Nick Lee-Frampton 🇬🇧🇳🇿🇺🇦🇮🇱🇪🇪🇫🇮🇩🇰🇱🇹

Defence journalist, author, royalist, modeller, walker.
Pro Ukraine, Canada, Greenland.

[D.Radka, #NAFO 🇨🇿🤝🇺🇦 @DakdaR22]

Alona became a mother just as Russian strikes hit Kyiv, damaging the maternity hospital.

The very next day, Zelensky visited her and met little boy..a newborn who had come into the world amidst a Russian attack.

I admire these people, every day🫂❤️

[Nick Lee-Frampton 🇬🇧🇳🇿🇺🇦🇮🇱🇪🇪🇫🇮🇩🇰🇱🇹 @Coolcorax]

How it should be done.

[Headquarters @HQNewsNow]

Barack Obama at his last press briefing with reporters, 2017:

"I have enjoyed working with all of you. That does not, of course, mean that I've enjoyed every story that you have filed, but that's the point of this relationship. You're not supposed to be sycophants. You're supposed to be skeptics. You're supposed to ask me tough questions. You're not supposed to be complimentary, but you're supposed to cast a critical eye on folks who hold enormous power."

[Nick Lee-Frampton 🇬🇧🇳🇿🇺🇦🇮🇱🇪🇪🇫🇮🇩🇰🇱🇹 @Coolcorax]

I have little interest in team sports, but the Black Ferns have done NZ proud. They deserve to get the same column inches, broadcast time and financial awards as the ABs.

[Nick Lee-Frampton 🇬🇧🇳🇿🇺🇦🇮🇱🇪🇪🇫🇮🇩🇰🇱🇹 @Coolcorax]

@Dicker_JJ Best of luck Jeremy!

[Nick Lee-Frampton 🇬🇧🇳🇿🇺🇦🇮🇱🇪🇪🇫🇮🇩🇰🇱🇹 @Coolcorax]

The gap between what China says and what it does is wider than any ocean.

[Andrew A. Michta @andrewmichta]

Yes. This is principled statesmanship.

[Nick Lee-Frampton 🇬🇧🇳🇿🇺🇦🇮🇱🇪🇪🇫🇮🇩🇰🇱🇹 @Coolcorax]

@Dicker_JJ Hmm, I use Times New Roman for serious words, although Arial Black could catch the ambassador's eye.
Hmm (again), driving should be enjoyable Jeremy and you look as if that emotion is ... distant. I'd add an emoji, only I regard them as tools for those who struggle with words!

[Nick Lee-Frampton 🇬🇧🇳🇿🇺🇦🇮🇱🇪🇪🇫🇮🇩🇰🇱🇹 @Coolcorax]

@Dicker_JJ Anyone else would have been grievously upset Jeremy, yet there's no sign of even a slight tremor in your controlled response to this dire provocation of civilised behaviour.
Does the friendship continue though?

[Nick Lee-Frampton 🇬🇧🇳🇿🇺🇦🇮🇱🇪🇪🇫🇮🇩🇰🇱🇹 @Coolcorax]

@Dicker_JJ Jeremy, Given your own remarkable intelligence, deep experience and boundless imagination, I'm puzzled that you should ask GPT anything. Surely it should be system consulting you?

[Nick Lee-Frampton 🇬🇧🇳🇿🇺🇦🇮🇱🇪🇪🇫🇮🇩🇰🇱🇹 @Coolcorax]

“European leaders are showing what solidarity looks like.
Washington is showing what cowardliness and complacency look like.”

[Roman Sheremeta 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @rshereme]

Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have canceled their planned trip to Kyiv because of “heavy russian air strikes on the city.”

Witkoff and Kushner have traveled to Moscow eight times for meetings with Putin.

But when it comes to visiting Kyiv, russian air strikes suddenly make the trip too dangerous.

Meanwhile, presidents and prime ministers from a dozen European countries have visited Kyiv over the past several days — despite those very same russian attacks.

This tells you something important about American diplomacy under Trump.

For months, we have been told that Witkoff and Kushner are trying to broker peace between russia and Ukraine. Yet the people supposedly acting as intermediaries repeatedly travel to Moscow, meet with Putin, listen to russia’s demands - and cannot even bring themselves to travel to the capital of the country russia is invading.

You cannot understand this war by visiting Moscow eight times and Kyiv zero times.

And you certainly cannot be an honest broker if you are willing to sit comfortably across the table from the aggressor but are too afraid to visit the victim because the aggressor might bomb you.

European leaders are showing what solidarity looks like.

Washington is showing what cowardliness and complacency look like.

[Olena Rohoza @OlenaRohoza]

🇺🇸🇺🇸🧐🤔“AND YOU STILL DARE TO OPEN YOUR MOUTH…”

Sasha Legerman: This is too accurate not to share.

This Australian’s response to Trump’s rant that “NATO does nothing for America” is absolutely devastating:

“Mate. You run a country where 600,000 homeless people will sleep on the streets tonight.

A country where 40% of adults can’t cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money.

A country where insulin costs more than a car payment, and people ration it just to stay alive.

A country where medical debt is the number one cause of bankruptcy.

A country where women die in hospital parking lots because doctors are too afraid of abortion laws to treat miscarriages.

You imprison more of your own citizens than any country on Earth.
More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea.

