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Laleh Khalili

@lalehkhalili.bsky.social
20K followers 877 following 2.3K posts

Politics, poetry, ports, pottymouth. She/her. Typos and dropped words in every post, because sharing is caring. Find me at l.khalili@exeter.ac.uk

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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 13h
This analysis of the far right in Brasil is spot on - and to me it also describes the politics of ressentiment in the UK and the US as well. It is just that in these two countries, it is targeted at migrants. www.equator.org/articles/bra...
Ever since Brexit and Trump, when the political weather changed so dramatically, the left has responded with two narratives: we either paint the far right as a revolt of the elites without a real popular base, or as a revolt of the left-behind, of a working-class betrayed by liberal elitism.

Neither of these narratives persuades me. Rather, I believe the contemporary far right is a cross-class phenomenon. One way to understand it is as a movement that brings together an underclass that has given up waiting on the promises of modernisation – formal work, accountable institutions, real equality before the law – and an elite who no longer even pretends those promises are on offer.

Between them lies the hardest core of true believers – not the largest group statistically, but the most passionate – which I call, borrowing a phrase from Orwell, the “lower-upper-middle class”. These are people who fall between two stools: they have a good standard of living but lack the assets or social capital of the true elite. They are not only haunted by the fear of downward social mobility, but also threatened by any minor upward mobility achieved by those below them, as during the Pink Tide in Latin America, when the poor became less poor – began attending university, travelling internationally and so forth. This generated a feeling of resentment that was easily instrumentalised.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
So happy to be a member of the Green Party even if the motion could have gone further
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Monroe Doctrine triumphant through the ministrations of the USA
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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 01/10/2026
‘After the first Trump administration imposed sanctions on Iranian and Venezuelan oil, the number of ghost ships carrying these countries’ oil tripled and the price of old ships due to be scrapped increased.’ @lalehkhalili.bsky.social on ghost fleets. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
lrb.co.uk
Laleh Khalili · Ghost Fleets
Unregistered and undetectable fleets cut into the profits of the big tanker companies. After the first Trump...
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
We already knew Tom Watson was a thug. We now have further proof: www.thenerve.news/p/clive-lewi...
thenerve.news
'We’re watching you’: MP Clive Lewis reveals Tom Watson has warned him over criticising Palantir
In a letter to his former Labour colleague, the peer, who joined Peter Thiel’s AI company this month, writes: ‘You have made the case against the company more or less continuously’. By Carole Cadwalla...
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Government borrowing costs (for the US, but also elsewhere) "are at the mercy of oil prices". www.ft.com/content/f894...
	Oil prices and US Treasuries are locked in their tightest relationship since the first Gulf war in 1990, as the Middle East conflict increasingly drives the bond market that helps set borrowing costs across the global economy.

The correlation between the price of West Texas Intermediate crude and the 10-year Treasury yield hit 65 per cent this month, according to derivatives firm Cboe, putting it within touching distance of the level set following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait nearly four decades ago.

