As the "escalation ladder" advances, & ahead of Nasrallah's speech later this week, excerpts from my '09 essay on his discourse & Hezbollah's practice, when peaceful pathways were still available to avoid the terrible war now moving closer by the day.1/15

I pay my US taxes & I’m a researcher at a refugee rights org that doesn’t take US or gov or UN $. So your take of the data points is rushed & incorrect. No one gets funded by US tax $$$. And my work has been about ending awful US-led wars & better ways to deal w/violent groups.

@MikeBenzCyber Mike, you are doing exactly the kind of manipulation that you critique as harmful. Take a moment.

This is a key interview w/@MikeBenzCyber who played a role in the chaotic, harmful, sudden destruction of USAID by Trump. It's hard to follow his arguments-he rarely is able to crystallize, meanders & cant resolve the obvious contradictions he raises.

"DOGE associates have been feeding vast troves of government records and databases into artificial intelligence tools, looking for unwanted federal prgs and trying to determine which human work can be replaced by AI, machine-learning tools or even robots."

Blackrock got it’s normal share:

RT @Faiyla: Ah of course, he's not Maronite.

RT @runasand: Paragon and Pegasus have both leveraged WhatsApp to silently install spyware onto people's devices -- with no user interactio…

"At just $15 billion by the end of 2019...gold reserves to have gone up by $1 billion, from $24.7 billion in mid-January to $25.7 billion on Jan. 31." via @LOrientToday

RT @John_Hudson: NEW: The State Department has approved more than $7 billion in arms to Israel without the sign off of the ranking member o…

RT @michellenichols: International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is first person to be hit with economic, travel sanctions authorize…

RT @MiddleEastEye: Princeton University offered to dismiss a case against 13 students charged with "trespassing" after participating in a p…

This former LAF head was America's darling for many years in Lebanon. He now escapes justice for corruption: "Jean Kahwaji and 4 other ex-officers escape justice due to statute of limitations." via @LOrientToday

RT @QuincyInst: Perfect timing: Just as we learn foreign governments pumped $110M into DC think tanks to shape US policy, the DOJ announces…

RT @AK_Wisniewska: 🇵🇱🪖Silny, nowoczesny polski przemysł zbrojeniowy to konieczność. Nigdy nie byli��my tak silnie osadzeni w systemie sojusz…

Seems @walidjoumblatt isn't aware of the "great new era" Trump is bringing fast & furious, 1 that is 100% opposed to the "no winners & no losers" approach of old. There'll only be winners & those who submit to will of the winner-all else,foreign & domestic, are to be eradicated.

The many contradictions and unintended (and intended) consequences will come to a violent boil sooner rather than later:

Trump's coalition has blaring red alarm contradictions that will explode. 1 main Benz criticism of USAID is for doing...exactly what Rubio said it should: "USAID is effectively a switch player...to assist the State Dept. on the national interest front."

Salam had a brief moment of flexibility to pursue a pragmatic, less confrontational approach. As expected, this is over. There's no room in Trump's world for such a position. War, lawlessness & raw power must decide winners/losers. We are at the beginning.

But Big Tech is the Government now: "Its application would mark a significant defeat for tech companies in their decades-long battle to avoid being wielded as government tools against their users."

RT @matthewstoller: Doha Mekki was the architect of the Google adtech antitrust case, which revealed Google and Facebook colluded to monopo…