Day: September 16, 2023

Fourteen people on a small jet died when the plane crashed in Brazil’s northern Amazonas state on Saturday, the state’s governor said.

The accident took place in the Barcelos province, some 400 km (248 miles) from the state capital, Manaus.

“I deeply regret the death of the 12 passengers and two crew members who were victims of the plane crash in Barcelos on Saturday,” said Wilson Lima, Governor of Amazonas state on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Our teams have been working from the outset to provide the necessary support. My sympathy and prayers go out to their families and friends.”

The Manaus Aerotaxi airline issued a statement confirming that there had been an accident and that it was investigating but offering no details about deaths or injuries.

“We count on respect for the privacy of those involved at this difficult time and will be available to provide all necessary information and updates as the investigation progresses,” the statement said.

The Brazilian Air Force (FAB) said in a statement that investigators from the Accident Investigation and Prevention Center (CENIPA) had been called in to begin an investigation into the reasons for the crash of the small aircraft, an Embraer Bandeirante with the registration PT-SOG.

In an interview with O Globo newspaper, Governor Lima said that the bodies had already been removed from the aircraft and that the victims were Brazilian tourists.

Lima also added that the region faces heavy rainfall and the most likely cause of the accident was an error in the route taken at the time of landing.

Thousands rallied in Australia on Sunday to support recognising the country’s Indigenous people in the constitution, a proposal that is struggling ahead of a referendum next month.

If approved on Oct. 14, the measure would enshrine Indigenous people in the constitution and set up an advisory body to give Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people input on policies that affect them.

Indigenous Australians, who account for 3.8% of the population, face disadvantages including discrimination, poor health and education outcomes and high incarceration rates.

But the “Voice to Parliament” proposal appeared on track for defeat, a poll showed last week, the fifth monthly survey in a row to find voters against the change.

Yes23, the group behind “Walk for Yes” events, said around 20,000 people attended in Brisbane, Australia’s third-biggest city, with rallies scheduled in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Hobart, Canberra, Darwin and Newcastle.

Many attendees wore T-shirts and held placards emblazoned “Vote Yes!”, Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) footage showed.

To change the constitution, the referendum, backed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor government, would require a national majority in favour and majorities in at least four of Australia’s six states.

Most Indigenous people favour the referendum, but some, like prominent No campaigner Warren Mundine, say it is a distraction from achieving practical and positive outcomes and would not fully resolve the issues affecting them.

“If we can do just three things – accountability, jobs and education – then we’ll resolve most of the problems we’ve got,” Mundine told ABC.

Since Australian independence in 1901, only eight of 44 proposals for constitutional change have been approved.

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Fourteen people were killed Saturday when a plane crashed in the Brazilian Amazon while attempting to land in stormy weather in the popular tourist town of Barcelos. There were no survivors, officials said. 

The small plane’s pilot was approaching the town in heavy rain, with low visibility, and appeared to inadvertently start his landing mid-runway, Amazonas state security secretary Vinicius Almeida told a news conference. 

The plane ran out of landing strip and crashed, killing all 12 passengers and two crew, he said. 

Initial investigations indicated the passengers were all Brazilian men traveling to the region for sport fishing, the state government said in a statement. 

“Our teams have been on the ground responding since the moment of the crash to provide the necessary support,” Governor Wilson Lima wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “My solidarity and prayers to the victims’ family and friends.” 

Media reports showed the small white plane belly-down on a dirt track, its front end crumpled into the dense vegetation to the side. 

The plane was an EMB-110, a twin-engine turboprop manufactured by Brazilian aircraft-maker Embraer. 

The plane was on its way from the state capital, Manaus, to Barcelos, about a 90-minute flight. 

Officials said two aircraft approaching Barcelos around the same time had to turn back to Manaus because of the weather. 

The Brazilian air force and police will investigate the crash, authorities said. 

Initial news reports had said the U.S. nationals were believed to be on the plane, but Amazonas officials said preliminary investigations indicated all the victims were Brazilian. 

Officials said the victims’ bodies would be taken to the state capital Sunday to be identified. 

Traveling sooner was impossible as take-offs and landings at night are not permitted in the region, they said. 

“An air force aircraft will leave Manaus tomorrow around 5 a.m.” local time with investigators and emergency officials, Almeida said. 

“The expectation is that tomorrow we’ll be able to bring the bodies to Manaus and immediately take them for forensics and then release them to the families,” he said. 

