Author Archive: Stephen Green

JAPAN VS BRITAIN: A Japanese Lesson for Troubled Britain.

The contrast between America’s great island allies on opposite ends of the world couldn’t be more drastic.

Japan has just given its commonsense conservative prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, a two-thirds supermajority in the national legislature’s Lower House; her Liberal Democratic Party took the highest proportion of seats of any party since World War II.

It’s an enormous vote of confidence not only in Takaichi’s economic agenda but also for her willingness to get tough with China.

Beijing’s mouthpieces have called Takaichi an “evil witch,” with China’s consul general in Osaka threatening, “the dirty neck that sticks itself in must be cut off” in response to Takaichi’s indication Japan would aid Taiwan against an invasion.

Such incendiary language didn’t intimidate Takaichi — nor, it turns out, Japan’s voters.

Yet even as Japan was rallying to its courageous prime minister, China was inflicting humiliation on America’s closest European ally.

Read the whole thing.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Find Someone Who Looks at You the Way Dems Look at Violent Criminals. “As we head towards the all-important midterm elections, the Democrats are putting all of their efforts into being the champions of murderers, rapists, and thieves who are in this country illegally. OK, that’s not fair — they are also doing what they can to help out violent criminals who are U.S. citizens.”

IT ISN’T JUST THE KIDS GETTING PARTICIPATION TROPHIES: I won ‘Teacher of the Year’ for enthusiasm, but kids weren’t learning.

Luke Morin won “teacher of the year” when he was a young, energetic, engaging — and ineffective — teacher, he writes on Holly Korbey’s BellRinger. He got flowers from the superintendent and his picture in the paper. But his sixth-grade English students weren’t learning very much.

Years later, after visiting effective schools and studying what make them work, he was “the highest-performing teacher in Colorado.” Nobody noticed.

In her “Learning from Greatness newsletter, Korbey asked why school leaders don’t investigate and emulate what’s working elsewhere. Why is there so little curiosity about success?

Maybe because there’s little interest in promoting it.

SADLY, THIS IS PROBABLY CORRECT:

They’ve had their fill of Islamic rule in Iran, but London is just really getting going.

HMM:

Developing…

THANKS, ELON: Ukrainian assault troops go on the attack — with help from Elon Musk.

On Feb. 4, billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite communications company throttled the thousands of terminals across Ukraine. At the behest of the Ukrainian government, the firm shut down all terminals moving at 75 km/hr or faster. That effectively grounded thousands of satellite-guided drones on both sides of Russia’s 48-month wider war on Ukraine.

The Ukrainians quickly submitted a list of their own Starlink terminals, which Musk’s company reauthorized for high-speed use. The effect of the related moves was that Ukraine retained Starlink access; Russia, which has been using smuggled and stolen Starlink systems, lost it. “Looks like the steps we took to stop the unauthorized use of Starlink by Russia have worked,” Musk wrote.

For the Ukrainian armed forces, the sudden Starlink gap was an opportunity. A few days after Russia’s terminals went down, Ukrainian forces counterattacked in several sectors along the 1,200-km front line—especially in Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts in southeastern Ukraine.

Late last year, the Ukrainians concentrated some of their best-resourced assault battalions and regiments in the southeast in a desperate bid to slow Russia’s ongoing offensive around Huliaipole, a key logistics hub that fell to the Russian 127th Motor Rifle Brigade in late December.

But it remains a cat-and-mouse game: Russia circumvents Starlink shutdown to control UAVs.

I STUCK WITH THE PUPPY BOWL THIS YEAR: TPUSA Halftime Show Ruled a Fumble. “I’ve written this article three times now, going back and forth over how criticizing Turning Point USA (TPUSA) would go over with an audience full of Charlie Kirk fans, myself among them. After surveying social media and talking to a few people, I’ve decided it needs to be said: TPUSA’s alternate halftime show was a fumble, and an ugly one.”

WILL SHE CHANGE HOW SHE VOTES TO REFLECT THIS RADICALLY NEW COMMONPLACE INSIGHT?

THE MULLAHS CAN’T HAVE NUKES, PERIOD: Iran steps up arrests, floats ‘diluting’ its enriched uranium as Netanyahu heads to US. “The arrests — including that of Javad Emam, the spokesperson for the country’s main reformist coalition — came after Iranian and US officials held talks in Oman that both sides painted as positive. And they came on the eve of a visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, where he will reportedly brief US President Donald Trump about Israeli intelligence on Iran.”

THIS IS THE WAY:

Exit quote: “Absolutely brilliant move by Trump not to exculpate himself by saying in public ‘I helped the law take Epstein down.’ Now his enemies are in so deep that all of their choices are horribly self-destructive.”

That’s been Trump’s MO since he entered politics over a decade ago, yet his enemies still never learn.

PAY YOUR FAIR SHARE:

California long ago adopted the Goodfellas method of tax collection.

AREC BARRWIN? What North Korea Is Really Afraid Of. “In 2020, North Korea introduced the Anti-Reactionary Thought and Culture Act, which describes anything that comes from South Korea as ‘rotten ideology that paralyzes the people’s revolutionary sense.’ Anyone found with the media in their possession can be sentenced to five to fifteen years in a labor camp, and anyone who distributes it or organizes a viewing is subject to the death penalty.”

IN MY DAY, IT REALLY DIDN’T SEEM LIKE WE NEEDED TO BE TAUGHT TO ARGUE: Teach students how to argue.