a diagnosis. “We are living through the most destructive arms race in human history,” he told the hall, his voice steady but urgent, “because this time, it includes artificial intelligence.” The image of history repeating itself — but with machine intelligence at the center — hung in the air like static.

The New Geometry of War: Cheap Drones, Long Shadows

Zelensky’s words were part policy briefing, part testimony. He sketched a new face of conflict: cheap, mass-produced drones turning wide swathes of land into “dead zones,” places where no one drives, where fields remain fallow, where life grows wary. “Ten years ago,” he said, “war looked different. No one imagined drones could create areas stretching dozens of kilometres where nothing moves.”

Across the world, analysts nod. Small commercial drones—modified, weaponised, networked—have altered the equation for both attackers and defenders. The barrier to entry is lower than ever: a laptop, an autopilot chip, a cheap airframe, and suddenly a battlefield is awash with dozens or hundreds of autonomous or semi-autonomous flying weapons.

“We’ve seen the democratisation of firepower,” said Dr. Laila Hassan, a defence analyst who studies unmanned systems. “When the technology that used to be exclusive to states becomes affordable, the strategic calculus changes. Non-state actors and smaller militaries can project force in asymmetric ways, and AI accelerates that process.”

“Stop Them Now”—A Stark Economic & Moral Argument

Zelensky did not mince words about the stakes. “Stopping Russia now is cheaper than wondering who will be the force to create a simple drone carrying a nuclear warhead,” he told delegates, a line that landed like a cold splash. His argument cut two ways: there is an economic logic to decisive resistance, and a moral case for preventing a cascade of weapon innovation that could slip beyond control.

He also unveiled a pragmatic response: Ukraine has become, by necessity, a laboratory of improvised defence technology. From volunteer workshops in Kyiv to university labs, Ukrainians have retooled commercial drones into reconnaissance platforms and loitering munitions. “We don’t parade big missiles,” he said. “We build drones to protect our right to life.”

Later in the speech, he suggested an even bolder policy: Ukraine is willing to share its weapons technology with friendly nations, arguing that systems tested in real war could provide “modern security” to others when global institutions falter.

Diplomacy on the Sidelines: Trump’s Shift and the Kremlin’s Reply

The chamber’s drama was shadowed by a presidential sidebar. Zelensky met Donald Trump on the margins of the UN summit, and within hours the US president posted that he believed Ukraine could reclaim every inch of territory taken by Russia. For a leader whose public stance has swung dramatically on the war, that social media moment was read as a pivot.

Back in Moscow, pressure valves hissed. The Kremlin rejected the idea that Ukraine can retake lost ground. “The idea that Ukraine can recapture something is, from our point of view, mistaken,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, wrapping the rebuttal in carefully measured rhetoric. When Mr Trump described Russia as a “paper tiger,” the Kremlin bristled, likening the nation instead to a bear — a metaphor designed to signal endurance and strength.

That exchange underscores a broader strategic impasse. Russia still controls roughly one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014. The conflict has left a devastating tally: tens of thousands dead, damaged cities and towns across the east and south, and millions forced to flee—registered refugee figures have numbered in the millions, with several million more internally displaced.

On the Ground: Kyiv’s Cautious Hope and Wearied Skepticism

In Kyiv’s coffee shops and volunteer hubs, people parsed the UN drama with a mix of hope and weary realism. “A single tweet won’t fill the holes in our roofs,” said Bogdan Tkachuk, 33, a volunteer coordinator handing out thermal blankets near a makeshift shelter. “We need weapons, yes. But we also need long-term commitments — training, munitions, repair parts.”

Svitlana Fetisova, a teacher who fled a village near Donetsk and now volunteers teaching children, was blunter. “Words are cheap. We hear promises, we see ceremonies, but our kids sleep in basements and study over Zoom,” she said. “If leaders mean it, let them make it concrete.”

Beyond Borders: AI, Arms Races, and the Fragility of Institutions

Read through Zelensky’s appeal and an uncomfortably modern pattern emerges: nations are stuck between two imperfect choices. Rely on international law and institutions that may lack teeth, or invest in the means of coercion and deterrence. “International law doesn’t work fully unless you have powerful friends willing to stand up for it,” Zelensky told the Assembly. “Even that doesn’t work without weapons.”

That calculus raises global questions. What happens when AI lowers decision times and increases the autonomy of lethal systems? How do you prevent accidental escalation when both sides deploy autonomous sensors and machine-guided missiles? And who regulates the spread of military-grade AI when it can be assembled from off-the-shelf parts?

