Seen in the News

[Tizer]

Netanyahu, Putin and Trump are now locked in to wars. Their reputations, and perhaps their lives, depend on winning or at least keeping the wars going.

[Stanley]

You are quite right Peter.... That's the dreadful truth behind what is happening.

See THIS for more land-grabbing by Israel.....
The Israeli military has captured the strategic site of Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon, in what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as a "decisive shift" in its offensive against Hezbollah. It comes as ground troops move ever deeper into Lebanese territory beyond their original demarcation line of the Litani river. The UK, France and Germany criticised Israel's latest escalation, as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) warned more residents to evacuate from a larger swathe of southern Lebanon. Lebanon's prime minister has accused Israel of carrying out "collective punishment". The latest evacuation warning is the second time in recent days that Israel has told residents to leave the entire south of Lebanon below the Zahrani river. "Anyone present near Hezbollah elements, facilities or means of combat endangers their life," an IDF spokesman said. The spokesman said a "significant number of IDF ground soldiers" were involved in the operation, which was "currently expanding to additional areas". UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper joined European allies on Sunday in calling for Israel and Hezbollah to stop the escalating conflict. "Israel's military escalation in Lebanon has killed and displaced civilians, destroyed infrastructure, and eroded space for diplomacy," Cooper wrote on X. "It must end." Hezbollah "must end attacks on Israel and disarm," she added. In Lebanon, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam made a televised address in which he accused Israel of a "scorched-earth policy and collective punishment" in the south of the country.
LINK for history of the castle.....

[Stanley]

HERE'S an opinion piece from Jerfemy Bowen that is worth reading......
The United States and Iran have both signalled that they would prefer not to go back to the war that has been on hold since the ceasefire was announced on 8 April. Neither side has allowed the steady drumbeat of military exchanges between them to end the talks being mediated by Pakistan, Qatar and others. The US still has powerful naval and air forces within striking distance of Iran. It is safe to assume that the Iranian regime will have kept its forces on high alert and will be using the ceasefire to re-organise and repair damage done by the US and Israel. Armed tension in the area in and around the Gulf opens up a clear risk for both sides of miscalculation and misperception. The US is trying to keep the pressure on the Tehran regime to make concessions by demonstrating that they are close by and capable of causing great damage. The Iranians are reminding the US that their determination to resist is undiminished and, if necessary, they will attack American bases and the wider infrastructure of the Arab gulf. The first objectives on what would be a long and perhaps unreachable road to a wider deal between the US and Iran is a continuation of the ceasefire and an agreement on a "memorandum of understanding" on the agenda of more talks between them. Getting to that is proving difficult. Israel's declaration that its bombers would return to Beirut has narrowed down Donald Trump's options even more. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not worry if his renewed offensive in Lebanon makes an American deal with Iran harder to get. He didn't want the ceasefire with the Tehran regime in the first place. As far as he's concerned, any deal between America and Iran is a bad deal.
There is much more but that last opinion about Netanyahu's role is telling. It reinforces what Peter and I have been saying. The bottom line is that Trump and the US are in trouble, they have made no gains and Israel is doing nothing to help him out.
Meanwhile, the global economic consequences mount daily.....

[Big Kev]

BBC News - Student loan inquiry begins as a third of people say university degree not worth it - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2e29gk73rjo

I didn't go to university but got NVQ level 4 qualifications whilst working (25 years ago). I am now in a job that required degree, or equivalent qualification (fortunately NVQ4 is first degree equivalent). At my age I wouldn't have paid for a university place but I don't think my CSE in woodwork would have got me in anyway

[Stanley]

I was over 40 when I got my degree and couldn't have done it if I had had to pay. As it was I got my three year course free and with full grants. I can't say if it helped me with work after, I suppose it must have but the main advantage as far as I was concerned was the sheer joy of learning.....

