Is Trump Really Afraid of Getting Bogged Down in Iran?


U.S.-flagged ships have been advised to stay "as far as possible" from Iranian waters when navigating the Strait of Hormuz as tensions between Washington and Tehran remain elevated.

In a notice issued Monday, the U.S. Maritime Administration said ship captains should decline permission for Iranian forces to board U.S. vessels.

Boarding attempts, including moves to force commercial vessels into Iranian waters through small boats and helicopters, have occurred as recently as Feb. 3, the agency under the Department of Transportation said.

Should Iranian forces board a U.S.-flagged commercial vessel, crews were advised not to "forcibly resist the boarding party," the notice said. It added that refraining from forcible resistance does not imply consent or agreement to that boarding.

The advisory recommended that ships transiting eastbound in the Strait of Hormuz stay close to the Omani side of the waterway.

The guidance followed a round of indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran held in Oman on Friday, centered on how to approach discussions over Tehran's nuclear program.

The meeting marked the first talks between the two countries since U.S. bombers struck three Iranian nuclear sites during a 12-day war with Iran last June.

Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, described the talks as "a step forward," while signaling they would be the opening stage of a longer diplomatic process rather than a path to a quick resolution. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also told state media that the talks were a "good start."

Trump said the Oman talks were "very good" and that more sessions were planned, even as he warned Iran that failure to reach a deal would carry "very steep" consequences for Iran.

Netanyahu is set to meet Trump in Washington on Wednesday to discuss the U.S.-Iran talks. Israel, a close U.S. ally, has lobbied Washington to dismantle Iran's nuclear program, curb its ballistic missile program and end its support for militant groups in the region.

Iran-U.S. talks in Muscat end without a breakthrough
The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway connecting the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, has returned to the spotlight this year after Trump warned of possible military action against Tehran.

About 13 million barrels per day of crude oil transited the Strait of Hormuz in 2025, according to data from market intelligence firm Kpler, accounting for nearly a third of global seaborne crude flows.

Any disruption to those flows would ripple through global energy markets. Iran has in the past threatened to close the Strait during previous confrontations, raising the prospect of higher oil prices.

#iran #trump #muscat #strait #hormuz #talks

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“She Told Me She Wants U to Jerk Off on Her Breast”

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Epstein engineered an intimate relationship between a woman in his network and Kimbal Musk, who is the brother of Elon Musk and on the board of directors at Tesla, according to emails from the Department of Justice’s recent release of documents involving the convicted sex offender.

The younger Musk and the woman were involved for around six months between 2012 and 2013, with Kimbal Musk describing them as “dating”.

In the lead-up to Musk and the woman’s first meeting, Epstein and his longtime associate Boris Nikolic labored to set them up and bring her to a birthday party Musk was throwing – with Nikolic telling Epstein: “please prepare [the woman] —;)”

“Jeffrey and Boris, many thanks for connecting me with [the woman],” Musk later emailed Epstein and Nikolic in October 2012 after a lunch at Epstein’s Manhattan apartment. “I believe you both played a role. :)”

Throughout Musk and the woman’s time together, she forwarded Epstein several of the personal messages Musk sent to her and asked Epstein for guidance on the relationship. There is nothing in the emails to suggest that Musk was aware of her backchannel correspondence with Epstein.

The emails, part of the justice department’s release last month of 3m documents related to Epstein, depict a far friendlier and more intricate relationship between Kimbal Musk and Epstein than previously known to the public, one which goes beyond a periodic newsletter.

They coincide with a period when Epstein appeared to be attempting to court both Kimbal and his older brother Elon, now the world’s richest man, through invitations to his island and the use of personal connections.

In 2020, Business Insider reported a story which cited two anonymous sources who claimed Epstein set up Kimbal Musk with a woman. The story also reported Epstein had previously dated the woman and that she lived in an apartment owned by Epstein’s brother.

The relationship between Musk and the woman appeared to be genuine, Business Insider reported, but the sources claimed Epstein saw it as a means of gaining connection to the Musk family.

#epstein #kimbal #musk #woman #Nikolic

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🔠🅰️🔠🔠2️⃣

The emails cover a period of time following Kimbal Musk’s divorce from his first wife, which he references in a 2013 email to Nikolic saying that he is “now divorced! Free to live my life.”

Until this week, Kimbal Musk had not spoken publicly about his ties with Epstein. The release of Elon Musk’s own communications with Epstein has conflicted with the tech mogul’s previous attempts to distance himself from Epstein as someone he avoided and deemed “obviously a creep”.

