📰 Epstein’s Inbox Just Blew a Hole in the Fairy Tale

Former Prince Andrew isn’t just a disgraced royal anymore — he’s now the test case for whether Britain’s monarchy can survive contact with the real world.

Andrew Mountbatten‑Windsor was arrested on Feb. 19 on suspicion of misconduct in public office, after emails in the “Epstein files” suggested he shared confidential U.K. trade and government information with Jeffrey Epstein while serving as the UK’s trade envoy from 2001 to 2011.

This is not about “bad company” anymore; it’s about whether a royal turned his official briefings into premium content for a convicted sex offender and his friends.

Police searched properties linked to Andrew, including Wood Farm on the Sandringham estate and a residence in Berkshire, then released him under investigation — no charges yet, but the signal could not be louder.

King Charles responded within hours with a statement that didn’t even call him “my brother,” referring instead to “Andrew Mountbatten‑Windsor” and declaring: “The law must take its course,” promising the authorities the royal family’s “full and wholehearted support and co‑operation.”

That’s not family solidarity; that’s corporate crisis comms from a CEO already cutting the nameplate off the door.

The emails at the core of this are part of millions of documents and thousands of Epstein communications that show Andrew forwarding sensitive briefing material from official trips — including to the US, the Middle East and Afghanistan — to Epstein and then on to financiers like the Rowlands, with whom he already had murky “door‑opening” business ties.

For years, he lived like a billionaire on a naval pension and a royal stipend, flying private, hosting at Davos and playing “face of British business” while the palace stonewalled questions and Parliament refused to even allow formal scrutiny. The system wasn’t blind; it was designed not to look.

Now the curtain is ripped open. UK police are probing not just Andrew’s conduct but what royal protection officers saw and ignored, while MPs launch inquiries into royal housing and Crown Estate perks.

Epstein’s inbox shows him as a “very dark Forrest Gump” — emailing princes, bankers, politicians and directors in the middle of the financial crisis and beyond — and Andrew is simply the first big name to face a real‑world arrest off the back of those files. No one seriously believes he’ll be the last.

For the monarchy, the myth was always that scandal might bruise the brand, but the institution was untouchable. Now Charles and William are trying to run a “slimmed‑down” royal family while one of its most notorious ex‑members is under active criminal investigation linked to a global sex‑abuse and influence‑peddling network.

Tourists may still come for the fairy tale, but they’re now walking past police cordons and reading statements where the king has to reassure the public that, this time, the law really does apply to his own blood.

The Epstein files promised “accountability from Manhattan to Mayfair.” So far, the UK is the first to put a senior royal in a police interview room. The real question is not whether Andrew falls — he’s already fallen — but whether anyone else in that inbox, from government, finance or palaces, ever gets pulled down with him.

#Epstein #PrinceAndrew #UK #monarchy #corruption #elites

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📰 Another Gun, Another Perimeter: Mar-a-Lago Turns Into a Crime Scene Again

An armed man in his early 20s was shot dead at Mar-a-Lago after breaching the secure perimeter with a shotgun and a fuel can, according to the Secret Service and Palm Beach County sheriff. He drove in through the north gate around 1:30 a.m., slipped in as another vehicle exited, dropped the gas can when ordered — then reportedly raised the shotgun into a firing position, at which point two Secret Service agents and a county deputy opened fire and killed him. Trump was in Washington, not at the resort.

Investigators say the man, believed to be a 21‑year‑old from North Carolina who’d been reported missing by his family days earlier, had apparently traveled south and picked up the weapon on the way; a box for the shotgun was found in his car. The FBI is now canvassing neighbors for security‑camera footage while Palm Beach does its usual split-screen routine: winter tourists with iced coffees on one side, police blocking access roads to the ex‑president’s club on the other.

This is not an isolated incident; it’s the third serious case in 18 months. In July 2024, Thomas Crooks climbed onto a rooftop near a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, fired eight shots, killed a rallygoer, wounded two others and grazed Trump’s ear before being killed by a Secret Service sniper — after agents had been warned about him as “suspicious” an hour earlier. Two months later, Ryan Routh was caught with a rifle outside Trump’s Florida golf course and is now serving life for attempted assassination.