Located on the Rio Negro, an Amazon tributary, Barcelos is bordered by several national parks and other protected areas. 

This is peak season for fishing in the region, a popular spot for catching tropical river species such as the “tucunare,” or peacock bass. 

Mandarin Chinese is reportedly the most difficult language to learn. Japanese and Arabic round out the top three. Italian and Spanish are known as more easy to pick up. So is Norwegian. But there is a language out there that I think is even easier. It is actually English (sort of) but consists of very few words, and this language is only spoken by — wait for it — one “person” in this whole world. Donald Trump. And this language is “Trump-speak.”

This mystical language consists of the smallest vocabulary of any language ever. Let’s take a look at some of the words:

Witch-hunt.

Rigged.

Deep state.

Person, woman, man, camera TV.

Bleach.

Thug.

Your favorite President.

Bigly.

I won.

See how easy this Trump-speak is?

Only now two new sentences can be added to this vibrant and soothing language. Let’s take a look at them.

“I know this. I don’t even know this.”

Spectacular! These words make so much sense, do they not? And they were spoken by his royal moron himself.

Trump said this in response to a question about responding to subpoenas. And Lawrence O’Donnell lovingly pointed it out on his show Thursday night: “I know this. I don’t even know this.”

Which is it, Donnie? In reality, Trump DOESN’T KNOW what he’s talking about. He doesn’t know when to shut up. The only thing Trump DOES appear to know is how to be an insurrectionist, and he failed at that, too.

It really would be nice if more media commented on the fact that Donald Trump does not seem to be able to string two sentences together these days. This absurd statement proves it. It also proves: Trump in disarray.

The post Donald Trump has no idea what he’s even trying to say anymore appeared first on Palmer Report.

In a newly released civil trial deposition, Donald Trump reportedly bragged about how much money he could sell his remaining properties for if he wanted to. It sure sounds like his babysitters have prepped him for the eventuality of his holdings getting liquidated in the Letitia James civil trial.

This way, when multiple Trump properties are seized and/or sold off as a result of the trial, Trump’s babysitters can lead him to believe that he sold them off for a profit. They’re prepping him for it already. And he’s so far gone, he’ll just accept that story as being real.

As always, the key part of the story is just how far gone Trump is cognitively. Based on how he now comes off in his public appearances, he seems to be at a point where his babysitters could probably convince him of anything. That now apparently includes convincing him that his properties aren’t being forcibly sold off as part of liquidation, but are instead being sold off because he’s a financial genius. Anything to soften the blow on his way down.

The post Donald Trump’s handlers appear to be preparing him for the liquidation of his properties appeared first on Palmer Report.

As far as I’m concerned, this latest Lauren Boebert scandal is wonderful news. Any time these Republican politicians slip up and reveal their true selves in this kind of blatantly obvious way, we get to use it against them. Boebert’s Democratic opponent Adam Frisch is already capitalizing on the scandal, as he should.

But even with Boebert’s worsening scandals, her 2024 race with Democrat Adam Frisch is going to be very close. It’s a Republican-leaning district by seven points, so even with Boebert’s crappiness and Adam Frisch’s excellence, it’ll still come down to a point or two. We’re going need to get behind Frisch big time.

If you have money, donate it to Adam Frisch. If you have time, sign up to do an online volunteer shift with Frisch. If you don’t have time or money to spare, you can still help meaningfully just by sharing Frisch’s Twitter or Facebook posts to your followers. Even if you only have 25 friends or followers on social media, and you share Frisch’s fundraising link and one of them makes a donation, it’ll mean you just raised money for Frisch. There’s always a way for you to make a difference.

Close elections don’t win themselves. Even the best of candidates can’t win a competitive election without your help. Yes you, the person reading this. If you don’t step up and make sure someone like Adam Frisch wins by a point instead of losing by a point, who will? If you truly want Lauren Boebert gone from office, here’s your chance to prove it. And let’s keep in mind that the Frisch vs Boebert race could end up single handedly deciding the House majority for the next two years.

The post Lauren Boebert’s worsening scandal just raised the 2024 stakes big time appeared first on Palmer Report.

Ukrainian forces made progress Saturday in their offensive against Russian troops in the east and south, a military spokesperson said, as the two militaries disputed who controlled the village of Andriivka. 

General Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s land forces, posted a video to Telegram showing a scorched, desolate landscape that he said proved his forces had captured the village.  

