Easy mistake to make, but still unfortunate, in today's @elpais.com newsletter. "The decision of Pedro Sánchez to not allow the use of American bases in the US and Israel's war in Iraq..."
Sánchez is explicitly trying to recover some of the fire of 2003 and the campaign against that war, but...
Updating: nope, my friend, like @bcdreyer.social, had never heard of this before his name was used in an “Expert Review” by Grammarly.
I have just tried this and it suggested Expert Review by another friend I am fairly sure did not give his permission. (I will update here.) Barf.
Unbelievable. Please copy us all on your lawsuit...
I'm sure I'm not the first to notice this, but I don't think I've seen anyone put the question to them.
Just realised an obvious tension in Trump and Hegseth's arguments. A four-week, easy air-only war with few American and allied casualties will rather undercut the argument that Iran was imminently becoming an unstoppable regional colossus.
It might really have been an interesting case. Like: "I'm not going to commit ground troops, or stay. But when an adversary annoys me long enough I'm going to use our vast military to kick its leadership in the teeth, then leave. It's cheaper and faster, and the next guy will think twice."
Ted Cruz to Dana Bash: "He did not say there would be no more wars. He said there would be no more *forever* wars."
Would have been interesting if Trump had run on short little fun feel-good wars. But that is not what he did.
www.vanityfair.com/news/story/d...
“The man who kept Iranians isolated from the world for more than three decades, who ruined their economy and who, when they dared speak out against his misrule, ordered them slaughtered by the thousands, is gone.”
economist.com/obituary/202...
I had missed your "easter egg" post. Here's a picture of The The to make up for it.
not THE hoi polloi smh. (kidding. I'll see myself out. But as someone who did a bit of Greek I can't make myself write "the hoi polloi" and can't make myself write "hoi polloi". So, just like beg the question, I just don't use it ever.)
Any idea how many of those reports were in paywalled sources (and were unique reporting)?
This was a nice reflection, and I'm looking forward to the book version.
Not for the first time, I realized he has absolutely no sense of speaking to the historical record. (Churchill of course actually wrote histories as well as making it.)
I wrote last June about the difference between preventive and preemptive strikes
Their entire point was to show the power of the truth over propaganda. Not to be counter-propaganda…
Yep. Like lonelyhearts being pig-butchered...
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/b...
When I get a spam call I like to hit the hang-up button extra hard, to show them how mad I am.
Thanks! Awesome stuff.
Gotcha, so it's written with ש and no ל in Hebrew?
What is the balsamic story?
The war is now longer than America's part in WW2, and has cost Russia about as many lives.
All while MAGA politicians have swaggered around belittling Ukraine's efforts, and its chances.
www.economist.com/graphic-deta...
"As a strategy for managing allies, the message 'You’re on your own, suckers, but do as America tells you', has a number of flaws."
Lovely lead from our geopolitics column, The Telegram.
www.economist.com/internationa...
Danish PM on Facebook this morning:
“I am happy to live in a country where there is free and equal access to healthcare for everyone. Where insurance and wealth do not determine whether you receive proper treatment. The same approach exists in Greenland. Happy Sunday to you all”
This is not a free-enterprise party. This is a big-business-buddies party. Not the same thing, at all.
www.ft.com/content/1658...
A retired British primary school administrator with a British passport and a valid visa was shackled, chained and detained for six weeks by ICE
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
I haven’t read the other statutes. But if they give the admin the power to do a thing, we have to lump it until we change it. That’s democracy. At least that would be the rule of (a bad) law.
Have already seen several versions of this, as if tariffs don’t hit workers.
So much of the news has felt unreal—a nightmare, a bad trip or you name it—that it is bracing to see the decision restore some semblance of reality.
Presidents can’t do this. Congress has powers. Words have meanings.
This is an excellent analysis by Sophie of a great European conundrum. French leaders, from De Gaulle, through Chirac to Macron, have been prescient about the need for greater European independence from the US. They are getting grudging, belated credit from other Europeans. BUT…1/
