💙 Frank van Avezaath 🐦 🏴‍☠️

Er was eens .... 😎🥸`.... m die grote bril

Who is paying the costs for NATO? Right: Europe is. Not the US. #WeAreNATO

“War is raging and the galaxy is in chaos. Where is Vader?” “He’s on social media slagging off Bruce Springsteen, sir.”

WATCH: The White House took down this video, but we still have it. Trump: We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country. We're fighting wars. It's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these things.

July 1987, Moscow, USSR — Trump, 41 years old, flies to Moscow at the invitation of Soviet Ambassador to the U.S., Yuri Dubinin. Upon returning from Moscow, the bankrupt Trump suddenly receives loans from 16 banks and, without negotiation. 1/n

Getting really bored of MAGA ranting about "freeloading" Europeans. The US does not spend a trillion dollars "on NATO." It spends it on a vast global military empire, with a mere 3.6% going toward their bases in Europe. Meanwhile us "freeloading" Europeans spend $454 billion on our own defence. The "freeloading" story is and always has been a lie to keep Americans angry and Europeans compliant.

JUST IN: You do not fire your Army Chief of Staff in the middle of a war for no reason. You fire him because of what comes next. Pete Hegseth called General Randy George on April 2 and told him to retire immediately. The Pentagon confirmed it within hours. No reason was given. Not publicly. Not privately. A senior Army official told Fox News that Hegseth offered George nothing: no misconduct, no operational failure, no policy disagreement on the record. Just a phone call and a career ending in the middle of the most significant American combat operation in two decades. George is the 24th general or admiral Hegseth has removed. But he is not the 24th. He is the one that matters. The Army Chief of Staff. The man whose signature sits between a president’s intent and the order that sends soldiers across a beach or into a tunnel complex. The 82nd Airborne is deploying right now. Marines from the 31st MEU are staged on the USS Tripoli. JSOC operators are at forward bases in Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Kharg Island, 90 percent of Iranian oil exports, sits 16 kilometres off a coast that someone will have to decide whether to approach. And the four-star general whose job it was to advise whether that approach should happen was removed 48 hours after Trump told the nation the war would continue for two to three more weeks. The replacement is Vice Chief General Christopher LaNeve. He was Hegseth’s senior military aide before this appointment. The man who carried the Secretary’s briefcase now commands the Army the Secretary is reshaping. The chain of command did not break. It shortened. The distance between a television studio and a combat order just collapsed to zero intermediaries who were not personally selected by the man giving the order. No reason was given. That is the tell. When someone is removed without explanation during a crisis, the explanation is the crisis itself. George either objected to something or was about to. The ground option. The power plant strikes. The Kharg raid. The escalation that turned a highway bridge in Karaj into rubble on the same day he was told to leave. Something in the next two weeks requires a chief who will not push back, and the Pentagon solved that problem by installing one trained as Hegseth’s aide. A former Fox News weekend host just fired a four-star general with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, replaced him with his own former assistant, and did it during a live war in which the next decision could put American soldiers on Iranian soil for the first time in history. No hearing was held. No misconduct cited. The Army woke up on April 3 with a new chief it did not choose, in a war it did not start, preparing for a phase the previous chief apparently could not be trusted to execute. The question is not why George was fired. Every general in the building knows why. The question is what order is coming in the next fourteen days that required removing the one man in the chain of command who might have said no. The war has no perimeter. The chain of command has no objectors. And the next phase has no one left to stop it. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

