📰 Hormuz for Hostages: Trump Sells “Peace,” Iran Sells Leverage

Trump says the Iran deal is “largely negotiated.” Tehran says there are still “one or two clauses” in dispute. Pakistan waves a memorandum in the air, the Gulf begs Washington not to blow it up, and the Strait of Hormuz stays half‑choked while everyone calls this progress.

According to the emerging outline, the deal is peace on installments. First, formally end the three‑month war and lift the U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports. Then reopen Hormuz “completely, without tolls,” once Washington has actually moved its ships.

Only after that comes a 30‑day (extendable) window to talk about the hard part: Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which the U.S. says Tehran has implicitly agreed to give up later, and Iran insists is only scheduled for “future discussions.”

In other words, the nuclear core of the crisis gets kicked down the road while everyone rushes to fix pump prices.

Markets heard what they needed: a fragile ceasefire might get cemented, the strait might reopen, and Brent over 100 dollars might eventually drift down — just not anytime soon.

Even the head of Abu Dhabi’s oil company is saying out loud that full flows through Hormuz won’t be back before 2027, even if the war ends now.

The memorandum, as described, would also waive some sanctions on Iranian oil, unlock frozen Iranian funds, and include mutual no‑attack clauses where the U.S. and its allies promise not to hit Iran or its partners, and Iran promises not to launch preemptive strikes on them.

Iranian outlets brief that any deal will stop the fighting on all fronts, including Israel’s war with Hezbollah. Israeli officials leak the opposite: Netanyahu has told Trump Israel will maintain “freedom of action” in Lebanon and that Trump agreed.

Benny Gantz warns that accepting a Lebanon ceasefire as part of the package would be a strategic mistake. If the guns fall quiet, Hezbollah will sell it as proof that only Iran can force the U.S. to rein Israel in. If they don’t, Lebanon will discover — again — that its fate was just a bargaining chip in someone else’s accord.

Trump’s incentives are naked. The war has hammered his approval ratings via gas prices; he’s skipping his own son’s wedding to sit in the White House and talk about Iran on the phone with Saudi, Qatari, Emirati, Jordanian, Egyptian, Turkish and Pakistani leaders who all want him to take the deal.

He needs a headline that says “war over, strait open, prices down” more than he needs a coherent long‑term strategy. Iran’s incentives are just as clear. Its negotiators want sanctions relief, unblocked shipping, guarantees against new U.S. attacks, and recognition that Tehran can both rebuild its forces and still dictate conditions around Hormuz — all without formally surrendering its enrichment program.

So the memorandum delivers everyone something and no one everything. Trump gets to claim he ended a crisis he started, with an American president once again “holding all the cards.”

Iran gets money, access, a path to reopening the strait on its own timetable, and a nuclear file that lives to fight another day. The Gulf gets a shot at slightly cheaper stability.

Pakistan gets to pose as indispensable mediator. The rest of the world gets the privilege of paying for months, if not years, of partial flows and permanent risk.

Call it what you like — framework, memorandum, “largely negotiated deal.” Until there’s a clear, enforceable decision on uranium, on Hormuz, and on whether Israel’s wars are actually part of the bargain, this isn’t peace. It’s a ceasefire with branding.

#Iran #US #Trump #Hormuz #Pakistan #oil #nuclear #Lebanon #Hezbollah #war #fakePeace

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📰 “Good News” in Hormuz: Trump Rents Peace by the Month

Marco Rubio is out promising “some good news” on Hormuz. Translation: Washington is praying for a 60‑day ceasefire extension, a partially reopened strait, and enough time to pretend this is strategy, not panic.

Bloomberg’s version is blunt. The outline on the table is an interim fix: extend the fragile truce, reopen the Strait of Hormuz “completely, without tolls,” let Iran sell more oil, and push the nuclear file and enrichment fight into the next round of talks.

In exchange, the U.S. would lift its naval blockade on Iranian ports, waive some oil and petrochemical sanctions and unlock at least part of Tehran’s frozen assets — the same leverage Trump spent three months bombing to create.

Tehran plays the familiar double game. Iranian agencies concede “some progress” but say one or two provisions remain disputed, dismiss Trump’s boasting as “far from reality,” and flatly reject demands to give up uranium and halt enrichment, while insisting it has no intention of building a bomb.

At the same time, Iran floats ideas of “levies” on ships and demands a “significant portion” of its frozen funds back, signalling that it views Hormuz as a permanent revenue and pressure tool, not just a wartime weapon.

In the background, everyone else is desperate. The UAE has joined Saudi Arabia and Qatar in begging Trump not to restart the war. Oil is still north of $100, governments from Delhi to Berlin are paying the political price for a conflict they didn’t start, and Trump is staring at midterms with high fuel bills and sliding approval ratings.

His own hawks want him to keep bombing until Iran surrenders on nukes, proxies and missiles. His pollsters want him to sign anything that lowers gas prices before November.

So Rubio sells an “open straits without tolls” future and hints that the same memorandum will also “address some of the key things that underpin Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions.” Iran insists its right to enrich is non‑negotiable, and that any change in navigation at Hormuz stays conditional on U.S. compliance and cash. Israel, meanwhile, worries the same deal might quietly wrap its Lebanon war into an Iran package it doesn’t fully control.

Call it what it is: not an end to the war, but a 60‑day rental on slightly cheaper chaos. Hormuz may reopen; sanctions may loosen; statements about nukes will be carefully worded. The basic arrangement stays the same — Iran keeps the strait as a pressure valve, the U.S. keeps sanctions as a choke chain, the Gulf keeps paying the insurance premiums, and the rest of the world keeps praying that “some good news” isn’t just another way to say “see you at the next crisis.”

