Political Thread in memory of David Reid. (R.I.P.)

[The Bedlington Terrier]

Yes. Let’s meet for lunch. I am quite happy with gammon(!) but like most foods. Look forward to a chat. Outwood.

Whats app me when you want to meet up. The Radcliffe to Bolton bus lands smack bang in the central bus station. I'll pick you up.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

What is now pretty clear is that Trump is not exactly a brilliant strategist, nor a skilled negotiator, and even less a brilliant diplomat or a profound political thinker, or even a simple politician.

It is enough for Iran to resist to win.

It costs Trump more than 3 billion dollars a day not to want to accept that it was Netanyahu who has put the reins on him and has led him, riding on him, to get into a hornet's nest from which he is eager to escape, but from which he cannot leave without a victory, of whatever kind, but to leave, at least, without losing his dignity and his pants.

And, for the moment, we continue with the Strait of Hormuz, closed when previously it was open for business until the Orange gob$hite stepped in.

With the Arab countries in the area, receiving punishment from which they will take years to recover and frightened seeing what is coming upon them. With the whole world watching the crisis, with prices and inflation impoverishing everyone. With the Chinese exhausting their patience and with the MAGA goons to see what their idol is spending money they need on.

And the only one that is gaining something is the promoter of all this tremendous mess: Israel.

Thank you, Mr. Trump, you are screwing us all up, on the whim of your friend Netanyahu. Pfhuck Israel.

[sinkov]

An Aussie wrote:
"Mate. You run a country with 600,000 homeless people sleeping on the street tonight. A country where 40% of adults can't cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money. A country where insulin costs more than a car payment and people are rationing it to survive. A country where medical debt is the number 1 cause of bankruptcy. A country where women are dying in hospital car parks because doctors are too scared of abortion laws to treat a miscarriage.
You lock up more of your own citizens than any nation on earth. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. The land of the free has 2 million people in cages, and a quarter of them haven't even been convicted of anything. They're just too poor to make bail.
Your life expectancy is going backwards. You're the only developed nation where that's happening. Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba's. Your kids do active shooter drills between maths and English while you sell the gunmaker's stock to your mates.
Your minimum wage hasn't moved in 15 years. You've got teachers working 2 jobs and veterans sleeping under bridges and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that didn't attack you.
And you?ve got a convicted felon, adjudicating raping, *****phile protecting, **** star shagging insurrectionist running the biggest dumpster fire war campaign since the Taliban thanked you very much for losing again.
And you're calling Greenland poorly run?
Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world. Nobody goes bankrupt there because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because their insurance said no.
'NATO wasn't there when we needed them." When exactly was that, champ? September 11? Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU. Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU. Australia wasn't even in NATO and we still showed up. For 20 years.
And you pulled out at 2am without telling anyone and left them to deal with the mess.
So maybe before you start calling other countries poorly run, have a look at your own backyard, you spray-tanned aluminium siding salesman. The only thing poorly run in this picture is your f----- mouth."
- Author unknown
Too on point not to share. An Australian's reply to Trump's rant about 'NATO not being there for America':

Are they still in Lockdown in Australia, or have they let them out yet ?

[sinkov]

What is now pretty clear is that Trump is not exactly a brilliant strategist, nor a skilled negotiator, and even less a brilliant diplomat or a profound political thinker, or even a simple politician.

It is enough for Iran to resist to win.

It costs Trump more than 3 billion dollars a day not to want to accept that it was Netanyahu who has put the reins on him and has led him, riding on him, to get into a hornet's nest from which he is eager to escape, but from which he cannot leave without a victory, of whatever kind, but to leave, at least, without losing his dignity and his pants.

And, for the moment, we continue with the Strait of Hormuz, closed when previously it was open for business until the Orange gob$hite stepped in.

With the Arab countries in the area, receiving punishment from which they will take years to recover and frightened seeing what is coming upon them. With the whole world watching the crisis, with prices and inflation impoverishing everyone. With the Chinese exhausting their patience and with the MAGA goons to see what their idol is spending money they need on.

And the only one that is gaining something is the promoter of all this tremendous mess: Israel.

Thank you, Mr. Trump, you are screwing us all up, on the whim of your friend Netanyahu. Pfhuck Israel.

