Riaan Smit

Time to pack it in and go sailing. Well, not quite yet - work to do to take on people justifying the unjustifiable. 😉

[Politics For You @PoliticoForYou]

BREAKING 🚨🚨🚨

World Cup fever kicks off as America welcomes the world with a traditional display of their culture and traditions.

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

The magnitude of what just happened may take some time to sink in.

This is the first time Iran has struck Israel after Israel struck another country's territory (that is, not Iran).

This means that the battle lines have been moved.

Iran's deterrence had already been restored in the sense that Israel knew that any strike on it would be responded to.

But now, Iran has proven that it will also respond to Israeli strikes on Lebanon.

This is the first time in decades that a regional power has the means, capacity, and willingness to put hard power against Israeli military maneuvers or aggression against a third party.

Read full analysis here: https://t.co/CPawJ4TYdr

[Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski]

American Psychopath

[Frances 'Cassandra' Coppola @Frances_Coppola]

You demand global sympathy for an attack on Israeli Jews, but have nothing to say about the 7-month-old Palestinian baby your soldiers murdered in Hebron.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

There's nothing "offensive" about comparing the actions and mentality of Israel to those of the Nazis. What is offensive is demanding that one country and only it -- Israel -- be exempt from those comparisons because it hurts people's feelings, or because it seems "bigoted" to compare them.

The whole point of the Nuremberg Trials was that the precedents set there would only have meaning -- i.e., be something beyond mere "victor's justice" -- if those principles applied to the actions of **all countries** in the future. Israel doesn't have some special, unique exemption from the imperative.

[Elijah J. Magnier 🇪🇺 @ejmalrai]

Donald Trump cannot join Israel in bombing Iran because he would look like someone dragged by the nose to a war he has stopped.

netanyahu, an ICC fugitive for war crimes, doesn't have the stomach to fight Iran and Hezbollah alone. In June 20025l after only 5 days, netanyahu was crying on Trump's shoulder, asking him to stop Iran's bombing.

Iran has been manufacturing special ballistic missiles to launch at Israel and is ready for a long war if necessary.

[Craig Murray @CraigMurrayOrg]

I am relieved that Iran has finally fired back at Israel.

The impunity with which Israel constantly violates the ceasefires in Lebanon and Gaza has to end.

Iran is standing up for all of humanity against the zionist supremacists.

[Redi Tlhabi @RediTlhabi]

You allowed this to happen for too long. From taxi drivers deciding that e-hailing drivers, friends and relatives could not transport people, to this. Videos of non-state actors "enforcing" their jungle law on South African streets have been circulating for so long. These actors were proud of their "law enforcement" and actually recorded it. You and your government were spectators. It is a sign that you were absent or too scared to face the backlash should you act against South Africans breaking the law. It doesn't matter how valid grievances are, NO STATE should quietly watch a parallel state emerge, with non-state actors deciding who belongs snd who doesn't, who must live or die. Your government, led by you, did that.

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

A fragile arrangement had been reached in Lebanon. Iran had made clear that if Israel continued to strike Lebanon, it would strike at Israel.

The US/Israeli side says that overnight, Hezbollah killed 15 Israeli soldiers. A violation of the arrangement in their view, and a sign that Iran either didn't or couldn't control Hezbollah.

At the same time, Israel knew that renewed attacks on Beirut, particularly Dahieh, would either force Tehran to attack or back down, while having the added benefit of further weakening US-Iran diplomacy.

Iran did not back down. An attack on Dahieh, according to the Iranians, is designed to kill as many senior Hezbollah and Iranian officials as possible. So a response was inevitable, in their view.

By now, four waves of missiles have been fired at northern Israel, Haifa, and other areas. Some of the missiles are of higher quality than the ones Iran used during the war.

Israel will strike Iran within the next few hours, and the Iranians don't have any other expectation.

Whether the US enters the fighting actively as well, or only provides support for Israel, is the big question mark right now.

The US side is deeply frustrated that the MOU has not been signed yet and accuses the Iranians of either playing for time, overnegotiating, or being incapable of getting to yes.

The Iranians, in turn, accuse the US of constantly changing the parameters while being unwilling to release a portion of Iran's frozen assets at the outset of the MOU as a way to prove their seriousness.

If Trump doesn't enter the war, he will be accused of abandoning Israel. If he enters the war, he will validate that Israel has an effective veto on the negotiations and on whether the US is at war or not.

A true America First policy would have worked to extricate the US from the Israeli-Iranian rivalry.

Now more than ever, it should be clear why such an exit serves US interest.

[Robbie @Robbie_Reasons]

The Somerset Farmhouse of 1 North Street, Williton were approached by a "food influencer" that wanted to charge them £2,000 for a review.

They put out a video of Sally eating a sausage roll instead 😆.

Lets make Sally and the Somerset Farmhouse famous for free.

[Alexander Stahel 🌻 @BurggrabenH]

I doubt the barefoot hike. I'm no fan of the Christopher Columbus complex, and I happen to admire elites who develop a country rather than exploit one. So let me explain what is actually going on here.

