British police detain 300 protesters during Palestine Action demonstration

September 7, 2025

UK police arrest 300 people in Palestine Action protest — A protester is carried away by police officers at a 'Lift The Ban' demonstration in support of the proscribed group Palestine Action

Under the shadow of Parliament: a city divided, a law contested

On a damp Saturday in central London, a crowd gathered like a living mural against the silhouette of the Houses of Parliament—placards bobbing, voices braided into a single, urgent chorus. The air smelled faintly of diesel from the red buses and of reheated coffee from the nearby stalls. For hours the chants rose and fell: anger, grief, defiance. By evening, police figures would say roughly 300 people had been taken into custody. For many who came to protest, the arrests were not a surprise—they were the point.

“I didn’t come to break the law,” said Eileen Carter, 74, a retired nurse from Camden, her voice hushed by age and resolve. “I came because I felt like I had to stand in the street and show the world that what’s happening matters.” Her placard read simply: ‘Stand Up For Gaza.’ She paused, as if weighing the consequences of her own words, and then added, “If that’s enough to put me in a cell, then let them do it.”

The Metropolitan Police had been unambiguous in their warnings all week: explicit support for Palestine Action—a group proscribed under the UK’s Terrorism Act 2000—could result in arrest. The ban, introduced in July after a series of high-profile acts of vandalism and a costly attack on a Royal Air Force site said to have caused roughly £7 million in damage, converts political solidarity into a potential criminal offence. The net cast by the legislation has already swept up hundreds; police records show more than 800 people had been arrested prior to this weekend, and 138 charged with offences linked to supporting or encouraging a proscribed organisation.

Faces in the crowd: stories that complicate the headlines

Not all who came were militants or masterminds. Many were parents holding the hands of teenagers, students with backpacks still damp from the drizzle, and older citizens who grew up in an era where the right to protest was sacrosanct. “I’m here because my son is still in Gaza,” said Layla Hassan, 39, who had travelled from East London. “I don’t support vandalism. I support people being allowed to speak.”

“They’ve turned civil disobedience into a security threat,” said Mark Hughes, 62, a CEO of a small recycling company who declined to give his surname in full. “When the state acts like this you have to ask: who exactly are they trying to protect?” He was detained by officers as the crowd surged against a police cordon. Around him, an ebb and flow of skirmishes broke out—pushed shoulders, shouted curses, and the metallic clang of police radios. The chants occasionally shifted into a single, pointed refrain: “Shame on you!”

The human cost of a legal label

To be proscribed under the Terrorism Act is to be legally frozen in the public imagination. Supporters of the ban argue it is necessary to protect public safety and to deter acts of deliberate damage or violence. Critics, from the United Nations to Amnesty International and Greenpeace, have described the move as an overreach: a silencing of dissent under the guise of counter-terrorism. “This is not just about one organisation,” said Dr. Imran Khalid, a civil liberties scholar at a London university. “It’s about where we draw the line between criminal action and political expression, and whether we allow the state to draw that line so broadly that it erodes basic democratic freedoms.”

Legal experts point to the stark penalties: those convicted of supporting or encouraging a proscribed organisation can face up to six months’ imprisonment for certain offences, while organisers or those found to be more directly involved could be jailed for up to 14 years. The government has been granted permission to appeal an earlier court ruling that allowed Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori to legally challenge the ban—an appeal that will likely set new precedents for how protest is policed in the UK.

Two demonstrations, one city in flux

At the same time as the arrests near Parliament, several thousand people poured into other parts of London, holding a separate demonstration to protest Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza. Their numbers were larger, their banners more varied—some reading ‘Ceasefire Now,’ others invoking international law. The protests unfolded against the backdrop of new military strikes by Israel aimed at taking Gaza City in operations it described as necessary to dismantle Hamas. Across the capital, conversations about international law, human rights, and the limits of protest spilled into cafés and living rooms.

“People are terrified,” said Amira Suleiman, a university student who had been at both demonstrations. “Terrified for our relatives, terrified for our rights here. They’re linked.”

What the numbers say—and what they don’t

The arrests and charges provide a quantitative snapshot: hundreds detained, dozens charged. But numbers alone can’t capture the frayed feelings a protest like this exposes—the sense that the state’s security apparatus and citizens’ political impulses are colliding in a new, harsher way. They also raise questions about selective enforcement. Why are some groups targeted for proscription while others, which may express controversial or disruptive views, remain legally active?

Reported arrests at recent demonstration: approximately 300
Total arrests linked to Palestine Action prior to Saturday: over 800
People charged with supporting/encouraging proscribed organisation: 138
Damage attributed to prior Palestine Action acts at an RAF site: approx. £7 million
Potential prison sentences: up to six months for many offences; up to 14 years for organisers

Local color: London as both stage and audience

On the pavement by Westminster, a man selling roasted chestnuts watched the arrests with a detached fury. “I’ve been here forty years,” he said. “London is a place where people make their voices heard. It’s part of our DNA. Now it feels like something’s being suffocated.” Nearby, a group of schoolchildren craned their necks as they were led past by teachers, their eyes wide, taking in what adults often call complex politics in phrases that are simpler and truer: “Why are those people in handcuffs?”

It was impossible not to notice the small, human moments: a woman offering bottled water to arrested protesters as they were guided into vans, a grey-haired man folding up a placard with a careful, tired reverence, and a young medic tending to a demonstrator with a torn hand. These vignettes threaded the drama with everyday tenderness—reminders of the ordinary lives that lie behind political labels.

Where do we go from here?