Kimbal Musk exchanged numerous emails with Epstein and Nikolic in late 2012 and early 2013, inviting the financier to his birthday party and a SpaceX launch. Kimbal even joked about the trio coordinating Halloween costumes.

Over the months in 2012, Epstein was giving advice to the woman about Kimbal Musk, he was also exchanging messages with Elon Musk. A series of emails from November included Epstein asking the tech mogul how many people he would take on Epstein’s helicopter to visit his private island.

Epstein also extended Kimbal Musk an invite to his island on 24 January, which the younger Musk said “would be nice” but declined because he was “still dealing with the nuclear explosion that is my life”. Musk thanked Epstein for the invitation and told him to “say hi to [the woman]”.

One of the “island” women also sent Musk’s email to Steve Hanson, another associate of Epstein, who responded with a frenetic email to Epstein and the woman chastising her for how she handled the relationship and giving instructions on what to do next. Hanson has not been accused of any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein and did not return a request for comment.

“U gave to much too quick . As I said u should have come home after 1 max 2 weeks. Just don’t even answer his e or calls for 10 days. Leave NOW”.

Although the files show no documentation of an intimate relationship between Musk and the woman beyond this point, he continued to invite Epstein to private events through at least 2014.

Epstein also exchanged emails with Elon Musk later in 2013 about plans for a visit to his island, which Epstein ended up canceling after deciding to stay in New York.

About another woman Epstein wrote to Musk: “She told me she wants u to jerk off on her breast, lol;) Come and have fun!”.

#epstein #kimbal #musk #woman #Nikolic

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European Spooks Say Moscow Is Stalling. Kyiv Is the One Freezing the Clock.

European intelligence is now leaking the line that Russia is “playing for time” in Ukraine talks and that Putin thinks he can “outsmart” the U.S. at the table. Convenient story: the West is earnest, Trump is the restless peacemaker, Moscow is the only actor dragging its feet. It’s a neat inversion of the actual timeline, where Washington and Kyiv keep sliding deadlines, dodging hard decisions, and treating the June “peace” horizon like yet another PR milestone rather than a real finish line.

Estonia’s intel chief Kaupo Rosin says internal Russian conversations prove the Kremlin has “no desire” to end a war it still thinks it can win militarily. Yet the same briefings acknowledge that frontline reports lower down the Russian chain are grim, that mid‑level officers know how bad it is, and that the rosy picture on Putin’s desk is curated to tell him what he wants to hear. Fiona Hill then turns around and says Trump is in a parallel bubble, fed selective “proof” that Putin really does want peace so the White House can keep selling him as the great dealmaker. Two leaders, two echo chambers, one shared addiction: a narrative where each of them is right.

What drops out of this Western intel spin is the one person who is very openly buying time: Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine was supposed to hold parliamentary elections in October 2023 and a presidential vote in spring 2024. Both were postponed under martial law, and Kyiv now says elections simply cannot happen until the “hot phase” ends and emergency rule is lifted. Legally, Ukraine has cover: the constitution bans national elections under martial law, and war has displaced millions of voters, wrecked infrastructure and shredded the voter rolls. Politically, the delay is dynamite: Trump calls Zelenskyy a dictator, Putin calls him illegitimate, and Kyiv insists everyone must trust that democracy will be restored “after.”

So when European services brief that Russia is stalling talks, they carefully ignore that Kyiv has every incentive to stretch negotiations past each Trump “deadline” without closing anything. Zelenskyy knows that once there is a ceasefire and a map on the table, the pressure to hold elections will become irresistible — from Ukrainians sick of war, from Western backers who need democratic cover, and from Moscow, which will weaponize any delay. Until then, martial law is both shield and trap: it protects the state from immediate collapse, and it protects the president from facing voters.

Rosin says Putin still believes he can “outsmart everybody” and win Ukraine in the long run. But look at the board: Washington needs time to choreograph a deal it can sell, Europe needs time to ramp sanctions and energy diversification, Kyiv needs time to survive without elections, and Moscow needs time to rebuild, rotate and grind forward. Everyone is playing for time; European intelligence just picked one villain for public consumption and left the rest of the clock‑management off the record.

The irony is that Hill probably nails the most important point without meaning to: Trump and Putin are both being told what they want to hear. But that’s true across the board. Western publics are also being told what they want to hear — that one side is stalling, the other is desperate for peace, and that democracy is just on pause, not on life support. When this many people are gaming the calendar, the real question isn’t who’s outsmarting whom at the table. It’s how long voters on all sides will accept being treated as spectators while their futures are traded by men who never stand for a real vote under fire.