Andriivka is unrecognizable, a correspondent for Ukraine’s Hromadske radio said. It is “so badly destroyed that soldiers do not even know where to place the pole with the Ukrainian flag,” Yanina Lvutina said on the radio’s website. 

Ukraine considers Andriivka crucial to regaining the nearby, also-destroyed city of Bakhmut. 

Russia’s Defense Ministry disputed Ukraine’s claim to Andriivka. Reuters was unable to verify either battlefield report. 

Meanwhile, airstrike alarms sounded at midday throughout Ukraine as the country’s military warned of the threat of ballistic attacks on population centers, including Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and the Zaporizhzhia, and Odesa regions.  

A series of blasts were reported in the Kharkiv region, although information on casualties or damage was not immediately available.  

Also Saturday, Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov told Reuters that Ukraine’s drone production has increased by more than 100 times since last year.   

Ukraine is also testing artificial intelligence systems, he said, that can detect targets kilometers away, as well as guide drones despite disruptions from electronic warfare measures. 

“There will be more drones, more attacks, and fewer Russian ships. That’s for sure,” he said, noting the recent attacks on Russian naval targets in the Black Sea. 

‘We’ve made significant progress’

In his nightly video address on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked his nation’s allies for their continued support in the fight against the Russian invasion. 

“This week, we’ve made significant progress in implementing existing defense agreements and other support packages,” he said. 

“Denmark, thank you for the new defense package, which is already the 12th package. Equipment, ammunition, and missiles for our air defense,” he said. “Germany, thank you for the new batch of military aid. Belgium, your participation in our pilot training is approved. Thank you! Norway, your decision to provide additional funding for Ukraine’s recovery. It’s crucial. Thank you!”   

He also singled out the United States and South Korea for their support. 

President Joe Biden will host Zelenskyy in Washington on Thursday in their third meeting at the White House.  

British warn of cruise missiles

Finally, in its daily intelligence update Saturday, the British Defense Ministry warned of the “realistic possibility” that Russia will resume using air-launched cruise missiles against Ukrainian infrastructure targets in the winter.   

The ministry said Russia has likely created a “significant stockpile” of the missiles, since open-source reports indicate that Russia began reducing its use of the missiles in April. 

The report also said the missiles “were at the heart” of most strike missions that Russia launched against Ukraine’s national energy infrastructure between last October and March. They allowed Russia to release munitions “from deep within Russian territory.”  

Some information in this article came from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 

Is it too late now for Shannon O’Brien to save her latest hack job by finally showing us her tattoo the way she promised back in 2002?

The state weed czar walked the plank Friday in a pre-Hurricane Lee news dump.

Ironically, she got whacked a day after the guy who defeated her in that 2002 governor’s fight, Mitt Romney, cashed in his chips before his new voters in Utah could give him the same bum’s rush down the steps.

All in all, it was a very bad week for the political protected classes in Boston. Seriously, who could have ever dreamed that Kendra Lara and Ricky Ricardo Arroyo would get fired before Chaim Bloom?

You ask, what did all these pampered pukes have in common, other than a breathtaking sense of entitlement?

They were all creations of the Boston Globe, Mitt perhaps less so than the others. But still, he always groveled before them, hoping to overcome his original sin of being a straight white male Republican who went to church on Sundays.

That’s why Willard marched in those phony-baloney BLM parades in 2020 — with a mask yet! It was to be his baptism into… wokeness.

Go woke, go broke. Now Mitt has sadly learned the same lesson as Transheuser Busch and Disney.

But Romney did do us one small favor stopping Shannon O’Brien from becoming governor in 2002. Likewise, she had earlier done us a solid by knocking off an unspeakable hack in the primary that year — Robert Reich.

The bow-tied bum kissers had preferred Robert Reich because he was, well, you know what he was. They felt sorry for the 59-inch-high egghead but in the primary he came up a little short, as it were.

When Reich didn’t rise to the occasion, the Globe immediately began non-stop gushing over Shannon O’Brien. She may have been a fourth-generation hack married to a drunk-driving ex-state rep. But when a race comes down to two honkies, all that matters is who’s got the right plumbing.

And she did have that tattoo that she bragged about in the Halloween debate.

Now Shannon has been “suspended” with pay from her $181,722-a-year job at the Weed Commission. In other words, the unemployable 64-year-old is now on vacation to fatten (bad word when discussing Shannon) her monthly kiss in the mail.

