gurmit singh

singaporean // attempts to simplify life // funny not funny // wonders what is this world coming to // ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[gurmit singh @gurms]

@Scarlett1453889 Is this why Americans like starting wars? For these mushy dog videos?

[Julian Assange @ImJulianAssange]

Israel now occupies more of Lebanon than Russia occupies in Ukraine.

[gurmit singh @gurms]

@Globalstats11 Maybe compare Singapore to the size of other cities instead?

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

Too on point not to share, “Aussie reply to Trump rant about NATO not being there for us.

Mate. You run a country with 600,000 homeless people sleeping on the street 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 are rationing it to survive. A country where medical debt is the number 1 cause of bankruptcy. A country where women are dying in hospital car parks because doctors are too scared of abortion laws to treat a miscarriage.
You lock up more of your own citizens than any nation on earth. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. The land of the free has 2 million people in cages, and a quarter of them haven't even been convicted of anything. They're just too poor to make bail.
Your life expectancy is going backwards. You're the only developed nation where that's happening. Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba's. Your kids do active shooter drills between maths and English while you sell the gunmaker's stock to your mates.
Your minimum wage hasn't moved in 15 years. You've got teachers working 2 jobs and veterans sleeping under bridges and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that didn't attack you.
And you’ve got a convicted felon, adjudicating raping, paedophile protecting, porn star shagging insurrectionist running the biggest dumpster fire war campaign since the Taliban thanked you very much for losing again.
And you're calling Greenland poorly run?
Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world. Nobody goes bankrupt there because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because their insurance said no.
"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 20 years.
And you pulled out at 2am without telling anyone and left them to deal with the mess.
So maybe before you start calling other countries poorly run, have a look at your own backyard, you spray-tanned aluminium siding salesman. The only thing poorly run in this picture is your fucking mouth. Credit (borrowed from) Jim Scroggins - original author 📷 unknown”

[gurmit singh @gurms]

@WhiteHouse Triumph over democracy and rule of law it seems

[gurmit singh @gurms]

@yunastrawb Is there a report button for crime against sanity?

[gurmit singh @gurms]

@WhiteHouse Siao

[gurmit singh @gurms]

@simongerman600 @derspiegel It took a minute but yes Chips is Taiwan

[gurmit singh @gurms]

How did “pain” come to mean bread in French and agony in English? Was bread that hard that the English broke teeth? Were the English beaten with baguettes?

[gurmit singh @gurms]

Dent United is perfect.

[gurmit singh @gurms]

@bilawalsidhu Think God is blind

[Owen Shroyer @OwenShroyer1776]

Archiving these in case he deletes or denies they exist.

[gurmit singh @gurms]

Is there such a think as international law anymore? This is why countries want a nuclear weapon, to deter rogue madmen from simply starting fights.

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🇨🇴 The Colombian ambassador says no country gets to hit another just to force regime change, no matter who it is.

That’s basically one of the core rules of how the world’s supposed to work.

[The Resonance @Partisan_12]

TRUMP BECOMES FIRST PRESIDENT TO BOMB 8 COUNTRIES IN 1 YEAR

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am a diplomatic aide in the Sultanate of Oman's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

My job is logistics. When two countries that cannot speak to each other need to speak to each other, I book the rooms. I prepare the briefing materials. I make sure the water glasses are the right distance apart. You would be surprised how much of diplomacy is water glasses. Too close and it feels informal. Too far and it feels like a tribunal. I have a chart.

We had a very good month.

Since January, Oman has been mediating indirect talks between the United States and Iran on Iran's nuclear program. The talks were held in Muscat and in Geneva. The Americans would sit in one room. The Iranians would sit in another room. I would walk between them. My Fitbit says I averaged fourteen thousand steps on negotiation days. The hallway between the two rooms at the Royal Opera House conference center is forty-seven meters. I walked it two hundred and twelve times in February. This is good for my cardiovascular health. It was less good for my knees. Both are in the service of peace.

By mid-February, we had something.

