Charles Martin-Shields
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charlesmartinshields.com
Charles Martin-Shields
@charlesmartinshields.com
Senior researcher, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS). Working on forced displacement, digitalization, and conflict.

My book: https://bit.ly/4gjNQ09

Open access: https://bit.ly/3AXzbI2
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
Two National Guardsmen were shot in Washington, D.C.

Democrats immediately express their sympathy for the victims and their families.

Republicans immediately spread conspiracy theories to blame Democrats for the shooting.

Anyone still believe both parties are the same?
November 26, 2025 at 9:41 PM
The NSF social sciences program has funded some of the best research I’ve seen, especially at the PhD level. There really isn’t another country in the world with the equivalent funding capacity to fill this gap, and the damage from this choice will be felt for a long time.
NEW from me - NSF cancels grant scheme for social science research.

Seems the NSF quietly archived ALL calls for DDRIG grants in the SBE directorate. This is a massive blow for PhD students wanting to do cutting-edge social science research. 🏺🧪
Today's biggest science news: Doomed comet explodes | Comet 3I/ATLAS course alteration | Dark matter detected?
Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2025: Your daily feed of the biggest discoveries and breakthroughs making headlines.
www.livescience.com
November 27, 2025 at 7:04 AM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
That was literally the takeaway of Three Kings, and it pains me physically to praise David O'Russell who I think should be kicked out of Hollywood.
Dear foreign nationals in war-torn countries, terrorism hot-spots, and amidst our enemies:

If you help the United States, we’ll fuck you over and abandon you. Not the individual servicepeople or intelligence officers — they’ll fight for you. I mean the depraved, soulless leadership of the nation.
So now they’re going to be doing individualized re-review of tens of thousands of Afghan evacuees’ cases on TOP of the re-review of 200,000+ refugees who entered under Biden?
November 27, 2025 at 6:23 AM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
The conservative movement is part corporate counterrevolution and part hate movement.
SCOOP: The Trump administration has instructed employees and grantees not to use U.S. funds to commemorate World AIDS Day — because the observance was started by the World Health Organization.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/h...
Trump Administration Cancels U.S. Observance of World AIDS Day
www.nytimes.com
November 26, 2025 at 7:38 PM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
what was “administration pedophile protection project” one too many words
Newly released emails show the FBI spent almost $1 million in overtime analyzing the Epstein files as part of an effort dubbed the “Special Redaction Project."
FBI’s Frantic Scramble to Redact Epstein Files Revealed
A trove of emails shows all-nighters and almost $1 million in overtime as Trumpworld debated releasing the Epstein files.
trib.al
November 26, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
"It was supposed to be a celebratory milestone, the final step in the process to obtain U.S. permanent residency. Instead, as each interview with an immigration officer wrapped up, federal agents swooped in, handcuffed the foreign spouse and took him or her away."
“I had to take the baby from my crying wife’s arms.“ It hasn’t even been a year, and this is not a scandal anymore? What is wrong with us?
Green Card Interviews End in Handcuffs for Spouses of U.S. Citizens
www.nytimes.com
November 26, 2025 at 7:10 PM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
As Liberal Currents works to raise money for its Startup Fund - a few of my articles I'm most proud of over the past...several years. A thread: www.gofundme.com/f/the-libera...
Donate to The Liberal Currents Startup Fund, organized by Adam Gurri
To fight fascism we need opposition media with a backbone. Liberal Currents is that. Help… Adam Gurri needs your support for The Liberal Currents Startup Fund
www.gofundme.com
November 26, 2025 at 5:02 AM
Pecan pie is done. Next up, apple pie.
November 26, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
This is a good read, but one of the great frustrations of seeing everyone react to the (not-at-all-surprising) "revelation" that the manipulators on Twitter are foreign accounts is that Musk & his cronies were the ones that attacked & defunded the researchers who were telling everyone about this!
I wrote about the fake account blowup on X this weekend. A genuine post-truth nightmare and proof that these companies have polluted their platforms so thoroughly and traded reality for profit that they've undermined the very idea of what the internet is supposed to be.
That MAGA Account Might Be a Troll From Pakistan
How X blew up its own platform with a new location feature
www.theatlantic.com
November 25, 2025 at 9:33 PM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
This is called “chain refoulment” and it’s illegal under both U.S. and international law. And the State Department and ICE know very well what Ghana is doing and simply don’t care.
ICE deported a woman who owned a home in the US for 30 years. A judge banned ICE from deporting her to Sierra Leone where she had been tortured, so it deported her to Ghana, which kidnapped her and sent her back Sierra Leone anyway. ICE is part of this illegal conspiracy.
November 25, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
Wrote about this here. The "anomaly" of the divergence between hard indicators of economic performance and soft indicators of sentiment disappears once if you include higher interest rates, leading to higher mortgage and car payments, in inflation. www.economist.com/finance-and-...
November 25, 2025 at 9:24 AM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
The Danish Model is actually a model for how to hand your country over to xenophobes
After more than 10 years of “the Danish Model”, nativism is hegemonic in the country, the far right polls near level highs again, and the Social Democrats lost Copenhagen and poll at historic low.