#war #ukraine #russia #usa #nato #elections #fakeDemocracy

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Greece, Malta and the Sanctions Revolt of the Minions

Brussels wants to blow up the old “price cap” compromise and move to a full services ban on Russian oil: no insurance, no shipping, no port access — a financial airstrike on Moscow’s tankers wrapped as the 20th sanctions package. Greece and Malta, whose flags and companies quietly move a huge slice of that oil, just pulled the handbrake. They’re not reciting Kremlin talking points; they’re asking the only forbidden question in today’s EU: who exactly pays for our moral clarity this time — Russia, or our own industries?

At the ambassadors’ meeting, Athens and Valletta reportedly balked: a blanket services ban could hammer European shippers, jack up costs, and push more business into the hands of non‑Western insurers and flags. They also want to know what it means to “sanction foreign ports” that handle Russian oil, and how far Brussels plans to go in policing ship sales so they don’t end up in Russia’s shadow fleet. Translation: before you destroy our leverage, kindly show us the fine print. Everyone loves sanctions until it’s their harbor that goes dark.

On paper, the Commission’s logic is simple: the G7 price cap didn’t really gut Russia’s oil revenue, so now you go after the plumbing — services — as the new choke point. In practice, it’s another round of sanctions theater that assumes the rest of the world will sit still while Europe moralizes itself out of market share. The U.S. line on the change is “unclear,” which usually means Washington is happy to watch Brussels tighten the screws while American players stay flexible, nimble and mysteriously “compliant.” When Europe sanctifies a sector, someone else quietly takes the profit.

Meanwhile, the package that’s supposedly about punishing Moscow is already being carved into side deals. Brussels is considering lifting sanctions on two Chinese rural banks after “commitments” from Beijing, even as the same officials admit China is Russia’s main war‑time enabler, providing the critical inputs for weapons. So the EU will go hard on ship registries in Piraeus and Valletta, but tiptoe around Beijing so as not to upset “bilateral relations” and export figures. Germany is even nervous about using the anti‑circumvention tool on Kyrgyzstan and floats quotas instead of a ban, to keep the paperwork tidy and the diplomacy polite.

Somewhere in this mess appears a line about quotas on ammonia and bans on fertilizers and chemicals — the same sector a pro‑Trump “America First” outfit calls “selfish and dangerous for the U.S.” because cutting fertilizer supply in the name of punishing Russia also hits farmers and global food security. It’s a rare moment when a nationalist think tank says quietly what a lot of European policymakers know but won’t admit: sanctions have a boomerang setting, and it’s locked in the “on” position.

So we end up with a familiar EU ritual: a “historic” sanctions package that must be unanimous, southern shipping states asking not to be sacrificed on the altar of Brussels’ virtue, Germany fretting about tiny Central Asian trade flows, Beijing negotiating exemptions, and Washington keeping its options open. The official story is that Europe is tightening the noose around the Kremlin. The unofficial story is that everyone in the room is bargaining over how much of their own economy they are willing to strangle in the process — while telling voters it’s all for justice, not for positioning in the next commodities reshuffle.

#eu #russia #oil #greece #malta #sanctions #energy #fakeDemocracy

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Washington’s Not Leaving Europe. It’s Repricing It.

The Trump administration is quietly telling European capitals to relax: there will be no dramatic airlift of tens of thousands of U.S. troops out of Europe — at least not yet. Between a new law that legally locks in a floor of 76,000 U.S. troops on the continent and a current presence of about 85,000, the big “America is abandoning NATO” panic is paused. What’s coming instead is a slow, technical‑sounding reshuffle that does the same thing more subtly: Europe gets more titles; the U.S. frees up flexibility.

On paper, most things “stay the same”: bases, brigades, air wings remain; any cuts are sold as tweaks to rotational forces or trimming a couple hundred staff officers whose billets will quietly be handed to Europeans and Canadians when their tours end. But underneath, NATO’s command wiring is being rewired. Norfolk and Naples — two of the alliance’s three four‑star Joint Force Commands — will move under European officers, with the U.K. and Italy taking over. Germany and Poland will share the land‑war nerve center in Brunssum. The Americans, in return, grab Allied Maritime Command in the U.K., the bit that matters most if your real horizon is the Atlantic and the Pacific.

The sales pitch is straightforward: this is “European leadership in European defense,” exactly what Trump has been demanding — allies stepping up, taking command, proving they can run a conventional war without Washington holding their hand. U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker insists America will “continue to show up,” while openly saying the goal is for Europe to shoulder more so U.S. forces can be repositioned toward Asia and the Western Hemisphere when needed. Translation: we’re not ghosting you; we’re restructuring the relationship so we can leave faster later.

