Frederick Deknatel
@freddydeknatel.bsky.social
Journalist, fellow at Century International, editor of Hidden Cities: https://www.hidden-cities.com/
Previously: Founding executive editor, Democracy in Exile @dawnmenaorg.bsky.social; managing editor @wpr.bsky.social; staff editor @foreignaffairs.com
Previously: Founding executive editor, Democracy in Exile @dawnmenaorg.bsky.social; managing editor @wpr.bsky.social; staff editor @foreignaffairs.com
Pinned
Frederick Deknatel - The Century Foundation
Frederick Deknatel is a journalist, editor and fellow at Century International, where he writes about Middle Eastern affairs. From 2021 to 2025, he was
tcf.org
I'm thrilled to join the Century Foundation as a fellow at Century International, where I'll be writing on Syria's future, from the huge challenges of reconstruction to the prospects for U.S.-Syria ties after Assad. @centuryintl.bsky.social @tcfdotorg.bsky.social
tcf.org/experts/fred...
tcf.org/experts/fred...
“The word Iranians keep using to describe their condition is ‘istisal,’ which translates to desperation but is more like a compilation of all its definitions into a single feeling: a pulling of roots, deracination, a sense of no hope, no ability, a sense of being destroyed.” @naghmehs.bsky.social
‘We Can't Live Like This Anymore’ • EQUATOR
Messages from Iran
www.equator.org
January 17, 2026 at 6:09 PM
“The word Iranians keep using to describe their condition is ‘istisal,’ which translates to desperation but is more like a compilation of all its definitions into a single feeling: a pulling of roots, deracination, a sense of no hope, no ability, a sense of being destroyed.” @naghmehs.bsky.social
“Behind every glitzy new event in the kingdom promoted as a sign of a new Saudi Arabia are the realities of widespread labor abuses.” My feature in @wpr.bsky.social on a Saudi economy built on labor exploitation, and one migrant worker’s fight for justice. www.worldpoliticsreview.com/saudi-arabia...
The ‘New’ Saudi Arabia Still Runs on ‘Modern-Day Slavery’
The notorious kafala system gives Saudi employers near-complete control over their workers’ legal status, resulting in widespread abuses.
www.worldpoliticsreview.com
January 17, 2026 at 4:41 PM
“Behind every glitzy new event in the kingdom promoted as a sign of a new Saudi Arabia are the realities of widespread labor abuses.” My feature in @wpr.bsky.social on a Saudi economy built on labor exploitation, and one migrant worker’s fight for justice. www.worldpoliticsreview.com/saudi-arabia...
Reposted by Frederick Deknatel
My new longform piece @wpr.bsky.social on Saudi labor abuses, including white-collar workers, told through the story of an Indian expat who spent 40 years in Riyadh. His ordeal is just one example of labor exploitation in a kingdom built on it. Gift link: www.worldpoliticsreview.com/saudi-arabia...
The ‘New’ Saudi Arabia Still Runs on ‘Modern-Day Slavery’
The notorious kafala system gives Saudi employers near-complete control over their workers’ legal status, resulting in widespread abuses.
www.worldpoliticsreview.com
January 16, 2026 at 4:07 PM
My new longform piece @wpr.bsky.social on Saudi labor abuses, including white-collar workers, told through the story of an Indian expat who spent 40 years in Riyadh. His ordeal is just one example of labor exploitation in a kingdom built on it. Gift link: www.worldpoliticsreview.com/saudi-arabia...
Reposted by Frederick Deknatel
New from me in Hidden Cities: Assad is gone, along with the regime cronies who were behind an authoritarian vision of Syria's reconstruction, if it could even be called reconstruction at all. Yet Syrians still don't have enough say in how their country might be rebuilt under Ahmed al-Sharaa.
Who Will Syria Be Rebuilt For?
Although free from the Assad regime, Syrians still don't have enough say in plans for their country's reconstruction.
www.hidden-cities.com
January 16, 2026 at 6:00 PM
New from me in Hidden Cities: Assad is gone, along with the regime cronies who were behind an authoritarian vision of Syria's reconstruction, if it could even be called reconstruction at all. Yet Syrians still don't have enough say in how their country might be rebuilt under Ahmed al-Sharaa.
Reposted by Frederick Deknatel
"Worse than Bush after Katrina" is a polling benchmark that I thought that partisan polarization had made impossible
Pollster: 58% of Americans say Trump's second term has been a failure. A year into term number two, Trump's numbers look worse than any other president. Trump is even worse than George W. Bush after Katrina and a long period in the Iraq War. This is really, really bad.
January 16, 2026 at 6:13 PM
"Worse than Bush after Katrina" is a polling benchmark that I thought that partisan polarization had made impossible
New from me in Hidden Cities: Assad is gone, along with the regime cronies who were behind an authoritarian vision of Syria's reconstruction, if it could even be called reconstruction at all. Yet Syrians still don't have enough say in how their country might be rebuilt under Ahmed al-Sharaa.