Let me explain something to the MAGA crowd, because clearly someone needs to. They seem to think NATO is cosmic room service. You pick up the phone, say “hello, we’re having a bit of a war here,” and thirty-one countries march to your rescue. A continental Uber for military adventures. That is not how it works. Article 5 is a mutual defense clause. The clue is in the word mutual. And it has been triggered exactly once in NATO’s entire history. After September 11. When America was attacked. Not Europe. America. Every NATO member showed up. They went to Afghanistan. They fought. They bled. They died. In America’s war. On America’s behalf. Now imagine they hadn’t. Over 1,100 allied soldiers died in Afghanistan. British, Canadian, German, Danish, Polish. And yes, even Ukrainian soldiers, who had no NATO obligation whatsoever. Gone. Without them, those are American names on those graves. Sons from Ohio. Fathers from Georgia. Kids from Nebraska who never came home. Then there is the money. NATO allies spent over 100 billion dollars on a war that started on American soil. Without that, Washington pays every cent. On top of the 2 to 3 trillion the war already cost. And without allied bases across Europe and Central Asia, American supply lines collapse entirely. Without British forces in Helmand and Canadians in Kandahar, the Taliban reconstitutes in three years instead of ten. The gaps get filled one way. More American deployments. More American coffins arriving at Dover. Afghanistan was bloody. But NATO took the hit. Without them, every single one of those casualties would have had an American name. Trump called allies like these losers. Suckers. If you are a certain kind of broken person, that probably makes sense to you. But for the rest of us, what those soldiers did has a different name. Honor. The bond between men who have been in the same dirt, under the same fire. Between Brits and Americans, Frenchmen and Norwegians, Canadians and Danes. Not a diplomatic relationship. A blood bond. Brotherhood forged in places most people will never see and cannot imagine. In that culture, you do not mock a fallen ally. You do not sneer at the dead. It is the lowest thing a human being can do. Trump did it to a standing ovation. If you are a MAGA supporter travelling to NATO countries, understand this. There are no friendly pats on the back waiting for you. No one will buy you a beer. The governments who share your worldview sit in Minsk, Moscow and Pyongyang. Brutal dictatorships where journalists disappear, elections are theatre and dissent is a medical condition treated in basements. Not London. Not Paris. Not Rome, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin or Ottawa. You have abandoned the open societies, the free press, the rule of law, the places where people actually want to live. You traded the best of civilization for a very small, very dark room. Frankly, it serves you right.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

Wow! A 1000-mile wall of Saharan dust is currently sweeping across northwest Africa 💨

He is the 1st President of the United States in history to sit in the Supreme Court of the United States to watch his Solicitor General, who used to be his criminal defense appeals lawyer, deliver the stupidest Supreme Court argument of the 21st century. He knows he lost.

Dus MAGA is boos op de Paus omdat hij tegen oorlog is? You can’t make this shit up.

Approved.

@redangel2009 Vogel ei

Kun jij je geboortemaand beschrijven zonder de naam te noemen?

🚨 The guy on the left was arrested and convicted for illegally selling missiles to Iran during the Reagan Administration. The guy on the right is a Fox News "military analyst” who thinks Iran shouldn't have missiles. They're the same guy.

@DieTukkerfries Ik mis Taiwan

NAVO opdoeken. Alle Amerikaanse legerbasissen in Europa sluiten Alle Amerikaanse soldaten terug naar land van herkomst. Stoppen met Amerikaanse wapendeals Investeren in eigen wapenindustrie Nieuwe NAVO oprichten zonder de VS Japan, Zuid Korea, Australië, Nieuw Zeeland en Oekraïne lidmaatschap aanbieden Mark Rutte weggeven aan Trump

Omg. It’s brilliant! I‘m dying LMFAO 🤣

Tja .....

You get attacked, NATO comes. You attack someone without asking, you’re on your own. It’s one sentence, Marco. Read it.

Pete Hegseth has never commanded anything larger than a Fox News segment. And it shows. Run out of missiles in three weeks. Banned from European airspace. Allies gone. Strait closed. No plan for day two, three, or four. Spending two billion dollars a day firing Tomahawks that take eight years to replace. Military historians will study this war for generations.

Before the war: 1) Iran didn't control the Strait Of Hormuz, now it does 2) Iran oil was sanctioned, now it's not 3) Iran was not building a nuke, now it will 4) US bases in the Gulf were assets, now liabilities 5) Inflation was declining, now increasing Definitely winning!

The Great Iranian Uranium Grab Right. So here’s the plan. The United States Marines are going to pop over to the Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant and collect the enriched uranium. Quick commando raid. In, out, done. Back for tea. This is not a fringe theory. This is actual strategic thinking currently circulating in serious policy circles. From salaried adults. With security clearances. Probably nice offices. The logic is breathtaking in its simplicity: America knows where the uranium is. Therefore the uranium will still be there. Waiting. Patient as a golden retriever. Because Iran, a country that has spent forty years watching America blunder catastrophically through the Middle East, will have left their single most valuable strategic asset exactly where it was. Unmoved. Unguarded. Helpfully labelled. Fordow is not a warehouse. It is a nuclear enrichment facility buried inside a mountain. The Iranians built it there deliberately, specifically because they did not want it bombed. This was not an architectural quirk. This was the entire point. The mountain is the feature, not the flaw. The mountain does not appear to have featured in the briefing. What we have, then, is a hardened underground facility engineered to survive sustained American bombardment. And the response being workshopped in serious rooms by serious people is a commando raid. I have seen more rigorous planning on a Friday afternoon in a Chipping Norton pub. At least those men had the self-awareness to know they were talking nonsense. These ones appear to believe they are not. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1