“We are at a crossroads,” said Professor Elena Markovic, who researches international security. “Either we use the next years to build norms, verification mechanisms and restraint, or we allow a diffuse arms race to proceed unchecked, and then the cost is not just geopolitical — it’s existential.”

Where Do We Go From Here?

As readers, what should we carry away from a speech that combined stark warnings with military realities? For some, the lesson is immediate: the pillars of peace are fraying, and new technologies make those fractures faster and deeper. For others, it is a call to activism: demand more robust multilateral responses, fund humanitarian corridors, push for treaties on autonomous weapons.

There’s no easy answer. But the questions are now public and urgent: can the world revive institutions with the strength to restrain an accelerating arms race? Can democratic publics find the political will to marshal both the friends and the hardware Zelensky says are necessary?

Walking out of the UN, the city’s noise returned — taxi horns, a street vendor calling out, the smell of roasted chestnuts somewhere nearby — and the global emergency felt, for a moment, unbearably intimate. The choices made in the coming months will ripple far beyond Kyiv, Moscow or Washington. They will shape whether this century’s conflicts are managed by law and diplomacy, or by a terrifying new industrialisation of violence.

Which future do we want to build? And who among us will insist on it?

Italy Dispatches Naval Support Following Attack on Gaza Aid Flotilla

hanad

September 24, 2025

No drones detected after Gaza flotilla fire - authorities — The Global Sumud Flotilla for Gaza said one of its main boats was struck by a drone in Tunisian waters

Night at Sea: A Flotilla, Drones and the Taste of Salt on the Air

The sea can be both a highway and a courtroom. On a cool night off Crete, the salt air carried the metallic staccato of distant explosions and the high-pitched whine of drones, turning what had been a quiet humanitarian mission into an unnerving episode of modern maritime protest.

Onboard the Global Sumud Flotilla — a ragtag armada that left Barcelona on 31 August with 51 vessels and a manifest of aid, activists and musicians — people clustered along rails and in cramped cabins, listening, watching and trying to make sense of sudden, unseen threats. Among them were environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg and, by official estimates, 22 citizens from Ireland. Most of the boats are now anchored near the Greek island of Crete, where the Mediterranean narrows and political tensions seem to compress into every wave.

What Happened — and Who Is Saying What

According to participants, several boats were targeted by unmanned aerial vehicles that dropped small devices. “We saw fifteen to sixteen drones,” said German human rights activist Yasemin Acar in a video posted to social media, her voice tight with fatigue and anger. “Communications were jammed. Explosions were heard. They tried to frighten us. It didn’t work.”

The flotilla’s statement was uncompromising: “We are carrying only humanitarian aid. We have no weapons. We pose no threat to anyone.” The message read like both an appeal and a rebuke: an appeal for international protection and a rebuke at the blockade that has kept Gaza under tight maritime controls.

Italy’s Defence Minister Guido Crosetto moved quickly, saying in a ministry post that he had authorised the Italian Navy frigate Fasan — then operating north of Crete as part of Operation Safe Sea — to proceed to the area for “possible rescue operations.” “To ensure assistance to the Italian citizens on the ‘Flotilla’… I spoke with the Prime Minister and authorised the immediate intervention of the Italian Navy’s multi-purpose frigate Fasan,” he wrote, condemning the “attack” and dubbing the perpetrators “currently unidentified.”

Rome was explicit in warning Israel that any operation in the area must conform to international law and be conducted with “absolute caution.” The Italian foreign ministry urged Tel Aviv to guarantee the protection of personnel on board, a diplomatic nudge at a tense geopolitical rope.

Voices from Aboard

“There are fishermen here and medics and schoolteachers,” said Layla, a volunteer from Barcelona who asked that her surname not be used. “When you are in the little kitchen on a boat and someone passes you a bag of rice, you remember why you came. And then you hear an explosion and you realize how fragile that memory is.”

Thiago Avila, a Brazilian activist on one of the boats, posted video showing devices falling and explosions in the background. “Four boats were targeted with drones throwing devices,” he said. “Our radios were jammed and loud music blared in our ears—classic psychological operations.” Whether anyone aboard was injured has not been confirmed by independent authorities; flotilla organisers said there were no casualties in the immediate footage they shared.

Context: A Blockade, A Humanitarian Crisis, and a Long Game of International Law

The flotilla’s mission is both practical and symbolic: break through Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza and deliver aid — and, perhaps more importantly, galvanize global attention. Israel has flatly rejected attempts to reach Gaza by sea, blocking similar flotillas in June and July. The country says the measures are necessary for security; activists and many international observers call them collective punishment.

