The oldest known image of Keith Richards, published around 1140 AD ...

No doubt the brazen grifter left another ski-d mark on EU-UK relations

Screen shot of NYT headline about U.S. attack on an Iranian ship with a photo of Trump at the top of the newspaper's report

It's not difficult to understand why Iran has no trust in the Trump regime...
First the unprovoked attack on Iran in February while Witless Witkoff & co. were ostensibly 'negotiating'
Now this...

Bulgaria: Pro-Russia Rumen Radev on course to win election Rumen Radev's new center-left party, Progressive Bulgaria, is on course to win Bulgaria's eighth general election. But Radev's pro-Moscow tilt puts pressure on Brussels.

The EU must feel like its playing whack-a-mole.
Having got rid of the obstreperous Orban it now faces a Bulgarian pro-Putin mole. Let's see if he earns the soubriquet 'Russian Radev'
p.dw.com/p/5CRCf

Quite.

A timely reminder to Trump from 🇳🇴 Norway's prime minister:
Trump has forgotten that America's first line of defence in the Western hemisphere sits in Europe.
Or perhaps he's so self-absorbed venting his delusions about #NATO allies not paying their way that he's never thought about it that way🤡

Ooops!
Breaking HormoozNooz...
And the Straights in Iran have just announced that the Straits of Iran are not open.
Time: 10.30am CEST 18/04/2026
🇺🇸💥🥊🇮🇷

A massive shakedown of public funds by a known criminal.
U.S. taxpayers must be livid at this obscene corruption squatting at the very top of their "government"

Trump, IRS In Talks To Settle U.S. President's $10 Billion Lawsuit Trump's adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization are also plaintiffs.

Trump is reported close to a "deal" with himself under which US taxpayers would pay him $10 billion.

I served in multiple communist and authoritarian dictatorships, but I never witnessed corruption on this scale or this blatant.

For sure. He's like an opportunistic burglar / mugger / cutpurse.
He did, after all, have a ghostwriter for 'Art of the Steal'.
His open corruption using the highest office of the United States is, quite frankly, staggering and obscene.
Let's hope the American taxpayer in future gets some payback

Trump will have taken a large share of this cash, too.

Trump's diurnal shouty bombast and bloviation is tiresome and irritating.
We know he lives only in his head not the real world, so every statement bears absolutely no relation to reality.
His fantasies hog the headlines and the media abets him.

On any given day, you might as well roll a die to predict whether Donald Trump is going to claim total victory; imminent victory; a negotiated ceasefire; an imminent ceasefire; new attacks; crucial negotiations or imminent crucial negotiations. The only certainty is that he’ll be lying.

Woohoo ! Is this the end of the beginning, or the beginning of the end?
Or is it just a continuation of Trump's lethally stupid dog and pony show? 🤡

Great! All those hashtag 'Rejoin' tweets have paid off after years of laboriously typing them hoping some Brextard might see them and see sense.
After a decade of lies, deception, indigence, I don't feel my Christian forgiveness coming to the fore: when will we put the 'big' Brexit perps on trial?

Hohoho! 😅 Good one!
Deffo one for the intelijetzia!🤓

How absurd and foolish for the British monarch to make a state visit to Trump's America while the trash talking president threatens to tear up trade agreements, insults the country and Prime Minister, and belittles the professionalism of UK armed forces.
FGS stop this charade and cancel the visit ❌

A visit by one hugely self-entitled irascible old man to another hugely self-entitled irascible old man. Totally detrimental to the UK's reputation and so-called 'soft power' making Brits look weak and speeding up the approaching end of the monarchy. Charlie looks like Trump's patsy and a stooge 🇬🇧🇺🇸🤡

Wow!
5,000 kms of train rides through Europe to the far north.🤩
One for the bucket list! 🪣✅

Rather ironic when the Anti-Christ poses in a cheap meme as Jesus

Surely Orban is already on a plane fleeing to Moscow while Szijiarto destroys all the evidence of their treason
#LockThemUp ⛓️ 🇭🇺

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

The Era of Free Seas Is Unraveling—and Now Everyone’s Going to Pay Iran’s “toll booth” in the Strait of Hormuz is shattering the U.S.-led maritime system that enriched the world for decades.

America no longer rules the waves
www.wsj.com/world/middle...

Orban loses and concedes defeat.
Thanks to those citizens of Hungary who voted Orban out, removing in one fell swoop a Putin proxy, an enemy of Ukraine, and a corrupt abuser of EU funds and democratic values.
✌️🇭🇺👏🇪🇺🕊️

Losing allies is only the half of it. He has also condemned millions of people worldwide to poverty, hunger and death with his Federal cuts to aid and support programs and his senseless, brutal wars, and in his connivance with Israeli genocide in Palestine and Lebanon. Wanton destruction his legacy.

Hungary and Russia struck 12-point plan for closer ties, documents show The cooperation agreement sheds more light on Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s ties to the Kremlin ahead of Sunday’s general election.

Were Orban to win Hungary's general election (whether by hook or by crook), then the European Council & EC should take immediate steps to expel 🇭🇺 from the EU. Orban's authoritarian govt is moving ever closer to Putin's Russia in total contradiction to Europe's values🇪🇺
www.politico.eu/article/hung...

Do Americans read print books, e-books or audiobooks more? | Pew Research Center Most U.S. adults read books, with print still favored over digital formats, though e-book and audiobook use has grown. Habits vary by demographics and few join book clubs.

www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

Is that Witless Witkoff the property developer standing behind Vance, trying hard to pass himself off as a bona fide 'diplomat'?

Cue Sinatra ...
🎶 'Send in the Clowns' 🎶 🤡

Oh. What a surprise.

As if the Trump regime's bombast, crude threats, and striking a pose were ever a substitute for the hard graft of honest, intelligent diplomacy.

Then there's the small question of the 'T' word:
"Iran had earlier said it was ready to reach a deal but did not 'trust' the US"

Book cover of 'Lives Between the Lines' by Michael Vatikiotis

Book cover of 'The Peloponnesian War' showing an ancient marble frieze panel of Greek warfare

Current 'Night' & 'Day' reading.
🌚 'Lives Between the Lines: A Journey in Search of the Lost Levant' - Michael Vatikiotis. The author's family chronicle of Italians, Greeks, Jews living, working, losing in a lost Levant.
🌝 'The Peloponnesian War'- Donald Kagan. A real Game of Thrones!
#Booksky 📚🤓😃