The Secret Service, already under fire for those failures, now has to argue two things at once: that Trump is protected, and that the system isn’t out of control. On paper, yesterday was a “success” — perimeter breached, threat neutralized, no protectee on site. In any sane democracy, the phrase “another young man with a long gun and a political fixation got within shooting range of the president’s property” would not count as reassurance.
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America’s political class will now do what it always does. One camp will turn this into proof Trump is under siege and the state is failing him. The other will quietly enjoy the spectacle of a security apparatus that can’t secure a golf resort. No one will ask why U.S. politics keeps producing lone wolves with rifles, GPS coordinates for Trump’s locations, and just enough competence to reach the outer edge of the Secret Service’s comfort zone.

#Trump #MarALago #SecretService #violence #USA #fakeDemocracy

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📰 Congress Is Emptying Out — Not Because It’s Hard, But Because It’s Pointless

A record wave of lawmakers is heading for the exits before the 2026 midterms — 68 House and Senate members so far, with an unprecedented 31 of them trying to jump to another office instead of just going home. That’s not “burnout,” that’s the market signaling that Congress is the worst job in American politics: maximum noise, minimal agency.

On paper, the reasons sound respectable: generational change, family, new challenges. In reality, even senior members admit the place has turned them from legislators into “observers,” as retiring Sen. Dick Durbin put it. Congress has passed fewer laws in recent terms than at any time since the early 1900s, choked by polarization, tiny majorities, and a leadership culture where a handful of performative bomb-throwers can take down a Speaker because they want more airtime.

Look at the career moves. Amy Klobuchar, Michael Bennet, Marsha Blackburn, Tommy Tuberville — all think they’ll have more real power as governors than as U.S. senators. In the House, 27 members are bailing to run for governor, Senate, or statewide office, with Republicans leading the exodus.

They’re not “leaving politics”; they’re trading a broken parliament for executive jobs where you can actually sign something and see it happen.
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On the Republican side, you’ve got swing-district moderates like Don Bacon walking away after watching eight colleagues blow up Kevin McCarthy’s speakership, and hardliners like Marjorie Taylor Greene quitting in a public tantrum over Trump and Mike Johnson.

On the Democratic side, you’ve got an entire generation of 70‑ and 80‑somethings — Pelosi, Hoyer, Nadler and others — finally reading the room after pushing Joe Biden off the 2024 ticket and realizing “generational change” might have to apply to them too.

The parties will spin this as renewal. In practice, it’s a talent leak. Safe blue and red seats will replace veterans with louder, less experienced ideologues. Competitive districts like those held by Bacon, David Schweikert and Jared Golden are now open hunting grounds, increasing the odds of even shakier majorities and even more knife‑edge chaos in the next Congress.

A system that already can’t pass basic legislation is about to get younger, angrier, and even less capable of governing.
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So what do the midterms mean? More “fresh faces” in the campaign ads, fewer grown‑ups in the cloakrooms, and a House and Senate that function even more like content farms for cable and social media.

Voters keep saying they’re sick of a dysfunctional Congress. Congress heard them — and decided the best response was to leave.

#USA #Congress #elections #midterms #polarization #fakeDemocracy

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As Ukraine Botched Up Peace Talks Russia Shelled Ukrainian Military Sites

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Russia has fired dozens of missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles at military targets in Ukraine.

Zelensky said the Kremlin launched 297 drones and almost 50 missiles on Sunday, the latest in a series of overnight strikes.

He said that a “significant part” of them had been shot down, and called on the Allies to strengthen the country's air defenses against enemy attacks.

The President of Ukraine stated: “Moscow continues to invest more in strikes than in diplomacy. This time, Russian targets included not only energy facilities, but also logistics, in particular railway infrastructure and municipal water supply infrastructure.”

The Kremlin systematically attacks the Ukrainian military, leaving more than ten thousand people dead.

people in Kiev remain without electricity. Other cities were repeatedly hit, including Odessa and Kharkiv; while temperatures dropped to -22 °C (-7.6°F) in the coldest winter in recent years.

