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      Trump’s attacks on South Africa are a punishment for independence | Achille Mbembe and Ruth Wilson Gilmore

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      On 7 February, less than three weeks after taking office, Donald Trump issued an executive order: “Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa.” The order directed US agencies to halt aid to South Africa, condemned South Africa’s case against Israel at the international court of justice (ICJ) as an “aggressive position”, and declared that white Afrikaners be prioritized for resettlement in the US based on the duplicitous claim that they are “victims of unjust racial discrimination”.The humanitarian consequences of this executive order are devastatingly clear. On 26 February, notices were sent out terminating support for HIV organizations funded by the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), initiated in 2003 by then president George W Bush. The termination of funding to Pepfar is catastrophic for South Africa. Studies predict this could result in more than half a million unnecessary deaths and up to half a million new infections.But Trump’s order is an escalation of an existing strategy to condemn, isolate and punish South Africa for charting an independent course for its people and their relationship to the international community at large.On 11 January 2024, the South African government presented its case at the ICJ, arguing that Israel’s military actions in Gaza – endorsed, funded and armed by the United States – constituted genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention. The ICJ case was not the first time that South Africa had broken with Washington on the global stage; in 2003, South Africa strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq, warning that the war amounted to “a blow to multilateralism”, in the words of its then president Thabo Mbeki.South Africa’s renewed appeal to multilateralism did not keep the Biden administration from responding to the ICJ case against Israel with immediate hostility. On 3 January, before arguments were even made, the state department spokesperson Matthew Miller declared: “We find this submission to be meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”While South Africa’s ICJ case was widely welcomed at home, some white actors with significant power in the country’s public sphere were hostile. Strident demands for South Africa to align with the west were issued by organisations such as the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation, among others. They found easy allies in Washington. In early 2024, several members of Congress argued that South Africa’s stance on Israel should disqualify it from receiving preferential trade benefits, including removal from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which aims to improve economic ties between the US and sub-Saharan Africa.Last month’s executive order marks a dangerous new phase in the efforts to strangle South Africa’s international solidarities – but this time with an explicitly white supremacist twist, focused on the country’s efforts to redress the compounded, multi-generational inequalities of apartheid. Trump has long supported the far-right conspiracy theory that falsely claims white farmers in South Africa are subject to a government-backed campaign of violence. In August 2018, he tweeted that he had asked then secretary of state Mike Pompeo “to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large-scale killing of farmers”.These views have been nurtured by organisations such as AfriForum, a rightwing Afrikaner group that has actively cultivated relationships with American conservative institutions since around 2017. In 2018, AfriForum representatives met with then National Security adviser John Bolton and conducted interviews on Fox News, promoting conspiracy theories about a non-existent “white genocide” in South Africa. A network of far-right white South Africans in the US, including Elon Musk, has similarly gained access and influence. Joel Pollak, an editor at Breitbart, is widely tipped to be Trump’s new ambassador to South Africa.These conspiracy theories aim to present white farmers as victims as South Africa moves toward remedy for dispossession. A 2017 government land audit found that white people, 9% of the population, owned approximately 72% of all privately owned farmland – a direct result of colonial dispossession that must be addressed as an urgent moral priority, as indicated in South Africa’s 1996 constitution.But if the target of Trump’s executive order is South African land reform, its principal casualty will be the beneficiaries of Aids treatment. One of the great successes of South Africa’s democracy has been its HIV treatment program. With approximately 5.9 million people receiving antiretroviral therapy through the public healthcare system, it is the largest HIV public health program on the planet. Pepfar has been funding a fifth of these costs, part of a program estimated to have saved 25 million lives worldwide.The Trump administration makes an intentional target of South Africa’s health policy. The deadly cruelty is the point.From Mexico to Greenland, Panama to Ukraine, the Trump administration is bullying allies to align with its vision of national primacy and ethnic supremacy. The rapid implementation of this new Trump doctrine requires Americans to join together with people across the world not only to oppose reactionary measures – but also to remain steadfast in their joint commitment to internationalism that enhances wellbeing. That commitment will require richer countries to spend in solidarity, not charity.The immediate task is of course the most urgent: rapid multilateral action is needed to secure the safety of the huge numbers of HIV patients whose lives are now in danger. The many pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities dotted through the global south should be turned to producing what people need, even as land and housing reform also necessarily shape regional agendas.But the risks posed by this executive order transcend its particular measures. There is enough; the problem is allocation, and the symbolic and conceptual as well as material means to realize human well-being.