See THIS news from the Gulf....
The US says it has struck and "disabled an unladen oil tanker" that was sailing towards Iran, as part of Washington's naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz. US Central Command (Centcom) said a US aircraft fired a Hellfire missile into the engine room of the Botswana-flagged M/T vessel, after its crew "ignored repeated warnings". Centcom also released a footage purportedly showing the moment the tanker was hit on Tuesday. Iran has not publicly commented on the issue. The US military began enforcing its blockade of all vessels entering and exiting Iranian ports on 13 April. In its statement, Centcom said US forces "enforced blockade measures against Botswana-flagged M/T Lexie as it transited international waters toward Kharg Island". It said the ship's crew had failed "to comply with directions from US forces multiple times over a 24-hour period". Overall, six commercial vessels have been disabled and another 122 redirected since the blockade went into force, Centcom said. The BBC has contacted Botswana's government for comment.
This, plus Israel's actions in Lebanon, will not assist in peace talks.... Is there any end to the violence?

[Big Kev]

It’s the greatest ceasefire in the history of ceasefires, there’s never been a ceasefire so beautiful, no one else could have negotiated a ceasefire like this!

[Stanley]

He's angling for a Nobel Peace Prize.... The man is a moron. See THIS
4 hours ago
Donald Trump has become the latest US president to find himself at odds with Benjamin Netanyahu, after reportedly clashing with the Israeli prime minister over military action in Lebanon that has thrown Washington's Iran diplomacy into crisis. Tehran responded to Israel's strikes on Lebanon by threatening to suspend talks with the US - a potential setback to Trump's efforts to extricate himself from an unpopular war with Iran. Trump was asked by a journalist about an Axios report that he had called Netanyahu "effing crazy" and accused him of ingratitude during a phone call on Monday. "I did," Trump told the Pod Force One podcast in an interview broadcast on Wednesday. "I wouldn't say angry. I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with ​Lebanon, you know." Trump added: "I like Bibi a lot. And I work very well with him." He would be far from the only US president to tangle with the Israeli PM. The prime minister has a long history of testing the White House's patience - and of politically surviving any fallout. The latest reported clash came as Trump mulls a deal that would extend the US-Iran ceasefire and open the door to talks on the future of Tehran's nuclear programme. The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz - a vital global shipping lane - is also at stake. Netanyahu laughed off any suggestion of tensions with his American ally. "Sometimes we have, as in the best of families, you have these tactical disagreements," he told CNBC in an interview on Wednesday. "We always find a way to work them out, and we do so as great friends." He added that the two can "disagree in the morning" and be in agreement by afternoon. Experts, however, cautioned that the call could point to frustration in the White House over the alignment of US and Israeli military and political goals nearly 100 days after they launched strikes on targets in Iran on 28 February. "Netanyahu has a long history of doing his own dance, irrespective of what he has heard from Washington," Brett Bruen, a former diplomat and president of crisis communications agency the Global Situation Room, told the BBC. "Trump… decided to take the plunge with him, and is now learning a really hard lesson about what happens when you get into war with a pretty mercurial leader that has an agenda which doesn't always align with your own priorities," he added.
The damage Trump is doing to the US is incalculable..... Sooner or later this is going to dominate his fate. The sooner the better as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

[PanBiker]

Chickens coming home to roost as the saying goes. Trump started it without any exit strategy to fall back on, no wriggle room so he will have to suck it up!

This is what happens when you have a bloke who thinks he is always right and throws his weight about willy nilly. He might have had a slightly different attitude if he hadn't dodged the draft. Unfortunately everyone else has to pay for his ineptitude in office.