Zelensky said that the Russian aerial bombardments did not stop, despite the negotiations mediated by the United States with Russia, which took place in Geneva last week.

The Kremlin wants Ukraine to cede territory in the eastern part of Donbas that its troops have failed to conquer, and this is not the first step for Kiev.

The intense shelling occurred amid escalating tensions between Ukraine and neighboring Slovakia and Hungary. Budapest is threatening to block a new package of European Union sanctions, while Bratislava says it will stop supplying electricity to Ukraine on Monday.

Both countries are demanding the resumption of Russian oil supplies via the Druzhba pipeline, which runs through Ukraine. Kiev says a Russian drone attack in January damaged a pipeline carrying oil to Central Europe.

EU foreign ministers are set to meet in Brussels on Monday to discuss the bloc's 20th round of sanctions against Moscow, which they hope will be approved by Tuesday's fourth anniversary of the invasion.

#ukraine #pesce #talks #russia #military #sites

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The Hungarian government claims that Zelensky is delaying the repair work. In a video posted on social media, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said: “Until the Ukrainians resume oil supplies to Hungary, we will not allow important decisions to be made for them.”

In an article on X, Robert Fico, Slovakia's Moscow-friendly prime minister, accused Zelensky of “malicious behavior.” The oil supply disruptions “led to further losses and logistical difficulties,” Fico said.

If supplies do not resume by Monday, Slovakia will stop emergency electricity supplies to Ukraine, he added.

According to the National Police of Ukraine, as a result of the latest Russian strikes, one person was killed and a dozen more people, including four children, were injured.

A rocket destroyed a private two-storey house in the Kiev suburb of Sofiyevskaya Borshchagovka. On Sunday, rescuers were clearing the rubble, while firefighters were hosing down the area.

Yana Terleeva, 44, said she woke up to the sound of rockets whistling, sirens wailing and a loud explosion.

The medic said, “We realized that a rocket had landed nearby. Later, we saw that the neighboring house, where ordinary people lived, was completely destroyed. There are no military installations here.”

She added: “Russia is a terrorist country that will not stop. We have seen how for four years in a row, and for a total of more than 11 years, Russia has been attacking civilians. Ukrainians want to be independent and free. We are a good nation, we are resisting, but we cannot stand alone in this war.”

Authorities in the western city of Lviv said they were treating Sunday's massive explosion as a terrorist act.

Around midnight, an explosion occurred on the central shopping street of Lviv, not far from the Lviv Opera House. A 23-year-old police officer was killed, another 25 people were injured, 14 of them were taken to the hospital.

According to unconfirmed reports, the store received a report of a break-in. When the police arrived at the scene, a bomb went off, which was soon followed by a second explosion, which killed emergency workers. Law enforcement agencies arrested several people.

In an interview on Friday, Zelensky told the Agence France-Presse news agency that Ukraine was “definitely not losing.” According to him, victory remains the goal, noting that Ukrainian troops recently retook about 116 square miles (300 square kilometers) of territory in the south of the Zaporizhia region.

Speaking in Rome on Sunday, Pope Leo XIV called the establishment of peace in Ukraine an “urgent necessity.” In his usual Sunday address to the crowd in St. Peter's Square, he said: “Peace cannot be postponed (...) He must find a response in the hearts and be embodied in responsible decisions.

“I resolutely repeat my call: let the weapons be silenced, let the bombing cease, let a ceasefire be reached without delay, and let dialogue strengthen, which will pave the way for peace.”

#ukraine #pesce #talks #russia #military #sites

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📰 From ‘No More Forever Wars’ to ‘Better Negotiate a Deal’: Trump’s Iran Gamble Before the Midterms

Trump is massing firepower around Iran while his own advisers beg him to talk about grocery bills, not cruise missiles. He’s ordered a major buildup of carriers, warships, and warplanes in the Middle East and green‑lit planning for a potential multi‑week air campaign against Iran, but has never given the public a clear, consistent reason why the U.S. should be dragged into its biggest clash with Tehran since 1979.