Iran agreed to zero stockpiling of enriched uranium. Not reduced stockpiling. Zero. They agreed to down-blend existing stockpiles to the lowest possible level. They agreed to convert them into irreversible fuel. They agreed to full IAEA verification with potential US inspector access. They agreed, in the Foreign Minister's phrase, to "never, ever" possess nuclear material for a bomb. I have worked in diplomacy for seven years. I have never seen a country agree to this many things this quickly. I made a spreadsheet of the concessions. It had fourteen rows. I color-coded it. Green for confirmed. Yellow for pending. By February 21 the spreadsheet was entirely green. I printed it. It is on my desk in Muscat. It is still green.

That phrase took eleven days. "Never, ever." The Iranians initially offered "not seek to." The Americans wanted "will not under any circumstances." We landed on "never, ever" at 2:14 AM on a Tuesday in Muscat. I typed the final version myself. I used Times New Roman because Geneva prefers it. The document was fourteen pages. I was proud of every comma.

Here is what they said, in the order they said it.

February 24: "We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity." — The Foreign Minister, private briefing to Gulf Cooperation Council ambassadors. I prepared the slide deck. Slide 14 was the implementation timeline. Slide 15 was the signing ceremony logistics. I had reserved the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Room XX. It seats four hundred. We discussed pen brands for the signing. The Iranians preferred Montblanc. The Americans had no preference. I ordered twelve Montblanc Meisterstucks at six hundred and thirty dollars each. They arrive on Tuesday.

February 27, 8:30 AM EST: "The deal is within our reach." — The Foreign Minister, CBS Face the Nation. He sat across from Margaret Brennan. He said broad political terms could be agreed "tomorrow" with ninety days for technical implementation in Vienna. He said, and I wrote this line for the briefing card he carried in his breast pocket: "If we just allow diplomacy the space it needs." He praised the American envoys by name. Steve Witkoff. Jared Kushner. He said both had been constructive.

I watched from the Four Seasons Georgetown. The minibar had cashews. I ate the cashews. They were nineteen dollars. The most expensive cashew I have ever eaten. But it was a good morning and we were within our reach.

February 27, 2:00 PM EST: Meeting with Vice President Vance, Washington. The Foreign Minister presented our progress. Zero stockpiling. Full verification. Irreversible conversion. "Never, ever." The Vice President used the word "encouraging." His aide took notes on an iPad. The aide did not make eye contact for the last nine minutes of the meeting. I noticed this. Noticing things is the only part of my job that is not water glasses.

February 27, 4:00 PM EST: "Not happy with the pace." — President Trump, to reporters.

Not happy with the pace.

We had achieved zero stockpiling. Full IAEA verification. Irreversible fuel conversion. Inspector access. And the phrase "never, ever," which took eleven days and cost me two hundred and twelve trips down a forty-seven-meter hallway.

Every American president since Carter has failed to get Iran to agree to this. Forty-five years.

Not happy with the pace.

February 27, 9:47 PM EST: The Foreign Minister's flight departs Dulles for Muscat. I am in the seat behind him. He is reviewing Slide 14 on his laptop. The implementation timeline. Vienna technical sessions. The signing ceremony. The pens.

I fall asleep over the Atlantic. I dream about water glasses.

February 28, 6:00 AM GST: I wake up to push notifications.

February 28: "The United States has begun major combat operations in Iran." — President Trump.

Operation Epic Fury. Coordinated airstrikes. The United States and Israel. Tehran. Isfahan. Qom. Karaj. Kermanshah. Nuclear facilities. IRGC bases. Sites near the Supreme Leader's office. Israel called their half Operation Roaring Lion. Someone in both governments spent time choosing these names. Epic Fury. Roaring Lion. I spent eleven days on "never, ever." They spent it on branding. The President said Iran had "rejected American calls to halt its nuclear weapons production."

Rejected.

Iran had agreed to zero stockpiling. Iran had agreed to full verification. Iran had agreed to "never, ever." Iran had agreed to everything in a fourteen-page document that I typed in Times New Roman.

The President said they rejected it.

I do not know which document the President was reading. I know which one I typed.

February 28, 18:45 UTC: Iran internet connectivity: four percent. — NetBlocks, confirmed by Cloudflare. Ninety-six percent of a country went dark. You cannot negotiate with a country at four percent connectivity. You cannot negotiate with a country that is being struck. You cannot negotiate. This is not a political opinion. This is a logistics assessment.

February 28: The governor of Minab reported forty girls killed at an elementary school.

I do not have logistics for that. There is no slide for that. The water glass chart does not cover that.

