Dom Pedro Ricardo 🌳 Dom Pedro II Aeternum 🇧🇷 📐 💮

Power Rangers stands at the fountainhead of the whole Asian martial arts genre that is now so popular.

What a great show.

Also hard to overstate the impact of Thuy Trang.

A Vietnamese refugee, one of the first Vietnamese people to make it big in mainstream US television.

Gave massive representation to Vietnamese and, more widely, Asian Americans.

As the Yellow Ranger she represented peace in the show.

It is hard to overstate the influence of Power Rangers.

Hugely impacted pop culture and shaped global culture in the 90’s.

Martial arts, a diverse cast, Asian philosophy, fitness etc.

The show led to a massive surge in Karate, really the driving force behind the spread of Karate in the West.

Donald Trump chose to go to war with Iran.

No clear goals. No exit strategy. No authorization from Congress. No support from the American people.

We are far too deep into the Parliament. Too many unforced errors, massive collapse in popularity.

Will be total defeat in May, Labour will then either rip itself apart over direction or grasp on to the mast of a sinking ship in the hopes it will miraculously resurface.

Both are dead ends.

Compromises only work if they actually make sense. If your fundamental strategy mitigates against the compromise working - then it doesn't make sense.

Predicting the future isn't a science, but it is something we all must do, using reason and the evidence we have.

Obvious Labour can't recover.

Thuy Trang.

The original Yellow Power Ranger.

She died at the tender age of 27 in a car crash.

She brought so many happiness.

God rest her soul.

Who said anything about there being a more able PM? Wilson, in foreign policy terms at least, was pretty damn good. But that doesn't mean serious mistakes were not made.

As for Starmer today, huge litany of unforced colossal misjudgements. Can anyone in Labour do better? No. Labour can't recover.

Geopolitical turmoil in the Middle East once again shows that reliance on volatile oil and gas exposes economies to price shocks.

Renewables, electrification and storage offer more stable long term energy costs and stronger energy security.

Look, keeping us out of Vietnam was a truly great move. No one can deny that. One of the best foreign policy moves from a British PM ever.

Wilson made the mistake that many British PM's made -imagining that cosying up to the Americans would actually get us something.

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Of course.

Any supposed "defensive" strike against a target in Iran from a British asset is - from an Iranian perspective - equivalent to entry into the war on the US side.

He was canny, for sure. Sometimes one can be too canny for one’s own good.

Kept us out of Vietnam, great for that. But his strategy had great contradictions. You can’t keep the Americans on board if you need to withdraw from the East.

No point trying to placate them. That was Wilson’s mistake.

Indeed, as well as clandestine (and sometimes not so clandestine) advice.

Harold was trying to walk a line that ultimately failed as the Americans turned on him anyway.

He was right to stay out of direct intervention in the war, but wrong to provide these other kinds of support.

Over 1000 civilians dead, and we're letting Trump use UK bases to further his war.

Britain should stand firm against Trump's illegal warmongering, and stop these bombers landing on UK soil.

8/8) LeMay believed that if you kill "lots of them" they surrender.

Vietnamese combat deaths vs American combat deaths were on a 15:1 ratio. Yet Vietnam still won.

Kill counts have virtually no relationship to strategic gains and losses in war.

Iran will take mass deaths, yet survive.

7/8) Trump will, at some point, walk away declaring victory - though it will be nothing of the sort.

The Iranian regime will remain in place and will regain control. In its triumph it will then rebuild its capacities and be ready for continued war - direct or indirect - with Israel.

6/8) They have learned, like the Vietnamese, how to inflict tremendous damage using much cheaper weapons.

Like the Vietnamese they also have a far higher pain threshold than America and Israel.

Like the Vietnamese, they have a revolutionary ideology that drives resistance.

Trump won't win.

5/8) Iran has extensively studied America's Vietnam experience, and ever since the Iran-Iraq war have recreated all the elements of Vietnamese strategy.

They have gone underground in a vast network of tunnels. They are dug into a natural fortress from which they cannot be dislodged.

4/8) This outcome was obvious in Vietnam, LeMay's entire premise that Japan surrendered due to an aerial bombardment campaign was false. He was trying to repeat a strategy which had never actually happened.

In the bombardment of Iran today we see the Ghost of LeMay.

3/8) Curtis LeMay would then go on to be the key advocate of forcing North Vietnam to surrender through a massive aerial bombardment campaign.

More ordnance was then dropped on Indochina then used by all sides during WW2.

North Vietnam did not surrender, and went on to win.

2/8) Japan surrendered because the Soviet Union declared war, breaking their entire strategy. The Red Army then killed and captured more than a million Japanese soldiers in Manchuria and was on the brink of a direct invasion.

Japan faced partition, that is what brought about the surrender.

1/8) Trump and his advisors have been reading too much about WW2 and Curtis LeMay.

Japan is the only example, ever, of a country that surrendered unconditionally to an aerial bombardment campaign.

Except, when you look into it, that's not why Japan surrendered. That is the LeMay/US narrative.

Well, gas is expensive, and food is expensive, and we’re doing a war nobody wants, but at least there are no jobs

Chart of the Week: Europe’s extra energy tax A weaker euro deepens the pain from higher oil prices

Chart of the Week: Europe’s extra energy tax ft.trib.al/fHI9iai | opinion

SPYRAL - Miami Killa (slowed + reverb) YouTube video by TheGoldenYami

Mood.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oyZ...

Looks like I clean up pretty nice, huh? (Photo by Ralph Dominguez/MediaPunch via Getty Images)

Reform gains second big donation from Thailand-based crypto investor Populist party received £3mn from Christopher Harborne in November last year, on top of £9mn in August

This outlines how broken our democracy is.
One man who resides overseas donated £12m to Reform last year.
That's more money than Labour got through donations in the entire year and about 34 times more than the Greens got.
Our democracy is being sold to the super-rich.
www.ft.com/content/73ef...

Trump has given Iran a massive PR boost.

He has turned brutal and tyrannical Iranian forces into anti-imperial / anti-colonial revolutionary heroes.

In the eyes of much of the third world and non-aligned world, that is how they will see this.

We have no interests in aligning with the USA.

Expeditionary warfare, especially when we are talking about democratic against authoritarian regimes, almost always results in defeat for the democratic regime.

We are not ruled by men of peace, and that is a great travesty.

Really sad.

God help us all, and god help all those suffering in war and chaos.