De Passage

The biggest lie in football history is that Messi is the good and humble one while Ronaldo is the bad and arrogant one.

I'm a Kurd who opposes a Kurdish state. When I tested my DNA, it came back 50% Anatolian, 30% Levant, 14% Iranian, 6% Spanish, so there's no pure anything in me. The story every nation tells about its unbroken bloodline is fiction. The fact of the matter is that national pride gets argued about like it's a virtue or a vice, when it's neither. It's just a tool. Understand that a country's leader and the global money flowing through their country want different things on different clocks. Capital plays for the return that clears on short horizons, and it leaves the moment the return on investments die. It pulls out of a currency, sells the bonds, moves the supply chain. But a state has no exit. It has to still be standing in 50 years, feed its people, hold its borders, whether the return is there or not. When those two collide, the side with more unity at home keeps more of its own choices. Cohesion is what lets a government say no to money that wants something back. That's the strength. China is the clean example. A clear majority tied to a story about itself that runs back thousands of years, and a state that kept firm hands on payments, energy, data and chips while trading hard with everyone. Foreign money is welcome across most of the economy and shut out of the few sectors that decide whether the country stays independent. The result is the fastest industrial climb in modern history. But that same cohesion is the easiest thing in the world for someone else to pick up and swing. That's the weakness. A proud population signs a blank check for defense the moment you show it an enemy, and backs a war it should never fight if the war is dressed as duty. Ukraine. That's not sovereignty. It's a pipe dream, and what runs through it is public money going out to arms makers and the people who finance them. The US runs on this. Point the national feeling at a boogeyman, keep the boogeyman alive but always two weeks from defeat, and the money never stops. So the exact feeling that lets Beijing say no to foreign capital is the feeling that lets Washington's capital class say yes to itself, again and again, on the public's money. The Kurds are the cleanest case of pride used as a handle, and it's most of why I want no part of it. Kurdish national feeling is real and old, and it's been picked up, armed, and dropped by every larger power that found it useful. The US, Israel, and half the region have backed a Kurdish cause when it served them and walked away the day it didn't. A people with intense pride and no state is the perfect proxy, because the pride does the recruiting for free and the patron owes nothing when the war ends. Every Kurd who wants the state is handing someone that handle. Pride also confuses feeling free with being free. A country can be deep in debt to foreign creditors, dependent on chips it can't make, and still feel completely sovereign, flags out, anthem loud, right up to the morning it needs something and finds the price is a change in its own policy. So how does a country with no cohesion cope? It substitutes. It builds unity out of institutions and a fair-enough deal instead of blood, like the US did for most of its history. Or it rents an identity by anchoring to a bigger bloc and outsourcing its defense, like most of Europe. Or it sells autonomy piece by piece for capital, and a decade later depends on outside money and standards while the flag still flies over a hollow middle. Put both edges together and it's simple. Pride lowers the cost of a government saying no to a bad deal, and it lowers the cost of someone talking that same government into a war. It's leverage for the state that controls its own story and a liability for the state whose story is written by the people who profit from it. China controls its story. America's story is written by the industries that get rich from it. Same tool, opposite owners. The mix isn't the problem either. Mixed societies hold together on institutions all the time, and homogeneous ones get quietly milked by their own elite while everyone salutes the same flag. What matters is whether the pride is owned by the public and aimed at protecting the country, or owned by the capital class and aimed at draining it. Pride isn't the point. Who owns it is.

Saudi Arabia had the chance to build 20 hospitals or at least 3 regional universities in Burkina Faso. Instead, they offered 200 mosques. Mosques are cool but at the moment we prefer projects that create real economic growth and uplift our people, regardless of faith.

She's a mother, billionaire, CEO of several brands, has 14 number-1 hits and still is the artist with the most monthly listeners, more than a decade after ANTI. Yall expect her to step onto her friend's stage and perform as if she still has something to prove, which she don't.

Rihanna knew the cameras would’ve forgotten A$AP Rocky the second she stepped out, so she stayed in the car and had security close the door.

INTRO DO JAYZ É A BEYONCÉ CORTANDO O CABELO DELEEEEE