As legal battles over the ban continue to make their way through the courts, the protest in front of Parliament will not be easily forgotten. It raises urgent questions: how do democratic societies balance the imperative to keep citizens safe with the equally important need to protect dissent? When does policing become political? And perhaps most pressing: in an age of polarized news cycles, how do we ensure that the human stories beneath the banners don’t get flattened into slogans?

The answers will not be found in a single courtroom or on a single pavement. They will emerge slowly, in policy debates, in law reports, in conversations around kitchen tables, and in the courage of ordinary people who keep showing up. “I’m not a criminal,” Eileen said one last time, as she prepared to leave. “I’m a witness.”

What, then, does your witness look like? How will you listen to the next protest that comes down your street, and what will you do when the law and conscience seem to point in different directions?

Lisbon funicular cable found disconnected minutes before crash

hanad

September 7, 2025

Lisbon funicular cable disconnected before crash — According to the initial findings of the investigators, the funicular crashed at a speed of 60 kilometres an hour

When a Cable Snapped: Voices and Questions After Lisbon’s Funicular Tragedy

On a soft, sun-bright morning in Lisbon this week, commuters and tourists made their way up the city’s steep terraces, as they have for generations—past azulejos that catch the light like painted glass, by cafes filling with the aroma of coffee, toward a funicular that has become as much a feature of this city’s rhythm as the trams’ bell or the Tagus’s tide.

By afternoon, that rhythm abruptly stopped. A cable linking two cabins gave way, and one of the vehicles crashed with devastating speed. Sixteen people lost their lives. The shock rolled through neighborhoods and headlines, leaving questions that will not be soothed by time alone.

The bare facts, laid out by investigators

Portugal’s air and rail accident investigations bureau, GPIAAF, published an early note that pieces together what little is known for certain. Maintenance records were up to date. A scheduled visual inspection had been performed the morning of the accident and, according to investigators, uncovered no anomalies in either the cable or the braking systems.

And yet—hours later—a cable separated from the vehicle. Early findings say the vehicle reached an estimated speed of 60 kilometres per hour, and that the catastrophe unfolded in roughly 50 seconds from the first signs of failure to the scene’s aftermath.

“We have to differentiate what we can see in the logbooks from what physically happened on the rope,” one investigator told me, speaking on condition of anonymity to allow them to discuss preliminary findings candidly. “The visual inspection did not allow access to that specific section of the cable where separation occurred. That’s where our focus must be now: why did that part fail despite routine checks?”

On the street: voices that linger

At a small bakery near the line, Maria Lopes, who has worked the counter for 23 years, paused while kneading dough and folded her hands like a prayer. “You learn to live with the city’s noises—bells, trams, the creak of the funicular. We never thought one of those noises would turn into an alarm this way,” she said. “People put flowers by the tracks. We are all asking how this could happen.”

A tourist from Madrid, who asked not to be named, described the scene as surreal. “One minute tourists were taking photos of the tiles; the next, sirens and confusion. There were people comforting each other—strangers hugging because there was nothing else they could do.”

For families of the victims, the morning’s official tone—calm, procedural—will be cold comfort. An emergency response worker, still haunted by the day’s images, told me, “We do this work because we want to save lives, not to go home with a list of them. The human cost is beyond numbers.”

Why a visual inspection might not be enough

Visual inspections are a cornerstone of urban cable-car maintenance. They catch frayed wires, corrosion, alignment issues, lubrication needs. But they are limited by what the eye can reach and by the assumptions that underpin routine checks. When investigators say a section could not be visually inspected, it means a hidden weakness—internal wear, a subsurface defect, a failure in a terminal connection—might have been missed.

“Think of a tree with hollow rot,” explained Dr. João Carvalho, a mechanical engineer specializing in cable transport systems. “From the outside, the trunk may look healthy. Inside, however, stresses accumulate. Cable systems are complex: there are terminations, joints, grips and anchoring points that are often the most vulnerable. You need non-destructive testing—ultrasound, magnetic flux leakage—to reveal those hidden failures.”

Dr. Carvalho’s point is technical but urgent. Across the world, cities operate aging transport infrastructure under the weight of modern demand. That mismatch raises a blunt question: are our inspection regimes keeping pace with reality?

What investigators will look at next

Detailed forensic analysis of the separated cable segment, if it can be recovered.
A review of maintenance logs and the procedures followed during the morning inspection.
Examination of braking systems and emergency safeties for possible malfunction or delayed engagement.
Interviews with staff, witnesses, maintenance contractors and contractors’ subcontractors.
Use of non-destructive testing histories and whether such tests were part of scheduled maintenance.

A city’s memory and the wider questions

Lisbon’s funiculars are more than transport; they are part of the city’s body and memory. Their wooden seats, hand-polished by decades of hands, and steel cables that have borne the weight of locals and visitors alike, are a living link to urban history. But heritage should not be an excuse to avoid the scrutiny modern safety demands.

There are broader currents at play here: an aging global infrastructure, increased tourist loads on historic systems, and pressure on municipalities to balance preservation with modernization. The cost of upgrading systems—both financially and culturally—can be high, and sometimes political will is slow to follow near-term budgets and headlines.

“We cannot let nostalgia become negligence,” said Ana Mendes, a policy analyst focused on urban transport and safety. “Cities must invest in diagnostics and technology. A visual inspection is important, but it should be complemented by periodic in-depth testing and a culture of safety that puts human life above appearances.”

Numbers that matter

Sixteen lives were lost in this accident—names, stories, routines, breakfasts left unfinished. Each casualty will ripple out to families, colleagues, and neighborhoods. Globally, cable and funicular accidents remain relatively rare compared with road traffic deaths, but their consequences are often severe because of the concentrated nature of the systems and the limited escape options when something goes wrong.