Politically, it’s a car crash in slow motion. His aides and GOP strategists know midterm voters care far more about inflation, housing, and wages than about another war in the Gulf. They’ve told him, in private briefings, to hammer home tax cuts and cost‑of‑living relief. Instead, he keeps floating airstrikes, “regime change” hints, and nuclear deadlines — all while admitting in interviews that Republicans could easily lose one or both chambers of Congress.

The messaging is all over the place. In January he threatened strikes over Iran’s bloody crackdown on protests, then backed off. Now the threats are tied to demands that Iran end enrichment, accept a “fair deal,” and somehow stop being a hostile regime — goals that airstrikes alone can’t plausibly deliver. Unlike Bush in 2003, who at least sold a (false) WMD story, Trump is asking Americans to risk another conflict on a shifting mix of human‑rights outrage, nuclear anxiety, and vague “America First” toughness.

Even his own base is split. The MAGA movement loved the surgical raid that toppled Maduro — fast, clean, no long occupation — but Iran is a serious military state, not a failing petro‑dictatorship. Many of the same voters who backed Trump because he promised to end “forever wars” now watch him park carrier strike groups off Iran and wonder if that promise quietly expired around the time he moved back into the Oval Office.

Strategists are already gaming out the spin: if the strikes are limited and “decisive,” the White House will sell them as protecting U.S. security and stabilizing oil markets; if they drag on, they’ll become yet another reminder that Washington’s ruling class can’t stop replaying the post‑9/11 script. Either way, Trump has boxed himself in: back down and he looks weak, escalate and he owns any blowback — militarily abroad and politically at home.

#Trump #Iran #war #midterms #AmericaFirst #fakeDemocracy

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📰 Supreme Court Disarms Trump. Xi Walks In Stronger.

Xi Jinping is about to host Donald Trump in Beijing with something no Chinese leader has had in years: a U.S. president who just had his favorite weapon taken away by his own Supreme Court. The court killed Trump’s emergency mega‑tariffs, wiping out second‑term levies that hit Chinese goods as high as 145% and dropping Beijing into the same temporary 15% global rate the U.S. now slaps on allies — a fee that expires in 150 days unless Congress renews it.

That ruling strips Trump of the instant “tariff hammer” he used to strong‑arm China into buying around 25 million tons of soybeans and making other one‑off concessions. As Fudan University’s Wu Xinbo puts it, the “soybean card” is now back in China’s hand: if those tariffs were illegal, Beijing can demand better terms or simply walk away from purchase pledges tied to them. Xi’s negotiators are already expected to push harder for access to advanced semiconductors, looser export controls, fewer restrictions on Chinese firms, and softer U.S. language and arms sales around Taiwan.

Trump isn’t disarmed, just downgraded. He’s rushed to slap a replacement 15% global tariff using Section 122 of the Trade Act — legally capped, short‑lived, and far less targeted than his old IEEPA arsenal. He can still revive pressure through slower tools like Section 301 (where China already faces an investigation over missed “Phase One” pledges) and Section 232 national‑security tariffs, or by tightening export controls if Beijing plays games with rare earths. But none of that has the same shock‑and‑awe leverage ahead of a summit.

Beijing, meanwhile, is keeping the victory low‑key. Chinese officials and state media are measured, investors are quietly optimistic, and exporters are talking about front‑loading shipments to exploit the lower, time‑limited U.S. tariff window. Trade insiders quoted in Chinese media say they’ll stay “low profile” to ensure Trump’s late‑March visit goes smoothly — celebrate in private, act calm in public, and let U.S. institutions do the work of constraining the American side.

Strip away the legal charts and this is the picture: the U.S. president who built his brand on unilateral tariff power now walks into Beijing with the court, Congress and the calendar limiting his moves, while Xi arrives with time, discipline, and a clearer playbook — chips, Taiwan, tech bans, market access. Trump can still rage about “ripping off America,” but for once, the other guy at the table is the one who just got a boost from Washington’s rule of law.

