Apr 132026
 


Thomas Cole The Course of Empire – The Arcadian or Pastoral State 1834


US Block Strait of Hormuz Over Iranian Mines as Iran Says ‘No Deal’ (Salgado)
Trump Eyes Limited Iran Strikes, Hormuz Blockade (ZH)
Trump Statement on the Iranian Refusal to Stop Building a Nuclear Weapon (CTH)
The Trump Card The President Holds If Iran Won’t Bend: A Naval Blockade (JTN)
Trump Blasts Pope Leo For Criticism of US Foreign Policy (CNBC)
London Mayor Sadiq Khan Calls For A Gov’t Social Media Disinformation Unit (MN)
John Cleese Pushes Back Against Islamist Tide In Britain (MN)
Putin Attends Easter Service For Orthodox Christianity’s Holiest Day (RT)
A CNN Anchor Just Torched the Left’s Favorite Narrative About Trump (Margolis)
Pelosi’s Monster: The Creation and Destruction of Eric Swalwell (Turley)
Eric Swalwell Suspends Gubernatorial Campaign (Matt Margolis)
Truth-Teller Encounters the Buzz-Saw of the Establishment Narrative (Spencer)

 


 

https://twitter.com/TalbotLionel2/status/2042924466200559693?s=20 ==

I used to believe that Donald Trump was simply an exceptional president.

But then, I watched in real time as the Mainstream Media (mainstream media), the FBI, intelligence agencies, the CIA, Big Tech, and the entire Washington establishment joined forces in an unprecedented campaign to destroy a single man.

The numerous lawsuits, the two impeachments, the endless hoaxes including the Russia one, the Mar-a-Lago raid, the gag orders, the efforts to remove him from the ballot, the attempts to bankrupt him and throw him in prison… all of that was aimed at preventing him from returning to power. Two attempts on his life followed.

With 92% of media coverage being negative for him while 78% of that for Kamala was positive, he managed to secure a convincing victory in the last election. How do you explain that?

That’s when it became undeniable for me: no one faces this level of coordinated and hysterical opposition unless they represent a true existential threat to the system… The system we all know is corrupt and broken. Ordinary politicians don’t trigger this kind of coordinated panic.

At that moment, I stopped thinking of him as a great president.

He is the greatest of all time.
==

https://twitter.com/Neccccy/status/2042988488300142716?s=20 https://twitter.com/ProudofusUK/status/2043008693097095362?s=20 https://twitter.com/XKx3_XS3x/status/2043303436209225828?s=20

 


 


Iran is used to negotiating for years on a topic. Trump doesn’t think in years.

It’s simple: No nukes. No blockade.

Trump will not leave the presidency with the mullahs in power in Tehran. I can’t see him leave with the IRGC in power either. Be creative!

US Block Strait of Hormuz Over Iranian Mines as Iran Says ‘No Deal’ (Salgado)

The Iranian regime would not agree to end their pursuit of nuclear weaponry, so the American delegation to Pakistan did not reach a final agreement with them, President Donald Trump confirmed Sunday. “Any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!” Trump threatened.


“So, there you have it, the meeting went well, most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, NUCLEAR, was not. Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump posted on Truth Social. The blockade is necessary because the Iranian regime dropped mines all over the Strait of Hormuz and is now claiming it doesn’t remember where they all are and cannot disable them, even though it is insisting upon countries paying tolls to Iran to use the strait.

The genocidal Iranian regime, which violated its ceasefire agreement with the United States within two hours and has been violating it ever since, and has spent almost half a century exporting terrorism, did not come to any agreement with the delegation led by Vice President JD Vance. It is almost as if they are fanatical fundamentalist Muslim terrorists who believe jihad is their moral duty and their shortcut to paradise.

Trump explained further, “At some point, we will reach an ‘ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO IN, ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO OUT’ basis, but Iran has not allowed that to happen by merely saying, ‘There may be a mine out there somewhere,’ that nobody knows about but them. THIS IS WORLD EXTORTION, and Leaders of Countries, especially the United States of America, will never be extorted.”

It is not in the least surprising that the Iranian regime did not agree to a deal, as the people with whom we were negotiating are the exact same tyrants complicit in the recent massacre of perhaps as many as 40,000 of their own people and the build-up and running of an international terrorist network that particularly targeted Americans and Israelis. Among the negotiators from Iran were Foreign Affairs Minister Abbas Araghchi and parliament speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf (or Qalibaf), both of whom have made the most extreme threats against the United States and Trump personally since the beginning of Operation Epic Fury/Roaring Lion. Ghalibaf, who has a long track record of screaming “death to America”, is especially radical. Meanwhile, back in Iran, the regime is looking to expedite executions of thousands of freedom protesters.

In light of all the ceasefire violations, Trump explained, “I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas. We will also begin destroying the mines the Iranians laid in the Straits. Any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!”The president ended:

“Iran knows, better than anyone, how to END this situation which has already devastated their Country. Their Navy is gone, their Air Force is gone, their Anti Aircraft and Radar are useless, Khomeini, and most of their “Leaders,” are dead, all because of their Nuclear ambition. The Blockade will begin shortly. Other Countries will be involved with this Blockade. Iran will not be allowed to profit off this Illegal Act of EXTORTION. They want money and, more importantly, they want Nuclear. Additionally and, at an appropriate moment, we are fully “LOCKED AND LOADED,” and our Military will finish up the little that is left of Iran!”

It promises to be another tumultuous week.

Read more …

The talks were never going to go anywhere and everyone knew it. iran was never going to volunteer to give up nukes. But they had to go through the step of the “talks”.

“.. the art of the deal… Escalate to De-Escalate… how long can Iran last with no oil revenues at all?”

Trump Eyes Limited Iran Strikes, Hormuz Blockade (ZH)

• President Trump begins blockading Strait of Hormuz, warns US military will “finish up the little that is left of Iran”
• 2 Supertankers U-turn after peace deal talks fail
• UAE Oil Chief warns Iran blocking Hormuz is “a direct threat to the energy, food and health security of every nation”
The odds of a peace deal by the end of the ceasefire period has collapsed…


President Trump said the US would blockade the Strait of Hormuz following the collapse of peace talks with Iran in Islamabad this weekend. “Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump said in a social media post. Trump noted that talks went well… until they didn’t… “So, there you have it, the meeting went well, most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, NUCLEAR, was not.” The US president is hopeful…

“At some point, we will reach an “ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO IN, ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO OUT” basis, but Iran has not allowed that to happen by merely saying, “There may be a mine out there somewhere,” that nobody knows about but them.” But then came the threats, with Trump apparently widening his purview to international waters: “THIS IS WORLD EXTORTION, and Leaders of Countries, especially the United States of America, will never be extorted. I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas. We will also begin destroying the mines the Iranians laid in the Straits. Any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!”

And the art of the deal… Escalate to De-Escalate… how long can Iran last with no oil revenues at all?

“Iran knows, better than anyone, how to END this situation which has already devastated their Country. Their Navy is gone, their Air Force is gone, their Anti Aircraft and Radar are useless, Khomeini, and most of their “Leaders,” are dead, all because of their Nuclear ambition. “The Blockade will begin shortly. Other Countries will be involved with this Blockade. Iran will not be allowed to profit off this Illegal Act of EXTORTION. They want money and, more importantly, they want Nuclear. Additionally and, at an appropriate moment, we are fully “LOCKED AND LOADED,” and our Military will finish up the little that is left of Iran!”

[..] UAE Oil Chief Warns “Illegal, Dangerous, & Unacceptable” For Iran To Close Strait
On Sunday morning, as vessel traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remained muted, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, ADNOC’s managing director and group CEO and one of the most influential people in global energy markets, wrote on X: “The Strait of Hormuz has never been Iran’s to close or restrict.”Al Jaber continued, “Any attempt to do so is not a regional issue; it is the disruption of a global economic lifeline and a direct threat to the energy, food and health security of every nation.” “Setting such a precedent is illegal, dangerous, and unacceptable. The world simply cannot afford it and must not allow it,” he concluded in the X post.

[..] A Wall Street Journal report indicates that President Trump is weighing limited strikes on high-value Iranian assets to break the stalemate in peace talks. The report continued: That is among the options that Trump was considering Sunday, hours after negotiations collapsed in Pakistan, the officials said. Trump could also resume a full-fledged bombing campaign, though officials said that was less likely given the prospect of further destabilizing the region and the president’s aversion to prolonged military conflicts. He could also seek a more temporary blockade while he pressures allies to take responsibility for a prolonged military escort mission through the strait in the future.

U.S.-Iran ceasefire talks in Pakistan ended late Saturday without an agreement. These periods generally allow both sides to restock weapons and prepare for the next phase of fighting. OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) accounts on X are reporting a steady stream of U.S. Air Force cargo jets heading to the Middle East late Sunday. “My advice to the White House folks I’ve spoken to is secure the strait at any cost and immediately as a matter of economic and national and global security,” said Steve Moore, a former economic adviser to Trump, who was quoted by the WSJ. Moore noted, “We have the power to protect the flow of international trade and must use it. Or the whole world economy could tumble into a global recession.”

Fred Fleitz, a senior National Security Council official during Trump’s first term, told the outlet that Iran’s large delegation to Islamabad showed that a diplomatic solution is possible. “I think Trump’s right, Iran is out of cards,” Fleitz said. “This conflict has only been going on for a few weeks. It’s too early to know how this will come out, but I think it looks promising.”

CENTCOM Says Blockade Will Begin Monday Morning at 1000ET
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces will begin implementing a blockade of all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports on April 13 at 10 a.m. ET, according to a statement on X. CENTCOM provided some further clarification regarding who will be blocked, in accordance with President Trump’s earlier proclamation. Specifically, they are only (and impartially) blocking any vessel leaving or entering an Iranian port… The blockade will be enforced impartially against vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas, including all Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. But, vessels from non-Iranian ports are free to transit the Strait CENTCOM forces will not impede freedom of navigation for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from non-Iranian ports. Now the fun begins.

Iran Says It Won’t Allow Blockade Of Hormuz Strait, But Room For Diplomacy Remains
As the US failed to open the Strait of Hormuz, it is also “doomed to fail in a naval blockade,” Iran’s military adviser to the supreme leader, Mohsen Rezaee, said in a post on X. Iran’s armed forces “will not allow America to do so and have great untapped leverage to counter it,” he adds. “Iran is not a place to be surrounded by tweets and imaginary plans.”

However, despite defiant statements from the U.S. and Iran, The Wall Street Journal reports that, according to regional officials familiar with the matter said, the door remains open for further diplomacy and a second round of talks could be held within days. Regional countries were also in consultation with the U.S. to secure an extension of the fragile two-week ceasefire period announced late Tuesday, they said.

The Islamabad talks were the highest-level face-to-face meeting between American and Iranian leaders since 1979. The main sticking points, said the officials, were reopening the Strait of Hormuz without collecting fees, the fate of Iran’s highly enriched uranium, and Iran’s demand that about $27 billion in frozen revenues held abroad be released. Iranian officials have presented counterproposals to continue to enrich token amounts or curtail its stockpile of enriched uranium, but the two sides were unable to reach a compromise, the officials said.

