Nicholas Dawes Profile picture
Executive Director at @TheCityNY. Boards: @amaBhungane, @CodaStory @bhekisisa_MG: NYC, Journalism, local news, occasional reminders of South Africa and India
Sep 26 4 tweets 2 min read
For over a year, our team at @THECITYNY has been investigating questions surrounding Eric Adam's fundraising, and providing detailed original reporting. Now, this: thecity.nyc/2024/09/25/eri… We've also provided the most detailed insight available into what is going on and might happen next: thecity.nyc/2024/09/17/wha…
Jul 4, 2021 13 tweets 4 min read
How did a proponent of the white genocide myth, and spokesperson for the South African hard right get into the US despite Covid travel restrictions? Was he granted a National Interest Exemption? If so, why? Ernst Roets has already been on Tucker's show once, feeding the white rage machine with tales from South Africa. Not hard to guess what he is here for now huffingtonpost.co.uk/2018/05/16/afr…
Jul 3, 2021 4 tweets 1 min read
Please send your holiday weekend prayers, subscription checks, donations and love to New York local reporters who just got an unexpected dump of election results. These are partial results mind you, and may change when absentee ballots are included, but they still have to be pored over deep into what should be the post-game of a ridiculous week.
Apr 7, 2021 4 tweets 2 min read
Some of us are old enough to remember when the push to end the tax race-to-the-bottom came from leftish technocratic leaders in the global south. If the west gets there 15 years later, I guess the destination is what matters. reut.rs/3fNxCj7 Within the US, the reinstatement of the SALT deduction is one of the few tools the Biden administration has to blunt the impact of tax competition on states with more redistributive budgets and give them policy space. Will Yellen bring this thinking home? thecity.nyc/2021/4/5/22369…
Dec 16, 2020 14 tweets 4 min read
Some ... personal news: thecity.nyc/pages/the-city… New York City must navigate the pandemic, and recovery efforts, while battling compound pre-existing conditions: racial injustice, inequality, and climate vulnerability. Local accountability journalism will make all the difference in the world to the shape we emerge in.
Dec 13, 2020 4 tweets 1 min read
Facebook's internal human rights team has designated India a "tier 1" risk for harm to vulnerable populations. But the company is not prepared to protect its staff against the consequences of deplatforming the Bajrang Dal, or take the business hit. wsj.com/articles/in-in… The Bajrang Dal make the Proud Boys look like a knitting circle
Jul 13, 2020 10 tweets 2 min read
The Press Trust of India, @PTI_News, roughly India’s AP, may not be a bastion of accountability journalism, but it is a crucial institution providing news from across the country. Now it faces a campaign of intimidation from the Modi government. (Short thread) On June 25, with tensions running high over clashes at the Sino-Indian border, PTI published this typically anodyne interview with the Chinese ambassador: ptinews.com/news/11592287_…
Jul 6, 2020 11 tweets 2 min read
“Even before COVID-19, we squandered a decade in the fight against poverty, with misplaced triumphalism blocking the very reforms that could have prevented the worst impacts of the pandemic” a stinging final report from ⁦@PhilipGAlstonchrgj.org/2020/07/05/phi… From the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, at the end of his 6-year term, this is both a critique and manifesto for very specific change in the way the global poverty reduction agenda is framed, measured, and pursued
Dec 10, 2019 11 tweets 2 min read
We are going to see a lot of “worst decade ever” takes over the next 3 weeks. And to be fair, taking the tally on #HumanRightsDay is pretty bleak. But there is another story. At the beginning of the decade, protests swept across Iran and much of the Arab world, Russia too. Today, repression has escalated where resistance flourished, and devastating wars grind on.
Sep 11, 2019 8 tweets 2 min read
One day, perhaps, people will pause in their celebration of Koos Bekker’s genius, to ask whether the Tencent investment liberated Naspers from its apartheid legacy, or built on a culture of media collaboration with repression, taking it digital and global Did decades as a pillar of the apartheid propaganda machine represent a weight the new Naspers had to overcome, or a set of competences in collaboration that served it well as the Chinese state built the machinery of algorithmic authoritarianism, helped by companies like Tencent?
May 28, 2019 4 tweets 2 min read
Julius Malema has pinned this tweet calling on his supporters to attack @PaulivW and @dailymaverick. It may be couched to skirt Twitter's ToS, but make no mistake: delegitimization, harassment, physical threats, these are old tools of intimidation algorithmically supercharged. Women, particularly journalists and politicians, face disproportionate levels of online harassment and abuse. wired.com/story/amnesty-…
May 2, 2019 6 tweets 3 min read
Alogrithms of repression: how reverse engineering a Chinese policing app gave us a glimpse inside Xinjiang's hyper-surveillance system: hrw.org/video-photos/i… Used more electricity than usual? That's a flag for investigation