From my new book, If We Burn: the beginning of the section on the Egyptian revolution I am being asked about Palestine, understandably, in book interviews, and this is the answer. Whether you like it or not, it was pro-Palestine solidarity that helped put together the movement that became the most inspiring scene in the "Arab Spring" - Tahrir Square in Cairo

Presidential debate in Brazil - Lula asks Bolsonaro, twice, how many universities and schools Bolsonaro opened - no answer. Then Lula said that Bolsonaro delayed the arrival of the covid vaccine, and made jokes while hundreds of thousands of people died Things heating up now ! Bolsonaro says "stop lying," and Lula responds, "you are the king of fake news - the king of stupidity!"

With 95% counted I think the situation is clear - Lula beat Bolsonaro today, but by less than expected. Regardless of what polling indicated, this is a remarkable turnaround for Brazil compared to the situation in 2021. On to the second round - Oct 30 resultados.tse.jus.br/oficial/app/in… Part two of the news tonight - in congress, and at the state level, the results so far have made it clear that Bolsonarismo is very much alive and well

https://twitter.com/jpcharleaux/status/1576721696442437632

O Método Jacarta - edição brasileira - chegando no começo de julho autonomialiteraria.com.br/loja/historia-… Já saiu! E estou saindo do país um pouco, de novo, agora. Mas estou feliz que conseguimos falar um pouco do livro na imprensa nacional este mês. Juntando aqui. O @eduardosombini apresentou a obra muito bem, nesse podcast da @ilustrissima que participei - www1.folha.uol.com.br/ilustrissima/2…

China is big, complicated, and very important. Its rise is a fact, whether you like it or not. For these reasons, we must think carefully, and speak honestly, about the country and its diverse characteristics. Reducing the entire nation to a strict good / bad binary is infantile Imagine if someone said "US companies created the smartphone" and you replied "what about the Iraq War!?" Or if you said "the US has by far the world's largest prison population" and you said "the universities are very good!" Yet we routinely speak this stupidly about China.

So that piece was largely about US historical amnesia, and the false line between the "civilized" West and the rest, but I want to talk about this part here, since there is a lot of debate about the use of the word "coup"

https://twitter.com/Vinncent/status/1348759497850970122

If the Supreme Court had found a way to give the election to Trump, that's a "judicial coup" or lawfare. Flynn's martial law plan, if it re-engineered the election, would be a military coup. Congress denying the results would be "parliamentary" coup. And all would be "autogolpes"

Vogue cover discourse is proof that there is no event monumental enough to stop social media from devolving into petty culture war bullshit. It is not even clear who runs the most powerful nation on Earth and everyone is quote-tweeting threads about whether lighting is violence Apart from the fact that the cover is fine! There are two, and one simply seems to say "the next VP dresses like this, a casual Gen-X cool mom, isn't that an interesting and novel development?" Meanwhile a new nazi vanguard is hiding out in man caves throughout the Northeast

So: Ann Dunham definitely worked at the US Embassy, and Lolo definitely worked for the Indonesian Military, while the US-backed and blood-soaked Suharto dictatorship consolidated rule over Indonesia. But this tweet is probably not 100% right. Because many people asked, a thread:

https://twitter.com/EritreaStruggle/status/1314249816621359104

First — there could be more. For The Jakarta Method (link in bio), I did not do special research into Ann or Lolo. But in "Dreams From My Father," (1995) Obama is clear that they were both surrounded by horrible people, and horrible things. His version could be wrong, of course.

So, I do believe we are seeing a kind of convergence between US and Latin American societies (a re-convergence? - most nations in the hemisphere are built on the same history) but you really should not do the "Good First World becoming like Bad Third World because Trump" trope Many of the very bad things now "appearing" in rich North America were 1) already present in previous iterations of anglo North America 2) actually imposed on Central / South America by Washington. It's a back and forth. The hemisphere has been one big system for about a century

Something like this happened to one of my best friends right after we graduated university. It's a story I always tell when trying to explain the insanity of the 🇺🇸 U.S. 🇺🇸 medical system:

https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/1292826811710283776

My friend was like 22, and didn't have insurance. University coverage ends abruptly, and it's really common for people this age be themselves uncovered. While riding his bicycle home from his low-paid job one day, he was struck by a car in Oakland. He passed out in the street.

