@magnifiedpod After getting hooked on the pod when you guys delved into Bazan, I started back at the beginning. This has been stuck in my head all week: “Whether it’s real or not you gain a little knowledge. Despite what Dumbledore said, despite what Dumbledore said.” #IYKYK
You know how we say in Ukraine: now Trump has to eat the mess pie he was baking for others.
You either support alliances, respect your friends and their interests, coordinate with them and thus benefit from partnerships with countries close to you -- or you sling dumb insults left and right, spit in your friends’ faces, play a big tough guy who needs no one, measure dicks and cozy up to dictators, and end up alone.
Mocking NATO and the alliance with Europe was great fun. Lifting sanctions on Putin and twisting arms over Greenland and Ukraine felt very bold.
But now you get exactly what you wanted: a world where Euro-Atlantic unity is gone, and America is no longer followed as the leader of the free world.
March 16 marks the anniversary of one of the deadliest terrorist attacks carried out by Russia in Ukraine.
On this day, a Russian aircraft dropped two powerful bombs, likely 500-kg, on the Mariupol Drama Theatre, where hundreds of civilians had taken shelter.
The attackers were not stopped by the massive “CHILDREN” sign written on the square in front of the building to show that civilians were inside.
Hundreds of people were killed while seeking refuge there, believing the theatre would never become a target.
Several contradictory things are simultaneously true:
1. Maduro was an oppressive, unpopular and illegitimate ruler, disastrous for his country and the region.
2. Using the US to remove him may have been equally illegitimate.
3. Venezuela would be better off with a new government under the opposition's Edmundo Gonzalez (who probably won the presidential election but is now exiled).
4. It's not clear that Maduro will be replaced by Gonzalez. Maduro's VP is still apparently in power, as are other regime figures and the Cubans who back them.
5. As we've seen in Iraq and Libya, it can be easier to topple a leader than to establish a new government; sometimes you get a worse leader, or Somalia-style chaos.
God, if only you could see how incredibly outraged the Russian Z-fascists on Telegram are.
Landing helicopter troops in the capital of an independent sovereign state, attacking its air-defense systems, and seizing its leader — a blatant violation of international law!
Where has such a thing ever been seen!!
This framing by Trump is both wrong and insulting. Zelenskyy is not "using the war" to stay in power. Zelenskyy, more than anyone, wants to end the killing of his people.
So basically, we’re looking at a situation where that petty despot got handed a document written by the Russians, and without even bothering to read it, he started throwing a fit and make everyone to sign it on the spot so he could keep demanding a Nobel Peace Prize for himself.
And the people around him -- who also saw that paper at the very last moment -- immediately scrambled to ingratiate themselves, jumping out of their skins trying to impress him more than the others.
It’s an absolute disgrace.
Most Republicans are good people. Most Democrats are good people.
The White House says outrageous things to make you hate your neighbor.
Your neighbor isn’t the problem. The White House is.
It is astonishing that just weeks after Republicans took to the media to angrily say any reference to their party as Nazi or fascist was incitement to violence, they’re now accusing the Democratic Party of being “Hamas terrorists.”
Per their own logic, they are inciting violence.
Russians have taken 25,000 homes from Ukrainians, — Le Figaro
First, the occupiers confiscated state and corporate property, but later they began to confiscate homes from Ukrainians in the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson regions. The houses are considered "ownerless," even if their owners were merely forced to flee or died during the war.
After the house is recognized as "empty," the owner has 30 days to contact the occupying authorities with a Russian passport.
If this does not happen, the property becomes the property of the Russian state after three months.
“Oh my god… I have no words.”
Listen to the emotional moment this year’s laureate Maria Corina Machado finds out she has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Kristian Berg Harpviken, Director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, shared the news with her directly before it was announced to the world.
#NobelPrize #NobelPeacePrize
Bloomberg reports Putin sees escalation as a way to force Ukraine into talks, believing Trump won’t boost support for Kyiv. Strikes on infrastructure have intensified after Zelensky rejected territorial demands last month.
https://t.co/IKdXOVAqCR
This is exactly what Putin did for the Olympics in Sochi. Force oligarchs to fund construction, meanwhile looting state funds as the cherry on top.
Everything that is Putin, Trump aspires to.
Russians just fired artillery into homes in Ukraine's eastern town of Kostyantynivka, murdering 9 people, 7 wounded. A drone hunted a civilian car also, one of the dead.
All day, every day, Russians.