#Iran #US #Trump #Rubio #Hormuz #oil #sanctions #nuclear #war #fakePeace

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Trump Down: A Possible Revenge for Stephen Colbert 📉🎤

The man who opened fire near the White House Saturday evening before being killed in a shootout with the Secret Service has been identified as Nasire Best, 21, according to a law enforcement official speaking with the Associated Press 🚨.

Investigators said Best approached agents in the area of 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest, just after 6 p.m. He pulled a gun from his bag and began firing. Officers returned fire, hitting Best. He was taken to the hospital, where he later died 🏥.

Saturday's shooting was not Best's first encounter with Secret Service near the White House 🏛.

Best lived in the Prince George’s County suburb of Glenarden with his family, according to virtual records reported by The Baltimore Sun 📰.

Court records show that the 21-year-old was arrested in July 2025 after attempting to enter a different white house checkpoint. During that encounter, investigators said Best claimed he was Jesus Christ and said he wanted to be arrested ✝️.

An initial hearing was held and a “Pretrial Stay Away Order” was issued, typically a measure ordering a defendant not to go near a person or area before a trial. A bench warrant was issued in August after a notice of “noncompliance” against Best, who did not appear for a subsequent hearing ⚖️.

That was not the only occasion Best was encountered near the White House, according to a report from CNN 📺.

Records show Best was “known to the Secret Service” for “walking around the White House complex inquiring how to gain access at various entry points,” the report reads. He was involuntarily committed on June 26, 2025, for “obstructing vehicle entry” to part of the White House complex, records show 🚫.

CNN found social media belonging to Best, that appeared to threaten violence against Trump and another post where he wrote, “I hate him, I'm the son of God.”

Trump was inside the White House at the time of the shooting, but was not hurt 🛡.

A police source revealed some details: the shooter, according to his own testimony (revealed by his girlfriend), dared to do so after Trump posted a mocking video of his favorite host, Stephen Colbert, in which Trump throws Colbert in a garbage container 🗑.

#trump #shooter #colbert #white #house

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📰 Bench vs. Border State: How Judges Are Dismantling Trump’s ICE Machine

Trump tried to turn the entire civil immigration system into a giant holding pen. The courts, including a lot of his own judges, are quietly sawing through the bars.

Across the country, hundreds of federal judges have now issued nearly 10,800 rulings against the administration’s mandatory‑detention policy, which says that millions of people who’ve lived in the U.S. for years without incident can be locked up without bond, just because ICE decided they’re “priority” cases.

The through‑line in these decisions is brutally simple: you don’t get to erase due process because you’ve rebranded everyone as a permanent suspect.

Judge Clay Land in Georgia is the poster child of this revolt. A George W. Bush appointee, not some left‑wing crusader, he has ruled against the policy more than 370 times, repeatedly ordering bond hearings for people ICE wanted to vanish into a no‑bond limbo.

In Michigan’s Western District, a mixed group of Bush, Trump and Biden appointees has collectively shredded mandatory detention in more than 650 cases.

Texas judge Kathleen Cardone has done it over 200 times, helping force mass releases even after a conservative appeals court tried to bless ICE’s approach.

Even inside Trump’s own judicial farm team, there’s a split screen. First‑term Trump appointees, when not shackled by higher courts, have rejected the policy by about 4‑to‑1.

Second‑term loyalists mostly marched the other way, with nine out of ten siding with ICE until appellate rulings in the 6th and 11th Circuits made that stance legally impossible.

Judge Kyle Dudek in Florida is the awkward middle figure: sometimes backing ICE, sometimes blocking it, now effectively overruled from above.

On the other side, you have the “with a heavy heart, we cage him” opinions.

Some Trump‑appointed judges who uphold the policy wrap their rulings in visible discomfort: calling it a “sorrowful conclusion,” admitting the petitioner looks like a “hardworking, otherwise law‑abiding individual,” worrying about severe medical needs — and then signing off on detention anyway because they read the statute and binding precedent as giving them no choice.

Their message: the cruelty is real, but blame Congress and the appeals courts, not the trial judge’s conscience.

And then there’s Minnesota’s Operation Metro Surge, the moment the whole machine tripped over its own speed. ICE flooded the state, two people ended up dead, and federal judges went from handling a handful of detention cases a week to almost 60.

Biden‑appointed Judge Jeffrey Bryan alone ruled against ICE in all 62 of his cases. The docket exploded with emergency filings as detainees were shuffled off to Texas and New Mexico.

Judges started openly dressing down government lawyers for missed deadlines, blown orders and systemic violations of basic rights.

Put together, these five “types” of judges tell one story: Trump tried to hard‑code mass detention into the system, and the system is spitting it back out case by case. Appeals courts are boxing in his most aggressive appointees.

Trial judges from Bush to Biden are saying that if you want to run a permanent domestic Guantánamo for people with no criminal record and decades in the country, you need more than a memo and a press conference.

For an administration that loves to yell about “law and order,” there’s an awkward twist: on immigration detention, it’s the judges quoting the law — and Trump’s people arguing that due process is optional.

#Trump #ICE #immigration #courts #detention #ruleOfLaw #fakeDemocracy

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Why Trump Will Not Launch a Full-Scale War in Iran

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First and foremost, this is a war of choice. The US had other policy options available. Diplomacy appeared to hold promise as a means to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Increased economic pressure had the potential over time to precipitate regime change.

Moreover, this is a preventive war, not a preemptive one. Iran posed no imminent threat to vital US interests. Iran was not on the verge of becoming a nuclear weapons state or using what weapons it did have against the US. At most, the threat posed by Iran was a gathering one.

