$ORCL bonds crossing 8.3% for the first time after Larry Ellison used the Enron trick (first time anyone did since Enron) of “Customer Pre-Payments with a Significant Interest Component” to hide Operating Cash Flow Problems. Notably Oracle also was the first Publicly Listed US company outside of drillers and Miners (or Covid) to use Force Majeur to avoid paying on a data center lease it couldn’t afford, since… you guessed it… Enron.

The Arab slave trade ran for roughly 1,200 years (way before the British or Europeans), from the 7th century to the 20th. It fed slaves into the Middle East, North Africa, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. Traders included Arabs, Berbers, Swahili, Persians, Turks, and African states that raided their neighbours for captives to sell. Who were the slavers? Who were your ancestors? Were they slavers? Or are you following in the Iranian tradition now? Trans-Saharan merchants were Arab and Berber traders, with Tuareg desert guides. They ran caravans from West and Central Africa (the Lake Chad region, Hausaland, Mali, Songhay) north to Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. African states such as Kanem-Bornu, Darfur and later the Sokoto Caliphate supplied many of the captives by raiding their neighbours. Red Sea traders moved Ethiopians, Oromo and Nilotic peoples from the Sudan into Arabia, Egypt and Yemen. East African and Swahili-Arab traders worked from Kilwa, Mombasa and above all Zanzibar. The Omani sultans moved their capital to Zanzibar in 1840, and the trade peaked in the 19th century. Tippu Tip, a Swahili-Omani trader, led caravans deep into the Congo basin for ivory and slaves. Barbary corsairs sailed from Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli and Salé under Ottoman or Moroccan rule. They raided ships and coasts across the Mediterranean and as far north as Ireland and Iceland. Many of their captains were European converts to Islam. Abbasid-era traders (8th–10th centuries) bought Slavs (saqaliba) from Viking and Jewish Radhanite middlemen for al-Andalus and Baghdad. They also bought Turks from Central Asia, who were trained as slave soldiers (mamluks). Who they targeted Sub-Saharan Africans: the largest group by far. They came from the Sahel, the Sudan, Ethiopia, the Great Lakes, the Congo and Mozambique. Slavs and Eastern Europeans, mainly in the early medieval period. Western Europeans taken by the corsairs. The raids hit Italy, Spain, Portugal and France hardest. Baltimore in Ireland was raided in 1631 and Iceland in 1627. Central Asian Turks and Caucasians (Circassians, Georgians) were bought mostly as soldiers and concubines. What were the slaves used for? Most slaves worked as household servants and concubines, so women outnumbered men about two to one in most routes. Men served as soldiers, galley rowers, and eunuchs. Castration killed a large share of the boys it was done to. Some slaves worked in heavy labour. The Zanj worked the salt marshes of southern Iraq and rose in revolt from 869 to 883. Others worked Zanzibar's clove plantations or dived for pearls in the Gulf. How many people were taken Written records are thin, so every figure is a scholar's estimate based on caravan sizes, market reports, and customs data. The ranges are wide. What's that your ancestors were capturing and selling them, and mine were buying them ? Which is worse? "Arab" covers people from several regions. They all trace back to the Arabian Peninsula, but by the height of the trade many lived far from it. Oman (southeast Arabia): Omani Arabs ran the East African trade. The Sultan of Oman moved his court from Muscat to Zanzibar in 1840, and Omani planters and caravan financiers controlled the coast from Somalia to Mozambique. Yemen, especially the Hadhramaut valley: Hadhrami merchants settled along the East African coast and around the Indian Ocean as traders and middlemen. The Hejaz (western Arabia: Mecca, Medina, Jeddah): the main buyers and resellers for the Red Sea route. Pilgrims to Mecca also bought slaves and took them home. Iraq: under the Abbasid caliphs (750–1258), Basra and Baghdad were the largest slave markets. Iraqi planters worked the Zanj on the southern marshes. Egypt: Cairo was the end point of the Nile and Darfur caravan routes ("the road of forty days"). The Mamluk sultans (1250–1517) were themselves ex-slave soldiers who kept buying Turkish and Circassian boys. North Africa (the Maghreb): Arab tribes arrived in the 7th century and again in the 11th, when the Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym migrated west. They mixed with the Berbers. Arab and Berber merchants in Fez, Marrakesh, Tripoli and Kairouan financed the trans-Saharan caravans. Mauritania and the Western Sahara: Hassaniya Arabs, from the Banu Hassan tribes, dominated the western Saharan routes. Slavery lasted longest here. Sudan: Arabic-speaking Sudanese traders called jallaba, including Ja'aliyin and Baggara tribesmen, raided and traded in the southern Sudan in the 19th century. Zubayr Pasha, the biggest of them, ran a private slave empire in Bahr el Ghazal. The Barbary corsairs are the odd case. They sailed from Arab-ruled ports, but their crews and captains were mostly Ottoman Turks, Berbers, Moriscos expelled from Spain, and European converts to Islam. In short, the Arab slave traders started out from Arabia, Iraq and Egypt. Over time, the trade spread to Arabic speakers across North Africa, the Sahara, Sudan and the East African coast. Have a nice evening as you reconsider your ancestors.