      Achille Mbembe is a research professor in history and politics at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research in Johannesburg, South Africa.

      Ruth Wilson Gilmore is a professor of earth and environmental Sciences, and American studies, at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. More

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      US suspends aid to South Africa after Trump order

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      The state department has ordered an immediate pause on most US foreign assistance to South Africa, according to a cable seen by the Guardian, officially implementing a contentious executive order by Donald Trump.The directive, issued on Thursday, implements Executive Order 14204 targeting what the administration called “egregious actions” by South Africa. It orders all state department entities to immediately suspend aid disbursements, with minimal exceptions.“To effectively implement EO 14204, all bureaus, offices and missions shall pause all obligations and/or dispersion of aid or assistance to South Africa,” reads the cable, signed by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio.The cable follows the 7 February order, amid a broader reassessment of US foreign aid which paused certain foreign assistance pending review.The order specifically cites “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners – descendants of Dutch colonizers who implemented the segregationist regime that denied basic rights to the Black majority until 1994.The South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, a Trump super-ally who heads the administration’s government efficiency team and has condemned his homeland for “openly racist policies”, is widely seen as influencing the administration’s stance toward a country where white South Africans, just 7% of the population, still disproportionately control most wealth and land.According to the cable, Rubio has delegated authority to Pete Marocco, a Trump loyalist who presided over the administration’s evisceration of foreign aid programs at USAid and the state department, to determine whether specific aid programs should continue. The guidance emphasizes there is “a very high bar for such requests”.Only Pepfar, the US global HIV/Aids program that provides life-saving treatment to millions of South Africans, will proceed without additional review, according to the cable. All other assistance programs require special permission, even those that had received prior exceptions under the January foreign aid pause.This is the latest sign of escalating tensions between the two generally friendly nations, starting when President Trump accused South Africa of using its new land law to discriminate against white citizens – claims the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, rejected as misinformation.The bill in question controversially permits government acquisition of private land without compensation in certain circumstances, though its supporters say such seizures would be rare and subject to judicial review.Trump has also criticized South Africa’s leading role in its genocide case against Israel at the international court of justice, while also offering refugee status to wealthy white Afrikaners who wanted to relocate to the United States, further incensing the country.The aid freeze also follows South Africa’s recent announcement that it is preparing a new trade proposal for the Trump administration, as officials anticipate the possible end of the African Growth and Opportunity Act – which has allowed billions in duty-free exports to the United States.Earlier on Thursday, South Africa issued a statement acknowledging the US withdrawal from the Just Energy Transition Partnership (Jetp), which has canceled previously funded climate projects following Trump’s revocation of international climate finance initiatives.The state department did not respond to a request for comment. More

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      Let’s Argue About Our Phones (and Tech in General)