Trump’s 6 Red Lines
Fox News reports that Vice President Vance’s final offer delivered to the Iranian delegation in Islamabad includes the following “red lines.”
1) End all uranium enrichment
2) Dismantle all major nuclear enrichment facilities
3) Retrieve highly enriched uranium
4) Accept a broader peace, security and de-escalation framework that includes regional allies
5) End funding for terrorist proxies Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis
6) Fully open the Strait of Hormuz, charging no tolls for passage

Needless to say, Iran refused to agree.

Read more …

“.. all of those points don’t matter compared to allowing Nuclear Power to be in the hands of such volatile, difficult, unpredictable people.”

Trump Statement on the Iranian Refusal to Stop Building a Nuclear Weapon (CTH)

I am going to outline a contextual background for the Iranian conflict and my opinion of the current situation in detail. In short, I stand with President Trump’s position, but many of the influential aspects are being missed. The anti-interventionist podcasters and the Israel-first advocates are both wrong. An honest and pragmatic review of the entire regional dynamic is needed. Which includes the big picture question that no one is asking. In the interim, here is the statement from President Trump describing the current status, against the backdrop of Vice President JD Vance’s earnest efforts to negotiate a resolution:

[VIA TRUTH SOCIAL] – “Iran promised to open the Strait of Hormuz, and they knowingly failed to do so. This caused anxiety, dislocation, and pain to many people and Countries throughout the World. They say they put mines in the water, even though all of their Navy, and most of their “mine droppers,” have been completely blown up. They may have done so, but what ship owner would want to take the chance? There is great dishonor and permanent harm to the reputation of Iran, and what’s left of their “Leaders,” but we are beyond all of that. As they promised, they better begin the process of getting this INTERNATIONAL WATERWAY OPEN AND FAST! Every Law in the book is being violated by them.

I have been fully debriefed by Vice President JD Vance, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner, on the meeting that took place in Islamabad through the kind and very competent leadership of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan. They are very extraordinary men, and continuously thank me for saving 30 to 50 million lives in what would have been a horrendous War with India. I always appreciate hearing that — The amount of Humanity spoken of is incomprehensible.

The meeting with Iran began early in the morning and lasted throughout the night — Close to 20 hours. I could go into great detail, and talk about much that has been gotten but, there is only one thing that matters — IRAN IS UNWILLING TO GIVE UP ITS NUCLEAR AMBITIONS! In many ways, the points that were agreed to are better than us continuing our Military Operations to conclusion, but all of those points don’t matter compared to allowing Nuclear Power to be in the hands of such volatile, difficult, unpredictable people.

My three Representatives, as all of this time went by, became, not surprisingly, very friendly and respectful of Iran’s Representatives, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, Abbas Araghchi, and Ali Bagheri, but that doesn’t matter because they were very unyielding as to the single most important issue and, as I have always said, right from the beginning, and many years ago, IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!

[PART II] – “So, there you have it, the meeting went well, most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, NUCLEAR, was not.

Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz. At some point, we will reach an “ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO IN, ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO OUT” basis, but Iran has not allowed that to happen by merely saying, “There may be a mine out there somewhere,” that nobody knows about but them. THIS IS WORLD EXTORTION, and Leaders of Countries, especially the United States of America, will never be extorted. I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas.

We will also begin destroying the mines the Iranians laid in the Straits. Any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL! Iran knows, better than anyone, how to END this situation which has already devastated their Country. Their Navy is gone, their Air Force is gone, their Anti Aircraft and Radar are useless, Khomeini, and most of their “Leaders,” are dead, all because of their Nuclear ambition. The Blockade will begin shortly. Other Countries will be involved with this Blockade. Iran will not be allowed to profit off this Illegal Act of EXTORTION. They want money and, more importantly, they want Nuclear. Additionally, and, at an appropriate moment, we are fully “LOCKED AND LOADED,” and our Military will finish up the little that is left of Iran!” ~

~President DONALD J. TRUMP

Read more …

From Saturday, seemingly before anyone even thought about it.

The Trump Card The President Holds If Iran Won’t Bend: A Naval Blockade (JTN)

Before he launched a daring military capture of the dictator Nicholas Maduro, President Donald Trump brought the Venezuelan economy to its knees with a naval blockade that strangled the nation’s oil revenues. If Iran refuses to accept the final deal the United States offered Saturday, Trump could bomb Tehran back to the “Stone Ages” as he vowed. Or he might just reprise his successful blockade strategy to choke an already teetering Iranian economy and ratchet up diplomatic pressure on China and India by cutting them off one of their key sources of oil.


Ironically, the massive USS Gerald Ford carrier that led the Venezuelan blockade is now in the Persian Gulf after a brief hiatus for repairs and crew rest after a deadly fire. And now it joins the USS Abraham Lincoln and other major naval assets. In short, Trump simply could out-blockade Iran’s hold over the Strait of Hormuz, experts said. “It would be very easy for the US Navy to exert complete control over what does and does not go up and down the Strait now,” the Lexington Institute’s national security expert Rebecca Grant told Just the News. “I’ve heard about 10 ships have moved in the last 24 hours. One of them was a reflagged Russian tanker, and we know that cargos have gone out to China, to India, and we’ve seen some inbound traffic.

“If Iran gets intransigent, then absolutely, the US Navy can set up with great overwater surveillance … and watch everything that goes in and out of that Strait and you’ll have to ask the US Navy if you want to move past Kharg Island or past that narrow part by Oman,” she added. After a marathon peace negotiation, Vice President JD Vance left Pakistan late Saturday without a deal with Iran and declared that the United States had offered its “final and best offer” to Tehran. Vance told a press conference that American officials negotiated in good faith for 21 hours, and now it is up to Iran to decide whether to accept the final terms approved by President Donald Trump.

“We leave here with a very simple proposal, a method of understanding that is our final and best offer,” Vance said. “We will see if the Iranians accept it.”The specifics of what the United States offered were not immediately released. But Vance made clear Iran had not yet agreed to Trump’s “central goal”: abandoning their development of nuclear weapons. “We haven’t seen that yet,” Vance said. With a sand clock waning on the temporary cease-fire, the Trump administration already prepared multiple options if Iran refuses Trump’s final offer.

The idea of a naval blockade was first suggested last week by retired Gen. Jack Keane, one of the nation’s top military strategists. “If the war resumes and after we degrade Iran’s remaining military assets sufficiently, the US military could choose to occupy Kharg — or to destroy it,” Keane wrote it a New York Post column. “Alternatively, the US Navy could set up a blockade, shutting down Tehran’s export lifeline.” If we preserve Kharg’s infrastructure but take physical control, we’d have a chokehold over Iran’s oil and its economy,” he added. “That’s the ultimate leverage we’d need to seize its ‘nuclear dust,’ or stores of enriched uranium, and to eliminate its enrichment facilities.”

Read more …

“If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”

Trump Blasts Pope Leo For Criticism of US Foreign Policy (CNBC)

President Donald Trump on Sunday bashed Pope Leo XIV over the U.S.-born Roman Catholic pontiff’s criticism of the U.S. war in Iran. The president said he does not “want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do,” in a Truth Social post. Trump linked the pope’s ascension to his return to office as president. “Leo should be thankful because, as everyone knows, he was a shocking surprise,” Trump said. “He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”


Trump said Leo is “Weak on Crime, Weak on Nuclear Weapons, does not sit well with me, nor does the fact that he meets with Obama Sympathizers like David Axelrod, a LOSER from the Left, who is one of those who wanted churchgoers and clerics to be arrested,” referring to a recent meeting between the pope and President Barack Obama’s former political aide. Leo, the first U.S.-born pope who hails from Chicago, has condemned Trump’s war effort with Iran. “Enough with the idolatry of self and money! Enough with the display of force! Enough with war! True strength is manifested in serving life,” Leo said on Saturday, according to CBS News.

The pontiff also said it was “truly unacceptable” for Trump to make a recent threat that he would destroy “an entire civilization” in Iran. Leo also used his Easter message to call for peace. “Let those who have weapons lay them down! Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue! Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them!” he said. Leo and other church leaders have also at times been sharply critical of Trump’s domestic immigration policies.

The pontiff endorsed a November message from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops who said they are “disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement.” “We bishops advocate for a meaningful reform of our nation’s immigration laws and procedures,” the bishops wrote. “Human dignity and national security are not in conflict. Both are possible if people of good will work together.”

Read more …

The capital of a Christian country should not have a muslim mayor. It is not innocent.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan Calls For A Gov’t Social Media Disinformation Unit (MN)

Sadiq Khan is pushing hard for a new state-backed disinformation unit to silence online criticism of London. The Mayor claims a “dark blizzard of disinformation” is undermining the city, linking it directly to offline harm, and wants government tools to force Big Tech to act – or else.


In a post on X (replies closed of course), Khan declared: “We can’t ignore the link between online disinformation and offline harm. At the Cambridge Disinformation Summit, I spoke about how the ‘outrage economy’ is eating away at the basic bonds of trust that hold our societies together – and why we need urgent action.”

He doubled down in remarks to the media, insisting: “We’re right to expect big tech to do better, but we should not rely on it. If platforms fail to act, the state must have the tools to make them. That’s why I’ll continue lobbying the government publicly and privately to take a much tougher approach.”

Khan called for “a new central body with the agility and authority to protect our democracy from disinformation, and deal with the scale and speed of this crisis. And we need more aggressive enforcement of the rules we already have. Because unless regulators like Ofcom have the power to hit companies where it hurts, they’ll keep on getting away with it.” He added: “The outrage economy is eating away at the basic bonds of trust that hold our societies together. It isn’t just a challenge for progressives like me. It’s a challenge for anyone who believes in democracy – wherever they are.”

Khan further suggested that “The same people attacking the capital have already started targeting other cities around the world. And, in a few years’ time, I think we’ll look back on London as the canary in the coal mine. But I hope we’ll also see it as the place where the fightback began.” Civil liberties group Big Brother Watch sounded the alarm on X:

https://twitter.com/BigBrotherWatch/status/2042640497529790947

As we recently highlighted, Khan is running a campaign to dismiss the chaotic reality on London’s streets as foreign propaganda or American disinformation: While Khan obsesses over online narratives, the actual data from his own city tells a different story.

https://twitter.com/GauciReports/status/1998372676079886469

Every hour in London a rape is reported, and every half hour or thereabouts knife crime is reported. Yet Sadiq khan claims it is the safest city in the world and everything negative you hear is “disinformation.”

Read more …

“Much of Islamic teaching consists of the glorification of the male ego, and the encouragement of its worst manifestations..”

John Cleese Pushes Back Against Islamist Tide In Britain (MN)

John Cleese has fired off a fresh round of unfiltered truth bombs, exposing the cultural erosion underway in the UK as mass immigration and Islamist influence accelerate. The Monty Python star is zeroing in on the BBC’s latest woke assault and the realities of Islamist culture that open borders have imported. Responding to a BBC claim that the UK education system “wasn’t built for black children” and was instead designed for “whiteness,” Cleese cut through the nonsense with characteristic clarity:


Cleese hit back: “It was built for British children, because it was in Britain. At that time most British children were white. To claim that was some kind of racist conspiracy is insane.” He added, “The BBC has a hidden agenda which is against the beliefs of the majority of British people.” No pandering to identity politics. Just facts about a nation educating its own people—before decades of mass immigration turned basic institutions into battlegrounds for grievance narratives. Cleese’s comments come fresh off demanding a new election over the epidemic of crimes against churches—more than 10 every single day—continues his stand against the forces dismantling British identity.