#UCRANIA comienza a usar exoesqueletos en el frente . Soldados con armazon antidrones se empezaran a ver en combate real

MacroVoices @ErikSTownsend & @PatrickCeresna welcome Michael Every @TheMichaelEvery. They discuss how escalating Iran–Middle East and Russia–Ukraine conflicts are weaponizing energy markets, why a looming global diesel crunch could fracture the “one-world” oil system into U.S.-led regional blocs, and how Washington may increasingly use tools like export bans, Arctic basing rights, and even dollar stablecoins as instruments of geopolitical statecraft against China and other rivals. bit.ly/4iRZKlX

It's an outrage that foreign tech company's agent can hack one of our key health care agencies - and that we only learn about it months later when the US tech company bothers to email our government. The PM already knew of this incident last week when he refused in Question Time to consider improving the powers of the AI Safety Institute. We need to move quickly to increase the AI Safety Institute's ability to keep us safe, and to legislate national protections and limits around AI, our privacy and our data. theguardian.com/australia-ne…

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese denies explicitly linking Labor’s censorship regime to combating “misinformation and disinformation”, despite saying exactly that 24 hours ago in remarks that remain unpublished on his website.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese informs a UN Panel that his Digital Duty of Care push to censor Australian social media is needed because “misinformation” is moving Australians away from the centrist politics towards the “extremes” of the left and the right.

The BBC:- “A Transgender Women’s Milk is just as good for Babies as Breast Milk” New UK PM Andy Burnham wants to stop Misinformation & Disinformation - perhaps he should start with the UK’s State Broadcaster

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says he’ll effectively ignore the Trump Administration’s concerns over online censorship under Australia’s Digital Duty of Care, insisting it’s not about government control but giving people control over their devices.

USA! USA! USA!

I received this message about this headline: (shared with permission) “Hi Sall, in case you find the below of interest; What little media reported it, wrongly attributed it to ‘all female’ however it was instigated by a TiM in the Women’s change room last week who was confronted by a pregnant woman. Man then pushed pregnant woman to the ground. Two female staff members were then assaulted by the man, with at least one punched. Rather than address the misogyny at hand, council scrap the entire Women only swimming sessions.”

Women don't wage violence but men do!

💥WILD TIMES: A women's peace group wants to disarm the Canadian Armed Forces because it poses a grave threat to the climate—and women. It's impossible to take these people seriously.

I take it back. This is a SUPERB piece by @matthewsyed. I have made almost exactly the same argument elsewhere. In my view, we will eventually look back on the British governments of 2010 to the present in much the same way we now look back on the governments of the 1930s. The failure has been that profound. That is why I am so angry with them. Like Syed, I am a classical liberal. Yet our successive British leaders have failed to do what was necessary to defend the peace, prosperity and political order they inherited at the end of the Cold War. Shame on all of them.