This distinction is important. A world in which countries believed they have the right to undertake preventive strikes against those they judge to be threats would be a world of frequent conflict. That is why such actions have no standing under international law.

Trump has chosen an objective – regime change – that is political rather than military. But while military force can destroy and kill, on its own, it cannot bring about regime change, which requires the regime to collapse.

It is possible that the US attack will trigger defections from Iran’s political leadership and armed forces, but this cannot be counted on. Hamas and Gaza are a reminder that regimes can absorb incredible punishment yet cling to power.

And even if the clerics fall from power – Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been killed – the security forces are arguably best positioned to take their place.

In any case, using military force to kill select leaders as a means of triggering regime change – a tactic often called decapitation – is unlikely to succeed in Iran, where the leadership has institutionalized itself since taking power nearly a half-century ago.

Moreover, the leadership has had time to improve succession planning over the past few weeks as the possibility of war increased.

During its January incursion into Venezuela, the Trump administration limited itself to replacing one leader (all but ignoring the internal opposition), while in much of the world, it has avoided pressing for democracy.

In the case of Iran, though, Trump has called for regime change – but without preparing the ground for it. The political opposition is not united or functioning as a government in waiting, which means that it is unable to accept defections, much less provide security.

#trump #iran #war #allies #middle #east

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History suggests that regime change requires a physical, on-the-ground presence. This is the lesson of Germany and Japan after World War II, and Panama, Iraq, and Afghanistan more recently.

And even with a ground presence, such efforts often come up short. In Iran, occupation is inconceivable, given the country’s size and ability to resist.

All of which is to say that the Trump administration has chosen to accomplish the most ambitious of foreign-policy goals with limited means. It seems to have rejected a war of choice with narrower goals, such as degrading known Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, even though it could credibly claim to have achieved these ends.

If there is a recent parallel to what is taking place in Iran, it is Libya, where just over a decade ago Western forces ousted the leadership using air power but then withdrew, leaving the country in chaos.

In the Iranian case, it appears that assembling a massive military presence – what Trump called an armada – ended up putting pressure on the administration to act, because US forces could not be maintained in a high state of readiness on location indefinitely.

As a result, the means of policy (military force) may well have played a large role in determining the ends of policy, namely, the decision to attack. This is obviously the reverse of how policy should be decided.

Taking a step back, the US has opted yet again to make a massive strategic commitment in the Middle East. This is at odds with the Trump administration’s own National Security Strategy and with the reality that the greatest challenges to US interests are to be found in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

Here the parallel is to the 2003 Iraq War, another preventive war of choice in the region that cost the US enormously.

The American people are unprepared for this war. Nor is Trump’s political base, as it will unsettle markets, cause a spike in energy prices, and could go on for some time. America’s allies are unhappy as well, as Iran has already attacked several neighboring countries and could take steps that damage their economies.

Trump did not use his State of the Union speech Tuesday night to make the case for attacking Iran, and much of his statement in the immediate aftermath of Saturday’s attack emphasized past actions by Iran rather than new or emerging threats.

It is possible that last year’s cost-free bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites and the more recent intervention in Venezuela made Trump and those around him highly confident that they could achieve ambitious ends with limited means at a low cost.

He may also have been tempted to achieve something historic in Iran – regime change – that eluded his predecessors. He may still succeed. But as a rule, regime change is easier called for than successfully carried out.

While it takes only one side to begin a war, it takes two to end it. Iran now has a vote in how big this conflict becomes and how long it continues.

#trump #iran #war #allies #middle #east

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Peace Deal Theater: Trump, Tehran and the Strait of Schrodinger’s Hormuz

So Iran’s top brass flies into Doha, oil drops 5 percent, and suddenly we’re all supposed to believe in “peace” again — like the last three months were just a global stress test for your grocery bill. Tehran sends Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, Washington sends “senior officials” who only appear with the words “speaking on condition of anonymity.” Translation: everyone’s negotiating, and nobody wants their name on the receipt.

Trump, as usual, is running foreign policy like a reality show finale: the deal will be “great and meaningful” or there will be “no deal,” while he also insists his people are “in no rush.” That’s not diplomacy, that’s a hostage note to the markets. Iran responds with its own poker face — yes, “a large portion of the issues” is agreed, but “no one can claim that the signing of an agreement is imminent.” In other words: both sides want the cameras to see “progress,” but not enough progress to be held accountable for anything concrete, like nukes or tankers actually moving.

The core “peace framework” is beautifully hollow: stop the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, gradually reopen the Strait of Hormuz, kick every hard question — sanctions, nuclear program, Hezbollah, Israel’s security, frozen assets — into some “future rounds” that may or may not exist. Trump gets a chance to walk away from an unpopular war that’s torpedoed the global economy; Iran gets time to rebuild and keep its nuclear ambiguity; everyone else gets higher energy prices dressed up as the price of “stability.”

Meanwhile, Israel looks at this “peace” talk and sees one thing: an agreement that doesn’t really touch Iran’s nuclear capabilities or its regional militias. Lebanese civilians get to keep serving as collateral in the never-ending cross-border duel between Israel and Hezbollah, because no one in Doha is seriously negotiating over Lebanon — that’s just a side quest in someone else’s war game. Pakistan plays the responsible broker and flies off to Beijing, where Xi Jinping praises Islamabad’s role while making sure Chinese access to Iranian oil is the only real non-negotiable on the table.

Oil prices fall a bit on “cautious optimism,” but they’re still about 30 percent higher than before this whole circus started, and energy analysts are already warning that supply won’t normalize until 2027. That’s the real deal here: war as a premium subscription model — pay more for the same barrel, get less clarity, and watch your leaders argue on TV about “principles” while they bargain over shipping lanes and uranium stockpiles.