Cleese slammed Prime Minister Keir Starmer for becoming “so dependent on Muslim votes that he now does not even pretend to be evenhanded,” highlighting how unchecked migration has left historic Christian sites vulnerable while authorities prioritize other communities. Cleese didn’t stop there in his latest tirade. He highlighted a video of an Islamic figure blaming victims for failing to control the emotions of the faithful, posting “This sage is proposing that as his followers are incapable of controlling their emotions, their victims should be the ones blamed and punished.” “Much of Islamic teaching consists of the glorification of the male ego, and the encouragement of its worst manifestations,” he continued.

This comes as Britain grapples with grooming scandals, parallel societies, and demands that native women and girls alter their behavior to accommodate imported cultural norms—while authorities look the other way. No hedging. No virtue-signaling. Just acknowledgment that importing millions who reject British values creates the exact fractures politicians now pretend to solve with more surveillance and speech codes. Cleese also dismantled London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s warning about a “dark blizzard of disinformation” online.

The sarcasm lands because the pattern is unmistakable: mass Islamic immigration brings incompatible ideologies that refuse integration, then critics of the resulting chaos are labeled the problem. Khan and the establishment deflect blame onto social media while churches burn and British streets fill with calls for Sharia. Britain’s historic identity—rooted in Christian values, free speech, and majority rule—is under sustained pressure from open borders policies and the cultural Marxism that cheers it on.

The BBC, Khan, and the Labour government aren’t protecting Britain. They’re managing its transformation, all while criminalizing dissent. The likes of Cleese, who has commented on British society for decades, see where this is heading and are refusing to play along, reminding the public that reality doesn’t bend to slogans about diversity or disinformation. In an age of elite denial, his willingness to state the obvious stands out. Britain’s survival as a cohesive nation depends on rejecting the Islamist cultural takeover and the woke enablers who imported it—before the division Cleese warns of becomes irreversible. As he stresses, the ballot box, secure borders, and unapologetic defense of British heritage remain the only path back.

Read more …

It’s not the birth of Christ, it’s his resurrection. Easter. The Orthodox church will save Europe, not Rome. You got to fight for your right to party!

Putin Attends Easter Service For Orthodox Christianity’s Holiest Day (RT)

Millions of Russians are celebrating Orthodox Easter, the most important holiday in Christianity and one that carries deep cultural significance across the country. Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the Easter night service at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior, where Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia is traditionally leading the Easter Matins and Divine Liturgy. In Russia, Easter goes beyond its strictly religious meaning. In a country shaped by diverse cultures and faiths, including Islam and Buddhism, the holiday is observed not only by Christians, but also by many non-believers and followers of other religions.


Some 73% of Russians plan to celebrate Easter this year, according to a survey published on Friday by the state-run pollster VCIOM. Only 15% of respondents said they do not intend to mark the holiday. Almost half of respondents said they would focus on preparing traditional Russian Easter dishes, including painted eggs and a sweet bread known as kulich. Almost 40% see it as an opportunity to meet with friends and relatives, planning to host or attend festive gatherings. Only about 20% observe Lent – a nearly seven-week period of fasting preceding Easter in the Orthodox tradition, the poll suggests.

Around 15% of respondents named egg painting as one of the most significant Easter traditions in Russia, while 10% highlighted family gatherings. Millions of Russians are expected to attend church services on Saturday night as part of traditional Easter celebrations.Orthodoxy is experiencing a resurgence in Russia, according to VCIOM, with the number of followers growing, particularly among young people. The share of people aged 18-24 who identify as Orthodox Christians has grown from 25% to 45% in recent years, the agency said in July 2025.

Read more …

“.. after Witkoff and Kushner reported that Iran wasn’t negotiating in good faith, the focus shifted to action. At a February 26 Situation Room meeting, Trump heard arguments from his team. Vance warned against a strike but deferred to the president..”

A CNN Anchor Just Torched the Left’s Favorite Narrative About Trump (Margolis)

Democrats talk about impeachment and the 25th Amendment pretty much all the time when it comes to President Donald Trump. There were plans to impeach him before he even took office in 2017. They spent years calling him crazy, inviting quack doctors on left-wing media outlets, and claiming he was unstable. So, the recent push to simultaneously push for impeachment and invoke the 25th Amendment is hardly new territory for them, but it’s getting kind of old, even for CNN. On Saturday, CNN’s Michael Smerconish delivered a scathing rebuke of Democrats’ rhetoric and methodically dismantled their favorite talking point that Donald Trump is mentally unfit to serve as president.


Smerconish began by recalling Bill Maher’s now-infamous dinner with Trump at the White House last spring, which triggered the predictable meltdown from the left — including Larry David mocking Maher in the New York Times under the headline “My Dinner with Adolf.” “In a choice between two of my favorite comedians, I stood with Maher on [the] theory that it’s better to have dialogue and to break bread than to demonize,” Smerconish said. Maher had dinner, went right back on television, and kept up his criticism.

As you know, it was Trump’s Truth Social posts during the Iran war that really set things off for the Democrats this past week, sparking the talks of impeachment and the 25th Amendment. The problem was, it worked, and 90 minutes before Trump’s deadline, Pakistan brokered a two-week ceasefire. Funny how that works. Smerconish went on to summarize a New York Times deep dive into what happened behind the scenes in the lead-up to Trump’s decision to bomb Iran.

https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/2042987757987856866?s=20

While Benjamin Netanyahu pushed for action and initially aligned with Donald Trump, key U.S. officials pushed back hard. John Ratcliffe dismissed Israeli regime-change plans as unrealistic, Marco Rubio bluntly rejected them, and J.D. Vance emerged as the most vocal opponent of war. But new intelligence created urgency, showing a rare opportunity to target Iran’s leadership. After failed diplomatic efforts led by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump convened a final meeting, heard all sides, and weighed legal and military input. With a deadline looming, Trump made the call just minutes before time expired, approving the strike and greenlighting “Operation Epic Fury.”

New intelligence revealed Iran’s leadership, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would be exposed in a rare, vulnerable setting, prompting urgency inside the White House. Donald Trump still gave diplomacy one last shot, but after Witkoff and Kushner reported that Iran wasn’t negotiating in good faith, the focus shifted to action. At a February 26 Situation Room meeting, Trump heard arguments from his team. Vance warned against a strike but deferred to the president, while Ratcliffe presented the intelligence, and legal and military officials confirmed the plan was viable. With a deadline looming, Trump made the final call aboard Air Force One, approving “Operation Epic Fury” just 22 minutes before the cutoff. Why did Smerconish bring this up? “It shows airing of competing views, some open to dissent, reliance on legal counsel, and a deliberative process, not the impulsivity with which Trump is so often associated,” he said. “There’s nothing in the Times behind closed doors account of an unstable Trump at the same time that he was playing the madman card in public.” The guy posting about civilizations dying was, simultaneously, going around the table, listening to dissent, consulting lawyers, and making a hard call under enormous pressure. Smerconish put it cleanly: “It’s not that there’s a method to his madness, it’s that the madness is his method.” Now, Smerconish argued that the act is wearing thin, and that’s a debate worth having. But, the New York Times report, Smerconish concluded, revealed the same thing Bill Maher saw over dinner: Trump is capable of exactly what his critics insist he isn’t. “Patience, process, and genuine deliberation. He went around the table. He heard the dissent. He consulted the lawyers; he made a hard call under enormous pressure. And 90 minutes before his own deadline, a ceasefire materialized.” He was direct: “That’s not nothing, and it’s certainly not the behavior of someone who needs the 25th amendment invoked or warrants impeaching.”

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“On the Epstein matter, Swalwell demanded full disclosure and called legal concerns “bulls****” in a screaming match with FBI Director Kash Patel.”

Pelosi’s Monster: The Creation and Destruction of Eric Swalwell (Turley)

In Mary Shelley’s famous work, Dr. Frankenstein is asked, “‘Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?” This week, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D. Calif.), the leading Democratic candidate for California governor, may wish he could ask that of former Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). After sexual assault allegations were raised by former staff members, Pelosi, Sen. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), and even his close friend (and former campaign chair) Sen. Ruben Gallego (D., Ariz.) have withdrawn their endorsements.


The fact, however, is that (regardless of the merits of these latest allegations), Swalwell was always a notorious figure in Washington who was constructed by Pelosi and others to serve their interests. As Pelosi and his other allies now seek to destroy him, they cannot escape their hand in his creation. Multiple women came forward this week to allege sexual assault and other potentially criminal acts by Swalwell. The first allegations came from a former staffer who said that she was raped twice by Swalwell, who had sex with her when she was too drunk to consent. Swalwell is denying the allegations.

Four women spoke to the Chronicle; one former staffer alleged that she tried to fight off Swalwell who left her bruised and bleeding after a rape. Even CNN, which eagerly featured Swalwell on programs as he attacked the Trump Administration, ran detailed accounts of another alleged assault in a hotel room. One of these accounts is from February of this year. The accounts, if true, suggest that Swalwell is not just a sexual harasser but a sexual predator operating in plain view. One woman, Ally Sammarco, alleged that she (like other women) received nude photos of Swalwell as well as inappropriate social media messages.

Swalwell’s scandal is about as surprising in Washington as the return of the cicadas. Swalwell was infamously accused of having an affair with an alleged Chinese spy named Fang Fang. His patron in Congress, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, immediately moved to protect him, declaring, “I don’t have any concern about Mr. Swalwell.” Pelosi even blocked efforts to remove him from the House Intelligence Committee despite obvious concerns that he was susceptible to blackmail over his sexual trysts. She lashed out at those calling for his removal in the interests of national security, declaring “I do think that it is unfortunate that Mr. McCarthy is trying to make an issue of this.”

After sexual assault allegations were raised by former staff members, Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Adam Schiff and even his close friend (and former campaign chair) Sen. Ruben Gallego have withdrawn their endorsements. What these women are describing is a politician who felt that he had a license to prey on female staffers. I wonder who gave him that impression? For years, the Democratic establishment and the media ignored any rumors surrounding Swalwell because he was their useful monster, someone who was an attack dog always straining at the leash.

Swalwell was always the first to a mob. Indeed, he now hopes that voters will not apply the same standard he applied to figures like Justice Brett Kavanaugh. In his confirmation hearing, Kavanaugh faced an allegation of attempted rape from high school, and Swalwell had little patience for those of us arguing for a modicum of due process. Swalwell said that Kavanaugh’s guilt was self-evident: “More and more cases that are separate and independent, that look the same, pretty soon a prosecutor starts to say to a jury … that the arrows are pointing in the same direction.” On the Epstein matter, Swalwell demanded full disclosure and called legal concerns “bulls****” in a screaming match with FBI Director Kash Patel.