America is making money hand over fist as the blockade on Iran has supertankers queing up to load American oil. It costs them nothing to keep the blockade on until Iran has run out of oil storage, money, food and power, and it won't be long before they do.

Incidentally, has Iran got a leader yet, or are they all afraid of topping the IDF to do list ?

[The Bedlington Terrier]

Trump gets weirder:

From last night BREAKING: Trump MELTS DOWN in unhinged 3 a.m. rant, demands arrests of Obama and Clinton while spiraling through his favourite conspiracy theories!

Donald Trump just put on a late-night spectacle that would be seriously laughable if it weren’t so dangerous. Starting just after midnight, the 79-year-old unleashed a chaotic barrage of posts on Truth Social, attacking Democrats, amplifying fringe conspiracies, and even promoting calls to arrest Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
It began around 12:20 a.m. with Trump lashing out at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, sneering that “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer should resign over this. He won’t be missed!”
From there, things only got more deranged. Trump pivoted to Obama, dredging up long-debunked conspiracy theories about a supposed “treasonous coup” tied to the 2016 election.
He didn’t even bother making the claims himself, instead boosting posts from random social media accounts calling for Obama and Clinton to be arrested. One of those accounts had barely a few hundred followers, but Trump is scraping the bottom of the barrel in his inability to sleep.
Next Trump turned his fire on the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group known for tracking extremist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan, bizarrely labeling it “one of the greatest political scams in American History,” while pushing claims tied to a new indictment alleging fraud. (Experts say that the group’s work sometimes involves interacting with extremists as part of investigations, which Trump ignored of course.
By 1:40 a.m., Trump had escalated even further, declaring that if his conspiracy theories were true, the 2020 election should be “permanently wiped from the books.”
Yes, really. A former president openly fantasizing about erasing an election he lost. Untethered, he wants to impose his own reality on history.
And because no meltdown is complete without a little help from his billionaire buddies, Trump also boosted Elon Musk and far-right commentator Mario Nawfal, spreading more misleading claims about the center.
He wrapped up his early morning spiral by promoting a Breitbart podcast about “birth tourism,” hitting every predictable MAGA talking point in one chaotic stretch.
Here’s a blow-by-blow of the madness:
• 12:18 a.m. — Demands Schumer resign
• 12:19 a.m. — Claims Obama tried to overthrow the government
• 12:27–12:28 a.m. — Repeatedly amplifies calls to arrest Obama and Clinton
• 1:13 a.m. — Suggests erasing the 2020 election
• 2:44 a.m. — Boosts Musk attacking the SPLC
• 2:45 a.m. — Promotes far-right propaganda Best of the Left Podcast
Ladies and gentlemen, our president, cuckoo for Coco-Puffs. Please like and share if you think this has been going on too long, is getting worse, and is no longer funny.

And this is the dude who holds the nuclear warhead codes. $hit!

[The Bedlington Terrier]

America is making money hand over fist as the blockade on Iran has supertankers queing up to load American oil. It costs them nothing to keep the blockade on until Iran has run out of oil storage, money, food and power, and it won't be long before they do.

Incidentally, has Iran got a leader yet, or are they all afraid of topping the IDF to do list ?

The Jews kill with impunity and our Prime Minister supports them. FFS!

Cuba next. Then the Orange lunatic wants the Falklands.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

I'm sending the Orange Buffoon a peg leg and a parrot.

Pete Hegseth stood at a Pentagon podium yesterday and said the United States Navy is boarding ships, seizing vessels, and controlling "the flow of global shipping" in and out of Iran.
Then he called Iran "a gang of pirates with a flag."
Read that back slowly.

The US has deployed warships to physically block Iranian ports. Nothing goes in. Nothing comes out. Any ship that "meets our criteria" gets turned around or boarded. Hegseth said it himself: "We control the flow of global shipping."
That's not a sanction. That's not diplomacy. That's a naval blockade. The kind of thing that used to start wars.
And Iran? They're the pirates.
Here's what's wild. Under international law, a naval blockade against a country you are not formally at war with is considered an act of aggression. Boarding foreign vessels in international waters without consent has a name. Several names, actually. None of them flattering.
But Hegseth said it with a straight face — "gang of pirates" — about the country whose ships we are physically seizing.
The irony isn't subtle. It's not even trying to hide.
America has the most powerful navy on earth. They are using it to choke off an entire country's access to global shipping. And the guy running it just called the other side the pirates.