Shannon had been in the marijuana grift before she decided to return to the hack racket. Since she’d once been state treasurer, she expected to be put back on the dole by the current female state treasurer.

The Beatles got high with a little help from their friends. Shannon got high up with a little help from her friends.

Even more entertaining was the crash of two of the Globe’s pampered pets on the City Council — Lara Kendra (or is it Hicks today?) and Ricky Ricardo Arroyo. After their ignominious beatings, grief counselors confiscated belts and shoe laces from broken-hearted, suicidal Globe trust-funders.

Lara went out with a little class — very little. Conceding at Brendan Behan’s, she guzzled beer, dropped f-bombs and then downed a shot of tequila. Finally, she was joined in mourning by Ricky Ricardo, who was described by a credulous scribe as her “colleague and childhood friend.”

That’s one way of putting it, I suppose.

In the final days, it had fallen to one of the Globe’s countless check-the-box scribes to rationalize Comrade Lara’s life of crime. About not having a driver’s license — “she had ample time to get her license renewed — 10 years, to be exact.”

The drifter scribe grudgingly acknowledged, “Yes, (she) broke the rules but did so because of life’s circumstances.”

In her case, life’s circumstances had taught Kendra that as a “victim” she could absolutely get away with anything — rabid anti-Semitism, driving like an illegal alien, squatting in public housing, a social media presence that would make Susanna Gibson blush, etc.

Kendra said her defeat means she’s been “promoted to activist.” Which community she plans to be an “activist” in — JP or Somerville — remains to be seen.

Whatever, it’s doubtful Kendra’s new gig will pay $103,500 a year, her Council salary that would have been raised in January to $115,000. On the bright side, she can now move back into public (meaning, free) housing.

As for Ricky Ricardo Arroyo, I think his ouster was an even worse blow to the Globe than Lara’s. He was the latest beneficiary of the Globe’s tradition of unctuously slobbering over dodgy Democrat disgraces, the sleazier the better.

Consider the Globe Hall of Shame: serial pederasts Gerry Studds and Dave Scondras, cradle-robbing, gay hack Stanley Rosenberg, Dianne the bra-stuffer Wilkerson and the Globe’s now-indicted “Bostonian of the Year” Monica Cannon-Grant.

And don’t forget another of their longtime crushes, disgraced ex-US Attorney “Racial” Rollins, who last year conspired with Ricky Ricardo to fix the DA’s race by leaking fake stories to… wait for it… the Boston Globe.

After Ricky Ricardo was beaten like a rented mule, the Globe sent him on his crooked way with yet another wet big kiss. They even described him as a part of a political “dynasty” — which I guess means his father Felix “No Show” Arroyo and his slimy brother Felix Jr., known as “Third Rail” for his conduct around women at City Hall.

No wonder the Globe swooned over the Arroyos — they regarded them as Puerto Rican Kennedys.

Don’t worry, though, the Globe and the rest of the ruined Boston media still have plenty of Democrat rear-ends to smooch. Take city councilor Julia Mejia — please.

The Globe absolutely adores her: “She has emerged as a valuable voice on the Council.”

The valuable voice’s most memorable statement as a city councilor was delivered on YouTube, as a message to her Mass & Cass constituency:

“For those who are wondering if I am using drugs, answer is definitely no.”

Not that a habit would necessarily be a bad thing for a local pol these days.

I mean, if you can’t brag about a lesbian sister, or a (closeted) gay uncle who raised you back in some Third World hellhole before you flopped into Boston as an illegal alien on welfare, probably drug addiction would be the next best qualification for high (get it?) office.

Now, if Shannon O’Brien will just finally show us her tattoo…

Order Howie’s new book, “Paper Boy: Read All About It!” at howiecarrshow.com or amazon.com.

City Councilors Kendra Lara, Ricardo Arroyo and Brian Worrell dig in on a redistricting map in May. (Chris Christo/Boston Herald)

Shannon O’Brien (Herald file photo)

The disappearance of China’s defence minister, the latest in a string of upheavals in the country’s top ranks, is stoking uncertainty about President Xi Jinping’s rule as an internal security clampdown trumps international engagement.

The growing unpredictability could affect the confidence other countries place in the leadership of the world’s second-biggest economy, diplomats and analysts say.

Defence Minister Li Shangfu, who has missed meetings including with at least one foreign counterpart since he was last seen in late August, is under investigation in a corruption probe into military procurement, Reuters reported on Friday.

