What are we? A bunch of Asians?
this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2025
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A lot of the news lately has been "US official makes promise, immediately goes back on it." And yet countries all across the globe keep making deals with the US. At some point you gotta admit if you keep making deals with the US you're the fool. There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again. 
purely on political, vindictive reasons
No, it's really true! We always had economic and xenophobic reasons too!
Fair point.
Were soft power and the threat of violence the only reasons any American ever had a shred of credibility?
The one (soft power) is designed to hide incompetence/intent in the other (threats of violence). With soft power accepting the implicit threat of violence as a part of the ecosystem and utilizing it as a backstop against straying “outside the lines”, it’s then able to shape outcomes within its defined realm.
If the threat of violence is identified as non-existent, then there’s nothing to keep things within capitals preferred realm. And soft power is just that, soft, and falls apart when trying to fulfill imperial ambitions without that threat.
Soft power via collaboration building is a bit different, since it’s shaped around a collectively formed goal rather than enforcing that of a single entity. Moreso carrot than stick. The US has been applying so much austerity that they’ve discarded both the carrot and the stick in (imo) the hopes that society is too atomized to notice; but one does catch on when contradictions heighten enough.
Excellently-put.
He's such a clown.
The gathering was relatively informal, but even so, Mr. Patel surprised other attendees when he arrived wearing a trucker hat and a green hooded sweatshirt, the former U.S. official said. Mr. Patel frequently attends official events without wearing a suit, breaking with F.B.I. tradition.
[...]
On a visit to New Zealand in July, he brought plastic 3D-printed replica pistols as gifts to senior national security officials, but they were illegal under local laws and had to be destroyed.
“To ensure compliance with firearms laws, I instructed police to retain and destroy them,” New Zealand’s police commissioner, Richard Chambers, told The Associated Press, which previously reported on the episode.
Mr. Patel had gone to Wellington to open a new F.B.I. office, an initiative that former agents had questioned as the bureau faces budget deficits.
This is like something out of a movie. The "take no prisoners" FBI director goes to the UK and he wants his guns to carry their guns 'cause they are his guys. The Brits say "We are terribly sorry but that is an impossibility." Mr. Badass Director then gets real, real mad to learn the CIA guys and the NSA guys got to carry their guns!
They said that during the trip, the Royalty and Specialist Protection Command of the Metropolitan Police told the F.B.I. that Mr. Patel’s security detail could not be armed. Britain has strict gun-control laws, and the police limit armed details based on risk assessments. The police assessment on Mr. Patel found he didn’t meet the threshold for an exemption.
The details for the heads of the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency were armed, another U.S. official said. That discrepancy prompted an emergency meeting between the F.B.I. and British security officials. The British officials held firm.
An F.B.I. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, denied that there had been a dispute over arming Mr. Patel’s detail. He acknowledged that the director had in the past pressed people on why F.B.I. details weren’t always granted allowances that other agencies got, but that he was seeking equal treatment for them, not for himself. The official also said the discussions about where to fly into involved a scheduling issue.
A funny ending to the article.
Before leaving Britain, Mr. Patel and his girlfriend joined the other security and intelligence officials for a dinner at Windsor Palace with King Charles III, according to two of the former officials. At the end of the night, the group gathered for a photograph. Mr. Patel stood next to the king.
British security officials rely on the bureau for high-tech surveillance tools — the kind they might need to monitor a new embassy that China wants to build near the Tower of London. The head of MI5, Ken McCallum, asked Mr. Patel to protect the job of an F.B.I. agent based in London who dealt with that technology, according to several current and former U.S. officials with knowledge of the episode.
yeaah totally that's what five eyes is doing (also i feel like those things were not so openly talked about?)
~~Five Eyes~~
Four Eyes +
This is actually true if we think of it with the word explicitly added and minus the Cold War bullshit