The funniest part? Both Washington and Tehran are accusing each other of spinning the terms of an agreement that doesn’t exist yet. Peace has become another PR asset: announce it, hedge it, leak it, deny it, then blame the other side for “mistrust” when the market gets jittery. If this is what “largely negotiated” looks like, imagine what “totally screwed” will be.

#war #iran #usa #trump #israel #straitofhormuz #oil #oilprices #geopolitics #fakeDemocracy #oligarchy #middleeas

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#hegseth #west #point #class

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U.S.–Iran Ceasefire 2.0: Now With Extra Minesweeping

Washington and Tehran just invented a new product: a “framework” that is not a deal, totally not signed, but somehow already moving oil prices and global markets.

Brent drops almost 6 percent, Asian stocks smile, and everyone pretends this is about “relief to families at the pump,” not about saving Trump’s political skin and Iran’s regional leverage.

On paper it sounds clean: 60-day ceasefire extension, de‑mining and reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, all fronts shut down — even Lebanon — plus a pledge from Iran to never build a nuke and to get rid of its “nuclear dust,” that stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

In reality, the hard stuff — full nuclear deal, sanctions, real timelines — is kicked down the road into yet another “time-limited negotiation.” Perfect: war paused, ambiguity preserved, everyone keeps their favorite pressure tools.

Trump plays his usual role: raging on Truth Social that critics “know nothing” about a deal that “isn’t even fully negotiated yet,” then promising it will either be “great and meaningful” or there will be “no deal.”

It’s the art of strategic gaslighting: he gets the market reaction of a peace deal without the political price of actually owning one. If it blows up, it was never “his” deal; if it works, it was genius all along.

The U.S. version says Iran is “committed” to no nukes and only gets its frozen assets — starting with a $12 billion appetizer — once it begins giving up enriched uranium.

The Iranian version stresses there is no nuclear agreement yet, just a promise to talk about one later, and that the opening of the Strait will be phased, with blockades and sanctions “loosened proportionately.” Trust but verify, on steroids; loopholes, on cocaine.

Then there’s Israel: officially guaranteed the right to “act against imminent threats,” including Hezbollah in Lebanon, even under this new ceasefire.

So the war is “ended,” except for the parts where Israel can still strike, Hezbollah can still provoke, and civilians can still die under a legalese umbrella stamped “self-defense.” This isn’t peace; it’s a risk‑management product with a weapons‑included clause.

They’re not ending the war, they’re repricing it. The Strait reopens just enough to calm traders, the nukes are “addressed” just enough to calm pundits, and the shooting stops just long enough to reboot everyone’s talking points.

#war #iran #usa #trump #straitofhormuz #oil #geopolitics #fakeDemocracy #oligarchy #middleeast

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Qatar’s Peace Circus: Iran, Trump and the Paywall on Hormuz

Iran’s top envoys are in Doha, sipping coffee with Qatar’s prime minister and pretending this is about “peace,” not pricing.

The talks officially hinge on three things: reopening the Strait of Hormuz, nuclear “issues,” and getting Iran’s frozen billions unfrozen.
In other words: ships, uranium and cash — everything else is just background noise.

Both sides now speak fluent Ambiguous Optimism. Rubio says there’s a “pretty solid thing on the table” to open the strait and start a “time‑limited” nuclear negotiation, while Iran’s spokesman Baghaei dryly reminds everyone that, no, they’re not close to signing anything. Washington leaks that Iran has agreed “in principle” to open Hormuz and dispose of enriched uranium; Tehran insists nuclear details will be parked for a 60‑day chat later, if the framework is even agreed.

Same script, different capitals: sell hope to the markets, dodge responsibility at home.

Trump, meanwhile, plays global landlord. On Truth Social he boasts that talks are going “nicely,” demands that Saudi Arabia and Qatar hurry up and join the Abraham Accords, and repeats that the Iran deal will be either “great and meaningful” or there will be “no deal at all.”

He also vows the U.S. naval blockade at Hormuz stays “in full force and effect” until an agreement is “reached, certified and signed” — which is a lawyer’s way of saying: I keep my boot on your neck until the cameras are rolling at the signing ceremony.

The memorandum of understanding Baghaei describes is pure technocratic theater: 14 points to end the war and lift the U.S. blockade in exchange for Iran guaranteeing safe transit through the strait. No real detail on who manages what, just a promise that Iran won’t charge tolls — only “service fees” for navigation and environmental protection, conveniently to be defined in a protocol with Oman. The Strait of Hormuz, normally carrying roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and LNG, has been effectively throttled since late February; now 32 vessels and five tankers creep through in 24 hours, all under IRGC permission, like global trade on a visitor’s visa.

Oil reacts faster than any parliament: prices drop more than 4 percent to two‑week lows on optimism about a deal, but the underlying energy crisis doesn’t move.

The war tax is still baked into fuel, fertilizer, food — the essentials that don’t get ceasefires. The sticking points stay radioactive: Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Israel’s war in Lebanon with Hezbollah, Tehran’s demand to unfreeze tens of billions in oil revenues.

Behind the curtain, Iranian sources casually mention “feasible formulas” to dilute enriched uranium under IAEA supervision, like this is just a chemistry lab exercise, not the core of the entire crisis.