The GPIAAF is known for careful, methodical investigations that can take months. Their final report will likely recommend technical fixes and procedural changes. But for those grieving now, the timeline is painfully slow. For many, the urgency is immediate: accountability, support, and changes to prevent another family from learning a city’s tram bell through tragedy.

Questions for the reader—and for policy-makers

As you read this, consider the infrastructure you move through daily—the bridges, elevators, subways, cable cars. How confident are you in the checks we accept as sufficient? How do we balance preservation of the past with the need for 21st-century safety standards?

I walked the line at dusk, where the day’s light catches the tiles and the city exhales. A small vase of candles flickered beside a makeshift memorial. People left messages in several languages—Portuguese, English, French—a testament to a city that belongs to many. One note, in a trembling hand, read simply: “Make it safe for everyone.”

That is the hard, human demand at the heart of this inquiry: not just to explain the physics of a snap cable, or to tally maintenance checks, but to ensure the public can trust the systems that carry them. Trust, once ruptured, is a long road to rebuild. The investigators will look for the mechanical cause. The city must also look for the moral response.

We will follow the investigation’s next steps and the wider conversation it ignites about safety, accountability and how we care for the shared systems of our daily lives. For now, Lisbon lights a vigil and asks—softly, urgently—how we can do better.

AI company Anthropic to pay $1.5 billion over pirated books

hanad

September 6, 2025

AI giant Anthropic to pay $1.5bn over pirated books — Anthropic competes with generative artificial intelligence offerings from Google, OpenAI, Meta and Microsoft in a race that is expected to attract hundreds of billions of dollars in investment over the next few years

A Quiet Storm in Silicon Valley: Authors, AI, and a $1.5 Billion Reckoning

There are moments when the hum of servers and the rustle of paper collide. This is one of them.

Anthropic, a fast-rising San Francisco AI shop behind the Claude chatbot, has agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion to resolve a US class-action lawsuit brought by dozens of authors who said their books were lifted without permission to train the company’s language models. The deal — covering roughly 500,000 titles — amounts to about $3,000 per book, four times the minimum statutory damages under U.S. copyright law.

That number alone is headline-grabbing. But numbers are only the scaffolding. On the ground, the settlement points to a broader cultural and legal quarrel: how we price creativity in an era when machines learn by devouring human work.

Not a Simple Win — Not a Simple Loss

In June, U.S. District Judge William Alsup wrote a decision that read like an attempt to thread a needle. He said the process of training large language models can be “transformative” — likening machine learning to how humans learn from reading. That ruling gave Anthropic partial breathing room. Yet the same judge also rejected Anthropic’s attempt to claim blanket immunity: downloading millions of pirated books to build a permanent, searchable library did not qualify as fair use.

“The technology at issue may be among the most transformative many of us will see,” Judge Alsup observed, but he stopped short of blessing wholesale copying as legal. What that tension amounts to — in policy terms and for people’s livelihoods — is what the settlement is trying to reconcile.

What the Deal Means Practically

Under the agreement, Anthropic has committed to destroy the pirated files and the copies it made from them, while retaining the rights to books it legally purchased and scanned. The settlement still requires judicial approval, but if it stands, it will mark one of the largest copyright recoveries tied to AI training to date.

“This settlement is a recognition that creative labor has value — and that value can’t simply be harvested without consequence,” said a plaintiffs’ counsel in the case. “It sets a precedent for how the industry handles the raw inputs that shape AI.”

A Chorus of Voices: Authors, Lawyers, and Storefronts

Walk into an independent bookstore in the Mission District or the East Village and you’ll feel the same pulse: books are not just data. They are livelihoods, conversations, the reason many towns close their downtowns for literary festivals. For writers, the suit cuts to a blunt reality — that their words can be subsumed into vast models with unclear lines of credit or compensation.

“When you put something out in the world, you imagine a reader turning a page, not a machine indexing it into an algorithm,” said one novelist who joined the suit. “This settlement doesn’t erase the harm, but it’s a start.”

Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild, welcomed the outcome. “This sends a message to the AI industry: you can’t treat creators like free raw material,” she said. “Authors, including those working with small presses, depend on predictable streams of income.”

On the streets outside Palo Alto cafés, developers and ethicists express mixed feelings. “We need huge datasets to make useful models,” said a machine learning engineer who asked not to be named. “But there has to be a system of consent and compensation. Otherwise, we’re building a house on someone else’s land.”

Context: Legal Ripples Beyond One Settlement

The Anthropic case is not an isolated skirmish. Last summer, a federal judge in San Francisco found that Meta’s use of copyrighted works to train its Llama models could qualify as fair use — a ruling that went the other way from authors’ claims in that lawsuit. And Apple now faces its own claims that “Apple Intelligence” relied on copyrighted books scraped from shadow libraries.

These divergent outcomes underscore a legal system struggling to adapt old doctrines to new technology. Fair use — a cornerstone of U.S. copyright law designed to balance creators’ rights with public interest — is proving elastic, but interpretation varies case by case. Meanwhile, statutory damages under U.S. law range widely: from a minimum of $750 per work up to $150,000 for willful infringement, a fact that shapes settlement dynamics.

Why the Money Matters

Scale: 500,000 books is not a rounding error. For many midlist and indie authors, a $3,000 payment represents months — sometimes years — of income.
Precedent: A record-sized settlement signals to other AI firms that the cost of ignoring authors’ rights could be real and not merely theoretical.
Transparency: The requirement to destroy pirated files and to clarify which scanned works remain in use creates a template for how companies might document provenance going forward.