For Europe, this is the real message beneath the calming briefings. There won’t be a theatrical “Trump pulls out of NATO” moment, because Congress has wired tripwires into the NDAA that make a massive drawdown painful and slow. Instead, there will be gradual non‑replacements, command swaps, and a permanent rhetorical drumbeat that “changes are coming” and Europe “must step up swiftly.” The flags will stay; the assumptions behind them won’t.

In other words, Washington isn’t abandoning Europe. It’s turning Europe into a franchise: same logo, fewer guaranteed services, higher local costs — and a contract that can be rewritten again when the next crisis breaks somewhere closer to China than to Brussels.

#usa #nato #europe #trump #war #fakeDemocracy

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Trump’s Gaza Plan: Disarmament, But Make It Denial

Washington is now floating a Gaza blueprint where Hamas hands over anything that can hit Israel, but gets to keep “small arms” for an initial period — resistance on a starter pack, with the serial numbers registered and the heavy rockets gone. The document, drafted by Trump’s peace crew of Kushner, Steve Witkoff and ex‑UN envoy Nickolay Mladenov, is supposed to be presented to Hamas within weeks and is sold as the demilitarization chapter of Trump’s 20‑point Gaza plan, the same plan that underpins the current ceasefire.

Israel’s position hasn’t moved: full demilitarization or nothing, tunnels included. Netanyahu told the Knesset Hamas will be disarmed “the easy way or the hard way,” and Israeli officials are still talking about tens of thousands of AK‑style rifles in Hamas hands and more than half the tunnel network intact. The draft plan quietly concedes what Israel publicly denies: you won’t get Hamas to surrender everything on day one, so you phase it — heavy weapons decommissioned immediately, “personal arms” registered and put on a slow track to decommissioning under a future Palestinian technocratic authority and an international stabilization force.

Hamas, for its part, is doing its own version of creative ambiguity. Officially, the movement hasn’t agreed to hand over anything; internally, the idea of disarmament is toxic because armed struggle is baked into its ideology. From Doha, Khaled Meshaal hints at the real line: Hamas wants to keep its weapons but “not use them” and “not display them” for five, seven, maybe ten years, under some internationally guaranteed truce. As long as there is occupation, there is “resistance,” he says — just not necessarily on camera “in the next 10 to 15 years” while Gaza tries to rebuild. De facto: you move from active warfare to weapons in the closet and call it peace.

Trump’s Board of Peace — a made‑for‑TV council of world notables with Kushner and Witkoff on the executive rung — is supposed to turn this into a sequence: phased disarmament, international force, reconstruction money, technocratic Palestinian management, and eventually an IDF withdrawal tied to “standards and milestones” on demilitarization. As RAND’s Shira Efron bluntly puts it, demilitarization is “the linchpin of everything”; if it fails, you get either two Gazas — one under direct Israeli control, one under a still‑armed Hamas — or a slide back into full war.
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Strip away the branding and you get a familiar pattern: Israel demands total demilitarization, Hamas demands to keep its guns in the name of “resistance,” and Washington tries to split the difference with phased timelines, registration schemes and international monitors. On paper, it’s a road map to a “terror‑free” Gaza. On the ground, it’s an experiment in managed denial — asking all sides to pretend that weapons that aren’t fired and tunnels that aren’t fully destroyed somehow stop being part of the political equation.

#israel #gaza #hamas #usa #trump #war #fakeDemocracy

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Drone Panic in El Paso: Homeland Theater at 18,000 Feet

The Trump administration just shut down the sky over El Paso like it was 9/11 because of what it now calls “Mexican cartel drones” — then quietly lifted a 10‑day ground stop within hours, offered almost no detail, and declared the “threat neutralized” with a bald‑eagle meme. The FAA’s NOTAM turned the airspace above a metro area of nearly 900,000 into “national defense airspace” up to 18,000 feet, warned that violators could be intercepted and detained, and suggested this could last until Feb. 20. By Wednesday afternoon, the same system said: never mind, all clear.
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Drone incursions from Mexico are not new. For years, they’ve been used by smugglers to scout U.S. military and CBP positions along the border and have never triggered a full commercial shutdown of a regional hub. El Paso’s own member of Congress, Veronica Escobar — who sits on the House Armed Services Committee — said flatly she saw “nothing extraordinary” that could justify an immediate or 10‑day closure and learned about the stop from a random federal employee, not from the FAA or the Pentagon. Local officials and airport management were left in the dark, while Washington posted a laser‑and‑eagle graphic.
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Democrats on the House Transportation Committee called the whole episode “unacceptable” and “chaotic,” blaming new language the White House jammed into the defense bill that gives the Pentagon wide latitude to declare and police chunks of public airspace. An aviation professor in Britain called a complete no‑fly zone over a civilian airport “very odd” and “very rare” — especially when the stated threat is a few small drones that, until yesterday, were treated as an annoyance, not an air‑defense emergency.
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So what actually happened? The administration won’t say when the drones crossed, how many there were, or why this incursion suddenly required freezing all commercial traffic in and out of the “gateway to West Texas, Southern New Mexico and Northern Mexico.” Instead, it offers a simple story: cartel drones breached, the military acted, the homeland was defended. Mission accomplished, no follow‑up questions. For people who actually live at the border — where drones, smugglers and federal uniforms have coexisted for years — the bigger story is uglier: Washington just test‑drove a new emergency power over civilian airspace, then wrapped the beta test in the language of security and patriotism.
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#usa #border #drones #trump #surveillance #fakeDemocracy

