Neil Abrams

@neilabrams.bsky.social

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Corruption, democracy, rule of law, Eastern Europe, Ukraine. Words in WaPo, Slate, Foreign Policy. PhD, political science. He/him. Subscribe at https://www.readthedetox.com

Kash Patel, in a blue suit and silver tie, looking forward with a stunned yet dead-eyed expression on his face.
Rome's Pantheon at night. The triangular roof is supported by eight massive columns, or pillars, that keep it upright. The structure is lit from the bottom and interior.
The video states that Israel was founded in 1948 “on British land”, and refers to the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria”, the biblical name controversially used for the region by the Israeli government. The original Jewish homeland comprises parts of modern-day Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, the video states.
While there is much to admire about the industry and inquisitiveness of Murray's teen-age years, there is at least one adventure that he understandably deletes from the story -- the night he helped his friends burn a cross. They had formed a kind of good guys' gang, "the Mallows," whose very name, from marshmallows, was a play on their own softness. In the fall of 1960, during their senior year, they nailed some scrap wood into a cross, adorned it with fireworks and set it ablaze on a hill beside the police station, with marshmallows scattered as a calling card
The New York Times previously documented two instances of indiscriminate use of lethal force against Kursk civilians early in the incursion, actions that may amount to war crimes. But reporters were unable to establish who was responsible for those deaths. One of Russia’s top law enforcement bodies, the Investigative Committee, has accused Ukrainian forces of torturing and killing a civilian in a residential building in Martynovka, and of killing two other residents of the village. Russian officials and outlets blame Ukraine for other deaths, including in the village where Ms. Lobodova’s mother died. State media has published reports describing harsh treatment of civilians, rarely providing evidence.
To put it bluntly, when you have a "feeling" that a politician from a different race, ethnicity or religion threatens you, and you are unable to articulate how that threat is supposed to plausibly manifest, and you ignore the avalanche of evidence – his words, his record, his associations – that no such threat exists, that feeling you have is called racism.
In fact, Trump's military intervention makes it more, not less, likely that Iran will develop nuclear weapons.
Trump's authoritarianism will be only as repressive as civil society allows it to be—no more, no less.
When leaders break the rules with abandon, they lose their legitimacy. This opens the door for other political actors to remove them by any available means, legal or not. Such brutish impulsivity is what sealed Yanukovych’s fate. After winning election in 2010, he packed the courts, ditched the constitution, and clamped down on the press. His disproportionate and violent attack on a Kyiv protest encampment in November 2013 turned what had been a limited series of demonstrations over his foreign policy into a nationwide revolt against his regime. By the time he fled to Russia in February 2014, a full 8.5 million Ukrainians, or 20 percent of the population, had taken part in the protests to oust him.
When faced with mass protests, Trump will undoubtedly respond with unchecked repression and brutal violence. This will only serve to undercut his legitimacy and mobilize opposition to his rule.
It is only a matter of time before these two imbecilic, impulsive narcissists come to blows. When that happens, Musk will receive a harsh lesson in the reality of competitive authoritarianism. His immense wealth matters little when up against the guy who can wield the Justice Department as his personal bludgeon. In all likelihood, he will become the subject of multiple criminal probes and be chased out of the country. It is a lesson that will not be lost on his fellow moguls.
It is only a matter of time before these two imbecilic, impulsive narcissists come to blows. When that happens, Musk will receive a harsh lesson in the reality of competitive authoritarianism. His immense wealth matters little when up against the guy who can wield the Justice Department as his personal bludgeon. In all likelihood, he will become the subject of multiple criminal probes and be chased out of the country. It is a lesson that will not be lost on his fellow moguls.
It is only a matter of time before these two imbecilic, impulsive narcissists come to blows. When that happens, Musk will receive a harsh lesson in the reality of competitive authoritarianism. His immense wealth matters little when up against the guy who can wield the Justice Department as his personal bludgeon. In all likelihood, he will become the subject of multiple criminal probes and be chased out of the country. It is a lesson that will not be lost on his fellow moguls.
The emperor has no clothes, and his sagging, crenulated butt is flapping in the breeze. The sooner we recognize this, the sooner we can kick his ass to the curb.
What all of this adds up to is a big flashing green light to commit violence against Democratic lawmakers.
His case illustrates a dynamic that lies at the core of Trump's regime. Over and over again, people are being punished for not committing crimes.