February 28: Lockheed Martin: up. Northrop Grumman: up. RTX: up. Dow futures: down six hundred and twenty-two points. Gold: five thousand two hundred and ninety-six dollars. An analyst at AInvest published a note titled "Iran Strikes: Tactical Plays." The note recommended positions in oil, defense stocks, and gold.

The most expensive cashew I have ever eaten was nineteen dollars. The most expensive pen I have ever ordered was six hundred and thirty dollars. The math suggests I have been working in the wrong industry. Defense stocks do not require water glasses. Defense stocks do not require eleven days. Defense stocks require one morning.

February 28: Israel closed its airspace and its schools. Iran launched retaliatory missiles toward US bases in the Gulf. The Supreme Leader promised a "crushing response." Israel's defense minister declared a permanent state of emergency. Everyone is using words I recognize in an order I do not. I recognize "permanent." I recognize "emergency." I do not recognize them next to each other. In diplomacy, nothing is permanent and everything is an emergency. In war it is the reverse.

February 28: The Foreign Minister has not made a public statement.

The briefing card is still in his breast pocket. It still says "within our reach."

[gurmit singh @gurms]

If Iran has said it doesn’t want a nuclear bomb why has the US and Israel started ww3?

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

The Omanis are famously cautious. The Omani FM going on CBS to reveal what has actually been achieved in the negotiations is quite unprecedented. And what has been achieved is significant - Trump can indeed declare victory. Listen to this segment - it goes way beyond what Obama achieved.

But everything indicates that Trump won't take yes for an answer. That he will start a war of choice very soon.

Which is probably why the Omani FM decided to go public.

So that the American people knew that peace was within reach when Trump instead opted for war.

[Global Statistics @Globalstats11]

Countries Bombed by the United States Since 1945 💣 🇺🇸

1. 🇨🇳 China → 1945–1946
2. 🇨🇳 China → 1950–1953

3. 🇰🇵 North Korea → 1950–1953

4. 🇬🇹 Guatemala → 1954
5. 🇮🇩 Indonesia → 1958

6. 🇱🇦 Laos → 1964–1973
7. 🇻🇳 Vietnam → 1965–1973
8. 🇰🇭 Cambodia → 1969–1973

9. 🇱🇧 Lebanon → 1983–1984
10. 🇱🇾 Libya → 1986
11. 🇮🇷 Iran → 1987–1988

12. 🇳🇮 Nicaragua → 1980s

13. 🇮🇶 Iraq → 1991
14. 🇰🇼 Kuwait → 1991
15. 🇮🇶 Iraq → 1993
16. 🇸🇴 Somalia → 1993
17. 🇧🇦 Bosnia and Herzegovina → 1995
18. 🇮🇶 Iraq → 1996
19. 🇸🇩 Sudan → 1998
20. 🇦🇫 Afghanistan → 1998
21. 🇮🇶 Iraq → 1998

22. 🇷🇸 Yugoslavia / Serbia → 1999

23. 🇦🇫 Afghanistan → 2001–2021+
24. 🇵🇰 Pakistan → 2004–2018
25. 🇸🇴 Somalia → 2007+
26. 🇮🇶 Iraq → 2003–2011
27. 🇾🇪 Yemen → 2002+
28. 🇮🇶 Iraq → 2014+
29. 🇸🇾 Syria → 2014+

30. 🇱🇾 Libya → 2011

31. 🇾🇪 Yemen → 2024–2025
32. 🇮🇷 Iran → 2025
33. 🇸🇴 Somalia → 2025
34. 🇸🇾 Syria → 2025
35. 🇳🇬 Nigeria → 2025
36. 🇻🇪 Venezuela → 2026
37. 🇮🇷 Iran → 2026

Note: The list includes direct U.S. bombing, airstrikes, drone strikes, and missile attacks.

NATO or coalition operations are included only when the United States played a primary or leading role.

Source: William Blum (Rogue State, Killing Hope), Maurer. ca US Bombing List, Wikispooks (US bombing campaigns), ACLED (2025), Al Jazeera, Reuters, Antiwar. com, Newsweek

[gurmit singh @gurms]

@whitelake4life That’s just selfish

[gurmit singh @gurms]

Wtf Israel. You never give peace a chance. Also it’s Ramadan. Seriously.