“We’ve seen rapid normalization of abuses we once associated with authoritarian regimes or the old Iron Curtain countries. It’s now routine for masked, unidentifiable government agents to sweep people off the street and whisk them away in unmarked vehicles.” @radleybalko.bsky.social

“Several diplomats in Syria said they were more disturbed by lobbying efforts in Washington than the insurgency plots. Such campaigns, they said, could gradually lay the groundwork for calls for a semiautonomous region in Syria.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/24/w...

stay woke, read the British financial newspaper owned by a Japanese stock market index and media conglomerate

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

Bashar al-Assad's daughter has been living and studying in the UAE since the regime fell, at the Sorbonne in Abu Dhabi, where it looks like Emirati authorities are her enforcers, kicking out another Syrian student who dared to criticize her in a group chat. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/w...

The world has moved toward renewable energy, that future is already here. Except in the United States, where the Trump administration is an agent of the oil and gas industry, desperate to take the country's energy infrastructure back a few decades. www.bbc.com/news/article...

"Vineyard Wind is almost done with construction, with only one turbine tower left to send out, and then some blade sets to install. It has been sending power to the grid all through the year. It is unclear if the project must now cease sending power." Trump's energy revolution!

Trump continuing to hike electric bills for everyone on the East Coast. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/c...

So is Bari Weiss going to performatively resign from CBS now too and blame a hostile culture of journalists who actually report the news?

No one is going to tune in to CBS because they know it won’t be critical of Trump but lots of people will tune out for that reason. Spiking the CECOT story to curry favor is a terrible moral and journalistic decision — but it’s also a terrible business decision.

By turning CBS into state media for Trump, Bari Weiss is also whitewashing the brutality of the Bukele regime in El Salvador. This 60 Minutes report would have shown viewers the horrors of CECOT — which Weiss wants to cover up. I wonder why 🤔 www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/b...

Remember, before it was “The Free Press,” Bari Weiss called her newsletter “Common Sense” — hilariously trying to co-opt Thomas Paine and the most famous pamphlet in American history, a genuinely radical document that represents the opposite of Weiss lying and sucking up to power.

“Government silence is a statement, not a VETO,” Alfonsi wrote. “Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story.” Bari Weiss and the billionaires who put her in charge of CBS News are pawns of the state. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Here’s a gift link to this stunner Washpost story, quoting the 60 Minutes correspondent on the CECOT story, who accuses Bari Weiss of spiking the piece all because the Trump Administration wouldn’t comment. “Government silence is a statement, not a VETO.” wapo.st/3YL4T3D

60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi : “We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state.”

“The Free Press” www.wsj.com/business/med...

Bari Weiss and her oligarch patrons bowing to government censorship. The free press!

oh the CBS bosses went to dylan byers? then they are definitely lying.

Grand Wizard Vance

The federal government only has to comply with “the spirit if not the intent” of laws now.

Trump’s own Culture Chamber and Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda are out to purge what they see as degenerate art. www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...

“The right has a cultural answer to the disintegration of the economic and social order. Trump’s ballroom is an expression of that.” The most interesting, compelling, provocative piece on Trump’s ballroom by far, by @katewagner.wehwalt.net nyra.nyc/articles/wre...

“To this day, Jordan is the rare Arab state that has never seen mass revolution, institutional collapse, or regime change, unlike some of its neighbors and much of the Middle East.” @seanyom.bsky.social on Jordan’s history and centrality to the Middle East: www.hidden-cities.com/p/why-tiny-j...

Exactly:

Also, the fact that City Journal doesn't present this "conversation" critically at all — not a hint of criticism, let alone shock, in showing young conservatives who voice a love of Hitler and a host of racist and authoritarian views — tells you everything.

Here's how City Journal (from the conservative Manhattan Institute) describes these young Republicans who have an affinity for Hitler: "What matters most for them all is not ideological consistency but vibe: humor, transgression, and the sense of being led by someone who can command attention."