I did, among others, property across Eastern Europe during my years at Babcock & Brown, and I spent the better part of a decade fighting a court case in Romania against people who tried to defraud my land title. I won. And here is the lesson I paid for: the one thing that separates an investable Eastern Europe from an uninvestable one is European Union membership. It is the guardian of the rule of law in an otherwise wild East, the easiest place in the world to lose your money.

That is the lens through which I read what is happening on Sazan Island.

You see, there was a time when Western elites saw themselves as custodians of institutions, rules and the places they touched. That instinct is fading. What remains too often is the Columbus reflex: arrive by yacht, "discover" land that people already know perfectly well, and treat the rules as obstacles reserved for everyone else. And then have the wisdom to go on camera and brag about it. Jesus. No wonder Albanians are now on the streets in their thousands.

"We were on a friend's boat and stopped for a swim. That's how we found it. We swam to the island. We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated."

What she "found" has been there for millions of years, in the Adriatic, not "the Mediterranean." It has a name. Sazan Island sits where the Adriatic meets the Ionian: a former military base, Italian and then Cold War, including a Soviet submarine base, inside a protected national marine park that has been open to the public since 2017 via boat tour from Vlorë. An island crawling with snakes, including the nose-horned viper, Europe's most venomous. So much for the barefoot hike.

Nothing was discovered, and nothing justifies any entitlement. Quite the contrary.

What actually happened is that Jared Kushner set out to cash in on his father-in-law's temporary power as President of the United States. That status means precisely nothing in Switzerland, with its seven centuries of direct democracy and institutions no outsider can buy. But it means everything to a weak man like Albania's prime minister, Edi Rama, cornered at home, courting Washington, and now under criminal investigation for how his government handed this deal away. Kushner understands that asymmetry perfectly. And he wants to exploit it. Period.

In Albania, he can. Albania is chronically bureaucratic, the long tail of its communist heritage, a home-grown Stalinism so absolute it broke even with Moscow and sealed the country off from the world. That legacy is the same one that ran, and still runs at times, from Sarajevo to Tirana, from Bucharest to Belgrade: decades of one-party rule that hollowed out the courts, the press and property itself, and left a vacuum filled by the personalised, strongman power of a connected few. It is the soil in which corruption flourishes, and Albania's greatest vulnerability.

And on that soil, in one of Europe's poorest countries, the island's protected status was suddenly changed in December 2024, in the weeks between Trump's election victory and his inauguration. Just like that. The public-tender rule was bypassed. "Strategic Investor" status went to a Kushner-linked SPV before the inauguration: no business plan, no feasibility study. Wonderful. Because Ivanka "discovered it". Right? Wrong.

A country vulnerability like that can be met in two ways. A responsible investor sticks to the rules and ties his fortunes to the country's long-term development, because that is what makes returns durable in the first place. And that will take a lot of time and upfront investment, with a highly uncertain reward. That's called risk-taking.

A powerful one, on the other hand, willing to bend the rules, as this deal suggests the Trump family is content to do, sees only something to exploit.

The subsequent damage runs far deeper and longer than a few harmless bungalows built without a proper concession. What is happening here is that Kushner is becoming part of the problem that corrodes Albania's path into the European Union. That is the real issue here. Just like the issue when JD Vance travelled to Europe and openly campaigned for illiberal politicians while lecturing Europeans about democracy. Who do these people think they are? Guardians of democracy?

Consider what the Albanian path actually looks like right now. The Balkans, like much of post-communist Europe, are chronically corrupt. But they are also full of people fighting to turn their countries toward something better, and EU accession is the single most powerful tool they have. It forces the one thing that actually develops a country: predictable rules, secure property, contracts that hold, and the credible belief that the same rules apply to everyone.

That belief is what brought the great wave of investment into Poland. Its absence is why Romania and Bulgaria remained under special monitoring for years after accession. The rule of law that eventually held in that Bucharest courtroom, and saved me, exists because membership forced it into being. Brussels learned the lesson. Today enlargement runs on a "fundamentals first" basis.

Which is exactly where Albania stands.

Last month it became only the second candidate after Montenegro to clear those rule-of-law benchmarks, with the EU's own enlargement commissioner describing SPAK, the very prosecutor now investigating this deal, as the country's "most trusted institution." The concession lands squarely on the chapters that decide membership: the judiciary, justice and public procurement. So this is not a side issue to Albania's European future. It is a direct test of it.

And that is why this does not help. It does the opposite. A single family connected to the presidency of the United States showing that the rules bend on demand corrodes the one asset a poor country cannot afford to lose: the belief, hard-won and easily lost, that the rules are real.

Then those same people have the chutzpah to complain about corruption in Eastern Europe and lecture the world about American exceptionalism. It is all so deeply wrong. And make no mistake, it erodes our democracies too, ever so slightly.

The thousands in the streets of Tirana understand all of this instinctively. They are not protesting a resort. They are defending the only thing that gives their country a future and hope: the rule of law applied equally to all.