Money, Power, and the Race for AI

The settlement comes as Anthropic announced a $13 billion funding round that put its valuation at $183 billion, part of a fevered global race. Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta and other tech giants are pouring capital into generative AI, an industry many analysts believe could attract hundreds of billions — even trillions — of dollars in investment and economic activity over the next decade. PwC and other consultancies have, in the past, estimated that AI could add trillions to global GDP by 2030.

Yet with capital comes conflict. The same algorithms that can summarize a medical paper, draft a marketing script, or help a student study, also depend on training data scraped from the human archive: books, news articles, code and more. That raises questions about consent, compensation, and cultural stewardship.

A Human Patchwork: Stories from the Margins

In a small midwestern town, a debut author who self-published through a boutique press said she felt vindicated. “I slept in a tiny studio for years to finish that book,” she told me. “Getting an email from your publisher that a giant AI might have ingested your work felt like being robbed by a faceless machine. This feels like somebody finally listening.”

But not everyone sees the settlement as a clear win. A data scientist in London told me, “We need access to diverse texts to build systems that don’t just echo the same demographics. The challenge is building mechanisms that reward creators while preserving the openness that fuels innovation.”

What Comes Next?

Expect more litigation. Expect creative licensing deals. Expect policy debates in Brussels, Washington, and beyond about what it means to train a machine responsibly. Companies will likely refine their data pipelines: filtering out pirated sources, negotiating bulk licenses with publishers, and building compensation systems for creators. Some startups are already experimenting with blockchain-based attribution systems, micropayments, or cooperative models that route royalties back to authors.

But legal and technical fixes alone won’t resolve the cultural question: what do we value, and how do we measure it?

Do we want a future where AI systems are trained on carefully licensed content that compensates creators, or one where the cheapest data wins? How do we ensure smaller voices aren’t drowned out by platforms that can merely pay more?

Final Thoughts

The Anthropic settlement is a yardstick: it tells us how much the law, for now, is willing to nudge an industry toward responsibility. It also reveals the ragged edges of a cultural bargain in transition. There are no easy answers, only trade-offs.

As readers and citizens, we must ask: what kind of intellectual commons do we want? One policed by heavyweights writing checks, or one sustained by fair markets and clear rights? The machines are learning fast. It’s time our laws, markets and moral imagination catch up.

So, where do you stand — on the side of open data for the sake of rapid progress, or on the side of protecting the people whose words built the very foundations of that progress? The future of writing — and the future of AI — may depend on how we answer that question.

Milan opens public viewing for late designer Giorgio Armani’s coffin

hanad

September 6, 2025

Public viewing of Giorgio Armani's coffin in Milan begins — Hundreds of people queued up before the opening of the viewing at which will last two days ahead of a private funeral on Monday

A City in Quiet Mourning: Milan Pays Tribute to Giorgio Armani

The morning air in Milan tasted faintly of espresso and roses. Outside the Armani Theatre, wreaths leaned against iron railings like a congregation of petals. Hundreds — students in wool coats, elderly women with polished handbags, young designers clutching sketchbooks — formed a slow, respectful line before the doors opened at 9am.

They had come to stand for a moment beside the coffin of Giorgio Armani, the man who for half a century reimagined what elegance could mean. A two-day public viewing precedes a private funeral, but for many the pilgrimage was already a ritual: to look, to remember, to place a flower or a handwritten note on smooth marble.

Scenes from the Queue

“He dressed my mother for her wedding; she still talks about the shoulder line,” said Maria Rossi, 68, smoothing the sleeve of her coat as she waited. “She always said she felt important for the first time. That’s what Armani did.” Her hands trembled slightly; her voice was steady enough to carry a lifetime of gratitude.

Nearby, Luca Bellini, 47, who spent years in the Armani ateliers in the 1990s, watched the procession with a mix of pride and private loss. “He taught us craftsmanship and restraint. You could hear him before you saw him — a soft voice, but firm. ‘Less is more, but do it precisely,’ he’d say,” Luca recalled. “He worked until he could no longer. That dedication was terrifying and beautiful.”

These personal recollections are threaded through with public testimony. Italy’s Culture Minister, Alessandro Giuli, called Armani “a leading figure in Italian culture, who was able to transform elegance into a universal language.” The minister praised a lifetime that connected fashion, cinema and Italian identity in ways that reached far beyond boutique windows.

From Piacenza to the World Stage

Giorgio Armani was born in Piacenza in 1934, the middle child of Ugo and Maria Armani. The family was not wealthy; style, it seems, was an inheritance of temperament. Maria sewed for her children and instilled a quiet discipline of taste that would later bloom into a global aesthetic. Armani himself once said he and his siblings “looked rich even though we were poor” — a line that captures his lifelong talent for making simplicity look like splendor.

He studied medicine briefly, then spent time in the army. His entry into fashion came almost by accident: a job dressing the windows of La Rinascente — Milan’s great department store — and later a position with Nino Cerruti where he began what would become his signature experiment: stripping the jacket of padding and structure and tailoring it to human movement.

By 1975 he had launched his own label. Within a few years he had turned new ideas about femininity and masculinity into a style that felt at once modern and timeless. In 1980, a crisp Armani suit on Richard Gere in American Gigolo announced a love affair with Hollywood that would last decades. Bergdorf Goodman in New York, among other luxury houses, embraced him and helped carry his clean lines across the Atlantic.

