Sika

Video appears to show U.S. cruise missile striking Iranian school compound The seven-second video was released by Iranian state media and directly contradicts statements made by President Trump, who said Iran was responsible for the strike.

The Iranian girls’ school was hit by a US tomahawk cruise missile. NPR has confirmed the footage.

So, in launching a huge bombing campaign on Iran they apparently didn't plan for:

- Who takes over;
- Interceptor shortages from sustained drone retaliation;
- How to defend US bases in the region;
- Threats to ships in the Strait of Hormuz; and
- How to evacuate Americans with airspace closed.

I’ve spent years, decades, obsessing over the Bush Administration’s Iraq WMD lies, writing about them, debunking them.

I can think of no lie about Iraq WMDs told by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al that comes even close to the enormity and absurdity of this lie from Donald Trump.

They deserve Dubai and Dubai deserves them

"One should not give a poisoner medicine,
A conjurer fine apparatus, nor
A rifle to a melancholic bore."
WH Auden

Not to mention the biggest arsenal in the world to a narcissistic attention-seeker.

Bodies shredded. Civilians killed. Children orphaned. Families torn apart.

Anna Forster: “Remember this is a region that knows war well.”

Western journalists talk about war in the Middle East like it isn’t profoundly life changing, because it’s not something that happens to them.

#r4today

Jonny Dymond talks about rising energy prices like s/o who won’t feel the sting, no matter how high they climb.

Why does he sound so chipper? People across this country are already buckling under soaring costs — and now, thanks to US adventurism in the ME, things are set to get even worse. #r4today

Robert Wilkie: “This is s/t that requires British discernment.”

Indeed. And the British government concluded that the Americans were pursuing an unlawful war with no credible endgame.

What’s unclear? I thought English was the first language of the instinctive bullies in Trump’s cabinet. #r4today

Lib Dem Leader Ed Davey:

"Tax exiles like Isabel Oakeshott and washed up old footballers who mock ordinary people who stay in the UK and pay our taxes... As we protect them, it's only right for tax exiles to start paying taxes to fund our armed forces, just like the rest of us".

"We called London a war zone and moved to Dubai by mistake"

Nigel Farage lied multiple times at his press conference today - including saying no-one who voted Green in Gorton and Denton has a job and he's "certain" Reform won most British born voters in the by-election, based on zero evidence, and yet not a single journalist there pushed back on them

#r4today Nick Robinson seems to be operating under the false assumption that Israel—hardly a democracy itself—can claim moral superiority over a repressive theocracy.

The genocidal apatheid regime showed in Gaza that it has no interest in negotiation and wld rather sow chaos across the region.

Why were our bases targeted, Nick? The Iranian strike didn’t come out of nowhere.

If you let the US & Israel operate from your territory, you can’t claim innocence or suggest you’re being attacked w/o justification. #r4today reporting may not say this, but it doesn’t take a genius to work it out.

Nobody ever accuses the Labour Party of pandering to Jewish voters when it backs Israel. So why is Justin Webb suggesting that a party, which has enthusiastically backed the Gaza genocide for more than two years, is “pandering to Muslim voters”?

What an utter piece of gaslighting nonsense. #r4today

The aims of this war are less sig than its repercussions. Those will take yrs to materialise — as w/ the 1953 CIA-backed coup in Iran that ultimately helped stoke the 1979 Islamic Rev to the chaos that allowed IS to seize territory across Iraq & Syria a decade after the US invasion of Iraq. #r4today

Wars don’t just happen; they are meticulously planned by those who stand to gain the most from the devastation and upheaval they bring to ordinary lives.

#r4today

There’s nothing surprising about Bill Clinton defending Donald Trump. Their families were close for years before Trump ever ran for president; he even donated to Hillary Clinton's past campaigns and to her husband's foundation.

#r4today

Eisenhower

A big part of the authoritarian playbook is war. War takes over the news. War blots out criticism. War divides a nation’s people, subjecting those against it to being called unpatriotic. War grants leaders all sorts of emergency powers. War consumes everything else.

We mustn’t let this war do so.

The UK government knew how many Brits were in the Middle East and the risks they faced from U.S. adventurism—but still backed pre-emptive strikes against Iran.

Calling Iran’s response “reckless” while ignoring U.S.–Israeli annihilatory statecraft exposes their glaring double standards.

#r4today

So now it turns out we are prioritising tax exiles above all else as Yvette Cooper is outlining on #r4today

#R4Today

Can we finally bury any notion that the "legitimate concerns" about immigration relate to "integration". This proposal makes integration practically impossible.

Can you seriously claim that the Americans were motivated by “regime change” when they act like this? #r4today

“It has been one of those occasions where you are never far away from an Iranian missile.”

Classic BBC reporting. The Israeli govt murders over a hundred Iranian schoolgirls with impunity and #r4today coverage chooses to prioritise the fears of Israelis—many of whom have access to bomb shelters.

Nick Robinson admits that advocates for American/Israeli supremacism wld be content to see Iran become a “failed state” so long as it no longer challenges US-Israeli hegemonic interests in the Middle East.

So was all that talk abt supporting “freedom loving” Iranians merely performative? #r4today

The op that warmongering Americans like Ezra Cohen describe as “absolutely spectacular from a military perspective” incls the assassination of at least 140 schoolgirls. They don’t care abt democracy or human rights, they just use them as propaganda to bolster their warmongering imperialism. #r4today

Which other religion does the ethnonationalist state of Israel accommodate?

#r4today

"First-past-the-post system is creaking at the seams" and "Westminster is dangerously underprepared for a multi-party future".

Excellent piece by @drhannahmcd.bsky.social: the Gorton & Denton by-election raises much bigger questions about our democracy than whether Starmer survives as Labour leader

The real threat to democracy doesn't come from 'family voting'. It comes from the losing side refusing go accept they've lost