🇪🇺President von der Leyen is no longer calling for regime change in Iran, now that 🇺🇸 has changed its tune and (falsely) claims that was never the goal.
VDL got the 🇺🇸memo. She went from calling for a "credible transition" to calling for a vague "enduring solution".
The Easter Bunny standing awkwardly next to Trump yesterday as he threatened war crimes looked to me like one of our European leaders on their many supplicant visits to the White House.
A WH photographer later caught the bunny looking self-reflective. If only our 🇪🇺leaders were capable of the same.
For almost a century generations of scholars and thinkers have tried to understand why the Germans sleepwalked into disaster. Future generations will focus on a different case.
Over the past year, the senior levels of the US military, diplomatic and intelligence leadership have been purged of all dissent.
There is no one left to stop this madness. So many people stood by and let this happen.
This is the type of thing that, were it happening in Trump's first term, probably would have been prevented by a military coup against the president.
But following the MAGA purge of the US military, there are no generals left to protect us.
👌 @thetimes.com front page photo / headline juxtaposition
We don't have time.
If the US commits war crimes this week, "the UK-US relationship could face its most serious strain in years".
It's sad that "serious strain" is the most dramatic consequences that Westminster journos can think of.
Propaganda War Donald Trump escalates the war with Iran—initially verbally. Some see this as the announcement of war crimes or even a coup. Tehran counters with targeted provocations against the US president.
Propaganda War Donald Trump escalates the war with Iran—initially verbally. Some see this as the announcement of war crimes or even a coup. Tehran counters with targeted provocations against the US president.
Le fígaro The Iran war is widening the gap between Trump and the Europeans. After suffering unilateral tariffs and threats of annexation of Greenland, Europe refuses to give in to American demands, acknowledging the transatlantic divorce.
La Repubblica The End of Iran Overnight" Trump threatens Tehran with total destruction if it doesn't respond to his ultimatum and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Peace negotiations are on the uphill road. A blitz rescues the American colonel missing after the downing of his F-15.
Newspaper cover selection.
Germany’s FrankfurterRundschau includes “war crimes” in headline: “Propaganda War
Donald Trump escalates the war with Iran—initially verbally.
Some see this as the announcement of war crimes or even a coup.
Tehran counters with targeted provocations against US president”
“The policy of subordination has failed: it has weakened Europe, discredited its leaders and deepened internal divisions,” writes Christian Spillmann.
The problem is our ostrich leadership in Brussels (VDL & Rutte) don’t seem to have any other ideas. europemorningpost.substack.com/p/the-end-of...
INTRODUCTION For decades, Congress has vested the President with overlapping statutory authorities that allow the President to make the improvements he deems necessary to White House grounds and structures. Yet, a district judge ordered the President to halt ongoing reconstruction of the East Wing of the White House by April 14, leaving a massive excavation and structurally completed site adjacent to the now open and exposed Executive Mansion and threatening grave national-security harms to the White House, the President and his family, and the President's staff. Almost 400 Million Dollars of private donations and contributions (No taxpayer dollars are being used to build this long sought, and desperately needed, ballroom!) have already been committed, or spent, in the purchase of heavy, large scale, and other types of building materials. As an example, the protective missile resistant steel columns, beams, drone proof roofing materials, and bullet, ballistic, and blast proof glass, are largely made, being used, and/or on their way to the project. Likewise, the bomb shelters, hospital and medical area, protective partitioning, and Top Secret Military installations, structures, and equipment, are built and/or ready to be built, installed, and placed.
Trump has filed an emergency appeal to keep building his planned White House ballroom, saying it's a matter of national security.
The motion — particularly the first five pages — is unusually written for an appellate brief, and often resembles Trump's Truth Social posts.
Why the Vatican is at war with Maga—The US president seems to have accomplished the miraculous task of bringing together the American bishops, historically divided between… www.ft.com/content/aab3... Mattia Ferraresi @financialtimes.com
Since the referendum defeat Meloni has lost 4 ministers & senior officials.
Her government has an aura of panic. And she is rapidly changing her foreign policy orientation as a result, criticising the US and Israel for the first time as premier.
The big question: will this new Meloni stick around?
Meloni has clearly been spooked by the rebuke against her by voters in the unrelated referendum last week.
The vast majority of voters oppose the Iran War and Meloni's initial defence of it because of her close alliance with Trump did not go over well.
...independent defence command and control, for fear of the capability gap.
In my view, talking up the idea of a Russian invasion in the next four years, which is extremely unlikely, only serves to freeze Europe in inertia. Rutte is holding Europe back, not moving us forward.
I agree that a Russian invasion from 2030 is quite conceivable, especially if the Ukraine War were to end on Russia's terms now.
I view "short term" as being before then (indeed, that's what Rutte has been saying - within 3 years). That kind of talk only serves to frighten Europe *against* building
BREAKING: Trump Fires Pam Bondi… for Not Being Corrupt Enough.
Our authoritarian president wanted Bondi to prosecute his enemies. She tried – and helped cover up the Epstein scandal, too. It wasn’t enough.
So many u-turns from the British Conservatives over the past weeks it makes your head spin.
After first praising Trump's war and criticising Starmer for not joining it, now they say the war is bad.
What will they say tomorrow?
Simon Kuper chronicles the last days of the Special Relationship between the UK and US. It's something Keir Starmer badly wants and Donald Trump is determined to trash. www.ft.com/content/9ce4...
But the point Rutte and others are making is that EU *could* mount a full-scale invasion of Europe in the short term, and therefor Europe doesn't have time to develop its own independent defence and must stay with NATO as the only defence option.
The reality is those countries that switched to renewables are now much more insulated from the crisis than those that didn't. Yet there will be many conservatives in Europe that will fall for this BS from the US State Department. Sad.
Europe is having an energy crisis because of America's disastrous war of choice against Iran.
No surprise then that the American government is blaming the high energy prices on EU climate policy.
www.state.gov/releases/und...
Why did Europe waste these 10 years? Why were they tricked into just spending more on American weapons instead of ending dependence on the US?
Because as I wrote in my new book The Owned Continent, 80 years of 🇺🇸 cultural domination rendered Europeans unable to see the truth.
But it's not too late.
In 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump said he would not necessarily defend the Baltics if Russia invaded
Europe has had *10 years* since then to build an independent European command & control independent of 🇺🇸
But this continent's Atlanticists blocked any such efforts, leaving us now vulnerable.
This isn't a zero-sum game. Saying Russia doesn't have the capacity to launch & sustain an invasion of the EU *tomorrow* isn't the same as saying they don't have the intention to and will have the capacity in a few years.
Exaggerating Russia's capacity isn't helping, it results in European inertia.
You may not be using the 'Russia will imminently invade the EU' argument to block efforts to build European command and control and stick with a NATO-only strategy, but others (Rutte for instance) are.
I strongly disagree that Russia has the capacity to launch and sustain an EU invasion tomorrow
Our European leaders seem to have mistaken the 'how it shouldn't' part of this Bruegel report and mistaken it for an instruction list for the emergency policies they should put in place.
Whether or not Trump pulls the US out of NATO (my guess, he won’t) his administration makes the US an unreliable, therefore useless ally. If Putin can disentangle himself from Ukraine, which is currently going rather badly for him, he will make trouble for Europe. Strengthening Europe is necessary.
