stephven

[stephven @stephven]

@shedntcare_ @threadreaderapp unroll

[stephven @stephven]

@vlok_andre You can’t be serious. Did we listen to the same interview?

[stephven @stephven]

@JordiGriff @wilkinsoncape Does Michael Beaumont even have an official role in the City of Tshwane? He’s just at the party, right?

[stephven @stephven]

@tamaruema @threadreaderapp unroll

[stephven @stephven]

@Hipotelab @threadreaderapp unroll

[Antonio @Anto53055355]

@raulcontev Los tiempos difíciles crean hombres fuertes, los hombres fuertes crean tiempos fáciles y los tiempos fáciles crean hombres débiles

[stephven @stephven]

Hi @geordinhl @CityofCT @CTMarathon – please send marathon road closures to @waze and @googlemaps for future events. A PDF isn’t enough in 2026, especially for a tech-focused city like Cape Town. Newcomers (like me) and tourists navigate by app. Both platforms accept submissions from organisers/cities directly. Today’s been genuinely frustrating – hoping you can close this loop for future events 🙏

[stephven @stephven]

When @StandardBankZA delivers your new corporate card and has unilaterally made me a Mrs… 🙈🫠🙄

[stephven @stephven]

Hey @News24 @AdriaanBasson, if I pay to subscribe to News24, why do I still get excessive adverts? Is there anyway to get an ad-free version? Please consider.

[stephven @stephven]

@NoFilterSkin @threadreaderapp unroll

[Jozi vs Jozi @jozivsjozi]

Many have been looking for context. Here it is.

[stephven @stephven]

@grightford In SA, we don’t usually use em-dashes. We use en-dashes usually (and because of computers, sometimes use a hyphen where it should be an en-dash). Em-dashes are not common at all in SA…until now (thanks, AI!). Any sign of an em-dash in an SA context and I will assume it’s AI.

[stephven @stephven]

@edgaralandough @TaraSails0921 Post before and after photos!

[stephven @stephven]

@jkap44 @ASFleischman My friend, this *so* not how law enforcement works. But keep living your fantasy ✊

[John Ʌ Konrad V @johnkonrad]

op-ed: I’ve spoken with multiple senior Pentagon officials and others indirectly involved in the Maduro raid. Two things stand out.

First: the operation was far more impressive than the public realizes.

Second: in my assessment as an observer, the decisive factor behind its speed and success was set months earlier at Quantico when Trump and Hegseth delivered a blunt message directly to ALL the generals and admirals: “You can take more risk because we have your back.”

I see no hard, on-the-record evidence that the Rules of Engagement were formally loosened in the Maduro raid (maybe they were, maybe they weren’t). What I do see is overwhelming evidence that the units involved internalized that message.

Historically, ROEs are drafted by senior JAGs, tightened by senior administrators, then tightened again at every level down the chain until, in some cases, platoon commanders can barely return fire while under attack.

This time, more trust was placed in officers closer to the fight.

This administration trusts warfighters. It trusts that well-trained men and women on the front lines have the judgment and ethical compass to make real-time decisions to protect themselves and civilians in complex combat environments.

Ironically, that trust reduces civilian casualties and the risk of war crimes because enemy fighters are stopped before they can use civilians, including children, as shields.

This isn’t a new problem. My father, a medic in Vietnam, talked about it often. Civilians brought to him with horrific wounds by soldiers who saw the enemy coming but weren’t allowed to fire. Angry, frustrated troops. An enemy soldier burned alive because base security was authorized only to fire warning flares as he crossed the wire.

This is one reason we’ve struggled in wars since Korea, a conflict that ended in a draw largely because every time we gained overwhelming advantage, negotiations followed and ROEs were tightened. Tightened by our own generals pursuing peace without learning that you can’t negotiate in good faith with communists.

How many have suffered in North Korea because our forces were restrained while they were winning?

We have struggled in wars since Korea except the Gulf War where Powell and Schwarzkopf told the American public they wanted an unfair fight.

To be clear: I don’t have hard, on-the-record proof. But after covering many failed missions where overly rigid ROEs were the most common complaint, slowing operations and endangering both warfighters and civilians, this is one complaint I’m simply not hearing from anyone today.

The Maduro raid is what the American military is capable of when Admirals and Generals let the warfighter do their job.

[Wall Street Mav @WallStreetMav]

Marco Rubio …

King of the one liners.
I didn’t realize he was this funny.

🔊

[Ami Kozak @amiKozak]

🚨 Leaked footage of Zohran calling Trump!

[Henrik Dahl @SociologenHD]

There has never been a rules-based international order. What is new is admitting it.

The American arrest of Venezuela’s dictator Nicolás Maduro (and his wife), accompanied by the use of military force, has understandably prompted many in Europe to lament what they see as a breach of the rules-based international order.

The purpose of the following reflections is to place this assumption in perspective.

If we confine ourselves to the permanent members of the UN Security Council, only the United Kingdom and France can be said to respect - more or less consistently - what Europeans refer to as “the rules-based international order.”