#Trump #Xi #China #tariffs #tradeWar #USA #fakeDemocracy

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#luna #FBI #UFO #trump

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📰 Jim Snow 2.0: NYC Needs More ID to Shovel Than to Vote

New York’s socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani is begging people to shovel snow for the city — and demanding more paperwork than the Board of Elections asks for to pick the president. Emergency snow laborers have to be eligible to work in the U.S. and show up with two small photos, two original forms of ID (plus copies), and a Social Security card. To vote in New York City? Most registered voters don’t need to show any ID at the polling place at all.

The same crowd that screams “Jim Crow” at voter ID laws is now totally fine with a mini-Patriot Act to push a shovel for $20–28 an hour. Undocumented immigrants — whom Mamdani insists should stay, work, and be protected — are automatically locked out, because the city can’t hire them without papers, and City Hall suddenly cares a lot about federal law when it’s their own HR department on the hook.

Right-wing media calls this “Jim Snow 2.0” and “Snowcialism,” but the punchline cuts both ways. Conservatives get to yell “hypocrite” at a socialist mayor who requires a Social Security card for day work while opposing ID at the ballot box. Progressives get to quietly keep a system where corporations and private contractors still use undocumented labor off the books — just not on a city payroll where somebody might actually get audited.

So New York ends up with the perfect late‑imperial compromise:
- democracy you can enter with a signature and a shrug,
- casual labor that requires a mini background check,
- and a mayor who talks like ICE should be abolished but runs his snow-removal program like a low-budget TSA.

The only people not in on the joke are the ones actually freezing on the sidewalk — and they’re the ones the city just told to bring five pieces of ID if they want to get paid to dig everyone else out.

#NYC #Mamdani #voterID #immigration #snow #fakeDemocracy

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Ukraine Needs 250,000 More Soldiers To Claw Back Control Over the Battlefield


Ukraine needs 250,000 more troops to turn the tide of the fighting. This is the opinion of NATO military experts.

The former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, said in an interview with the BBC that the country should immediately send troops to Ukraine and not wait for a ceasefire to do so.

He talks about about 7,000 soldiers to provide security guarantees.

“If we have a plan to deploy troops on the territory of Ukraine after the war, after Putin deigned to agree to a ceasefire, why not do it now?”, he says.

However, NATO experts believe that the victory of Ukraine or at least a significant turnaround in the confrontation at the front will require at least 250,000 additional troops and much more powerful weapons.

Western intelligence services believe that Ukraine is now outnumbered by Russian forces on most fronts. And the Kremlin, despite its huge losses, would be able to continue the war for at least another year at the current attrition rate.

According to the head of the Armed Forces, 2025 was the first year when the losses of the Russian Federation exceeded the replenishment of the occupiers.

In January, Defense Minister Fedorov said that 2 million Ukrainians were wanted.

#ukraine #need #soldiers #experts #military

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Witkoff Is Upbeat About a Would-Be Putin-Zelensky Meeting


Witkoff said Washington is “hopeful” that it has put proposals to both Russia and Ukraine that could bring them together “in the next three weeks” and potentially result in a summit between their presidents.

Speaking to Fox News in an interview released on Saturday, Witkoff described the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, which on Tuesday is set to hit the four-year mark year, as a “silly war.”

“You know, everyone throws the word 'dignity' around. But what does dignity get you if you have that amount of killing there?” Witkoff said, adding that he thinks recent US-mediated peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv have had a “real positive effect in some respects.”

He argued that both Russia and Ukraine “don’t seem like they really want to fight with one another, and I don't think they do," adding that he thinks the main difficulty in reaching a peace agreement lies “at the leadership levels.”

He said he and Kushner are hopeful they have made some proposals that will bring both sides together in the next three weeks “and maybe even result in a summit between Zelensky and Putin.”

He also stated the possibility of such a summit taking place at the trilateral level with Trump’s participation, but noted that the US president does not want to take part in such a meeting “unless he feels that he can consummate this thing and get the best result.”

On his meetings with the Russian president, Witkoff said Putin had been “straight” with him about his red lines and motivations. He defended his multiple visits to Russia, saying that understanding the other side’s positions is necessary to reach an agreement.