The stakes are enormous. Gaza is home to roughly 2.3 million people, many of whom live under siege conditions that limit food, fuel and medical supplies. Last month a UN-backed body declared famine in parts of Gaza, an alarming formal recognition of extreme food insecurity. On 16 September, UN investigators accused Israeli authorities of actions that could amount to “genocide” — a phrase that jolted diplomatic halls and deeply polarized global public opinion.

What happens at sea matters for what happens on land. Blockades, despite being naval in nature, affect hospitals, bakeries and collective memory. When food and medicine are reduced to negotiation chips, the ripples are felt across generations.

Why Drones Change the Equation

What is novel about this confrontation is the deployment of drones against civilian protest vessels. Unmanned systems complicate attribution and raise new legal questions about responsibility in congested maritime spaces. Naval law traditionally assumes identifiable actors on identifiable vessels; drones blur both lines.

“Drones are a force multiplier and a deniable one,” said Dr. Miriam Al-Saleh, an expert in maritime security at a European university. “They can intimidate, disable communications and escalate without direct, visible human attribution. That creates a grey zone that is hard to police under existing international frameworks.”

Local Color: Crete, Fishermen and Midnight Conversations

On the island of Crete, where much of the flotilla has gathered, locals watched from rocky cliffs and tavern terraces. “We are used to the sea bringing everything, olives, tourists, storms,” said Nikos, a 62-year-old fisherman from Heraklion, who pointed to the horizon with a knife-stained thumb. “But men and women risking their lives to carry food? That’s a new kind of cargo.”

Nighttime in Crete is a mosaic of lights: fishing boats, the glow of village lamps, the distant silhouette of the frigate’s navigation mast. Locals remember other nights when politics arrived by water — refugee boats, patrols, rescue missions — and the community learned to treat the sea as an extension of the café where people argue about the world.

The Bigger Picture: Protest, Solidarity and the Limits of Diplomacy

Why do citizens form flotillas? Because when borders look immovable and institutions seem sluggish, people still believe physical presence can alter a narrative. A small boat with aid and an outspoken activist on deck is, in the eyes of the organisers, a moral microphone. It is protest as logistics, hope as cargo.

But will that moral argument translate into policy? Or will it harden lines and invite new forms of confrontation? The arrival of a NATO-member navy frigate to “assist” complicates the optics: European states are being forced to reconcile domestic human-rights sensibilities with alliance politics and operational realities.

Actions at sea may trigger legal reviews, diplomatic cables and, perhaps, international court cases. They will also push the question of accountability beyond capitals and into living rooms worldwide: when a humanitarian mission is met by drones, who is responsible? How do we, as a global community, regulate technologies that outrun our treaties?

What to Watch Next

Whether the Italian frigate Fasan reaches the area and what role it assumes.
Official responses from Israel about the alleged drone incidents and any forensic evidence.
Independent verification of casualties or damage aboard flotilla vessels.
Any legal actions or international inquiries into attacks on civilian vessels.

Questions for the Reader

If you were on one of those boats, would you stay? What do solidarity and safety look like when both are in short supply? And as drones become part of everyday conflict, how should international law evolve to protect unarmed civilians who choose the sea as their stage?

There are no easy answers. But tonight, as the flotilla rocks in the dark and the frigate’s silhouette grows on the horizon, you can almost hear the collective breath of a dozen nations, a handful of languages, and a single human urgency: to reach people in need, whatever the ocean demands of us.

Jimmy Kimmel Returns, Calls Kirk’s Death ‘No Laughing Matter’

hanad

September 24, 2025

'Nothing funny' about Kirk death, says Kimmel on return — US President Donald Trump with conservative activist Charlie Kirk

On Stage Again: Jimmy Kimmel’s Return and the Politics of Punchlines

When the lights came up on the studio on a humid Monday night, the applause that greeted Jimmy Kimmel sounded less like a polite TV clapping track and more like a small, human roar. For five days the show had been absent from ABC’s lineup, suspended amid a storm of criticism following comments Kimmel made about the controversial killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Now, with the band warming and a live audience watching, the comedian walked back into the ring and into a debate that reaches far beyond late-night jokes.

“It felt like coming home,” Kimmel told the crowd, voice steady beneath the bright set lights. “But there are some things you don’t make light of.” He went on to insist he had never intended to trivialize the death that had set off the backlash. For viewers at home and thousands online, the segment became less about a single joke than a test case in an increasingly fraught public square where comedy, politics, and corporate caution collide.