Headline and opening paragraph from New York Sun article: Why Trump Is Braving Critics To Welcome White South Africans to America One opponent expresses concern that the administration ‘has chosen to fast-track the admission of Afrikaners, while actively fighting court orders to provide life-saving resettlement to other refugee populations.’ By HOLLIE McKAY | 15 hours ago |politics
Will Stancil @whstancil quote-tweeting "I’m sorry what" to a tweet by @narrenhut which states, "The DC Israeli embassy shooter had apparently been previously banned from Twitter for sending death threats to Will Stancil."
In the next few years, a mass movement against Trump’s regime is almost certain to emerge. One way or another, it will gain leaders. Whether or not current Democratic incumbents end up receiving those leadership roles is largely up to them.
Trump’s tendency to fire off the most demented, unhinged opening salvos only to reverse course at the slightest pushback carries important implications. We should not be fooled by the shock and awe he tries to instill and should instead see him for what he is—your typical schoolyard bully who cowers the moment somebody punches back. In this way, the copious amounts of makeup he applies to conceal the pasty, ashen carcass underneath is a metaphor for how he rules—all appearance and no substance.
The second is that, per this study, when Jewish leaders, like the head of the Anti-Defamation League or the leader of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, imply or say that these policies have the support of most American Jews, they are saying something that is not true. They may be speaking their own truth, but, if you are an American Jew, odds are better than average that they are not speaking yours.
And in general, I would say that a good rule of thumb is that if your television one-liners could also be coming out of the mouth of one of brutal white patriarchs masterminding a fascist takeover, you may not be the hero (or the intellect) you imagine yourself to be.
David Sacks reposted Rapid Response 47 @RapidResponse47 🚨 Valor CEO and DOGE volunteer Antonio Gracias says that they found 5 million+ non-citizens with Social Security numbers -- and that "thousands" of them were registered to vote and that "many of them had voted."
Tweet from @BillAckman, part 1 of 2: The country is 100% behind the president on fixing a global system of tariffs that has disadvantaged the country. But, business is a confidence game and confidence depends on trust. President @realDonaldTrump has elevated the tariff issue to the most important geopolitical issue in the world, and he has gotten everyone’s attention. So far, so good. And yes, other nations have taken advantage of the U.S. by protecting their home industries at the expense of millions of our jobs and economic growth in our country. But, by placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital. The president has an opportunity to call a 90-day time out, negotiate and resolve unfair asymmetric tariff deals, and induce trillions of dollars of new investment in our country. If, on the other hand, on April 9th we launch economic nuclear war on every country in the world, business investment will grind to a halt, consumers will close their wallets and pocket books, and we will severely damage our reputation with the rest of the world that will take years and potentially decades to rehabilitate.
Those who helped create this monster are uniquely positioned to dismantle it. Those who breathed life into these dangerous falsehoods must now speak truth with equal fervor. What kind of community stands aside and laments the misuse of a weapon they themselves forged and handed over—while refusing to break it apart?
In reality, Trump’s assault on democracy is proceeding far more rapidly than in other competitive authoritarian regimes. This makes it all the more important to align our conceptual frame with the evolving landscape.
The Grayzone News is notorious for its refusal to disclose its own major donors. But fear not; Reed, its editor, will not tolerate such behavior from other organizations.
google search results: The Independent Washington Post staffers outraged at Jeff Bezos’ stunning plan for opinion pages that prompted top editor to quit 'I have a feeling this isn't gonna bring back the 250k subs,' one Post reporter wrote in the paper's Slack channel on Wednesday. . 3 weeks ago NPR A top 'Washington Post' columnist resigns, accusing publisher of killing piece Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus resigned, accusing the paper's publisher of killing her piece on owner Jeff Bezos' overhaul of its opinion pages. . 2 weeks ago Axios WashPost opinion editor resigns after Jeff Bezos announces changes to Opinion section The Washington Post's Opinion Section editor David Shipley resigned after owner Jeff Bezos mandated the section prioritize two topics, personal liberties... . 3 weeks ago The New Yorker Why I Left the Washington Post Owner Jeff Bezos wants to transform the Opinions section of the paper, where Ruth Marcus worked for forty years. After the publisher killed her column... . 1 week ago
Quote tweet of me by Grayzone editor Wyatt Reed: Love the new tough-guy persona Neil. So fierce! Thanks for acknowledging you lied and that I never worked for any state-backed outlet while at Grayzone To answer: We don’t name our individual donors as they generally don’t want unemployed neocon freaks like you stalking them too 1:51 PM · Mar 23, 2025 Reply to Reed by me: Yeah, which should disqualify them as donors. But not to you guys, I guess. 3:03 PM · Mar 23, 2025
screenshot of Sputnik website listing Kit Klarenberg as a “Sputnik correspondent” and referencing 100 articles he wrote for the publication.