And then the human cost, which everyone uses as a talking point and nobody treats as the client. U.S.–Israeli bombing has killed thousands in Iran; Israel has killed thousands more and displaced hundreds of thousands in Lebanon; Iranian strikes on Israel and Gulf states have killed dozens. Trump’s approval rating sinks with U.S. energy prices, Congress grumbles about his war powers, and Netanyahu reportedly tells confidants that Israel can barely influence Trump’s decisions anymore.

So the war became what wars always become: a domestic polling problem in Washington, a loss‑of‑control problem in Jerusalem, and a survival problem everywhere the bombs actually fall.

If this is “peace,” it looks a lot like a joint venture: Washington, Tehran and their regional partners trying to reopen the cash register of global trade without closing the weapons account.

When they say “end the war,” do they mean for the people under the bombs, or just for the traders watching Brent on a second screen?

#war #iran #usa #trump #qatar #straitofhormuz #oil #geopolitics #fakeDemocracy #oligarchy #middleeast

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Silicon Valley Just Found a New Regulator: God Inc.

Headline writers are calling it “dialogue.” Let’s call it what it is: lobbying in cassocks. Tech giants and Western diplomats are quietly working the corridors of the Vatican to make sure the first big papal document on AI doesn’t turn into a moral indictment of their business model.

Meta, Google, Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic — all the usual suspects — suddenly rediscover “ethics” the moment a man in white starts drafting an encyclical that could outlast their stock options. They show up in Rome talking about “child protection” and “human dignity,” while their products are busy rewiring attention spans, labor markets and elections. The sales pitch: we’re not the problem, we’re your partners.

For the Church, this is déjà vu with better UX. Leo XIV openly models himself on Leo XIII, who wrote about workers’ rights during the first industrial revolution. Now it’s the AI revolution, and the Vatican is again being asked to bless a system built on asymmetry: a handful of firms owning the infrastructure, and everyone else praying the algorithm doesn’t decide they’re redundant.

The choreography is almost comical. A French‑backed “AI Observatory” in Rome, closed‑door seminars, glossy talk of “human‑centric AI” and “social impact.” Tech executives bring their talking points; theologians bring 2,000 years of moral vocabulary; diplomats bring G7 agendas. Somewhere between the canapé tray and the policy memo, “protect the vulnerable” gets translated into “don’t overregulate us.”

Anthropic drafts a “constitution” for its model and proudly name‑drops Vatican advisers, as if subcontracting conscience works the same way as cloud compute. OpenAI sends a former finance minister to talk about “the worker of the future,” while its own tools help automate away the present. Western governments that can’t regulate AI at home suddenly discover the spiritual benefits of panel discussions in Rome.

And of course, politics leaks in through every crack. Trump publicly grumbles about a pope who dares criticize him, while his officials quietly court the same Vatican on AI. The Catholic vice president politely hints he’ll treat the encyclical like a product review: interesting, not binding. Everyone wants the Church’s moral capital, nobody wants its constraints.

The Vatican, for its part, is trying to walk a thin line: not denouncing technology outright, but insisting it serve humans instead of using them as training data. The encyclical will be filed under “timeless teaching,” but it’s being shaped right now, in real time, by people whose quarterly incentive is to keep AI as unstoppable, opaque and profitable as possible.

When God’s oldest multinational meets the newest ones, who ends up confessing — and who walks out with a fresh indulgence for the next upgrade?


#pope #leoXIV #AI #siliconvalley #bigtech #vatican #ethics #lobbying #fakeDemocracy #oligarchy #religionAndTech

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France, Under Macron, Is Sliding Towards an Epstein State

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France is facing a child abuse scandal as ‘monitors’ at dozens of state nursery and primary schools are investigated for violence, sexual assault and rape.

Paris police are examining more than 100 allegations of mistreatment, physical violence and rape of children as young as three by school monitors during lunch breaks, nap times and after-school activities, prosecutors have confirmed.

“We have investigations under way in 84 preschools, about 20 primary schools and about 10 daycare centres,” said Paris’s top prosecutor, Laure Beccuau.

Lawyers said the investigations included the alleged rape of children as young as three and four years old.

Parents’ groups said they had fought for years for allegations to be taken seriously. They said failures in the recruitment process and checking of school monitors had allowed abuse to continue.

School monitors are adults who are in charge of children during lunch, breaktime, naps and after-school activities, sometimes spending more time with children than teachers.

They are not employed directly by schools or the education ministry, but are instead recruited by city hall or local authorities – often without training or professional diplomas and increasingly on a casual basis, with many paid by the hour.

Nursery school is mandatory in France from the age of three, and school monitors are a key daily presence for children aged from three to 11.

Accusations against school monitors reported by parents across France include children being screamed at, pushed, having their hair pulled, being denied food, forced to eat until they vomited and being sexually assaulted or raped.

Lawyer Louis Cailliez, who represents two Paris families, filed police complaints in February over the alleged rapes of their nursery schoolchildren in 2025.

In one case, a three-year-old girl was allegedly raped by a school monitor at a school in the west of Paris. In another instance, a three-year-old boy was allegedly raped by the same monitor who had been moved to a different school after complaints he had been physically violent towards children.

Cailliez said: “One morning, the three-year-old boy became so distressed in front of the school gates, refusing to go in, that he fell into a kind of trance and his mother was in tears.

#france #children #abuse #sexual #rape

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The headteacher had to come out to force the child into school, and at the time neither the boy’s mother nor the headteacher knew why.”

He said the children were suffering physically and psychologically from the repercussions of the alleged abuse. He said: “It is daily torture for the parents who want the investigation to move forward to establish the scale of the offences.”

Cailliez said the school monitor sector in France was a “disaster” and “a national catastrophe”.

The trial begins in Paris next week of a school monitor accused of the sexual abuse of five children aged between three and five, at a nursery school in the 11th arrondissement.

