Zoher Abdoolcarim

Into family, horses, tennis and Taiwan. Asia Editor of TIME 2008-2017. The 3Rs of journalism are reporting, reporting and reporting.

[hasanabi @hasanthehun]

its ironic that this pivot to the center is what caused the democrats to lose to an incompetent fascist twice, & now there are far more democratic socialist electoral victories because voters recognize the moderates failure!

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

Bob Geldof did not want them on the bill.
He had agreed to include Queen in the Live Aid lineup only reluctantly, pushed by promoter Harvey Goldsmith. By the summer of 1985, Geldof was not alone in thinking their moment had passed. Their biggest hits were nearly a decade old. Critics had started writing them off. Privately, the band itself was wondering if it was finished.
Then came July 13, 1985.
What nobody watching that day knew was what had happened the week before. Queen had booked the 400-seat Shaw Theatre near King's Cross in London and rehearsed their 21-minute set down to the exact second. Not the general shape of it. The exact second. Six songs, every beat drilled until nothing could go wrong.
And then, reportedly, their roadies disabled the sound limiters on the PA before the set. Every other band on that stage was capped. Queen was not.
At 6:41 PM, Freddie Mercury walked out. White jeans. White tank top. Studded armband. Seventy-two thousand people erupted.
He sat at the piano and played the opening of Bohemian Rhapsody, not the whole song, just enough to set the crowd on fire. Then he stood. Strode to the microphone.
Radio Ga Ga filled the stadium. Seventy-two thousand people raised their hands in perfect unison, one of the most iconic images of the entire decade.
Then Freddie stopped the band. He turned to the crowd. He opened his mouth and sang a single sustained note.
""Aaaaaaay-o.""
And waited.
Seventy-two thousand people sang it back. He went higher. They followed. Higher still. They stayed with him. Back and forth, the note climbing, the crowd holding on, the moment stretching into something that felt almost sacred.
It would later be called The Note Heard Round the World.
They tore through Hammer to Fall, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, a shortened We Will Rock You, and finally We Are the Champions. The stadium shook.
Twenty-one minutes after they walked on, Queen walked off.
Bob Geldof, the man who had not wanted them there, said afterward: ""Queen were absolutely the best band of the day. They played the best, had the best sound, used their time to the full. It was the perfect stage for Freddie: the whole world.""
An estimated 1.9 billion people across 150 nations had been watching. In 2005, music industry insiders voted it the single greatest rock performance in history. Not one of the greatest. The greatest.
Authors and musicians who were there have said those 21 minutes may have saved the band itself, that Queen was on the verge of a permanent split, and that afternoon reminded all four of them what they were still capable of together.
Freddie Mercury died on November 24, 1991. He was 45 years old.
But on July 13, 1985, for 21 minutes, standing before 72,000 people under a London summer sky, he was the most alive person on earth.

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

Hi @NYTimesPR, thanks for responding. Appreciate it. I'm a subscriber and I think some of your reporters do some great reporting.
Just to respond to your response to my post:
1) There were no facts "misstated" by me. You cited three examples in response. Only one of them was about specific *named* GOP House members (and it wasn't from "yesterday", it was from a year ago.) So I stand by my post.
2) As others have pointed out already, none of the 3 articles you cited have the names of any GOP individuals in the titles ("Right-Wing Republicans" "a Kansas Republican" "G.O.P. Fingerprints"), in comparison to your original "Who is Darializa" takedown piece. Where is your "Who is Brandon Gill" or "Who is Keith Self" or "Who Is Randy Fine" or "Who Is Mary Miller" critical profile pieces? How about "Who is Tom Emmer," given the GOP House Majority Whip just a few days ago spewed racist crap about Somalis? And where are the Peter Baker tweets summarizing *their* most controversial claims?
3) This isn't a new criticism. Many have made it against your paper for many years; that you go harder on the left than the right, that you even occasionally whitewash the far right. Remember when you had to do a public response in 2017 to a NYT profile that went super soft on a... Nazi? https://t.co/IF6DhTwcrp. Remember when you guys did a softball piece about a far-right, Islamophobic Trump aide's love for cooking? https://t.co/dp0Sf9PQg9.
Oh, and dare I ask: where are the fawning 'Trump voters' in diners' equivalent pieces for DSA members in NYC bodegas? Isn't it time?
4) Finally, that your response to my post was to proudly say you guys at the Times have "been documenting the increasingly extreme viewpoints on both sides of the political spectrum" kinda makes my point for me. One side's extreme wants universal healthcare and an end to genocide. The other side's extreme says Somalis are "garbage" and wants "remigration", mass deportations and white supremacy.
But, hey, "Both sides!"

[James🔻 @GoodVibePolitik]

They’re more militant about DSA than the Republican Party and that should tell you just about everything you need to know

[Sir Norman of Nowhere. 🏴‍☠️ @Normanjam67]

A collection of clips of Labour MP's condoning genocide.
Never forget, never forget.

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

Keir Starmer was not merely a disappointment. He is a mendacious figure of ethical decrepitude, a man who won the Labour Party leadership based on promises that he jettisoned five seconds after winning - a Labour leader who dared banish from the Labour Party not only his predecessor but also remarkable human beings like director Ken Loach - the gentleman who has taken the historic Labour Party and transformed it into a vessel for the very oligarchy it was elected to restrain.

