Philemon Ronoh

Climate Finance for the Global North open.substack.com/pub/globalsout…

"It is the Nakba of the Jordan Valley", a senior Israeli activist tells me, as he takes me through "the last days of the ethnic cleansing in the area". "Road 90 and Road Alon have been emptied of Palestinian shepherds", he says. From the River to the Sea, the destruction of Palestinian life continues, while influential states pretend not to understand what is happening.

Question! Which machine do you think has the biggest demand targeting small commercial farmers in East Africa?

Kenyan friends🇰🇪 Exploring a pay-as-you-go finance startup for livestock farmers. Still debating if livestock is the one to start. Any successful agri-finance/livestock models in Africa I should check out? Would love to interview entrepreneurs or users. Please reach out!

🇺🇸JEFFREY SACHS: "It's very important to understand that World War II never ended with a treaty, and I think the United States was to blame. The reason it never ended with a treaty is that the Soviet Union said, 'Germany killed 27 million of our people; we want Germany to be disarmed and neutral.' Of course, Germany itself was divided into occupation zones at the end of the war in 1945. The U.S. immediately came to the view, in the summer of 1945, that the next war would be with the Soviet Union. Rather than making a peace agreement to end World War II, the U.S., along with the British and French occupation zones, merged, formed the Federal Republic of Germany, and rearmed Germany. By the way, the fact is that they put a lot of former Nazis back in charge of leading armaments industries, and a few years later, Germany joined NATO. This was, of course, both an affront and a threat for the Soviet Union. NATO was never viewed as a defensive force. The Soviet Union saw NATO as the next front in a continuing Western war against it. There were periods of détente, for example with Nixon, and periods of tension, but there was never an end to World War II on the basis of a treaty. When Mikhail Gorbachev said, 'I wanted to end the Cold War'—and be sure, he ended the Cold War—he ended it peacefully. This needs to be remembered: it wasn't an American victory. Mikhail Gorbachev said, 'I wanted the walls to come down.' Of course, Reagan wanted to do that peacefully together with Gorbachev, but it was Gorbachev's initiative. I watched a lot of it firsthand, up close, in Central and Eastern Europe, as an economic advisor to the heads of governments involved in this. Immediately, the question of German reunification arose. In that context, there needed to be an agreement between the West and the Soviet Union for the legal end of the occupation of Germany. German reunification was a legal event that was essentially the end of World War II—you needed the Soviet assent. What did the United States and Germany say to the Soviet Union to get that assent? It was not ambiguous; it was not unclear. They said, without any equivocation, 'We will have German reunification, and NATO will not move one inch eastward.' Those were the words used by U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III directly to Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990. Hans-Dietrich Genscher—on a tape you can listen to—said, 'When we say it won't move, we don't just mean within Germany; we mean anywhere to the east.' It's so clear. Of course, America cheats. Please understand this: America is a big power. It cheats. It tries to do what it can. It uses media and propaganda to get away with cheating—that's what big powers do, have no question. A few years later, the United States claimed, 'Oh, we never promised that.' You can just read it in the documentation, which is available online in the National Security Archive of George Washington University. So, in 1994, under Bill Clinton, the U.S. cheated. They adopted a plan: NATO would expand eastward. And, by the way, not just eastward by 100 km or 300 km, but keep going east—all the way to Ukraine, all the way to Georgia, remember. They wanted to go even beyond. I'm sure some crazy person in the United States said, 'Why not Kazakhstan? Why not Uzbekistan? Why not Armenia?' Their idea in 1990—I know it—was, 'We won!' Especially in December 1991, when the Soviet Union ended, the American 'strategists'—if you can call them that; it's a kind of euphemism because they are hardly good at strategy—said, 'We're alone. We're the most powerful country in the history of the world. We're more powerful than the Roman Empire. We're the world's sole superpower. We can do whatever we want.' So that was the mindset, and cheating goes along with that mindset—the arrogance of power. So, to make a long story short: yes, the United States started to expand. Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of these strategists, explained very clearly in 1997, in his book The Grand Chessboard, why Russia would be unable to resist. In a meticulously laid-out chapter, he asked the question: What if the U.S. pushes NATO? What if Europe keeps expanding eastward, crowds Russia, surrounds Russia—what can Russia do? Brzezinski asked whether Russia could resist or if it would have to give in, and he concluded that Russia would have no choice. He reached the conclusion, for example, that Russia would never form an alliance with China. He also concluded that Russia would never form an alliance with Iran. You know, okay, theorists—this is playing games. He compared the world to a chessboard. By the way, the world is not a chessboard; it's not a poker game. It's the real lives of eight billion people. American strategists are trained in game theory, which, by itself, in its name, gives everything away. They treat the world as a game—bluff, raise, call—as if it's a poker match. And you know what? They used other people's lives to do it. They raised the stakes with Putin: 'We raise you.' But whose lives were they betting on the table? The Ukrainian lives. Huh, not a good show."