Recently, Swalwell took a different view on the release of his own FBI files from the Chinese spy scandal. In a cease and desist letter to prevent public disclosure, attorneys Norm Eisen and Sean Hecker warned Patel, “Your actions threaten to expose you, others at the FBI, and the FBI itself to significant legal liability.” It is now a pile-on as Swalwell’s former enablers run for cover: even Gallego, who posed with Swalwell bare-chested on camels in Qatar. Notably, no one seemed concerned that the trade group US-Qatar Business Council spent more than $84,000 to fly Swalwell, Gallego, and their loved ones to Qatar for the luxurious trip.

The most obvious beneficiary of the scandal, Katie Porter, has denied any involvement in the woman responsible for organizing the disclosures against Swalwell. The irony is that Swalwell’s scandal will remove a candidate who has allegedly physically assaulted staffers in favor of a candidate who has verbally assaulted staffers. The implosion of Eric Swalwell is raising questions about how so many close associates and friends could not have known about the rumors of his misconduct. Now, suddenly, Swalwell has no friends or allies after years of being praised by Pelosi and many in the media.

Mary Shelley made the point most vividly in Frankenstein that there is little difference between the creators and the monsters in such moments: “It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.”

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“CNN investigated the claims and corroborated many details.”

Eric Swalwell Suspends Gubernatorial Campaign (Matt Margolis)

Rep. Eric Swalwell has suspended his campaign for governor of California in the wake of multiple sexual misconduct allegations, including sexual assault. The accusations prompted a mass exodus of campaign staff and endorsements. Democrats in Congress, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Sen. Adam Schiff, and other key Democrats called on him to end his campaign. “I am suspending my campaign for Governor,” Swalwell wrote in a post on X. “To my family, staff, friends, and supporters, I am deeply sorry for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past.”mHe added, “I will fight the serious, false allegations that have been made — but that’s my fight, not a campaign’s.”

]


A former staffer says Swalwell had sex with her twice while she was too drunk to consent. Another woman says he cultivated her political ambitions online, then got her intoxicated during a 2025 visit and kissed and groped her without consent, after which she woke up in his hotel room with only blurred memories. Social media creator Ally Sammarco says he sent unsolicited nude photos to her while suggesting he could help her career. Another woman says that after contacting her on social media, Swalwell repeatedly requested explicit photos and sent unsolicited nude videos over several years. CNN investigated the claims and corroborated many details.

Politico has more on this development: “The Democratic congressman’s exit completed a stunningly swift collapse for a candidate who had shown signs in recent weeks of pulling ahead of a crowded Democratic field, with prominent interest groups and elected officials beginning to coalesce behind him. But an ex-staffer’s allegation that Swalwell had sexually assaulted her, detailed in a San Francisco Chronicle report and followed by more misconduct allegations in a CNN report, led those allies to abandon Swalwell en masse as high-level staffers departed his campaign.

Swalwell started last week vehemently denying accusations against him as nakedly political attacks on the race’s frontrunner. He ended it politically isolated, his top campaign surrogates and prominent endorsers withdrawing their support or urging him to exit the race. By Friday afternoon, Swalwell’s two campaign co-chairs, Reps. Jimmy Gomez and Adam Gray, called on Swalwell to drop out, as did Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement saying the accusations “must be appropriately investigated with full transparency and accountability,” and that, “As I discussed with Congressman Swalwell, it is clear that is best done outside of a gubernatorial campaign.”

Suspending his campaign likely won’t be the end of this saga. The allegations against him are currently under investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, and there have been growing calls for Swalwell to resign from Congress or face expulsion.

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The Dhimmi. Do read!

Truth-Teller Encounters the Buzz-Saw of the Establishment Narrative (Spencer)

What happens when someone dissents from the leftist establishment narrative in a way that is so compelling and convincing that the continued wide acceptance of that narrative is imperiled? What happens is that the leftist media establishment deploys its strongest rhetorical weapons against the offender, hoping to destroy or at least cripple the dissident before he or she is able to amass a significant following, or to dishearten and disperse that following if it already exists. This is why the April 2026 issue of Tablet magazine contains a massive article, over 6,000 words long, damning with faint praise the pioneering scholar of dhimmitude, Bat Ye’or.


Former New York Times writer Judith Miller, who for decades has been a reliable conduit for the establishment line, pulls out all the stops to ensure that her readers will come away with the idea that Bat Ye’or, for all her admirable qualities, is a bit of a nutter. It is a shabby way to treat one of the great thinkers of our age, and demonstrates how deeply threatened the academic left is in the face of the truths Bat Ye’or has uncovered.

Bat Ye’or is a 92-year-old independent scholar, born in Egypt. Her 1990s books, including The Dhimmi, The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam, and Islam and Dhimmitude, shed unprecedented light upon a previously neglected area of the study of Islam: dhimmitude, Islamic law’s institutionalized system of discrimination and persecution of unbelievers, primarily Jews and Christians. Then in her equally groundbreaking 2005 book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, Bat Ye’or showed how and why Europe embarked upon the path that is now leading, as more and more people realize daily, to the destruction of its own civilization: the admittance of massive numbers of Muslim migrants without any expectation that they would ever assimilate and adopt European Judeo-Christian values and mores.

If events have vindicated anyone who has written anything over the last quarter-century, they have vindicated Bat Ye’or. Islamic apologists in the West have, over the last few years, sharply curtailed their claims that Islam is tolerant and now are increasingly open about their supremacist designs and contempt for their hosts. Eurabia, for years dismissed as a conspiracy theory, is now obvious and unavoidable on the streets of London, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, and elsewhere.

Bat Ye’or should consequently be celebrated as the visionary she is, and as someone who stood her ground courageously against the ridicule and contempt of the academic establishment, which assured us that Islam was peaceful and tolerant and that Europe would never be in any danger from the Muslim migrants it took in. Instead, Judith Miller gives us more of that contempt. Miller is at least polite about it, and professes to admire Bat Ye’or’s intellectual integrity. Miller semaphores repeatedly throughout her windy piece, however, that right-thinking leftist intellectuals should not dare to take Bat Ye’or seriously, or to notice that she has been proven correct about everything.

Miller’s pull quotes themselves tell the tale: “Critics accused her of inspiring both Anders Breivik [a Norwegian mass murderer] and the ‘Great Replacement’ theory of Renaud Camus.” That’s another “conspiracy theory” that has turned out to be absolutely correct. “Bat Ye’or insists that jihad is central to the practice of Islam.” Miller would have been hard-pressed to find an honest Muslim scholar who would tell her it wasn’t, but she clearly didn’t even bother to look. “Dismissed by academics but revered on the right, the author of ‘Eurabia’ sees Muslim migration as the result of a grand conspiracy.” “For many analysts, the ‘Eurabia’ thesis appeared to have come from Mars.”

While admitting that Muslim migrants have inundated Europe and are rapidly changing its culture and more, Miller insists that Bat Ye’or, in tracing the seeds of this inundation to a series of agreements that the European Commission concluded with the Arab League beginning in the 1970s, allowing Muslim migrants to stream in and not assimilate in exchange for a steady supply of oil, is engaging in baseless conspiracy theorizing.

In support of this claim, Miller quotes an academic from the Saudi-funded Georgetown University: “‘There was no giant plot,” said Lorenzo Vidino, an Italian American writer on Islamism who heads Georgetown University’s Program on Extremism. ‘Not even the Muslim Brotherhood, which plans 200 years ahead, thought of moving millions of Muslims to Europe,’ he said. Rather, it happened ‘serendipitously.’”

Serendipitously? Seriously? But what a remarkable coincidence that this serendipitous occurrence is discussed in a series of conferences and agreements concluded at those conferences, which bore the name… Eurabia. Miller also invokes Daniel Pipes, “a long-standing anti-Islamist activist, said that while Bat Ye’or was right to be concerned that Europeans were acting ‘pre-emptively like dhimmis,’ blaming this development on an obscure Euro-Arab working group from the 1970s was inaccurate. ‘I don’t think that a group of bureaucrats who began meeting 30 or 40 years ago in Brussels ever had that importance,’ he told me.”

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Orban lost; EU won. https://twitter.com/HungaryBased/status/2043060675514138922?s=20 https://twitter.com/RealHellenist/status/2042968347063783553?s=20 https://twitter.com/DiogenisSinopis/status/2043108388553347214?s=20

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Mar 142026
 


Paul Cézanne Village derrière des arbres, Île-de-France 1879


Iran’s New Supreme Leader Wounded, Likely Disfigured, Hegseth (Reuters)
Mojtaba Khamenei Is Nowhere to Be Seen (Rick Moran)
There Are Many Who Complain About ICE (Michael A. Letts)
Sec 301 Trade Investigations Into 16 Economies Including The EU (CTH)
Witkoff and Kushner Meet Russian Delegation in Florida (CTH)
Bessent Greenlights Sale Of Russian Oil At Sea To “Promote Stability” (ZH)
Bessent: “Narrowly Tailored, Short Term Sanction Relief” for Russia (CTH)
Merz Slams Trump Admin For Temporarily Lifting Russian Oil Sanctions (JTN)
Nearly 1 Out Of Every 2 Muslims Under 40 Has ‘Islamist’ Attitudes (RMX)
Order of Battle (James Howard Kunstler)
Zelensky Plotting Suspending Elections For Years – Media (RT)
Mamdani’s Wife Worked With Author Who Called Jews ‘Rabid Demons’ (Salgado)
Ex-Columbia Professor Calls for Violence, Glorifies Murder of Jews (Turley)
Musk Whips Out ‘Macrohard’ In Disruptive Tesla-xAI Bid (ZH)
Honda Just Lost Billions on EVs It Can’t Sell (Stephen Green)
Gavin Newsom Has a ‘Hillary Clinton Problem’ (Robert Spencer)

 


 

https://twitter.com/JamesMelville/status/2032639700196786606?s=20 https://twitter.com/TheChiefNerd/status/2032597866611408953?s=20

 


 


He has some info on that which he holds behind.

Iran’s New Supreme Leader Wounded, Likely Disfigured, Hegseth (Reuters)

Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is wounded and likely disfigured, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Friday, questioning Khamenei’s ability to govern after nearly two weeks of U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran. No images have been released of Khamenei since an Israeli strike at the start of the war that killed much of his family, including his father and wife. The Reuters Iran Briefing newsletter keeps you informed with the latest developments and analysis of the Iran war. His first comments came in a statement read out by a television presenter on Thursday. In the statement, he vowed to keep the Strait of Hormuz shut and called on neighboring countries to close U.S. bases on their territory or risk Iran targeting them. ntinue


“We know the new so-called not so supreme leader is wounded and likely disfigured. He put out a statement yesterday. A weak one, actually, but there was no voice and there was no video. It was a written statement,” Hegseth told a briefing. “Iran has plenty of cameras and plenty of voice recorders. Why a written statement? I think you know why. His father – dead. He’s scared, he’s injured, he’s on the run and he lacks legitimacy.” An Iranian official told Reuters on Wednesday that the newly appointed supreme leader was lightly injured but was continuing to operate, after state television described him as war-wounded.

Hegseth was joined by General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a briefing in which they emphasized U.S. military strikes to knock out Iran’s missile and drone capabilities and its navy. ‘NO QUARTER’ During the briefing, Hegseth said that the United States would show no mercy in the war. “We will keep pressing, keep pushing, keep advancing. No quarter, no mercy for our enemy,” Hegseth said. “No quarter” is the refusal to spare the life of someone who has expressed their intention to surrender – something prohibited by law. “International humanitarian law prohibits the use of this procedure, that is, ordering that there shall be no survivors, threatening the adversary therewith, or conducting hostilities on this basis,” according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

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“The February 28 airstrike that took out Ali Khamenei also killed his wife, his daughter, Mojtada’s wife, Ali Khamenei’s son-in-law, and at least three grandchildren.”

