afam

Software developer. Interested in coding, iterative improvement and meditation.

[Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده @RamAbdu]

Veteran journalist Mujahid Abu Mufleh, before and after his detention in the Israeli Auschwitz camps.

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

"[T]he problem the Free Press has with Parsi is not his alleged ties to the Iranian state (which is just a nonsensical conspiracy theory) but rather his real influence in Washington. Bari Weiss knows she is losing in the court of public opinion. Since she can’t effectively debate her ideological opponents, she prefers to deport them."

https://t.co/SNzOI0gf3X

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

There is now clear evidence that the Great Israeli Real Estate event had unlawful activity at it.

I've written to the Mayor of London to ask what he intends to do about it.

This needs to be escalated immediately.

[Doragonotoko @doragonotoko]

I'm so happy they're still doing stuff for Iyanu but damn is this show massively under marketed

[Politics Global @PolitlcsGlobal]

🚨🇸🇴 NEW: Somali referee Omar Artan, who was scheduled to referee at this summer’s World Cup, has been denied entry into the US

Artan was elected the best African referee of 2025 at the CAF awards

[@Romain_Molina]

[Halli @iamharaldur]

"Never again" they said, as they sat back and demanded no one interrupt while it happened again.

[Thomas Fazi @battleforeurope]

Crazy that this is getting barely any coverage. This year’s European Press Prize was just awarded to an investigative report by the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. It is entitled “What the Wounds Tell” and in it the journalists Maud Effting and Willem Feenstra document the cases of 114 children in Gaza under the age of 15 who were struck by a single bullet to the head or chest. Almost all of them died or were left severely disabled. They chose to document only the cases of boys and girls under the age of 15 (though often much younger: aged 3, 4 or 7) because these are children who can be immediately identified as such. “A single bullet in these parts of the body is a clear indication that these children were deliberately targeted“, the two journalists write.

This is the article: https://t.co/YkZrpqBWBQ

[David Fishman @pretentiouswhat]

This Economist article on China's solar industry has some problems.

I won't waste ink getting all hyperbolic about it. I'll just highlight the places where I think a healthy copy-edit could have helped the piece a lot. 🧵

[ruva🌼 @ruviexo]

I’m tired of ambitious MPs who want to be PM with no plans or vision. You can see all the Lab MPs scuttling around at the opportunity to tick off a career bucket list. It’s never about genuine change & what’s best for this country. It’s simply a promotion for them.

[afam @afamokoh]

At least we will be laughing on our way to hell

[Will @willglloyd]

One thing I reckon we are overlooking is that if Streeting wins is we’d be getting Nigerian woman vs bitchy gay guy at the dispatch boxes for the next few years. Absolutely a generational Parliament dynamic

[Will @willglloyd]

One thing I reckon we are overlooking is that if Streeting wins is we’d be getting Nigerian woman vs bitchy gay guy at the dispatch boxes for the next few years. Absolutely a generational Parliament dynamic

[Sam Dunning @samdunningo]

<<
The first evidence is arriving that Multipolarity Brief was correct to argue that China was far more resilient to the Hormuz Shock than Trump supporters often suggest. Two weeks ago, we detailed the seven points that led us to this conclusion. Briefly, they are: first, that China has diversified its imports away from the Strait, with only some 42% of its imports coming from the Gulf. Second, that China is a net exporter of refined products, and that by restricting exports, it could reduce the crude it needed to import. Third, that China has enormous stockpiles of crude: enough to last into autumn even if all oil had been cut off from the Gulf from the beginning of the conflict (which we know it wasn’t for China) and even if it failed to get replacement oil from elsewhere (which we know it can). In real terms, this means it could last well into next year, even without reordering its internal energy structure (unlikely) and even without demand destruction elsewhere in the world (already happening).

Fourth, that China has gigantic currency reserves, which would allow it to hoover up spare oil at whatever price for years. Fifth, that China is a leader in renewables and coal, giving it great flexibility in terms of re-ordering its internal energy structure. Sixth, that China’s economy is in a low-flationary or deflationary state, which affords its central bank more monetary policy room to mitigate the supply shock than western central banks, where inflation is a real issue. Seventh, that while China is no longer a Marxist-Maoist economy, the Communist Party has more command control over the levers of economic power than do western governments.

Now, the first evidence has arrived to support this thesis. Javier Blas, Bloomberg’s energy analyst, reports that China is significantly reducing its oil imports. He writes:

Over recent weeks, industry executives have noticed something odd: Chinese state-owned oil companies have been reselling some of their oil cargoes to European and Asian rivals. The behavior suggests surpluses — odd during a supply shortage.

[…]

Tanker-tracking data gives the same anomalous surplus signal. Vortexa, a commodity intelligence firm, estimates that China is buying just 8.2 million barrels a day of crude from overseas, down from a prewar level of around 11.7 million. The 3.5-million barrels a day swing almost matches the total consumption of Japan and is double the amount supplied by the United Arab Emirates pipeline that circumvents Hormuz

[…]

The import drop might make sense if Chinese commercial inventories were falling sharply, or if Beijing had tapped its strategic petroleum reserves. But neither is happening. Instead, commercial stockpiles have continued to increase in recent weeks, according to satellite data. What Beijing did was ban exports of refined products, effectively allowing refineries to process less crude to meet domestic demand. But the policy has now been reversed, suggesting the country sees enough fuel availability.

How is China doing this? Mr Blas crunches the numbers and rules out demand destruction. Instead, he suggests that China’s coal-to-petrochemicals industry is ramping up. This technology replaces crude oil with coal as the feedstock for plastics such as polyethylene, polypropylene and polyvinyl chloride. Mr Blas finds that these plants have been “have been running hard for the last 60 days, in turn reducing consumption of traditional feedstocks such as ethane and naphtha.”

>>

[Chłoddy @OfSymbols]

It’s so wacky that every single pundit just has to pretend they don’t get it.

[// @aggzzx]

His last line was such a dagger looool

[Michael Walsh @thatbloodyMikey]

I am so fucking tired of this Israel Occupied Government. Turn on the Telly &amp; you'll hear no solutions to rising Bills, Food costs or Cost of living.
All you'll get is this relentless, Manufactured bollocks to remove our rights &amp; Criminalise anyone Critical of Israel.

[LBC @LBC]

'You should be disqualified for retweeting something stupid but not for giving a prestigious diplomatic post to a friend of the worst paeodphile of our age?'

@lewis_goodall questions Labour's criticism of Zack Polanksi's response to the Golders Green attack.

[JewishVoiceForLiberation @JVoiceLiberatio]

There is no excuse for the stabbings today in Golders Green.
No matter how enraged anyone is by Israel's actions, this does not justify attacking random Jews on London's streets.
We hope the two victims make a full and speedy recovery

[Marl Karx @BareLeft]

Best possible thing for the Greens is to keep saying completely reasonable stuff and watching the political establishment crash out in performative and actual disagreement.

[Mohammad Alsaafin @malsaafin]

Breaks my brain that in 2026 there are still people writing essays and doing media appearances defending or denying or justifying this.

[Collingwood 🇬🇧 @admcollingwood]

The key insight to be gained here is that the US has been applying a unipolar foreign policy suite (and even sensemaking framework?) to a multipolar world. A good date for the end of the unipolar era and the beginning of multipolarity is 2014. That was the year that China surpassed the US in PPP GDP and when Russia drew a line in the sand on NATO enlargement. A year later, China had unveiled the Made in China 2025 programme and Russia had survived the (actually quite tough) sanctions (which probably did more damage to its economy than the current sanctions) applied for its annexation of Crimea.

There should have been a recognition (as there was in corners of academia and the commentariat, who were very clear in their predictions) that this meant the world was multipolar and that that required the United States to pursue a very different foreign policy. There should have been a high confidence (as there was in corners of academia and the commentariat, who were very clear on their predictions) that Made in China 2025 would succeed, and put China in a leadership position in several key economic sectors absent a US response, and that Russia could and would continue to resist efforts to draw Ukraine into the Western alliance in the face of even the greatest pressure the Western alliance could muster at an acceptable cost.

Instead, the same people who accelerated the onset of multipolarity to begin with—the neocons and liberal interventionists who managed in just 15 years to squander the most powerful relative position any great power has ever had in history—continued to dominate Washington's foreign policy making process.

What did America get out of this?

Russia pushed into the arms of Beijing, creating a hugely unfavourable balance of economic and nuclear power.

Destabilisation on Europe's Eastern Approaches, making disengagement from Western Europe more difficult.

Another stupid war in the Middle East—this time one from which Iran emerged as a Great Power.

The effective loss to China of the US defensive perimeter in the Western Pacific.

Unfortunately, events have made even the arguments of the Realists—of both prioritizer and restrainer stripes—redundant now. The US cannot prioritise resources to defend the First Island Chain. That's gone. It cannot draw Russia away from China any time soon. It cannot keep a lid on the Middle East or prevent the emergence of Iranian power. They shall have to retreat to the redoubt of the Western Hemisphere, which will now require active defence, given Chinese economic penetration of the region.

Even more concerning: there seems to be little recognition of this. The neocons and liberal interventionists—who require unipolar freedom of action as PREDICATE to their theories—still hold great power. Should we therefore expect this to continue?