A sudden suspension, a louder conversation

Network suspensions of high-profile hosts are not unheard of, but they are rare enough that each one invites intense scrutiny. The five-day hiatus drew as much attention to ABC as the brief remarks that prompted it. Public outrage—on both sides—did not take long to ignite. In the days leading up to Kimmel’s return, social platforms filled with petitions, op-eds, and accusations: some demanding a firmer stand against what they called callousness, others warning of an erosion of comic freedom.

“If comedians can’t push boundaries, where does that leave us?” asked Dr. Aisha Raman, a media professor who studies satire and civic discourse. “Comedy has always been a pressure valve for society, but there are moments when the valve gets jammed.” Raman notes a broader trend: in an era of polarized media and lightning-fast outrage cycles, comedians are often the first to feel corporate attrition and the last to receive institutional protection.

Voices from the studio — and the street

Inside the studio, the mood was complicated. A standing ovation met Kimmel when he stepped out; some fans cheered, others watched in silence. “He’s a smart man and he joked badly,” said Maria Lopez, an audience member who’d driven two hours from Oxnard. “But we also want honesty. It wasn’t funny.” Across the street from the network building, counter-protesters waved signs and chanted in fragmented slogans about accountability and media bias.

“People are exhausted with one-sided narratives,” said Daniel Price, a freelance journalist covering the protests. “This isn’t just about a joke—it’s about which voices get amplified and which get silenced.” Price’s observation echoed in the social feeds of millions. On the conservative platform Truth Social, former President Donald Trump—whose post drew immediate attention—blasted ABC for rehiring Kimmel, insisting the host harmed the network’s standing.

Beyond a punchline: what’s at stake?

The Kimmel episode is a microcosm of larger tensions at work across the media landscape. Is a satirist’s job to press against norms and highlight hypocrisy, even during moments of tragedy? Or do public figures have a heightened responsibility to tread carefully when a community is grieving? There are no easy answers, but the collision of comedy, politics, and corporate self-interest tends to make everyone look worse.

“Networks respond to money and risk in equal measure,” said former network executive Laura Chen. “A major advertiser pulling out, or a rogue government official promising pressure, moves the needle quickly. That’s not an excuse—it’s a reality.” Chen pointed to recent advertising boycotts aimed at cable news and streaming shows that have left networks skittish. “Executives don’t want headlines; they want balance sheets,” she added.

Indeed, financial stakes are real. While late-night viewership has shifted in recent years to streaming and snippets online, nightly network talkers still command millions of viewers cumulatively. Nielsen estimates have shown that established shows often pull in well under two million live viewers nightly in the streaming era, but the ripple effect in digital clips and syndicated segments can multiply that reach exponentially—making every controversial moment into a marketing and legal chessboard.

Free speech, corporate pressure, and political fury

Kimmel framed part of his return around a constitutional concern. “A government threat to silence a comedian the president doesn’t like is anti‑American,” he said on air, tapping into a long-standing trope about free speech and state overreach. Whether the alleged government pressure in this case met any legal threshold is a matter for lawyers, but the rhetoric mattered—especially to free-speech advocates.

“Threats, explicit or implicit, from officials toward media organizations create a chilling effect,” said Elise Navarro, director of a press‑freedom NGO. “Even the suggestion can make outlets self-censor. That undermines robust debate, which is vital in democracies.” Navarro cautioned, though, that free speech is not a shield from consequences: “People can say things freely, but organizations also have the right to act when public trust is threatened.”

How communities process grief and anger

Outside the immediate controversy lies a simpler human story: people wrestling with loss and meaning. When a public figure dies—or is reported to have been killed—communities rush to interpret the event in ways that reflect their identities. Some see opportunity; others see danger.

“We had a candlelight vigil across from the studio,” said Janae Olumide, who organizes local memorial events. “People came to grieve, not to score points. It’s heartbreaking when grief becomes a political tool.” The impulse to politicize tragedy is global: from public memorials in small towns to viral midnight takes on social platforms. The result is often a layered discourse where sincerity and opportunism sit uneasily side by side.

Where to from here?

As Kimmel rejoined a familiar set and ABC resumed broadcasting, the nation continued to argue. Was his suspension fair? Was his return a capitulation to free expression? Or was it an inevitable compromise between a network and its star? The answers depend on whom you ask.

For viewers, the episode offers a prompt: what do we want from public conversation in tense times? Do we value levity even amid sorrow? Do we demand decorum even when comedy has a long history of critique? These are not merely entertainment questions; they are civic ones.

“I want accountability,” said Lopez, the audience member. “But I also don’t want us to forget how fragile honest conversation is. If we silence every comedian, who will point out our blind spots?”

