allison abner 🫧🛼🪩

TV writer/producer: The West Wing, Narcos, Bad River, Imperfect Wmn, Mighty Mary. Pro-union canine loyalist. ✍🏽☕️📺 🫏🇺🇸🇺🇦 🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🧩

[Democrats Deliver @DemzDeliver]

🚨 HUGE: Chicago has fully transitioned all city facilities to 100% clean energy.

[Democrats Deliver @DemzDeliver]

🚨 Homicides in Baltimore are now at a 50-year low under Mayor Brandon Scott.

[Brooklyn Bridgebuilders @BklynBridgeNYC]

Dan Goldman has been one of THE most effective Congressmembers: he helped lead Trump's first impeachment, fought ICE & backed progressive priorities. He did incredible work, but lost his race b/c he refused to buy into the genocide libel. That’s it. Dem party is in big trouble.

[Stephanie Baker @StephaniBaker]

The Kremlin’s cognitive warfare is evolving. Leaked documents from Russia’s Social Design Agency reveal efforts to move beyond planting fabricated stories on social media. Now Russian influence operators are trying to create Wikipedia clones and fake think tanks to shape the information powering search engines and AI chatbots. https://t.co/R1NqMxyJjr

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

BREAKING: Protests in Albania are escalating, with demonstrators now calling for the resignation of the entire government amid growing anger over the proposed Kushner-Ivanka Trump development project.

What began as opposition to a luxury development is rapidly turning into a broader political crisis.

[UNITED24 Media @United24media]

Gen Z romanticizes the Soviet Union as “vibey,” forgetting it was a regime of repression, poverty, and silence.

🧵 1/17 ⬇️

[Sam @SamCKx]

A democratically elected British Prime Minister has been driven from office by a relentless campaign of propaganda and misinformation; funded, amplified and perpetuated by foreign billionaires and elites whose interests bear zero resemblance to those of ordinary working people.

A noble gesture from an emotional Keir Starmer, entirely consistent with his conduct in office.

A truly sad day for British democracy.

His full resignation speech:

[Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en]

Alexander Browder, a 17-year-old London teenager, has become Russia's youngest ever sanctions target. He has built a database exposing the crypto networks helping Russia and other rogue states dodge Western sanctions.

In March, @Alexbrowder_ published a report for the Henry Jackson Society think tank, describing money-laundering mechanisms involving cryptocurrencies and estimating the scale of such operations by Russia, Iran, and North Korea at around $350 billion.

▪️ Cryptocurrency as a sanctions-evasion tool

A stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to a stable asset. This may be a currency, such as the ruble. This avoids the sharp price fluctuations typical of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, making the token convenient for payments and transfers.

According to Alexander Browder, this stability made the A7A5 stablecoin a useful instrument for sanctions evasion. The ruble-pegged token allowed payments to be conducted outside the banking system, which has been blocked for Russia by Western sanctions.

Alexander described A7A5 as one of the West's biggest challenges in the fight against money laundering. According to the British Foreign Office, more than $90 billion passed through the stablecoin network linked to the token in the past year alone.

That figure is comparable to roughly half of Russia's annual military spending. In late May, London imposed sanctions on 18 platforms in several countries, accusing them of creating shadow financial systems to circumvent restrictions.

▪️ Russia's response

On June 2, the Russian foreign ministry added Browder and four other British citizens to its sanctions list. They were accused of "slander and spreading false information." The teenager was banned from entering Russia.

Browder himself took the move calmly. According to him, the sanctions have become a badge of honor and proof that his investigation has "touched a nerve."

By the way, Alexander is the son of financier and human rights advocate William Browder @Billbrowder, CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital. His lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, died in a Russian prison in 2009 after exposing a major tax fraud scheme. Browder Sr. is an outspoken critic of Putin and the initiator of the Magnitsky Act.

According to Alexander, it was his father's story that inspired him to pursue investigations. He believes that today's schemes for financing war through cryptocurrencies require a new, younger generation of analysts.

📹: DW

[Ihab Hassan @IhabHassane]

BREAKING: The first anti-Hamas protests in Gaza have just begun. People are demanding better living conditions — and in these protests, they're asking for something as basic as water.

DOWN WITH HAMAS!

[Jack Dart @JackWDart]

If people genuinely believe Burnham won’t receive the exact same media onslaught, they’ve not been paying attention.

Starmer is not, objectively, bad. This idea that he is somehow the worst PM in British history is frankly laughable.

Liz truss lasted 49 days, crashed the pound and was laughed out of Downing Street.

Since Labour took office, Keir Starmer’s government has:

• Scrapped the two-child benefit limit, lifting hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty and putting money back into some of the hardest-pressed households in the country.

• Expanded free school meals, cutting costs for families and making sure more children get a proper meal during the school day.

• Expanded funded childcare, reducing one of the biggest monthly costs facing working parents and making it easier for people to stay in work.

• Raised the National Living Wage, increasing pay for millions of low-paid workers.

• Strengthened workers’ rights, giving people greater protection against insecure work and bad employers.