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      More from our inbox:Excuse Me, but Who Are You Calling Stupid?Musk Has Seen ‘State Capture’ BeforeThe Autocrats’ Playbook221A/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “The Only Phone You Need Is a Dumb One,” by August Lamm (Opinion guest essay, Feb. 2):Three cheers for Ms. Lamm, an anti-tech activist.I am a boomer who grew up meeting people face to face, talking with family members at the dinner table, playing outdoors, writing with a ballpoint pen and going to the library to get information. So it’s refreshing to see a young person striving to restore our basic sanity — our basic humanity, in fact — by encouraging us to dump harmful, unnecessary technology.We’re living in a dangerously dizzying time in which high tech threatens to end our very existence.Dennis QuickCharleston, S.C.To the Editor:August Lamm announces that she is “on a mission … to get people off their smartphones.” Why has she made it her mission to change the lives of strangers who have never asked for her intervention? Because “we’ve become so used to selecting partners on a sterile, simulated interface that we’ve lost the ability to make spontaneous, messy connections in real life.”But I often make spontaneous, messy connections in the real life of cyberspace, which lets me make these connections based on mutual interests and values rather than mere propinquity.The only opinion I need about how to live my social life is my own, supplemented by suggestions from friends who actually know something about me.Felicia Nimue AckermanProvidence, R.I.To the Editor:August Lamm is 29 years old, so she may be too young to know: Seventy years ago, everyone in the United States smoked, or at least it seemed that way. Today, far fewer Americans smoke. I suspect that social media is headed in the same direction.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Orders Halt to Aid to South Africa, Claiming Mistreatment of White Landowners

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      President Trump on Friday ordered that all foreign assistance to South Africa be halted and said his administration would prioritize the resettling of white, “Afrikaner refugees” into the United States because of what he called actions by the country’s government that “racially disfavored landowners.”In the order, Mr. Trump said that “the United States shall not provide aid or assistance to South Africa” and that American officials should do everything possible to help “Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.”It follows Mr. Trump’s accusation on his social media site on Sunday that the South African government was engaged in a “massive Human Rights VIOLATION, at a minimum.” He vowed a full investigation and promised to cut off aid.“South Africa is confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY,” the president wrote in the post. “It is a bad situation that the Radical Left Media doesn’t want to so much as mention.”The order was stunning in providing official American backing to long-held conspiracy theories about the mistreatment of white South Africans in the post-apartheid era.Mr. Trump has made repeated claims without evidence that echoed those conspiracy theories. In 2018, he ordered his secretary of state to look into “the large scale killing of farmers” — a claim disputed by official figures and the country’s biggest farmers’ group.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Long Wave: How Juls journeyed the Black Atlantic to curate his sound

