Kepler-186

Glad your mate is ok. You’re right it’s an absolute horror show and the report I posted only shows how many parties are involved. Are there any good reporters covering it I could follow/read?

Part 2 (from Tortoise’s Sensemaker email) Power play. The war started as a power-grab by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for control of the capital, Khartoum. It has now become a civil war between the RSF and Sudan’s regular army (the SAF) with no discernible frontline, a complex ethnic history, multiple militias and wargaming from outside actors, with millions of Sudanese caught in the middle. Today, the RSF controls most of Sudan, including Al Jazirah, which produces most of Sudan’s cereal crops; Darfur, where mass killings and displacement have led to extensive ethnic violence; and Khartoum, where large areas of the city have been destroyed. “Since we lost Khartoum, the majority of the country is paralysed, from the telecommunication system, banking, governance, and our capability to respond with humanitarian assistance,” said Eatizaz Yousif, the Sudan country director for the International Rescue Committee. Beyond Sudan. The UAE is believed to be supplying large quantities of military aid to the RSF via flights to neighbouring Chad. In addition: Ukrainian special forces are fighting the RSF and its Wagner Group backers; Russia is understood to be backing both sides; while Iran is reportedly providing its Mohajer-6 military drones to the Sudanese army. Famine stalks the country and is expected to have taken hold in most of it by June, killing half a million people, according to a study by the Clingendael Institute, a Dutch think-tank. Behind closed doors, senior western officials are discussing a worst-case scenario of 10,000 deaths a day. Harvests have been disrupted, cereal production has declined by almost half and the cost of food has soared. UN agencies struggle to reach 90 per cent of the areas most in need of aid as both sides use food as a weapon of war: RSF fighters regularly attack aid lorries and loot NGOs warehouses, while the SAF banned aid agencies from delivering supplies via Chad and continues to withhold travel permits for aid workers. There are logistical obstacles to reaching remote rural areas in Africa’s third biggest country, which is mostly desert, poorly served by roads. What’s needed. Money and attention. Before this week, western governments had provided only a fraction of the cash needed to avert disaster. The crises in Europe and the Middle East have taken priority “but even before, there was no focus on Sudan,” says Zeinab Badawi, the Sudanese-born journalist and president of SOAS University of London. Delivering food aid to the region has become more expensive given difficulties in accessing wheat from Ukraine and running the gauntlet of Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping. The UN is seeking another $1.4 billion to help neighbouring countries that have taken in hundreds of thousands of refugees. What’s more… Negotiation efforts to date have been uncoordinated and led by junior ministers, which makes them “invisible,” said Yousif. Sudan deserves better.

Sudan: a country in pieces Donors at a conference in Paris have raised more than €2 billion for Sudan, including funds from the EU, France, Germany, the US and the UK. So what? It’s about time. A year since the start of a conflict that took even the Sudanese by surprise, war has consumed a country five times the size of Germany. In the process it has put all Sudan’s seven African neighbours at risk of escalating violence; displaced 8.5 million people, with 1.8 million fleeing mainly to Chad, South Sudan and Egypt; and dashed hopes of a new era of democracy at the confluence of the Nile. By the numbers 25 million – people in need of humanitarian assistance, nearly half the population, with nearly 5 million on the verge of famine 6 – factor by which the number of Sudanese entering Europe has grown since 2023 15,500 – people estimated killed in the war, which has injured almost 30,000 more 800,000 – children with severe malnutrition 5 – percentage share of the $2.7 billion needed to address Sudan’s humanitarian crisis this year that has actually materialised

“Thanks for listening, children!”

