Mariana Peña Cater

Journalist.

[Gunther Eagleman™ @GuntherEagleman]

Make it make sense.

[Alejo Schapire⚡️ @aschapire]

Despertarse y ver que toda la escoria (woke right, islamoprogresistas, izquierda champagne, dictaduras mafiosas, teocráticas o comunistas) está en llamas porque el régimen más oscurantista, machista y homofóbico peligra.

[Prófugos del Ácido Fólico @EsdeProfugos]

La IA avanza pero México está a años luz. 😌

[Context News @ContextNewsroom]

Data centres are booming in Querétaro, Mexico, with most built in the last three years. Many operate without environmental reports or emission taxes, raising concerns about water use and transparency.

✍️ Diana Baptista and Fintan McDonnell report

🔗 https://t.co/yiryoBvZWf

[Brenda Estefan @B_Estefan]

El documental “México: los cárteles hacen la ley”, difundido en Francia hace tres meses y grabado en Uruapan, Michoacán, muestra cómo el narco impone su ley. En él, el hoy asesinado alcalde Carlos Manzo confiesa haber recibido amenazas de muerte desde el primer día de su mandato.

[Brenda Estefan @B_Estefan]

Y luego hay quienes se sorprenden cuando Trump insiste en que México está gobernado por los cárteles…

[Stephen Taylor @stephen_taylor]

This is the wildest attack ad I’ve ever seen in politics. Andrew Cuomo pulling out all the stops.

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

In a sane world, when a civilian is kidnapped from a music festival and reappears nearly two years later, starved, abused, and filmed digging his own grave, people care.

So where is the Red Cross?
Where is the UN?
Where are the human rights activists?

Do your job.

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

This guy is definitely talented.

A rich kid LARP’ing as a poor mans defender. But anyone who has grown up poor (I grew up on welfare) or people who are poor hate people like this.

None of us wanted to stay poor. We wanted to be rich and never look back. The hard work, resilience and ingenuity to do so should be celebrated. Only a masochist or an idiot would want to stay poor.

So, as it turns out, the only people that fall for this ragebait are guilty, rich people who inherited wealth or luckboxed their way to wealth and feel they don’t deserve it. You’d think there aren’t many of them, and you’d be right, but there are a few cities that tend to concentrate these gullible lemmings and NYC is one.

If he wins, he will most likely be a symbolic mayor who accomplishes nothing (like most mayors in most cities) OR he will get a mandate to try his version of governance. That version has already been tried many times - London, Vienna, Chicago, Havana.

That version will most likely ruin NYC and degrade one of the world’s greatest cities as those policies have already done in the cities that have tried before it.

No matter what happens, all of this will be meticulously documented as a report card on both the root causes and outcomes of limousine liberalism.

In the end, you can have equality of outcome or you can have the freedom to achieve your own God given ability but you can’t have both as the residents of NYC may soon find out.

[Dean Phillips @deanbphillips]

When the right adds $12 trillion in debt in six years and the left nominates a NYC mayoral candidate who speaks of “seizing the means of production”, it’s time for a new American political movement committed to common sense.

[(((James Acton))) @james_acton32]

Bottom line: Military action doesn't pass the tests set by the critics of the JCPOA.

Even now--even with an Israeli attack ongoing--diplomacy offers a better bet than military action for preventing Iran from getting the bomb. (7/7)

https://t.co/y85PXFIOZU

[Sunny @sunnyright]

When I want to build a peaceful nuclear energy program, I always build it deep below the surface where it requires 30,000-pound bunker busters to access it, while pledging to die rather than surrender it.

Because you see, I'm really passionate about clean energy.

[Maya Sulkin @SulkinMaya]

Gen-Z New Yorkers I’ve spoken to at bars wearing $500 jeans, sipping G&Ts—enjoying all the fruits capitalism has to bear—simply do not comprehend what their vote for Mamdani means and what his leadership will do to the places average NYers depend on. Ultimate privilege.
https://t.co/eguocHPISW

[LongTime🤓FirstTime👨‍💻 @LongTimeHistory]

ICE agent points gun directly at the head of innocent civilian—just for taking picture of his license plate.

He drew his gun with one hand—while fumbling to open the car door with the other.

The "agent" did not seem to be aware someone else was already recording his vehicle.

The incident happened during an ICE raid at the corner of Los Robles & Orange Grove in Pasadena, California.

#DemVoice1 #wtpBLUE #DemsUnited

[Geoff Brumfiel @gbrumfiel]

ANALYSIS: There is a LOT of stuff in the media right now about the Massive Ordinance Penetrator--The American bunker buster that might get used on Iran's deeply buried site at Fordow.

Can it hit Fordow? I'm not sure.

Here's why (WITH MATH). 🧵

[Megan Martin MD, MPH @Megmd514]

I don’t understand why he didn’t hire social workers?

[Dr. Jeffrey Lewis @ArmsControlWonk]

As much as I think Israel’s attack on the nuclear facilities has been middling, the neutralization of Iran’s conventional missile force has been remarkable. So many lessons to be learned.

[Farzan Sabet @IranWonk]

Mossad's "legion of defectors" in Iran

1. @jakesNYT had a great piece in the NYT this weekend (with comments by yours truly) emphasizing the spectacular use of drones by #Ukraine and #Israel in highly damaging operations against their respective adversaries, #Russia and #Iran (article linked at the end).

