Drop Site Livestream

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s new report argues that the destruction of truth has become integral to the destruction of the Palestinian people. The report, “Truth Under the Rubble: Media in the Time of Genocide,” documents the killing of nearly 300 journalists and media workers in Gaza since October 2023, Israeli state censorship and incitement, and the role of Western media and digital platforms in reproducing Israeli narratives.
Drop Site’s Sharif Abdel Kouddous spoke with Albanese, an Italian international lawyer who has served as the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. They discuss what she calls “mediacide,” Israel’s killing of journalists including Drop Site contributor Hossam Shabat, incitement on Israeli TV, bias in Western coverage, and the New York Times’ response to her report.
Albanese has faced sustained backlash for her work. When she presented the report to the UN General Assembly on Monday, the Israeli and US representatives called her a “liar,” a “fraud,” and a “lunatic,” and the chair asked speakers to focus on the report’s contents. The US, Israel, and several European governments opposed her reappointment last year. Soon afterward, Secretary of State Marco Rubio imposed economic and travel sanctions on her, citing her efforts to push the International Criminal Court to investigate US and Israeli officials and companies. Albanese, who is unpaid in her UN role, says the sanctions have cut her off from banking, and that her US-citizen daughter could commit a felony simply by having financial dealings with her. Her family is now suing the Trump administration.
Read the full UN report: https://docs.un.org/A/81/249
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(0:00) Intro: “Truth Under the Rubble”
(1:15) Israeli and US reps attack Albanese at the UN
(3:35) Why a report on the media?
(8:30) What is “mediacide”?
(10:10) Silencing the witnesses: Israel’s killing of journalists
(14:00) Information as Israel’s “eighth front”: censorship and platforms
(19:10) Why killing journalists is a war crime
(22:40) Incitement on Israeli TV and international law
(24:40) Western media bias in coverage of Gaza
(28:20) The New York Times responds to the report
(31:50) What US sanctions mean for Albanese and her family
(36:05) Documenting Gaza as resistance against colonial erasure
_________
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Yemen’s war has reached Riyadh. Ansar Allah has repeatedly struck the Saudi capital’s main airport in the past week, killing 13 people in the deadliest attack on Saudi soil in over a decade, while Saudi jets pound northern Yemen and the ground offensive Riyadh backs stalls. Ryan Grim talks with Dr. Shireen Al-Adeimi, a Yemeni-American scholar at Michigan State University, and Dr. Annelle Sheline of the Quincy Institute, a former State Department official who resigned over US support for the genocide in Gaza. They discuss how Ansar Allah turned an 11-year war back on Saudi Arabia, a century of Saudi meddling in Yemen, why MBS is unwilling to walk away, what the war means for Vision 2030, Yemen’s north-south divide, the myth of Ansar Allah as an Iranian proxy, and whether Trump will join the fight.Subscribe on YouTube and wherever you get podcasts.
00:00 Intro2:32 How Ansar Allah Is Bringing the War to Saudi Arabia7:33 A Century of Saudi Intervention in Yemen12:19 MBS and Washington’s Role in the War21:53 Why Ansar Allah Is Done With Truces26:33 Why Saudi Arabia Is Unwilling to Walk Away30:46 What the War Means for Vision 203036:26 Ansar Allah, the South and Yemen’s Ideological Divide43:46 How the War Could End in Yemen’s South46:20 The “Iranian Proxy” Myth55:34 Will Trump Join the War?58:55 Closing_________➡️ FOLLOW Drop Site News for more independent news on war and politics
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Three years into Israel's genocide in Gaza, Palestinian human rights lawyer and legal scholar Noura Erakat argues that Donald Trump's Board of Peace is about more than Gaza: it's a blueprint for a new world order.Drop Site's Sharif Abdel Kouddous speaks with Erakat, a professor at Rutgers University, about her Boston Review essay, "Exit and Exception." Erakat argues that the Board of Peace matters less for whether it succeeds than for what it reveals: a political project, driven by market fundamentalists and a tech elite, to exit international law and popular democracy altogether. She traces that project from the charter cities and special economic zones championed by figures like Peter Thiel to Gaza, which the Board's charter designates as a special economic zone and where Palestinians are described as "Gazans" rather than a people with a right to self-determination.
Israel, she argues, has long been the model, claiming that Palestine is a legal exception where the rules that apply everywhere else do not. Erakat also traces the Board's roots in the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, whose militarized aid sites became death traps for starving Palestinians.
She also describes her arrest last month at a Palm Beach County public hearing, where she came to testify against the county's more than $1 billion investment in Israel bonds.
Read "Exit and Exception" in Boston Review here. _________➡️ FOLLOW Drop Site News for more independent news on war and politics
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Eight months into the US-Iran war, the Strait of Hormuz is still contested—and the oil shock nearly everyone predicted never arrived.
Gregory Brew, senior energy analyst at Eurasia Group and a historian of modern Iran, explains why crude sits in the $90–$110 band instead of $250: alternative pipeline routes, high global inventories, a steep cut in Chinese imports, and an oil market practiced at absorbing shocks. He also breaks down the US escort operation moving 9 to 10 million barrels a day through the strait—supertankers running dark through the Omani channel—and why he calls it a Band-Aid.Also: the attack on Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline, Iranian production down to 2 million barrels a day, record US diesel prices ahead of the midterms, and why Brew expects Tehran to escalate rather than capitulate.
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Chapters:
0:00 Intro: Gregory Brew on the Oil War
0:22 Why the $250 Oil Catastrophe Never Came
4:59 7-Day Regional Oil Exports Average ~17 Million Barrels
9:18 Supertankers Going Dark Through the Omani Channel
11:41 How Long Can US Navy Keep Up Its Escort Operation Through Strait?
15:08 Qatar's LNG Problem
17:46 Yemen and the Attack on the East-West Pipeline
22:47 Iran's Oil Is Running Out — Will It Capitulate?
30:42 How Iran May Escalate
35:13 Diesel at Record Highs and PossibleExport Ban
39:37 Global Economy: Can it Absorb Another Year of This?
43:55 The Future of US-Iran Relations
48:55 A Divided GCC and the Case for Accommodating Iran
51:25 Closing
➡️ FOLLOW Drop Site News for more independent news on war and politics
Stay INFORMED on our latest reporting: DropSiteNews.com
LISTEN to the show as a podcast on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts.
SUBSCRIBE to Drop Site News. Our reporting is FREE, and we are committed to keeping it that way. To help support our work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription, it’s what fuels our reporting: https://www.dropsitenews.com/subscribe
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Don’t like social media? We’ve got you covered. We launched a daily weekday newsletter, Drop Site Daily, which compiles the top stories our team is tracking throughout the day on social media, into one convenient, place: https://www.dropsitenews.com/s/drop-site-daily