Here’s the article copy and pasted from The Post for those who want a read. The rise and fall of the Baltic Triangle’s hapless scam artist By Abi Whistance I’m in a meeting room with Miles Pearson, the co-owner of 12 Jordan Street, a co-working space in the Baltic Triangle. He reached out to me about Fenir back in March, and has been keen to tell me all he knows about the elusive businessman. The pair first came into contact in December 2023, when Fenir strolled through the doors of 12 Jordan Street. He said he needed a desk away from his other employees to run his business — a property company called Hu by Sabe Group Ltd — and wanted to move in “straight away”. “We never usually get walk-in enquiries. It was quite unusual,” Miles says, but explains he was happy for Fenir to take a desk after he’d provided a copy of his passport and the first month’s rent. Fenir soon settled in, and within a matter of days he’d begun offering lucrative business schemes to others in the co-work, as well as tenants in Miles’ other buildings. Fenir had a whole host of investment opportunities and commercial property rentals available, he said, and would happily be the middleman to broker any deals. One of those investment opportunities was a Georgian office building on Castle Street. On his Instagram, he posted photos of a gorgeous furnished building with white podiums and a view of a park, advertising it at £950 a month. Yet Miles wasn’t so sure — since when did Castle Street have a park? “He showed me a floor plan, and I’m an architect, so I know what a Georgian building looks like — it’s not that,” Miles laughs. When he reverse image searched the advert online, it appeared as an office building in London, not in Liverpool. “That’s when we knew something was off.” Nevertheless, Miles continued to let him use the co-work. “He was quite young. We thought maybe he was trying to impress people there,” he says. As first impressions go, this was understandable. Decked out in designer gear and never without a big flashy watch wrapped around his wrist, Fenir clearly has no problem showing off his status. When I meet him, he tells me he was bullied as a child for his weight, and in adulthood decided to hit the gym and get tattoos to feel better about himself. Perhaps that’s why Fenir also told people in 12 Jordan Street that he was a millionaire, a former police officer, a DJ, an ex-nightclub bouncer and that he ran a security company on the side. At the time, his various careers caused some amusement to those in the office. He was thought to be pretty harmless, in all. That was until his business schemes ramped up. One morning, Fenir arrived at 12 Jordan Street with a box of watches. He had yet another company, Off the List Luxury Ltd, which specialised in selling Rolexes and other luxury goods. He asked others in the co-work if they had any expensive watches they wanted to sell. He could write up a consignment agreement and sell it for them, he said, noting his web of high-profile connections that could be of use. Unfortunately for Fenir, there was no bite, and he left soon after — leaving the box of Rolexes on his desk, wide open. “That’s when we knew they were fake,” says Tai Wang, another person at the co-work. “You don’t just leave a box of Rolexes on your desk overnight. Why on Earth would you do that?” When Tai confronted him about it, Fenir told him not to worry, because he “trusted everyone” at the co-work (at this point, he had been at 12 Jordan Street less than a week). The final straw came a week later, when Fenir approached Miles about investing in a “nearly completed scheme” in Bootle that turned out to be a vacant site. At the same time, Miles saw another rental advert of Fenir’s online — this time for a mansion for a hen party, located in Crosby. Again, Miles used Google’s reverse image tool to find out more about this mansion. Within a matter of minutes he’d traced back the images to a B&B in Wales. “I emailed him and told him I knew the adverts were fake and I wanted him out of Jordan Street,” Miles says. 11 minutes later, he received a bombardment of texts and screenshots. Fenir claimed he had been duped by a man known only as ‘James JV Office Space’ who had sourced the rental deal for him, and was equally angry about it. “I think it was pretty clear James didn’t really exist,” Miles laughs. “James JV — Joint Venture, it’s like the most generic contact name ever.” Fenir left the co-work immediately after that. Although he hasn’t been seen in-person since January, he continues to send Miles messages and voice notes claiming he is innocent. Back in February, he attempted to join another co-work on Jamaica Street named Basecamp, but has since been asked to leave after lying to the owner about having 15 staff working in Miles’ office space. “It’s just really strange,” Miles says. “We’re such a tiny community. We obviously all talk to one another. Why lie when you’ll get caught out so quickly?” Fenir denies that he told Basecamp he had 15 employees working in Miles’ office space, and added he’d be contacting Basecamp to clear his name; when we speak to Basecamp, they confirm he did say he had 15 employees at Jordan Street, and was asked to leave shortly after. A bad day for NatWest I’m on the phone to Abi Mooney, a 34-year-old woman from Anfield whose watch was taken by Fenir as part of a