"The [Algerian] government may look to spin it as a PR win. Algerians' deep-seated support for the Palestinian cause means Khalil could be given a hero's welcome in Algiers," I tell The New Arab. However, sensitivities around political speech could well push Algeria in the other direction.

Some good news in dark times Alaa Abdel Fattah: British-Egyptian activist reunited with family - BBC News

American productivity hits new high - 0.65 Dreamliners per worker!

HUGE HUGE NEWS FROM EGYPT!! Egyptian President Sisi has issued a presidential pardon for activist and blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah.

NEW: Air Force jets are doing ICE flights to Africa with transponders turned off, making them nearly un-trackable. This includes the third-country removal to Ghana and another secret flight. We figured out where it landed. From me for @rollingstone.com: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

What a sight. Stranded in Idlib just 10 months ago, the new Syrian leadership hit Central Park

Hell of a photo by my former Chicago Tribune colleague Stacey Wescott from a protest today at an ICE facility in the Chicago suburbs. Read the sign at the bottom. @staceywescott.bsky.social

This is the third incursion this month, after drones flew over Poland and Romania. Trump said the Poland incursion "could have been a mistake." Covering for Putin is getting harder by the day.

PIF to split Sindalah Island resort off NEOM. More parts will likely be lopped off in the coming months: "Executives of PIF companies have been under growing pressure to deliver results as the kingdom seeks to maintain the momentum of its diversification programme amid lower oil prices." 🎁:

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public...." - Teddy Roosevelt, 1918

On the mismatch in Israeli-Syrian negots & how it could feed deep ongoing instability. “For Syria, talks are a means to reduce conflict and assert sovereignty; for Israel, they serve as an extension of its strategy of coercion” writes @haidhaid22.bsky.social en.majalla.com/node/327415/...

"While average citizens cannot vote, any Syrian has the ability to challenge a candidate’s eligibility — creating a type of reverse participation and a filter that seeks to ensure that incoming lawmakers serve their communities."

This remains one of the underappreciated transformations of our lifetime:

Human Rights Watch new release on Israel's actions in Syria, calling them “not legitimate acts of military necessity, but pages out of the playbook used in the occupied Palestinian territory & other parts of the region, stripping residents of basic rights & freedoms.” www.hrw.org/news/2025/09...

"Haykal charmed Syrians in his induction speech as the new minister of communications, in which he admitted he’d used ChatGPT to cut the address in half." Nice snapshot of Syria's reborn tech startup scene, which looks poised for growth now that Assad-era restrictions are off:

If someone’s not mourning the death of Robert Redford in a manner that’s consistent with your views, make sure you set up a database, call their employer, and get them fired.

NEW MOON DROP

His passing feels like the end of an era. RIP to a legend of cinema.

[wearily] the future belongs to whoever can stop hitting themselves first

Millennials are the chosen people, the only ones who can redeem the world

In a world obsessed with Israeli airstrikes, in this piece I argue that you're never going to contain the Houthis without a stronger IRG And that's going to require addressing deep obstacles to the flow and distribution of Yemen's hydrocarbon wealth

The Chinese dominance of clean-energy industries is “creating the conditions for a decline in fossil fuel use,” according to a report by Ember, a research group focused on the prospects for clean-energy technologies. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/c...

Nationalist brainrot

Scavengers Reign

4/ New study from my @nzpolicylab.bsky.social lab: @davidfickling.bsky.social covers our report on Chinese overseas green manufacturing FDI. We spent the summer painstakingly coding every single chinese green factory across the world. The results are striking: bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

a threat to tyranny anywhere is a threat to tyranny everywhere

"Theirs is the stale orthodoxy of those blinkered devotees of human aristocracy, who reject the faith of the founders — and the work of those who made it real — to worship at the altar of hierarchy and repression." 🔥 from @jamellebouie.net

There is a real possibility that Charlie Kirk’s death will serve as a pretext for authoritarian purges. And our political culture does not have much experience with that. Mainstream reporters and politicians are not in the habit of recognizing or naming it.

Foreign govts are still unsure how to handle frozen Russian assets. Here's an idea: Transfer every last cent to Kyiv, which will match $-for-$ in long-term bond issuance, giving the holder a huge stake in Ukraine's future. Hand those bonds to Moscow and watch the bombing slow right down.

One of the fundamental lessons of both parenting young children and writing first drafts is that sometimes, there's no choice but to touch the poop

Somebody really doesn't want the people of Gaza to get food aid

More and more companies are wising up to the fact that using green hydrogen as a fuel source does not - and never will - make economic sense. Its only viable use case is in replacing black/grey H2 as a chemical feedstock. Anything else just delays the energy transition.

FT: The US is ending its cooperation with European states on combating false news generated by Russia, China, Iran, and other hostile states, aimed at manipulating public opinion in democratic countries. For those who follow their actions rather than their statements, it’s no surprise. 🔗🎁

Massive Leak Shows How a Chinese Company Is Exporting the Great Firewall to the World - www.wired.com/story/geedge... "Geedge Networks is selling its censorship and #surveillance systems to at least four other countries in Asia and Africa." bad news, no surprise...

Seems we've now reached the stage in the white nationalist project where the Arab conquerors' stories get attributed to the Greek conquerors. His name was Tariq ibn Ziad.

👏📖

The “problem” with vaccines? They so effective at preventing deaths that they create generations of people that question whether disease was a problem in the first place because they have never experienced the horrors of a world without vaccines.

Someone needs to tell him that Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines is sitting in jail in the Hague, waiting on his ICC trial, for this same thinking.

The goal is not to address social ills, but instead to produce theater for the MAGA base.

People have embraced authoritarianism in large part because they've been sold individualistic explanations for social problems. If you think people are poor or unhoused because they've made "bad choices," then you'll see appeal in authoritarian leaders who promise to punish those who are "bad."

With new wind permits already off the table under Trump, it's hard to see how further attention to the issue does further harm. So let 'em rip... Every minute his senior officials spend on this is a minute they can't spend dismantling something else of value.

Some arguments are always worth making, even to this White House: "Repression is not a bulwark against chaos; it is a driver of it. The more closed political systems become, the more likely citizens are to abandon peaceful pathways and embrace radical alternatives."

The Everglades Concentration Camp costs 3x one of these trains.

Global solar capacity installations are up 64% in the first half of 2025 over 2024. Global installations in 2025 reached 380 GW as of June. The pace in the second half of the year might slow down somewhat, but we're still on track to eclipse 2024 by a lot.

Welcome to the insanity that is the French concept of "laïcité" - often mistranslated as "secularism" but in fact quite different!

Not stated in this retrospective on a German town's embrace of immigrants (or elsewhere that I've seen) but what if our ultimate takeaway from this era of European politics is that immigration's most salient effect was to exacerbate underappreciated (but hugely consequential) urban-rural divides?

This is absolutely catastrophic for U.S. higher education, and for U.S. global leadership. Just the latest in a series of senseless acts of self-sabotage by a malevolent administration bent on making the United States weak and poor.