And make no mistake about who the brave ones are. They are not on a yacht. They are on the street of Tirana and inside SPAK, because in Albania, stepping on the toes of the powerful is done in the knowledge that the danger is real. Confronting entrenched corruption in the Balkans has cost prosecutors, judges and journalists their their lives. That is the issue here, ladies and gentlemen!

I doubt Ivanka loses any sleep over any of this. Her concern is closing the deal while her father remains in office. And on a timeline that tight, a public tender, one they may well have won fairly, becomes an inconvenience rather than a safeguard.

That is the difference between a custodian of capitalism and democracy like Warren Buffett and the late Charlie Munger and a primitive land-grabber without any moral compass and integrity.

[MaurizioDomenico loi @loidomemau]

La Sardegna non ci sta: la protesta ad #Alghero contro la presenza di soldati NAZISTI EBREI israeliani in vacanza sull’isola.
Fuori i criminali di Guerra dalla nostra terra.
La nostra ospitalità non è gradita a chi spara verso donne e bambini innocenti.
#IsraeleStatoTerrorista

[Antifa_Ultras @ultras_antifaa]

#Scotland — A vigil was held in Glasgow to pay tribute to Palestinian footballers killed by Israel.

[History ZAR @HistorySAZAR]

The first Africans to compete in the Olympic Games were two South Africans, Jan Mashiane and Len Taunyane, who competed in the Marathon at the 1904 St. Louis Olympics. Their participation in the infamous 1904 St. Louis Olympic Marathon is one of the most fascinating and bizarre chapters in sports history. Neither man traveled to the United States as an official Olympic athlete. They were in Missouri as part of the Boer War Spectacle at the World's Fair, which ran concurrently with the Games. They had previously served as dispatch runners during the Anglo-Boer War. They decided to enter the marathon on a whim just before the race began. Because officials struggled with their surnames, they were listed on the program as "LenTau" and "Yamasani". Taunyane was actually on pace for a much higher finish but was chased nearly a mile off-course by a pack of aggressive, wild dogs. Despite the canine detour and brutal conditions that caused 18 out of 32 runners to drop out, both South Africans finished the race. Taunyane finished 9th and Mashiane finished 12th. Source: Olympics, Missouri History Museum, African Global News.

[Antifa_Ultras @ultras_antifaa]

Iraqi footballer Aymen Hussein issued a statement after being detained and questioned for seven hours upon entering the United States:

“If America is so hostile towards foreign nationals, why is it hosting the #2026WorldCup?”

[Isi Breen @isaiah_bb]

Israel has killed more Palestinian children in the last 3 years than Palestinians have killed Israelis of any kind over the last 80 years.

And it’s the Palestinians who are bloodthirsty and violent. Sure.

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

"Pete Hegseth’s D-day speech on immigration condemned as ‘grotesque stupidity.’ Historians and campaigners accuse US defence secretary of desecrating memory of soldiers who fell in Normandy"
https://t.co/VFtZCfZKJS

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

The country that has spent the last 16 months lecturing Europe about how to live sits at number 36 on the 2025 Prosperity Index. Just a mouse-arm’s inflammation above Russia. Sandwiched between Poland and Israel, two spots ahead of Hungary, and a comfortable distance behind Croatia.

Let that sink in while JD Vance is warming up his next speech about European decline.

Every single country from number one down to number twenty-five is either European, or a nation built on European foundations. Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden. The top four. Not a MAGA hat in sight. The United Kingdom, which according to certain Fox News contributors is an unrecognisable warzone where law-abiding citizens are fed to the wolves the moment they land at Heathrow, sits at a very comfortable number 26. Ten places above the self-proclaimed leader of the free world.

Slovenia beats America. Estonia beats America. Lithuania beats America. Latvia beats America. These are countries that were behind the Iron Curtain within living memory.

And yet here we are, being told by the people around Trump, Vance and Rubio that Europe has something to learn from Washington. About prosperity. About governance. About how to run a country.

Number 36.

Two above Russia. Seventeen below Slovenia. Just ahead of Israel and Hungary, which is basically the international hall of fame for countries that have lost the plot.

The data is not complicated. Europe is not declining. America is just falling down the list.

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

Trump reached deep into his profanity lexicon a week ago to warn Netanyahu not to attack, then told the world he had put Bibi in his place and troops were even turning around. Peace was at hand thanks to Trump’s strength and his fury, Axios reported.

A week later that very bombing run is carried out and Iran is promising major retaliation.

We have had a lot of weak presidents over our history but perhaps none weaker than Trump. He gets pushed around by a small nation of a few million people that we subsidize.

[محمدباقر قالیباف | MB Ghalibaf @mb_ghalibaf]

۲/ محاصرهٔ دریایی علیه ملت ایران و چراغ سبز امروز آمریکا به رژیم صهیونیستی، پایگاه‌ها و دارایی‌های آمریکا و رژیم در منطقه را به اهداف مشروع تبدیل می‌کند. دست نیروهای مسلح ما مثل همیشه باز است.