Other victims of forced confessions broadcasted on Press TV have not been as privileged. The pictures and forced confessions of Hashem Shabani, a poet and high school teacher, and Hadi Rashedi, a school headmaster, were broadcast in December 2011 prior to their trial, before they were executed and buried secretly in January 2014.
Aaron Maté quote-tweeting journalist Idrees Ahmad of New Lines Magazine of being "Pentagon-tied" for accepting public funding. March 22, 2025.
She added: “At all times, we are guided by our values, putting academic freedom, free expression, open inquiry, and respect for all at the fore of every decision we make.”
As of Tuesday, Khalil had not been charged with any crime. However, two people with knowledge of the matter told the New York Times that the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was relying on a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that gives him broad power to expel foreigners if they give him “reasonable ground to believe” their presence in the US has “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences”. Zeteo also reported that Rubio himself “personally signed off on the arrest”.
In February – after Columbia president Katrina Armstrong met with Israel’s education minister, where they discussed taking firmer action on campus speech – Columbia’s Barnard College expelled three students for political activism for the first time since the 1968 protests. This week – as the school welcomed former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who once said, “I’ve killed many Arabs in my life, and there’s no problem with that,” to campus – NYPD arrested nine students involved in a campus sit-in. All the while, Columbia is maintaining a shadowy process to discipline students who are critical of Israel, including, apparently for writing op-eds.
This deterministic framing also explains why so many libertarians found themselves drifting toward reactionary politics. If democracy is doomed, then why bother defending it? If technology is going to replace governance, then why not accelerate the process?
My initial comment: Trans rights—to free expression, citizenship, and basic dignity—are a bellwether for the rights of us all. What Jews were to the Nazis and “kulaks” were under Stalinism, trans people are under Trump. Once they start getting rounded up and put into camps, it won’t be long for the rest of us. The reply: At least you offered to defend them to keep that from happening and to keep all minorities and peoples from falling… or did you come here to State a fact without it affecting you at fucking all???
𝕃𝕦𝕜𝕚𝕦𝕞 ‪@americanmanifesto.news‬ Your entire argument falls apart without that premise, and the facts already stand heavily against it. Watch the Vigilante Inc. Documentary as well as Greg Palast's follow up work since the elections.
The editorial board writes that what "shouldn't be debated is whether the government should target a group of Americans to be stripped of their freedom and dignity." But that's exactly what the Times has been doing: treating trans people's right to exist as a topic for debate rather than a fundamental human right.
Israel Drafts Plans to Allow Gazans Passage Via Ports, Borders Airport and seaport are options in military’s draft proposal It’s unclear if Trump’s idea will get backing to proceed
UFC fighter says he’s ‘definitely not a Nazi’ after comments spark criticism by Filip Timotija - 02/04/25 10:52 AM ET
“I meant, that they were guilty because they did something wrong. But they’re not guilty ‘til they come to court. They’re innocent ’til proven guilty," he told the commission.
This emerging tech cult admires religion for its rigid hierarchies. But unlike traditional conservative power structures where God sits atop the pyramid, these tech prophets place technology at the summit, with themselves as its high priests. Instead of divine authority flowing from God through patriarchal figures, authority flows from technology through its billionaire interpreters, who see themselves as humanity's saviors.
Photo of bearded protester with snowflakes on his shoulder and wearing a red hat. Tweet from A. Bartaway🇺🇦❤️✊✌️ @Bartaway On January 22, 2014, Serhiy Nihoyan was the first to be shot to death by the Berkut in the Revolution of Dignity. He had come to Maidan to protest the police beating students. His family were refugees from the 1st Nagorno-Karabakh War that moved to town outside Dnipro.
Book jacket: Comeback: Routing Trumpism, Reclaiming the Nation, and Restoring Democracy’s Edge, by M. Steven Fish with Laila M. Aghaie
Quote-tweet by Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno A Sunday roast, binging on a box set with your partner on the sofa, dropping your kids off at a sports class, snoozing through your alarm. The thing about civilisation is it’s easy to take for granted, and then in an instant you’re in an apocalyptic wasteland craving death Tweet quoted is by Jessica Parker @MarkerJParker Big move by outgoing #US President - and long awaited by #Ukraine. Joe Biden has given the green light for Ukraine to use long-range missiles supplied by the US to strike military targets inside Russia, according to US media.