Since the "ceasefire," the Israeli military has killed hundreds of Palestinians, including many children, along the shifting "Yellow Line" that Israel has imposed over half of Gaza—a de facto new border that is part of Trump’s so-called 20-point peace plan. www.theguardian.com/world/video/...

Trump's Gulf allies are definitely going to send troops to a "stabilization force" in Gaza where they'll be bombed and shelled by the IDF.

Back to the booming 70s!

“To this day, Jordan is the rare Arab state that has never seen mass revolution, institutional collapse, or regime change, unlike some of its neighbors and much of the Middle East.” @seanyom.bsky.social on Jordan’s history and centrality to the Middle East: www.hidden-cities.com/p/why-tiny-j...

“It’s probably not a good idea to turn off the navigation lights on the US economy for over a month. I think we are learning that you can’t just switch the lights back on and everything immediately becomes clear again,” said Erika McEntarfer, the BLS chief Trump sacked this summer.

None of these words make any sense—the president's failing social media company, which is also into crypto, is merging with a fledgling fusion power company (?) for billions. The only thing that is clear: Trump's unprecedented corruption and self-dealing. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/b...

"The Epstein Story? Count Me Out." 🤔 A headline that ends up saying a lot more than Brooks and his editors ever imagined.

“Jordan cannot be reduced to the banalities of orientalist folklore, much less the other tropes that have long garbled how the Western media describe the kingdom.” @seanyom.bsky.social in Hidden Cities on what Jordan’s history reveals about the Middle East: www.hidden-cities.com/p/why-tiny-j...

Good thing the FCC is an independent agency with a mission to regulate broadcasters in the public interest.

I can think of other headlines to summarize that Trump address.

So, the bruises on Trump’s hand are from Dr. Feelgood.

If UNC wants to cut $70 million from its budget, they could get most of the way there by not paying Bill Belichick $50 million—instead of eliminating area studies entirely.

Sorry, we can't teach or research the Middle East—or Europe, or Africa, or Asia, or the Americas, or Africa, or Eurasia—we have to pay Bill Belichick (his annual salary is $10 million).

“Jordan cannot be reduced to the banalities of orientalist folklore, much less the other tropes that have long garbled how the Western media describe the kingdom.” @seanyom.bsky.social in Hidden Cities on what Jordan’s history reveals about the Middle East: www.hidden-cities.com/p/why-tiny-j...

"However accidental its historical genesis, Jordan has become a crucible of knowledge about how power and geopolitics operate in the region." @seanyom.bsky.social in Hidden Cities on how tiny Jordan helps explain the entire Middle East: www.hidden-cities.com/p/why-tiny-j...

It’s time for… another financial collapse.

"However accidental its historical genesis, Jordan has become a crucible of knowledge about how power and geopolitics operate in the region." @seanyom.bsky.social in Hidden Cities on how tiny Jordan helps explain the entire Middle East: www.hidden-cities.com/p/why-tiny-j...

They’ll teach the Ellison CBS takeover as a business school case study someday, and not for the reasons Larry Ellison wants. (Bari Weiss’s fake university will probably be out of business by then.)

“Some of the trails have vanished completely,” said Jamal Aruri, a retired photographer and experienced hiker. “We walk at the edges of cities,” he added, since the more remote areas “are taken over by settlers.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/w...

Elon's little serfs are quite literally begging journalists to come back because every publicly available source of data shows people have fled the platform and young people won't use it. They are literally begging regular people to come back. Don't do it! It is a website by and for actual Nazis!

The Supreme Court, like much of America’s political system, has valued the Second Amendment more highly than public safety, so you can guess how these cases will probably go.

Based just on this metric (the price-to-earnings ratio), the biggest stock bubble risk isn’t AI but Tesla. www.ft.com/content/21f5...

Abolition, women’s suffrage and the civil rights movement are just “wokeness” now, according to our pliant and credulous media.

Maybe, just maybe, Trump’s “20-point plan for Gaza” doesn’t actually intend to “create the conditions for lasting peace.”