Mojtaba Khamenei Is Nowhere to Be Seen (Rick Moran)

Mojtaba Khamenei, the new Supreme Leader of Iran, was “elected” Supreme Leader of Iran on March 8. In fact, the Assembly of Experts, the body charged with electing the Supreme Leader, met virtually only once and then only to confirm Mojtaba’s choice as leader. Reports from sources like Iran International indicate that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) applied significant “psychological and political pressure” on the clerics to ensure a quick victory for Mojtaba, aiming for regime continuity during the war. Khamenei the Younger is a cutout, a stand-in for the IRGC. On March 9, the regime held “Allegiance rallies” to “celebrate” Khamenei the Younger’s elevation (installation?) to the Islamic version of the Peacock Throne.


At the rally in Tehran’s Revolutionary Square, a life-sized cardboard cutout of Mojtaba was hauled on stage to be properly venerated. “State media broadcast regime loyalists hailing and swearing allegiance to a cardboard Khamenei,” writes Amit Segal of The Free Press. If that’s not bizarre enough, consider this: the only word we’ve heard from Mojtaba Khamenei was third-hand. The first Official Statement was written only and read by an anchor.mIs Mojtaba Khamenei still alive? The February 28 airstrike that took out Ali Khamenei also killed his wife, his daughter, Mojtada’s wife, Ali Khamenei’s son-in-law, and at least three grandchildren. Mojtaba was injured, according to the official reports, on his legs, hands, and arms.

“At the most critical juncture in the history of the Islamic Republic, its new Supreme Leader is a ghost,” reports WOIN. The fact that Khamenei did not use his own voice in the statement poses a significant problem for intelligence agencies.Even if Tehran eventually releases an audio tape claiming to be Mojtaba, there is almost zero baseline to verify it. He has spent his entire adult life operating in the shadows of the security establishment. In fact, the only publicly known recording of his voice in existence is a brief, years-old, one-minute clip of him telling seminary students that his theology classes were canceled.In today’s AI world, anyone can use an AI software like Elevenlabs and create an entire speech in Khamenei’s voice just for $11 a month.

Audio is the easiest medium to manipulate in the world of AI and a country obsessed with camera and public appearances using audio tapes, is raising suspicions among the experts. And down the rabbit hole we go. “Iranian opposition groups in the diaspora are openly claiming that Mojtaba is actually in a deep coma, being treated in absolute secrecy,” according to the WOIN report. “The theory suggests the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forced the Assembly of Experts to name Mojtaba as leader to maintain a facade of dynastic stability.”If Khamenei is dead or in a coma, who is in charge? The same people who have been in effective control of Iran for the last 30 years: the Revolutionary Guard Corps senior commanders.

Amit Segal writing in The Free Press: “The truth is that even if the conspiracy is false and Khamenei is only suffering from minor leg injuries, that may still be the case. It is far from unheard of for the successor to a powerful dictator to serve primarily as a military figurehead. The regime needs Khamenei to have a pulse, but not much more. In a Freudian slip early in the war, Iran’s foreign minister claimed that the attacks on neighboring states were “not our choice,” indicating that IRGC elements may have acted independently of the government.

The regime’s official narrative is that Khamenei is being kept away from the public for security reasons. Israel has already announced its intention to reunite the son with the deceased father. But if this is truly about security, it is still a dangerous game. There are times when absence increases a leader’s mystique—a regime in crisis is not one of them. Since Khamenei’s election in 1989, the Revolutionary Guard Corps has been aggrandizing power unto itself. They’ve appropriated most of the largest and most profitable businesses, giving pieces of the corporations to favored clerics and military commanders.

Following the death of the Supreme Leader, the Guards really turned the screws on the Assembly of Experts.“The pressure from the Revolutionary Guard to announce Mojtaba Khamenei as his father’s successor as quickly as possible was so intense that the IRGC Intelligence Organization forced several dissenting members of the Assembly of Experts into this choice by threatening them and their family members. Their silence following the selection is likely a result of those same threats,” according to Iran Wire.

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“ICE continuously reports progress made across the United States with new arrests every single day – and no, not in a “Gestapo” manner. More like “we know which criminals to track down and arrest” manner. Just look at their track record.”

There Are Many Who Complain About ICE (Michael A. Letts)

Negative talk about ICE agents these days is very commonplace. Just take a good look at social media and across various news outlets. You’ll see it everywhere. “They’re causing chaos in Minneapolis!” But you know what you don’t see with all this negative talk? What they’re actually doing when it comes to their job.President Donald Trump didn’t put this group together just to spite the American public. He put them together to make a difference and clean up the mess left behind by Joe Biden – that mess being the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants that seeped their way into the United States thanks to his lazy border policies.


And while they all aren’t criminals, a good portion of them all – including a number of child sex offenders. The worst of the worst, if you ask me. After all, these are full-grown men who are going after kids. And abusing them in the most awful way you can imagine. Well, good news, folks. Based on this report, ICE has really cracked down on this particular group of criminals. ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Houston recently arrested 414 criminal illegal aliens charged with child sex offenses of some kind during Trump’s first year in office. That’s nearly twice the amount of similar predators arrested during the final year of the Biden administration, when he was scrambling to make up for his previous years of screw-ups. (Only 211 were arrested at that time.)

“While elected officials and media pundits across the country were zealously trying to manipulate the American public with fake news stories about ICE’s public safety mission, the brave men and women of ICE were quietly going about their business to arrest and remove more than 400 dangerous child predators from our local communities,” ICE ERO Houston acting Field Office Director Gabriel Martinez noted in a statement. “Thanks to their tireless efforts, parents across southeast Texas can sleep a little better tonight knowing that these pedophiles and child rapists are no longer a threat to their children.”

And keep in mind that this is only one specific city. ICE continuously reports progress made across the United States with new arrests every single day – and no, not in a “Gestapo” manner. More like “we know which criminals to track down and arrest” manner. Just look at their track record. But this is nothing new. Law enforcement officials have always buckled down in the face of criticism and continued doing the job to the best of their ability – even when the tide was turned against them.

This reminds me of several years ago when the “defund the police” campaign kicked off following the death of George Floyd. Because of the act of a certain few, thousands of police officers went through a wave of hatred and unfair restraint at the hands of foolish Democratic officials who felt the need to drain their funds in favor of other programs. And why? Online hatred. But while some of these officers retired or simply didn’t want to deal with such restraints anymore, many persevered. In the face of this newfound hatred, they continued doing their job – and effectively, as such. And because of that, many of these officers remain in the field, continuing to fight for what’s right – despite what’s being said about them.

That’s kind of the point overall here. ICE is facing all sorts of criticism, a majority of it undeserved. But they’re still persistent in getting the job done. As a result of this, over 400 criminals are headed back to their home countries – and, again, this is just from one region of the United States. Imagine the overall effectiveness of the program, which goes into thousands or higher. Say whatever you want about law enforcement officials. It’s your right to have an opinion. Just keep in mind it’s an opinion. The facts are right there. ICE is getting the job done. Police are getting the job done. Anyone can say whatever they want. But remember, actions speak louder than words. Here’s to the actions of our law enforcement officials. Keep going!

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Tariffs still.

Sec 301 Trade Investigations Into 16 Economies Including The EU (CTH)

When the Supreme Court made their ridiculous decision to nullify the import tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) use, the high court noted several alternate approaches would not be legally problematic. One of those approaches would be the use of Section 301 trade tariffs. Yesterday USTR Jamieson Greer quietly announced that a Section 301 review would be taking place for the following countries: China, the European Union, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Japan, and India.” Section 301 tariffs are a trade enforcement mechanism established under the Trade Act of 1974. They allow the U.S. government to impose tariffs on imports from countries that are found to be engaging in unfair


USTR PRESS RELEASE – WASHINGTON — Today, United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced the initiation of investigations regarding the acts, policies, and practices of various economies under Section 301(b) of the Trade Act of 1974 relating to structural excess capacity and production in manufacturing sectors.The investigations will determine whether those acts, policies, and practices are unreasonable or discriminatory and burden or restrict U.S. commerce. The economies subject to these investigations are: China, the European Union, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Japan, and India.

“The United States will no longer sacrifice its industrial base to other countries that may be exporting their problems with excess capacity and production to us. Today’s investigations underscore President Trump’s commitment to reshore critical supply chains and create good-paying jobs for American workers across our manufacturing sectors,” said Ambassador Greer.

“The Trump Administration’s reindustrialization efforts continue to face significant challenges due to foreign economies’ structural excess capacity and production in manufacturing sectors. Across numerous sectors, many U.S. trading partners are producing more goods than they can consume domestically. This overproduction displaces existing U.S. domestic production or prevents investment and expansion in U.S. manufacturing production that otherwise would have been brought online. In many sectors, the United States has lost substantial domestic production capacity or has fallen worryingly behind foreign competitors.”

Additionally, Section 232 [Steel and Aluminum examples] of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (19 U.S.C. §1862, as amended) authorizes the President to impose trade restrictions—such as a tariff or quota—if the Secretary of Commerce determines, following an investigation, that imports of a good “threaten to impair” U.S. national security. Section 232 is currently covering all the steel and aluminum import tariffs. Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 allows the U.S. president to impose tariffs of up to 15% to address “large and serious” balance-of-payments deficits. This authority can be exercised without prior congressional approval for a limited duration of 150 days. After this period, any tariffs must be extended by Congress.

Section 122 has already been deployed to retain the “baseline reciprocity tariffs.” USTR Greer is now walking through the process of deploying Section 301 and will eventually become the legal underpinning to replace Section 122 and retain all tariff status without congressional extension needed. Most of this is technical and legal compliance as several of the aforementioned nations have already finalized free trade agreements.

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A very practical meeting. In the same way that sanctions are unpractical.

Witkoff and Kushner Meet Russian Delegation in Florida (CTH)

The fact that Team Russia and Team USA would be discussing a strategic economic alliance on the issue of energy is not a surprise to those who watched both President Putin and President Trump outline that same content discussion in Alaska last August. However, given the current conflict with Iran and the escalating oil price issue, Russia and the USA discussing Russian oil capacity and U.S. sanctions therein takes on a new angle.


It has been obvious that domestic U.S. politics, in combination with the Russia-Ukraine war, has impeded President Trump from organizing a strategic reset with Russia pulling away from historic conflicts. However, CTH is also clear-eyed on the longer-term ramifications for Eastern Europe when contrast with Putin’s ambitions to fix what he perceives as prior Russian Federation mistakes regarding the West (more on that at the end). As noted in social media exchanges from Witkoff and Dmitriev, the discussion was productive.


All indications of this meeting give the appearance of less focus on progress in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, and a higher focus on current economic conditions -created by the Iran conflict- that could be enhanced with cooperation between the U.S. and Russia. According to Kirill Dmitriev, Russian special presidential envoy for investment and economic cooperation with foreign countries and director general of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), relayed through the Russian News Agency (TASS), “he visited the US upon orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin, taking part in a meeting of the heads of a working group on economic cooperation between the two countries.”