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      Hi everyone. The first thing you’ll notice about this newsletter is that I’m not Nesrine. But don’t worry, we don’t need her to have a good time. I’m Jason, the editor of The Long Wave, and I’ll be writing the newsletter this week and occasionally in the future.Last month I attended a pop-up in London for the pioneering British-Ghanaian DJ and producer Juls. If you’re a fan of African music, like me, you’ll know that when a track opens with “Juls, baby” you’re about to hear straight fire (for the uninitiated, start with Wizkid’s True Love and Wande Coal’s So Mi So). So I was very excited to meet the man himself as he celebrated 10 years shaping modern Afrobeats, and the launch of his most recent album, which takes listeners on a journey through the sounds and traditions of the global Black diaspora. First, here’s the weekly roundup.Weekly roundupView image in fullscreenRacist texts after Trump’s win | Black people across the US have reported receiving racist messages telling them they have been selected to “pick cotton” and need to report to “the nearest plantation” in the aftermath of Trump’s election win. The president-elect’s campaign has denied any association with them.Big oil payouts in Guyana | Hundreds of thousands of Guyanese citizens at home and abroad will receive a payout of GY$100,000, as the country attempts to redistribute its oil wealth, Natricia Duncan reports. Since Guyana began crude oil extraction in late 2019, its economy has enjoyed incredible growth.Buz Stop Boys sweep Ghana’s streets | A group of young professionals and tradespeople are “driving a new wave of civic responsibility in Ghana” cleaning and sweeping away rubbish in Greater Accra, as well as clearing gutters and cutting overgrown grass. The collective hopes to inspire environmental consciousness and investment in proper methods of waste disposal.A toast to Abidjan cocktail week | Ivory Coast’s drinks festival, founded by the doctor turned mixologist Alexandre Quest Bede and “Afrofoodie” blogger Yasmine Fofana, is encouraging Africans to embrace their roots. Eromo Egbejule reports that “due in part to colonial-era stigmatisation and bans, local gins and other alcoholic drinks have long been seen as unsafe [and] inferior”.London Rastafarian HQ revived | A new exhibition will tell the story of the temple at St Agnes Place in London, which became a focal point for Rastafarian religion after a takeover in 1972. As Lanre Bakare reports, Echoes Within These Walls hopes to “dispel myths about the religion, which continues to be a big influence in popular culture”.In depth: A cultural odysseyView image in fullscreenWhen Juls conceptualised the album Peace & Love, he envisioned a cultural odyssey that drew on Black traditions, sounds and instruments around the world. Much of the album was made in Jamaica and Ghana, where he would create beats on his mother’s balcony in Esiama, or rent a beach house in Kokrobite so he could hear the ocean. But to finish it off sonically, Juls headed to Brazil in the summer of 2023, where he added further details to his tracks. “On the album we’ve got a song called Saint Tropez, which has elements of amapiano and highlife, but then there’s some triangle sounds that I got from Brazil. There’s a mix of different sounds I’m hearing as I’m going on these trips.”These trips were also an opportunity for Juls to enrich himself culturally. In Jamaica, he visited Bob Marley’s Tuff Gong Studio in Kingston, where he made beats. “I was just connecting with a lot of people who are deep in reggae music history. We spoke a lot to the Marley family, and we spoke to Bob Marley’s engineer. It was a real music journey. I got to meet Augustus Pablo’s son – we went to his record store and bought some vinyls as well.”In Salvador, home to Brazil’s largest Black community, he was reminded of Yoruba culture – “they still practise a lot of rituals over there”. He made similar observations in Jamaica: “When you go to the Accompong [Maroon] village, they practise a lot of the Ashanti rituals from Ghana. So there’s a lot of similarities between parts of the Caribbean, Latin America and Africa that I found interesting.”Juls was also struck by the use of instruments in the places he visited and how similar percussive sounds were transformed in new contexts. A staple of Afro-Brazilian music is the agogô, a bell with origins in Yoruba and Edo traditions. “But we don’t call it that in Ghana, we call it Gan Gan,” Juls says. Where Ghanaians use the kpanlogo drum, Brazilians may use the atabaque.For Juls, the Black diaspora’s use of drums gave him an opportunity to “play with all of these sounds” and provide a deeper layer of meaning to his music. On the opening track of his album, Leap of Faith, featuring the British artist Wretch 32, Nyabinghi drums are played, “these drums are used by Jamaicans and Ghanaians as a form of communication, celebrating their ancestors and showing praise. And they were also used to communicate in the village back in the day. In the beginning of the song there’s a guy from my father’s home town, Jamestown, who says: ‘Everybody gather around and listen’.”‘I like to bring people together’View image in fullscreenJuls is considered a maestro of Afrobeats, evidenced by the long list of artists who bring him on as a collaborator, but his curiosity stretches far beyond whatever limited perception people have of the genre, as he explores the interconnectedness of the diaspora. He loves mixing African and Brazilian music in his sets. He recounts performing in São Paulo, where the Brazilians were pleasantly surprised by his extensive knowledge of their genres.That passionate embrace of similarities and differences is something he literally wears around his neck. He shows me his chain, which he tells me is “an Adinkra symbol called Funtunfunefu Denkyemfunefu, which means unity and diversity. And that’s just something that I live by – I just like to bring everybody together from different tribes.” But in African music, there has at times been backlash over incorporations of different genres into a broader Afrobeats sound – there have especially been concerns around Nigerian artists “appropriating” amapiano music, which is native to South Africa.But for Juls, this melting pot of African genres can be embraced so long as what is produced is always in dialogue with its originators. “I’ve tapped into amapiano quite a few times but I always make sure I’m doing it with a South African artist or producer,” he says. “There’s a song on my album called Muntuwam, which has an element of amapiano, and on there I have Nkosazana’s Daughter. She listened to the song and loved it, which made me feel great because that’s coming from a South African who’s deep into that sound. It means you’re on the right path.”Juls also sees this as something that charts the progression of Afrobeats from its birth in the early 2000s DJ sets – “data, internet, structure”. There’s an ability to authentically tap into genres around the world, from fújì to highlife and kwaito to soukous, because you’re able to readily access information about this music. Afrobeats is thus less a coherent genre and more a label used for convenience. “If you really want to tap into the proper sound, you have to travel to these countries specifically, and do even deeper research.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis curiosity is evidently booming for Black artists. He cites Asake’s collaboration with the Afro-Brazilian singer-songwriter Ludmilla – Whine (one of my most played tracks from Lungu Boy) and even Tyler, the Creator’s sampling of the Zamrock band Ngozi Family on NOID from his latest album, Chromakopia, as some of his favourite recent Black Atlantic link-ups.It’s clear Juls is ready for his sound to enter a new chapter, bringing the Black diaspora with him. “The first 10 years have been about putting people in a good mood; the next 10 years, I’m trying to make people dance.”What we’re intoView image in fullscreen