I am very excited about this - next Thursday (August 13th) @SoeTjenMarching and I will discuss The Jakarta Method - not just the book, but the situation faced by survivors of the violence, and family members of the victims, to this day. Register here:
crowdcast.io/e/vincent-bevi… The event is 6PM EST (1900 Brasília, 2300 London, 5am in Jakarta), hosted by @public_affairs and @powerHouseBooks. It will stay up after, so sign up even if you might be busy. I hope we can make clear that Indonesia 1965 is not in the past, but still affects of millions of people

You should always identify when a country is committing serious abuses. But it's much harder to identify an action another state can take that will improve, rather than worsen, the situation. The fatal flaw of US foreign policy ideology is to ignore the difference between the two It works both ways. If you opposed the invasion of Iraq, you could be (and were) accused of ignoring Saddam's crimes. Inversely, mainstream discourse usually ignores abuses committed around the world until it is time for the US government to Do Something (anything at all will do)

Indigenous TikToker attacking some of Brazil's most toxic and racist anti-native sentiments, such as the idea that he stops being indigenous just because he lives in the 21st century

https://twitter.com/cristianwariu/status/1282058255808815104

This is an extremely common way to deny indigenous Brazilians history (they can only exist in the form that the Europeans found them) and block full citizenship. For example, for white Brazilians to have Portuguese ancestry, do they have to still dress and act like Pedro Cabral?

I think this is close to right, but not exactly. Working class people in the global south learn theory too. But there is absolutely a dynamic in which the world's most privileged people go to elite institutions where they learn the magic words that absolve them of personal guilt

https://twitter.com/MazMHussain/status/1280936738278572032

But the second thing is more relevant when talking about English-language mainstream media. It's mostly people from those schools. You are born elite, you're awaiting a position that will cement that material status, and you learn exactly what to say to appear to be a good person

Becoming clear that Instagram is an even worse app for political discussion than Facebook was Became clear over the last two months that most of my peers (real peers, not twitter people) now use Instagram stories to do their politics post and while the discussions were vital and the people were often right, it just, doesn't really work.

Folha de S.Paulo has launched a special on the Brazilian dictatorship. Though support for democracy is high, they (rightly, I think) believe this is a good time to talk about what happened the last time it fell

www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2020/06/… I have one small quibble here, however. This seems to affirm that Brazilian democracy is solid because most people here prefer democracy. But the whole point of dictatorship is that the will of the people no longer matters.

Whoah. Labour leader Keir Starmer has fired Rebecca Long-Bailey (she was the post-Corbyn left-wing leadership candidate) from the UK shadow cabinet for tweeting out an interview with an actor who linked US and Israeli security tactics

https://twitter.com/RLong_Bailey/status/1276161748664496128

This is her tweet, and this is the section of the (long, published in a mainstream outlet) interview that was deemed antisemitic. The quote is from actor Maxine Peak

"Hollywood is America’s unofficial ministry of propaganda." - important essay by @viet_t_nguyen

nytimes.com/2020/06/24/mov… "I feared that Lee, despite being a Black American with a powerful, necessary voice, would, in the end, be an American. Could his antiracist critique overcome the investment in American imperialism that most Americans have without knowing it?

Unfortunately, the answer is no."

"The concentration of land ownership, one of the fundamental reasons for endless cycles of violence in this country, has been untouchable for five centuries in Brazil"

https://twitter.com/Diogotapuio/status/1275417966016937989

If I were forced to answer the question, "Why did murderous right-wing coups happen in the 20th century" in two words, those two words would be "land reform."

Bolsonaristas will tell you it is no coincidence that all of these criminal investigations are closing in on the ruling family at the exact moment they lost the support of key sections of the political and economic establishment. They are actually right, for the wrong reasons. It's true that in Brazil, judicial investigations rise up as your political capital falls, but in the case of the Bolsonaros, this is not "lawfare." It's the opposite. Their criminality has been obvious since the beginning, but the establishment gave them some room to try to rule

Note for people watching Brazil - a coup would not involve Bolsonaro saying "I'm doing a coup!! Are you with me, fellow golpistas??" - the President could claim simply an independent source of power (Supreme Court, or Congress) overstepped, and ignore a decision they have made. It would be framed, as these things always are, as a way to defend true democracy from illegitimate attacks. If he simply ignored, say, a Supreme Court decision, then it would come down to the security forces. Do they carry it out? Or do they agree the decision was illegitimate?