In Turkish educational system, honorary degrees are only applicable to the institute granting the degree itself. You instead need to have an earned degree to be able to use the privileges outside the institute granting the degree.
> U.S. should be on Ukraine's side for moral reasons and could also benefit from the military technology they are developing
America is too busy Smoot-Hawleying itself right now. The power moves are in European capitals. (Probably not Brussels.)
If you're in the Baltics, Poland, Finland or Sweden, Slovakia, Romania or Bulgaria, you should be upping your defence production and buying Ukrainian arms. Co-locate production in your territory and let that be used to re-arm yourself and build for Kyiv.
It's a win-win squared. You get defence kit and production expertise. Kyiv gets resources. And you get someone else to blow up against Russia, thereby increasing the time until they can mount a credible threat against you.
'Romania’s far-right — which holds about a third of seats in the country’s legislature — will likely seek to replace Georgescu’s candidacy, the deadline for which is March 15 at midnight. Many observers have speculated that his close political ally, George Simion, could take up the mantle.'
You can't exclude from an election a party that has 1/3 support of the electorate and expect the result to be respected.
Georgescu ran as independent, not as the candidate of any party. Simion ran against him. "Taking up the mantle" here means that he might be able to convince Georgescu's supporters to vote for him instead. (He got 13.86% vs 22.94% for Georgescu.)
The problem with Georgescu's candidacy is that he claimed 0 campaign spending, yet his campaign appeared to have quite significant amounts of funding. Excluding a candidate for campaign finance transparency violations seems acceptable to me, even if he had gotten 99% of the vote. It's the principle of the thing. But I do think the Romanian court system could've handled it better.
> Excluding a candidate for campaign finance transparency violations seems acceptable to me, even if he had gotten 99% of the vote.
I feel like this is a reason made up to justify preventing a result the EU did not like. Just like Germany was thinking about banning a party for the same reason.
People can think for themselves and vote in a democracy. Why not let the election play out freely? If the claim of a crime is proven, the candidate can face consequences after their term. Otherwise it looks like the EU and a few judges pressured by the EU are picking who wins.
Also aren’t we talking about very little unexplained spending? A million doesn’t really do much.
>Romania’s election commission has blocked pro-Russian candidate Calin Giorgescu from running in its rescheduled presidential elections, on the grounds that he has illegally benefited from Russian support. https://conservativehome.com/2025/03/13/from-garvanwalshe-ro...
People are touchy about Russia rigging things these days. They seem to be causing a fair bit of havoc quite likely flipping things in the Brexit vote and the 2016 US election, plus the invasion stuff.
I mean, EU can barely agree on anything (less so of late, but that has been the pattern for the last decades) yet somehow they are pulling the strings of Romanian politics? Who is? Italy, Germany, Poland?…
EU is unable to prevent Orban from vetoing decisions left and right, yet somehow they can get Romania‘s top court to exclude a candidate?
It’s just not credible.
And democracy is also about following the law. Lying to everyone, breaking laws and then getting elected is maybe what some politicians do to a certain extend but that is certainly not what democracy stands for. One cannot say “people like him, that’s democracy”. <Insert nazi comparison here>
`With America’s drone technology a disappointment on the battlefield, defense startups have joined forces with Ukrainian manufacturers to build better, war-proven aircraft for the U.S. military.
U.S. startups have spent billions of venture-capital dollars in hopes of developing the small drones that the Pentagon says it needs for future conflicts, but many have produced only expensive aircraft that don’t fly very well. Ukrainian drone makers, meanwhile, have mastered mass-producing drones despite limited resources and are looking for new customers and capital.
Now, the two sides are coming together, and the unlikely pairing is getting attention from the Defense Department.
Southern California startup CX2 last year struck a deal to put its software and sensors on Ukrainian drones, a matchup that has received approval from a branch of the U.S. military and might soon arm American forces.
“No U.S. company is keeping up with Ukraine,” said CX2 co-founder Nathan Mintz. “You know their stuff works. They’ve got the ultimate high-stakes laboratory meant to battle-proof all this stuff.”`
Dude is legit messed up in the head IMO. He's capable of expressing his will at times, but others I honestly don't think he is lucid.
During his first term they came up with a rule at the Pentagon that a written and signed order from the white house was required before any unexpected action would take place. That rule came about because Trump would be ranting and give verbal orders that were unexpected and arguably dangerous (and given to the wrong people) .... and the next day he would not remember / deny he gave them.
One of which is his order to shoot protesters, per Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper. The current SecDef would carry out those orders.
Some members of the armed forces would refuse such orders, others would follow them.
In terms of patrimonialism, Donald is the country and the country is Donald, not just in his mind, but also the true believers.
Therefore, there won’t be a universal sense of 5 USC 3331 preventing the following of such an order. That oath will merely be transferred to Donald in the minds of the committed, and part of what will aid this is principate.
Europe's defense sector has both "underspend" and "corrupt and incompetent" problems. And without some pretty draconian oversight, firing up their spending will mostly fuel the latter.
South Korea ranks even higher despite a smaller budget and even smaller population. The difference is less in how much money gets spent to buy new equipment, but in what happens to old equipment.
South Korea still has lots of tanks left over from the Korean War. Similarly, Germany used to have lots of Cold War-era tanks inherited from the combined arsenals of West and East Germany, but as they were considered outmoded and unlikely to ever get used again, the Bundeswehr sold them off. Then when a new use for them was found in Ukraine, some of them got bought back again.
My understanding is that S. Korea is one of the world's leading arms exporters, because they're perfectly capable of delivering good-quality stuff - on time, on budget, and at scale:
