amweeden.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

It’s never been more evident that natural resources - especially CRMs - increasingly influence geopolitical relations. In the new power-based world order, minerals talk.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Recycling is a fairy tale we tell ourselves. Waste management drives injustices, attracts organised crime, and accelerates global asymmetries. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/opinion/trash-recycling-global-waste-trade.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

First Trump united the world in response to the ICC sanctions. Now an alliance is forming to protect Ukraine against the twin threats of Russia and the US. Anybody that happened to fall into a coma in mid-Jan is going to wake up and wonder how long they’ve been asleep. Three weeks, my friend.

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

As a colleague said “nothing bad ever comes from leaders asking for info on journalists”. Authoritarian leaders rush to harness the new narrative, to dig the dirt on dissidents. “Distorting” forces or simply pro-democracy activists. History will decide. #fico #AuthoritarianAbuse #anti-democracy

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. #booksky #bookchallenge No. 10: Findings by Kathleen Jamie Kathleen’s lyrical prose was my first real experience of nature writing. What an intro - she writes beautifully. She also taught at my old university, tho not while I was there!

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

The White House is pushing to extend tax cuts for the wealthy at an estimated cost of $4.7 trillion. Makes $40 billion of “wasteful” USAID funding seem like small change. www.politico.com/news/2025/02...

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

Investing in global vaccination programmes makes this world safer for all, not just those who receive the vaccines. Despite this, and in the wake of the sudden withdrawal of US programmes, the U.K. is considering cutting funding to the global effort.

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

Gutting USAID will have a monumental effect on combating climate change. The agency was a key player in renewable energy and disaster protection around the world—until Elon Musk showed up www.wired.com/story/guttin...

submitted 17 days ago • 8 comments

I lived in Uganda for 12 years and saw firsthand the impact of USAID support of health programmes, enabling world class responses to outbreaks of Ebola and other problems. So this figure is horrifying.

submitted 19 days ago • 1 comment

Thank goodness. We need a little light relief right now.

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

Resource scarcity linked to environmental problems (i.e. bird flu in this case) causes spikes in the value of legitimate goods which attracts organised criminal activity. The same has been seen with olive oil markets in Europe, and now it’s eggs in Pennsylvania 🐓🐓🐓

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. #booksky #bookchallenge No. 9: The George Smiley Collection by John Le Carré. Bit of a cheat this one, as it’s 9 in 1. I liked Le Carré but neglected Smiley until stuck at home with a bug back in 2016 & took the plunge. Masterful!

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

Good to see @nytimes.com reference @lizdavidbarrett.bsky.social on the 3 pillars of state capture. Her work on the topic is normally applicable to understanding kleptocracy in developing nations, but this is for a 101 for Americans, and much closer to home. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/o...

submitted 22 days ago • 1 comment

“The geopolitical implications of a United States unable and unwilling to engage in development and humanitarian assistance may reverberate for years and decades to come.”

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

Whilst we’ve (to my knowledge) yet to see any civic protest in response to the wrecking ball Trump has taken to the US constitution, we are seeing some incredibly brave acts by federal employees as they try to prevent what’s increasingly being described as state capture by tech bros & billionaires.

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

A troubling report from @ivodaalder.bsky.social and Jim Lindsay in @foreignaffairs.com: "Pax Americana is gone. Born with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor [...], the US-led international rules-based order died with the second inauguration of Donald Trump." www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

Meeting chaos and persecution with good humour is a new skillset everyone suddenly needs.

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. #booksky #bookchallenge No. 8: The Looting Machine by Tom Burgis. An eye-opening book which shone a light on the injustices meted out across Africa, and some of the malign actors responsible. It became somewhat of a call to arms.

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

The sheer scale of the direct impacts of the aid freeze, let alone the long term, indirect harms. I have vertigo just thinking about it. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/h...

submitted 25 days ago • 1 comment

Despite all the orange bluster and apparent whimsy there the annexing of Greenland is a very considered strategic choice. It’s at the nexus of critical materials and trade routes - in a geopolitically volatile location between US and Russia.

submitted 28 days ago • 2 comments

UK foreign policy has long had a blind spot when it comes to Rwanda, darling of the West. Now Rwanda-backed M23 rebels have taken over Goma in Eastern DRC, it seems the UK government has been forced to respond.

submitted 29 days ago • 1 comment

When life imitates satire @rory-stewart.bsky.social @alastaircampbell2.bsky.social @hignfy.bsky.social @privateeyenews.bsky.social www.devex.com/news/usaid-c...

submitted 29 days ago • 0 comments

Nature abhors a vacuum. And the stop-work orders and aid freeze have created the perfect environment for other geopolitical actors to move into the gap. American soft power just collapsed, with one stroke of a presidential pen.

submitted 29 days ago • 1 comment

I urge you all to read Orbital by Samantha Harvey. It is sumptuously and sensuously written, lyrically summing up precisely how remarkable Earth is, and how humanity is at once both tiny and insignificant & also the most important, malign influence upon it. A startlingly good book of our time.

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

Last week during a walk on Crooklets beach in Bude I was soaked up to my knees by incoming tide due to a schoolgirl error…. After letting them dry out all week I treated them with some “dubbin” style salve. I’ve had them four years and this is the first time I’ve put anything on them at all. Oops.

submitted 33 days ago • 1 comment

The private car parking sector is awash with hidden structures that an organised crime network would be proud of. Issuing companies sell debts to debt collectors to shorten “contestation window” yet debt collectors owned by same parent company. Clever, but not fair. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

Disappointing turn of events today.

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. #booksky #bookchallenge No. 7: Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux. Read this before moving to Africa, soaking up Theroux’s love of this magical continent. Read it again, after years of life in Uganda, where Theroux lived for a while. 💛❤️🖤

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

If you're interested in post-growth economic thinking, this newly published article will be right up your street. It was a big pleasure to work on it with such a fantastic group of co-authors. Check it out here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

submitted 36 days ago • 11 comments

World’s addiction to fossil fuels is a “Frankenstein’s monster’, warns UN chief - ‘The monster has become master’ António Guterres told Davos leaders, says after Donald Trump pulled the US out of the Paris climate agreement #climatecrisis story by me www.theguardian.com/environment/...

submitted 36 days ago • 1 comment

The @newsagents.bsky.social observed recently that they thought vengeance against his detractors was a major motivator for this presidency. With the damage this pardon - let alone all the others - will do to the rule law itself, they’re not wrong.

submitted 36 days ago • 1 comment

Are the Executive Orders simply first day bluster which will be hard to enforce? According to evidence-based analysis by Sharece Thrower, Executive Orders lack staying power, frequently facing legal challenges or dilution future administrations. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

submitted 37 days ago • 0 comments

Hope is here and love knows, We have so much to do.

submitted 37 days ago • 0 comments