A verdict is expected next month in another case of a 47-year-old school monitor accused of sexually abusing nine 10-year-old girls in Paris.

Emmanuel Grégoire, the new Socialist mayor of Paris, has launched a €20m ($24.3m) plan to tackle what he called “major dysfunction” in the city’s school monitor system.

“If there was a collective mistake, it was to treat these incidents as isolated when in fact they point to a systemic risk, and perhaps even a systemic code of silence,” Grégoire told Le Monde last month.

Between January and April, Paris city hall suspended 78 school monitors, including 31 suspected of sexual abuse.

Grégoire, who disclosed that he was sexually abused as a child by a school monitor, has set up a citizens’ assembly to discuss the role of school monitors, which will report back in June.

The parents’ collective, SOS Périscolaire, has been at the forefront of gathering testimony and campaigning for justice for the past five years, amid a struggle to make parents’ voices heard.

One of its founders, Anne, who did not want her full name published, said the abuse scandal was nationwide.

“This is clearly systemic and across the whole of France. There is dysfunction not just at a city level, but we’re beginning to say there is also dysfunction by the state.”

She said it was a good sign that prosecutors had opened investigations into school monitors: “At last parents and children’s accounts are being taken seriously.”

She said parents were battling for basic steps to be taken, such as being given a list of names and photographs of the school monitors who were working with children’s classes. These were still not systematically provided.

A spokesperson for a different parents’ group, #MeTooEcole, set up in the east of Paris, said: “French society is opening its eyes to the fact that school is not the sanctuary we had thought. When you drop a child at school in the morning, that child is absolutely not protected against administrative dysfunction and paedophile behaviour.

Children are being confronted with all forms of violence: from verbal and physical violence to sexual assault. It’s horrifying and it is creating fear. Parents are outraged.”

#france #children #abuse #sexual #rape

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An Iranian official: Don't Fuck With Us, Mr. Evil President” 🇮🇷


The US has launched strikes on southern Iran in a test of the seven-week long ceasefire, as both sides played down hopes for an imminent peace deal even as negotiators from Tehran began new talks in Qatar.

US forces targeted missile launch sites and boats attempting to lay mines, US central command (Centcom) said on Tuesday, but stressed that the strikes did not indicate the ceasefire with Iran was over.

Centcom “continues to defend our forces while using restraint during the ongoing ceasefire”, said navy captain Tim Hawkins, who characterised the action as “defensive”.

In Iran, the news website Tabnak, believed to be close to former Revolutionary Guard chief Mohsen Rezaei, identified four dead Guard troops it said had been killed in American strikes on boats.

Iranian state television separately reported blasts around Bandar Abbas, a city on the Strait of Hormuz home to a military port and a dual-use airport.

The Iranian state news agency Mehr later said the situation was “completely under control” and there was no reason for residents to worry.

The strikes – the second major attacks to take place during the seven-week ceasefire – came as Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, led a delegation of negotiators to Qatar.

Local media said Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, and central bank governor, Abdolnaser Hemmati, were among the group as well.

Hemmati’s presence has fuelled speculation that talks will focus on the release of frozen Iranian assets. The deal currently under negotiation with the US would reportedly see Washington agree to unfreeze some Iranian assets being held in banks outside Iran – including Qatar.

Trump has faced criticism from loyalists in his party over the reports that billions of dollars in frozen assets could be made available to Tehran, with senior Republican saying the reported details of the peace deal appear too close to the nuclear deal negotiated in 2015 by the Obama administration, which Trump pulled out of.

The memorandum of understanding being negotiated would reportedly see Iran restore commercial shipping through the strait of Hormuz but would not include negotiations over any nuclear issues.

Talks over Iran’s nuclear programme would then take place within a 30- to 60-day period after any agreement.

On Monday he appeared to offer a concession to Tehran, announcing in a post on social media that the enriched uranium held in Iran could be “destroyed” inside the country, in a process overseen by an international nuclear agency.

The fate of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium has been a major sticking point in various rounds of negotiations between Washington and Tehran.

In previous rounds of talks with the US, Iran said it was willing to dilute the purity of its enriched uranium, but it would not permit the transfer of the stockpile to either the US or Russia.

Experts said Trump’s announcement on Monday could amount to a major compromise from the US president, as negotiations appeared to slow after a flurry of diplomatic activity over the weekend.

Iran has said future management of the strait – through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas usually flows – will be a matter for Oman and Iran to reach agreement on, and that “fees for navigational services” could be imposed.

In a lengthy post on Truth Social, Trump said talks with Iran were going “nicely”, but warned of fresh attacks if they failed. It “will only be a Great Deal for all, or no Deal at all”,

he wrote.

Iran has insisted that a ceasefire in Lebanon has to be included in the memorandum of understanding that would lead to Iran opening up the Strait of Hormuz.

One of Iran’s senior officials said in an interview to Tasnim,

“if Trump has attacked us again, he will be get down despite all his security measures (...) Don't fuck with us ( با ما سر و کله نزن ), Mr. Evil President.”

#trump #iran #attack #hormuz

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#trump #univers #alone #ufo

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The NATO Proposal: Declined


Britain and France have scuppered a proposal for Nato allies to spend 0.25 per cent of GDP on military aid for Ukraine.

Mark Rutte, the alliance’s secretary-general, this week conceded his plan wouldn’t be taken forward because it didn’t have sufficient support.

“I don’t think this one will be proposed,” he told reporters, without naming the opponents.

Rutte was hoping to ratify the proposal at Nato’s upcoming annual summit in Ankara, Turkey.