Newly installed Foreign Minister Qin Gang vanished with scant explanation in July, the same month as an abrupt shake-up of the military’s elite Rocket Force, which oversees China’s nuclear arsenal.

As Xi, China’s commander-in-chief has focussed inward, he caused concern among foreign diplomats this month by missing a Group of 20 summit in India, the first time he has skipped the global leaders’ gathering in his decade in power.

Faced with the growing uncertainties, some diplomats and analysts are calling for a hard look at the true nature of Xi’s regime.

“Clear-eyed assessments are needed – this isn’t just a question of whether China is a partner or a competitor, it is a source of economic, political and military risk,” said Drew Thompson, a former Pentagon official who is now a scholar at the National University of Singapore.

Due to a lack of transparency surrounding the changes, various explanations were plausible “and this feeds the crisis of confidence that is brewing around China,” Thompson said.

China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

Regarding Defence Minister Li’s disappearance and investigation, a ministry spokeswoman told reporters on Friday she was not aware of the situation. The State Council and Defence Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

Since his appointment in March, Li has been the public face of China’s expanding military diplomacy, expressing concern over U.S. military operations during a high-profile security conference in June and visiting Russia and Belarus in August.

He had been expected to host an international security meeting in Beijing in October and represent the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) at a meeting in November of regional defence chiefs in Jakarta.

With corruption long permeating China’s military and state institutions, some analysts and diplomats believe Xi’s anti-graft crackdowns mark political purges across the Communist Party.

“Regardless of the reason… the sense that this could keep happening could have an impact on foreign actors’ confidence in engaging with their Chinese counterparts,” said Helena Legarda, lead analyst with the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin.

The Li upheaval is unusual for its speed and its reach into Xi’s hand-picked elites.

“This is all so sudden and opaque. One thing we can now see is that proximity does not equate to patronage in Xi’s world,” said Singapore-based security analyst Alexander Neill, an adjunct fellow with Hawaii’s Pacific Forum think-tank.

Although not in a direct command position, Li serves on Xi’s seven-person Central Military Commission and is one of China’s five state councillors, a cabinet position that outranks regular ministers. Some scholars believe he is close to General Zhang Youxia, who sits above him on the commission and is Xi’s closest ally in the PLA.

Li, sanctioned by Washington in 2018 for an arms deal with Russia, shunned a meeting with U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin at Singapore’s Shangri-la Dialogue security conference in June, where a handshake marked their closest interaction.

Austin and other U.S. officials are keen to resume high-level talks between the two militaries regional tensions roil. But Beijing counters that it wants Washington to be less assertive in the Asia-Pacific.

Regional envoys say deeper Chinese military diplomacy is vital, particularly with the U.S. but also with other powers, as China increasingly deploys forces around Taiwan – the democratically governed island it claims – and across disputed parts of the East and South China Seas.

If Li’s fate “reflects Xi’s increasingly inward focus, it is not good for those of us who want greater openness and lines of communications with China’s military,” said one Asian diplomat.

As the PLA has an unprecedented level of military engagements with Southeast Asian forces this year, the recent swift changes back in Beijing “spur speculation and some concern about the continuity of policy”, said political scientist Ja Ian Chong at the National University of Singapore.

“A shake-up of the military at this time is likely to draw attention, given the heightened activity of the PLA near Taiwan and the East China Sea, as well as stepped-up paramilitary activity in the South China Sea, since such actions create potential risk of accidents, escalation and crises,” Chong said.

Such is the apparent state of the isolated and increasingly desperate ethnic Armenian enclave in Nagorno-Karabakh, whose 120,000 people are enduring what local authorities and a host of international experts describe as a blockade at the hands of Azerbaijan, the country within which the territory sits. Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought multiple wars over Nagorno-Karabakh after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the advent of their independent nation-states. Though recognized by the international community as part of Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh and some areas surrounding it have been governed for decades by a separatist ethnic Armenian entity.

For the entirety of this year, Azerbaijan has restricted movement along the Lachin corridor, the sole route connecting Armenia directly to the enclave, which Armenians refer to as Artsakh. The restrictions intensified this summer, with the International Committee of the Red Cross unable to deliver humanitarian assistance to the region and trucks with hundreds of tons of supplies stranded on the roads. The plight of the afflicted communities led Luis Moreno Ocampo, a former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, to publish an opinion earlier this month determining that the conditions of starvation inflicted on the enclave’s ethnic Armenians was an act of genocide. He cited an article in the Genocide Convention that referred to “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.”