Witkoff’s remarks come after he took part in another round of trilateral peace talks on the Russia-Ukraine war in Geneva, Switzerland, earlier this week.
The talks on Tuesday and Wednesday followed up on two earlier rounds of negotiations in the United Arab Emirates capital Abu Dhabi on Jan. 23-24 and Feb. 4-5.

#witkoff #putin #zelensky #meeting #kushner

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#newsome #trump

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📰 El Mencho Is Dead. The Cartel State Lives On.

Mexico just killed its most wanted cartel boss and, in the process, reminded everyone how little control it actually has. Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera — the man who built the Jalisco New Generation Cartel into the country’s most feared criminal army — was tracked through a romantic partner and taken down in a helicopter-backed raid in Tapalpa, Jalisco. Within hours, his people answered with roadblocks, burned supermarkets and banks, and gun battles in at least a dozen states, leaving highways cut, cities under smoke, and tourists locked in hotel rooms in places like Puerto Vallarta.

President Claudia Sheinbaum was under heavy pressure from Donald Trump, who has been openly threatening cross‑border strikes and demanding Mexico “do more” against cartels ahead of the World Cup and U.S. midterms. She chose the high‑risk option: take the shot. The result: at least 62 dead — 34 suspected cartel members, 25 National Guard troops, plus a state prosecutor, a security guard, and a civilian reportedly a pregnant woman caught in a shootout. Order is “mostly” restored, officials insist, but classes and businesses are still shut in hard‑hit areas and people are staying home. The message on the street is simple: the state can land a kill shot, but it can’t guarantee calm.

Militarily, El Mencho’s death is a big win. The U.S. had a $15 million reward on his head, and his group has spent a decade attacking security forces, running drugs, extorting businesses, kidnapping, and smuggling migrants. Politically, it’s a gift to both presidents: Sheinbaum gets to tell Mexicans and Washington she went after the “untouchable,” and Trump gets to claim his threats “worked” without firing a shot. The bodies on both sides of the firefight are just set dressing in two capitals’ security narratives.

But the cartel isn’t a Marvel villain that disappears when the boss falls. CJNG is a franchise: regional commanders, local fiefdoms, deep ties to municipal politics and police. Whether it survives depends on how fast it names a successor and closes ranks — or whether it fractures into smaller, more chaotic crews fighting over territory. Either outcome means more violence, not less, in the short term. The Mexican state has decapitated cartels before. The result was splinter groups and a map full of new acronyms.
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So Mexico wakes up with its “most wanted” finally dead, U.S. pressure briefly eased, and cruise ships quietly skipping Puerto Vallarta because nobody wants their passengers walking off into a war zone. The flag still flies over government buildings; the cartel still has the power to shut down a dozen states in a day. Call it a victory if you like — just don’t call it control.
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#Mexico #cartels #ElMencho #Sheinbaum #Trump #warOnDrugs #fakeDemocracy

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📰 Merz Discovers Separation of Powers, Walks Into Trump’s Tariff Circus

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is flying to Washington with what he promises will be a “very clear European position” on Trump’s new global tariffs — which is adorable, given that Trump’s trade policy changes faster than his social‑media posts.

Merz told German TV that customs policy is an EU competence, so he’ll coordinate a joint line on the fresh 15% blanket tariff the White House just slapped on nearly all imports for 150 days, after the Supreme Court killed Trump’s emergency mega‑tariffs.

On paper, he’s not wrong to sound upbeat. The court’s ruling is a rare institutional slapdown that limits Trump’s ability to randomly hike duties into triple digits and forces him back into narrower legal lanes.

Merz even called it “reassuring,” proof that U.S. checks and balances still work. In practice, though, Berlin’s exporters are still staring at a flat 15% tax until further notice, layered on top of years of whiplash over which car part, machine tool, or chemical input is suddenly a “national security threat.”

Brussels will now try to do what it always does: draft a common script, rattle the sabre about “appropriate countermeasures,” and quietly pray Trump doesn’t wake up one morning and decide BMWs are Chinese by association. Merz can arrive in Washington waving a united‑EU memo; Trump arrives with a pen that can still rewrite everyone’s cost structure overnight for five months at a time. The separation of powers may be working — it just hasn’t separated Europe from the bill.