The closeness of the relationship highlights how dependent the outlook for the global economy and major asset classes has become on traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 per cent of the world’s oil exports usually pass.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The US is a massive scam from top to bottom. They sell semiautomatics to do domestic mass murder, and then pay lawyers to fight the sites of mass murder, and then sell insurance so that those lawyers can be either paid or fended off. www.ft.com/content/5ad7...
ft.com
The booming business of insuring against US gun violence
Companies, political campaigns and even schools are taking out policies to shield themselves from litigation that can follow attacks
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Paul Hikari @paulhikari.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Well, here's the trailer. Let's make it go viral. www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY_8...
youtube.com
Musk | Official Trailer | Bleecker Street
YouTube video by Musk
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Alex Gibney was the first US director to make a film about extraordinary renditions. He has now made a film about Apartheid Elmu and social media refuse to advertise it. www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/dig...
hollywoodreporter.com
The Major Social Media Platforms Are All Rejecting Paid Ads for Alex Gibney’s ‘Musk’ (Exclusive)
YouTube, TikTok and Meta have all turned down the trailer for the Oct. 9 doc, citing “political” content. X won't even take Bleecker Street's calls. The distributor is appealing.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Pentagon "quietly" adds 37 to the number of casualties. Given 29 are "Navy", they are likely SEALS killed in whatever failed operation they did in Iran. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
washingtonpost.com
Pentagon quietly adds dozens to tally of troops wounded amid Iran war
With the addition of 29 U.S. sailors and eight Marines, the total number of personnel wounded since the start of hostilities has risen to 861, a Pentagon database shows.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
This piece by the incomparable Moe Tkacik digs into the political economy of the Macklemore/Sheeran standoff and the money and business relations flowing behind the scenes: prospect.org/2026/09/19/m...
prospect.org
Macklemore vs. Everybody - The American Prospect
The wokest rapper took on the NFL’s plutocratic ownership, the Israel lobby, and the Live Nation ‘flywheel’—and won.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
It is extraordinary that Netanyahu mentioned Hassan Piker and Mamdani in his speech; in a speech in which he also held up a pager... A deranged and utterly shameless genocidaire who has been basically given a carte blanche by the US and Europeans.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
"My name is Masih Savak Aryamehr, and my country,Persia, yearns for freedom" (H/t to the genius who came up with the original: "blonde-haired blue-eyed person named something like Sabine Mengele-Eichmann: my country, Venezuela (Brazil/Chile etc,), yearns for freedom")
Two images of the Iranian who lectured Abdul El-Sayed on democracy. In the first, he is being baptised in a tub and says that he finally understands what "iman" (faith) means. The second he is dressed in a ridiculously oversized military uniform heavy with medals, dressed as the Shah going to a World Cup game.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
This film looks really interesting, not only at the level of the narrative itself (i.e. the unreliable narrator, and the unreliable filmmakers), but also at the meta level of making you feel like a voyeur for wanting to watch it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvW_...
youtube.com
You Can See Everything | Official Trailer HD | A24
YouTube video by A24
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M a r c u s 🏳️‍🌈🇧🇧 @marcusjdl.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Andy Burnham had said more about PUBS and DRINKING than he has about racist pogroms and transphobia combined
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
What an absolutely brilliant scorching indictment of Sheeran, the BBC, and all the assholes both-siding a genocide www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/se...
lrb.co.uk
Lorna Finlayson | Public Positions
Given much of the coverage of the Ed Sheeran-Macklemore debacle, you could be forgiven for thinking that Sheeran had...
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Miriam Matthiessen @miriammthsn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Really excited to be part of this @rethinkecon.bsky.social book discussion with @lalehkhalili.bsky.social on her wonderful book The Corporeal Life of Seafaring. It will take place next Wednesday, September 30th, 4.30pm CET. You can register here: rethinkeconomics.org/events/book-...
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Holy shit, US politics is so incredibly dirty: www.propublica.org/article/fbi-...
propublica.org
The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins — Until Trump Got in the Way
After the FBI caught a defense contractor’s CEO making illegal campaign contributions, it sought to launch a sweeping political bribery probe involving Collins and others. Then the second Trump admini...
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I wonder if this was the price Saudi had to pay in order to get the US to send jets to bomb Yemen: www.ft.com/content/ac10...
ft.com
Saudi Arabia quits China-led cross-border currency platform
Kingdom’s central bank withdrew from programme which is part of Beijing’s effort to develop an alternative system to the dollar
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
The Pentagon is actually lying about the number of casualties in the US/Israeli war on Iran: www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
washingtonpost.com
More U.S. troops have died amid Iran war than Pentagon has disclosed publicly
Officials who spoke with The Post expressed frustration that the additional loss of life in the Middle East is not reflected in the Defense Department’s casualty database.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Some US special ops "intelligence" analyst used a crappy chatbot (likely produced by Palantir, given how they luuuuuuuv that crappy company) that nearly started a war with China by hallucinating shit: edition.cnn.com/2026/09/18/p...
edition.cnn.com
Exclusive: US military had close call after using AI for false intelligence report, sources say | CNN Politics
The episode shows the risks of using this new, relatively poorly understood technology in the middle of the Iran war
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
This is sooooooo enraging. A US anthropologist (who had been a CIA agent and was married to a US diplomat) basically robbed Nepal of its cultural and religious heritage, and in contravention of Nepalese laws and donated these to US museums. www.himalmag.com/mary-slusser...
himalmag.com
Mary Slusser’s secret loot of Nepal’s sacred art and heritage
A US scholar made her name as an expert on Nepal’s cultural heritage – while illicitly buying sacred artefacts and smuggling them out to the United States
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
When they say "Mediterranean" do they mean Israel? www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
bloomberg.com
Aramco Hunts for Fuel Supply in the Mediterranean After Attacks
Oil giant Saudi Aramco has been looking to secure thousands of tons of diesel in the Mediterranean after a series of attacks on its energy facilities over the past few weeks.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
A crypto millionaire who was pardoned for fraud by Trump and who has donated £36 billion to Reform (Ben Delo), a former left-wing academic turned far right (Nina Power), Toby Young's Free Speech Union... And dodgy financial dealings: www.ft.com/content/21aa...
ft.com
Reform UK’s mega-donor backed a friend’s libel claim. Now he controls her home
Crypto billionaire Ben Delo loaned more than £300,000 to former academic Nina Power
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
The US military is hiring Brazilian Portuguese instructors for the next three months: recruiting.paylocity.com/recruiting/j...
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
This is not a historical turning point. Settler colonial regimes contain from their inception the kernel of fascism that will sooner or later be their defining characteristics. www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...
haaretz.com
'Historic turning point' • Israel moves toward recognizing Austrian party founded by former Nazis
The Austrian Freedom Party's leader gave a speech backing Israel's right-wing agenda that was welcomed by members of the Israeli government. Austria's established Jewish community vehemently rejects t...
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Heather Burns @heatherburnstech.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Regular reminder that JG Ballard’s final novel, “Kingdom Come” (2006), is about a far-right English town which creates their own militarised breakaway state in a shopping mall, where they worship the gods of St George and consumerism. Old JG wrote it as tongue-in-cheek satire. At the time.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Damn, things got even more embarrassing for Sheeran
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Doing a false flag against Mecca is definitely something that the Al Saud (who attacked and flooded the Haram Al Sharif in 1979) would do to preserve their power.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I was just asked by AHR to review an article. I responded so:

Ordinarily this would be so up my street, but given the woeful behaviour of AHA vis-a-vis Israeli genocide in Gaza, I am boycotting everything that has to do with the organisation.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
This wonderful review celebrates Patricio Guzman who just passed away, and whose Nostalgia for the Light may be the most beautifully devastating documentary ever: www.anothergaze.com/great-motion...
anothergaze.com
Great, Motionless Ship: Patricio Guzmán’s Chile
On the anniversary of the Chilean coup d’état, Kaleem Hawa examines the political cinema of Patricio Guzmán, from The First Year (1972) to Chile, Obstinate Memory (1997), detailing how Salvador Allend...
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Something really has changed.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
If Sheeran had an ounce of courage, he would pull out of the tour and let Bob Kraft the paedophilic john and the promoters (Messina) pick up the pieces.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Good for Aaron Rowe (even if i have no idea who he is)
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Omg Mieville has a new novel!
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Dubai's "home transaction volumes in May were roughly half the levels of a year earlier, according to data from local research and consultancy firm ValuStrat, as the war hit market sentiment and left sellers reluctant to sell at steep discounts. www.ft.com/content/3d6b...
ft.com
Middle East war tests Dubai’s island dreams
Ailing luxury developments on emirate’s man-made archipelago reflect strains on wider real estate sector
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Ex MI5 agent works for Tommy Robinson. Some of those who work forces Are the same that burn crosses hopenothate.org.uk/lennons-secr...
hopenothate.org.uk
Lennon's Secret Agent
A former MI5 agent who operated as an IRA bomb maker is now working for Stephen Lennon. Despite still being supported by the British taxpayer, Peter Keeley appears to have broken the law by supplying ...
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Ed Sheeran is a fucking disgrace.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
So there are at least three cases of US citizens in the UK engaged in heinous crimes getting away with it. The CIA woman who hit and ran the teen in Norfolk; the US pilot who sexually abused a woman he met on Tinder; and now this paedo diplomat being whisked out of the UK.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Whole countries have had uprisings around the US demand for extraterritorial immunity for their citizens overseas (e.g. Iran 1963) but here is a diplomat looking at child porn in the UK and the US sneaks him out before the cops can interview him.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Extraordinary that this is not being reported more widely (i.e. why is it not the top item on BBC website) www.itv.com/news/2026-09...
itv.com
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Reading a letter by Hans Magnus Enzenberger from 1968 and boy does it sound familiar:
Let me begin with a few elementary considerations. I believe the class which rules the United States of America, and the government which implements its policies, to be the most dangerous body of men on earth. In one way or another, and to a different degree, this class is a threat to anybody who is not part of it. It is waging an undeclared war against more than a billion people; its weapons range from saturation bombing to the most delicate techniques of persuasion; its aim is to establish its political, economic, and military predominance over every other power in the world. Its mortal enemy is revolutionary change.

Many Americans are deeply troubled by the state of their nation. They reject the war which is being waged in their name against the people of Vietnam. They look for ways and means to end the latent civil war in the ghettos of American cities. But most of them still hold on to the idea that these crises are unfortunate accidents, due to faulty management and lack of understanding: tragical errors on the part of an otherwise peaceful, sane, and well-intentioned world power.

