Everyone targeted was a member of an internationally recognised terrorist organisation, and there was no reason for non-members to ever have the pagers. There are questions about rules of engagement, but one thing this operation wasn’t technically is terrorism.

Israel will have to remind them of their eternal obligation

In law, every SS member, without exception, was axiomatically classified as a war criminal, with membership being sufficient evidence in itself. Of course, the western allies were not above looking the other way if it potentially meant the difference between victory and defeat in the Cold War, but this was an informal policy imposed from high up.

It is classified as a terrorist organisation by the majority of the international community. By legal definition, all Hezbollah members are terrorists regardless of what they do in the organisation, in the same way that all SS members are war criminals even if they were an office janitor or something, which makes them legitimate targets in a broader way than ordinary combatants who are bound and covered by the laws of war.

I guess he’s not making that comeback after all

I thought they already did that. (Didn’t a number of touring rock stars, including IIRC one of the Beatles, get busted for having it?)

You’re thinking of the Wall Street Journal. The FT is based in London and (IIRC) owned by Nikkei (who run the Tokyo stock exchange)

The 4x10 week sucks compared to the 32-hour version that was originally proposed, but it could be seen as a sensible compromise between “radical left” ideas such as sub-40-hour weeks and the 996 (9am-9pm, 6 days a week) system common in China and India (who, the pundits will say, are eating our lunch because we’re lazy)

Do other tribes recognise someone else in a similar role?

The one weakness of hypersonic missiles is that it’s very hard to make them manoeuvrable. Where a slower missile or drone could be programmed to take evasive action to make it harder to shoot down, a hypersonic missile only has speed. If you can track it fast enough, you have a pretty good idea of where to aim an interceptor to hit it.

I’ll just leave this here…

Soon “lying flat” will end you up in the reeducation camp

That too. To him, the difference between, say, Italians, mixed-race sailors with disturbingly un-Episcopalian cultural practices, mixed-species human-fish hybrids worshipping hideous idols in underwater cities and non-Euclidean gods of madness in the spaces between space was a quantitative rather than qualitative one.

“Never call up that which you cannot put down” — H.P. Lovecraft

Nairobi and Kampala are seen as the same conurbation? That’s like talking about LA and Las Vegas as one metro area.

I don’t know. Maybe they need more cryptocurrency experts and sovcit hedge-lawyers to help with getting around sanctions

Kadyrov’s goons have an image of being fearsome warriors, but their main talent is maintaining this carefully manicured image. Other than killing/torturing defenceless civilians and prisoners, they stay well away from the actual fighting and take selfies looking fierce with their shiny new not-at-all-battleworn equipment, to the point that people refer to them as the Instagram Corps. His glee at receiving this defective mall-ninja cosplay prop that barely copes with paved roads is on brand with this. If they keep it safely away from the front and have squads of conscripts keeping mud and bugs out of its moving parts, they can take turns scowling menacingly behind the machine gun like Immortan Joe’s War Boys, and if they persuade Putin of the propaganda value of the footage, it may save them from going to the front. At least until a Ukrainian drone finds their toy and torches it. If they make the mistake of riding their new steed into battle, they’re effectively dead meat.

You thought the Russian army would protect you? You must be new here.

I’m not from Thailand, though my understanding is that a progressive party won the elections (defeating military-backed incumbents), but was prevented from forming government, and then forcibly dissolved, on the grounds of raising the suggestion of relaxing tough laws against criticising the monarchy. Is this more or less right?

She makes like a lettuce and leaves