Trump doing all he can to ensure US troops will never have local support in any future ground war

On a related note, when the Democrats take power again and proclaim that the US is once again supporting international institutions and the rule of law, I’m looking forward to hearing them justify their opposition to the International Criminal Court

Just one example, but the way the entire Trump family has become billionaires, admin officials play prediction markets, and domestic and foreign grifter openly bribe Trump cronies would be dominating headlines daily in virtually any other country bsky.app/profile/judd...

If there’s any lesson from Magyar’s overwhelming win over an entrenched 16 year kleptocracy, it’s that anger over corruption can mobilize a lot of voters across the ideological spectrum. Apart from Epstein, corruption is little discussed in the US even when it’s in your face.

Honest question: do most authoritarian countries do this?

Progressives complain about the disproportionate impact that the Florida Cuban community has on US foreign policy but they are missing the lesson that concentrated single issue voting is very effective. That’s why I propose that every single union member in the US move to Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile 61% of Americans oppose military intervention in Cuba, and as many support diplomatic relations. It’s almost as if having US foreign policy cater to a single demographic in the 44th largest city in the country isn’t likely to serve the national interest. yougov.com/en-us/articl...

Being an American stranded in Europe due to an airline strike

If you are president of either Peru or South Korea, there’s a 100% chance that you will either go to jail, or off yourself first

Leftist Sanchez in line for Peru runoff as vote count goes down to the wire Leftist Peruvian congressman Roberto Sanchez shifted into second place in a presidential vote tally heading ‌down to the wire on Wednesday, rattling financial markets at the prospect of him facing Kei...

I’m refusing to remember his name if he wins unless he manages to remain in office longer than 3 months

Brazil’s Lula, 80, livestreams workouts before election against rival half his age President contrasts his health with challenger Flávio Bolsonaro, who fainted during a TV debate

Honestly it could work for him, but only if he gets some sick tribal tats too

Klein has blocked me on here, but kudos to him for having on two US-based political scientists to tell him something academics in the Middle East have been saying for decades. As Klein is another decade behind the times, it must have been revelatory for him.

One of the textbook features of present-day competitive authoritarian regimes that distinguish them from totalitarian regimes is that they are good at managing the procedural aspects of democracies, like elections, so as to fool people who have only a superficial understanding of pluralism.

Applying total systemic friction on the cartels. On April 11, at the direction of #SOUTHCOM commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted two lethal kinetic strikes on two vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations. Intelligence confirmed the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco-trafficking operations. Two male narco-terrorists were killed, and one narco-terrorist survived the first strike. Three male narco-terrorists were killed during the second strike. Following the engagements, USSOUTHCOM immediately notified U.S. Coast Guard to activate the Search and Rescue system for the survivor. No U.S. military forces were harmed. @DeptofWar #OpSouthernSpear

Meanwhile, the lawless killing spree at sea continues.

This is a notable change, but don’t overstate the degree to which public opinion drives foreign policy. A clear majority of Americans have opposed the US embargo on Cuba since at least 2015, yet it remains in place

How long before we find out that one faction is funded by the Pentagon and the other by the CIA?

Clearly this is because the world is getting safer and there is no more persecution anywhere

Sanctions have diminishing marginal impacts because the more countries you sanction, the more countries there are that are cooperating on evading your sanctions or simply trading among themselves

The ceasefire isn’t a permanent resolution, and fits with what I see as Trump’s adoption of Israel’s “mowing the grass” strategy: periodic unprovoked bombardments with no clear or achievable objectives, other than the ability to turn a war on and off to suit domestic political purposes.

The first president to apply “don’t touch that dial!” to war crimes

For such a stodgy publication they can be so unserious

Does anyone besides The Economist think this is a problem?

Bukele: del terror de las pandillas al terror del Estado El 36% de los capturados durante el estado de excepción no figuraban como pandilleros, según datos oficiales

Bukele’s own government figures show more than one-third of all people arrested under El Salvador’s State of Exception are not gang members. Other independent analysts have estimated the proportion of false arrests to be as high as 70%.

Maybe Venezuela’s chavistas’ total capitulation to Trump was part of a long game coordinated with their allies in Iran to lull him into a sense of overconfidence that would result in a costly military overextension and ultimately the downfall of US global hegemony

All the best parts of Christianity are paganism

CIA officers have gone to jail for revealing secrets less sensitive than this

Cuba’s periodic prisoner releases are ambiguous because the government denies it has any political prisoners, and those dissidents they arrest are usually for crimes of “public disorder.” So the government can claim it’s a humanitarian gesture while maintaining right to arbitrary detention.

The bar is going to be so low for whoever is the next president

Texas Republican congressman Pete Sessions lobbied on behalf of the Maduro government of Venezuela, wrote him a nice letter, and tried to broker a meeting for Delcy Rodriguez with Exxon’s CEO, per AP: apnews.com/article/vene...

Exclusive: Venezuela's Rodriguez readies Citgo board takeover, sources say Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodriguez's administration is getting ready to take over the boards of state oil firm PDVSA's U.S. subsidiaries, including Citgo Petroleum, four sources close ‌to th...

Congrats to the Trump admin for accomplishing what Maduro could not: giving control over a major source of oil revenue back to the chavista government and screwing the opposition in the process