Who Will Syria Be Rebuilt For?
Although free from the Assad regime, Syrians still don't have enough say in plans for their country's reconstruction.
www.hidden-cities.com
January 16, 2026 at 6:00 PM
New from me in Hidden Cities: Assad is gone, along with the regime cronies who were behind an authoritarian vision of Syria's reconstruction, if it could even be called reconstruction at all. Yet Syrians still don't have enough say in how their country might be rebuilt under Ahmed al-Sharaa.
My new longform piece @wpr.bsky.social on Saudi labor abuses, including white-collar workers, told through the story of an Indian expat who spent 40 years in Riyadh. His ordeal is just one example of labor exploitation in a kingdom built on it. Gift link: www.worldpoliticsreview.com/saudi-arabia...
The ‘New’ Saudi Arabia Still Runs on ‘Modern-Day Slavery’
The notorious kafala system gives Saudi employers near-complete control over their workers’ legal status, resulting in widespread abuses.
www.worldpoliticsreview.com
January 16, 2026 at 4:07 PM
My new longform piece @wpr.bsky.social on Saudi labor abuses, including white-collar workers, told through the story of an Indian expat who spent 40 years in Riyadh. His ordeal is just one example of labor exploitation in a kingdom built on it. Gift link: www.worldpoliticsreview.com/saudi-arabia...
One indicator of Trump’s “booming economy”:
“Nearly 30% of trade-ins toward new purchases came with negative equity in Q4 2025, according to Edmunds, the highest rate in years. Moreover, the average amount owed on those underwater trade-ins hit $7,214, the highest level Edmunds has ever recorded.”
“Nearly 30% of trade-ins toward new purchases came with negative equity in Q4 2025, according to Edmunds, the highest rate in years. Moreover, the average amount owed on those underwater trade-ins hit $7,214, the highest level Edmunds has ever recorded.”
'Dark' Car Factories Are Coming Sooner Than You Think
Today's EV news: Fully automated factories are coming, Colorado wants to lead on battery recycling, and underwater car loans are a growing problem.
insideevs.com
January 16, 2026 at 2:09 PM
One indicator of Trump’s “booming economy”:
“Nearly 30% of trade-ins toward new purchases came with negative equity in Q4 2025, according to Edmunds, the highest rate in years. Moreover, the average amount owed on those underwater trade-ins hit $7,214, the highest level Edmunds has ever recorded.”
“Nearly 30% of trade-ins toward new purchases came with negative equity in Q4 2025, according to Edmunds, the highest rate in years. Moreover, the average amount owed on those underwater trade-ins hit $7,214, the highest level Edmunds has ever recorded.”
What do you mean, enriching Trump’s mega-donors is in the best interest of the American people.
January 16, 2026 at 1:11 PM
What do you mean, enriching Trump’s mega-donors is in the best interest of the American people.
“Taking the oil” for Trump’s cronies:
“The first US sale of Venezuelan crude was to a company whose senior oil trader donated millions of dollars to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and attended a White House meeting with the president last week.” www.ft.com/content/da74...
“The first US sale of Venezuelan crude was to a company whose senior oil trader donated millions of dollars to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and attended a White House meeting with the president last week.” www.ft.com/content/da74...
Donald Trump’s first Venezuela oil sale deal goes to megadonor’s company
Senior Vitol trader met US president at White House last week and gave millions of dollars to his re-election campaign
www.ft.com
January 16, 2026 at 1:08 PM
“Taking the oil” for Trump’s cronies:
“The first US sale of Venezuelan crude was to a company whose senior oil trader donated millions of dollars to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and attended a White House meeting with the president last week.” www.ft.com/content/da74...
“The first US sale of Venezuelan crude was to a company whose senior oil trader donated millions of dollars to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and attended a White House meeting with the president last week.” www.ft.com/content/da74...
You’ll be shocked to learn that Bari Weiss “expressed a high level of interest” in a story that was clearly “a thinly-veiled, anonymous leak by [the Trump administration] to someone who’d carry it online.”
CBS News really becoming a stenographer for the state. www.theguardian.com/media/2026/j...
CBS News really becoming a stenographer for the state. www.theguardian.com/media/2026/j...
![The network's top editor, Bari Weiss, expressed a high level of interest in the story on an editorial call Wednesday morning, according to staffers who listened.
"There was big internal dissension about the 'internal bleeding' report here last night," the CBS News staffer, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said . "It was viewed as a thinly-veiled, anonymous leak by [the Trump administration] to someone who'd carry it online."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:5oevos635qa5cttq4y5w5cbf/bafkreibnvvcfk5yper3fjwpdl7gf72ve6y2oyx7ne7ydivn7i7iybm5qra@jpeg)
January 16, 2026 at 3:36 AM
You’ll be shocked to learn that Bari Weiss “expressed a high level of interest” in a story that was clearly “a thinly-veiled, anonymous leak by [the Trump administration] to someone who’d carry it online.”