      I can’t tell you how many times I’ve played Tyla’s Push 2 Start music video – that song! That choreography! Her performance at the MTV EMAs on Sunday was electrifying. Jason

      One of the advantages of living on the African continent is all the African content on streaming platforms. This week, the most watched movie on Netflix is the South African Umjolo – the Gone Girl. It is tagged as “Steamy. Quirky. Dramedy”. I’ve heard enough. Nesrine

      I’m obsessed with Toyo Tastes, a British-Nigerian food blogger and cook who makes everything from plantain and efo riro croquettes to gizdodo vol-au-vents. Jason

      I am a tragic cyclist, in that I love it but am not gifted at it. (And all the kit puts me off.) There may also be a cultural element – which is why I’m excited to dig into my copy of New Black Cyclones – Racism, Representation and Revolutions of Power in Cycling by Marlon Lee Moncrieffe. What a title. Nesrine
      Black catalogueView image in fullscreenAbi Morocco Photos, the Lagos photography studio operated by husband-and-wife John and Funmilayo Abe, captured portraits of Nigerians from the 1970s to 2006. A new exhibition at Autograph in London focuses on the studio’s formative decade in the 1970s, showcasing Lagos street-style and the characters who made up the every day hustle and bustle of the city.Signal boostLast week we wrote about how Nigerians have responded to Kemi Badenoch’s rise to the top of the Conservative party in the UK. Here, a reader offers their response:“I’ve always maintained that people who expect Kemi Badenoch to be different don’t understand anything about her background. Her education and exposure would also have imbued her with a certain amount of intellectual superiority.“As a fellow Nigerian who also spent her formative years in an upper middle class family steeped in academia, nothing about her surprises me. I just wish we would all stop identifying with people simply because they are black/African/Nigerian etc. She is her own person and this so-called achievement has no bearing whatsoever on the issues faced by black and brown people in the UK.” Kan Frances-Benedict in Kent, UKTap inDo you have any thoughts or responses to this week’s newsletter? Share your feedback by replying to this, or emailing us on thelongwave@theguardian.com and we may include your response in a future issue. More

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      Athens Democracy Forum: Young Activists on What Drives Them

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      Six young people from around the world who attended the Athens Democracy Forum spoke about what drives them and the challenges they face.Young people from around the world who actively champion democracy are an integral part of the global effort to gain, preserve and protect freedoms. The following six were among the group of young activists who attended and participated in the Athens Democracy Forum last week.Before the forum began, we interviewed them by phone, video and email about their work and experiences. Their responses were edited and condensed.Persiana AksentievaLaettersPersiana AksentievaHamburg, Germany; 28; Youth fellow, International Youth Think TankBorn in Sofia, Bulgaria, Ms. Aksentieva has spent the last five years advocating democracy in Europe. An International Youth Think Tank fellow, she recently traveled to Sofia and spoke to high school students about the importance of voting. She also works for a beauty and personal care company in Hamburg.Nicole KleebAnsichtssache Britta SchröderNicole KleebBerlin; 27; Project manager, Bertelsmann StiftungMs. Kleeb works for Bertelsmann Stiftung, a social reform foundation, in Gütersloh, Germany, as well as in youth engagement in democracy throughout Europe. She also leads the foundation’s #NowEurope initiative that encourages young people to vote and volunteers as vice president for the Young German Council on Foreign Relations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      China Woos Africa, Casting Itself as Global South’s Defender

