David K Johnson

LSE Fellow in IPE @LSEIRDept | PhD @johnshopkins

[Gabriel Zucman @gabriel_zucman]

Now that the California billionaire tax is officially on the ballot this November, voters deserve logical arguments.

This guest essay in today’s New York Times, by two economists from the Hoover Institution, is based on a shocking logical mistake. 🧵

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

If you were surprised that Hillary Clinton penned an oped in @FT declaring her support for Trump's Gaza plan - that de facto allows Israel to annex most of the territory - then you haven't been paying attention for the past 25 years.

[Gabriel Zucman @gabriel_zucman]

I have some tremendous news to share: we've just won a decisive victory against Mark Zuckerberg and the Silicon Valley billionaires 🧵

[John McDonnell @johnmcdonnellMP]

Scale of sentences on the 4 young people who took direct action against the arms supplier to Israel is truly shocking. To impose years of imprisonment for protesting to save lives in Gaza is unjust, especially sentencing on terrorist grounds they were never convicted of by a jury

[Aaron Bastani @AaronBastani]

Britain at the height of its power and prestige was home to Karl Marx and Giuseppe Mazzini. It was a refuge for Alexander Herzen and Victor Hugo.

Now, in 2026, it wont allow American YouTubers & streamers to enter because they criticised Israel. 🥀

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

META sent me an AI message flagging my Facebook profile, saying it will no longer be promoted because of "lack of original content." This was part of my response to them:

"You are flagging my profile, claiming I put up unoriginal content. Clearly, your AI leaves much to be desired. The majority of my posts are either A) videos of interviews I have given to mainstream and alternative media, so BY DEFINITION, it is ORIGINAL content. I created it. And B) it is me providing ANALYSIS of news, which is my job as the co-head of a think tank. Again, by definition, it is original.

If you want to ban me because I am critical of Israeli policies, then just say so instead of hiding behind these insulting pretexts.

[James Meadway @meadwaj]

Strongly recommend @DanielaGabor’s step by step account of what’s really happening with bond markets - and how to really deal with them without wishful thinking.

(The “Bailey premium” we pay govt borrowing costs also deserves wider circulation.)

Link below.

[Daniela Gabor @DanielaGabor]

I've written about how @AndyBurnhamGM or @ZackPolanski can stop worrying about bond vigilantes' veto on big, transformative ambitions.

https://t.co/xxWxrblwP4

[Gabriel Zucman @gabriel_zucman]

Hello @JeffBezos, since you question the results of our studies on the unfairness of the US tax system, please allow me to remind you of the main conclusions of our work, the most comprehensive research to date on this issue.

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

🎥 Oil Markets Are Dangerously Complacent About What’s Coming — Commodities Veteran Jeff Currie

Jeff Currie, former Goldman Sachs global head of commodities research and now senior adviser at Carlyle, warns financial markets are catastrophically underestimating the oil crisis building beneath the Iran war.

📌 “You’re borrowing oil from the future”:
“There’s a big difference between a deficit and a shortage. We’re in a deficit. Demand is above supply. We are drawing inventories.”

U.S. distillate inventories have already fallen to 102 days of supply from 120 just weeks ago. Gulf Coast tank bottoms sit around 200–220 million barrels. “If you get below 220, you’re already in a pretty tricky situation. We’re not that far away.”

📌 “You’re going to have to feel it”:
Currie says the inflection point where deficit becomes outright shortage could arrive within days: “If you’re at 102, you’re going to feel it like any day.”

📌 The Strait of Hormuz may not be forceable open:
“All you need is a guy with a rocket launcher and some drones. There’s no way you’re gonna force that thing open.”

He pointed to the Red Sea, where after two years of bombing Yemen, shipping traffic remains down roughly 75%.

📌 “The whole Bretton Woods architecture is done”:
Currie argues the closure of Hormuz shatters the core bargain underpinning dollar dominance: U.S. protection of global trade routes in exchange for the world using the dollar system. “Who’s ever going to trust them again?”

(Video from Official Energy Aspects. Full linked below.)

[New Left EViews @NewLeftEViews]

Take this FT piece from today. “Oh UK's the gilt market may have become untethered from its peers” and the explanation amounts to “we’re addicted to debt”. It is mentioned in HALF A SENTENCE that the Bank is actively shedding gilts. THIS IS NOT SERIOUS FINANCIAL JOURNALISM.

[Daniela Gabor @DanielaGabor]

Shocking - @FT long read on UK bond market with v little analysis beyond 'a lot of debt, powerful investors'

Nothing on linkers, one sentence on Bank of England actively selling gifts when no other central bank does.

https://t.co/3ghDed4vYM

[Daniela Gabor @DanielaGabor]

I urge UK journalists/politicians to read Nangle before alarmist incantations about power of bond investors

' greatest compliment the bond market can give a chancellor aiming for economic rejuvenation is a mild sell-off'

@AndyBurnhamGM @ZackPolanski

[Esfandyar Batmanghelidj @yarbatman]

"The situation is getting worse, so therefore it must come to an end" is not very convincing geopolitical analysis.

Accelerating oil inventory depletion in the face of stagnant blockade pressure is a reason for Iran to keep the strait closed. Iranian leaders feel they can get a better deal in two months than they can get in two weeks. They are eyeing that $5 national average gas price.