CBS News really becoming a stenographer for the state. www.theguardian.com/media/2026/j...
CBS News really becoming a stenographer for the state. www.theguardian.com/media/2026/j...
ICE would have shot and killed Kevin McCallister for this “act of violence.”
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin on "acts of violence" against ICE agents in Minnesota: "Pouring water on the ground so that it would freeze the ground in front of our federal law enforcement vehicles so that they would potentially slide, crash, and potentially kill them"
January 16, 2026 at 3:24 AM
ICE would have shot and killed Kevin McCallister for this “act of violence.”
Reposted by Frederick Deknatel
News outlets declaring “Trump Accepts Nobel Peace Prize” is a red alert state media indicator
January 16, 2026 at 2:39 AM
News outlets declaring “Trump Accepts Nobel Peace Prize” is a red alert state media indicator
The FT's architecture critic, @edwinheathcote.bsky.social, on the banal, inhuman architecture of the 21st century: the AI data center. "An architecture built not for us but for the computing power we are coding and training (and which will be coding itself) to outsmart, even supplant us."
Welcome to a post-human world: the vast anonymity of the data centre
These impersonal warehouses are the 21st century’s calling card — architecture for the computing power we are training to outsmart us
www.ft.com
January 15, 2026 at 6:13 PM
The FT's architecture critic, @edwinheathcote.bsky.social, on the banal, inhuman architecture of the 21st century: the AI data center. "An architecture built not for us but for the computing power we are coding and training (and which will be coding itself) to outsmart, even supplant us."
Reposted by Frederick Deknatel
Excited to share something new I’ve been working on the last few months with @centuryintl.bsky.social: a new democracy meter for the United States. This inaugural edition shows how under the second Trump administration, the US took an authoritarian turn: tcf.org/content/repo...
Century’s New Democracy Meter Shows America Took an Authoritarian Turn in 2025
At a time when experts are warning of unprecedented democratic backsliding in the United States under the second Trump administration, how should people
tcf.org
January 15, 2026 at 3:06 PM
Excited to share something new I’ve been working on the last few months with @centuryintl.bsky.social: a new democracy meter for the United States. This inaugural edition shows how under the second Trump administration, the US took an authoritarian turn: tcf.org/content/repo...
More reporters need to be asking this question to Trump officials and Republicans in Congress—every day, multiple times a day, make them answer.
Q: Are you ok with federal agents & officers violating people's 4th Amendment rights by asking for papers without reasonable suspicion?
NOEM: Every single action our ICE officers take is according to the law and following protocols that we have used for years. They are doing everything correctly
NOEM: Every single action our ICE officers take is according to the law and following protocols that we have used for years. They are doing everything correctly
January 15, 2026 at 4:12 PM
More reporters need to be asking this question to Trump officials and Republicans in Congress—every day, multiple times a day, make them answer.
A brilliant essay linking Trump's imperial ambitions in "our hemisphere" to the mass deportation and nativist hysteria empowering ICE and CBP as the new, unaccountable federal policing authority at home. The end goal? "Governing populations as subjects rather than citizens." @equatormag.bsky.social
Homeland Empire • EQUATOR
From Venezuela to Minnesota, Trump is trying to create a borderless American power, collapsing the foreign and the domestic into a single domain of impunity
www.equator.org
January 15, 2026 at 3:37 PM
A brilliant essay linking Trump's imperial ambitions in "our hemisphere" to the mass deportation and nativist hysteria empowering ICE and CBP as the new, unaccountable federal policing authority at home. The end goal? "Governing populations as subjects rather than citizens." @equatormag.bsky.social
Reposted by Frederick Deknatel
A year after Assad's fall, reconstruction barely exists in Syria, beyond pledges on paper. Opaque investment deals with foreign companies, many from Turkey and the Gulf, risk replicating the cronyism and corruption of the Assad era.
My new piece for @centuryintl.bsky.social tcf.org/content/comm...
My new piece for @centuryintl.bsky.social tcf.org/content/comm...
Syria’s Reconstruction Risks Cutting Out the Syrian People
Damascus’s battered fairgrounds, on the outskirts of the city, hosted a reconstruction fair this fall, billed as an international exhibition to rebuild
tcf.org
January 15, 2026 at 3:06 AM
A year after Assad's fall, reconstruction barely exists in Syria, beyond pledges on paper. Opaque investment deals with foreign companies, many from Turkey and the Gulf, risk replicating the cronyism and corruption of the Assad era.
My new piece for @centuryintl.bsky.social tcf.org/content/comm...