I told her what was impressive for me was not necessarily the technology - Israel has deployed small drones in a similar capacity in Iran since at least the early-2020s - but the intelligence-operational element. The cases of both the Ukrainian and Israeli operations demonstrate a deep understanding of the human terrain in the territories' of their foes, with which they have been intimately familiar for decades if not longer. Other comparably sophisticated states lacking this familiarity may not have been able to execute similarly effective attacks.

The scale, precision, and effectiveness of the operations on the ground in Iran implied the existence of a comparatively large legion of defectors inside of Iran.

(Note: If we're using less analytical language, the overwhelming majority of Iranians would probably view them as traitors for the death and destruction they have wrought on the streets of the country).

2. This legion could have at least three main elements. The first would be Mossad controllers in Israel, and local Israeli handlers, perhaps Iranian Jews who have made Aliyah some time ago, but could blend into Iran's urban landscape.

The second element would be double-agents within the Islamic Republic system engaged in intelligence-gathering, since it's unlikely Israel's feats were accomplished by cyber or remote-means alone. These would likely be khodi ("system insiders") outwardly espousing a hardline worldview, while supporting intelligence and sabotage operations for Israel in secret. Such an individual could be a senior official all the way down to a janitor. These people would likely be induced to work for Israel due to the leveraging of kompromat against them, threats to the wellbeing of them or their family, financial inducements, promises of support for emigration, professional frustration, and/or ideological disillusionment.

The third element would be Iranian field operatives, who would establish the legion's infrastructure and conduct actions on the ground, including assassinations, sabotage, and feeding intelligence to the Israeli Air Force (IAF) to conduct strikes. These individuals would predominantly be gheyr khodi ("non-system insiders") of reasonability good ability, hailing from various backgrounds and worldviews. Such individuals would likely be induced to work for Israel due to anti-system sentiments, financial inducements, promises of support for emigration, or the leveraging of kompromat against them. Most of these people would have little prospect for entering and rising in the state system as "non-insiders", and were likely radicalized to take such drastic action beginning with the 2009 Green Movement protests, and through the socio-political and -economically motivated anti-system protests in 2018, 2019, and 2022.

This third group is likely to be predominantly be drawn from Iranians of the Persian- and Azerbaijani Shia urban core of the country (including groups like the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, a.k.a the MEK or MKO): Israel is unlikely to risk the lives and safety of the Iranian Jewish community, and individuals from Kurdish and Balochi groups would have a harder time blending in the urban core and could be known to the security services due to their past activities.

3. Every system and polity produces dissenters, malcontents, and traitors who turn against their government or people. But the creation of Mossad's legion of defectors has been enabled by the Islamic Republic's dual policies of external and internal tension, espousing confrontation with Israel (and the United States) abroad; and political polarization between "insiders" and "non-insiders" at home. The lethal combination of enmity with one of the world's leading security powers (i.e. Israel, backed by the world's superpower the United States), and polarization and radicalization of vast swaths of the Iranian public, has created fertile ground for discontent to be weaponized into deadly and effective operations that undermine the security of the state.

This problem is not new, and the Islamic Republic has grappled with it for decades. Instead of placing its laser focus on such high-level threats and creating the conditions to neutralize them, the post-revolution Iranian state has spent an inordinate amount of resources and energy policing the minute details of its citizens lives, and punishing and humiliating them for the smallest actions that would go unnoticed in a free society.

And so, the issue has festered and grown steadily worse in scale and magnitude over time, culminating in the scenes of mayhem and destruction we've seen on the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities. The Iranian security forces appear to have rolled up some units of the legion, but many remain at large, continuing to provide Mossad (and by extension the IAF) intelligence for air strikes, conduct drone attacks, and set off car bombs.

Iran's security has been punctured, people's already fraying sense of normalcy shattered, and the Islamic Republic's security services - the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) chief among them - have been left discredited on this and other fronts.

Breaking the ranks of the Mossad's legion of defectors, and the conditions that created it, will require a fundamental change in the orientation of the system in Iran, or the system itself.

Have I correctly understood and characterized the nature and structure of Mossad's legion of defectors? What part of the picture am I missing? Happy to engage with thoughtful responses!

New York Times article by Lara Jakes with my input: https://t.co/othgzbYXS5

[Brianna Wu @BriannaWu]

New York Times opens with a dire warning against voting for Zohran.

“Mr. Mamdani would also bring less relevant experience than perhaps any mayor in New York history. We do not believe that Mr. Mamdani deserves a spot on New Yorkers’ ballots.”

They don’t even mention his antisemitism. Just how crazy his ideas are, and how divorced he is from the actual problems of New York.

[Rachael Horwitz @RachaelRad]

This NYT editorial on antisemitism is notable to me for two reasons beyond the obvious:

(1) Wild to read any opinion piece today about bigotry that is written so plainly, without postmodern jargon or academic gobbledygook, just a clear moral argument. IMO years of relativist theory have produced what has always struck me as unreadable writing which of course leads to worse thinking. This is downright refreshing in that way?

(2) It draws on giants like Natan Sharansky and Jews who survived Soviet totalitarianism that know firsthand what happens when hatred is legitimized by ideologies on the left like communism. And linking to @tabletmag? Crazy to see the Times’ break the habit of only platforming Jews who fit the typical progressive mold. I almost can’t believe my eyes.