Content Tagged “politics”

• Trump Unveils New Air Force One with New Colour Scheme

  President Donald Trump on Friday showed off the new Air Force One, a formerly Qatari-owned jumbo jet that has been converted into the official U.S. presidential aircraft. The new aircraft eschews the Kennedy-era robin’s egg blue exterior of the old plane for a bolder look, with the underbelly of the plane painted navy blue with a red stripe above it. The plane’s left side, where the president boards, features the presidential seal, while the tail of the aircraft has a massive American flag on it.

  “This plane was transformed into a flying White House at a level of luxury that nobody has ever seen before,” Trump said from inside the massive Joint Base Andrews hangar, as a couple hundred assembled Air Force personnel looked on.

  → Trump shows off new Air Force One, a gift from Qatar, and admits “a normal president wouldn’t do this”, Fortune, 20 June 2026

  The new livery (Photo: U.S. Air Force)

  This aircraft, registration N7478D, is now the third Boeing VC-25 in service — the other two being registered as 28000 and 29000. When the President is on board one of these aircraft, it receives the call sign “Air Force One”.

  Here’s the original VC-25, registration 28000, as Air Force One with President Obama aboard, on final approach to Langenhagen Airport (EDDV) on 24 April 2016 (I got up early on Sunday morning and grabbed this shot from my balcony when Obama arrived for his TTIP trade visit to Hannover):

  

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• US / Iran Peace Negotiations Are Progressing

  Some good news for a change:

  The U.S. and Iran made progress during talks in Switzerland on Monday toward reaching a final deal within 60 days, including the agreement to establish a committee and a mechanism to end hostilities in Lebanon.

  “The Lake Lucerne Summit was conducted in a positive and constructive atmosphere. Encouraging progress has been made, including the creation of a mechanism for further technical talks,” according to a joint statement by mediating parties Qatar and Pakistan.

  Building on a memorandum of understanding signed last week, the parties agreed to establish a “High Level Committee” that will provide political oversight of the mediation. Chief negotiators will report regularly to the committee and lead working groups on nuclear, sanctions, and dispute resolution, according to the joint statement.

  The parties also agreed to establish a “de-confliction” cell between the U.S., Iran and Lebanon, facilitated by the mediating countries, to ensure full termination of military hostilities in Lebanon.

  → U.S., Iran agree on roadmap for final deal and plan to end military operations in Lebanon, CNBC

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• Palantir and the US Strike on the Iranian Girls School

  This is the best analysis I’ve seen of the US military strike that killed over a hundred young girls in a school in southern Iran.

  By the time the war began, “AI safety” and “alignment” and “hallucination” and “stochastic parrots” had become the terms of every argument about artificial intelligence, structuring and limiting what we could even say. Worse, “artificial intelligence” itself had come to be synonymous with LLMs. When the school was bombed, those were the terms people reached for, despite the fact that this critical apparatus offered a poor fit for the older, more mature stack of technologies involved in targeting. The real question, the question almost nobody was asking, is not about Claude or any language model. It is a bureaucratic question about what happened to the kill chain, and the answer is Palantir.

  → The Guardian: AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying

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• Bret Weinstein & Tucker Carlson on Iran

  We’ve all been told a lot of things about both Bret Weinstein and Tucker Carlson. And while I don’t agree with either of these two on a lot of topics, they are both formidable thinkers and very good speakers. I challenge you to file away your preconceived notions — that you probably got from media commentators — for two hours and just listen to this conversation. I found it very engaging and also educational:

  → Unholy War: A Conversation with Tucker Carlson on DarkHorse

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• Walter Kirn on The Brownstone Show

  Man, Walter Kirn is great. He's funny and irreverent and just a great thinker. This is well worth the time:

  → Brownstone Institute: The Brownstone Show - Episode 6 - Walter Kirn

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• Fresh Hell 3: Vote Hell California

  Today I learned: You can legally vote after the actual election in some US states.

  Any vote by mail ballot cast under this division shall be timely cast if it is received by the voter’s elections official via the United States Postal Service or a bona fide private mail delivery company no later than seven days after election day and either of the following is satisfied:

  If the ballot has no postmark, a postmark with no date, or an illegible postmark, and no other information is available from the United States Postal Service or the bona fide private mail delivery company to indicate the date on which the ballot was mailed, the vote by mail ballot identification envelope is date stamped by the elections official upon receipt of the vote by mail ballot from the United States Postal Service or a bona fide private mail delivery company, and is signed and dated pursuant to Section 3011 on or before election day.

  → California Legislative Information: California Elections Code 3020

  

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• Fresh Hell 2: Operation Schneefluch

  What would German troops even do in Greenland? And why do people suddenly care about it anyway?

