Pieter Verbeeck

[Pieter Verbeeck @verbeeck9]

@RGIII

[Pieter Verbeeck @verbeeck9]

@JGreenbergSez There is no cheating in american sports?

[Pieter Verbeeck @verbeeck9]

@robert_bor @RPlasterk @elonmusk @ThierryBreton Dus ook alle landen die de regels hebben goedgekeurd?

[Pieter Verbeeck @verbeeck9]

@ibinvestorX @slantchev I live in the EU and have no problem with it. Most of the problems in the EU is of right wing politcians kissing the ass of people like Musk and forget they are choosen by real people with real problems.

[Fake History Hunter @fakehistoryhunt]

😄

[General Marc @general_marcT]

Een verhaal van de kanarie in de koolmijn en de olifant in de kamer.
Los van de discussie of 5% voor defensie veel, teveel of te weinig is, is het vooral de vaststelling dat de Belgische federale overheid financieel niet meer in staat is haar verantwoordelijkheid te dragen. We hebben nog nooit zo weinig diplomaten gehad als vandaag. Justitie financieren lukt ook niet. Het defensiedebat is dus niet meer als de kanarie in de koolmijn. De olifant in de kamer is dat de Belgische constructie na verschillende staatshervormingen een doodlopende straat is ingereden.
Om het in culinaire termen te zeggen: we hebben een lasagne gemaakt met teveel lagen pasta en te weinig saus. Sommigen willen nog saus (belastingen) bijmaken. Met een overheidsbeslag van 53% (tegenover 48 % gemiddeld in EU) is dat niet de beste oplossing. Er moeten dus een aantal lagen pasta (staatshervorming) uit. Niet om alles te herfederaliseren welteverstaan. Maar niet meer vanuit het principe' wat we zelf doen doen we beter'. We moeten nadenken over welke competenties we nog dichter bij de burger brengen en voor welke competenties de stem van 11,5 miljoen Belgen effectiever is dan de stem van 6 miljoen Vlamingen, 4 miljoen Walen of 1 miljoen Brusselaars.
Dat is het principe dat alle (con)federale staten gebruiken.
Tijd dat we in België ook wakker worden. Ik begrijp dat het 'inconvenient' is. Maar dat is elke olifant in de kamer. De huidige discussies rond Defensie zijn stuitend, maar raken enkel maar het oppervlak van het probleem aan. Tijd voor wat verdieping in de politieke discussie.

[Saqib Ul Islam Chaudhary @SaqibIslam]

US scrambles to bring back VOA’s Persian service amid Iran-Israel conflict - POLITICO https://t.co/rNAbjBSdCU

[Chris Brockman🎙️ @chrisbrockman]

return it to “Twitter” and go back to the old blue check policy

[John @lastofhiskind]

It’s perfect.

[Nolan Peterson @nolanwpeterson]

I'm tracking some back and forth on this site about a point of view, held by some, that a subset of U.S. veterans may hold reflexively anti-Ukraine views due to an innate jealously, or sense of insecurity, regarding the intensity of Ukrainians' combat experiences versus what we faced in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I'll leave that debate to others. Yet, as a former USAF special ops pilot who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and who then reported on those wars from ground level as a war correspondent, and who has also lived in Ukraine since 2014 covering the full arc of Russia's invasions...I'll say something about the differences in the American and Ukrainian combat experiences.

First off: The fear of violent death feels no different if it comes from an Al-Qaeda terrorist's Kalashnikov or a Russian glide bomb.

From my point of view, the dangers of combat are like those of mountaineering. A 100-foot fall from a crag in Colorado can kill you just as easily as an 11,000-foot fall down the Kangshung Face of Mount Everest.

As a journalist, I've been under artillery fire in a Ukrainian trench, and I've been under sniper fire in Iraq and Afghanistan. All are scary. And any American or Ukrainian soldier who has the courage to stand their ground, face the enemy, and overcome their fear of death for the sake of defending their nation is a hero in my book.

Full stop.

What truly separates combat in Ukraine from the GWOT wars isn't the acute fear of dying in combat — it is the grind of years of inescapable war. Ukrainians don't get to grab a Subway sandwich and hit the gym between missions like we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are in constant contact with the enemy and live with the threat of death on their shoulders 24/7. That constant psychological burden is a foreign thing to my generation of American veterans. And the rise of drone warfare makes modern combat in Ukraine even more emotionally exhausting.

When artillery shells rain down around you, the threat is objective, mathematical. There are predictable actions to take, which, statistically speaking, will probably keep you alive. With drones it’s different. With drones, you feel like you’re being hunted.

Beyond all that, Ukrainian troops also fear for their families' safety since Russia's missile and drone strikes spare no corner of Ukraine and routinely target civilians. As someone who has lived through Russia's bombardments alongside my wife, I can testify that fearing for her safety supersedes by multiple orders of magnitude whatever worries I may have about my own survival.

The human toll of a conventional, full-scale war is also hard to comprehend. As a pilot, I lost a handful of friends on combat missions over the years. Each one hurt like losing a family member. Ukrainian troops endure that same pain, but on a much larger scale. I don't exagerate when I say that, out of the friends I made in the Ukrainian military from 2014 to 2022, more than half are now dead. And of those who are alive, almost all have been wounded.

My fallen friends belong to a generation of Ukrainian heroes who held their ground when the enemy invaded and saved their homeland and their nation from destruction. The only choice they had was to fight or die. More than three years later, the stakes have not changed — and neither has the Ukrainian nation's courage.

So, circling back to that original question.

A war's size isn't how you measure the courage of the soldiers who fight in it. And any American veteran could come to Ukraine and without knowing a word of the language find a welcoming nation of brother and sister warriors who will instantly understand you, to the core of your soul, in a way that most American civilians never could.

[Oksii ✚ 🇺🇦 @Oksii33]

LOL😅

[Bart 🌊⚓️ @BartGonnissen]

So... now imagine a port with the 2nd largest petrochemical hub in the world... a Chinese/Russian/whatever containership with a few thousand containers on board docked in the middle of it... and no air defenses whatsoever...

[Bill Bramhall @BillBramhall]

Cartoon

[Willem de Zwijger @WillemdePrater]

Namens @atlascontact mag ik een exemplaar van het interessante boek ‘De Ware Vrijheid’ verloten! Interesse? Retweet dan dit bericht en volg mij. De winnaar wordt op maandagavond 21 april 2025 om 20.00 uur bekend gemaakt.

[Quinten Jacobs @QuintenJacobs3]

De wereld staat in brand, Vlaanderen leunt achterover. https://t.co/uEP87wLIQF

[Just saying @kangaroos991]

👇 Okay, who made this? 🤣🤣🤣

[Pieter Verbeeck @verbeeck9]

@nadernation84 @Osint613 But Hungary lost it a long time a go

[JessicaUSAF @JessicaUSAF]

😂