So the show goes on—on a late-night set bathed in neon, in newsrooms feverishly parsing every clip, on timelines where anger and support both get amplified. If nothing else, Kimmel’s return reminds us how tightly wound comedy and politics have become—and how small a misstep can feel like a national crisis.

What would you defend: the right to joke, even badly, or the responsibility to keep certain moments solemn? It’s a hard question—and one we’ll be asking again, and again, as the cultural conversation keeps changing the channel.

How Uyghur forced labor can end up in your clothing supply chain

hanad

September 24, 2025

How forced Uyghur labour could be woven into your wardrobe — From Xinjiang's cotton fields to Irish shop racks: RTÉ Investigates traced forced labour cotton through global supply chains

Behind the Price Tag: How a Piece of Cotton from Xinjiang Can End Up on Your Back

Walk into a busy Irish high-street store on a drizzly afternoon and you’ll be greeted by neat piles of sweaters and cheerful signs promising “sustainably sourced” cotton. The labels are crisp. The lighting is flattering. The price feels right. But peel back a few layers — not of fabric, but of paperwork — and you may find yourself tracing a line that begins in fields the size of small countries, watched over by guards, and threaded through factories where workers don’t have a choice.

Across the globe, cotton is not just a raw material. It is a vector of human stories: small villages emptied of their elders and children, rural farmers reassigned as factory hands, and labour systems so embedded that they become invisible to consumers who only see the final garment under the fitting-room mirror.

From Aksu’s flat horizons to Dhaka’s factories

In the Aksu prefecture of Xinjiang, the landscape rolls into acres of pale stalks and flowering bolls. It’s a place that produces roughly 90% of China’s cotton — and about one-fifth of the world’s. Here, fields stretch to the horizon and cotton is a kind of commodity weather: abundant, mechanised, heavily policed.

But abundance has a shadow. Since the mid-2010s, international investigators, human rights groups, and survivors have documented a system of mass detentions, forced “re-education,” and organised labour movements from rural communities into manufacturing hubs. The UN’s 2022 assessment concluded that some of the abuses in the region could amount to crimes against humanity; several national parliaments and human rights groups have used the more charged term “genocide.”

“When you see the scale of transfers, the family separations and the state rhetoric about remaking people, it feels like an assault on identity,” said a former human-rights adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “And the cotton harvest is where policy meets profit.”

How cotton slips into global supply chains

The trail is not neat. Cotton from Xinjiang is processed, woven, blended and exported. Two Chinese firms — among others — operate large farms and factories in the Aksu region and, according to shipment and corporate records, export substantial volumes of cotton fabric to textile manufacturers in Bangladesh. Those Bangladeshi plants, in turn, sew millions of garments for international retailers whose labels promise traceability and ethical sourcing.

“We buy fabric, we get paid for production,” said a factory supervisor in Dhaka, who asked to remain unnamed. “The paperwork says it’s from China. We don’t ask more. That is the reality of my job. I am judged by speed, not origin.”

The mechanics that allow this to happen are technical and mundane: mass-balance certification systems, blending in spinning mills, and a chain of suppliers and sub-suppliers that grows longer with each stage. Labels like “Better Cotton” or isotopic certificates are meant to reassure shoppers — but they have loopholes.

Better Cotton’s mass-balance model allows certified volumes to be mixed with conventional cotton early in the chain, meaning “sustainable” on a label doesn’t always indicate farm-level origin.
Isotopic testing can identify broad environmental signatures in fibres, but blends and mixed inventories dilute accuracy.
Written supplier declarations often substitute for verifiable tracing, and they depend on the honesty of actors across several countries.

Voices from the chain

“We are not powerless,” said a consumer-rights campaigner in Dublin. “People can push brands to map their supply chains to the raw material. It’s complicated, but buyers hold influence.”

A Bangladeshi tailor on a factory floor told me, almost apologetically: “We want orders. If they ask where cotton comes from, factories give papers. Who will cut orders if we ask too many questions?” His hands moved to the seam of a child’s T‑shirt as if to show the gulf between policy and pocket money.

Scientists caution against over-reliance on single tests. “Isotopic fingerprints are powerful tools, but mixing undermines them,” said an isotope researcher at a North American university. “You need rigorous chain-of-custody protocols, not just snapshots.”

Why this matters beyond a garment

This is not a niche ethical debate for boutique shoppers. Supply chains connect millions of lives. The allegations around Xinjiang are about more than forced labour: they are about cultural erasure, mass surveillance, and political coercion. Freedoms can be compromised laboriously — stitch by stitch — and then sold in five-euro bargains at the till.

