Hugh Sykes

Oh good.

1935:
British ambassador to Germany Eric Phipps
waiting for Hermann Goering, who is late.
Goering arrives. "Sorry I'm late, I've been shooting."
Phipps: "Animals, I hope."

#Russia Putin still scared of #AlexeiNavalny
x.com/BBCSteveR/st...

#TeslaTakeover protests take aim at Elon Musk Protesters organized small #TeslaTakeover demonstrations on BlueSky, the rival to Musk's platform X.

Coordinated protests in US against unaccountable Elon Musk, urging Tesla shareholders to dump their stock - and Tesla drivers to sell their cars.
Tesla's share price has already dropped 30% since December.
www.bbc.com/news/article...

Watch: Clive Myrie finds corridors filled with patients at London hospital Clive Myrie spends a day inside the Royal Free Hospital to see how the NHS is coping after intense, annual winter pressures.

Plaudits to BBC News Clive Myrie
for revealing, and worrying
radio and TV #NHS reports today
from @royalfree.bsky.social
BBCOne
www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/...

"Things fall apart."
@RobertKennedyJr confirmed as health secretary by the US Senate - 52 votes to 48, thanks to two senators once regarded as thoughtful moderates, Susan Collins & @lisamurkowski.bsky.social .
Childhood polio survivor, Republican Mitch McConnell - honourably - voted against.

It's also a click-bait distraction designed to appeal to potential Reform supporters.
Asylum seekers want to be granted asylum,
and the great majority are.
They already have to wait ten years before they can apply for citizenship.
Most refugees I've met intend to return home when it's safe.

Missed opportunity? The 1987 Peres-Hussein peace deal that wasn’t Pushed by Margaret Thatcher, Shimon Peres believed the London Agreement would have averted the Intifada. Here's what went wrong

'We could have saved ourselves and the Palestinians six years of Intifada, and the loss of so much human life, had the former head of the Likud-run government not undermined the agreement I had worked out with King Hussein of Jordan.' - Shimon Peres.

www.timesofisrael.com/missed-oppor...

#Israel #Jordan
At secret talks in the late 1980s,
instead of Israelis negotiating direct with Palestinians, King Hussein of Jordan
& Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres
drew up a peace plan known the London agreement.
It was sabotaged by
@likud prime minister, Yitzak Shamir.

#Refugees #AsylumSeekers

In 2024, 82 refugees died trying to cross the English Channel in overcrowded small boats.

The highest number came from #Afghanistan, followed by #Iran.

There are no safe routes for asylum applications
from either of those countries,
nor from most of the others:

#USAID For the record Elon Musk, USAID have been active in #Iraq since 2003, providing humanitarian assistance, economic development - and conflict management, as here in 2008 supporting Shiite Baghdadis and their Sunni neighbours after they had been occupied by ISIS.

Doge v USAid: how Elon Musk helped his acolytes infiltrate world’s biggest aid agency Exclusive: Takeover of USAid agency by Doge operatives seen as pilot for large-scale overhaul of federal government

#USAID #DOGE

How Elon Musk's 'kids' took over.

The young men, all under the age of 26 & with almost no government experience, tapped into the treasury department’s federal payment system & vacuumed up employment histories at the office of personnel management.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

#Israel The river & the sea.
#Gaza
Deputy #Jerusalem mayor
Fleur Hassan-Nahoum
told @Channel4News
that #Hamas
are "the only people with ethnic cleansing in their charter."
Not true. @likud's founding 1977 platform says:
"Between the Sea & the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty."

Especially in the hands of journalists with immense experience in the middle east like the level-headed author of that article, @tombateman.bsky.social

Or just never looking in the mirror.

An insider speaks out on why legacy media is failing us right now Trump and Musk are hijacking the state. Why can’t much of the press say so?

Trump, Gaza etc:
'Traditional media don’t hesitate to use phrases like “increasing instability” and “corruption”
when discussing so-called developing nations.
But they refuse to use such unequivocal language about their own countries and leaders.'

open.substack.com/pub/anandwri...

Trump halts tariffs on Mexico as it rushes troops to border Mexico agreed to rush 10,000 national guard troops to the border to strengthen efforts to block the flow of drugs, especially fentanyl, coming into the United States.

Tariffs? Mexico? Delayed. May never happen.

www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...

Two Robins briefly on our feeder.

Tariffs? What tariffs?

Interessant. Aber kein der Weg zu einer 'harmonischen' Gesellschaft ...? 'Harmonious' is one of their favourite defences for a lot of what they do.

Trump says Americans may feel 'pain' in trade war with Mexico, Canada, China President Donald Trump said the sweeping tariffs that he has imposed on Mexico, Canada and China may cause "short term" pain for Americans as global markets reflected concerns the levies could undermine growth and reignite inflation.

#Tariffs? What tariffs?

US-Mexico tariffs paused for a month

Cat and mouse.

[The text is up to date, the headline is not]

www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

Israel’s female spotters are free – now their families want to know why warnings were ignored Mix of chauvinism and complacency led senior officers not to heed young women who saw Hamas preparing attack

#Gaza The real scandal: the spotters who were ignored.

19-year-old Eshel, a border spotter, 'detailed with calm precision the movements of #Hamas fighters as they breached the fence just 500 metres away.'

The IDF ignored her.

She was killed.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/f...

Just taken my own HIV meds this morning. And imagined what it would be like to turn up to a clinic and be told, there’s no more pills for you

#trump #hiv #treatmentforall #evil

The Fu*king Nightmare Trump II, week 2

Trump

The Fu*king Nightmare by @rbreich.bsky.social

"Over the last forty years, starting with Reagan, America went off the rails: stagnant wages for most, staggering wealth for a few, big money taking over our politics, undermining the foundations of America."

open.substack.com/pub/robertre...

How can it be liberated? The Chinese Communist Party [CPC] censors searches. If you ask it about the 4th of June, for example, it'll ask you to talk about something else.

2: Senate minority leader
Chuck Schumer said:

"It's one thing for internet pundits to spew off conspiracy theories, it's another for the President of the United States
to throw out idle speculation
as bodies are still being recovered and families are still being notified."

Washington DC Plane Crash

Learner-President Trump said the helicopter was flying too high "by a lot."
How did he know?

"I have common sense, okay?"

His own choice of defense secretary Pete Hegseth said that was just speculation.

DC mayor Muriel Bowser set Trump an example with:

"We don't know."

Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek censors itself in realtime, users report Depending on version downloaded, app approaches its answers with preamble of reasoning which it then erases

DeepSeek: What use an AI platform which has China state censorship built into it and which has to comply with Chinese national intelligence law?
Stay well away.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Auschwitz 80

Two children deep in thought
at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.

Will
@secdef.bsky.social @petehegseth.bsky.social,
like other members of the military,
have to submit to breath and blood tests
if there is any suspicion of alcohol intake
before he is allowed into situation rooms
or critical military facilities?

#HolocaustMemorialDay #Auschwitz80

"We are not safe. You have to be awake."

Sound on. 🔊🔊