iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Today in, “hey, how’s it going over at the world’s leading conflict event database?” (From today’s edition of ACLED CEO Clionadh Raleigh’s email newsletter)

“Do you have scholar/activist in your job title? Did you put it there? Everyone hates you and thinks you do nothing all day. You — yourself — are the reason that universities will fail as a public good.”

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

In the spirit of not just newsposting all the time: My wife and I are hosting an impromptu Federico Fellini Film Festival at our apartment in Los Angeles this year, and if you're around and like film, you should come! If you're interested, sign up here: forms.gle/u6bTNBSEASaN...

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

The voice of my favorite form of revenue generation... or at least a voice of a form of revenue generation. From the NYT review of congestion pricing:

"It's allowed me to believe that perhaps America can change for the better." - Hanna Horvath, Brooklyn.

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Emmanuel Macron, famed election respecter, has logged on.

Emmanuel Macron post urging the installation of Edmundo Gonzalez as president of Venezuela

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

I stand by everything I wrote here about Kroenig in 2020. fellowtravelersblog.com/2020/12/23/2...

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

Dumbest man alive finds new grift.

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

Awaiting any sort of public introspection from the various faux experts who pronounced this conflict over in the last couple years.

Item from Zitamar News:

Violence in Cabo Delgado could reach record levels this year.

Violence in Cabo Delgado province could reach a record high in 2025, with 519 attacks reported by the end of August, compared to 448 in 2022, according to a report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The report says that most incidents, which include the use of improvised explosive devices, are attacks against civilians. The escalation of conflict and violence affects the districts of Ancuabe, Balama, Chiure, Macomia, Mocimboa da Praia, Montepuez and Muidumbe, Nangade in Cabo Delgado, Memba in Nampula province and some regions of Niassa province, according to OCHA.

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

Obviously some particular challenges with MIIS, but adding this to the "policy education is deeply screwed" file.

Tweet from Decker Eveleth saying: "Middlebury Institute of International Studies will be closing down most of its programs by June 2027."

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

Lance Gooden is another (I think the other) one:

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

I can't quite make it out, could someone please tell me what the date is on this story?

Headline: "Senior ministers call for new settlement in Gaza at ultranationalist conference"

Date: 21 October, 2024 -- before Biden lost the election and during his apparently successful "public and private pressure campaign to compel Netanyahu to reject the ethnic cleansing calls of his far-right allies."

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

To anyone who wants to play the, "they didn't lie, they just didn't finish investigating the civilian harms claim" game, first of all, come on, we're all adults here, and second of all, GAO reports that State told Congress they'd investigate civilian harm incidents in Gaza and then just... didn't.

GAO Report: "Further, as of December 2024, State had not completed any investigations into reports it deemed credible. State officials said they needed additional resources to manage this workload. By developing and implementing a strategy to identify appropriate staffing and resources for the process, State could investigate the full scope of reported incidents in a more timely manner."

GAO Report: "However, in the report, State noted it had not yet reached definitive conclusions on whether U.S.-origin defense articles were used in specific incidents that were inconsistent with international humanitarian law. According to the report, State was planning to review these incidents and make recommendations to reduce the risk of civilian harm, but had not curtailed security assistance to Israel."

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

A fitting title for a guy whose lasting legacy is relentlessly enabling a murderous war, killing hundreds of thousands directly and indirectly, telling himself all the while it's for the greater good: The Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order!

Politico article announcing Jake Sullivan as Harvard's new Henry Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order.

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

The Belfer Center, a think tank with the courage to say, in this moment, that politics doesn't exist.

"Over the course of his extraordinary career, Brett has worked for multiple presidents from both parties, demonstrating how it is still possible to serve one's country at senior levels regardless of partisan politics. His abilities and perspective make him an exceptional resource for our students, scholars, and broader community." - Meghan O'Sullivan, Director, Belfer Center

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Belfer striking yet another blow in the blob's war on accountability.

Headline: Brett McGurk joins Belfer Center as Senior Fellow

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Well, *someone* here is deliberately sabotaging lifesaving programs to make a political point, but it's not the aid groups.

Tweet from John Hudson:

"New: Secretary Rubio blamed aid groups for failing to navigate Trump's freeze on foreign aid, saying they are either too incompetent to apply for exemptions of deliberately sabotaging their work to make a 'political point.'"

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

Mozambique isn't my everyday beat anymore, but as long as USIP keeps publishing foolish articles about Mozambican politics by "Africa experts" and ignoring the work of Mozambican analysts, I'll keep yelling at them about it. x.com/samratner/st...