Policy responses are on the way. The European Union is finalising a Forced Labour Regulation due to come into effect in 2027 that will bar products made using forced labour from European markets. The law could reshape sourcing practices across multiple industries.

“Regulatory teeth are essential,” said a legal advocate specialising in global labour standards. “But enforcement must be paired with transparency. If companies still rely on self-declarations and opaque blending rules, legislation will be one more box on a checklist.”

Small actions, big ripples

What can the individual shopper do? The question often feels like a pebble against a dam. Yet history shows that collective consumer attention moves markets.

Ask: When you buy, ask staff where materials are traced to, and ask brands online for farm-level mapping.
Amplify: Share replies — or the lack of them — on public platforms so companies feel reputational pressure.
Support policy: Back legislative efforts that require corporate transparency and penalise forced-labour taint.

“If enough customers ask, companies will either clean up supply chains or risk losing markets,” said an international NGO worker. “There is leverage.”

A final stitch

The next time a label promises “ethically sourced” cotton, pause. Imagine the cotton’s journey: the white bolls under Aksu’s sun, the lorry rumbling to a city factory, the boxed rolls arriving in Bangladesh, the sewing machines that stitch a name into a seam. Consider the stories stuck between those layers — of families moved, identities pressured, systems built to shape human behaviour into labour.

We do not have to surrender to complexity. We can ask, probe and demand a chain of custody that reaches back to the field. That is how markets change: not overnight, but by steady insistence from many voices. Will you be one of them?

Crowded Hall as Trump Strays From Script on National Stage

hanad

September 24, 2025

Packed hall as Trump goes off script on biggest stage — US President Donald Trump speaks during the United Nations General Assembly

Inside the Chorus and the Clamor: A Day at the UN When Politics and Pageantry Collided

The flags outside the United Nations fluttered like a thousand small claims on the future — bright, tattered, hopeful. It was a morning that smelled of cold coffee, taxi exhaust and the faint perfume of diplomacy: the kind of day New York wears when global leaders have flown in and the city is both exhausted and electric.

By the time I slipped into the General Assembly gallery, there wasn’t an inch of space left. Delegates, diplomats, and a clutch of press squeezed together in the warm, wood-paneled room — the great hemisphere of the world’s conversation. You could feel the room compressing not just with bodies, but with expectation. How will he speak? What will be the tone? Will the world laugh, applaud, bristle?

Stagecraft, Stumbles and the Art of the Unsparing Line

When he walked up to the podium, the buzz changed — a mixture of curiosity and a peculiar deference reserved for those who know how to command attention. He spoke longer than anyone had anticipated, veering off script in a way that turned the allotted 15 minutes into a 55-minute performance. Jokes about a balky escalator and a reluctant teleprompter punctured the tension, and laughter rolled across the room like short, shocked gusts.

“If the First Lady wasn’t in great shape, you would have fallen,” he quipped, and people laughed — not because they agreed, but because the rhythm of performance demanded a beat of release. He mocked the teleprompter, blamed its operator, and the gallery chuckled at the human foibles of power.

But beneath the laughs, the speech had teeth. He warned of migration as a force “destroying” Europe, denounced green policies as a “joke,” called climate action politicized, and accused the UN of failing to live up to its potential. At times his rhetoric felt like a mirror held up to a divided room; at others it felt like a flare meant to disrupt the view.

Echoes Outside: Protests, Prayers and Street-Level Reactions

Just a short walk away, in front of the New York Public Library, a different kind of music rose up. Protesters chanted and carried signs — some for Palestinian rights, others waving banners in support of the host nation’s policies. A woman named Ana, a public school teacher from Queens, told me, “I came because I want to remind them that policies have faces. The people making loud speeches here are out of touch with the ones living the consequences.”

A security guard outside the UN, who declined to give his name, rolled his eyes and said, “Every year it’s the same theater. Different actors, same script. But people still come, and they still listen.”

Between Performance and Policy: What the Words May Mean

It’s easy to read a speech as pure rhetoric. But words at the UN often precede policy, influence funding, and shape alliances. The United States historically covers a substantial share of the UN’s assessed budget — roughly one-fifth — and American posture toward the organization has ripple effects. Cuts in funding to UN climate programs, refugee protection, and humanitarian aid have a real downstream impact on fragile states and displaced people. Today, more than 100 million people around the globe are forcibly displaced — a figure that changes lives far from the halls of diplomacy.