  → The New York Times: A Few Dozen European Troops in Greenland Triggered Trump

  

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• Details on the Maduro Raid

  Details on the Maduro Raid:

  → Reuters: Mock house, CIA source and Special Forces: The US operation to capture Maduro

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• Trump Captures Maduro

  Woah. Not much details there yet, but … woah. 😲

  → CNBC: Trump says U.S. operation captured Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro

  U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday the United States conducted a large-scale strike in Venezuela that resulted in the capture and removal of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Maduro and his wife were captured and removed from the country following the operation, which was conducted in coordination with U.S. law enforcement authorities, Trump said in a statement on Truth Social. No further details were provided.

  CBS News reported that the U.S. Army’s elite Delta Force unit was involved in the capture of Maduro.

  There was no immediate confirmation from the Venezuelan government. However, Maduro’s official Facebook page posted a video stating that attacks occurred in the states of Miranda, Aragua and La Guaira, according to a translation of the Spanish-language statement. The statement in the video added that the U.S. would not succeed in its goal of possessing Venezuela’s oil and minerals, and that Maduro had declared a national emergency and mobilized defense forces.

  Explosions were reported in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, at about 2 a.m. local time (0600 GMT), according to images circulating on social media that could not be independently verified.

  → CBS News: U.S. launches military strikes on Venezuela, Trump says Maduro captured and flown out of the country

  Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was captured early Saturday morning by members of Delta Force, the U.S. military’s top special mission unit, U.S. officials told CBS News. The elite Army Delta Force was also responsible for the 2019 mission that killed former Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

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• UN Approves Budget Cuts for 2026

  Bloomberg: UN Approves Sharp Cuts in 2026 Budget Amid Financial Turmoil

  The United Nations has approved a 7% reduction in its budget from last year as the organization grapples with a financial crisis driven largely by the refusal of the US to pay what it owes. The UN General Assembly on Tuesday voted to adopt an operating budget of $3.45 billion Tuesday for 2026, down from $3.72 billion this year, to fund administrative and operational activities.

  The reduction, which includes cutting 2,900 positions, comes as the UN tries to cut costs wherever it can. Earlier this month, the organization announced that it would no longer provide paper towels at the restrooms in its global headquarters in New York.

  Now, here’s me thinking less bureaucracy would be a good thing. But I guess that’s just naïve of me. I also don’t get these maths, though:

  Guterres, who has been working on a financial survival plan for the UN for months, suggested cutting the budget by $577 million and slashing 18% of jobs. He cited arrears from past years — most of which is owed by US — for the drastic measures.

  The US usually contributes 22% of the UN’s regular budget, but the Trump administration has not paid the $826 million bill for 2025 and it still owes some $660 million in arrears. On Monday, the US pledged $2 billion to the organization’s humanitarian arm.

  So, the US owes them about $1.4 billion and will pay $2 billion? Sounds to me like they should increase the budget, since they are getting more than half a billion more now? Unless they are anticipating more cuts from the US for 2026. But why is this not mentioned in the story then? This is probably why I didn’t study economics. I don’t understand this shit …

  Unless the whole point of the story is just TRUMP BAD!!! as always.

  President Donald Trump has accused the the UN of wasting taxpayer dollars, and US officials in his second term have embarked on an effort to bring the organization “back to basics.”

  “It’s time for the UN to get back to basics: stopping wars and preventing conflict, NOT funding bloated bureaucracy on the American taxpayer’s dime.”

  I actually think that would be quite reasonable. But as I’ve already said: What do I know?

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• Algo Prison Blues

  Just revisiting this old gem from No Agenda. Still cracks me up.

  🎵 No Agenda: Algo Prison Blues

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• Where Have All the Rebels Gone?

  I’ve recently stopped listening to a lot of the music I’ve previously enjoyed. I don’t feel it’s currently the right time for Bruce Springsteen to sing about the travails of the working class or for metal bands to innocently explain some historic battle to me. Instead, I’ve been listening a lot to Merle Haggard, Billy Joe Shaver, Bob Dylan and Van Morrison. What do all of these artists have in common? They are almost incessantly pissed off. Which I feel fits the situation we’ve been in for the last year quite well.

  Van Morrison has become a particular favourite. The man’s always been weird and abrasive – as anyone who’s ever been to one of his concerts knows. Hell, he once wrote a complete album of unreleasable music because his record company fucked him over. And Van Morrison, of all people, is the only established musician I can find, who’s actually speaking out against the things going wrong right now. Van Morrison, of all people, the small, quiet blues man, is suddenly the most punk of the group.

  On his latest album with the quirky meta name Latest Record Project – Volume 1, there’s as song called Where Have All the Rebels Gone? And in that song, Van puts to music exactly what I have been asking myself for over a year now:

  Where have all the rebels gone?
  Hiding behind computer screens
  Where’s the spirit, where’s the soul?
  Where have all the rebels gone?

  Why don’t they come out of the woodwork now?
  One for the money, two for the show
  It’s not very rock and roll
  Where have all the rebels gone?

  Where have all the rebels gone?
  Waiting for someone else to make a move
  Why are they sitting on the fence?
  Well, it’s some kind of pretence
  They’re not saying much at all
  Where have all the rebels gone?

  Where they really all that tough?
  Or was it just a PR stunt?

  → Van Morrison: Latest Record Project – Volume 1

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