My base case is that Trump isn’t fully aware of how smart, cunning and experienced Putin is. Guy has been running Russia for over 25 years now - that’s not nothing when you think of how tough of a place Kreml is. You might not like the guy but you got to respect him.
" The way in which these talks are proceeding reinforces the perception that Russia is in control . Not only has Mr Putin not yet made any significant concessions to Ukraine, but he continues to demand that Ukraine stops receiving arms and intelligence from the West. Mr Putin has agreed on the bare minimum for Mr Trump to be able to claim that the partial ceasefire is a step forwards."
If you can take him to the Chinese Consulate General in Toronto, you can get the million-dollar
reward,’ Liberal Paul Chiang said of Conservative rival Joe Tay
(snip)
A Liberal MP has issued an abject apology after encouraging people in his Toronto-area riding to turn
in a Conservative politician to the Chinese consulate and collect the $183,000 bounty placed on his > head by Hong Kong police.
Conservative candidate Joe Tay, a former resident of Hong Kong, had been charged under the Asian
city’s widely condemned national-security law for running a YouTube channel in Canada that was
critical of the enclave’s Beijing-dominated government.
(snip)
“If you can take him to the Chinese Consulate General in Toronto, you can get the million-dollar
reward,” the Liberal MP suggested to laughter from his audience. It’s unclear if he meant the remarks
as a joke or not.
I would hope that if someone had indeed taken Mr Tay, or indeed any other Canadian, to the Chinese Consulate, presumably forcibly, the Canadian government would not allow the Chinese government to exfiltrate him from Canada.
This is surprising. I think he had this polished, buttoned-up conservative image. I don’t really care that the guy has “Kafir” tattooed on his bicep. I’m just kind of surprised of the overall WT-vibe. I had no idea the guy was rocking a full sleeve tattoo like some local bartender or barber. Def wouldn’t go 3/3 in 18 months.
Trump thinks the S in BRICS is Spain Then again those guys have so many abbreviations to remember that no wonder they confuse them. But I think the best part is how he starts lecturing the reporter.
Reminds me of when Bush thought they speak Mexico in Mexico.
For those who don’t know, kafir is a pejorative term used by Muslims to refer to non-Muslims.
Secretary Hegseth is allowed to use it because, as the expression goes, “that’s our word.”
He fought in the neocon Imperial Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq where he would have been denounced as a kafir by the Muslim majority. Good on him for choosing to own the epithet. If anyone has earned the right to use it, he has.
Fwiw, he’s got a BA from Princeton, a master’s from Harvard, and worked for the Bear as an equity analyst.
Edit: added:
According to wikipedia, at the time of Biden’s inauguration, Secretary Hegseth was serving in the District of Columbia Army National Guard, and he was barred from serving on duty at that inauguration after a guardsman flagged him as an insider threat, because he sported a Deus vult (God wills it) tattoo on his bicep.
Hopefully his opinion has changed since he wrote the book. Looking at the world, Islam is kinda passé and the Middle East quagmire 2000-2021 was one gigantic strategic misstep by the neocons, which allowed China to grow in the shadows while Americans were chasing ragtag bearded dudes in the dessert.
I’d say the Middle East quagmire started in 1991 under Bush I and continued under Clinton I.
Reagan was one of the great presidents, but he erred when he made GHWB his vice president, because that essentially anointed GHWB as his successor. The Accidental Vice President
I don’t know how true it is, but long ago, a story appeared in the NYT (the home of fake news) that Reagan wanted former President Ford as his veep and at the last moment the Ford camp messed them around by essentially demanding at the last minute that Ford would control foreign and fiscal policy, with Hank Kissinger returning as Secretary of State and Nixon Aide Alan Greenspan being Treasury Secretary, neither of whom were acceptable to Reagan, so they had to scramble to find a replacement veep within hours. And they picked GHWB because someone had just seen him in the hotel corridor. This was happening in real time at the Convention a few hours before Reagan was due to announce his running mate.
This one’s puzzling. Faye Hall, but looks and sounds at least part Chinese. She was being held by the Taliban (Afghanistan) for `unauthorized use of a drone.’ No one was swapped for this one, instead the US has rescinded the bounty on a couple of the Taliban leaders.
Not sure what Faye was doing in Afghanistan, or why she was using a drone there. It wouldn’t be my first choice for a vacation destination, yet there seems to be an endless stream of Westerners (not just US, others as well) who feel the need to go backpacking in Afghanistan, or take a cycling tour of North Korea, or go shoplifting in China, or go on a trip to Russia but forget to leave their drugs at home.
Who remembers Pippa? (Pippa Bacca - Wikipedia). The feminist artist wanting to promote world peace and “marriage between different peoples and nations”. In 2008 Pippa hit the road and wanted to travel across Middle East (to prove the stereotypes associated with the region are wrong), only to be gang raped and killed by the locals (who, I believe, did have a slightly different “value set”).
I would definitely classify firebombing a Tesla dealership as political violence, given that Elon Musk is running DOGE. Making Molotov cocktails and firebombing a Tesla dealership is a significant escalation from keying a Tesla as you walk past it.
It actually seems a fairly effective method of protesting against Musk. Tesla stock has plummeted since President Trump returned to the White House. TSLA closed at $426.50 before the inauguration. It was $268.46 last night. Even those not suffering from TDS are going to think twice before buying a Tesla if there’s a risk of being attacked by a deranged leftist.
There also seems to be a possibility that these aren’t random attacks and that someone somewhere is coordinating and funding at least some of them. An “astroturf” protest rather than grassroots. The sort of thing USAID was funding before it was shut down.
Whether it is terrorism depends on the definition of terrorism, and that is the problem: there needs to be an agreed on definition of terrorism.
It doesn’t make much difference to me what that definition is, as long as it is consistently applied and the same rules apply to everyone.
On the one hand, parents asking mean questions at PTA meetings have been branded “domestic terrorists” in the past.
On the other hand, in the UK in particular (and other parts of Europe as well) someone can cut an infidel’s head off while screaming “Allahu Akhbar” and carrying an ISIS manual and the authorities will deny that it is terrorism.
Put those two together, and it appears absurd.
The Oxford dictionary definition of terrorism is
the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians,
in the pursuit of political aims
Zuckerberg helped Biden during the 2020 election by suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story etc. If someone had firebombed a Facebook building in response (no one did and I’m not suggesting that anyone should have), would that have been terrorism?
I agree. The definition needs to be clearly identified. Otherwise it just becomes a weapon itself to call someone a terrorist. The inflationary trend of the word started in my opinion during the War Against Terror and has now become a word that is dished out left and right.
I once watched when a leftist politician was interviewed and she was asked about the violence and destruction of private property during protests (BLM etc). Her response: it’s violence, yeah, but it’s intellectual violence, it’s right type of violence".
I guess throwing a 2 pound stone through Tesla’s windshield is “right type of violence”.
These people must be insane.
Then again those guys have so many abbreviations to remember that no wonder they confuse them. But I think the best part is how he starts lecturing the reporter.