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      More than 50 African leaders have gathered in Beijing for a summit aimed at projecting the influence of China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in the developing world.African flags have been flown over Tiananmen Square. Leaders of African nations have been greeted by dancers, honor guards and children waving flags. They have been escorted in extensive motorcades past banners celebrating “A Shared Future for China and Africa” and giant, elaborate flower arrangements.China has pulled out all the stops for a gathering of leaders and top officials from more than 50 African nations this week in Beijing, welcoming them with pomp and pageantry. “After nearly 70 years of hard work, China-Africa relations are at the best period in history,” China’s leader, Xi Jinping, told the gathering on Thursday. Mr. Xi has cast his country as a defender of the developing world, one that can push the West to listen to the voices of poorer countries. He hosted a banquet for the leaders at the start of the event on Wednesday, after three straight days of back-to-back bilateral talks with nearly two dozen leaders of nations ranging from impoverished Chad to the continental economic powerhouse of Nigeria. The three-day forum is meant to demonstrate Beijing’s global clout despite rising tensions with the West. Mr. Xi’s courtship of African countries is part of a great geopolitical competition with the United States that has intensified in recent years over Russia’s war in Ukraine and China’s aggressive posture toward Taiwan.China is “trying to take advantage of the space left by the U.S. and Europe, which are increasingly disengaged with Africa,” said Eric Olander, the editor in chief of the China-Global South Project website. “China sees an opportunity to really step up its engagement, and not necessarily just with money.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Harris wants to bring ‘joy, joy, joy’ to Americans. What about Palestinians? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Muslim Women for Harris is disbandingGot any spare brooms to hand? I think the folk at the Democratic national convention may need a few extra because they’ve been very busy this week trying to sweep the carnage in Gaza under the rug.Hope and joy have been the big themes of the convention. On Wednesday, Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, told the crowd that working to get Kamala Harris elected would mean “joy, joy, joy comes in the morning”. It is wonderful to see all this exuberance, all this optimism for a brighter future. But it is also impossible not to contrast the revelry in Chicago with the Biden administration-sponsored suffering coming out of Gaza.Well, it’s impossible for some of us, anyway. For plenty of delegates at the convention, the suffering of Palestinians, the harrowing images on social media of charred babies and toddlers in Gaza whose heads have been caved in from US-manufactured bombs, seem to be nothing more than an annoying distraction. Pro-Palestinian protesters at the convention haven’t just been met with stony faces, they’ve been met with jeers and violence. One delegate inside the convention was caught on camera repeatedly hitting a Muslim woman in the head with a “We Love Joe” sign. The woman’s crime was that she had peacefully unfurled a banner saying “Stop Arming Israel”. It’s not clear who the man assaulting this woman was but one imagines he will not face any consequences.To be fair, Gaza hasn’t been completely ignored. On Monday, there was a panel centered on Palestinian human rights, in which Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric doctor who treated patients in Gaza, talked about the horrors she had witnessed. But the panel, while important, wasn’t on the main stage. It wasn’t given star billing like the parents of the Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who gave an emotional speech on Wednesday. It felt a lot like pro-Palestinian activists had just been tossed a few crumbs.For a brief moment, it did seem like a Palestinian might get a proper chance to speak. The Uncommitted National Movement, which launched an anti-war protest vote during the primaries, had been urging convention officials to include two Palestinian American speakers on the convention’s main stage. “We are learning that Israeli hostages’ families will be speaking from the main stage. We strongly support that decision and also strongly hope that we will also be hearing from Palestinians who’ve endured the largest civilian death toll