“This wasn’t merely showmanship,” said Dr. Laila Hassan, a scholar of international institutions. “Speeches at the UN are signals. When a major power derides an institution publicly, staff morale, program funding, and multilateral cooperation all feel it. The implications aren’t just rhetorical.”

Moments of Contradiction: Warmth, Bluster, and Surprise Diplomacy

Contrast and contradiction are the main courses at any UN General Assembly. He criticized the UN and then, after a private meeting with the Secretary-General, proclaimed unequivocal support. He boasted of ending wars and lamented the difficulty of solving the Ukraine conflict. Backstage embraces with leaders whose foreign policies he has publicly assailed were met with nervous laughter and whispers among diplomats.

“I saw him, he saw me, and we embraced,” he said of an encounter with a regional leader, smiling as if to underline the theatre of reconciliation. It’s worth asking: does a fleeting hug undo months of policy divergence? Or is it simply another soundbite for the evening news?

Legal Questions and the Moral Ledger

The speech also brushed up against thorny legal and moral issues. He defended U.S. operations meant to interdict drug-smuggling from sea, vowing to “blow you out of existence” to traffickers. That language drew a cold silence. Critics pointed to the thin line between interdiction and extrajudicial force — a line that international law, human rights organizations and many states are vigilant to guard.

“Force has consequences beyond the tactical,” said an international law expert I spoke with. “Using military power in peacetime against civilians, even if suspected of crime, raises grave legal issues and risks eroding norms we’ve built since World War II.”

What the Gallery Left With: Dissonance and a Fragile Consensus

When the speech ended, people filed out of the Assembly like a parade that has lost its rhythm. Some clapped; others were bemused. The tone had swung wildly from self-congratulation to scolding, from homespun humor to hard-edged threats. Perhaps most striking was how the laughter, the boos, and the silence were all genuine — a small democracy of reactions reflecting a much larger global debate.

For many delegates the deeper concern isn’t a line in a speech. It’s the pattern those lines may indicate: an erosion of longstanding American support for collective responses to refugee flows, climate change, and global public goods. The UN, imperfect but indispensable, manages many of the systems that keep states from unraveling into violence and neglect. When a major member state hints at withdrawal, that system creaks.

Questions to Sit With

Can multilateral institutions adapt to the populist currents sweeping several democracies without losing their capacity to act?
How do we reconcile a world that needs collective action on climate and migration with political narratives that prize national sovereignty and suspicion of global governance?
And what responsibility do citizens have — in New York, in Kyiv, in Tehran, in Lagos — to defend or reform the institutions that shape global life?

Walking back through the security cordon, the city’s noise swallowed the hum from the Assembly. A migrant street vendor adjusted his cart and laughed when I asked how he felt about politics at the UN. “They debate whether the world should be saved,” he said, flicking a napkin at a pigeon, “but who feeds my kids tonight? That’s the only vote I want to win.”

That line — practical, weary, human — stuck with me. In a chamber where grand narratives are spun and reputations reshaped, the human stakes remain stubbornly local. The United Nations may be vast in flag and form, but its work is measured in shelter, food, legal protection, and the slow accretion of trust between states.

So what does the speech mean in the end? Perhaps it is both signal and noise: a portrait of a leader intent on reshaping the conversation, and a reminder that the world’s shared problems require more than bravado. They demand patience, money, and faith in collective solutions — none of which can be conjured with a joke about an escalator.

Man convicted for trying to assassinate President Donald Trump

hanad

September 24, 2025

Man guilty of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump — Ryan Routh is facing a maximum life sentence in prison

On a Sunlit Fairway, a Plot Unraveled

The morning at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach began like a postcard: palms feathering the edges of the sky, the smell of cut grass on the muggy Florida air, a chorus of golfers calling “four!” across manicured greens. It ended with a man in custody and a federal jury’s verdict that will linger far beyond the day’s scorecards.

Ryan Routh, 59, a man who had been drifting between islands, war zones and construction sites, was convicted by a federal jury on every charge brought against him for plotting to assassinate former President Donald Trump. Prosecutors say Routh lay in the brush overlooking the sixth hole, rifle trained toward the course, for nearly ten hours until a Secret Service agent on routine patrol spotted him and fired, forcing him to flee without firing a shot.

“This plot was carefully crafted and deadly serious,” prosecutor John Shipley told jurors at the start of the trial. “Without the intervention of the Secret Service agent, Donald Trump would not be alive.” It was a stark line in a case that has become another painful punctuation mark in a national story about political violence.

The Arrest and the Evidence

Federal agents say Routh arrived in South Florida about a month before the September incident, living inconspicuously at a truck stop while tracking the former president’s movements. Investigators recovered an SKS-style rifle, two bags of metal plates resembling body armor, and a small video camera positioned to capture the stretch of holes where Routh had concealed himself, according to courtroom testimony.