According to the envoy, the meeting addressed both promising projects that can help restore Russia-US relations and the current crisis on global energy markets. The US is becoming increasingly aware of the role of Russian oil and gas in ensuing the stability of the world economy, as well as of the [in]effectiveness of sanctions against Russia, Dmitriev said after the meeting. “We discussed promising projects that could contribute to the restoration of Russian-American relations and the current crisis on global energy markets,” Dmitriev also wrote in a Telegram post. “Today, many countries, primarily the United States, are beginning to better understand the key, systemic role of Russian oil and gas in ensuring the stability of the global economy, as well as the ineffectiveness and destructive nature of sanctions against Russia.”

With the strong likelihood that Russia’s restart of their flagship LNG terminal Arctic-2 was directly related to the August summit in Alaska {SEE HERE}, there is already a baseline established for strategic cooperation President Trump would have no problem with Russia introducing millions of barrels of oil into the global market given the issues created by conflict in/around the Strait of Hormuz. However, obviously the issues for streamlined Russia oil exports surround (1) preexisting sanctions, (2) domestic U.S. anti-Russia politics and (3) the political and economic position of the anti-Russia European Commission leadership.

As we previously outlined with the Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) benefit, Russia previously extracted, liquified and pumped massive amounts of LNG into floating storage platforms from Arctic-2. Those LNG supplies doubled and tripled in value in a few days once Qatar shut down their production facilities and are now being sold to various Asian countries.

Europe has a massive energy problem with severely low LNG storage rates and now a shortage of oil, with EU gasoline prices rising much higher & faster than the rest of the world. Europe is facing a severe energy crisis overall and now their preexisting economic troubles are being amplified. More than ever Europe needs the Russian oil/gas, but ridged ideologues will never compromise on their anti-Russia position. They have even steeper sanctions against Russian oil/gas scheduled to trigger at the end of this month. It will be interesting to see how President Trump navigates the potential benefit from Russian energy products into the global market against the backdrop of all the geopolitical angst and political opposition against Russia.

[..] Here’s where/why Trump is being careful and pragmatic. President Trump doesn’t want to see an outcome where Russia is eventually stronger than Europe. There’s not enough frictionless history between the USA and Russia to trust Putin when he says the Federation has no plan to expand into Europe. The USA can/should be strategic allies with Russia. However, it would be much better if a strong Europe existed at the same time. Hence, Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Rubio continuing to emphasize that Europe needs to stop cowering in politically correct wokeness. The EU is destroying itself at the same time Russia is getting stronger.

.


Last point, the Lyndon LaRouche team, Promethean Action PAC, are very happy with the ongoing fracture of the USA away from the UK/EU group. However, be cautious around Political Action Committees who say, “President Trump needs people to understand what he is doing” and we are here as his official policy interpreters.

Remember, President Trump doesn’t need policy interpreters.

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In the global market.

Bessent Greenlights Sale Of Russian Oil At Sea To “Promote Stability” (ZH)

In a statement late Thursday on X, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the U.S. will allow countries to purchase Russian crude oil already at sea. The move aims to temporarily boost global supply availability, as the IEA warned earlier that the Middle East conflict has sparked one of the worst energy shocks on record. “To increase the global reach of existing supply, @USTreasury is providing a temporary authorization to permit countries to purchase Russian oil currently stranded at sea,” Bessent said.He continued, “This narrowly tailored, short-term measure applies only to oil already in transit and will not provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government, which derives the majority of its energy revenue from taxes assessed at the point of extraction.”


UBS analyst Nana Antiedu told clients earlier this morning that about 124 million barrels of Russian-origin oil were at sea across 30 locations worldwide. More specifically, Bloomberg analysts said about 30 Russian tankers are in Asian waters and may be available for purchase. These tankers carry about 19 million barrels of Russian crude and 310,000 tons of refined products. Bloomberg data show these Russian tankers are signaling “for orders” or, in other words, have no clear destination yet. They could be unloaded in Singapore or Malaysia.

Robert Rennie, head of commodity research at Westpac Banking, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying, “Of course, any supply helps, but this is a smaller help than it looks.”Rennie estimated that of the 125 million to 150 million barrels of Russian crude on the water, about a third is off China and is likely to end up in storage, while 30 million to 40 million barrels are in India and are likely to be consumed there. Rennie said the rest is in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. “We are only really talking about replacing maybe four or five days of lost Gulf exports. Sure, it helps, but it is no panacea,” he added. Bessent’s office also issued India a 30-day waiver at the beginning of the month so that New Delhi could buy Russian oil at sea to build reserves and cushion against an oil shock.

Brent crude futures are largely unchanged from when Bessent posted on X overnight. President Trump said the U.S. has “plenty of time” in the Iran war. Brent hovers around $100/bbl as of 0630 ET. The Trump administration has taken several steps to combat triple-digit Brent and WTI prices, including the planned release of 172 million barrels from the U.S. SPR. The release is part of a much larger 400-million-barrel SPR dump worldwide, agreed upon by the 32-nation IEA. This comes as the IEA warned about the worst-ever energy shock to hit the world. Also, the Trump administration is waiving a century-old law that requires U.S. ships to transport goods between American ports, so that domestic supplies can be shifted around more quickly.

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Relief at the pump.

Bessent: “Narrowly Tailored, Short Term Sanction Relief” for Russia (CTH)

President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are facing mounting criticism for creating a window for Russia to sell oil and gas to the global market via “narrowly tailored, short-term” sanction relief. However, few people are putting the issue into context, and the background here is exceptionally interesting. According to the terms announced by Secretary Bessent, the license to sell applies solely to Russian crude or petroleum products loaded onto vessels as of March 12 and is valid through midnight Washington time on April 11.


The sanction relief license to sell will be done in globally recognized petrodollars and applies only to preexisting oil and petroleum products that are already in transit at sea. However, here’s where it gets very interesting and the ramifications are significant. Immediately following the Alaska summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Trump, Russia restarted Arctic-2 LNG terminals and began increasing oil production for storage on ‘floating platforms.’ President Trump met with Putin on August 15, 2025, and the curious increase in Russian production began on August 18, 2025. In the past six months Russia has been pumping sanctioned oil and gas and storing it on ships and mobile sea platforms, seemingly (at the time) with no customers.

Suddenly, against the background of the Iran conflict, all of that previously stored ‘on the water‘ production, now worth double, is authorized for global sale (in petrodollars). Either Russian President Putin is the luckiest guy in the world, or Russia knew something. In 2025 what Russia did following the Alaska summit did not make sense; now it does and the ramifications are stunning.President Trump was looking for a way to organize a strategic partnership with Russia on the issue of energy production but was hampered by the preexisting sanction regime and strong opposition from domestic and international politics. The ‘coincidental’ timing’ of Trump meeting with Putin and then subsequently Russia producing massive amounts of oil and gas for storage on the water suddenly starts to take on an entirely new light.

Did Putin know something was coming, something that would eventually make the Russian over production and ‘on the sea’ storage worth billions. The implications here are quite remarkable; however, they simultaneously explain most of the behaviors since the Iran confrontation began. Media reports highlight that Vladimir Putin was asked about a previous joint agreement for military support between Iran and Russia and why Russia did not respond when Iran was attacked. Foreknowledge would explain that reaction. Additionally, the Russian Federation president never responded to the Trump operation to take down Venezuelan dictator Maduro and seize control over Venezuela’s oil production.

If there was some discussion inferring that a ‘limited sanction relief’ protocol might be possible, that would explain why Russia began storing oil and gas at sea. This fact pattern would also indicate that President Trump’s decision toward Iran was made at least six months ago, with a set of geopolitical events planned between the Alaska summit and the eventual confrontation with Iran. TIMELINE: Trump and Putin meet. Three days later Russia begins pumping oil/gas and storing it at sea. President Trump then triggers the Venezuela western hemisphere security operation; Russia stays silent. President Trump then triggers the confrontation with Iran; Russia rejects involvement. And then two weeks after the Iran confrontation begins, Trump removes sanctions on Russian oil/gas “in transit” at sea.

Suddenly all of the Russian produced and stored product ‘on the water’ has greater value and new customers. Just a coincidence? No way. The United States needs the oil/gas market stability that Russia can provide. Venezuela was/is to Trump as Ukraine was/is to Putin. We’ll keep watching. Enjoy the rest of your day.

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Merz doesn’t mind if gas is $3,00. Beating Russia is what counts.

Merz Slams Trump Admin For Temporarily Lifting Russian Oil Sanctions (JTN)

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Friday fumed over the White House’s decision to ease sanctions on Russian oil amid the ongoing Iran war, warning that it would bolster the Russian war effort against Ukraine. “We think that’s wrong,” he said, according to Politico. “There is currently a price problem, but not a supply problem. And in that regard, I would like to know what other factors led the U.S. government to make this decision.” “We want to ensure that Russia does not exploit the war in Iran to weaken Ukraine,” Merz said. “Nor will we allow Moscow to test NATO on its eastern flank and up here in the north.”


Merz made the remarks during a meeting with Norwegian Prime Minster Jonas Gahr Støre. The German chancellor was joined by French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, both of whom shared his sentiments. The administration lifted sanctions on Russian oil this month on a temporary basis. As of press time, Brent crude oil stood just shy of $100.00 per barrel.

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“This study should set off all the alarm bells. It is a societal time bomb. We must not only talk about migration, but also about integration and religion”

Nearly 1 Out Of Every 2 Muslims Under 40 Has ‘Islamist’ Attitudes (RMX)

A newly released study by the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), nearly 50 percent of Muslims under the age of 40 in Germany hold “Islamist” views, with these Muslims expressing an attraction to Islamism, a preference for Sharia law over the German Basic Law, and harboring anti-Semitic prejudices. The findings, described as “explosive in nature,” were featured in the latest edition of the “Motra Monitor.” The study reports that as of 2025, Muslims in Germany under the age of 40 (45.1 percent) hold “latent or manifestly Islamist attitudes.“ Some German politicians have already voiced their views on the study’s release. Wolfgang Kubicki, a prominent politician in the Free Democrats (FDP) and former MP, stated on X:


“This study should set off all the alarm bells. It is a societal time bomb. We must not only talk about migration, but also about integration and religion. The policy of naively looking away has favored this development. The naivety must stop.” He further stated that “anyone who demands a caliphate is an enemy of democracy. Enemies of democracy without German citizenship must leave the country. Neighborhoods where ghettoization provides fertile ground for radicalization must be restructured. Islamic associations without a clear demarcation from extremists must not be interlocutors for politics. Germany must act secular and self-confident.” He further called for an end to headscarves in schools and other state institutions “not to harass or suspect the wearers, but to make it clear that the only binding source of our values is the Basic Law.”

Beyond rising crime rates, terrorism offenses, and demographic change, the soaring numbers of Muslims in Europe also raise fundamental questions about worldview and society.mThe “Motra monitor,” a monitoring system tracking radicalization, spans 598 pages. It is published by the BKA and receives funding from several entities, including the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Family Affairs. While the report addresses various forms of extremism, including right-wing movements, it places a significant focus on Islamist extremism.