Bernie meme: "I am once again asking for USIP to publish a single Mozambican analyst"

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 29/12/2024

Grimes… don’t watch Conclave

Grimes skeet:

It is so monumentally embarrassing that I am finally getting into Christianity because it's the only way I can quit vaping.
I am more of a general deist/ feel like god is physics/ math / sees itself thru our eyes kinda vibe in terms of what l "actually think" (the universe is also probably dead and empty except yeh idk prob not ngl)

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

I’ve been getting Henry James-pilled lately — my guy wrote some of the best, most joyfully absurd, sentences I’ve ever seen. This passage, from The Wings Of The Dove, is better social media commentary than 90% of the “Twitter vs BlueSky” columns out there.

Passage from Henry James’ The Wings of the Dove reading: Lord Mark's intelligence meanwhile, however, had met her own quite sufficiently to enable him to tell her how little he could clear up her situation. He explained, for that matter - or at least he hinted - that there was no such thing to-day in London as saying where any one was. Every one was everywhere - nobody was anywhere. He should be put to it - yes,

“frankly - to give a name of any sort or kind to their hostess's
'set'. Was it a set at all, or wasn't it, and were there not really no such things as sets in the place any more? - was there anything but the groping and pawing, that of the vague billows of some great greasy sea in mid-Channel, of masses of bewildered people trying to 'get' they didn't know what or where?
He threw out the question, which seemed large; Milly felt that at the end of five minutes he had thrown out a great many, though he followed none more than a step or two; perhaps he would prove suggestive, but he helped her as yet to no discriminations: he spoke as if he had given them up from too much knowledge. He was thus at the opposite extreme from herself, but, as a consequence of it, also wandering and lost; and he was furthermore, for all his temporary incoherence, to which she guessed there would be some key, as packed a concretion as either Mrs. Lowder or Kate.“

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

Today in "Congress is a serious body, serving the needs of the people," here's a real provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that'll be passed this week:

A screenshot from the FY2025 NDAA with the text of Section 641: Prohibition on the Sale of Garlic from the People's Republic of China at Commissary Stores

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

If Kurt Campbell needs some good language to draw from for an improved statement, I'd suggest he take a look at this from @ilhanmn.bsky.social:

A statement from Rep. Ilhan Omar, reading:

"South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is plunging his country into chaos to cling onto power at the expense of South Koreans. There is no doubt that President Yoon Suk Yeol's decision is a direct attack on human rights and an attempt to violently suppress opposition. We must condemn President Yoon Suk Yeol's actions unequivocally and stand firmly on the side of protesters fighting for their constitutionally guaranteed rights. This decision echoes one of the darkest chapters in South Korea's history. To secure a brighter future for the people of South Korea, we must ensure democratic norms and essential human rights are respected."

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

The Biden administration never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 08/11/2024

The elite foreign policy consensus is real: Obama had Hagel, and now Trump has Hegel.

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 10/05/2024

A particularly choice piece of absurdism from State's NSM-20 report. The retired IDF general trumpeted as doing an "independent, fact-finding assessment" of IDF IHL violations? He's the CEO of Israel's national arms manufacturer! www.jpost.com/israel-hamas...

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 27/03/2024

Monty Python-ass conflict analysis.

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 13/02/2024

This decision is profoundly dangerous, and leaking it like this at the precipice of a full-scale attack on Rafah is feckless beyond belief.

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 12/02/2024

Kamala Harris: You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? Keith Richards in 2006, existing fully outside the context of all he lives and all that came before him: Yes.

Headline: Richards concussed after fall from coconut tree

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 03/01/2024

Who thought this leak would make people think the Israeli attack on Al-Shifa hospital was okay? "We thought there were a few Hamas fighters near there, but we had no idea if they were there at the time, and it turns out they weren't."

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 02/01/2024

Q for Israel-watchers: Gantz et al keep saying stuff like this about how the unity gov is focused on "winning the war" -- destroying Hamas, freeing hostages, etc. -- as though it's inevitable. What happens when people notice that they're not winning, that none of that is happening?

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 26/12/2023

I used some Christmas Day free time to finally finish @lefteleven.bsky.social’s excellent The Counterinsurgent Imagination. This except, from the conclusion, is characteristically right on the money. Here’s to working for new political imaginings in 2024.

“Counterinsurgency is, in the end, not simply a set of strategies and tactics — an assemblage of proposed solution — so much as a politics unto itself. Imagining alternatives to counterinsurgency must begin not with alternative solutions but with alternative views of the world: with other political imaginings.”

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 28/11/2023

The ethnic cleansing inquirer has once again logged on... to openly endorse genocide.

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Sam Ratner @samratner.bsky.social · 13/11/2023

Can't stop laughing at this stupid meme going around on the bad site. Scholars spend whole careers studying democracy formation, when the answer was in front of their faces all along: democracy's formation is a stodgy 4-4-2.

A soccer tactics chart depicting "Democracy FC" lined up in a traditional 4-4-2 vs "Terrorist Dictatorship," using a more progressive 4-3-3 formation.

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