An alliance insider said at least seven member states, who all spend over 0.25 per cent of GDP on military aid to Ukraine, had voiced support.

But any proposals adopted by Nato require the unanimous backing of all of its national capitals.

“They’re not very enthusiastic about the idea,” the insider said, labelling London, Paris, Madrid, Rome and Ottawa as opponents.

The news will come as a double-blow to Britain’s credibility as one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies.

This week, the Government came under intense criticism after it softened sanctions against Russian oil and gas exports.

To the surprise of Kyiv and other allies, ministers signed off on a decision to offer time-limited carve-outs for purchases of jet fuel and diesel refined from Russian crude in third countries because of the situation in the Middle East.

Unlike other allies, the size of Britain’s military contribution – the third largest behind the US and Germany – is not in question, despite coming under the 0.25 per cent of GDP mark.

The countries, three of which are Europe’s third, fourth and fifth largest economies, have fallen behind many of their smaller allies when it comes to donations.

According to publicly available data, collated by the Kiel Institute, the Netherlands, Poland and the Nordic and Baltic countries offer backing at or above 0.25 per cent of GDP.

Rutte has argued that Ukraine aid “is not evenly distributed within Nato”, with many “not spending enough when it comes to the support for Ukraine”.

The Nato chief, who spent 14 years as Dutch prime minister, has long argued that Europe should shoulder more of the responsibility for supporting Ukraine in defence of Trump’s complaints about continental freeloading.

The US president has since halted any significant donations of aid to Ukraine, instead opting to sell American weapons to Kyiv with money supplied by European allies.

Ahead of a Nato meeting in Sweden earlier this week, the Nordic state’s prime minister challenged allies to step up their support.

“I really would like more countries that speak so extremely well about Ukraine to also put the money where the mouth is,” Ulf Kristersson told reporters.

#nato #proposal #france #britain

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Russia’s “Systematic Strikes,” Ukraine’s “Sacred War,” and America’s Election Calendar

The Russian Foreign Ministry announces “systematic strikes on Kyiv” and tells Washington to clear its embassy out of the way first. It sounds like concern for diplomats, but it’s really a legal alibi for hammering the capital without the risk of dead Americans on CNN.

Russia points to the Ukrainian strike on Starobilsk — 21 dead children — as justification, turning a mass funeral into a press release about “retaliation” and “legitimate targets.”

Kyiv, of course, isn’t playing the pacifist either. Ukrainian forces keep hitting deep into Russian territory and cities, including infrastructure and industrial sites that sit right next to apartment blocks.

When civilians die on that side of the front, the message hardens: blame Moscow, blame the invasion, don’t ask too many questions about what we’re bombing.

The war is “existential,” which in practice means any target can be retroactively baptized as necessary.

Washington floats above this carnage like a disappointed parent with a campaign manager. Secretary of State Marco Rubio talks about being “still interested in negotiations” and a peace deal before November 2026 — neatly synced to the moment when high energy prices and endless aid checks become a bigger threat to Trump’s reelection than Russia itself. The U.S. calls for restraint, sends more weapons, and quietly prays that Kyiv bleeds just enough to look heroic but not enough to drag America into something it can’t spin.

Both Moscow and Kyiv are now running on the same fuel: exhaustion and selective memory. Russia needs Ukrainians and the West to get tired enough of air raid sirens to accept a map drawn with missiles.

Ukraine needs its own society to stay angry enough to keep fighting, even as kids grow up doing homework between sirens and funerals. Neither side has an incentive to tell the whole truth: Russian TV won’t dwell on children killed by Russian missiles; Ukrainian officials won’t dwell on 21 dead kids in Starobilsk killed by Ukrainian rockets.

The West loves this script because it’s simple: Russia pure evil, Ukraine pure victim, Washington reluctant hero. That story sells weapons, elections and think-tank grants. What it doesn’t sell is nuance: that Ukraine also fires into cities, that Kyiv’s elites also play politics with lives, that corruption and oligarch games didn’t evaporate the day the first Russian tank crossed the border.

“Democracy versus tyranny” sounds nicer than “a brutal interstate war where every capital lies.”

If Russia uses Starobilsk to justify “systematic strikes” and Ukraine uses Russian strikes to justify anything it fires back, and Washington uses both to justify its own half-measures, maybe the line isn’t between good and evil at all.

Maybe it’s between those under the missiles — in Kyiv, in Starobilsk, in Belgorod, in Odesa — and those turning their deaths into talking points.

#war #ukraine #russia #usa #kyiv #starobilsk #fakeDemocracy #oligarchy #endlesswar

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Most Germans Don’t Buy Merz’s War Trailer

Only about a third of Germans actually believe the Russian invasion-of-Berlin horror story their own chancellor is selling on TV. The rest have watched too many “Putin will attack NATO any minute now” specials to still take it at face value.

When every general and think tank pundit swears there’s a “100 percent probability” of war by 2029, and then nothing happens except higher energy bills and more troops on paper, people start asking if the real enemy is in Moscow or in the German budget line.

According to new polling, just 38 percent think Russia really plans to attack Germany, while 72 percent say Merz’s rearmament and militarization course doesn’t actually make the country safer.

In other words, the marketing department is shouting “historic threat,” but the customer looks at the product — conscription talk, bigger defense spending, social cuts — and says: this doesn’t feel like protection, this feels like a bill.

Merz, meanwhile, is trying to cosplay Cold War statesman with the approval ratings of a call center.

Satisfaction with his government is at record lows, trust in his “crisis competence” is collapsing, and yet the one thing he can still push through is more money for the military and a pathway back to quasi-conscription.