consignment agreement last year. She’d met him online through a watch-selling Facebook group, and wanted to make sure she sold her prized possession locally. At the time, Fenir’s company Off the List Luxury Ltd had a listed address on the Albert Dock. It seemed like a perfect fit. The pair signed an agreement: Fenir would sell her watch for no less than £36,000, and he would keep any money over that amount. Abi’s boyfriend handed the watch over to Fenir on the Albert Dock one evening. All seemed fine. But when, after a few weeks went by, she was yet to hear about any sale, she contacted Fenir asking for her watch back. Fenir said he’d sold it, and that the money had already been sent her way. He sent her a screenshot of the transaction in his banking app. Yet when Abi checked her bank account, she saw nothing. When she raised this with Fenir, more screenshots followed. His bank had put a hold on the money and wouldn’t release it to Abi, he explained, and as the weeks went by he produced emails purportedly between him and NatWest as evidence. Despite the seemingly official correspondence, Abi noticed that these emails seemed suspiciously littered with spelling errors. During this period, Abi learned that a watch identical to hers had been sold in a pawn shop in Liverpool city centre for just £16k, one day after she handed it over to Fenir. According to a receipt seen by The Post, the name of the seller was Fenir Saba. When Abi confronted Fenir about this, he told her it was the fault of his business partner, Josh, a man who lived miles away in the East Midlands. Josh had told him to pawn the watch for half its value; Fenir had simply done what he was told. And what’s more, Fenir said he had great news — he’d successfully sued NatWest for millions over Abi’s pending transaction, and would be able to pay her back soon. Over a month on, Abi is yet to receive the £36,000. When I put all this to Fenir, he doubles down. According to him, ‘Josh’ stole over £80,000 from Off the List Luxury Ltd and fiddled with company spreadsheets, leading him to accidentally pawn several watches for low prices. When I ask him about suing NatWest, he says that “sued was a loose term”. “I was sided with [the] financial ombudsman over a large withheld amount, and found to be correct in my complaint,” Fenir says, adding that the entire case was “confidential”, so I’d be unlikely to verify his story. It’s a pretty bombastic tale. I ask Fenir if he thinks his ex-business partner Josh will verify his version of events. He replies that Josh won’t speak to me. Well, enter stage left: Josh. The watch and the footballer “He’s the worst person I think I’ve ever met in my life.” I’ve got Josh on the phone and he’s keen to put the drama with Fenir to bed, once and for all. He’s asked us not to use his last name in the article as he is attempting to move on from the ordeal. The “stress of it all” hospitalised him in recent months, he says. So who is Josh, and how did the duo first meet? Well, it was the most unlikely of places for a business transaction. “He got chatting to me on Facebook and then Xbox, and asked if I wanted a joint venture opportunity,” Josh explains. This was back in July 2023. Josh, 27, has been a mechanic his whole life, but part of him had wanted to escape the nine-to-five lifestyle. Fenir came along at the “perfect time”, he says, as he had some savings put away and had always dreamed of getting into the lucrative world of property. “I wanted to turn my life around,” he says. Who better to trust than some bloke you met on the internet? “I don’t know what made me trust him, but he just seemed like a normal guy and he just took care of it all,” Josh says. He gave Fenir an initial sum of £10,000 to invest in a rental office building in Liverpool city centre, and away they were. Within a matter of weeks Fenir had another proposition for him: Josh should join him in creating a luxury goods company, Off the List Luxury Ltd, to sell watches. Josh, who already had a two-grand watch of his own that he was looking to sell, was eager. He handed over his watch to Fenir to kickstart the business, and gave him just shy of £4,000 to rent an office space on Albert Dock. It wasn’t long before things went wrong. “I got this angry message from this footballer saying I’d stolen his money. I was like, what?” Josh says. Fenir had entered a consignment agreement with a footballer player from Barnsley (who we can’t name) to sell his watch, and told him that Josh had run off with his money. “He was blaming me for everything. I was at the other end of the country so I couldn’t do anything,” Josh says. He notes that he only ever met Fenir a handful of times, visiting Liverpool just twice during their business relationship. At this point — around four months in — Josh decided it was best to cut his losses and end his business relations with Fenir. What started as a way to change his career direction had now left him massively out of pocket and missing an expensive watch. “He still owes me like £20k, but I just want it all to be over now,” he says. He’s heard very little from Fenir in recent weeks, who continues to use him as a scapegoat to countless people in Liverpool. The Post asked Fenir Saba to comment on Josh’s side of the story. He says he’s made Merseyside Police aware of Josh’s involvement, and that the watches were “put on [a] spreadsheet, [and] Josh stated he’d spoken to clients and some of the watches were his personal collection”, which led to them being mis-sold. He adds that if Josh hasn’t been contacted by the police, then “that’s on [Merseyside Police]”. He also says he has three complaints against a current officer at Merseyside Police over his fraud case. Fenir tells us that when it came to the rental deals unpicked by Miles at 12 Jordan Street in December, Josh was behind these too. He says that ‘James JV Office Space’ has since deleted his Facebook account, but suggests that James’ identity was that of a rogue London landlord now in prison for a series of scams. Which, of course, makes him uncontactable. An online vendetta If you ask Fenir, I’ve got the wrong end of the stick. This is all an elaborate plan to frame him for something he didn’t do, and the real crime lies in the existence of the website Sabatage (now simply called Fenir Saba Dot Com), created to take him down. He insists he is a millionaire, and got his money after a false rape allegation made by his ex in Newcastle led to an £8 million pay off from Northumbria Police. When I contact Northumbria Police, they have no record of any claim brought against them from Fenir. When I tell Fenir this, he says he hadn’t quite got his facts straight as his family dealt with the finer details. In an email to me, he says a pay-off was offered outside of a formal court setting in exchange for him “not going public about [the] findings in the police investigation! Of which due to needing funds to move I accepted.” As for the ongoing fraud investigation against him, Fenir admits he has been contacted by Merseyside Police. Yet he says he has his own case in the works — a harassment case against the folk behind the anonymous Sabatage website. In a text message to me this week, he says Merseyside Police have grounds for an arrest regarding the website, and sends me a screenshot of what appears to be a partially redacted text from the police inviting him in for an interview. The interviewing officer, he claims, is about to reveal the identities of two people behind the website. Merseyside Police have since confirmed they have investigated a report of malicious communications involving a website but no arrests have been made. They said they could not comment further on ongoing investigations. I’ve been told — and witnessed firsthand — that Fenir has a tendency to fake emails and bank statements, or use screenshots in a misleading way. When he’s challenged on these documents, he sends long, legal-looking emails threatening to sue people, or else threatens to report them to the police for harassment. Indeed, I receive similar threats while working on this story myself. “My solicitor has also advised, as he’s born scouser, taking court action to force the hand of an independent scouse media company,” Fenir wrote in one message to me, attempting to push me to disclose some of my sources. I later ask him for his solicitor’s name and the firm he works for. Reece Bedford, he says, from the law firm Monan Gozzett in York. I call Monan Gozzett. They confirm that no one named Reece Bedford works, or has ever worked, for them. When I confront Fenir about this, he tells me I’m confused and must have misheard him in our chat. Reece Bedford is a freelance criminal defence solicitor, and he never said he worked for Monan Gozzett. Again, when I search for Reece Bedford on the Solicitors Register, there is no trace of anyone with that name. Fenir also denies ever faking documents or misleading people with screenshots. Admittedly, when speaking to a journalist, people can be economical with the truth. Yet the level of deceit Fenir is willing to go to is strange to witness firsthand. All these names, places, pieces of information — they’re all easily verifiable. So why go to such lengths to continue the lies when you know they’ll catch up with you? As Fenir repeatedly tells me, I should take his word as gospel. Everyone is out to get him: even the police, even Action Fraud, even me. He refers me once again to a handful of screenshots he’d taken from the Sabatage website, leaking his girlfriend’s nudes, inciting violence against him and soliciting payment for information. This is what I should care about, he says — the mistreatment both him and his girlfriend are receiving from this website. Once again, something doesn’t sit quite right. There are violent threats against him on the website, and his girlfriend’s nudes were posted on the forums. But the timestamps on the screenshots taken by Fenir show that they were all captured within one second of the posts being made. To capture something so quickly seems near impossible. Fenir vehemently denies he is the one who leaked the images and posts, and says he has notifications turned on for the website, which is why he is able to screenshot these posts immediately. It seems fanciful. Just one hour after I meet him in Cafe Nero, I get a text message from a source. They send me a collection of screenshots of WhatsApp messages from Fenir. In them, he insists that a journalist from The Post is about to clear his name. He says “multiple people have come forward to the reporter” who received payment for their watches, so the world will know he’s innocent of any fraud. We’re still waiting for them to contact us.

