The Japan That Can Say No How Japan rewrote its pacifist constitution without changing a word

profjabbott.substack.com/p/the-japan-...

4/4 New on The Balance of Power: The Japan That Can Say No.
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3/4 This week's arms exports, the Australia warship deal, hypersonic missile deployment, a sixth-generation fighter with Britain and Italy: not a break with Japan's postwar settlement. The endpoint of it.

2/4 Article 9 was never amended. It was reinterpreted. In 1954. In 1992. In 2014. Each time the step looked modest. Each time it held. Each time it made the next one easier.

🧵 1/4 Japan has the 9th largest defense budget in the world. Its pacifist constitution is unchanged. Those facts are not in tension. They are the product of the same strategy.

Strange how in many countries governments were overthrown with people power. Seems they didn't need guns.

This image is a political illustration from the German newspaper Die Zeit depicting a confrontation between a Pope and a US President.

The artwork is titled "Pope Leo XIV" and portrays a tension-filled scene between the two figures.

If journalists had any integrity and courage, they would boycott the White House Correspondents Dinner. It should be as empty as a TPUSA event.

Seeing President Obama and Mayor Mamdani reading to kids and singing "The Wheels on the Bus," while doing all the hand gestures is a reminder that they are human.
Whatever is evil ruling us now is not. They would never...

Shame if it encountered salt water

If you like and agree please share and feel free to contact your reps, mayors, governors in NY/NJ

6/6 Compared to the tunnels, the rail links, the highway interchanges this region has built over a century, a single pedestrian span is a modest ask.
New York builds enormous things when it decides to.
The question is never really engineering. It is political will.

5/6 At this scale and density, modal shift is not a marginal gain. It is a meaningful reduction in congestion, emissions, and the chronic overcrowding that makes this corridor a daily misery.
The objections — cost, shipping lane clearance — are real. Neither is insurmountable.

4/6 A dedicated walking and cycling bridge would:
✦ Take cars out of the Holland Tunnel
✦ Take bodies off overcrowded PATH trains
✦ Take diesel ferries off the water
✦ Knit together two waterfronts that dead-end at the river

3/6 The Hudson River Greenway is one of the most-used recreational paths in the country. The Jersey City waterfront has been transformed over two decades into exactly the kind of corridor a direct pedestrian connection would activate further.

2/6 400,000+ people cross the Hudson between New Jersey and Manhattan every day — by PATH, by ferry, through tunnels built a century ago.
What they cannot do is walk.
Exchange Place to the tip of Manhattan is under a mile.

No cars. No trucks. No tolls. Just a walking and cycling crossing over less than a mile of water.
The Hudson pedestrian bridge case: a thread. 🧵 1/6

Because people are stupid and Fox News lies

Marge tells Piers Trump tried to cover up the Epstein files, even the government shutdown was part of it — and when Trump called her a “traitor” and her son got death threats Trump had no compassion for her and told her it would be her fault if her son got killed. 😳

would choreographed be more accurate?

@rokhanna.bsky.social You are wrong on this.
It sounds intuitive: keep gas at home, increase supply, lower prices. But U.S. fuel prices are tied to global oil markets, you can’t wall them off from shocks. Worse, refiners won’t just redirect supply, they’ll cut output. That risks higher prices.

The Special Relationship That Isn't, And Never Was “I love that word ‘relationship.’ Covers all manner of sins, doesn’t it?” — Hugh Grant as Prime Minister in Love Actually (2003)

The Special Relationship isn't special. It never was. New piece on Love Actually, Keir Starmer, and the story Britain has been telling itself since Suez. #geopolitics #UKForeignPolicy #KeirStarmer

Hillary Clinton: "I think our allies believe we've lost our minds because they wake up in the morning like we do and see the rants from the president making no sense half the time"

Well when was the last time he went to church

Yup

Also camels rich men and eyes of needles springs to mind

Apparently it's 39% of voters! Can we just disqualify them on the grounds of stupidity

Cancel the fucking visit for the Love of God

Evil or just that fucking dumb

USCCB President: “I am disheartened that the President chose to write such disparaging words about the Holy Father. Pope Leo is not his rival; nor is the Pope a politician. He is the Vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel and for the care of souls.”