At some point you have to ask what the pfhuck is going on?

[sinkov]

At some point you have to ask what the pfhuck is going on?

The overthrow of a vicious, anti-semitic terrorist regime without violence, apart from the odd shell into an engine room, to remind recalcitrant skippers just who is the world's policeman.

God bless America.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

21.04.26. CORRUPTION STINKING TO HIGH HEAVEN.

BREAKING: WE'RE COMING FOR JARED!

Rep. Yassamin Ansari vows to launch an investigation into Jared Kushner for the most brazen corruption in American history, cashing in on U.S. foreign policy while negotiating with the same foreign governments!
In a powerful House floor speech, Rep. Yassamin Ansari publicly ripped the lid off the naked, shameless grift at the heart of the Trump administration.
Jared Kushner – a man with zero foreign policy experience – is once again shaping critical U.S. negotiations with Iran and Gulf countries while his companies are simultaneously soliciting $5 billion in new investments from the exact same foreign governments involved in those talks.
He’s doing it all as a private citizen with no security clearance, no oversight, and no accountability.
This is the same Kushner who used unsecured WhatsApp channels to chat directly with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during Trump’s first term while his family’s failing real estate empire magically found two billion in foreign money. Nothing has changed, it’s only gotten worse and more blatant.
Meanwhile, Trump himself is literally suing his own the IRS in his own government for $10 billion of taxpayer money to go straight into his own pocket.
“It would be too outlandish for a movie script, yet this is the reality in America today,” Ansari said. “An elite ruling class making life-or-death national security decisions based on how much money they can personally extract from it.
This is not public service. This is a criminal enterprise wearing suits and flying on Air Force One.”
The Arizonan vowed that when Democrats take back the House, subpoenas will fly, Kushner will be dragged under oath, and every dirty dollar Trump and his family have funnelled into their own pockets will be exposed.
The corruption is not even hidden. It’s open. It’s naked. It’s brazen.
If you’re furious that Trump and his family are turning the U.S. government into their personal cash machine, WHEN WILL ENOUGH BE ENOUGH?

[The Bedlington Terrier]

The overthrow of a vicious, anti-semitic terrorist regime without violence, apart from the odd shell into an engine room, to remind recalcitrant skippers just who is the world's policeman.

God bless America.

Wait for it mon ami...

You must be wondering why Donald Trump, after all the tough talk, quietly stepped back and offered an indefinite pause on military escalation with Iran. No grand announcement. No victory speech. Just a sudden, unusual stillness.
Iran sent him a map.

Not a peace proposal. Not a diplomatic note. �� ������������������ ������ �������������� �������������� ���������� ���� �������� ���� ���������������� ���� ������ ���������������� ���������� ���������� ������������ �������������� �������������� ������ ������������ ���� ������������.
That map said more than a thousand missiles ever could.
The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. The world already knew it carries nearly 20% of global oil. What fewer people talk about is that the same narrow passage is threaded with undersea cables that carry the internet, banking data, and financial transactions for hundreds of millions of people across the Middle East, Asia, and beyond.
���������� ���������� �������� �������� ���������� ������ �� ������������.
Your salary transfer. Your business payment. Your hospital billing system. Your supply chain software. All of it travels as pulses of light through cables thinner than a human hair, resting silently on the ocean floor. If those cables are cut, the damage is not just technological. Businesses collapse overnight. Banking systems freeze. Economies bleed while the world waits weeks for underwater repair ships to even locate where the break occurred.
�������� ���� ������ ���� ������������ ���������������� ������������ ����������. �� ������ ������.
Because a map of chokepoints tells you something a weapon cannot. It tells you how much the other side is willing to lose, and more importantly, how much you are. The United States and its allies have built their entire economic architecture on this invisible underwater infrastructure. Disrupting it would not hurt Iran half as much as it would hurt global markets, Western banks, and the digital economy that the modern world depends on.
Iran did not threaten war. It reminded the world of its geography.
There is something deeply human in this moment, and also deeply sobering. We built a globalised civilisation on thin wires buried under oceans, and we never really asked who sits above them. Now we know.
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Pfhuck Trump.