My new piece for @centuryintl.bsky.social tcf.org/content/comm...
Why does the NYT’s report on the latest ICE shooting lead entirely with the account of the DHS spokeswoman who has a long track record of lying — while then acknowledging “the federal government’s narrative could not immediately be verified.” So don’t lead with it! www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/u...
January 15, 2026 at 3:25 AM
Why does the NYT’s report on the latest ICE shooting lead entirely with the account of the DHS spokeswoman who has a long track record of lying — while then acknowledging “the federal government’s narrative could not immediately be verified.” So don’t lead with it! www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/u...
A year after Assad's fall, reconstruction barely exists in Syria, beyond pledges on paper. Opaque investment deals with foreign companies, many from Turkey and the Gulf, risk replicating the cronyism and corruption of the Assad era.
My new piece for @centuryintl.bsky.social tcf.org/content/comm...
My new piece for @centuryintl.bsky.social tcf.org/content/comm...
Syria’s Reconstruction Risks Cutting Out the Syrian People
Damascus’s battered fairgrounds, on the outskirts of the city, hosted a reconstruction fair this fall, billed as an international exhibition to rebuild
tcf.org
January 15, 2026 at 3:06 AM
A year after Assad's fall, reconstruction barely exists in Syria, beyond pledges on paper. Opaque investment deals with foreign companies, many from Turkey and the Gulf, risk replicating the cronyism and corruption of the Assad era.
My new piece for @centuryintl.bsky.social tcf.org/content/comm...
My new piece for @centuryintl.bsky.social tcf.org/content/comm...
"The ELN stands emboldened to challenge the authority of the Colombian state—and US ambitions in Venezuela... The ELN’s ranks are filled with skilled guerrilla fighters with deep expertise in improvised explosives..." @dickinsonbeth.bsky.social on blowback to Trump's imperial adventure in Venezuela:
Opinion | Something Bad Is Brewing on Venezuela’s Border
www.nytimes.com
January 15, 2026 at 2:22 AM
"The ELN stands emboldened to challenge the authority of the Colombian state—and US ambitions in Venezuela... The ELN’s ranks are filled with skilled guerrilla fighters with deep expertise in improvised explosives..." @dickinsonbeth.bsky.social on blowback to Trump's imperial adventure in Venezuela:
The regime has run thousands of simulations and found the solution to grocery prices inflated by Trump’s tariffs: rationing!
Tomorrow on Fox, Rollins will unveil her folksy recipe for Woolton Pie.
Tomorrow on Fox, Rollins will unveil her folksy recipe for Woolton Pie.
Brooke Rollins: "We've run over 1,000 simulations. It can cost around $3 a meal for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, corn tortilla, and one other thing. So there is a way to do this that actually will save the average American consumer money."
January 15, 2026 at 12:39 AM
The regime has run thousands of simulations and found the solution to grocery prices inflated by Trump’s tariffs: rationing!
Tomorrow on Fox, Rollins will unveil her folksy recipe for Woolton Pie.
Tomorrow on Fox, Rollins will unveil her folksy recipe for Woolton Pie.
“When I asked Terry Lynn Karl, a Stanford political economist, what she predicted for Venezuela, she saw a prospect much bleaker than the ‘paradox of plenty’: A return to the years before OPEC when foreign governments and companies ran oil-producing countries as virtual colonies.”
Venezuela Suffers From a Century-Long Curse. Will the U.S. Inherit It?
www.nytimes.com
January 15, 2026 at 12:33 AM
“When I asked Terry Lynn Karl, a Stanford political economist, what she predicted for Venezuela, she saw a prospect much bleaker than the ‘paradox of plenty’: A return to the years before OPEC when foreign governments and companies ran oil-producing countries as virtual colonies.”
“Heading home after joining a protest in Tehran, Reza put his arms around his wife Maryam to protect her. ‘Suddenly, I felt my arm go light – there was only her jacket in my hands,’ he told a family member. Maryam had been fatally shot - and they had no idea where the bullet had come from.”
Iran protests: BBC hears from families of demonstrators killed in crackdown
BBC Persian has received dozens of accounts from inside Iran. Defiant despite potential repercussions, the witnesses said they wanted to ensure the rest of the world knew of the violence against the p...
www.bbc.com
January 15, 2026 at 12:19 AM
“Heading home after joining a protest in Tehran, Reza put his arms around his wife Maryam to protect her. ‘Suddenly, I felt my arm go light – there was only her jacket in my hands,’ he told a family member. Maryam had been fatally shot - and they had no idea where the bullet had come from.”
From the same news network that brought you this hard-hitting bit last week on the Jan 6 anniversary:
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/a...
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/a...
January 14, 2026 at 8:43 PM
From the same news network that brought you this hard-hitting bit last week on the Jan 6 anniversary:
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/a...
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/a...