Eelco van der Maat

You know how American intelligence was pretty excited to do to the USSR in Afghanistan what Soviet intelligence did to the US in Vietnam?

These are all answers given by trump and his various sycophants in the last five days to the question, "why are we doing this?"

So, in launching a huge bombing campaign on Iran they apparently didn't plan for:

- Who takes over;
- Interceptor shortages from sustained drone retaliation;
- How to defend US bases in the region;
- Threats to ships in the Strait of Hormuz; and
- How to evacuate Americans with airspace closed.

When we talk about Baby Boomers not getting off the stage: In 1997, the US president was born in 1946.

In 2007, the US president was born in 1946.

In 2017, the US president was born in 1946.

And next year in 2027? The US president will have been born in 1946.

How are those security guarantees looking to, well, everyone?

There are at least 10,000 Amcits in Qatar alone, and the US government is saying we are on our own

I have never seen a politician more directly copy this speech in my life

I think the last time the USA created regime change solely through bombing was in Cambodia, when a massive carpet bombing campaign so destabilized the country that the Khmer Rouge came to power and wiped out the Royal government—the American ally. Genocide followed.

How to stop a dictator I spent months studying how authoritarians like Trump lose. The answer is shockingly simple.

I have spent the past several months studying the cutting-edge research on modern democracies that have defeated authoritarian leaders.

I've learned that the conventional wisdom on the topic is wrong — in ways that have clear implications for the US going forward

THREAD www.vox.com/politics/479...

This is the most incredible footage of blue whales I’ve ever seen

Opinion | Trump Is Raising Billions in Federal Funds. That’s Not a Good Thing.

This is a really good piece by Aziz Huq and @vanessawilliamson.bsky.social. I've been highlighting similar themes in my recent power-of-the-purse scholarship. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/o...

Quite the chart

allllll together now:

BAN THE PERVERT GLASSES

Page 1 of a child’s handwritten letter, written in pencil in Spanish. Colorful doodles of a rainbow and hearts are found throughout the page. Translation: “I am Maria Antonia Guerra Montoya and I have been 113 days in detention I miss my friends and I feel they are going to forget me. I am bored here. I already miss my country and my house, I came on vacation for 10 Days and they took me into an ice office an officer interrogated me 2 hours without my mom, I was traveling with flight attendant because my mom lives in new york, they only wanted to arrest my mom, because my mom didn’t have documents to live in U.S.A., I always traveled with my tourist visa but ice used me to catch my mom and now I am in a jail and I am sad and I have fainted 2 times here inside. When I arrived every night I cried and now I don’t sleep well, I felt that being here was my fault and I only wanted to be on vacation like a normal family.”

Page 2 of a child’s handwritten letter, written in pencil in Spanish. Translation: “They don’t give me my diet I am vegetarian, I don’t eat well, there is no good education and I miss my best friend julieta and my grandmother and my school I already want to get to my house. Me in dilei [Dilley] am not happy please get me out of here to colombia.” Below the text is a drawing of the girl and her mother in the government-issued gray sweatsuits of the detention center.

6/ “When I arrived every night I cried and now I don’t sleep well, I felt that being here was my fault and I only wanted to be on vacation like a normal family.”

9-year-old Maria Antonia Guerra Montoya, detained on her way to Disney World, spent 113+ days at Dilley.

these people have a moral rot

Fund independent media www.liberalcurrents.com/support-us/

Journalisten moeten zorgvuldig zijn in hun taalgebruik en zaken omschrijven zoals ze zijn. Het zijn geen “strengere” asielwetten, ook wl zeggen politici dat. Ze doen niets met de criteria voor asiel. Ze maken verblijf en opvang van mensen erbarmelijker, terwijl die vaak genoeg al erbarmelijk zijn

something the research on genocide, ethnic cleansing, & communal violence shows us is that the processes tend to stop where local officials & local people refuse to participate in them. there may be obstacles to refusal—being threatened, being overpowered—but violence isn’t inevitable once it starts

when we say complex processes of repression & violence are highly contingent & dynamic, we mean they depend on active choices people make—nothing is inevitable.

we know from lots of research that people can interrupt violent processes by making choices that reflect their values. this is an example.

I think it is OUTRAGEOUS that people are LEAPING to the conclusion that some our post prominent Americans are child rapists when it is EQUALLY PLAUSIBLE that they are simply indifferent to whether other people are child rapists so long as those other people can offer them access to power.

holy shit, Xi purged Zhang Youxia. that's pretty much a clean sweep of PLA senior leadership at this point.

Imagine what’s happening in the camps.

Videos From Minnesota Show How Aggressive ICE Has Gotten During Arrests and Encounters With Protesters (Gift Article) For weeks, residents have documented the impact of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign and captured many violent confrontations on camera.

The NYT has collected a number of videos shot by regular people and put them together in a solid narrative.

Gift article link:

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Our initial analysis is up.

The video footage appears to show that the gun was taken away from the man before he was shot.

He was UNARMED before any of the shots were fired.

"in most cases, these videos appear to have been filmed secretly - using Meta smart glasses."

Argh for the love of god BAN. THE. PERVERT GLASSES.

I got very choked up in class today showing my students what James Baldwin had to say about Shakespeare:

“the greatest poet in the English language found his poetry where poetry is found: in the lives of the people. he could have done this only through love…”

Trump’s Year of Anarchy The unconstrained presidency and the end of American primacy.

One year in, it's Hobbes all the way down. Me & @dandrezner.bsky.social in @foreignaffairs.com.

www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

Peace for our Times.

At least our ignorance makes up for our lack of courage.

Trump posts an image depicting Canada and Greenland as part of the United States