European Social Democrats should look at the facts, not the myths!

Me in @theguardian.com
The ‘Danish model’ is the darling of centre-left parties like Labour. The problem is, it doesn’t even work in Denmark | Cas Mudde
This week’s local elections are the latest reminder that when social democrats move rightwards, they’re making a mistake, says academic and author Cas Mudde
www.theguardian.com
November 23, 2025 at 10:47 AM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
After more than 10 years of “the Danish Model”, nativism is hegemonic in the country, the far right polls near level highs again, and the Social Democrats lost Copenhagen and poll at historic low.

European Social Democrats should look at the facts, not the myths!

Me in @theguardian.com
The ‘Danish model’ is the darling of centre-left parties like Labour. The problem is, it doesn’t even work in Denmark | Cas Mudde
This week’s local elections are the latest reminder that when social democrats move rightwards, they’re making a mistake, says academic and author Cas Mudde
www.theguardian.com
November 22, 2025 at 1:59 PM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
Unprecedented nepotism & corruption at the highest levels of American government
Reuters has confirmed that President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and his special envoy Steve Witkoff held a private meeting in Miami with a sanctioned Kremlin proxy to help shape the new "peace plan" for Ukraine. www.reuters.com/world/europe...
www.reuters.com
November 23, 2025 at 6:01 AM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
Indeed, some of the earliest petitions and what we’d now call letters to the editors that circulated in print media in the early americas were manifestos, and other political writings from enslaved and free Black people arguing for abolition and/or return to Africa.
On my drive back to New York from giving a book talk at Bowdoin College, I stopped briefly at Portsmouth, New Hampshire,where I stumbled on this remarkable history. A sharp reminder that slavery permeated the American experience,even where least expected. www.seacoastonline.com/story/news/l...
November 22, 2025 at 4:22 PM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
Shot + chaser
November 21, 2025 at 8:46 PM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
This story is all Nigel Farage should be asked about by journalists for months
Ex-leader of Reform UK in Wales sentenced to 10-and-a-half years for taking pro-Russian bribes
The judge tells Nathan Gill his actions were a
www.bbc.co.uk
November 21, 2025 at 2:34 PM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
imagine knowing literally anything about Haiti and deciding to try this
Gavin and Tanner, planned and trained for nearly a year, legal documents say, in an elaborate attempt to invade a Haitian island, kill its Black men, enslave its Black women and Black children and fulfill their "rape fantasies."

www.fox4news.com/news/haitian...
NTX men planned to murder men, enslave women on foreign island: Indictment
Two North Texas men have been indicted for an alleged scheme to sail to a foreign island, murder all the men, and enslave the women and children.
www.fox4news.com
November 21, 2025 at 1:28 PM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
It’s widely known (and, I think, pretty uncontroversial) that learning requires effort — specifically, if you don’t have to work at getting the knowledge, it won’t stick.

Even if an LLM could be trusted to give you correct information 100% of the time, it would be an inferior method of learning it.
Relying on ChatGPT to teach you about a topic leaves you with shallower knowledge than Googling and reading about it, according to new research that compared what more than 10,000 people knew after using one method or the other.

Shared by @gizmodo.com: buff.ly/yAAHtHq
November 21, 2025 at 12:49 PM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
Will say it again: You can make policies aimed at reducing forms of immigration inconsistent with public values, and politically it is wise for governments to do this. But, politically, you utltimately will need to make an argument that immigration is good actually, and not surrender the discourse.
November 21, 2025 at 10:45 AM
Anything, ANYTHING, not to have to say that white people can also be terrorists. The whole "It wasn't *religious* terrorism" misses the damn forest for the trees.

www.bbc.com/news/article...
Wieambilla ambush: Australian police murder not an act of religious terrorism, coroner finds
A trio of religiously fanatical conspiracy theorists launched a fatal ambush against police in 2022.
www.bbc.com
November 21, 2025 at 10:58 AM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
November 21, 2025 at 8:41 AM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
honestly a toss up whether I’m more disturbed by his casual invocation of war for oil or by his getting the effect of Venezuelan war on oil prices totally backwards
Bessent: "If something happens down in Venezuela, we could really see oil prices go down even more."
November 21, 2025 at 4:40 AM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
🚨🚨This is no "peace" plan, it is a recipe for further suffering and #Russian imperialist expansion in the #west. It is difficult to appreciate just how much damage the #trump administration has done to #Ukraine and its war efforts. It is disgusting beyond words. 🧵 www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...
Ukraine banned from Nato, Russia readmitted to the G8 and territory ceded: what’s in Trump’s draft plan
Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he expects to discuss the plan – which was reportedly drafted by Russian and US officials – with Trump
www.theguardian.com
November 21, 2025 at 8:48 AM
Reposted by Charles Martin-Shields
Still think we’re not there yet?
November 20, 2025 at 7:24 PM