• Introduced statutory sick pay from the first day of illness, so workers are less likely to choose between their health and their wages.

• Ended no-fault evictions, giving renters more security in their homes.

• Brought rail operators back into public ownership, taking key services out of failed private hands and giving the public a stronger stake in how they are run.

• Cut NHS waiting lists from their post-pandemic peak, meaning more patients are being seen sooner.

• Raised the state pension through the triple lock, protecting pensioners’ incomes against rising costs.

• Scrapped the old non-dom tax regime, making some of the wealthiest people in the country pay more fairly.

• Added VAT to private school fees, raising money from those most able to contribute.

• Removed business rates relief from private schools, ending an unjustified tax break.

• Increased neighbourhood policing, putting more officers and PCSOs back into communities.

• Helped bring knife crime down, meaning fewer families face the devastation of serious violence.

• Recorded the lowest homicide rate since the 1970s, a material improvement in public safety.

• Created Great British Energy, giving Britain a publicly owned clean energy company.

• Created the National Wealth Fund, backing investment in industry, infrastructure and clean energy.

• Passed planning reforms aimed at getting homes and major projects built faster.

• Improved relations with the EU, reducing diplomatic hostility and rebuilding practical cooperation.

• Agreed a UK-EU security partnership, strengthening cooperation on defence and European security.

• Signed a long-term partnership with Ukraine, reinforcing Britain’s support against Putin’s invasion.

• Secured new trade agreements, opening up markets for British businesses.

• Helped restore seriousness to government after years of scandal, chaos and decline.

People do not have to like Starmer. They do not have to vote Labour. But pretending this is the record of the worst Prime Minister in British history is absurd.

[Kareem Rifai 🌐 @KareemRifai]

Read Adriano Espaillat and Darializa Avila Chevalier's initial reactions to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The choice couldn't be more clear.

[Sam @SamCKx]

If Keir Starmer does resign, history will look back on his reign and scratch its head as to why the hell he was so hated.

On paper, he's probably delivered more to working British people in such a short time than any PM for decades.

After inheriting an absolute mess: NHS waiting lists fallen. Worker's rights improved. Rail operators nationalised. Improved relations with EU and improved UK's global reputation. Removed non-dom tax status. Halved childcare costs. Boosted state pensions. Lowest homicide rate in 50 years. Lifted 550k children out of poverty. Immigration vastly reduced.

We are in the age of billionaire funded misinformation, whose sole purpose is to topple democratically elected leaders, and insert leadership that favours the wealthy elites over the working people. Looks like the game plan is working...

[Philip Obaji Jr. @PhilipObaji]

Russia is recruiting Africans for troll farms and influence ops targeting Europe. From fake accounts spreading division in the Netherlands to amplifying migration fears and anti-EU sentiment, Moscow is weaponising African labour for its hybrid war.

[Masih Alinejad 🏳️ @AlinejadMasih]

I asked American students why they don’t protest when women are whipped and shot in Iran and Afghanistan.

The answers expose a contradiction nobody wants to talk about.

We must change the narrative so the younger generation stops lending cover to Hamas, Hezbollah, Taliban and the Islamic Republic. That's why I choose to travel and speak to students face-to-face. I listen first, without judgment. Then I share what it means to live under Sharia law not as an abstraction, but as a lived reality.

Truth is not a phobia. Calling out the whipping of women is not hate. Staying silent about it is.

[Kareem Rifai 🌐 @KareemRifai]

Just hours after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Darializa Chevalier blamed the US for "bullying Russia" and accused Washington of stoking the war for profit. Copy-and-paste Russian talking points.

She's the Mamdani-backed challenger to Rep. Adriano Espaillat.

[Tymofiy Mylovanov @Mylovanov]

Applebaum: Putin has presented a fake image of Russia to the world. He talks about leading a traditional society

In reality, divorce is very high, abortion is common, very few Russians go to church and less than 5% have ever read a Bible. It's not a traditional culture at all 1/

[Bloomberg Opinion @opinion]

No one can force Platner off the ticket, but if he steps aside by July 13, the party could replace him, writes @RonBrownstein. And there are three progressive Mainers who would be a better candidate https://t.co/qQvoWllekB

[Aleksandar Djokic (Александар Джокич) @polidemitolog]

Russian asset Edward Snowden appeared in a Rossiya 1 report claiming that foreign intelligence services compromised phones of Russian officials through cooperation with Microsoft, Apple and Google. The segment promoted an FSB statement about a Western operation using companies such as CloudFlare and Fastly for surveillance.

[Sig Chri 🇺🇦 🇦🇹 @Fella_IA_X25]

At @United24media ! He hasn’t been used. He is a spy. He harmed western counter intelligence programs in a way that it helped 🇷🇺 to create a espionage and influence network.

He never was a hero and his helpers are around him are ideologically driven.

[Dave Troy @davetroy]

FWIW the reason this makes a lot of logical sense is that all the “antiwar” people are bolting in favor of “America First,” which is very aligned with Kremlin messaging, really over the course of decades.