Six cell phones, prosecutors said, some registered under false names.
Metal plates suitable for makeshift armor.
A small camera aimed at the green.

Routh was arrested later that afternoon after being stopped by state troopers on a Florida highway. He now faces the prospect of life behind bars if the judge hands down the maximum sentence available for the federal counts on which he was convicted.

A Life That Traveled, but Never Settled

It is tempting to try to reconcile the man in bushes with the man his daughter remembers. Sara Routh described a father who repeatedly made grand gestures to help people he saw as vulnerable. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he traveled there twice; he stayed in Kyiv for ten months, she said, sleeping in a tent and helping recruit volunteers and source supplies.

“They were about to fight a war. They had nothing to fight with,” Ms Routh said at trial. “He felt like he could make a difference.”

Those journeys—an itinerant roofing contractor turned amateur activist in Taiwan and Ukraine—paint a portrait of a restless man whose ideals often collided with the limits of circumstance. Friends and neighbors in Hawaii remembered him as friendly but unpredictable. “He had a heart for the underdog,” one neighbor said. “But he could get lost in his own plans.” The image sits uneasily beside the rifle and camera found in a Florida bush.

Self-Representation, or a Final Gamble?

In one of the trial’s more unusual turns, Routh dismissed his attorneys and chose to defend himself. His opening statement was meandering and subdued; the judge cut him off at points, and as witnesses—law enforcement officers, surveillance analysts, Secret Service agents—walked the jury through timelines and phone records, Routh offered little in the way of rebuttal.

To jurors, the prosecution painted a picture of premeditation: fake names, multiple phones, days spent surveilling a target. To the man who once slept in a tent in a war zone, the defense offered images of a gentle, nonviolent man who was misunderstood. Jurors sided decisively with the former.

More Than One Isolated Plot

Routh’s conviction comes at a fraught moment in American life, when politically motivated violence has seeped from fringe corners into public spaces. The trial unfolded in the shadow of other violent incidents that shocked the nation: an arson attack on the Pennsylvania governor’s residence and brazen shootings that claimed the lives of state legislators in Minnesota—events that have turned the question of security for public figures into a matter of urgent public debate.

During the 2024 campaign, Mr. Trump survived multiple attempts on his life, one of them leaving him with an ear wound. Those incidents and this conviction together underscore a grim reality: politically motivated violence is no longer hypothetical. It has become a recurring, destabilizing presence in civic life.

What Experts Say

“We’re seeing an erosion of civic boundaries,” said a political violence analyst who has worked with law enforcement agencies. “Polarization, the normalization of extreme rhetoric online, and easier access to weapons form a dangerous mix.” While experts debate causation and remedy, many agree that the problem is systemic and multifaceted—rooted in social media ecosystems, echo chambers, and a national conversation that often prizes spectacle over nuance.

On the Ground: Florida, Hawaii, and the Global Patchwork

Walk the fairways in West Palm Beach and you’ll see a choreography of privilege—clubs, caddies, and the quiet rituals of golfers. Look a few miles inland and the patchwork is different: strip malls, veterans’ outreach centers, and neighborhoods where debates about security and democracy often bleed into everyday life. It is in that borderland—between spectacle and suburban reality—that this plot was discovered.

Hawaii, where Routh most recently lived, adds another layer. Islanders there speak of a man who moved through communities with an odd mixture of earnestness and detachment. “He’d talk big about changing the world,” one local said. “Then he’d be gone for months.”

What Do We Do Now?

Conviction closes one chapter. But it opens a dozen questions: How do democracies protect leaders without turning every public space into a fortress? How does a society balance open civic life with the need for security? What responsibility do platforms, commentators and leaders have for cooling rhetoric that can inflame action?

We can track prosecutions and count arrests. We can measure increases in politically motivated attacks. But numbers alone won’t stop someone from sitting in a bush, rifle assembled, and deciding—because of rage, conviction, or despair—that violence is the answer. Prevention requires more than policing: it requires a civic culture that makes violence unthinkable, not merely illegal.

And so the case of Ryan Routh asks the reader—where do you stand? What are you willing to defend and how? In a polarized world, the answers we offer each other will shape whether our public spaces remain places of debate or become battlegrounds.

The verdict is in. A jury has spoken. For now, one plot has been stopped. The larger work—of rebuilding trust, reining in extremism, and protecting the face-to-face spaces of democracy—continues.

1...545556...138 Page 55 of 138