Late 30's; father; Tech Enthusiast. Doing what I can to make the world a better place. PFP: Meow Collection by @Twinney_A #OGCollective @OGCollective200
Malaysia
Joined September 2018
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I count my blessings that I've met wonderful, kind, inspirational people everywhere I've been - even in Web3. Starting a 🧵 to recognise them: 1 every Sunday for whole 2023. Some I know personally, others may be profiles in Web3; all make me smile & inspire me to be better ❤️.
justanotherdude🍸 retweeted
The man below standing with indicted ICC fugitive Netanyahu and holding a Barak sniper rifle to be sent to IOF genocidaires is the man UNSG Antonio Guterres has just appointed as the new head of the UN World Food Programme. He is Luke Lindberg, a former Trump administration official and vocal Israel regime supporter who publicly praised Netanyahu in the middle of the genocide in Palestine (wishing him “godspeed”), and who is the son-in-law of Israel lobby darling US Sen. John Thune. In the meantime, WFP has announced it is cutting food aid to half a million genocide survivors in Gaza, as winter approaches and their situation grows ever more dire. This is the UN on its knees before the US empire. It will find the courage to stand up, or it will fade into permanent irrelevance. #Shame
justanotherdude🍸 retweeted
parasites is too kind a word for these cockroaches. look how they delight in having terrorized Palestinian families into leaving so they could steal their homes, complete with furniture, appliances, and even kitchenware. No one who legitimately sells their home leaves in such haste.
justanotherdude🍸 retweeted
Everyone and their mother watched us being attacked by a settler in the West Bank.
But when journalists get attacked, the attack itself is rarely the real story.
The real story is WHY they got attacked. What were they reporting on?
Here is what we were reporting on:
andreyx.substack.com/p/why-d…
We were nearly killed two days ago.
Settler-terrorist Tomer Liani bashed my head against the ground repeatedly, then the IDF and police blocked the ambulances and prevented hospitalisation.
All because we caught the settlers locking locking a gate to more than 20 Palestinian communities, trapping entire families.
We exposed Tomer Liani, Shimon Atia and Nevo Nadalski directly committing crimes against humanity in Masafer Yatta, and we were punished by the Israeli police and court for this.
Israeli state terrorism in the West Bank is at its peak, and the authorities are doing everything to keep Palestinian voices silent.
justanotherdude🍸 retweeted
This is interesting: according to German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Xi Jinping refused a trilateral China-US-Russia summit on Ukraine because "this is a European conflict in which Europeans would also have to be at the negotiating table."
Steinmeier said in an interview with German broadcaster ARD that he directly asked Xi about it - because there were rumors of such a meeting on Ukraine at the upcoming APEC summit in Shenzhen - and "you could see the irritation on his face". Xi told him there was "no preparation whatsoever" for this and asked him "where such rumors come from."
Which means we're in an interesting situation because Trump, on his end, has publicly voiced his interest in such a trilateral summit, specifically saying it didn't matter "whether somebody’s there or not" referring to Zelensky (cnbc.com/2026/10/19/trump-pu…) - and if Zelensky is optional, Europeans clearly are too.
So, in effect, out of the 3 great powers, the only one insisting that Europeans get a seat at the table on a war in their own continent is China. And that's according to the German president himself.
Src for screenshot article: dpa-international.com/politi…
justanotherdude🍸 retweeted
I'm a doctor in the UK with Palestinian family. I spoke out against genocide and jewish supremacy. My medical licence was suspended.
Dr Eastland Staveley, a jewish GP, said he didn't shoot enough babies in Gaza. He is practising medicine freely in Britain.
They proved my point.
justanotherdude🍸 retweeted
British man speaks out:
“Do you think I’m going to sit back and watch my TV and watch a genocide? No chance”
justanotherdude🍸 retweeted
How can anyone watch this and not come away with the understanding that Israelis are blood sucking vampire parasites.
Israeli terrorists forces bombed Jabalia again—destroying a makeshift school educating 350 children and a displacement camp full of families who had nowhere else to go. Tents ripped to shreds. Kids’ classrooms wiped out. All under a so-called ceasefire.
There is nowhere safe in Gaza. #Jabalia #Gaza #Palestine
justanotherdude🍸 retweeted
Tucker frustrates me terribly over many issues, but on this war he seems to be one of the only people in the US with any platform that actually gets it.
I have no doubt Netanyahu is pushing for the most extreme measures: he does it to drive systems insane, but also as a psychological trick to get a little less as a compromise.