To this interpretation I cannot agree. The Vietnam war is not an isolated phenomenon. It is the most visible outcome and, at the same time, the bloodiest test case of a coherent international policy which applies to five continents. The ruling class of the United States has taken sides in the armed struggles of Guatemala and Indonesia, of Laos and Bolivia, of Korea and Colombia, of the Philippines and of Venezuela, of the Congo and of the Dominican Republic. This is not an exhaustive list. Many other countries are governed, with American support, by oppression, corruption, and starvation. Nobody can feel safe and secure any more, not in Europe, and not even in the United States itself.The fact is that most Americans have no idea of what they and their country look like to the outside world. I have seen the glance that follows them: tourists in the streets of Mexico, soldiers on leave in Far Eastern cities, businessmen in Italy or Sweden. The same glance is cast on your embassies, your destroyers, your billboards all over the world. It is a terrible look, because it makes no distinctions and no allowances. I will tell you why I recognize this look. It is because I am a German. It is because I have felt it on myself.
If you try to analyze it, you will find a blend of distrust and resentment, fear and envy, contempt and outright hate. It hits your President, for whom there is hardly any capital left in the world where he can show his face in public; but it also hits the kind old lady across the aisle on the flight from Delhi to Benares. It is an indiscriminate, a manichaean look. I do not like it. I do not share your President's belief in collective graft and in collective guilt.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
The reuse of Twin Towers' steel in memorials is fascinating. In another lifetime I wrote about the work done by commemoration. But there is something about these images (read the Alt for details) that makes these at once exemplary and also macabre memorials.
The 9/11 Remembrance Garden memorial along Route 66 in Winslow, Arizona.Photographer: Ron Buskirk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Laleh's comments: a fairly standard memorial using two upended steel inexpertly plunked in the middle of a concrete square in a desert landscape. This is the kind of memorial you see that mid-level state officials commission for the work of nation-building.Graham Bennett’s memorial in Christchurch, New Zealand, on September 11, 2016.Photographer: Aaron Campbell Photography

Laleh's comments: This one is baffling to me. Why would New Zealand have a memorial to 9/11? Other than, of course the fact that the US is the world metropole and so you will have memorials to its dead.Artist Heath Satow's sculpture in Rosemead, California, contains 2,976 stainless-steel doves welded into a pair of hands lifting a steel beam from New York’s World Trade Center.Photographer: Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images


Laleh's comments: Without wanting to belittle this, frankly I find this more insulting that the Arizona memorial. Because if you are going to have peace doves, maybe have them enumerate all the dead civilians in the War on Terror... The USS New York’s bow was built with 7.5 tons of steel from the World Trade Center.Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images North America


Laleh's comments - using steel from WTC in the hull of a US warship is about as perfect a memorial I can think of.
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Somebody, Somewhere... Holy shit
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Unsurprising news re "a secret U.S. program to resettle Nazis and Nazi collaborators in Canada by evading proper security screenings" "The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (at U Alberta) maintains eight endowments in the names of Ukrainian SS veterans." ottawacitizen.com/public-servi...
ottawacitizen.com
Judge orders release of records on Nazi war criminals who settled in Canada
Documents from CIA program to settle Nazi war criminals in Canada ordered released by judge
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
As always, Sophie Lewis has the most insightful take, this time on Sophie Lewis: www.patreon.com/reproutopia/...
patreon.com
Eight theses on Gloria Steinem, because goddamn | Sophie Lewis
I think the phrase we’re looking for is social-democratic anticommunism. She was a metonym of the 20th century, which is currently dying. Sh
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
There's always an Arab quisling monarch. In October 1973 it was Hussein of Jordan, in October 2023, MbZ. The survival of these retrograde monarchies depends on Israel. www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...
haaretz.com
Netanyahu got an explicit warning before Oct. 7. He didn't brief security chiefs
In September '23, UAE President bin Zayed called Netanyahu to deliver a harsh warning. Netanyahu did nothing. An extensive investigation, conducted for a new book, reveals the PM's failures surroundin...
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Of course Kent police did nothing. Some of those that work forces Are the same that burn crosses
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
I wish....
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Laleh Khalili @lalehkhalili.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
When i read that piece of sci-fi writing about models going rogue (and speaking to each other in English and expressing emotions lol) I smelled bullshit. Happy to see Timnit Gebru post this corrective: mail.cyberneticforests.com/models-dont-...
mail.cyberneticforests.com
Models Don't Go Rogue
Stochastic Flocks & Cybersecurity 'Pandemonium' 💡This essay was drafted from my appearance on Mél Hogan's podcast, The Data Fix, discussing the OpenAI / Hugging Face hack. Embedded below or find it o...
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