Ghosts of Cable Street by The Men They Couldn’t Hang

“McKenzie’s soul lies above the ground, In that pyramid near Maryland” and “Now there’s a ley line runs down Mathew Street It’s giving energy to all it meets.” Does This Train Stop on Merseyside by Ian Prowse and Amsterdam

“I’ve walked La Ramblas But not with real intent” If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next Manic Street Preachers

Some decent analysis here on these topics, and the future of the Tories. https://99-percent.org/what-the-extreme-right-may-be-planning/

Yeah most people are turned off by all politics now, and I can’t say I blame them.

The crank right like Miriam Cates and others are bemoaning things like the ahem indigenous birth rate, National Trust wokery pointing out trillions were made from Empire and slavery, the decline in educational performance and kids’ behaviour in school etc. and at the same time uphold an economic system that requires two adults to work exhausting hours in order to maintain a roof over their head, and pay endless increasing bills. Obviously if you suggest a Nordic style settlement so people can start to balance their lives and communities can rebuild then it’s front page Daily Heil anti commie propaganda for you.

Trotsky over here.

No idea mate just popped up on the “For You” feed and I had a look and someone posted that the other guy had ripped him to bits. Also saw there’d been a Telegraph piece saying “The Left needs to learn to love Toby Young”, and a retweet of a Andrew Marr LBC interview with a professor of epidemiology saying rickets and scurvy are rising. Standard Tory Country shit.

Don’t use Twitter as much these days but this was elegant online takedown. https://x.com/dieworkwear/status/1776809993146355798?s=46

Non-profit behind ‘He Gets Us’ Super Bowl ads is main funder for US hate group The Servant Foundation has ploughed tens of millions of dollars into the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/servant-foundation-he-gets-us-jesus-gen-z-alliance-defending-freedom/ Jesus was an influencer cancelled for his beliefs but it’s also a great tax write off.

Excellent short doc on how societies succumbed to totalitarianism. I’m full of the joys of spring, me.

“Father” Calvin “Robbo” Robinson explained. https://x.com/robin_c_douglas/status/1776298089042600204?s=46

We live in a deeply divided country with huge inequalities, with a near enough city state in the south east with hollowed out major cities and towns elsewhere shorn of their industries, local services and yes their pride. Like Frank Sobotka says “we used to make shit”. Lots of places that voted Leave had literally been left behind. Cynical politicians are exploiting this to this day and are subverting what was a quieter, more subtle form of patriotism, and sense of community to get people riled up as deep down they know the days of well paid stable jobs are decreasing for the majority of citizens in many places. Even if you have a good job in dat der London the commute and housing is a bitch. I’m not sure regional mayors are the answers. They both talk a good game in Liverpool and Manchester. I read Northamptonshire council ( Tory run) essentially privatised all its services. This will surely be the model in the future. Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to flog everything off and stop having a coherent regional policy. Fucking Tory cunts.

Yeah thought that. “Well he was bright, articulate and a bit lefty, shall we have him back?” ”Nah let’s get some think tank gimp on to keep the neoliberal agenda going like every day.” ”Hello is that the IEA?”

Hadn’t seen this guy’s work before. Really good vid about 10 minutes long.

Military conflicts can go in the summer.

Las Malvinas etc. etc.