Power to da Ppl ✊🏾

[Power to da Ppl ✊🏾 @Qadeer_P]

#FirstTake today is 3 Black men telling a white man to conform to the system. And the lone white man telling them not to trust the system.

🤦🏾‍♂️🤦🏾‍♂️🤦🏾‍♂️🤦🏾‍♂️

[the purpose of a system is what it does @PushaStee]

“Equality (uniformity, conformity, likeness) and liberation (deliverance, emancipation, freedom) are not the same.”

Read that 5 times, then 5 more again

[Leah Goodridge @leahfrombklyn]

Deed theft is not an aberration. It’s happening in mostly Black neighborhoods and it has increased by 240% between 2023 and 2025 alone.

So YES a moratorium on these evictions is necessary!

https://t.co/v9E1a45lsu

[Power to da Ppl ✊🏾 @Qadeer_P]

Reading material…

[K.Diallo ☭ @nyeusi_waasi]

A collection of important PDF books on Iran's political, social, and economic history.

"Capitalism and Revolution in Iran" by Bizhan Jazani.

https://t.co/fUYH9o5J1G

"Call to Arms: Iran's Marxist Revolutionaries: Formation and Evolution of the Fada'is, 1964–1976" by Ali Rahnema

https://t.co/j69Tf7smMF

"A history of modern Iran" by Ervand Abrahamian.

https://t.co/WWsbyootPp

"The Iranian Revolution Turns Thirty"

https://t.co/Ed3rYOi9iT

[Markus Batchelor @MarkusforDC]

Hey, family: My cousin Tre has been missing since the end of last week and we need your help to bring him home. Please share with your DC friends and family.

If you see or have any information about where he could be, contact us or MPD’s Youth and Family Division.

[unusual_whales @unusual_whales]

Twenty-one people, including a 60-year-old British tourist, have been charged under the United Arab Emirates’ cybercrime laws for filming and sharing videos of Iranian missile and drone attacks, per CNN

[Peter Agboola @baba_Omoloro]

FREE educational websites with thousands of courses:

https://t.co/Vid76wNXIb
https://t.co/arleMe2EJs
https://t.co/G5t2yQumyy
https://t.co/vwETThrJEi
https://t.co/XqdL6Oicuu

[Power to da Ppl ✊🏾 @Qadeer_P]

Reading - PDFs

[K.Diallo ☭ @nyeusi_waasi]

"Bankers and Empire : How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean" by Hudson, Peter James.

https://t.co/NsHer6bAYV

[Manolo De Los Santos @manolo_realengo]

Stand with the Cuban people and send solar panels and generators to keep Cuban hospitals running. Donate now at https://t.co/AT1cepZdhb

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86]

Everyone talks about Iranian oil in barrels. Nobody talks about what is inside them. That difference is why Western refineries have been running shadow networks through Dubai for twenty years to get it despite the sanctions.

Crude oil is not a uniform commodity. It is a spectrum of hydrocarbons with different molecular weights, and the composition of a given crude determines how easily it converts into the products refineries actually want to sell: gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, heating oil. The measurement that captures this is API gravity. Higher API gravity means lighter crude with shorter carbon chains, which means lower energy cost to crack, lower processing cost to refine, and higher yield of the light distillates that carry premium pricing. Lower API gravity means heavier crude requiring more energy, more processing steps, more capital equipment, and producing a higher share of lower-value residuals.

Iranian Light crude runs at 33 to 36 degrees API gravity with sulfur content between 1.36 and 1.5 percent. That is the refinery sweet spot. It is light enough to yield high fractions of gasoline and middle distillates without excessive processing costs, but heavy enough to produce the full range of products that complex refineries are designed to process. It is what petroleum engineers call an optimal blend crude.

Now compare the alternatives.

Venezuelan Merey heavy crude runs at approximately 16 degrees API gravity with sulfur between 3 and 5 percent. Refining it profitably requires a coking unit, a hydrocracker, and an extensive desulfurization train. The equipment exists. The economics work for refineries purpose-built around Venezuelan feedstock. It is not a substitute for Iranian crude. It is a different product requiring different industrial infrastructure.

US West Texas Intermediate runs at 39 to 40 degrees API with sulfur below 0.25 percent. In theory, the cleanest and easiest crude to process. In practice, it is so light that it does not yield the heavier middle distillates a complex refinery needs to run at full capacity. European and Asian refineries built around medium crudes cannot switch to WTI without blending it with heavier crudes to achieve the molecular weight distribution their process units require. WTI is not a drop-in replacement for Iranian medium.