since 1948,” the movement’s statement released on Tuesday read.By Wednesday evening, however, it seemed clear that the convention had rejected these requests. In response, a group of uncommitted delegates staged a sit-in in front of Chicago’s United Center. Ilhan Omar joined the demonstration, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called in via FaceTime.In light of the convention’s refusal to have a Palestinian American speaker, the group Muslim Women for Harris made the decision to disband and withdraw support for Harris. “The family of the Israeli hostage that was on the stage tonight, has shown more empathy towards Palestinian Americans and Palestinians, than our candidate or the DNC has,” Muslim Women for Harris’s statement read.For those of us who have been cautiously optimistic that Harris might break from Joe Biden’s disastrous policy of unconditional support for Israel, this week has been bitterly disappointing. Whoever wins this election, it seems clear joy, joy, joy will not be coming to Gaza anytime soon. Just more bombs, bombs, bombs.Dismiss ‘grannies’ as frail old biddies at your perilWhether it’s “Nans against Nazis” protesting in Liverpool or the Raging Nannies getting arrested at US army recruitment centers, older women are some of the toughest activists out there, writes Sally Feldman.Woman, 75, uses gardening tools to fill in potholes outside home in Scottish villageArmed with a bucket and spade, Jenny Paterson undertook the resurfacing work against her doctor’s orders. She’d had surgery and wasn’t supposed to lift things but said: “I’m fine and I’m not a person to sit around and do nothing anyway.” Which has given me some inspiration to pick up a rake and go tackle the raggedy roads of Philadelphia.The late Queen Elizabeth II thought Donald Trump was ‘very rude’Apparently, she also “believed Trump ‘must have some sort of arrangement’ with his wife, Melania, or else why would she have remained married to him?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHow Tanya Smith stole $40m, evaded the FBI and broke out of prisonThe Guardian has a fascinating profile of Smith that touches on how the FBI couldn’t catch her for so long because they didn’t think a Black woman was capable of orchestrating her crimes. In Smith’s memoir, she recounts how one officer told her that “neeee-grroes murder, steal and rob, but they don’t have the brains to commit sophisticated crimes like this”.A clueless Alicia Silverstone eats poisonous fruit off a bushIf you’re wandering the streets of London and see a bush in someone’s front garden with mysterious fruit on it, should you a) admire it and move on? Or b) reach through the fence and film a TikTok of yourself munching the lil street snack while asking whether anyone knows what the heck it is? This week, Silverstone chose option b. The woman thinks vaccines are dodgy and yet she has no problem sticking an unknown fruit into her mouth. Turns out it was toxic but Silverstone has confirmed she’s OK, which means we can all laugh at her without feeling too bad about it.Women use ChatGPT 16%-20% less than their male peersThat’s according to two recent studies examined by the Economist. One explanation for this was that high-achieving women appeared to impose an AI ban on themselves. “It’s the ‘good girl’ thing,” one researcher said. “It’s this idea that ‘I have to go through this pain, I have to do it on my own and I shouldn’t cheat and take short-cuts.’” Very demure, very mindful.Patriarchal law cuts some South African women off from owning their homesBack in the 1990s, South Africa introduced a new land law (the Upgrading of Land Tenure Rights Act) that was supposed to fix the injustices of apartheid. It upgraded the property rights of Black long-term leaseholders so they could own their homes. But only a man could hold the property permit, effectively pushing women out of inheriting. Since the 1990s, there have been challenges and changes to the Upgrading Act, but experts say that women’s property rights are still not sufficiently recognized and “customary law has placed women outside the law”.The week in pawtriarchyThey stared into the void of an arcade game, and the void stared back. Punters at a Pennsylvania custard shop were startled when they realized that the cute little groundhog nestled among the stuffed animals in a mechanical-claw game was a real creature. Nobody knows exactly how he got into the game but he has since been rescued and named Colonel Custard. “It’s a good story that ended well,” the custard shop manager said. “He got set free. No one got bit.” More