I still don't believe nuclear weapons will be used: this is a scenario with unknown and unimaginable consequences for the world, which will definitely, definitely, push Iran to develop a nuclear arsenal of its own within weeks.
Also, using nuclear weapons against Iran legitimizes the US of nuclear weapons against Israel. And it may not always be clear who used them.
I am mostly certain that a major attack on Iran will happen. What Carlson half says here could be the most important part: the license Israel has been issued by the West to enact greater and greater acts of insane barbarism have brought humanity to the brink.
Stopping and isolating Israel needs to be a top agenda for everyone, everywhere. It's a shame he doesn't go far enough in this respect.
One thing I do know: humanity's indifference to the cries of Gaza's babies will return to haunt it, and collect a steep price. Everybody was warned, but no one listened, and now judgement day (and that's in the case of a conventional war) seems right around the corner.
We will deserve whatever we get. We left children to die. We are not worthy of anything
Under pressure from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Trump administration may be within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran. The target would be Pickax Mountain in central Iran, where Israeli intelligence claims the Iranian government has restarted its nuclear enrichment program. No conventional weapon in the American arsenal can penetrate 300 feet of solid granite to destroy the tunnels where enrichment is supposedly taking place. The only military option is a nuclear strike. Netanyahu has been pushing hard for one. “Bibi calls Trump about it every day,” says an informed observer.
Netanyahu is cornered and desperate. After last week’s election results, he can’t form a government unless Trump intervenes directly in Israeli politics and brokers a deal with other parties that gives Netanyahu 61 seats in the Knesset. Otherwise, he is out as prime minister and on his way to ignominy, investigations and possibly jail. Netanyahu must stay close to Trump. He needs this war.
To that end, he’s applied maximum pressure to his closest allies in the administration, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper. Both oppose a negotiated settlement to the war they’ve so grievously mismanaged; both are pushing to restart major combat operations. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA director John Ratcliffe are also following Netanyahu’s lead, as are leaders of the Democratic Party. In a recent meeting on the subject, former president Barack Obama said he opposes the current Iran peace deal being drafted in Doha.
The rest of America’s longtime allies in the Middle East are terrified by the prospect of more war. On September 27th, Netanyahu flew secretly to Abu Dhabi to enlist the UAE in his lobbying effort for a final attack on Iran. The Emiratis refused. After eight months of conflict, Gulf economies are teetering. So are global energy and fertilizer markets. They won’t recover soon. Globally, there are a total of about 850 supertankers used to transport oil from producers to the rest of the world. In October alone, 11 of them were badly damaged in Hormuz. At this pace, a global depression is imminent. A nuclear strike would radically accelerate the destruction. Fallout from a ground explosion at Pickax Mountain would contaminate the Persian Gulf, poisoning the water supply for 100 million people.
And those are just some of the immediate consequences for the region. The rest of the world is every bit as exposed. No country other than the United States has ever used a nuclear weapon in war. Some would like to. An American nuclear attack on Iran would set a new precedent. The Russians have already told at least two other governments that an American nuclear strike on Iran would free them to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine. Pakistan and India would be tempted to do the same against each other, as would North Korea against Seoul. After the first nuclear strike, World War Three is inevitable. That war would be short and final.
We’ve been sleepwalking toward this moment for months. Since February, the administration has quietly rewritten America’s nuclear doctrine to make first use of so-called “battlefield nukes” easier and therefore more likely. No one in Washington in either party seems bothered by this. Now we’re on the brink of it.
Close observers say Trump is likely to decide by next weekend whether or not to use nuclear weapons. That would be November 7, six days from now. To his credit, he’s hesitating. At the moment, Trump is listening to his vice president, JD Vance, and to his envoy and friend Steve Witkoff, both of whom argue a deal with Iran can be made.
They’re right, though it won’t be simple. The Iranians are famously frustrating to negotiate with under any circumstances, and elements of that government have become more radical since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family were killed in February. After decades of isolation, even relatively moderate Iranian leaders seem confused by how decisions are made in the West. (There is a widespread belief in Tehran, for example, that the United States government controls Israel.) But overall, people who have spoken to decision-makers in Iran say there is consensus there that more war is bad for everyone and a deal is worth making.
One group that hasn’t been consulted so far is the global population — the hundreds of millions of people who will be killed along with their children if Trump is pushed by Netanyahu into launching a nuclear strike next week. Now would be the time for them to speak up.
justanotherdude🍸 retweeted
Italians refuse to stay silent and sit idle in the face of a genocide and the normalisation of war.
The global awakening has started and so the peaceful uprising against the globalisation of Apartheid.