Key Milestones

1934 — Born in Piacenza, Italy
1975 — Founded the Giorgio Armani fashion house in Milan
1980 — Designed iconic looks for American Gigolo; entry into the U.S. market
2010 — Opened Armani Hotel in Dubai’s Burj Khalifa
2025 — Passed away aged 91; public viewing in Milan ahead of a private funeral

More than a Look: A Global Brand and Cultural Force

Armani never confined himself to a singular canvas. Emporio Armani, Armani Exchange, fragrances, and luxury hotels expanded the brand into lifestyles and experiences. The Armani Hotel in Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, which opened in 2010, became emblematic of his capacity to translate a design philosophy into architecture and hospitality. He was credited with inventing “red-carpet fashion” — a bespoke system that made cinema’s glamour accessible to the media machine of celebrity.

Yet Armani’s legacy is also about how clothes fit into the rhythms of life. He created workwear that respected the body and eveningwear that allowed a person to breathe. For a generation of women entering offices and boardrooms from the 1980s onward, his designs offered both authority and ease. “He made power dressing humane,” said Dr. Elena Moretti, a fashion historian at the University of Milan. “Armani softened the armor and, in doing so, broadened who could wear it.”

Grief, Reflection, and a Brand That Mattered

There is a particular melancholy in saying goodbye to an icon just weeks before a golden anniversary. The Armani house was inches away from celebrating 50 years — a half-century of men’s and women’s tailoring that remade a city and influenced wardrobes across continents. Instead, Milan pauses to remember a designer who, by many accounts, worked until the end. The company said he “passed away peacefully, surrounded by his loved ones” and noted he was “indefatigable to the end.”

He had cancelled shows in Milan and Paris this year for health reasons; the absence was felt as an ominous hush in the calendar of fashion weeks. For younger creatives, Armani’s mortality forces a question: what do legacies look like in an industry obsessed with the new? How do we remember craftsmanship in an era of rapid trends and fast fashion?

Local Color and Global Threads

Outside the theatre, shopkeepers turned off radios and lowered awnings in a small, improvised salute. A florist wrapped a bundle of white orchids in brown paper and tied it with twine — a modest offering that matched the understated elegance the designer championed. Tourists stopped to take photographs, then put phones away, as if aware they were intruding on a private act of civic mourning.

“He made Milan speak the language of the world,” said Paolo Ricci, who runs a small atelier in the Navigli district. “People come to us because here—here—there is history and craftsmanship. Armani is part of that story. His jackets taught me how to cut a shoulder so a woman could move freely and still be commanding.”

What Armani Leaves Behind

Armani’s influence will ripple through the industry — in patterns, in the proportion of suits on red carpets, in the language designers use when describing restraint and proportion. But beyond fabric and thread, there is a broader cultural footprint. He helped knit Italian design into global identity, creating jobs and reputational capital that fed into tourism, hospitality, and luxury retail. Milan remains one of the world’s fashion capitals; designers, buyers, and journalists still travel here to see the latest statements of taste. Armani helped make that ecosystem possible.

So we stand, a city and a world that loved a man for making simplicity sing. We remember a tailor who turned the ordinary into something quietly exalted. And we ask ourselves: as fashion becomes faster and more fleeting, what does it mean to create something built to last — in garments and in memory?

There will be private words at the funeral on Monday, and public echoes in the months ahead: retrospectives, exhibitions, perhaps debates about preservation, craft and commerce. For now, Milan lines up in the cold, places a flower, and whispers thanks.

Why Robert Fico Is Pushing to Normalize Ties with Russia

hanad

September 6, 2025

Why Robert Fico wants normal relations with Russia — Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico (L) and Russian President Vladimir Putin before their bilateral meeting in Beijing last Tuesday

One Leader, Two Meetings, and a Country Caught Between Pipelines

On a humid morning in Beijing, amid the fanfare of an 80th-anniversary commemoration for the end of the Pacific War, a curious scene played out: among presidents and prime ministers who shook hands with Xi Jinping, only one leader from the European Union took his seat at the guest table.

He was Robert Fico, Slovakia’s controversially pragmatic prime minister, and he did not come alone in spirit. Alongside the formal ceremonies, he slipped into private corridors of power, where the politics of energy, memory and national identity were being negotiated with a clarity that left little room for ideology.

A Triad of Meetings: Putin, Zelensky, and the Voter Back Home

On the sidelines of the Beijing event, Fico managed what he has made into a signature diplomatic pattern: a brief, deliberate meeting with Vladimir Putin. It was the third time the two had met since late last year. Then, back in Central Europe, he sat across from Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky in Uzhhorod for what both leaders described as a “meaningful” exchange.

To the outside observer these were more than photo-ops. They were a snapshot of a foreign policy aimed as much at domestic audiences as at foreign capitals. “He wants to show voters he can stand up to Brussels and still keep lights on and heating bills low,” says Alexander Duleba, a senior political scientist at the Slovak Foreign Policy Association. “That’s powerful in a country where memories, friendships, and trade routes run both East and West.”

Politics of Protectionism — and Popularity

Fico’s coalition promised low energy prices and a straightforward message: Slovak interests first. For many voters, that translates into preserving cheap Russian gas and oil, even as Brussels pushes to decouple from Moscow. “You can’t tell a pensioner that prices will rise because of politics,” a Bratislava shopkeeper told me, shrugging as she stacked bottles of sunflower oil. “They’ll blame the politician, not the pipeline.”

That political calculus partly explains why Fico has cut military aid to Ukraine, stalled EU sanctions packages against Russia and vowed to keep importing Russian energy. It also explains why he has kept Slovakia out of the so-called Coalition of the Willing — a group of 31 countries formed to safeguard a post-war settlement in Ukraine — a club that still counts Hungary and Malta among a few European holdouts.