“The idea of genocide is not just about killing, but about removing people from the land,” Moreno Ocampo told me during a phone call this week. In his report, he wrote: “There are no crematories, and there are no machete attacks. Starvation is the invisible genocide weapon. Without immediate dramatic change, this group of Armenians will be destroyed in a few weeks.”

On Wednesday, the situation was discussed at an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council. Various officials, including U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, called on Azerbaijan to “restore free movement through the corridor.” Armenian foreign minister Ararat Mirzoyan said the deprivation imposed on the enclave was a form of warfare that would lead to the “ethnic cleansing of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.”

That sentiment was echoed in Washington by a handful of U.S. lawmakers. “Azerbaijan’s systematic ethnic cleansing of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh through a large-scale and unprovoked invasion is unconscionable,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) told me, referring to the territory seized by Azerbaijan during a lopsided six-week war in 2020 that saw thousands die. “Particularly egregious is their weaponization of the blockade to starve the people of Nagorno-Karabakh and block humanitarian assistance.”

Responding to these charges, Yashar Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s U.N. envoy, described talk of a blockade as “unfounded and groundless allegations” and said his government was subject to an Armenian “campaign” to “manipulate and mislead the international community.” Officials in Baku claim that the restrictions on movement along the Lachin corridor, which is supposed to be administered by Russian peacekeepers, are necessary to stop, among other things, the illicit supply of arms from Armenia into the enclave. They point to the intransigence of the de facto authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh, who have refused the delivery of supplies through an alternate eastern road from Azerbaijan.

“An administration of occupation is blocking the Azerbaijani government’s provision of food and medicine to an Azerbaijani region. Tellingly, nowhere in the Ocampo report is this mentioned,” wrote Hikmet Hajiyev, top foreign affairs adviser to Azerbaijan’s long-ruling President Ilham Aliyev. “Claiming they are under threat while engineering a crisis to galvanize the international community’s support is intended to convince the world that Azerbaijanis and Armenians cannot live together, as we once did.”

The impasse reflects the profound gulf between the two sides. Some analysts believe that Azerbaijan, wealthier and reinforced by Turkish and Israeli arms, is pressing its considerable advantage with the world distracted by the war in Ukraine to apply intolerable pressure on the separatist enclave in its midst. Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in rounds of negotiations over a lasting peace settlement that would normalize ties and find an acceptable accommodation over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh.

But the current crisis has highlighted the existential fears and deep-seated enmities felt on both sides. As Armenians around the world raised the alarm over the plight of blockaded Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijani media focused on the discovery of a mass grave of Azerbaijani people in the city of Shusha, dating back to the battles of the 1990s and the area’s occupation by ethnic Armenian forces. The city was “liberated” by Azerbaijan in the brief 2020 war, which saw Baku’s forces seize significant swaths of territory captured by Armenian troops in the earlier phase of the conflict.

Now, some ethnic Armenians who fled Shusha — known to Armenians as Shushi — in 2020 find themselves in even more dire straits. One of those is Alvina Nersesyan, a resident of the enclave and mother, who briefed reporters on a virtual call organized by Armenian officials on Thursday. She described the “fearful” bread lines in Stepanakert, the enclave’s de facto capital, known in Azerbaijan as Khankendi, and lamented that she doesn’t “even say the words for sweets anymore,” lest she upset her deprived children who are “too small to understand the situation.”

The immediate hardships are recognized by diplomats elsewhere. “Access to food, medicine, baby formula and energy should never be held hostage,” Thomas-Greenfield said Wednesday. “We urge the government of Azerbaijan to restore free movement through the corridor.”

“U.S. officials believe that Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh are managing to survive only because of backyard gardens and other home-produced food,” wrote Post columnist David Ignatius. “They fear that within two months, as winter approaches, the population could face starvation. Armenians dread a repetition of the Ottoman genocide of 1915, an ever-present historical memory for Armenians around the world.”

Moreno Ocampo summoned that deep, bitter history, noting that hundreds of thousands of Armenians who perished more than a century ago were driven from their homes by Ottoman forces and left to die of hunger. “Starvation was the weapon of the genocide in 1915 and now Azerbaijan is using starvation against Armenians,” he told me. “It’s tragic but history is repeating, and that’s why humanity has to react.”