One of the very few good things coming out of the relentless nightmare happening in Gaza is that at long last the western world is getting a clear look at Israel. The real Israel. Not the Israel they teach you about in school. Not “the only democracy in the middle east,” where Jews were given safe haven after their victimization at the hands of the Nazis and managed to create a thriving society despite existing in a sea of savage enemies bent on their destruction. Not that Israel. The real one. Arguably the most racist society on earth, whose existence has depended on nonstop violence, theft, tyranny and abuse since its very inception. The real Israel, whose government is deliberately and methodically starving Palestinian civilians to death by the tens of thousands just for being the wrong ethnicity. The real Israel, whose snipers routinely murders Palestinian children by shooting them in the head. The real Israel, whose military is so sadistic that it created an AI system to specifically target suspected Hamas fighters when they are at home with their families, and called the AI “Where’s Daddy?” because it would be killing fathers when they are at home with their children. The real Israel, whose soldiers cannot stop posting footage of themselves mockingly dressed in the undergarments of dead and displaced Palestinian women and playing with the toys of dead and displaced Palestinian children. The real Israel, where Palestinian doctors are raped and tortured to death. The real Israel, where the majority of men do not believe acquaintance rape or spousal rape are real crimes, and where the majority do not believe the soldiers accused of raping and torturing a Palestinian prisoner to the point of severe injury should face criminal charges. The real Israel, who routinely bombs buildings full of civilians and then uses sniper drones to pick off the survivors, including children. The real Israel, whose drones have been heard playing the sounds of crying babies and screaming women in order to lure out civilians so they can be killed. The real Israel, who has damaged or destroyed 94 percent of the healthcare facilities in Gaza with hundreds of targeted attacks. The real Israel, whose military forces target medical staff so methodically that doctors and nurses in Gaza reportedly change out of their uniforms when they leave the hospital in order to avoid assassination. The real Israel, who hates truth so much that it has been killing historic numbers of journalists in Gaza while preventing foreign journalists from entering the enclave. The real Israel, who has been knowingly attacking the locations of humanitarian aid workers. The real Israel, whose citizens are so warped and twisted that they attend boat tours to cheerfully witness the devastation in the Gaza Strip. The real Israel, whose citizens set up blockades to prevent aid trucks from getting to starving civilians in Gaza while they enjoy barbecues and set up bouncy castles and cotton candy machines for their children. The real Israel, whose TikTok influencers started a viral trend mocking the suffering of civilians in Gaza. The real Israel, whose citizens will travel to another country and tear down Palestinian flags and sing about how there are no children left in Gaza and then cry victim when people fight back. This is the real Israel, in all its glory. And it is good that it is being seen. The sooner everyone stops supporting this freakish, murderous society and begins insisting that normal human values win out over the demented forces which keep it going, the sooner there can be peace in the region. And the better off our entire species will be.

The U.S. ambassador to the UN got a community note for gaslighting.

How did we get to the point where a country not only arrests surgeons but rapes them to death and is still feted as "the only democracy in the Middle East"? The sickness of our political systems is off the scale.

Trump Locks Bathroom Door So Elon Musk Can’t Follow Him In theonion.com/trump-locks-ba…

: The brilliance of Kwamé Turé...

Who is killing children in Lebanon?

These 3 American men have invaded 9 countries in 23 years, killed 11 million civilians and no one calls them 'war criminals'

An excerpt from my SOAS lecture: "We cannot allow, in a way that is akin to a Clockwork Orange, that the live-streamed genocide and its associated apathy desensitise us to the violence, normalise the oppression, dissociate us from its moral failure, or to legitimise the illegitimate. We cannot allow it to clockwork us into a conditioned acceptance of the unthinkable."

As well as the literal genocide, there is a cultural genocide taking place. While baby-killing soldiers are being protected so they can compete in European competitions, Palestinians are being culturally erased. This is the anatomy of a coordinated genocide.

He was raped to death, and the same media that called racist soccer thugs getting beat up a ‘pogrom’ have ignored it. We are being lied to, cheated, played like fools!

Statement on Adherence to @KenyaKccb Directives on Political Donations to the Church. @MagazineSeed @MkatolikiDaima @CatholicMediaN1

Meanwhile, All churches should simply deplatform ALL politicians irrespective of rank. Watu waingie kanisa, waimbe, waombe waondoke. Ati ooooh, leo tuko na kiongozi, wacha atusalimie. Abeg, akasalimiane nje. Church, are you listening?

Who are the real terrorists?🧐

Our role, as the first generation in history to witness a live-streamed genocide, is to ensure that we are also the last. The evidence of Western complicity & criminality cannot be overstated. The lies at the heart of our society have collapsed: we must ensure they lead to change

This isn’t the result of a war. It’s the outcome of a barbaric, punitive, medieval style raid against the people of Gaza which has been ongoing now for a year. Supported by our government. Silence is complicity.