The Numbers That Do the Talking

Behind the slogans are hard statistics. Until last January, Slovakia imported roughly two-thirds of its natural gas from Gazprom, totaling about three billion cubic meters a year transported via Ukraine. Much of that winter fuel didn’t just warm Slovak homes — it passed through, re-exported to neighbours such as Austria, generating transit fees now sorely missed.

The loss of those fees has a tangible price tag: Bratislava estimates the shortfall at about €500 million annually. Meanwhile, around 80% of Slovakia’s crude oil still arrives through the venerable Druzhba pipeline from Russia — a flow that, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), is valued at roughly €178 million.

“Energy is not abstract here. It’s cash in municipal budgets, diesel in tractors, and gas for school boilers,” says Géza Tokár, an analyst of Slovak politics. “When the numbers are this big, the argument becomes less about geopolitics and more about immediate survival — political survival included.”

Alternative Routes — But at What Cost?

European policymakers are pushing a timeline: phase out Russian gas by 2028. Studies, including one by CREA, argue Slovakia and its neighbours could source non-Russian oil from the Adriatic via Croatia and access other suppliers on the open market.

Yet the transition would come with wrinkles. Infrastructure upgrades, new bilateral contracts, and short-term price spikes are all real threats. “If your entire logistics chain runs one way for decades, re-routing isn’t plug-and-play,” says an EU energy specialist. “It’s expensive and politically risky — especially for an incumbent leader who promised stability.”

History, Nationalism, and the Long Shadow of Memory

To understand why many Slovaks are willing to tolerate a government stretching towards Moscow, you must walk the streets of smaller towns where statues, cemeteries, and family tales blur the line between geopolitics and lineage.

“My grandfather fought in the Red Army,” said an elderly woman I met at a café in Prešov. “We have family in Russia. You cannot simply erase those ties.”

That cultural memory fuels a strain of Slovak national sentiment that is more receptive to Russia than many Western capitals assume. Fico, historian turned politician turned populist, has long traded on that sentiment. His SMER party weaves together center-left economic populism with conservative stances on immigration and social issues — a mix that has proven electorally resilient.

The Post-Shooting Prime Minister and the Limits of Political Theatre

There are dramatic personal notes to this political story too. Fico survived a near-fatal shooting some 16 months ago and made a remarkable recovery. He returns to diplomacy with the aura of a leader who has stared down violence and come back determined. That image helps him brandish independence on the international stage with an almost theatrical flair.

Yet symbolism can only carry a leader so far. After his meeting with Zelensky, Fico publicly endorsed Ukraine’s EU membership bid — a point of divergence from Hungary, which opposes Kyiv’s accession. “Support for integration is not the same as unconditional endorsement of every Ukrainian policy,” Fico said, attempting to balance Brussels and Moscow in a single breath.

What Does This Mean for Europe — and for You?

For citizens across the continent, the Slovak case raises uneasy questions. How much sovereignty should be sacrificed for energy security? When is pragmatism mere expedience? And how do democratic societies navigate the tension between voters’ immediate needs and long-term strategic goals?

If the EU’s 2028 target holds, the transition away from Russian energy will reshape supply chains, trade balances, and geopolitical alliances. Yet leaders like Fico demonstrate that domestic politics will remain the decisive force: parties that can tie international policy to household budgets will always hold leverage.

So I ask you, reader: would you accept short-term price hikes if it meant reducing dependence on an autocratic supplier? Or is it fair to prioritize immediate economic relief over uncertain, distant strategic gains?

Looking Ahead

Slovakia’s path forward is neither predetermined nor simple. The country sits at the crossroads of pipelines and histories, of EU ambitions and old friendships that travel via rail and radio across borders. Fico’s diplomacy — meetings in Beijing, handshakes in Uzhhorod, and conversations with Moscow — is part show, part strategy, and entirely rooted in the pressures of voters paying their utility bills.

What happens next will depend on whether the alternatives the CREA study and Brussels advocate become politically feasible and economically bearable. It will depend on whether Slovak industry and households can absorb the costs of re-routing supply. And it will depend, in the end, on the stories politicians tell at kitchen tables and in cafes — stories that decide whether national interest means choosing comfort today or security tomorrow.

Israel destroys Gaza City high-rise in targeted airstrike

hanad

September 6, 2025

Israel destroys high-rise building in attack on Gaza City — Smoke and dust rise from the Mushtaha Tower in Gaza City after it was hit by Israeli airstrikes

When a Tower Falls: Gaza City’s Mushtaha Tower and the Anatomy of a Collapsed Refuge

When the Mushtaha Tower came down, it sounded like a city losing its memory.

One instant, windows glittered against a washed-out Mediterranean sky; the next, a 14-storey block folded into itself in a dull, violent rumble. A great, dirty cloud rose and swallowed the sun for a moment. People who live by the sound of the sea and the cadence of daily prayers found themselves counting rubble instead of blessings.

The scene

It was the Al-Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza City — a part of the strip where the urban grid runs up close to the shoreline, where apartment towers and narrow alleys mark lives layered upon lives. Video circulating online shows the Mushtaha Tower shudder, a violent bloom at its base, and then collapse, floor by floor, like a house of cards knocked by a single, terrible hand.

“We saw people on the balconies throwing things down,” said Arej Ahmed, a 50-year-old displaced woman who now sleeps in a tent southwest of the city. “They were trying to save what little they could. Less than half an hour after a call came through to leave, the explosion hit.”

Across the city, the fear was palpably new, even to those who had lived through months of bombardment. “Everyone is scared and doesn’t know where to go,” said Ahmed Abu Wutfa, 45, who is sheltering in a damaged fifth-floor flat. “There is no safe place — we only hope that death comes quickly.” His words carry the bleak humour and raw exhaustion of many here: defeatist, desperate, human.