[Stanley]

HERE'S the latest from Trump.....
US President Donald Trump has hit back at lawmakers who voted to send him a rebuke over the war in Iran, calling them "unpatriotic". On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives passed a measure seeking to halt Trump from taking further military action amid growing opposition to the war. In a post on Truth Social, the president wrote: "Yesterday, in a meaningless vote, the House voted, 4 bad Republicans and all of the Dumocrats, to limit my War Powers, right in the middle of my final negotiations to end the War with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Who would do such an unpatriotic thing." It is unclear how much legal force the House's measure will have. The White House has dismissed its merits. It has also described the move as an unconstitutional attempt to restrict presidential power. The vote, which passed 215-208, was to adopt the war powers resolution, which would require Trump to withdraw US forces or seek congressional approval for the conflict. The road to actual enforcement would involve the legislation clearing several thorny political, procedural, and legal hurdles. Nonetheless, the vote sent an unusually blunt message from Congress to the White House. "There's a political impact, because a majority of one House of the Congress have gone on record, in an actual vote, that the US armed forces need to be withdrawn from hostilities in the Persian Gulf," said Michael Glennon, a professor of constitutional and international law at Tufts University. "Congress is in effect saying: now, we really, really, really, really think this is unlawful, and you need to get out," Glennon said. The measure considered was a concurrent resolution -- meaning that if an identical version is also passed by the Republican-controlled US Senate, it would not require the president's signature. And even if that did occur, it could face a legal challenge from Trump. Meanwhile, if the Senate opts to tweak the language, it becomes what is known as a joint resolution - which would require Trump's signature. The president would likely veto it, and Congress does not have enough votes to override him.
Trump can splutter about patriotism as much as he likes but this is a clear indication of where opinion lies in the US and he can't control the truth!

[Stanley]

HERE'S the latest update on Iran....
1 hour ago
The US military says it has shot down four Iranian "one-way attack drones" launched toward the Strait of Hormuz, adding that the drones "posed an immediate threat to regional maritime traffic". US forces "subsequently struck Iranian coastal surveillance radar sites in Goruk and on Qeshm Island to defend against further attacks", US Central Command (Centcom) said in a statement. Iran has not publicly commented on the incident. It comes several days after Washington and Tehran exchanged strikes, in an escalation that threatened a shaky ceasefire between the two countries. One person was killed and more than 60 injured in Iranian drone strikes on Kuwait's international airport on Wednesday, local officials said. Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) denied responsibility for the airport strike, claiming the damage was caused by an error from a US missile interceptor. Centcom said this was false and claimed Iran struck the airport in a "deliberate, calculated and unjustified attack". The IRGC earlier said it had targeted US bases in the Gulf in retaliation for US strikes on an Iranian oil tanker and Qeshm Island.
Funny way to run a cease fire.....

[Stanley]

HERE'S the latest report coming out of the US.
Updated 50 minutes ago
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has criticised European nations over migration for allowing what he described as an "invasion" on their shores, during a D-Day anniversary speech in France. Hegseth was speaking in Normandy 82 years after allied forces stormed French beaches to liberate Nazi-occupied north-western Europe in 1944. "Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies," Hegseth said. "Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion?" Migration has become a major political issue across Europe, with parties supporting hardline immigration policies surging in the polls. Hegseth's comments mark a further criticism of European migration policy by senior members of the Trump administration. On Friday, US Vice-President JD Vance blamed the death of the 18-year-old British student Henry Nowak, who was fatally stabbed last year in Southampton by Vickrum Digwa, on the "mass invasion of migrants" and said the "only response" was "righteous anger". Downing Street responded by criticising "people trying to interfere in our democracy," adding that the Nowak family had "said they do not want his death to be used to create further division". The Crown Prosecution Service has confirmed that Digwa was born British. Speaking in France, Hegseth said that in the years since D-Day some European capitals have grown too "comfortable" with their hard-fought freedoms, forgetting that "freedom is not free". "The men who fought and died here restored freedom to Europe," Hegseth said. "That freedom must be maintained by this generation of leaders and war fighters or what they fought for was merely temporary."
You might well be asking yourself what is going on here, attacks on us by Leon Mush, Vance and now Hegseth. I think this has more to do with laying the groundwork for the US mid-term elections than any serious critique of us or Europe on race and immigration. Trump does not like his prospects, his war policies are in chaos and what we are getting is anything to distract the home audience. It will get worse as we go into the year....

[PanBiker]

All this from members of a nation totally descended from immigrants one way or the other. First, second, third, fourth, fifth or whatever, generation, makes no difference the are all mongrels.