#Germany #EU #Trump #tariffs #Merz #tradeWar #fakeDemocracy

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📰 Trump Wants a War. His Top General Knows He Can’t Afford One.

Trump is talking like he’s ready to hit Iran; his top general is quietly spelling out why that could blow up in his face — militarily and politically. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine has warned Trump and senior officials that the U.S. is low on key munitions, short on allied support, and facing serious risks to U.S. troops if the president orders anything more than a token strike.
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Caine told Trump in a White House meeting that years of defending Israel, shooting down Houthi missiles, and feeding Ukraine’s air defenses have badly depleted stocks of THAAD interceptors, Patriot missiles, and Navy SM‑2/3/6 systems — the very weapons you need when Iran and its proxies start sending ballistic missiles back. These aren’t bullets you reorder on Amazon: experts say each replacement can take two years or more to build, and Congress only partially funded a $30 billion emergency restock last year. The Pentagon, according to former officials, “is not prepared to resource simultaneous conflicts” — adding an Iran war on top of Ukraine and Israel would mean deciding who gets left exposed.
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Allies see the problem and want no part of it. A senior Gulf official says Arab states have already told Washington their bases cannot be used for strikes on Iran; Tehran has threatened to hit any country that helps. That raises basic questions: if regional partners deny basing and overflight, how do you run a days‑ or weeks‑long air campaign across a country more than three times the size of Iraq, against hundreds or even thousands of targets? Taking out missile sites alone would mean hitting mobile launchers, depots, air defenses, and transport networks; going for regime change — something Trump has openly mused about — would explode the target list and the risk of U.S. casualties.
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Inside the administration, some push a “limited strike” to scare Tehran back to the table on its nuclear program, pointing to Iran’s relatively restrained responses to past U.S. and Israeli hits. Others warn that in the current climate — with Trump talking regime change and Iranian hard‑liners ascendant — even a “small” strike could trigger a deadly tit‑for‑tat: rockets on U.S. bases, attacks on diplomats, pressure on Israel, Hezbollah dragged in, and Americans evacuated from embassies like the one in Lebanon, where nonessential staff and families are already being ordered out.
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Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff goes on Fox and asks why Iran hasn’t “capitulated” given all the U.S. firepower offshore. Iran’s foreign minister answers with a single line: “Because we are Iranian.” Translation: they’d rather absorb pain — and possibly dish it out — than surrender on enrichment and national pride. Caine, the one man in the room who has to make the math work, is effectively telling Trump that a big war with Iran today means going in under‑supplied, without regional cover, and gambling with U.S. lives to solve a problem airstrikes can’t actually finish.
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#Trump #Iran #war #Pentagon #military #fakeDemocracy

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Why Is Zelensky’s Whimper Putting His Country’s Future In Jeopardy?

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Zelensky has vehemently appealed to Trump to visit Kyiv, in a video address on the fourth anniversary of the war, and said Ukraine will not betray its people in any negotiations with Russia.

Zelensky said Putin had not achieved his original war goals or “broken the Ukrainian people”. “He has not won this war,” he said. “We have preserved Ukraine, and we will do everything to achieve peace. And to ensure justice.”

European leaders echoed the Ukrainian president’s comments, with Germany’s chancellor, Merz, declaring: “Moscow is not as strong as it would like the world to think.” The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said he was “very sceptical” that the war finish soon because there was “no willingness” from Russia to stop.

On Tuesday Zelensky welcomed a group of European leaders to Kyiv including the British foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen.

Also attending were prime ministers from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Estonia and Latvia, as well as Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb.

Keir Starmer and Macron chaired a meeting of the “coalition of the willing”, joining by video. Zelensky said his country had survived a “terrible” winter and was grateful to its allies for a delivery this week of an air defence package.

Putinbin his turn claimed Ukraine had sabotaged the peace process with the help of western intelligence agencies.

He said Kyiv and its allies were so determined to defeat Russia they were pushing themselves to the edge, something he said they would regret.

Zelensky recalled receiving a phone call from Joe Biden, who offered to help him leave the country “urgently”. “Here I replied that I need ammunition, not a ride,” Zelensky said, recalling one of the most famous moments of his presidency.