Orders, denials, and collapse

Israel’s military said it targeted tall buildings believed to be used by Hamas, and that some civilians had been ordered to evacuate prior to strikes. A spokesman suggested that the strikes are part of a broader push to seize Gaza City, and officials have said they will not announce operations in advance to retain “the element of surprise.”

Still, the building’s management denies the claim that Mushtaha Tower housed fighters, and says it opened its doors to displaced families. “This was a refuge for people who had nowhere else,” a manager told an Arabic network. “There were children inside, families who fled other attacks.”

Such contradictions are now a daily rhythm: warnings that are too short, denials that never reach the middle of the rubble, and a cascade of images that are impossible to reconcile.

Numbers and realities

Among the figures that must be named: Gaza’s civil defence reported at least 19 people were killed today in and around Gaza City. The United Nations estimates that the parts of Gaza under the fiercest assault are home to nearly one million people and has declared a famine in the area.

Other markers of the human toll are staggering: according to Gaza’s health ministry — figures the UN considers reliable — some 64,300 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, most of them civilians. The October 2023 Hamas attacks that ignited this round of violence killed roughly 1,219 people in Israel, according to AFP’s tally based on Israeli figures.

Today’s reported fatalities in and around Gaza City: at least 19 (Gaza civil defence)
Total deaths in Gaza since Oct 2023: approximately 64,300 (Gaza health ministry; UN considers reliable)
People living in the besieged areas of Gaza City: nearly one million (UN estimate)
The Global Hunger Monitor (IPC): currently classifies Gaza’s situation as a man-made famine

These are not just numbers. Each is a name erased, a market stall that never reopens, a child who learns fear before the alphabet.

A war of towers: the urban battlefield

Towering apartment blocks, once symbols of modern Gaza life, have become contested terrain. For residents who fled to these tall buildings from ground-level devastation, the towers were a horizontal refuge turned vertical trap.

“We sought shelter higher up because bombing had taken the streets,” a local teacher who asked to be called Samir said. “Higher floors felt safer until they didn’t. The lines of sight changed; the city became a chessboard, and we are the pieces.”

The logic of urban warfare is brutal and simple: control the heights, control movement. But what happens when the “heights” are also homes, markets, and shelters for displaced families? How does an attack that targets a building factor in the presence of thousands of civilians clustered inside and around it?

International alarms and legal questions

Beyond Gaza’s rubble, the diplomatic ripples are growing. International voices, including European Commission vice-president Teresa Ribera, have used the word “genocide” to describe the trajectory of the war — a label that has sharpened criticism of Israel and raised urgent calls for action. The world’s largest association of genocide scholars passed a resolution saying legal criteria have been met to establish that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Meanwhile, UN human rights officials and humanitarian monitors warn that policies around access to food, medical care, and safe passage have created conditions described by the IPC and the UN as an entirely man-made famine. UN human rights chief Volker Türk said the famine was the direct result of policies blamed on the Israeli government.

These declarations move the debate from the field of military strategy to the courts of moral and legal responsibility. They force global citizens — not only strategists and diplomats — to ask: what is the responsibility of outside actors when an urban population is squeezed to the point of starvation?

Stories among the ruins

At a makeshift tent cluster near the sea, children play amid the half-eaten leftovers of a life interrupted. A vendor who once sold falafel near the Corniche walks through the dust, his hands empty. The morning call to prayer echoes differently now — quieter, interrupted by the diesel whispers of generators, the crackle of frayed radios, the language of alerts.

“We are exhausted of counting the dead and counting our food,” a young mother, Huda, whispered, hugging a toddler who refused to sleep. “We used to argue about rent. Now we argue about what to give the baby to eat.”

Stories like Huda’s are fragments of a larger narrative: one of displacement on an industrial scale, of families whose maps have been erased and redrawn daily. They are a human ledger against the sterile terms of “tactical advantage” and “military necessity.”

What are we to do — and to feel?

Look at the images: a tower collapsing, a cloud of dust, people sifting through concrete. Do you see strategy or tragedy? How do you reconcile an urgent call for security with the urgent needs of those whose daily reality is survival?

This is not a small question. It is the wound at the heart of modern urban conflict. As the international community debates labels and legal frameworks, the people of Gaza count the immediate costs — food, shelter, dignity.

In the end, the Mushtaha Tower is more than a fallen building. It is a mirror. It asks us to look at how war is waged in cities, what rights civilians truly hold when the ground beneath them is declared an “operational” zone, and what values the global community chooses to prioritize when the daily math of survival is so stark.

There are no easy answers. But the pictures, the names, the tolls — and the voices like Arej’s, like Huda’s — demand we do more than scroll past. They demand that we listen.

Gaza City residents urged to evacuate as Israeli offensive continues

hanad

September 6, 2025

Gaza City residents told to leave amid Israeli offensive — Palestinians fleeing south from Israeli attacks ride a truck with their belongings on the coastal road in central Gaza

Gaza’s Crossroads: A City Told to Move — and the World Holds Its Breath

There are moments when a single message feels like an earthquake: brief, unavoidable, reshaping the landscape of ordinary life. Earlier this week, residents of Gaza city woke to such a tremor — a directive from the Israeli army urging them to relocate south to an area it called a “humanitarian zone.” The order, shared on social media by an army spokesman, read like a blunt evacuation notice; its language promised safety and resources, and its timing was unclear.

“Take this opportunity to move early to the Al‑Mawasi humanitarian zone and join the thousands who have already gone there,” the message urged. For many in Gaza city, where families have been pushed from home to home for months, the message landed not as clarity but as a new, painful demand: leave again, with only what you can carry, because the next phase of a ground offensive may be coming.

