I cannot matchmake with my friends who are two ranks below but when my squad is incomplete you fill my squad with rookie leveled, now make that make sense🤦🏾♂️ @Battlefield
Jean Montero 🇩🇴❤️
De República Dominicana al Final Four de la EuroLeague.
Qué orgullo verte hacer historia y representar a todo un país en lo más alto de Europa
Seguimos disfrutando cada paso tuyo, Jean. ¡Qué grande eres! 🇩🇴🔥
As an avid reader of Immanuel Kant during my teenage years, I disciplined myself morally in ways that external chaos could never achieve. Kant’s categorical imperative became my inner compass: act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. This pure reason-based ethics grounded me, turning personal turmoil into a commitment to principles that transcend circumstances.
The loss of Ali Larijani, a true Kantian thinker who authored multiple works on Kant’s philosophy, including explorations of mathematical method, metaphysics, and synthetic a priori judgments in his thought, feels profoundly personal to me. Here was a man who confronted what he saw as a materialist, genocidal empire on high moral ground, much like Kant’s insistence on treating humanity always as an end in itself, never merely as a means. His death is not just a political event; it is a blow to that rare fusion of philosophical rigor and principled action.
The United States, through its Rewards for Justice program, placed a bounty of up to $10 million on Larijani’s head (along with other senior Iranian officials, including Mojtaba Khamenei) just days before his reported killing in an Israeli strike. This act reduces a human being, regardless of political role, to a price tag, a means to an end in geopolitical maneuvering.
If this practice were to become a universal principle, no head of state would ever be safe again. Imagine Donald Trump, or any leader, subject to the same logic: bounties issued by adversaries, turning political opposition into licensed assassination markets. The world would descend into a state where dignity evaporates, reason is subordinated to power, and perpetual insecurity reigns, precisely the antithesis of Kant’s vision of a kingdom of ends, where rational beings coexist under laws they give themselves.
Larijani, this committed Kantian (Syed Kantian, as some might say), left a piercing question for the Muslim world in his final public message before his martyrdom: Which side are you on? He framed the confrontation as one between America/Israel on one side and Muslim Iran/forces of resistance on the other, urging Islamic nations to unite rather than remain silent or complicit. He emphasized that true security, progress, and independence come not from narrow nationalism but from solidarity across the Ummah, echoing a bloc-like unity similar to the European Union.
Today’s EU stands, in many ways, on Kant’s anti-nationalist philosophy. Kant viewed nationalism as outdated, a relic of particularism that must yield to cosmopolitan right and perpetual peace through federations of free states. Larijani, in his last message, similarly rejected narrow nationalism for Iran or the Muslim world, advocating instead for a collective strength akin to a supranational bloc that could guarantee dignity and autonomy for all, much like Kant’s ideal of a federation transcending sovereign rivalries.
I am in no position to write a full obituary for him yet; the shock is still too raw, the grief too immediate. But I will write one, in time. For now, this is simply an acknowledgment: a Kantian light has dimmed, yet the imperative he lived by, and that he helped instill in me, remains undimmed. We must will a world where such principles prevail, not bounties and eliminations.
If Russia had killed 167 Ukrainian girls, the world would not stop talking about it. But for the spilled blood of 167 young Iranian girls, the Western media is dead silent.
UN experts denounce aggression on Iran & Lebanon, warn of devastating regional escalation: "U.S. and Israel should stop waging and expanding wars, and considering themselves as above international legality”.
https://t.co/yYhNfFUMvN
Is Brazil’s President Lula hinting at nuclearization?
'We are a peaceful region — no nukes, drones for agriculture and science… NOT WAR'
'But if we don’t prepare for defense — WE'LL BE INVADED'
🇨🇳Xi Jinping: Si eliges ocupar un cargo público, no busques enriquecerte; si quieres enriquecerte, no ocupes un cargo público. Asume los cargos oficiales con una mente limpia y pura y con una determinación inquebrantable.#China#XiJinping
Putin: "I want the ordinary citizens of Western countries to hear me."
"You are being persistently told that all your current difficulties are the result of hostile actions by vicious Russia, and that you must pay for the fight against a mythical Russian threat out of your own pockets. All of this is a lie."
"The truth is that the problems you are facing now are the result of years of actions by the ruling elites of your own countries—their mistakes, short-sightedness, and ambition. They do not think about how to improve your lives; they are obsessed with their own selfish interests and excessive profits." - Vladimir Putin