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Ryan Grim interviews Yemeni journalist Hussain Al-Bukhaiti on the state of the conflict in Yemen. Al-Bukhaiti told Drop Site that Saudi-backed forces in eastern areas of Al-Jawf are essentially driving around empty desert for the cameras and presenting it as an advance.“They just go to an open area and keep shooting at a hill or a small mountain, and there’s no one there,” he said, adding that the forces are also “sitting ducks” for Ansarallah fighters who hold all the key high ground in the west of the province.Albukhaiti also predicted that oil- and gas-rich Marib province will fall “exactly like Mocha,” saying it “could be easier” because Ansarallah has already sharply limited Saudi air cover.
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00:00–01:01 — Saudi Arabia and Ansarallah Escalate
01:02–03:09 — Advice for MBS & Why Saudi Arabia Broke the 2022 Truce
03:10–05:52 — Ansarallah’s New Demands for Riyadh
05:53–09:22 — What’s Happening in Al-Jawf
09:23–16:10 — Why Saudi-Backed Forces Collapsed on Yemen’s West Coast
16:11–20:41 — Why Ansarallah Went on the Offensive
20:42–26:00 — The Battle for Marib and Ansarallah’s Strategy
26:01–34:39 — Could Saudi Arabia Lose Territory?
34:40–35:52 — Iran, the U.S. and Ansarallah’s Regional Strategy
35:53–38:19 — Red Sea Shipping and Bab al-Mandab
38:20–43:17 — Why Ansarallah Is Detaining UN Aid Workers
43:18–43:42 — Journalism and Closing Remarks


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