Gonofgons 🇪🇦🇮🇷🇱🇧🇨🇺🇵🇸

Retweeting and liking things I find interesting, whether I agree with them or not.

[Rand Paul @RandPaul]

Some in the media say I'm too focused on "criminalizing policy differences." This isn't about policy.

Lying to Congress under oath is a felony. Destroying government records is a felony. If you or I did either of those things, we'd be facing prosecution. Anthony Fauci should be held to the exact same standard.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

@TheAliceSmith There is no such thing as “magic ground” that makes some places prosperous and some not!

If you teleported the people of Japan to anywhere else, that place would become Japan.

[DD Geopolitics @DD_Geopolitics]

“We are negotiating with Iran.”

[Phoenix 🇺🇸 @Phoenix2A_1980s]

I think some people in Spain might be a little upset at the current state of affairs🤔

[Ethan Levins 🇺🇸 @EthanLevins2]

Russian forces taking down a Ukrainian UAV along the front.

Dangerous game.

[Owen Shroyer @OwenShroyer1776]

My DOGE dividend went to a war in Iran.

My tariff check went to the companies that charged me more for tarrifs.

[Saagar Enjeti @esaagar]

When I was 20 eating at home was *dirt* cheap AND you could also go to Chipotle and get a massive meal for $6 after tax

Today the same bowl is roughly $12/13 and the same groceries are 43% more expensive. It was nice and we should try to make that happen for todays 20 year olds

[Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil @ivan_8848]

🚨Alice Weidel is furious! "Mr. Merz, vacate your seat!" – Heated debate in the Bundestag

Our economy is facing collapse.
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
The bankruptcy tsunami is sweeping unchecked across our country and will surpass a record mark this year of 30 000, due to chain insolvencies.

The middle class is suffering the most.

Your government is supporting the disastrous EU decision to ban imports of cheap natural gas from Russia in the future as well.
The new one-sided dependence on expensive American liquefied natural gas is turning out to be extremely inefficient and also dangerous.
That is fatal, especially in this geopolitical situation.

It is in Germany's interest to quickly end the war in Ukraine.
Germany must participate in the peace process to bring in its own interests.
That includes rejecting Ukraine's
membership in the EU and NATO and further transfer payments from Germany.
Instead, we must demand compensation for the state terrorist attack on the infrastructure vital to Germany, the Nord Stream gas pipeline, which Kyiv is clearly also responsible for.
Infrastructure of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, the obviously Kyiv bears some responsibility.

[Gad Saad @GadSaad]

We need to end democracy in order to protect democracy.

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🇩🇪 1,051 German lawyers just signed a letter to ban a party millions of Germans keep voting for.

Judges, prosecutors and legal experts all say the AfD is unconstitutional and want the courts to shut it down before it climbs any higher in the polls.

The timing gives it away. The AfD is now one of the strongest parties in the country, so the move is to remove it by ruling instead of by vote.

And here's the catch. Under German law, regular citizens get no say in this. Only the government, the Bundestag or the Bundesrat can ask the Constitutional Court to kill off a party.

So a leading opposition party could be banned by the exact establishment it's beating.

Whatever you think of the AfD, that part should worry everyone.

Source: Spiegel. de / Writer: Daniyal

[MenchOsint @MenchOsint]

The UAE's imperial push into Africa – FT

"It was one of the largest gold heists in world history, executed in the opening salvos of Sudan’s civil war in April 2023.

As paramilitary forces battled their former allies from the Sudan military, they seized the state-owned gold refinery in Khartoum and broke into the central bank.

At least 1.5 tonnes of bullion worth $100mn at that time was stolen, together with jewellery raided from safe-deposit boxes at commercial banks.

A witness, whose version of events was corroborated by three other people familiar with the operation, says the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces transported the gold across borders, including to neighbouring Chad and South Sudan. The RSF denies involvement and the details of the theft are contested.

But where much of the gold went next is no mystery: from the international airport in South Sudan’s capital, it was loaded on to planes destined for the UAE"

https://t.co/vBn9Ysa5Lb

[Luke Rudkowski @Lukewearechange]

American foreign policy perfectly explained!

[Glenn Diesen @Glenn_Diesen]

A large-scale attack on Kiev last night and a continued naval blockade on Ukraine. NATO's strategy of increasing deep strikes into Russia to weaken Russia's economy and make Russian civil society also feel the pain of war is a disastrous plan - for Ukraine. Why does NATO go up the escalation ladder at a time when Ukraine has run out of air defence missiles? Russia always had the option to intensify strikes on Kiev and impose a naval blockade to make Ukraine a de facto landlocked country. However, this was reserved as a step further up the escalation ladder. When the NATO political class pursued this strategy and their mouthpieces in the media uncritically celebrated the attacks on Russian civilian ships and commercial targets deep inside Russia, they certainly knew that it would trigger a response from Russia. However, this is the luxury of fighting a proxy war. NATO does not pay any cost yet, as the Russian retaliation is aimed against Ukrainian targets.