Together we are ONE, standing for peace, human rights & love for one another.
🇮🇹 Tens of thousands of workers, students, truckers and farmers marched in more than 40 Italian cities on Friday in a general strike against soaring living costs, rearmament and European support for wars in the Middle East, including the genocide in Gaza, according to Italian news agency Adnkronos.
Police counted 30,000 in Milan, where marchers shut down the eastern ring road for three hours, while organizers claimed over 100,000, according to Italian broadcaster TGCom24. A speaker in Turin put the crowd there at more than 50,000. The grassroots union USB, which called the strike, claimed 2 million nationwide showed up to challenge Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's "war economy."
Protesters blocked the port in Genoa with burning tires, TGCom24 reported, and marched into Naples port, demanding that ports not be used to move "weapons, ammunition, military equipment and troops." In Rome, police charged about 300 students who threw stones and Molotov cocktails. At least 10 officers were injured in Mestre and Vicenza, according to Adnkronos.
Transport Minister Matteo Salvini had ordered rail, air, sea and transit workers to stay on the job, but the order was dismissed by USB as "illegitimate."
🎥 Milan
justanotherdude🍸 retweeted
5’2 guard Natalie Nakase had a dream school coming out HS: UCLA. She decided to bet on herself & walk-on. Nakase tore her ACL & missed her entire freshman year, but kept going. She later became the team’s starting PG & captain. Nakase tried to play pro but another knee injury led her to transition to coaching. She spent 4 years earning her stripes overseas in Japan & Germany. In 2012, she joined the Clippers staff as a video intern, a thankless job. She steadily climbed the ranks over a decade, breaking barriers as an assistant coach at summer league. In 2022, Nakase was a finalist for a head coaching job with the Mercury, but got passed over. So she joined Becky Hammon’s staff in Las Vegas. Nakase won titles and learned while waiting for her chance. The Valkyries saw her leadership, her vision, she was named the first head coach for the expansion franchise. Now she’s the first Asian American head coach to win a WNBA title in just her 2nd season. Trailblazer.
justanotherdude🍸 retweeted
What are we supposed to do as journalists? The occupation has left no method of repression unused against us.
An Israeli occupation army soldier posts a photo documenting the moment Palestinian journalist Marah Awad was arrested, following a raid on her home in the town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron, in the occupied West Bank.
justanotherdude🍸 retweeted
Dear German,
China had no Auschwitz—that is yours.
China did not slaughter six million Jews—that is yours.
China bears no historical guilt toward the Jewish people—that is yours.
And Chinese people are under no obligation to accept your gaslighting—your attempt to project your own historical crimes onto China.
Since you claim that Chinese people are antisemitic, let us examine what they actually oppose.
What Chinese people find most contemptible about Germany is this:
Germany has turned its guilt toward the Jews into a moral scripture for supporting another mass slaughter.
“Never Again” was supposed to mean never again for anyone.
Instead, Berlin increasingly treats it as:
never question Israel,
never compare,
never condemn,
never allow Palestinian suffering to disturb Germany’s historical self-absolution.
That is not remembrance.
It is laundering one historical guilt through another people’s blood.
And here is the crucial point:
When Chinese people say they oppose Nazism, do they mean only Germans wearing swastikas?
No.
They mean the political logic behind it:
racial supremacy, dehumanization, collective punishment, forced segregation, territorial expansion, mass killing,
and the belief that one group’s suffering grants it the right to inflict suffering on another.
That distinction matters.
World War II did not teach humanity that only Germans can become Nazis.
It taught us that Nazi logic is not genetically or nationally exclusive to Germans.
Any state or movement that embraces racial supremacy, dehumanization, collective punishment, territorial expansion, and mass killing can reproduce the logic of Nazism.
So when Israel imposes systems of separation, occupies territory, inflicts collective punishment, and kills Palestinians on a massive scale, historical victimhood does not place those actions beyond comparison or condemnation.
Who decided that victims of Nazism are incapable of reproducing Nazi logic?
That is why criticizing Israeli state violence is not “antisemitism.”
And that is why “we were victims once” is not a defense against becoming an oppressor now.
No one owns the category of victim.
And no one is exempt from becoming the thing history once taught them to fear.
justanotherdude🍸 retweeted
The day the police will no longer raise their batons against people standing for human rights and against war-mongering and genocide, will be a beautiful day. The day the police will walk WITH the anti-apartheid and anti-war movement, it will be the beginning of a new era.
justanotherdude🍸 retweeted
This is so immensely ironic: my friend @DanielDumbrill looked into the background of the author of the article who ridiculously framed our family trip in Xinjiang this summer as an influence operation - all because, according to him, it's "odd" that two foreign families (mine and Daniel's) would travel together in RVs in China.