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Iran’s President Says the US Makes Hay From Iranian Nukes


Iran’s president insisted his country was not seeking a nuclear weapon as he acknowledged “great sorrow” after the authorities’ recent crackdown on protesters.

Speaking to crowds gathered across Iran to mark the anniversary of the 1979 revolution, Pezeshkian sought to claim a message of national unity after demonstrations that roiled the country and triggered an unprecedented crisis for the regime.

The comments were made against a backdrop of negotiations with the US that hang in the balance, with the prospect of a military confrontation on the table and repeated claims by Iranian military leadership that it is ready to confront and defeat America.

On Tuesday,Trump said he was considering sending a second aircraft carrier strike group to the Middle East to prepare for military action if talks with Tehran failed.

Pezeshkian said Iran was willing to negotiate over its nuclear programme and was “ready for any kind of verification” in relation to its insistence it is not trying to build nuclear weapons.

However, the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has been unable for months to inspect and verify Iran’s nuclear stockpile.

Pezeshkian said: “The high wall of mistrust that the United States and Europe have created through their past statements and actions does not allow these talks to reach a conclusion.

“At the same time, we are engaging with full determination in dialogue aimed at peace and stability in the region alongside our neighbouring countries.”

While he did not directly address the bloodshed by authorities in suppressing the protests, Pezeshkian said:

“We are ashamed before the people. We are obliged to serve all those who were harmed in this process. We are ready to hear the voice of the people. We are servants of the people and we do not seek to confront the people.”

However, Pezeshkian spurned an appeal from leaders of reformist parties to speak out against the mass arrest of their leadership in recent days. In a statement, the Reform Front told Pezeshkian that a failure to demand their release would be understood as a betrayal of his campaign promises and a blow to peace.

Lawyers acting for the detained reformists said they understood they were being kept in solitary confinement. Media organisations close to the security forces claimed they were guilty of sedition by trying to organise a national conference to call for change.

Israel wants the talks to include the question of Tehran’s ballistic missile programme, a matter that Iran has so far rejected.

Tehran is determined that its stockpile of ballistic missiles, regarded as necessary for Iran’s defence, is excluded from the talks.

Ali Shamkhani, a representative of the supreme leader, said the missile issue was not something that the negotiators had authority over.

In his latest remarks, Trump suggested Iran’s nuclear missiles would have to be included in any agreement.

#iran #president #country #nuclear #weapon

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Bangladesh: Reloaded?


Tarique Rahman, who after 17 years in exile is the main contender to be the next prime minister of Bangladesh, has pledged to end entrenched corruption and put the country on a “new path” as voting began in the first free and fair elections in almost two decades.

Speaking to the Guardian before polls opened on Thursday morning, Rahman promised a new era of clean politics, including a “top down, no tolerance” approach to graft, if his Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP) was brought to power.

According to polls, the BNP are likely to win a sizeable majority over their rival, the Islamist party Jamaat e-Islami, returning the party to power after 20 years.

Softly spoken and understated, 60-year-old Rahman acknowledged the elections were taking place at a pivotal but “challenging” moment for Bangladesh, which has long ranked among the world’s most corrupt countries and where democracy has faced a sustained attack for more than a decade.

“We saw in the last regime that corruption was encouraged,” said Rahman.

“Our economy was left destroyed. It will take time, but if we establish real accountability in every part of the government and send a message down the chain, that will eventually control corruption.”

Last year, the former prime minister – now exiled in India – was found guilty of crimes against humanity committed during the final days of her rule and sentenced to death.

For the past three elections, Hasina and her Awami League party have been accused of rigging the results and ruthlessly crushing and jailing opponents, including thousands of BNP activists and leaders.