One million people at the city’s gates

The UN estimates roughly a million people live in and around Gaza city — a figure that reads more like a density map of human vulnerability than a statistic. To put that in context: the Gaza Strip itself is home to just over two million people on roughly 365 square kilometers of land. When a major urban center like Gaza city becomes the focal point of military plans, the arithmetic of displacement becomes brutal fast.

“There is nowhere safe left for us,” said Amal, a teacher who has already fled her neighborhood twice and now shelters in a crowded warehouse. “We are tired of running. My children ask every night if we will sleep in a tent or in the street. They don’t understand why the world can’t make it stop.”

Al‑Mawasi: Promise and skepticism

The Israeli military described Al‑Mawasi as equipped with “field hospitals, water pipelines, desalination facilities,” and ongoing supplies of tents, food, and medicine — a logistical backbone designed, officials say, to receive those fleeing the city. They also claimed that humanitarian aid there would continue “in cooperation with the UN and international organisations,” even as ground operations expand.

Yet the history of Al‑Mawasi during this conflict complicates the picture. The area was previously declared a safe zone early in the war, but it has not been untouched by violence; residents and observers have reported strikes and bombings there too, often explained by military spokespeople as attacks on militants hiding among civilians.

“We were told once before that a place was safe,” said Youssef, a 54‑year‑old vegetable vendor who keeps his small stall half‑buried under a damaged awning. “We went. Then we had to go again. How many times can a family be moved before they run out of faith?”

The human calculus of survival

Humanitarian corridors and safe zones are meant to reduce harm. But in practice, when a million people are told to move — sometimes overnight, often with children, elderly, and the sick — logistics turn into moral puzzles. How do you guarantee water? Medical care? Privacy for women and girls in large, temporary camps? How do aid agencies continue vaccinations, chronic disease management, and maternal care when clinics are overrun or out of reach?

UN officials warn that another push into Gaza city risks a “disaster” on a catastrophic scale. The agency’s concerns are not abstract: large civilian populations in dense urban settings typically suffer the most in modern warfare. The UN’s pleas for restraint and protection are both humanitarian and legal—invoking the need to shield civilians and uphold international law.

Voices around the world — and at home

The international response has been a chorus of alarm and urgings for pause. Pressure mounts on Israel from foreign governments and human rights organizations to reconsider a full-scale assault on Gaza’s largest urban center. At the same time, inside Israel, political currents press in different directions, with some leaders urging decisive military action and others warning of the long-term costs of further escalation.

Hamas publicly accepted a ceasefire proposal last month that envisioned a temporary truce and a staged release of hostages. Israel, however, framed its demands differently — pushing for the immediate release of all hostages and stipulating the disarmament and political end of Hamas’ control over Gaza as part of any durable settlement.

“Nothing about a durable peace will come from more forced displacement,” said Leila Haddad, an analyst who has followed Gaza for years. “You can win a battle for territory and still lose the war for legitimacy. Populations matter. Their survival, stories, and rights matter.”

Regional echoes: The Arab League and the broader landscape

Beyond Gaza’s borders, the Arab League convened in Cairo and issued a resolution that read like a reminder and a rebuke: lasting coexistence in the Middle East, the bloc declared, is impossible without addressing the Palestinian question and ending what it called Israel’s “hostile practices.” The resolution—sponsored by Egypt and Saudi Arabia—reaffirmed support for a two‑state solution and the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which offers full normalization in exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in 1967.

Experts view this as more than diplomatic posturing. “When regional actors say that peace cannot be built on occupation, they are signaling a set of red lines,” explained Omar Khalidi, a professor of international relations. “The Arab League’s position links Gaza’s present to an unresolved regional order, where normalisation without a just settlement for Palestinians risks being short‑lived.”

At the same meeting, delegates could not ignore the inflammatory rhetoric coming from certain Israeli political figures calling for annexation in the West Bank — language that, to many in the region, only deepens mistrust and fuels cycles of violence.

What does “safe” mean anymore?

Walk through any part of Gaza city today and the question is less rhetorical than urgent. “Safe” can mean a tent with running water. It can mean a clinic with insulin in the fridge. It can mean being able to bury your dead without waiting months. For thousands, it means holding on to a sliver of dignity amid the rubble.

Imagine being a child who has known nothing but shelters and checkpoints. Imagine the calculus in an elderly couple’s hands as they decide which photos to tuck into a small bag. Imagine an aid worker juggling satellite calls and dwindling supplies while the generator hums and the list of people needing help grows.

What do we owe the civilians at the heart of this story? How do international actors balance security concerns with a clearer commitment to human protection? And perhaps more intimately: how many times must ordinary people choose between staying and moving before the world acts to make such choices unnecessary?

Looking ahead

The coming days will test not only military strategy but the endurance of humanitarian systems and international diplomacy. If the Israeli military proceeds with plans to take Gaza city, the lives of hundreds of thousands will be reshaped overnight. If it pauses, the pause itself will be political, fraught with bargaining and the heavy burden of unaddressed grievances.

For now, families like Amal’s and Youssef’s continue to wait, pack, and hold one another close. They tell their children stories of olive trees and jasmine perfume to keep the past alive. In the whispered exchanges and the robust arguments at aid tables, the same question keeps surfacing: can humane policies be found amid the strategic calculus? The answer will determine not only the fate of Gaza city, but perhaps the contours of peace in the region itself.

As you read this, what would you do if the world told you to move — again? How far would you go to keep your family safe, and what would you bring?

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