Iranian oil fits where both US shale and Venezuelan heavy do not. It is the liquid that flows through the middle of the global refining system without requiring either the coking infrastructure for heavy crudes or the blending operations for ultra-light shale. That molecular fit is why it commands a persistent premium above comparable grades. It is why Indian refineries maintained Iranian crude purchases through every round of sanctions and negotiated the logistics to keep that flow moving. It is why the Dubai shadow banking and trading network that the UAE is now considering dismantling existed in the first place.

The Strait of Hormuz does not just carry oil. It carries the specific category of oil that the global refining system was built to process most efficiently. Closing it does not just reduce supply. It removes the grade of crude that the system runs best on and forces every refinery in the world to run less efficiently on whatever it can find as a substitute.

That is the premium embedded in the $82 oil price. Not just volume. Molecular weight.

https://t.co/ULBgEzZ3A8

[Ella Septima-Hamer @jbrous41]

Amazon ends USPS partnership after $9.5 billion loss, affecting 100,000 workers https://t.co/5FhPHovfjM

[Omar Hamad | عُـمَـرْ 𓂆 @OmarHamadD]

Perhaps it slips your mind that the crowds you see in the picture are not returning to anything — our homes and streets no longer exist. Everything has turned into emptiness, rubble upon sand. All that remains are the photos we’ve kept in our memories and on our phones, and a bit of love we’ve tucked away deep in our hearts to nurture our children with — a love for the soil of this land that knows our souls and our faces well.

We are not returning to our houses, but to resist all this injustice, to plant, to build, and to light up our homeland anew.
We return, carried by longing, walking tens of kilometers without feeling tired.

[philip lewis @Phil_Lewis_]

Former LSU wide receiver Kyren Lacy was nearly 100 yards behind a fatal crash that killed a 78 year-old man, a newly released video shows

Lacy took his own life days before he was set to appear before a grand jury
https://t.co/noknM27Qmz

[Muhammad Smiry 🇵🇸 @MuhammadSmiry]

A Palestinian girl shows her house before and during the "war" in Gaza.

[ҒβΔ GΩDDΣSS✨ΔΠDRΣΔ @FBAGoddess444]

14 girls have gone missing in DC in the month of June and there is nothing being said about it, help get out the word for each of these young ladies🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨
@EvaMarcille

[Power to da Ppl ✊🏾 @Qadeer_P]

@mainey_maine I took my nieces and little cousins on a Black history trip in the south a few years ago. While I saw the extreme bouts of poverty, access to public transportation is something I surely didn’t think about. Being from the NJ/NY area having that access has mitigated sines issues.

[Haymarket Books @haymarketbooks]

We made a class war reading list for you https://t.co/JUt0d5VHkv

[Rain Drops Media @Raindropsmedia1]

NYU student woke up to her college roommate urinating on her face, the morning after she texted her asking her to keep the noise down. 😳

[Mahmoud 🍉𝕏 @mahmoud60013]

Don’t skip me . Tasneem's eye is swelling up rapidly causing a puffiness under her innocent eye. It increases whenever she cries. The pain is merciless, the burning doesn't subside. Her tears turn into agony. Her face is filled with pimples and spots. The weather is making her condition worse, Tasneem is crying bitterly. Tasneem needs therapy. Tasneem is waiting for your touch. Share, donate, or pray for her. Her little heart deserves a life without pain.
https://t.co/fo8V75E2AX

[Unity of Fields @unityoffields]

🚨State repression against anti-imperialist organizers traveling to Cuba: "Devyn Elijah Springer, who goes by the pen name Musa, is a Black, Muslim, queer activist and journalist from the Atlanta area. On April 8, 2025, they were stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials at the Tampa International Airport on their way home from a trip to Cuba. They were detained and interrogated for hours about their political work and their associations with other prominent activists and scholars who, like Musa, have been outspoken advocates for Palestinian rights and critical of the U.S. government’s role in funding the Israeli military campaign in Gaza. CBP agents subjected Musa to invasive pat-downs, searched their luggage, and seized their phone and laptop. Musa refused to turn on the devices or give their passwords to CBP. @theCCR and co-counsel filed a motion in federal court in the Middle District of Florida seeking the immediate return of Musa’s electronic devices and copies of any information obtained from them."
https://t.co/gLeziYuCzj