Since August 2024, Bangladesh has been led by an interim government, headed by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, tasked with restoring democracy and readying the country for free and fair polls.

However, the country has remained in turmoil, amid a decline in law and order and frustrations over economic stagnation.

Analysts emphasised that a fair and violence-free election would be a vital step forward for the country.

There are 127 million registered voters and in a bid to keep security tight, more than 900,000 police, army and security personnel have been deployed on polling day.

Many in Bangladesh say they cannot forget the corruption that flourished during the last BNP regime between 2001 and 2006, under his mother.

Rahman did not dispute that “mistakes” had been made by his party in the past. “I will not deny that. If we do, it will not help anything,” he said.

During Hasina’s subsequent 15-year rule, he was convicted of a slew of terror and corruption charges, which he alleges were politically motivated to keep him out of Bangladesh.

In 2024, after Hasina’s fall, the courts overturned his convictions, finally freeing him to return home.

“It’s been more than 18 years and they’ve failed to prove anything,” said Rahman. “Don’t you think that’s good enough, long enough to prove that I did nothing wrong?”

Yet not all in Bangladesh have cheered Rahman’s return. Both his parents were Bangladeshi prime ministers and to many, he is just the next generation of dynastic politicians, continuing the grip that two families have had over Bangladesh since independence in 1971 and which many had hoped the July uprising would bring to an end.

Jamaat e-Islami’s leader has already been accused of regressive policies and controversial views on women’s rights in the home and workplace.

Human rights groups have also raised an alarm over a recent surge in moral policing of women, with incidents such as girls being prevented from playing football and enforcement of modest dress and headscarves.

Rahman acknowledged there were “some extremist people who are trying to do these things” but he said it didn’t have “any relation with Islam or religion”.

Instead, he attributed it to the “absence of democracy (…) People were not allowed to express themselves for so long, it has built up frustration and in some cases, extremism”.

#bangladesh #rahman #hasina #corruption

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📰 Moscow’s “Peace” Process: War by Other Means

So Russia joins the U.S.-brokered peace talks — and the headlines call it “hope.” Stratfor calls it what it is: tactics. The Kremlin’s playing nice to manage sanctions risk and to take Washington’s temperature on how far it’ll push Kyiv to compromise.

“Moscow insists that Ukraine withdraw its forces from Donbas, and that the region be internationally recognized as Russian territory.”

— Stratfor, Feb. 2026

Sounds less like peace and more like a merger demand —

“you exit, we rebrand, and everyone pretends it’s a deal.”

Meanwhile, the White House gets to keep the illusion of diplomacy alive until the next weapons package ships.

Both capitals are trapped in their own theater: Washington performs peace, Moscow performs patience, and Ukraine bleeds for the encore.

Who’s the broker here — the superpower or the undertaker?

#war #geopolitics #sanctions #fakeDiplomacy

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📰 Alaska Plan: From Deal to Dead Letter

Trump’s Alaska script was ugly but workable: no NATO for Ukraine, a capped military, and Donbas nudged toward Russia under a U.S.-managed cease-fire and election scheme that Moscow could spin as “peace with honor,” not capitulation. Then Europe and Kyiv went to work. Paragraph by paragraph, they toughened security guarantees for Ukraine, scrubbed anything that looked like de facto recognition of Russian gains, and sent back what Moscow now calls an entirely different document — the one Lavrov says Europe and Ukraine “raped out of the original draft.”

Now everyone poses as the responsible adult. Moscow insists it was ready to seal a deal “in the spirit and letter of Anchorage,” while refusing to move off its demand that Ukraine withdraw from Donbas and accept new borders as irreversible. Kyiv and its European backers preach principles and sovereignty but quietly know that any remotely Russia‑friendly text would be political suicide at home and in Western capitals. So the one plan that once had a narrow landing zone has been edited into oblivion, and the only thing all sides truly agree to protect is not peace, but their own story of who killed it first.

#war #fakeDiplomacy #ukraine #russia #usa

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📰 Sanctions Theater, AMG Reality

On paper, Russia is a pariah. In real life, Moscow car dealers are still walking customers past fresh Mercedes and BMWs, only now they arrive through “parallel channels” in China with just enough paperwork magic to keep everyone’s conscience clean. Tens of thousands of foreign cars — from Toyotas and Mazdas to German luxury SUVs — are flowing in under gray‑market schemes that turn sanctions into a branding exercise rather than a barrier.