Consider the litany of Starmer’s moral and logical failures. He promised a 'different Britain', yet his actions were a masterclass in Tory-lite politics—using the same maxed-out credit card analogies that once served the austerity brigades to justify his own failure of vision. He promised a human rights lawyer’s approach but he embraced a racist-lite version of Farage.

On Europe, Starmer promised Brexiteers that Brexit is Brexit yet stood before those who yearn to rejoin the European Union, winked at them to make them feel that Britain would gradually reconnect, even rejoin, with the EU while offering nothing of substance. This is not leadership; it is a fraud.

And then there's the manner in which Starmer and his government rushed to offer Israel unequivocal support in pursuing its genocide in Gaza, sacrificing precious political and civil liberties in the UK by imprisoning grandmothers, priests and peaceful activists who dared support Palestine Action, an organisation that Starmer and his minions proscribed as terrorists for practising the usual activist tactics of trespassing to spray paint military planes that had demonstrably aided in the genocide. To add insult to injury, Starmer performed the diplomatic pantomime of recognising a Palestinian state, in a manner that ensured it would never happen.

But above all else, this is a government that has learned nothing from the post-2008 era. Starmer and his Chancellor are playing the same tired austerity game while enabling and empowering the Finance Curse perpetrated by the City of London, throwing in forgood measure cuts in international aid to fund a military spending trickle under the guise of a "Strategic Defence Review" . It is the same old doctrine: austerity for the masses, socialism for the financiers and the arms dealers.

History will remember Mr Starmer as a man without conviction, a Prime Minister who offers not a shred of honesty, but merely the cruel illusion of change. He is ethically decrepit because he had chosen, consciously, to abandon principle for power. And for that, history will indict him. Good riddance, I say.

https://t.co/sGfebPkDXR

[michaelturton @michaelturton]

Memories Frozen in Time: Taiwanese Prisoners of War in the Siberian camps
https://t.co/fM74oycllS

[The Husky @Mr_Husky1]

A 24-year-old Polish tennis player arrived in Paris last week ranked 114th in the world, with no sponsors, no guaranteed income, and no certainty she could even pay for her hotel room.

She had to win three qualifying matches just to enter the French Open main draw. Prize money is only paid at the end of the tournament, so a Polish sports drink brand quietly stepped in and covered her hotel bill.

Her name is Maja Chwalinska. And today, she plays in the French Open final.

Before this tournament, she had won exactly one Grand Slam main draw match in her entire career. She had battled depression so severe that in 2021 she couldn't get out of bed. She underwent knee surgery in 2022. She spent years grinding through small tournaments across Europe just to stay afloat.

Then she arrived in Paris, won three qualifiers, and kept winning. Zheng Qinwen. Elise Mertens. Maria Sakkari. Diana Shnaider. Nine straight matches. One set dropped.

She is now the first qualifier in French Open history to reach the final. The last time a qualifier reached a Grand Slam final, it was Emma Raducanu at the 2021 US Open. Raducanu won.

By simply making the final, Chwalinska has earned more prize money than her entire career combined. The runner-up cheque alone is $1.6 million. If she wins today, she takes home $3.25 million.
One week ago she couldn't pay for her hotel room.

[Kaiser Kuo @KaiserKuo]

Manya Koetse (@manyapan) on a common experience for many who think and write about China from a pets that resists stark binaries. https://t.co/4GX7QsBDiD

[🖤 Christine @christinelu]

Watching this on Netflix and understanding the Taiwanese being spoken while reading the English subtitles is good practice.

[Ben Rhodes @brhodes]

Why is it controversial for Zohran to skip a parade bc of his principles but not for Democratic politicians to march with a fascist bigot like Smotrich?

[theniumee 🏹🐠 @theniumee_]

It is crucial to remember the KMT's efforts to suppress this chapter of Taiwanese history. While the linguistic bans were severe, the most devastating aspect of the White Terror was the targeted elimination of the island's intellectual class, including scholars and physicians. Those who were not so lucky from execution, fled the country and remained exiled, separated from their loved ones.

[✧˖ @colditioner]

still one of the greatest opening sequences in cinema history

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

These headlines are both form today.

🇮🇱: Says
🇷🇺: Threatens

[Alex Marshall @alexmarshall81]

🥰

[Fred Guttenberg @fred_guttenberg]

Absolutely agree. The parents of these shooters should spend the rest of their lives in prison.

[Saeed Shah @SaeedShah]

Israel in Lebanon: “One soldier entered empty villages with no fighters and no battles, just demolition. Civilian contractors paid per house flattened schools, clinics, and homes while soldiers guarded the bulldozers. Daily quotas were tallied as "achievement assessments."

[Hamidreza Ahmadi @hrahmadi8]

read my article on Iran's Wartime Political Transformation on Jacobin:
https://t.co/dbNiNQym3B

[Intern Pierre @internpierre]

The WSJ wants to know "what happens when Europeans find out how poor they are."

I'm a European running a family office / living in Monaco. Let me run the numbers for Joseph Sternberg.

Spoiler: per-capita GDP is the most misleading stat in this entire debate.🧵

[katexbt.hl @katexbt]

Pretty much every smaller city in Japan has something like this.

99% of you people visiting will never find it because you have been brainwashed into doing Osaka-Kyoto-Tokyo like everyone else.