Evidence of these tensions surfaced in the summer of 2025 when “young Muslims and radical left-wing Germans occupied the Gutenberg Memorial in Frankfurt to demonstrate against Israel, some of them willing to use violence.“ The study’s researchers highlight a concerning core demographic, noting that “manifest Islamist attitudes are most prevalent among Muslims under 40, at 11.5 percent.“

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“History doesn’t move in straight lines. What looks like stagnation can be prelude. Let’s not lose hope.” —RVassil on X

Order of Battle (James Howard Kunstler)

Don’t lose your shit over mines in the Strait of Hormuz and the oil price shooting up. Iran has many thousands of mines. But something has to lay them out in the water. Iran has no more naval ships. They have small boats. The US can see everything moving on the surface, or sitting at docks. We are blowing them up methodically. The news outlets who want the US to fail in this operation (because: Trump) want you to think that we had no plan for dealing with this problem. That’s not so.


There are very few mines actually laid so far. Tankers are not going through the Strait of Hormuz because their captains are nervous. Their ships and their cargos are worth millions and the insurance costs millions. So, they’re waiting in place, hanging back. The US still has work to do destroying Iran’s shoreline defenses of missile and drone launch sites. Iran is firing all they’ve got left. Whenever they launch something, we see the geo-location on our satellites and radars. The mobile launchers are a little trickier because, obviously, they shoot and move. But they don’t always move fast enough, and there isn’t an endless supply of them.

The US Navy decommissioned its four Avenger-class minesweeper ships in the Persian Gulf in September, 2025, but replaced them with more agile Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs) capable of countering submarines and clearing mines. Two LCS ships — USS Santa Barbara and USS Canberra — quietly deployed in March 2025. An LCS uses an Airborne Laser Mine Detection System and an Airborne Mine Neutralization System via helicopter. In the water, it uses mine-hunting sonar and the Unmanned Influence Sweep System — all operated from unmanned surface vessels. The unmanned sweep vehicle triggers magnetic, acoustic, or combination mines, with the LCS at a safe distance.

The LCS vessels are armed with an 11-cell SeaRAM launcher for point defense that fires Rolling Airframe Missiles — fast, radar-guided missiles designed to knock down incoming anti-ship missiles and drones at short range. They also carry Longbow Hellfire missiles with updated software and hardware specifically to counter drones. The Longbow Hellfire uses radar-guided technology enabling it to engage targets through battlefield clutter, with a range of up to eight kilometers — giving the LCS the ability to engage drones before they get close. The LCS ships will be accompanied by Arleigh Burke-class destroyers equipped with Aegis and full missile defense suites for protection against the full spectrum of Iranian threats.

The oil markets are extremely sensitive to any changes in the oil environment, and war induces the most extreme changes. Even outside of war, weird things happen. April 20, 2020, was the apex of Covid-19 paranoia when everyday life was shutting down all over Western Civ. The price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures — specifically the May 2020 contract, which was expiring the very next day — crashed to an historic low of negative $37.63 per barrel. That is, sellers were literally paying buyers to take oil off their hands. By the following day, April 21, prices had rebounded back into positive territory, though still at very depressed levels around $10–$15 per barrel.

The current situation with oil in the $100 range is not going to be a one-day event, but it won’t last forever, either, so do your deep-breathing exercises and calm down. Of course, in America right now, a seditious news media will take every opportunity to induce exquisite anxiety in the public-at-large to deflect from the order-of-battle that President DJT is carrying out to 1) improve America’s geopolitical position and relations, and 2) to defeat the forces both external and domestic that seek to wreck the country.

Which is why you might see that the next move in the order of battle will be against the wrecking crew in our own country, including the political figures behind the decade-long conspiracy to undermine the president, the administrative rogues running the “resistance” in government agencies, the Lawfare ninjas queering the justice system, and the big money that funds the hundreds of NGOs attempting to instigate a color revolution here. I have visions of perp walks and indictments coming in on the zephyrs of spring.

It looks just now like Majority Leader John Thune and his RINO herd will trample the SAVE Act (election reform) into failure. But consider that Mr. Trump’s FBI has had more than a month to analyze the Fulton County, Georgia, ballot evidence from the 2020 election (while only last week it seized the Maricopa County, AZ, records, and for all we know the agency also has 2020 ballot evidence from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada, too). So, prepare for the public to be shocked and amazed at what has been discovered, and expect to see a sharp attitude change among embarrassed US Senators who will be compelled to come on-board for election reform.

Somewhere in all that, you might expect Cuba to fall — a momentous event, actually, considering the cumulative mischief Cuba’s government has provoked all over the western hemisphere since 1958. We don’t even have to do anything to make it happen, just respond in the aftermath with emergency food and fuel relief, and perhaps some help averting the vengeful slaughter of the old Castro governing network. We don’t want a bloodbath there.

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“Ukraine is facing a “financial catastrophe” that could halt its war effort and collapse the economy..”:

Got to feed the ever growing hunger for money.

Zelensky Plotting Suspending Elections For Years – Media (RT)

Vladimir Zelensky has ordered his advisers to plot out a scenario where elections in Ukraine are suspended and the country commits to years of war, Ukrainskaya Pravda has reported, citing government sources. The tenure of Zelensky and of the Ukrainian parliament has long expired, but the Ukrainian leader has refused to hold elections since early 2024, citing martial law imposed amid the conflict with Russia. The situation has prompted international concerns over the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government, particularly from Moscow, which has repeatedly questioned Zelensky’s authority and suggested he may not be in a position to sign any peace agreement should a deal ultimately be reached.


Ukraine’s European backers want Kiev to continue fighting for up to two more years, though the country is facing a “financial catastrophe” that will consume not only its war budget but also its economy as a whole, the newspaper reported on Thursday. “The Europeans said: ‘Fight for another year and a half or two. We will give you money.’ Under their influence, [Vladimir] Zelensky gave the task to the political leadership to develop a plan to hold off elections in Ukraine for several more years and how the parliament will work in such circumstances,” an anonymous source from Zelensky’s administration told the outlet.

The risk of Kiev running out of cash has been growing rapidly. With a proposed €90 billion ($105 billion) EU emergency loan remaining blocked by Hungary, growing dissent within the Ukrainian parliament has slowed down the adoption of measures needed to receive funding from the International Monetary Fund, the newspaper warned on Thursday. The EU emergency funding scheme ended up derailed amid the oil standoff between Ukraine and Hungary and Slovakia. In late January, Kiev halted the Druzhba pipeline, which used to carry Russian crude to the two EU nations, citing alleged damage to the artery. While Moscow has denied attacking the pipeline, Budapest and Bratislava have accused Kiev of deliberately disrupting supplies for political reasons. Hungary has vetoed the €90 billion loan in retaliation, while Slovakia warned it could opt to block the proposed package as well.

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Muslims vs jews in Christian territory.

Mamdani’s Wife Worked With Author Who Called Jews ‘Rabid Demons’ (Salgado)

New York socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wife is already in the midst of a scandal about her jihad-aligned views after she was caught liking and promoting posts about Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre online, but it turns out she also translates that virulent antisemitism into her “art.” Rama Duwaji Mamdani is an artist, but in the socialist trend that all art is politics. One of the works she provided a leading graphic for was an essay by Susan Abulhawa called “A Trail of Soap.” Abulhawa has repeatedly issued the most outrageous accusations against and labels of Jews, including an unhinged rant about “Jewish supremacist vampires.” Abulhawa also claimed she wanted to vomit every time she hears the Hebrew language, and insanely argued, “Most of the people killed on October 7 were actually killed by Israel.”


Abulhawa further referred to Oct. 7, when Palestinian terrorists filmed themselves massacring families, raping women to death, and laughing as they gunned down civilians, as a “preemptive strike” after “seven decades of provocation.” Last year, again referring to the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, she raved: To any reporter who thinks to ask me about October 7, go to hell and don’t bother to contact me or my agent. I do not worship at the alter of October 7. I do not worship at the altar of the WWII holocaust. I do not worship at the alter of Jewishness, antisemitism, or any other penance imposed by zionists on the world. Zionism is a disease of jewish supremacy that rots your brain and dulls even minimal critical thinking skills.

It is people like Abulhawa who fuel real-world violence and the massive rise in antisemitic attacks ever since Oct. 7, 2023. As important context, God granted Israel as a “perpetual possession” (Genesis 17:8) to the Jewish people more than a millennium before Islam was even invented or the Arabs first conquered Jerusalem. The reestablishment of Israel in the modern era was exceptionally legal, and yet Muslims have been waging almost incessant war against Israel ever since then. Despite the constant Jihad, Israel has generously given land grants to the Muslim Arabs, including Gaza and Bethlehem, land which the Muslims have immediately turned into hotspots of terrorist activity. There has never been a state of Palestine in history, and Muslims in the modern day have been refusing offers of a state for decades, because they don’t want their own state (they already have 50 nations), they want to destroy Israel. Abulhawa is as dishonest as she is vicious.

There are numerous posts on Abulhawa’s X feed referring to Jews as “parasites,” which seems to be her favorite go-to insult. For example, she re-shared a video asserting that groups of Israelis were moving into Gaza to capitalize on genocide (there was no genocide in Gaza; the only attempted genocide was on October 7). “F*****g parasites on this planet. I want to puke every time I hear that fake language pretending to be Hebrew, without a trace of Semitic sounds, rejoicing in carnage, trying to get their greedy grubby hands on more of what does not belong to them. There’s something horribly wrong with these people,” Abulhawa spat. In another post, she called Israelis “soulless parasites.”

In February, she reposted a clip of Congress welcoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a claim that almost every member of the United States government is either Jewish or married to a Jew. Abulhawa screeched, “the whole world is zionist occupied, except Palestine. They’ve stolen our land and home and heritage, but we’ve at least kept our dignity, refusing to submit to these parasites on earth.” Apparently, burning Jewish babies to death is maintaining dignity — who knew?

In January, Abulhawa shared a completely unconfirmed report that Israeli soldiers had murdered a mother and daughter. Abulhawa gibbered, “they are demons on this earth. virulent parasites who suck the lifeblood from others, not even for their own survival, but for their sadistic amusement.”I could provide dozens more examples from Abulhawa’s X feed of the most vile antisemitic rhetoric (see more above, found by Jon Levine), but I think the point is clear, which is that Abulhawa is a pro-genocide Jew-hater, and Mamdani’s wife created artwork for one of her essays. If you can know a person by the friends he or she keeps, then Rama Duwaji Mamdani has some serious explaining to do.

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Go home.

Ex-Columbia Professor Calls for Violence, Glorifies Murder of Jews (Turley)

Professor Muhammad Abdou, who until recently taught students at Columbia University, appeared online this week to spread calls for religious-based violence and glorify the murder of Jews. He did so as part of an event at the Union Theological Seminary, an institution associated with Columbia. While the university recently ended Abdou’s teaching, it is important to remember that this unhinged fanatic was previously chosen by Columbia faculty and administrators to teach their students. Those individuals remain at Columbia, and Abdou is just the latest example of the radical chic of higher education.


The Islamic studies scholar called on students to “be a threat” as part of the event titled “Death to the Akademy: How to be a thorn in their throat amidst snakes in the grass.” Teachers in higher education are often called “the academy.” According to a video on X from Manhattan Institute investigative analyst Stu Smith, the talk involved deeply disturbing and hateful comments.

