EU leaders have suddenly grown enough of a spine to refuse to take a part in the Iran war. But what are they doing to stop it? NATO is supposed to be a defensive alliance. That means members aren’t actually obligated to go bail out a member state that goes around the world punching other countries in the face. Easy mistake to make from the optics of other recent conflicts, though, where the term “defensive” has been doing a lot of impressive rhetorical gymnastics. US President Donald Trump hasn’t been able to talk his ‘allies’ into coming along for the white-knuckle adventure this time. Largely because he threatened to invade Europe – specifically Greenland – barely weeks before asking for their help to do the same to another country. Apparently, they took his threat so seriously that they were getting ready to beat him to the punch by blowing up their own airfields first, according to the New York Times. Before Trump just decided to go it alone and threaten to fix the global ener...
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The art of diplomacy is relaying messages to your interlocutors in a polite manner, spokesman Dmitry Peskov has explained The Russian government does not resort to obscene language in contacts with other countries, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. The Financial Times reported last week that French President Emmanuel Macron’s advisers, Emmanuel Bonne and Bertrand Buchwalter, had secretly visited Moscow in February for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aide, Yuri Ushakov. According to an unnamed European diplomat who spoke to the outlet, Macron’s representatives asked for the EU to be included in peace talks between Russia, the US, and Ukraine, but the meeting ended with Ushakov telling the visitors: “Sorry, actually, no we don’t [have to], f**k you’.” Asked to comment by Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin on Sunday, Peskov replied: “No, none of us ever uses foul language to refer to anyone.” Read more EU to push Ukraine loan ‘one way or the other’ – von der...
Brazil’s president has slammed the US kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro and the oil blockade of Cuba Latin America faces the threat of a return to colonial rule, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said, describing the White House’s recent moves in the region as undemocratic. The United States kidnapped Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in January before imposing an oil blockade on Cuba last month after US President Donald Trump accused the island nation of being a threat. Washington has also launched numerous lethal, extrajudicial strikes on boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific in an attempt to fight drug trafficking. Lula blasted Washington’s foreign policy during the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) summit in Bogota, Columbia on Saturday, while refraining from directly mentioning the US or Trump. “It’s not possible for someone to think that they own other countries. What are they doing with Cuba now? What did they do with Venezuela? Is t...
The world richest man could end up paying up to $2.6 billion in damages, according to the attorneys for the plaintiffs Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been found guilty in California of misleading investors during his $44 billion purchase of Twitter in 2022. The class-action lawsuit, which had been filed shortly before Musk took control of the social media platform that he subsequently re-branded as X, focused on two tweets and comments made by the tech billionaire during a podcast in May 2022. Following those statements, including a post claiming that the Twitter deal was “temporarily on hold,” the company’s shares plunged by almost 10% in a single session. The nine-man jury in San Francisco delivered its verdict on Friday, stating that the tech billionaire did mislead the shareholders, who sold Twitter shares at a lower price as a result of his announcements, with the tweets. However, it also found that there was nothing wrong with what Musk said on the podcast and that he di...
Oil, shipping, and supply chains: the widening fallout of the Iran war Nikolay Patrushev, assistant to the president of the Russian Federation, has a stark assessment of the Iran war as it begins to ripple far beyond the Middle East. With shipping disrupted in the Strait of Hormuz, energy markets under strain, and maritime security deteriorating, the consequences are already being felt across global supply chains. In an interview with Kommersant special correspondent Elena Chernenko, Patrushev outlines how the conflict is reshaping trade routes, testing alliances, and accelerating a broader reordering of the global economy. Q: Kevin Hassett, the US president ’ s economic adviser, recently announced that oil tankers are once again passing through the Strait of Hormuz. However, shipping volumes through the strait remain far below the levels seen prior to the US and Israel ’ s war against Iran. What is your assessment of the situation in the region, particularly around the Strait of Ho...
The non-reaction to an RT reporter’s narrow escape from a missile strike underscores the selective outrage of Western media On March 19, RT war correspondent Steve Sweeney and his cameraman Ali Rida Sbeity were injured by an Israeli strike meters from where they stood in southern Lebanon. Sweeney was on camera reporting on recent Israeli attacks on southern Lebanese towns and infrastructure when he heard the sound of an incoming projectile. Ducking and running, he managed to escape the brunt of the impact. According to the journalists, an Israeli aircraft fired a missile at their filming position near Al-Qasmiya Bridge, where Sweeney was reporting on, “the targeting of bridges and the forced displacement of one million people, an ethnic cleansing operation on a larger scale than the Nakba,” as he later stated , referencing the violent displacement of Palestinians which accompanied the creation of the Jewish State in the late 1940s. The men were treated for shrapnel injuries. S...