When Daniel and I have been friends going back many years and this is the third time our 2 families meet up during trips in China: friends, oddly, have this strange habit of seeing each other. Deeply suspicious behavior, I know...
Well, you literally couldn't make this up: the guy, named Sean Haines, used to be an actual Chinese media employee, during 5 years. Meaning HE was the guy who actually received a paycheck from the Chinese government during years - not us.
As Daniel rightfully points out, the fact he's pivoted to doing the opposite now - propaganda for the "other side" as it were - is two sides of the same coin: for him it’s not a question of truth or conviction, it's probably about something closer to tribalism, belonging to a camp and reciting their talking points.
Probably a very big reason why Daniel and I are good friends is because we - almost eerily - have similar profiles. We're both entrepreneurs, both financially independent, both with a Chinese family and both have very passionate personalities.
The last part if what drives us to speak up about China: we genuinely - in our guts - can’t stand seeing a country we know so intimately being so grotesquely misrepresented. It’s that simple. It's about conviction and passion.
We also have the unusual profile of being - ironically, given the accusations - completely free: as entrepreneurs we have no employers, no editors, no affiliation, no career to protect. Nobody can fire us, nobody can pressure us. We say what we think because we can.
It's all the more the case that, for both of us, our main sources of wealth are completely unrelated to what we speak up about so we don't even have financial incentives to say any of this, no audience we're fearful of losing because that'd be devastating to us financially.
And it works both ways, by the way. Here is a recent anecdote. I was approached this summer to do promotional posts for a very famous Chinese company. They wanted to pay me - generously - to recite their corporate line about their product. I replied to them that I don't do promotional posts but that I'd be happy to look at their product announcements and if it was genuinely newsworthy and interesting, I could write about it for free, as an independent voice - not a mouthpiece. They weren’t interested because, to them, what mattered was control.
That's the irony and probably what people like Sean Haines cannot physiologically comprehend: some people speak up purely because they believe what they’re saying. When you’ve spent your entire career being a mouthpiece for one side or the other, I suppose the concept of genuine conviction becomes literally unthinkable.
I also think this is very geopolitically relevant. I often cite George Kennan's "Long Telegram" - basically the US strategic framework for the Cold War - and particularly the part where Kennan stresses that, at the end of the day, what mattered most was conviction: "Create among the peoples of the world generally the impression of a country which knows what it wants, which is coping successfully with the problems of its internal life and with the responsibilities of a world power, and which has a spiritual vitality capable of holding its own among the major ideological currents of the time."
I think this matters a lot: when a given nation/system does NOT have people with conviction, when it only has mere mouthpieces - only Sean Haines types - then you're on very shaky foundations.
At the end of the day, propaganda never works in the long run because it's never about messaging but about meaning it.
In any case, please do watch Daniel's full video which explains brilliantly what happened and the shameful dishonesty of Sean Haines's article: youtube.com/watch?v=CuaJ25oH…
I long knew that Bill Bishop was the high priest of these so-called "China experts" who systematically promote a negative image of the country.
What I didn't know is that he was a straight-up conspiracy theorist, I thought he was a tad more subtle than this.
This article he's pushing - written by an anonymous account (these people are always so courageous) - says my trip to Xinjiang this summer was part of a promotion campaign by the Chinese government.
Which is of course completely false, and I can prove it: I personally paid for everything and I have the receipts.
My two biggest expenses, given this was an RV trip and we were sleeping in the RV (as everyone who followed the trip here on X knows) were:
A) the RV rental fee
B) the plane tickets to travel to Xinjiang from Malaysia and back
All four receipts are attached. The RV cost us RMB 18,000 (about US$2,650) for the month, paid in two installments: a RMB 3,000 down payment to the rental company in May to reserve it, and the RMB 15,000 balance when we picked it up.
The plane tickets for the four of us cost RM 8,164 (about US$2,050): RM 3,915 to fly from Kuala Lumpur to Urumqi and RM 4,249 to fly back.
Except for these, all our other expenses were relatively small: mostly restaurants, snacks, attraction fees and a hotel in Urumqi for the last 10 days, during which our daughters were at a holiday camp to perfect their Chinese with local kids. I also, unfortunately, had some medical fees because, as followers know, I ended up having health issues during the trip. Happy to show receipts for all of these too...
The supposed "proofs" that this was a promotional trip in Bishop's promoted article are 1) that I got interviewed by Chinese media at some point towards the end of my trip, and 2) that I met up with my friend Daniel Dumbrill and his family.