Abdou told the students: “Let us engage in jihad, and there are rules for jihad, and Muslims know that Allah has commanded rules. We don’t engage in wanton violence, but we don’t accept the negative peace either.” One of the most chilling moments came when he praised Elias Rodriguez, the man facing multiple charges for the murder of a young Jewish couple. In what Abdou called the “assassination of two Zionists,” Rodriguez is accused of murdering Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26, the two Israeli employees in 2025 in Washington.

Abdou does not discuss how this young couple dreamed of a life together or sought to bridge religious divides. They are just a couple of “Zionists” in his eyes. He then reportedly praised their accused killer: “God bless him. He took action. … Take action. Not only that kind of action, just to be very clear, because there’s also building. We need to destroy. We need to create alternatives.” The seminary stopped his in-person appearance, which led to condemnations from student groups. In an Instagram post, Queer Muslims NYC accused the seminary of “flagrant Islamophobia and utter disregard for Muslim students.” However, they claimed that the union continued to support the event with a virtual component.

This video is reminiscent of the speech of other radical faculty like Cornell Professor Russell Rickford, who celebrated the massacre in Israel on Oct. 7th. Their extremism was not a barrier to being hired. It was likely an enhancement. They are examples of why faculty members are unlikely to change the overwhelmingly liberal appointments. Conservatives and libertarians have been largely purged from most departments. While even a moderately conservative faculty candidate will often face organized opposition, radicals like Abdou and Rickford find an eager audience on faculties.

I encourage you to watch this video. This is the man who was interviewed and selected by faculty and administrators, not just at Columbia but at Cornell University and the University of Toronto. He was appointed as the Arcapita Visiting Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s Middle-Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS) Program at the Middle-East Institute. He was also a Postdoctoral Fellow/Visiting Scholar at Cornell.

According to his bio, “he is a self-identifying Muslim anarchist and diasporic settler of color.” His credentials include “his organizing towards BIPOC and Palestinian liberation and involvement with post-anti-Globalization Seattle 1999 movements.”That appears to be the perfect resume for someone who wants to teach at leading universities. Those faculty and administrators are still at these institutions, and so is the radical culture that has taken hold of higher education in the United States. What is most striking about this video is how Abdou offers just pure hate. There is no discernible intellectual content or insight. Just rage masquerading as scholarship.

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Keeping busy.

Musk Whips Out ‘Macrohard’ In Disruptive Tesla-xAI Bid (ZH)

Elon Musk on Wednesday announced a joint project between Tesla and his AI startup xAI, which he dubbed “Macrohard” or “Digital Optimus” that can ‘basically automate entire companies’ by observing and intelligently simulating their functions. The way it works, per a Wednesday post on X: “Grok is the master conductor/navigator with deep understanding of the world to direct digital Optimus, which is processing and actioning the past 5 secs of real-time computer screen video and keyboard/mouse actions. Grok is like a much more advanced and sophisticated version of turn-by-turn navigation software.”


So Digital Optimus is the ‘instinct’ while Grok is the ‘thinking part of the mind’ according to Musk. The setup will run “very competitively on the super low cost Tesla AI4 ($650) paired with relatively frugal use of the much more expensive xAI Nvidia hardware,” and “will be the only real-time smart AI system. “In principle, it is capable of emulating the function of entire companies. That is why the program is called MACROHARD, a funny reference to Microsoft.” -Elon Musk.It gets even more wild; Musk says it works “in all AI4-equipped cars, so your car can do office work for you when not driving,” and he will deploy millions of dedicated Digital Optimus units at Supercharger stations.

Grok itself suggested 10 use cases;
1. Auto data entry from invoices/docs.
2. Real-time code fix from error messages.
3. Deal hunting while shopping online.
4. Contextual email response generation.
5. Seamless enterprise software ops.
6. Auto video edits from timeline.
7. Live stock trade execution.
8. Tutorial step automation.
9. Instant security threat spotting.
10. Entire company workflow emulation.

According to Musk, Digital Optimus will be ready to rock in 6 months. xAI was acquired by SpaceX last month in an all-stock deal that valued the rocket maker at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion, which comes ahead of a potential SpaceX IPO later this year.

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All carmakers obeyed politics and lose. Except for Toyota, which didn’t jump in head first. And Tesla.

Honda Just Lost Billions on EVs It Can’t Sell (Stephen Green)

Japanese automaker Honda just cancelled the production of three planned made-in-the-U.S.A. electric cars, including the 0-Series SUV, the 0-Series Saloon, and the Acura RSX — and the company says it will write off massive losses as a result. Still, better than building EVs nobody wants to buy. The company said the EVs had to go to avoid future losses, complaining about the “current business environment where the demand for EVs is declining significantly.” I follow these things, and I’d somehow never even heard of Honda’s 0-Series vehicles — assuredly for “zero emissions” — introduced at the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and were supposed to go on sale in the U.S. later this year.


The company’s 0-Series English-language and Japanese brag sheets are still up on the Honda website, for whatever that’s worth. Honda blamed U.S. tariffs (I’ll come back to those in a moment), the “volatile policy environment surrounding EV incentives,” (as Car and Driver put it), fossil fuel regulations, and changing consumer priorities in China. Honda says total write-downs could total $15.8 billion. While the epic losses won’t all come at once, Honda says it expects to lose between $2 billion and $3.5 billion in the current fiscal year, ending this month. According to Financial Times, that’s Honda’s first-ever annual recorded loss since going public 50 years ago.

What’s maybe most impressive about losing nearly [dr_evil_voice] SIXTEEN BILLION DOLLARS [/dr_evil_voice] on EVs is that Honda didn’t even try that hard, at least not compared to certain other automakers I could name — and am about to. GM said in January that it would suffer $7.6 billion worth of write-downs on its overblown EV plans, and in December, Ford announced a $19.5 billion write-down on its EV investments. That’s one of the largest in history. Europe-based Stellantis took one look at Ford’s losses and said, “Hold my beer.” Headquartered in the Netherlands, the Euro-giant also owns the old Chrysler Group brands, including Chrysler, Dodge, Ram, and Jeep.

Despite Europe offering even bigger subsidies and stricter mandates for EVs than this country does, Stellantis last month announced a whopping $26.6 billion in EV losses. Then there’s fussy old Toyota, which remained largely focused on hybrids and fuel-efficient ICE vehicles. That company seems to be doing just fine. American tariffs might have complicated Honda’s poor planning, but as you can see, they weren’t primarily to blame. Those same tariffs were supposed to help GM and Ford sell their cars — including EVs — but American EV makers took their lumps, too.

The real culprit here, of course, is Big Government. Washington, Brussels, and Beijing went all-in on subsidizing and even mandating a market into existence — a market that there simply wasn’t enough demand to serve. Not even with all the subsidies and mandates. So automakers retooled manufacturing facilities, built massive battery factories, and designed EVs (and pricy software to run them) from the ground up. Now they have to throw out some of the designs, scale back the battery production, and re-retool the plants.

Thanks, Big Government!

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Newsom is a good sign the Dems don’t have anyone.

Gavin Newsom Has a ‘Hillary Clinton Problem’ (Robert Spencer)

The destroyer of California, Gov. Gavin Newsom, wants very, very much to be president of the United States, and if he ever attains his goal, he will do to the entire country what he has done to California. That’s why all reasonable Americans who value the nation as a relatively economically stable and free society should be deeply alarmed at the prospect of a Newsom presidency. Newsom is such a bad candidate that even some leftists are alarmed, albeit not for the same reasons that patriots are. On the left, the concern is that Gavin has a “Hillary Clinton problem.”


The term “Hillary Clinton problem” could refer to so very many difficulties and categories of difficulties that it veritably boggles the mind. Did Newsom use a private email server to conceal government business from watchdogs? Did he abandon our people to jihadis at Benghazi and then lie about it? Does Newsom intend, after losing (as all patriots hope) the 2028 presidential election, to frame his victorious opponent for collusion with Russia? Does Newsom have reputation for lamp-throwing temper tantrums? Do Newsom’s enemies have strange suicidal tendencies?

In this case, the “Hillary Clinton problem” phrase comes from MS NOW host Chris Hayes, who said: “I think Newsom has the Hillary Clinton problem, which is that Hillary Clinton was perceived outside of the Democratic Party and Democratic coalition as the ultimate lib, the libiest lib who ever lived, and was never actually like that much of a lib. It was like — and also had a record that was fairly centrist, particularly as a U.S. senator.”

Oh, good grief. Hayes is trying to sell Newsom – and Hillary Clinton — as centrists? They may be centrists if Chairman Mao is at one end of the spectrum and Uncle Joe Stalin at the other end, but that’s about it. Newsom has presided over California’s first-ever population decline. Luminaries including Elon Musk and Steven Spielberg have fled the state to avoid Newsom’s ever-growing tower of taxes and regulations. All Newsom promises for the nation if he moves into the White House on Jan. 20, 2029 is an open border, spiraling crime, and a federal government that bleeds the taxpayer even more than his California state government does now. What is centrist about all that?

Hayes added: “And that’s like the worst uncanny valley for a Democratic politician to be in, where the base doesn’t trust you because you don’t have a kind of organic relationship with the left parts of the party. And then the swing voter just thinks like, that’s a lib.” Right. Because the swing voter is still marginally sane, while the “left parts of the party” think that men can become women, that Old Joe Biden was a competent president, and that ever-expanding government control over every aspect of Americans’ daily lives is a positive development.

Whether the Democrats run Newsom in 2028 or some other nutbar, it is virtually certain that no one will be able to secure the nomination without appealing to the party’s socialist, anti-American, pro-Islamic Republic of Iran, pro-Hamas base. Hayes says that the “Democrats needed someone who had an authentic relationship with the party’s left-wing base, but also ‘communicates broadly’ and is viewed as nonpartisan.” This is like saying that V. I. Lenin has a chance to be elected if he “communicates broadly” with anti-Communists and is viewed as nonpartisan: it isn’t going to happen.

Hayes, however, thinks Newsom can do it: “I just think right now — and this could change — Newsom has the opposite set of factors. He has made very clear attempts to show that he’s bipartisan, centrist, independent.” How on earth has Gavin Newsom ever attempted to be “bipartisan”? This is the man who has sponsored a gerrymandering scheme that will totally disenfranchise the millions of Californians who are still Republicans.

Despite the facts, Hayes insisted that “substantive things he’s done” showed that Newsom had moved toward the center, and lamented: “But I haven’t seen evidence that that comes through. I just think there’s a reputational thing that’s very problematic. Also, the governor of California is a tough place to get the next Democratic nominee from.”

That may be. Newsom’s problem is indeed California, albeit for different reasons from the ones Hayes imagines. Newsom’s problem is that he has been governor of the nation’s most populous state since Jan. 7, 2019. He has a lengthy track record. Contrary to Chris Hayes’ imaginings, there is nothing centrist about it. So will America choose for president a socialist whose policies have wrecked his state? We shall see, but Gavin’s “Hillary Clinton problem” is not so much that he is wrongly not perceived as a centrist, but that like Hillary, he has always left a catastrophe in his wake. Ask Christopher Stevens about that.

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