Month: June 2022

The (No Longer) Secret World of Surf Spots – The New York Times

The (No Longer) Secret World of Surf Spots

Publicizing certain surf spots, especially ones off the beaten path, is similar to violating the first rule of Fight Club. Instagram and some new surfers have threatened that reverence.

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/06/sports/secret-surf-spots.html

“One of the reasons I was drawn to remote, wild places is I was so sick of dealing with things at home,” Burkard said, using an expletive, as he cited having his car vandalized and receiving death threats.

June 6, 2022
Putin Ally Mines Gold and Plays Favorites in Sudan – The New York Times

‘From Russia With Love’: A Putin Ally Mines Gold and Plays Favorites in Sudan

Backed by the Kremlin, the shadowy network known as the Wagner Group is getting rich in Sudan while helping the military to crush a democracy movement.

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/05/world/africa/wagner-russia-sudan-gold-putin.html

But Wagner is far more than a war machine in Africa, and a close look at its activities in Sudan, the continent’s third largest gold producer, reveals its reach.

June 6, 2022
How Russia’s Wagner Group Is Expanding in Africa – The New York Times

Putin’s Shadow Soldiers: How the Wagner Group Is Expanding in Africa

Best known for its mercenaries, the Wagner Group also mines diamonds, spreads disinformation and props up autocrats in an effort to grow Russia’s footprint.

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/world/africa/wagner-group-africa.html

But Wagner is far more than a simple guns-for-gold scheme. Operating through a sprawling web of shell companies, it has become a byword for a broad spectrum of Kremlin-backed operations in over a dozen African countries. Wagner meddles in politics, props up autocrats and orchestrates digital propaganda campaigns. It donates food to the poor and produces action movies set in Africa. It has even organized a beauty pageant.

June 6, 2022
The faces from China’s Uyghur detention camps

The faces from China’s Uyghur detention camps

Thousands of photos from a data hack of police files, reveal the human cost of China’s Uyghur detention system.

via BBC News: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/85qihtvw6e/the-faces-from-chinas-uyghur-detention-camps

Thousands of photographs from the heart of China’s highly secretive system of mass incarceration in Xinjiang, as well as a shoot-to-kill policy for those who try to escape, are among a huge cache of data hacked from police computer servers in the region.

June 1, 2022
Shootings, fires and an anti-tank missile: Peter R. de Vries and the battle to cover gangs in the Netherlands – Columbia Journalism Review

Shootings, fires, and an anti-tank missile: Peter R. de Vries and the battle to cover gangs in the Netherlands

Nabil Bakkali, a thirty-year-old member of the Dutch-Moroccan mafia, was smoking hookah and playing pachisi with friends in a lounge in Utrecht in 2017 when a phone call interrupted their game. It was an associate of Ridouan Taghi, the alleged leader

via Columbia Journalism Review: https://www.cjr.org/special_report/peter-de-vries-press-freedom-netherlands.php

Eight in ten Dutch journalists say they have experienced aggression and threats, according to a 2021 survey conducted by the Dutch press safety group PersVeilig. Journalists covering the Mocro are at particular risk. “There are no red lines for them,” Peter ter Velde, PersVeilig’s director, said. “They just do what they want to do, and that means killing.”

June 1, 2022