In the land of the free, 2 million people sit in cages, and a quarter of them haven’t even been convicted of anything.
They’re simply too poor to afford bail.

Your life expectancy is declining. You’re the only developed nation where that’s happening.

Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba’s.

Your children practice active shooter drills between math and English classes while you sell defense stocks to your friends.

Your minimum wage hasn’t changed in 15 years.

Your teachers work two jobs, your veterans sleep under bridges, and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that never attacked you.

And now a convicted criminal — found liable for sexual abuse, defending a pedophile, sleeping with a porn star, and running the biggest dumpster-fire campaign since the Taliban — is thanking you for yet another disaster.

And you call Greenland badly governed?

Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world.
Nobody there goes bankrupt because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because insurance refused treatment.

‘NATO wasn’t there when we needed them.’

When exactly was that, champ?
September 11?

Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU.

Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU.

Australia wasn’t even in NATO, and we still showed up. For twenty years.

And then you left at 2 a.m. without telling anyone and left everybody else to clean up the mess.

You don’t care that a great nation is being terrorized by your friend, and you haven’t shown it a single ounce of sympathy.

So maybe before calling other countries badly governed, take a look at your own backyard, you aluminum siding salesman with a spray tan.

The only thing badly managed in this picture is your damn mouth.

And you still dare to lecture the rest of the world?”

[Nick Lee-Frampton 🇬🇧🇳🇿🇺🇦🇮🇱🇪🇪🇫🇮🇩🇰🇱🇹 @Coolcorax]

@davidcapie I grew up when everybody knew about war. Young, middle-aged Kiwis mostly have no idea because peace has reigned. Peace has to be fought for and constantly defended. It's tricky, yes, which is why it needs constant attention.

[Nick Lee-Frampton 🇬🇧🇳🇿🇺🇦🇮🇱🇪🇪🇫🇮🇩🇰🇱🇹 @Coolcorax]

@davidcapie With Trump supporting dictators & tyrants while stripping the US of its military leaders & withering the USN, is not the time to shunt defence matters sideways with our ally.

[Nick Lee-Frampton 🇬🇧🇳🇿🇺🇦🇮🇱🇪🇪🇫🇮🇩🇰🇱🇹 @Coolcorax]

@davidcapie As I posted last week, defence needs absolute focus. To include it as one of 11 portfolios is folly, dangerous and reckless. It suggests Luxon regards protecting NZ as trivial.

[Nick Lee-Frampton 🇬🇧🇳🇿🇺🇦🇮🇱🇪🇪🇫🇮🇩🇰🇱🇹 @Coolcorax]

@davidcapie Perhaps because there are so many other lamentable conflicts going on, maybe because I cannot recall a time when there wasn't a conflict going on in Africa. There was fighting in Sudan during the 50s. There was a time when the UN blue helmets carried some weight and force. 1/2

[Nick Lee-Frampton 🇬🇧🇳🇿🇺🇦🇮🇱🇪🇪🇫🇮🇩🇰🇱🇹 @Coolcorax]

@davidcapie Equally there was a time when the US possessed  both the means & the intelligence to wield power. Likewise there was a time when the weather was largely predictable and moderate. 2/2

[Nick Lee-Frampton 🇬🇧🇳🇿🇺🇦🇮🇱🇪🇪🇫🇮🇩🇰🇱🇹 @Coolcorax]

@ChrisPenknz @nzpol When Denis Healey was the UK's Minister of Defence in 1969 he said: Once we cut defence expenditure to the extent where our security is imperilled, we have no houses, we have no hospitals, we have no schools. We have a heap of cinders.' 1/3

[Nick Lee-Frampton 🇬🇧🇳🇿🇺🇦🇮🇱🇪🇪🇫🇮🇩🇰🇱🇹 @Coolcorax]

Defence, both in UK & NZ requires a Minister's total attention, which isn't possible if lots of other portfolios are involved. 2/3

[Nick Lee-Frampton 🇬🇧🇳🇿🇺🇦🇮🇱🇪🇪🇫🇮🇩🇰🇱🇹 @Coolcorax]

@ChrisPenknz Thus to remove Chris Penk as MoD and give that role to Goldsmith as one of his 10 portfolios is indefensible. 3/3

[Nick Lee-Frampton 🇬🇧🇳🇿🇺🇦🇮🇱🇪🇪🇫🇮🇩🇰🇱🇹 @Coolcorax]

@nzpol Removing Chris Penk from cabinet is bad for NZ's defence. Paul Goldsmith doesn't have Penk's military service experience, nor his time assisting Collins when she was MoD. Everyone says defence is vital, few practice it.

[Joe Walsh @WalshFreedom]

HE GAVE AMERICA 20 YEARS OF SERVICE. AMERICA TOOK HIS WIFE.

Retired Staff Sgt. Wilmer Trujillo served in the Army and Texas National Guard, deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan. Trump’s government repaid that sacrifice by detaining his wife, Arelys Barahona-Martinez, during a routine ICE check-in.

She has no criminal record and was pursuing a legal path to residency. Now she must fight for due process from behind bars while her veteran husband begs his own country to stop destroying his family.

https://t.co/du9bv2U4pY helps families understand their rights, document ICE and preserve evidence.

Keep PAXIS free: https://t.co/Hi5Yo2N2N2