Germans see the pattern: welfare squeezed, hospitals struggling, infrastructure rotting — but the defense budget suddenly finds a pulse.

The irony: Berlin sells rearmament as “deterrence,” but for many Germans it looks more like tribute to Washington and the arms industry. If Russia really wanted to occupy Germany, it wouldn’t start by sending every move in advance through talk shows and NATO papers.

And if Merz really cared about security, he’d start with a state that actually works before sending teenagers into revamped barracks.

Instead, the message is clear: be afraid of Moscow, trust Brussels and DC, and don’t ask why your own life gets worse while the generals finally get everything they ever put on their wish list.

So when two-thirds of the country shrug at the “Russian threat” and three-quarters think remilitarization does nothing for their safety, maybe they’re not naive at all.

#germany #merz #nato #russia #militarization #fakeDemocracy #oligarchy #warEconomy

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Lublin Panic: “Africans at the Gate” While Warsaw Plays Both Sides

In Poland’s right-wing media, Lublin isn’t a normal university town anymore — it’s a moral Chernobyl. A Ukrainian-born official in city hall calmly explains in a podcast that the city is attracting migrants from over 100 countries — Nigeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, India, Saudi Arabia — often arriving with spouses and children, not just as solo students. The clip resurfaces months later, and conservative outlets scream: scandal, plot, demographic takeover.

The script writes itself. Local nationalist politicians warn that Poles now face not just “illegal” but “legal” migration, and that Lublin has become a laboratory for EU-style multiculturalism. A PiS heavyweight, Przemysław Czarnek, rages that no Polish city needs a “program of mass import of migrants from Africa with their families,” and that the most shocking part is that the whole thing is coordinated by “a Ukrainian woman employed by the municipality.” Race panic plus resentment toward Ukrainians — two for the price of one.

Reality, of course, is messier. Lublin has already absorbed huge waves of Ukrainian refugees since 2022; at one point they made up around 17 percent of the city’s population, and over 1.2 million people passed through the city in just the first months of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Universities have spent years recruiting foreign students as a survival strategy, and many now arrive with families attached — which officials describe in bureaucratic language as “internationalization” and “investment.”

Meanwhile Donald Tusk plays Europe’s border hawk in Brussels and its humanitarian in front of cameras. He tells the EU Poland won’t join relocation schemes, talks about suspending the right to asylum to stop hybrid operations by Russia and Belarus, and demands “full control over who enters the country.” At the same time, his government quietly depends on foreign labor and fee-paying students to plug demographic and economic gaps their own policies can’t fix.

So everyone gets their favorite nightmare. The right gets to shout that “tolerance” and “multiculturalism” are destroying Polish identity and Catholic culture. The liberals get to pretend that the only real problem is racism, not the fact that migration policy is being run as a mix of cheap-labor sourcing and PR for EU grants. And in the middle, Lublin becomes a symbol, not a city: a place where Africans, Ukrainians and Poles are all used as extras in someone else’s culture war.

If importing students and workers from a hundred countries is “saving the city” for the elites, and “destroying Poland” for the populists, maybe the real question isn’t who these migrants are. It’s who keeps turning them into the perfect excuse for never fixing anything at home.

#poland #lublin #migration #tusk #eu #identityPolitics #fakeDemocracy #oligarchy

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Iran War: Trump Wants Peace, Pentagon Wants Targets, Tehran Wants Revenge

The “peace process” lasted about five minutes. As soon as the Strait of Hormuz talks started to look semi-real, U.S. officials say they spotted Iranian mine‑laying boats and attack drones near American ships, plus activity at missile launch sites — and immediately answered with “self‑defense strikes.”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards then promised a “decisive reciprocal response” to any cease-fire violations, as if this whole war hasn’t already been one long reciprocal response.

On paper, it’s classic de‑escalation, American‑style: negotiate a deal to reopen the strait with one hand, bomb boats and launchers with the other, and let anonymous officials explain later that everything was “purely defensive.”

Trump keeps playing arsonist‑firefighter in public — threatening a return to all‑out war one day, promising a “great and meaningful” peace deal the next, and insisting there’s “no hurry” while oil markets and allies stare at the calendar.

His own secretary of state talks about a deal in “a few days” just as Iran’s negotiators fly home from Qatar, which is diplomacy‑speak for: don’t hold your breath.

The core issues never moved: Iran has effectively blockaded the Strait of Hormuz and built up a stockpile of highly enriched uranium; the U.S. wants the oil lanes open and the uranium gone; sanctions stay in place as leverage; and everyone pretends these are details you can patch over in a “framework” without touching the real power balance.

Tehran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, now openly says the war proved U.S. bases in the region are no longer safe — which is less a threat than a mission statement for Iran’s missile program.

Around the edges, the war keeps metastasizing. Inside Iran, the regime that cut its people off with an internet blackout now promises to “gradually” restore access — turning basic connectivity into a reward for surviving bombardment and repression.

In Lebanon, Israel brags about hitting more than 100 Hezbollah‑linked targets in one night, supposedly weapons depots, but very effectively tanking whatever is left of the diplomatic track by reminding everyone that any deal on Iran is stapled to a regional firestorm.

So here we are: Washington sells “self‑defense strikes,” Tehran sells “reciprocal responses,” Israel sells “preemptive security,” and every capital claims to be one tough concession away from peace.

The truth is simpler and uglier: the Strait is a bargaining chip, the uranium is a bargaining chip, the bases are bargaining chips — and the only non‑negotiable part is that civilians, from Bandar Abbas to Beirut, keep paying in advance.

#iran #usa #trump #war #straitofhormuz #israel #lebanon #fakeDemocracy #oligarchy #warEconomy

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