Russia is waging war in Ukraine in blatant violation of international law. China’s conduct in the South China Sea has no place within the framework of international law. And neither does the American arrest of Maduro.

In other words, the majority of the permanent members of the Security Council have - diplomatically speaking - a relaxed relationship with the UN Charter and other fundamental components of the rules-based international order.

That the United States, Russia, and China adhere to the principles of the rules-based international order only until they no longer do so is nothing new.

The difference lies rather in how such violations are justified. The United States continues to legitimize its actions in a normative language of human rights, responsibility, and international order - even when the arguments are thin. Russia and China, by contrast, increasingly refer openly to spheres of influence, historical entitlement, and civilizational particularities.

Russia - and before it the Soviet Union - has a long history of invading countries within its sphere of interest that failed to fall into line. China has been a member of the WTO for 25 years without ever genuinely respecting the organization’s rules. The United States, for its part, has carried out a substantial number of military operations without a UN mandate since the Second World War.

The question, therefore, is not when these three countries abandoned respect for the international order. The question is rather whether they ever truly embraced it in anything other than a rhetorical sense.

Upon closer reflection, one is compelled to conclude that “the rules-based international order” is, to a large extent, a normative phantom—one to which small and medium-sized European states have shown a particular fondness for rhetorical devotion. Much like their principal cooperative institution: the EU.

This is not to say that norms are without significance. Rules do matter—but they operate asymmetrically. They discipline the weak far more effectively than they constrain the strong.

In principle, I see nothing wrong with toasts to principles that are difficult to live up to on a daily basis.

The point of a toast is to install an ideal: a conception most people recognize and respect. If successful, this has two advantages.

First, it provides a norm to which one can appeal when it is violated. Even if one does not tell the full truth at all times, the norm of truthfulness is a good thing. It offers a starting point for legitimate criticism when a specific person, in a specific situation, is not being truthful. And that is useful.

Second, norms can, in fortunate cases, induce shame in those who violate them—and public shaming when they are caught in flagrante. No society can function without such mechanisms of control and self-control.

Seen in this light, there is of course nothing wrong with European countries - and the EU as a whole - professing their commitment to the rules-based international order.

The problem arises when Europeans genuinely and in all seriousness believe that the world is in fact governed by rules, and that violations are consistently called out and sanctioned.

Why? Fundamentally because this has little to do with reality. Because it is an illusion—and permanent illusions are dangerous.

What ultimately governs the course of world affairs is power. Toasts to the rules-based international order cannot and should not obscure that fact.

Great powers comply with rules as long as it is in their interest to do so. The moment that interest disappears, so does compliance. Small and medium-sized states can only hope that the great powers will continue to play by the rules. For if they do not—what then? Nothing. In practice, the rules become void, and the law of the strong prevails.

For this reason, the real problem with the American arrest of Maduro is not that international law has once again been set aside. Historically speaking, that is nothing new.

What is new is that Europeans still pretend to be surprised.

That great powers recognize the “rules-based international order” only when it suits them is therefore not new. What is new is merely that they are increasingly no longer bothering to conceal it.

Sex also existed before the liberalization of pornography. What was new was not that people suddenly began doing things they had never done before. What was new was that they no longer felt ashamed of it - and allowed it to become common knowledge that this is how the world actually works.

In this sense, the new international reality more closely resembles the liberalization of pornography than the emergence of wholly new and epoch-making activities in bedrooms around the world.

In a world where strong powers act openly on the basis of interest and power, weaker actors must either build real power, align themselves with power - or accept their irrelevance. Appeals to unenforced rules change nothing. Protests without sanctioning capacity change nothing. Moral outrage without material means changes nothing.

For Europe, this means that the question is no longer whether the rules-based international order has been violated. That question is irrelevant. The only relevant question is which instruments of power Europe possesses - military, economic, and strategic - and whether there is political will to use them.

If not, Europe will continue to speak the language of norms in a world that has moved on to the language of power. Elegant - but without effect.

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

All the bleating about "international law" shows just how completely deluded some of our elites have become.

International law was a pleasant fiction that lasted for a few decades. It was never real and now the world has reverted to its default setting: Great Power politics.

This is why, as a strong Ukraine supporter, I have never talked about international law or called Putin's attack an "illegal invasion".

Laws are based on submission to an overarching authority backed by force. There is no such international authority and even if you view the UN as one, it does not have the ability to use force against those who violate "international law" other than against small countries with weak militaries.

When the US attacked Iraq, the UN did nothing.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, the UN did nothing.
If China invades Taiwan tomorrow, the UN will do nothing.

If you cannot enforce a law, it's not a law.

I do not support Ukraine because naughty Vlad broke the rules. I support Ukraine because it's not in OUR interest in the West to have Russia marauding its way through friendly countries on the borders of Europe. It's in our interest for us to be as strong as possible and for our adversaries to be as weak as possible.

President Trump is a realist and a pragmatist. He sees through the fictions other "leaders" cling to.

A good leader advances the national interests of his country. If more Western leaders did this, our civilisation would be in a much better place.