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stewartprest.ca
Recalcitrant Canadian. Political scientist at UBC in Vancouver. I research, teach and talk international relations, BCpoli, comparative democratic institutions, and contentious politics. stewartprest.ca | https://stewartprest.substack.com
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Posts 29 Comments 21

In some ways Trump is the anti-Bush: the Indecider.

submitted 8 hours ago • 2 comments

A good thread. Destabilising Iraq didn’t do much but encourage more war. Iran is also a state trying to enforce a central will on a disparate population. If that regime collapses who knows how it’ll go?

submitted 13 hours ago • 0 comments

🧵

submitted 12 hours ago • 0 comments

This is the simplest way to understand Israel's approach to conflicts it is engaging in. There is effectively no frame for peace on any front, but rather a continued pursuit of degradation of threats—a managed security situation in perpetuity.

submitted 13 hours ago • 1 comment

"Was it really this dumb in 2003" guys they renamed french fries

submitted 15 hours ago • 409 comments

Gift: Are ICE agents wearing masks due to increased assaults on them, or to avoid accountability? Phil Bump takes a deep dive into the data ICE is using to justify the masks. The data is murky. Assault is wrong, but I assert that the masks actually increase the risk of assaults. wapo.st/4l7a1ch

submitted 15 hours ago • 108 comments

Reminder: International Relations scholars had to pay $10s of thousands to get their voice against the Iraq war heard in the @nytimes in 2002. They were still ignored. Now the same people who were given free space in the media to push for a ruinous war then are still at it today.

submitted 15 hours ago • 4 comments

Ugh.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

History only repeats itself if leaders fail to learn from it.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

If the US does engage militarily in Iran in the wake of Israel's escalation, it will be an example of a small power dictating great power policy on a par with Serbia drawing Russia into WWI.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

"Democracy is under attack" is not just a metaphor.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Never a doubt!

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

This is extremely unethical. The military should host the Commander-in-Chief (whoever he is) in a professional way. It shouldn't stage-manage campaign events. And the barring "heavier soldiers" part is just the icing on the cake.

submitted 8 days ago • 9 comments

Alice Lake Provincial Park is being evacuated tonight as the Dryden Creek wildfire burns north towards the park. globalnews.ca/news/1123727...

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

One unambiguously great thing about CBC is its support for data driven journalism.

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Funny to think of the days when we fretted about Wikipedia's accuracy because it was written by users. Now it's the gold standard because it's written by humans, period.

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Important caution from a legal scholar of these issues, @debpearlstein.bsky.social

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

The article frames the backlash as a mostly philosophical one, but it's also a VERY practical one: editors in the trial found frequent major errors in the summaries! Link to AI bullshitting about the Cambrian for my geo crowd, but you can scroll around for more: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...

submitted 8 days ago • 2 comments

from "Classical Studies memes for Hellenistic teens" on FB

submitted 9 days ago • 74 comments

A couple notes about last night's significant and clarifying Vancouver council vote. Housing continues to cut across typical polarized political lines. ABC and OneCity are parties committed to density, and on both sides of the aisle—Greens, COPE and the twice defeated TEAM—find reasons to oppose.

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

Deep Blue is 30 years old and was capable of defeating chess grand champions. It could be housed in a single cabinet. ChatGPT spans untold data centers devouring massive amounts of electricity and it got its ass whipped by an 8 bit gaming console from the 1970s.

submitted 9 days ago • 146 comments

This is a crucial point for anyone talking about politics. We're half a step from headlines like "Trump seizes autogolpe advantage in advance of midterms" and "In opposing authoritarianism, Dems risk alienating independents." Democratic implications cannot be secondary to electoral implications.

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

Last night, I started a checklist of how to politicize the US military and how far along we are. I wrote it up here: saideman.blogspot.com/2025/06/how-...

submitted 8 days ago • 6 comments

NYT: “How will Trump’s illegal military takeover of LA play for Democrats?” I’m just a political communication scholar standing in front of our paper of record asking for them to not strategy frame an authoritarian takeover. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/10/u...

submitted 9 days ago • 42 comments

It sure would be a shame if tens or hundreds of thousands of people protested the parade.

submitted 9 days ago • 20 comments

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office posts a video of Emperor Palpatine reciting Donald Trump’s Truth Social post about L.A. via @swholocron.bsky.social

submitted 9 days ago • 343 comments

Potentially good news, though much will hang on how the provincial government goes about doing this. Clearly the status quo is untenable, however.

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

Miller "directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven .. stores. Miller bet that he and a handful of agents could go out .. and arrest 30 people right away. “Who here thinks they can do it?” Miller said .." @wsj.com www.wsj.com/us-news/prot...

submitted 9 days ago • 94 comments

what people seem to believe is that there is a large number of criminal, layabout immigrants who can be easily found and deported. they support doing so snd are dismayed by the deportation of otherwise law abiding people. the problem is that the criminal group is imaginary!

submitted 10 days ago • 328 comments