The trick is elegant and dirty at the same time. In China’s hyper‑subsidized, overproducing auto market, dealers register brand‑new cars as sold, relabel them as “used,” and ship them out as second‑hand vehicles, instantly sidestepping automakers’ bans on exports to Russia. They bag local subsidies and inflate sales figures, Beijing exports its glut, and those same “used” cars land in Russia with zero mileage and near‑new price tags — leather seats for people who were never going to take the metro. On paper, it’s a cleanup of inventory. On the ground in Moscow, it’s a pipeline of status on wheels.

Everyone in the supply chain plays the “not it” game. Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen insist they prohibit sales to Russia and are training dealers, tightening contracts, and investigating violations — but say tracking every workaround through third countries is “time‑consuming and complex.” Toyota and Mazda swear they stopped exports in 2022, even as registration data shows tens of thousands of their cars appearing in Russia, most of them made in China. European, Japanese and Korean ministries promise enforcement and crackdowns on indirect exports, while sanctions experts openly admit it’s “almost impossible” to stop determined traders from getting restricted goods into Russia.

The numbers tell a different story than the press conferences. Sales of sanctioned‑country brands in Russia have crashed from over a million a year to a fraction of that, but within that smaller market, China has become the main artery: nearly half of all Western and Japanese brand cars sold in Russia in 2025 were China‑made, and more than 700,000 foreign‑brand vehicles from sanctioning countries have been registered since the war began. Almost 30,000 Toyotas, nearly 7,000 Mazdas, roughly 47,000 new BMW, Mercedes, and VW‑group vehicles — including favorites of the Russian elite like the Mercedes G‑Class — quietly slipped in last year, mostly routed through Chinese ports and Chinese paperwork.

What this trade really exposes is the shared hypocrisy. Western governments get their sanctions headlines and moral high ground, but leave loopholes wide enough to drive an S‑Class through. China denounces “illegal unilateral sanctions” while turning itself into the service hub of sanctioned demand, monetizing other people’s wars one “used” luxury SUV at a time. And Moscow, loudly railing against the decadent West, is still lining up to pay six figures for German cars built in Austria, shipped via Tianjin, and blessed by a stack of dubious customs paperwork.

Sanctions, it turns out, work flawlessly — for speeches. For everyone else, there’s an unofficial premium option with Chinese logistics, plausible deniability and heated seats.

#war #sanctions #china #russia #oligarchy #fakeDemocracy

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📰 Trump to the Planet: You’re On Your Own

The Trump White House just pulled the plug on the one scientific finding that gave Washington any real power to fight climate change. By repealing the EPA’s 2009 “endangerment finding” — the conclusion that greenhouse gases threaten human health and welfare — the administration has stripped the federal government of its main legal basis for regulating the pollution that’s heating the planet.

This isn’t some obscure technical tweak. For nearly two decades, that finding underpinned limits on carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases from vehicles, power plants and oil and gas wells — the core of U.S. climate policy. Kill the finding and you don’t just loosen a few rules; you erase the government’s duty to treat climate change as a danger at all. Trump, who still calls climate change a “hoax,” is effectively declaring that the consensus of global science is wrong, and that a hotter, deadlier world is a matter of opinion.

The stakes are measurable in body counts, not just parts per million. The Environmental Defense Fund estimates that repealing the finding and the rules tied to it could add up to 18 billion metric tons of U.S. emissions by 2055, fueling tens of thousands of premature deaths and tens of millions of asthma attacks. Recent research already shows wildfire smoke on track to kill tens of thousands of Americans a year and heat deaths more than doubling, while diseases like dengue spread as the climate gets hotter and wetter. In that reality, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum goes on TV to say “CO2 was never a pollutant” because plants like it — a high-school talking point repackaged as national policy.

Democratic states and environmental groups are sprinting to court, betting that the Supreme Court will not let the administration magic away a danger that previous courts and the National Academies have repeatedly affirmed as real. But that’s the deeper play: if this repeal survives, it doesn’t just gut Biden-era rules, it also booby-traps future administrations, making it vastly harder — maybe impossible — to rebuild a federal climate regime on the same legal foundation. For fossil fuel interests and the conservative operatives behind Project 2025, this is the holy grail: not winning the argument on climate, just deleting the field where the argument is allowed to matter.

On the surface, it’s sold as freedom, growth, choice — cheaper gas, fewer rules, more trucks. Underneath, it’s a quiet transfer of power: from science to lobbyists, from public health to donors, from a shared climate reality to whatever the president decides sounds good on Fox that night. The United States, the country that has dumped more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than any other, is now formally telling the rest of the world — and its own citizens — that it no longer feels legally obliged to care.