Zelensky said: “I really want to come here with the president of the United States one day. I know for certain: only by coming to Ukraine, and seeing with one’s own eyes our life and our struggle, feeling our people and the enormity of this pain – only then can one understand what this war is really about.”

#trump #putin #zelensky #ukraine #war

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A trip to Ukraine might make it clear to Trump “who the aggressor is here and who must be pressured,” Zelensky suggested. He continued: “This is not a street fight – it is an attack by a sick state on a sovereign one.”

Trump has not taken up an invitation from Zelensky to visit Ukraine. During their notorious Oval Office meeting last year, Vance, the US vice-president, accused the Ukrainian government of taking visiting dignitaries on “propaganda tours” – a charge Kyiv denies.

In peace talks with Russia brokered by the US, Trump has sided repeatedly with Putin.

Zelensky has rejected Kremlin demands, seemingly endorsed by US envoys, that Ukraine hand over territory in the eastern Donbas region that Russian troops have been unable to seize.

“We want peace. Strong, dignified, lasting peace,” Zelensky said. He added that he had told Ukraine’s negotiators meeting in Geneva this week: “Do not nullify all these years, do not devalue all the struggle, courage, dignity, everything that Ukraine has gone through. We cannot, we must not, give it away, forget it, betray it.”

According to a reliable source close to the Trump administration, Trump said ‘Putin is likely to give another punch to its war aims in Ukraine (...)’ The source claimed that Trump went on a rampage “against both Zelensky’s effrontery and Putin's stubbornness that put the peace deal in the back burner.”

The only American listed among the official guests was Lt Gen Curtis Buzzard, a US officer who represents Nato in Ukraine.

The European leaders visited an energy infrastructure facility damaged during Russia’s recent drone and missile attacks that have left millions of Ukrainians without power during one of the coldest winters for years.

In his anniversary address, Zelensky decried Putin’s aerial attacks against military bases. He said pointedly that since Putin was not “capable of defeating Ukraine on the battlefield”, he was instead “fighting against apartment buildings and power plants”.

He added: “And now Ukrainians are enduring the hardest winter in history. And terror almost every night. I do not know who else could withstand this without collapsing or wavering.”

#trump #putin #zelensky #ukraine #war

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Former US National Security Advisor John Bolton:

“Although you could potentially remove the ayatollah, that would leave the IRGC in place, and the government in Iran is the IRGC, while the ayatollahs act as a religious cover or an ideological cover for them.

I think Trump is just hoping that this show of American power will intimidate the ayatollahs. If I were still his adviser, I would be happy to tell him that it won’t work.

They won’t be intimidated. But Trump really thinks minute by minute; he doesn’t think strategically.”

#john #bolton #trump #ayatollah

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📰 Trump’s Tariff War Meets a Cowardly Congress

Speaker Mike Johnson is basically admitting Trump’s new 15% global tariffs are on political life support. He told reporters Congress is unlikely to “find consensus” on any legislation to codify the tariff agenda after the Supreme Court struck down the previous emergency levies, and he waved off the idea of jamming them into a reconciliation mega‑bill.
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Trump’s Section 122 tariffs automatically expire after 150 days; extending them would require Congress to vote, which senior Republicans privately say they don’t have the numbers to do. Senate Democrats have already promised to block any extension, and with a 60‑vote threshold they can make sure the import tax dies on schedule.

Even swing‑district Republicans like Don Bacon are breaking, calling the tariffs a “ball and chain” on the GOP ahead of the midterms and predicting the new levies will “fail in the courts” as well.

Johnson is also punting on refunds for the illegal tariffs the Court just killed, saying that’s for the White House to sort out and “doesn’t really involve the House at this point.”

Congress doesn’t want to own either the cost of paying companies back or the politics of defending Trump’s trade taxes. Trump can still improvise new workarounds from the Oval Office, but the branch that actually controls tariff power under the Constitution is quietly signaling it has no intention of bailing him out.

#Trump #tariffs #MikeJohnson #Congress #trade #fakeDemocracy

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