The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there. – L.P. Hartley, The Go-Betweens.
Accurate. And sometimes a foreign country wants to be the past. Somewhere between a faded photo of Benito Mussolini’s inverted corpse and an ill-received performance by the Stormtroopers of Death at the Teatro alla Scala lies this inexplicable decision to return Italy to its nationalistic roots.
Recently, Patrik Baab had the occasion to speak with award-winning investigative journalist and writer, Seymour Hersh. We are so very pleased to bring you this interview. [The views expressed remain those of Mr. Hersh and do not necessarily reflect those of the Postil].
But Haylujan isn’t the only E-girl using Sanrio sex appeal to lure the internet’s SIMPs into the armed forces. There’s Bailey Crespo and Kayla Salinas, not to mention countless #miltok gunfluencers cropping up online. While she didn’t document her military career, influencer Bella Poarch also served in the US Navy for four years before going viral on TikTok in 2020, and is arguably the blueprint for this kind of kawaii commodified fetishism in the military. An adjacent figure, Natalia Fadeev, also known as Gun Waifu, is an Israeli influencer and IDF soldier who uses waifu aesthetics and catgirl cosplay to pedal pro-Israel propaganda to her 756k followers. She poses to camera, ahegao-style, with freshly manicured nails wrapped neatly around a glock, the uWu-ification of military functioning as a cutesy distraction from the shadowy colonial context: “when they try and destroy your nation,” she writes in one caption.
Despite the UN’s apparent disinterest in pursuing a broader inquiry, Russia claimed this week that it would continue to pursue an international effort. “We will do everything in our power to continue to insist and to initiate such an international investigation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters during a conference call.
Ellen Min doesn’t go to the grocery store anymore. She avoids bars and going out to eat with her friends; festivals and community events are out, too. This year, she opted not to take her kids to the local St. Patrick’s Day parade.
There are two Volodymyr Zelenskys: the one we have known since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, who has since been celebrated every day in the Western media as a hero with a spotless white (or green) vest; the other, who was less well-known prior to this significant escalation of the war, which, according to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, began in 2014. (Here are details on the actual start of this war in 2014).
On Friday, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, for alleged war crimes.
“THERE IS NO WAY he is a victim of communism,” my partner quips, pointing to a photo of the late Pope John Paul II. We are near the end of our visit to the new Victims of Communism Museum, standing in an elevator-size lobby with photographs of “victims” screen-printed all over the walls. Among the many victims and honorees: Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, the Dalai Lama, Romanian writer Herta Müller, Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong, and Hungarian neofascist Viktor Orbán.
Wow, Trump's former National Security Advisor says the US would destroy Taiwan's chip factories before letting them fall into China's hands https://t.co/kuFaW7ttGR
Still, I was caught off guard by O’Brien’s candor. It occurred to me at that moment that this national security advisor, cleared at the highest level of state secrets, probably knew whether there is some sort of “end TSMC” action plan should the U.S. and allies not stop China from taking control of Taiwan. O’Brien didn’t explicitly say there was such a plan, but when I asked if Taiwan’s chip production facilities would really be “gone,” he said “I can’t imagine they’d be intact.”
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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