It simultaneously pushes Jews into the arms of the right. However common antisemitism is on the fringes of the left—and it is certainly present, as I have discussed previously—its manifestations on the right are far more dangerous. Students for Justice in Palestine has rightly earned rebuke for its antisemitism. But it is not exactly on the verge of taking over Washington. Do you know who is? The Republican Party. The GOP, for all its Zionist window dressing, is home to a shocking number of antisemites, including Donald Trump himself. They are not the type who valorize Hamas, of course. Instead, they are the old-school, blood-and-soil variety—the kind that thinks the government is controlled by a secret Jewish cabal bent on destroying the volk.
Of course the problem that they have now is that having presented themselves as such brilliant practitioners, their policies have actually resulted in a series of missteps and disasters.
Publicity poster for the 1984-85 TV series, "V," showing an alien face emerging from beneath his human disguise from inside the letter "V."
In addition to contributing to the hostile atmosphere for Jewish community members, the speakers fostered an atmosphere of ahistorical bias that is antithetical to the values of NAIS. Dr. Barakat, for example, defined Zionism as when “some European Jews decided that the solution to solving antisemitism in Europe and Russia was the establishment of a state in Palestine,” a patent erasure of the millennia-old connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel and a flattening of Jewish identity, excluding MENA Jews who also yearned to return to their ancient homeland. She and others, such as Dr. Ruha Benjamin, used the term “genocide” in relation to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, a grossly inaccurate and misleading use of a well-defined legal term. Independent schools should champion nuanced and fact-based teaching of history and current affairs; students should learn that international conflicts are complex and easy answers and accusations are rarely a panacea
A little white shi tzu lying on a white dog bed with her mouth agape in what appears to be a scream (but is really a yawn)
Now, tankies do understand that they are different from most people. In fact, they try to compensate for their peculiarities by presenting themselves as normal—much like psychopaths unable to experience empathy understand it as a concept and use it to manipulate others. Although tankies dismiss the notion of Enlightenment individualism, they can grasp why the rest of us would subscribe to it. They therefore pose as adherents of the idea in the course of gaslighting their audience.
We also documented the 2011 NATO campaign in Libya, the ensuing civil war with foreign intervention in Libya from 2012, US military and CIA operations in Yemen, Turkish actions in northern Syria and Iraq against Kurdish forces and factions, and the US campaign against al-Shabaab in Somalia. In addition in May 2021, Airwars teams documented all civilian casualties in Israel and the Gaza Strip during the deadly ten day war.
Key findings By almost every metric, the harm to civilians from the first month of the Israeli campaign in Gaza is incomparable with any 21st century air campaign. It is by far the most intense, destructive, and fatal conflict for civilians that Airwars has ever documented. Key findings include: At least 5,139 civilians were killed in Gaza in 25 days in October 2023. This is nearly four times more civilians reported killed in a single month than in any conflict Airwars has documented since it was established in 2014. In October 2023 alone, Airwars documented at least 65 incidents in which a minimum of 20 civilians were killed in a particular incident. This is nearly triple the number of such high-fatality incidents that Airwars has documented within any comparable timeframe.
Airwars has also documented select periods of harm resulting from Russian military actions in Ukraine, documenting the ‘Battle of Kharkiv’, in particular. As the information environment in Ukraine is tightly controlled, with little information about civilian and non-civilian victims released either officially or unofficially, the utility of open-source civilian harm monitoring is limited. As such, comparisons to the civilian impact of the Russian campaign in Ukraine are not included in this report.
In addition, he decries the “shifts in…internal left wing discourse and politics” which “cost people their jobs in certain liberal institutions.” Fine. But is he similarly vexed over Republican plans to purge liberals from the federal bureaucracy and other institutions? Of course not. The projection gets more absurd from there. Consider, among other claims, the “bureaucratic supervision of intimate life” he fears in #MeToo feminism; the anti-racism movement’s supposed proclivity for “re-education,” “strict white deference,” and “society being re-engineered;” and, most laughably, his premonition of a “color revolution” by Democrats bent on reversing a Trump victory in 2024. In sum, Douthat expresses far more concern about these mostly imaginary liberal excesses than their far graver manifestations on the right. This very fact suggests he does not have much of a problem with them—so long, that is, as they are used to advance his own vision of how America should be.