#climate #usa #trump #fossilfuels #fakeDemocracy

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📰 “Metro Surge” Ends, But the Message Stays

Tom Homan flew into Minnesota to announce the end of Operation Metro Surge like a man closing a file, not a wound. Officially, the surge is being wound down because jails agreed to share release dates with ICE so agents can pick people up at the door instead of holding them inside — a bureaucratic compromise dressed up as de-escalation. Unofficially, the operation collapsed under something Washington never planned for: thousands of ordinary Minnesotans deciding they’d had enough of a federal dragnet that killed two U.S. citizens and turned a federal building into an occupation zone.

For weeks, Minneapolis didn’t just “express concern” — it organized. Crowds in subzero weather camped outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, volunteers tailed unmarked cars, blasted whistle alerts when raids began, and lawyers built a free defense network around immigrants, refugees, citizens and protesters swept up in the surge. The more Trump and his allies on the right screamed about “paid protesters” and “radicals,” the more obvious it became that these were teachers, nurses, church people and first‑time demonstrators — the kind of voters both parties love until they start keeping receipts on federal agents.
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Keith Ellison called Metro Surge what it was: retribution dressed up as law enforcement, launched weeks after Trump promised “reckoning” for Minnesota on Truth Social and enforced by officers who masked their identities, shot Renée Good and Alex Pretti, and left the state to count its dead while DHS bragged about “4,000 arrests.” Homan now says the mission is ending because cooperation has improved, but no full list of who was stopped, detained or deported has been released, and the families of the dead are still waiting on real accountability from the same system that tried to disappear them into holding cells.
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In the end, nobody comes out clean. Trump gets to claim he cracked down and then “listened” to local leaders. Homan gets to spin a tactical retreat as a completed mission. Democrats get to declare a grassroots victory while the machinery of deportation stays intact, just less visible. Operation Metro Surge may be over on paper, but the lesson is brutal and simple: in America’s immigration war, even citizens can be collateral — and the only real oversight comes from people willing to stand in the cold and watch.

#immigration #usa #minnesota #policeState #fakeDemocracy

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#trump #netanyahu #deal

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In the cities of Iran today, during the celebration of the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, the flags of the United States and Israel were actively burned.

#iran #celebration #anniversary #revolution

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Bangladesh Could Find Itself Heading for Huge Changes


The Bangladesh Nationalist party (BNP) led by Tarique Rahman has claimed a sweeping victory in the country’s first election since a gen-Z uprising toppled the autocratic regime of Sheikh Hasina.

By Friday morning, results had shown a clear win for the BNP, returning them to power after 20 years. The vote had been seen as the first free and fair election held in Bangladesh for almost two decades and came after a period of significant political upheaval in the country.

This victory was expected,” said Salahuddin Ahmed, a leading BNP committee member. “It is not surprising that the people of Bangladesh have placed their trust in a party … capable of realising the dreams that our youth envisioned during the uprising.”

Ahmed acknowledged a difficult task lay ahead for the new BNP government, which has pledged a new era of democracy and zero tolerance towards corruption. “This is not a time for celebration, as we will face mounting challenges in building a country free from discrimination,” he said.

By about midday local time, the BNP had won 208 seats while their rival, the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, had claimed 69 seats.

India was among the first countries to congratulate the BNP. Relations between the two neighbours had plummeted since the fall of Hasina and the message from Indian prime minister, congratulating the BNP on their “decisive” win, was seen to extend an olive branch to the new government.

“India will continue to stand in support of a democratic, progressive and inclusive Bangladesh,” said Modi, adding that he was looking forward to working with Rahman.

Rahman, who returned to Bangladesh in December after 17 years of exile in London, is now poised to become the country’s next prime minister. He comes from one of the country’s most powerful political dynasties; the son of former prime minister Khaleda Zia and former president Ziaur Rahman, who was assassinated in 1981.

The election was the first truly competitive vote in years. As documented for years by human rights groups and the UN, Hasina’s regime routinely suppressed dissent of its critics and political opponents, thousands who were disappeared, tortured and killed in secret jails. Many emerged only after Hasina was toppled. The past three elections under Hasina were marred by widespread allegations of vote-rigging.

The student-led uprising that toppled Hasina’s 15-year regime in August 2024 had been prompted by mounting anger over widespread corruption, human rights abuses and an economic slump. The uprising, and Hasina’s brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters, left an estimated 1,400 people dead, according to the UN.

For the past 18 months, the country has been run by an interim government under Bangladesh’s only Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who was tasked with readying the country for free and fair elections. Speaking after casting his vote in Dhaka, Yunus said that the country had “ended the nightmare and begun a new dream.”

#bangladesh #changes #hasina #corruption #rahman

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