Even if a framework agreement is reached, they will slow roll the reopening of the strait to bolster their negotiating position.

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

🚨New Testimonies Reveal Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya Stripped, Beaten, and Set Upon by Dogs in Israeli Detention

Three recently released Palestinian prisoners have provided harrowing testimony about the condition of Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, who has been held in Israeli detention since his arrest on December 27, 2024.

Released prisoner Ahmad Qaddas said he initially did not recognize Abu Safiya due to his physical deterioration. He described the doctor spending most of his time “sitting in a daze,” barely able to speak, while fellow prisoners could hear him screaming during beatings but were powerless to intervene — with those who tried to help facing tear gas raids.

A second witness, Hamza Abu Omeira, said Abu Safiya suffered constant vomiting, could not keep food down, and was denied medical care. He described seven consecutive days during which prisoners were shackled by both hands and feet. He said Abu Safiya was also reportedly forced to repeat degrading phrases about himself under torture.

A third released prisoner said he witnessed Abu Safiya being stripped, beaten after interrogation, and attacked by police dogs that “scratched him and knocked him to the ground.”

All three witnesses warned he faces imminent death if not released immediately. Abu Safiya is one of 737 medical workers arrested by Israel since the start of the war, according to Al Jazeera.

Source: Palestinian Information Center

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

BREAKING: The Israeli naval vessel that abducted the 180 Sumud Flotilla crews off the coast of Crete (an act of piracy and a gross violation of the Law of the Sea) is intend on victimising two of them: Saif Abukeshek, a Spanish citizen of Palestinian origin, and Thiago Ávila, a Brazilian citizen who has distinguished himself with repeated attempts to break the illegal, genocidal, Israeli blockage of Gaza.

Unlike the remaining abducted members of the Sumud Flotilla crew, which the Israeli navy disembarked in Crete, Saif and Thiago are detained and bound for an Israeli prison. This is a double violation of International Law: First, Israel abducted them illegally at sea. Second, Israel is now transporting them, violently, illegally, to one of its notorious prisons.

Meanwhile, the Greek government is cooperating fully in Israel’s criminal behaviour, effectively surrendering its search and rescue obligations and conniving with Israel to victimise the brave crews of the Sumud Flotilla who are steadfastly, through their activism, defending International Law as well as the verdict of the International Court of Justice which has clearly and unequivocally declared Israel’s continued naval blockade of Gaza and its occupation of the Palestinian territories illegal.

Through their complicity and their silence, the Greek government, the European Union, the mainstream media, the West more generally, are flouting, indeed they are trashing, their supposed, much publicised, ‘Western values’. Let us all demand:

· The immediate release of Saif and Thiago
· An end to Israel’s criminal behaviour in international waters
· The termination of Israel’s illegal Gaza blockade
· That the Greek government and the European Union cease and desist from lending logistical and moral support to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its ethnic cleansing campaigns in E. Jerusalem and the West Bank

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

MUST WATCH: Majority of US military sites in Middle East damaged by Iran, CNN investigation reveals. Many of them are "virtually unusuable."

Day by day, we will find out more and more about what actually happened in this war...

https://t.co/BdCLtuzgAZ

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

Germany's Merz welcomed Israel's attack on Iran in June 2025, and said Israel was "doing Europe's dirty work for it." He welcomed Trump's war on Iran in Feb and dismissed its illegality.

Now, as a rat jumping off a sinking ship, he claims he always had doubts about the war.

The Germany that proudly stood against the Iraq war in 2003 is long gone. The German government has turned Germany into a vassal of the US.

But this vassal wants its cake and eat it too: Benefit from America's wars if they go well, while washing its hands of the war if they go badly.

This is why America should refrain from turning once good allies into vassals. It benefits neither in the long run.

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

Allegations of rape and sexual violence against white women were one of the most commonly cited justifications for lynching Black men in America, though the historical record shows these charges were routinely fabricated or grossly distorted.

Statistics show that about one-fourth of all lynchings from 1880 to 1930 were actually prompted by an accusation of rape. In fact, most victims were political activists, labor organizers, or Black men and women who simply violated white expectations of deference.

White mobs used these allegations to enforce segregation and advance stereotypes of Black men as violent, hypersexual aggressors. The brute caricature of the hypersexual Black male was a myth used to justify the violence, which in turn functioned as a social control mechanism to instill fear in Black communities — sending messages not to register to vote, not to apply for white men’s jobs, not to organize, not to complain publicly.

This caricature gained in popularity whenever Black people pushed for social equality.

Journalist and activist Ida B. Wells was among the first to systematically document and expose this pattern. In 1892, she published Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, which connected names, dates, and identities to individual cases of lynchings and rape accusations to show that that the rape narrative used to justify lynching was a deliberate fabrication, writing, “nobody in this section of the country believes the old threadbare lie that Negro men rape white women.”

She documented that the true motivation for lynching was the enforcement of racial hierarchy.

No independent international human rights organization has confirmed a single case of rape by Palestinian fighters on October 7.

[Mouin Rabbani @MouinRabbani]

I'm very pleased to announce that my book, Gaza Apocalypse: A Genocide Diary will be published this summer by OR Books and is now available for pre-order at a 15% discount.
https://t.co/QewzXELt45