The second one is particularly hilarious. They write "One foreigner spending weeks touring Xinjiang in an RV with his young family is odd. Two is odder." That's it, that's the extent of the proof: it's "odd" 🤷 Yes, super odd indeed that two friends would meet up on holiday, completely unheard of! What a joke...
Plus, it's anything but "odd" for me to travel in China in an RV with my family: as people who follow me are (maybe painfully) aware, it's the third summer we've done this. Before Xinjiang we'd toured Dongbei in an RV in 2023 (China's northeast) and some of the central provinces like Gansu in the summer of 2021.
It's even less odd for my friend Daniel who owns his RV and lives in China: he travels in his RV with his family all the time.
And it's actually the third time our 2 families have met during trips to China: friends, oddly, have this strange habit of wanting to see each other. Deeply suspicious behavior, I know.
As for the first "proof", the fact I got interviewed by Chinese media, it's such a stupid accusation. For better or worse (I'd argue for worse, and because of people like Bill Bishop), a foreign family travelling to Xinjiang is indeed news in China. It shouldn't be, it should be normal, but the geopolitical climate is such that it is.
I agreed to meet up with @FriedaLi3 from Beijing Review by the end of our trip because we already knew each other and I like her work, which I find nuanced and thoughtful.
It's basically the equivalent of, say, a Uyghur family from Xinjiang doing an RV trip in France: it's a good story and I'm sure French media would want to interview them. I don't see how it'd be scandalous, unless of course you're Bill Bishop, in which case it'd be irrefutable proof of an Orwellian French influence operation.
Bishop's promoted article also points out the Substack post that I wrote at the end of my trip (substack.com/@arnaudbertrand…) as some sort of propaganda piece, cherry-picking one line and the title. And the one line they "quote" isn’t even my wording: they apparently took a Chinese translation of my article, ran it back into English, and passed the result off as a direct quote from my Substack, grammar mistakes included. That’s the level of rigor we’re dealing with here...
Also, anyone who actually read my Substack post knows how intellectually dishonest this framing of it is, given how I wrote at length about the heavy-handed security we encountered in Xinjiang, the climate of "institutional paranoia" that I describe alongside the resentment some Uyghurs feel toward Beijing. Believe me, no censor in China would read those paragraphs and think "great job, Arnaud, exactly what we ordered", and that's an understatement 😅
Last point: that's not to say that sponsored trips in China don't exist, there are plenty but they look nothing like what we did. You travel as part of a group - never individually - and are accompanied all the time by official minders, with an itinerary fixed weeks in advance and every hotel, meal and visit arranged for you. We were alone as a family in a rented RV, with two kids fighting in the back...
I've been offered actual sponsored trips many times and I've always refused them with one exception: when I was with an official French delegation with the French minister of the interior (Christophe Castaner) and other French officials. Precisely because in that instance there was zero ambiguity and I couldn't be accused of being a Chinese agent or a traitor to France: hard argument to make when you're traveling alongside the minister in charge of its counterintelligence...
The fact that Bill Bishop and this anonymous writer want to push the narrative that any travel to Xinjiang is inherently suspicious is, of course, no accident and exactly why you too should go.
See it for yourself, film whatever you want, talk to whoever you meet. The more "odd" foreigners driving around Xinjiang, the less odd it becomes, and the harder it gets for people like Bishop to sell their "open-air prison" story. If the witnesses are few, you can always discredit them one by one. When there are thousands of them, what they describe has a name: reality.
justanotherdude🍸 retweeted
our hearts can't break any harder.
we will never forget, nor forgive. someday they will pay so damn dearly, and they will have no one to blame but themselves.
justanotherdude🍸 retweeted
Macklemore’s ‘Free Palestine’ tour ended with a sold-out show in London. It brought together artists and activists calling for an end to suffering in Gaza, after Macklemore was dropped from Ed Sheeran’s US tour following pro-Palestinian remarks.
justanotherdude🍸 retweeted
We were nearly killed two days ago.
Settler-terrorist Tomer Liani bashed my head against the ground repeatedly, then the IDF and police blocked the ambulances and prevented hospitalisation.
All because we caught the settlers locking locking a gate to more than 20 Palestinian communities, trapping entire families.
We exposed Tomer Liani, Shimon Atia and Nevo Nadalski directly committing crimes against humanity in Masafer Yatta, and we were punished by the Israeli police and court for this.
Israeli state terrorism in the West Bank is at its peak, and the authorities are doing everything to keep Palestinian voices silent.