[Senator Rand Paul @SenRandPaul]

The closest thing to fascism the United States has seen was the COVID-19 pandemic response, instituted and vigorously mobilized by Left-wing groupthink.

[Clint Russell @LibertyLockPod]

Wanna know how I know there's outrage fatigue? Trump made it very clear that he will not be challenging Fauci's pardon because he intends to pardon his whole family.

The biggest crime in world history and he won't pursue it because he and his kids needed to rug pull on a shitcoin.

Or because he needed 100K/mo to sell access to his truth social posts so that whales could front run his weekly Iran TACO announcements.

He has gone from bad to indefensible and there are three camps remaining:

Deep denialists
Paid propagandists
The rest of us.

The problem is that the rest of us are just so overwhelmed by the avalanche of corruption you can't even get adequately mad.

It's like adrenal overload.

I'm tired, boss.

[JOSE GEFAELL @ChGefaell]

Invasión de Ceuta: El ex Ministro de Defensa Federico Trillo sin pelos en la lengua.
Una hipótesis empieza a tomar cuerpo: Lo ocurrido en Ceuta es ser una operación de Ventana de Overton: Pedro Sánchez ha pactado ya la entrega de Ceuta y Melilla y esto es simplemente una forma de ir preparando a la opinión pública.

[Grummz @Grummz]

This is the OG WoW team.

Journalists and grifters really did them dirty.

This is the real story.

This was not a "frat house run amok" as they want you to belief.

I should know. I was the Team Lead. Every HR incident would have to cross my desk. (I'm on the left, holding out the champagne bottle from the launch celebration).

None of them were SA or even "Frat Boy" style incidents (we did have one GDC drinking binge that ended up with flooding a hotel room and getting the company banned, but there were no women involved nor anyone harmed). So many articles were written that claimed Blizzard was a haven for some kind of "wild" and out of control environment. They are wrong.

Instead what we were was a group of geeks, many of us socially awkward, all of us with a passion for games and absolutely driven to make the best game we could.

"Frat Boys" would have stuffed us in lockers and given us swirlies.

We worked hard, we were gamers, geeks, nerds. Many were married, with kids, or starting families. Many others were extremely shy, and introverted. We worked really long hours, but that's kinda what it takes to accomplish the exceptional.

I know it's popular to paint OG gamers (and even DnD players/creators) as some sort of toxic group that pushed out women and minorities. But that's a lie. That's the narrative they use to explain why teams were majority men back then. They were men because women wanted nothing to do with games (until it became popular in culture).

We would have loved to see more women interested in what we were doing, and we would not cared if they wanted to join the team. There was only one requirement: You had to be a gamer and passionate about making games and have the skills to back it up.

We were the quiet, awkward nerds who were driven to excellence.

It is such a terrible wrong to paint this team as some sort of menace to women. It's sad that this is the legacy people want to force on not just Blizzard, but all the OG teams from other companies that defined the IPs that carry gaming even today. They were all attacked. They want to destroy the past, tell a false history, so they can supplant it with their modern agenda (and people).

It was done for clicks. It was done for money. It was done for clout.

But when you point that out, they just call you a "woman hating grifter".

All they do is lie and project.

[More Births @MoreBirths]

An extraordinary graphic showing what will happen in Poland if fertility rates simply stay where they are. Most of the developed world is on a trajectory of population collapse similar to this.

Nothing matters more than turning around birthrate decline.

[Matt Walsh @MattWalshBlog]

The conservatives on here denying the affordability crisis are engaged in what I can only describe as an act of political suicide. They're also lying, which is the worst part. Grocery prices are up. Housing. Energy. Insurance. Health care. Basic living expenses. It's real. It's happening. Denying it just makes you look out of touch, deceitful, and untrustworthy. It's also a completely unnecessary and unforced error. No credible person is claiming that Trump caused these price surges. You don't have to disgrace yourself by denying the reality in front of your face just to prove your loyalty to Trump. The causes for the most part are multi faceted, complicated, and longstanding. That's true. So let's discuss them. Debating whether the problem exists at all -- or, if it does exist, whether it counts as a problem -- is a total waste of time, and makes you look like a shill and a fraud.

[The Rabbit Hole @TheRabbitHole]

Male students are more tolerant of political rivals than female students are of political allies.