Laleh Khalili

Thank you.

At the level of pure grift and corruption Farage comes very close to Trump.

Is that P et Tau? What does it mean?

Do none of these politicians have an ounce of dignity? This is embarrassing for HIM, more than it is for the people he supposedly is mocking.

omg

This is absolutely brilliant. The pens on the right are mostly used by children and easily break down. So this is absolutely the most perfect metaphor for AI!

What is she even saying? Romania is gonna help US invade Greenland?

New anthology by students at #Gaza universities 🇵🇸

"Sumud, resilience, was never so powerful & clear, as it appears in this must read & urgent collection."

—Ilan Pappé

All royalties from sales of book go to student authors in Gaza

darajapress.com/publication/... #booksky
@darajapress.bsky.social

Behrooz Ghamari, Kayhan Valadbaygi, Narges Bajoghli, Ali Kadivar, Kevan Harris, Negar Razavi, Naghmeh Sohrabi, Eskandar Sadeghi Boroujerdi, Arang Keshavarzian... There are loads of really amazing people who are writing about this moment, & many more on history...

Abu Dhabi’s Adnoc Is Said to Evaluate Investing in Venezuela Gas The United Arab Emirates’ state oil giant is evaluating options for a potential entry into Venezuela’s energy industry as the Middle Eastern country seeks to build out its international natural gas bu...

The US's little sparta:

"Any approach by Adnoc in Venezuela would be made via XRG [for natural gas]. The company has made the fuel a cornerstone of its multibillion-dollar overseas expansion plans, with talks ongoing for a stake in an LNG project in Argentina"

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

IKR?

WestExec is Blinken’s outfit. These people are vile.

Indeed.

Why Trump's Chaos Has Turned Davos Into 'Survival of the Richest' A record crowd pursues the US president to the annual conclave as he shakes up trade and alliances

Capital ❤️ Trump: "Like [Davos], which finessed its agenda to please the president, many Davos-goers appear to be willing to do what it takes to protect and advance their interests in his new world of radical uncertainty."

www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Donald Trump’s first Venezuela oil sale deal goes to megadonor’s company Senior Vitol trader met US president at White House last week and gave millions of dollars to his re-election campaign

On Vitol execs being big donors to Trump:

www.ft.com/content/da74...

The Tanker Tycoons and Oil Brokers Cashing In on the Venezuela Trade Oil traders Vitol and Trafigura and Greek tanker owners are diving back into the country after Nicolás Maduro’s ouster.

On Vitol and Trafigura:

www.wsj.com/business/ene...

Exclusive: US gets first $500 million Venezuelan oil deal, holding some proceeds in Qatar The details shared with Semafor mark an initial milestone in the administration’s plan following the ouster of Nicolás Maduro.

On Qatar: www.semafor.com/article/01/1...

Re: Trump seizure of Venezuelan oil and its sale via traders Vitol and Trafigura means that the money goes into a Qatari bank account and out of the hand of Venezuela’s creditors. Vitol and Trafigura have been big donors to Trump. So, the oil capture benefits *some* capitalists, but not others.

These policies have also reconfigured the state itself. Rather than shrinking, the Iranian state has mutated into an apparatus of authoritarian austerity: fiscally disciplined, physically coercive, and interventionist in the monetary and financial sphere, while retreating from universal welfare and redistribution.3 Social justice is thus reduced to a technical matter of administrative inclusion and exclusion, and society itself appears not as a political subject but as a risk to be managed through “transparency,” persuasion, and policing. The structural reforms pursued by Ali Madani-Zadeh—the current minister of economy, a University of Chicago economics graduate and the latest heir to Chicago-style neoliberalism—are a class project aimed at reproducing the state and its dominant class fractions under crisis, even as they further undermine social reproduction in wartime conditions.

A brilliant analysis of how sanctions have transformed the Iranian government into a Chicago School regime of austerity that benefits those attached to the regime, creates precarious labour, and rolls back all the redistributive and social measures of the past:

www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...

Knut Hamsun (Literature Prize 1920): In 1943, he gifted his Nobel medal to Goebbels to thank him for meeting him. Goebbels was honoured by the gift. "The present whereabouts of the medal are unknown."

www.nobelpeaceprize.org/press/press-...

“I feel the need to say something,” Tai said, when Tooze was finished. She recalled a parable Martin Sheen had delivered in front of the White House during the 25th anniversary celebration of The West Wing, the haute-liberal political fantasia that remains a touchstone for professional Democrats. Sheen’s story concerned a man who shows up at the gates of heaven and earns an admonishment from St Peter for his lack of scars. “Was there nothing worth fighting for?” St Peter asked the man. Tai turned the question on Tooze: “Where are your scars, Adam? I can show you mine.” Recalling this exchange several months later, Tooze was still flabbergasted. “I’d be silly if I didn’t admit that it was a bruising encounter,” he told me recently, in one of three long conversations we had over the past year. Nevertheless, he said, “it confirmed my underlying theory about what was going on. These were a group of entirely self-satisfied American liberal elites who were enacting a morality tale in which Sheen and The West Wing and that whole highly sentimental vision of power and politics is a central device. She says this, I think, meaning to sound tough, like, ‘I’m the warrior. Who are you? You’re just some desktop guy.’ Which just shows how little she understands what I’m saying, which is: ‘You people are a bunch of sentimental schmucks who don’t understand that you lost. If you had any self-respect, you would not be on any podium again, ever, sounding off about anything. Because comrades, if we were in the 30s, I would have taken you out and shot you. You fail like this, you don’t get to come back and show off your wounds.’”

❤️Adam Tooze re an encounter with a Biden Admin appartchik (Katherin Tai). Srsly though, liberals need to stop talking about the show West Wing; it makes them all seem so much like a bunch of infantile schmucks.

www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Omg same

Such dirty relationships:

i.exeter.ac.uk/campusm/home...

Colleagues overseas, check this out:

A medal, a medal, I’ll give you a kingdom for a medal...

They are both such unremittingly pathetic, sad, megalomaniacal creatures...

This has been Israeli modus operandi since 1948, and indeed of Yishuv settlements before that: stage-by-stage occupauion of Palestinian land intended to take over maximum space and technically cleanse Palestinians.

The slow motion stage. Amidst the destruction and death, Israel has moved the yellow line another three hundred meters west.

Some of the stories in here are absolutely chilling. One US citizen of Somali descent was just riding an elevator with ICE agents and then they detained him for almost half an hour in the freezing cold despite him showing agents his passport card. They only let him go once protestors showed up.

Exclusive: US gets first $500 million Venezuelan oil deal, holding some proceeds in Qatar The details shared with Semafor mark an initial milestone in the administration’s plan following the ouster of Nicolás Maduro.

The main bank account holding revenue from the Venezuelan oil sales is located in Qatar.

“There is no basis in law for a president to set up an offshore account that he controls so that he can sell assets seized by the American military,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

www.semafor.com/article/01/1...