Trump acts like a tinpot Caesar demanding tribute from his vassals
Trump, that oafish imbecile, that blustering buffoon, conducts himself not as a statesman but as a swaggering mob boss, squeezing concessions from his subordinates with all the subtlety of a knee-capping enforcer.
His meeting with Ursula von der Leyen was less a negotiation than a ritual humiliation, as the European Commission president prostrated herself before the whims of an American imperialist regime that views trade not as mutual exchange but as plunder.
READ MORE: Scottish Labour councillor suspended for 'bullying' member of the public
The resulting 'deal' is a grotesque farce – Europe, trembling before its mercantile overlord, agrees to higher tariffs, coerced purchases of US goods, and the funnelling of billions into the maw of the American war machine. This is not diplomacy; it is tribute exacted by a gangster.
And what of Keir Starmer, that eager supplicant, scurrying to Turnberry to kiss the ring of his transatlantic patron? His obsequiousness was met with the usual Trumpian blend of ignorance and malice – vague platitudes on Ukraine, half-brained mutterings on Gaza, and the usual litany of lies about stolen aid and imaginary victories. Starmer, ever the loyal vassal, could do little but nod along, his own political fortunes tethered to the whims of a man who views international relations as a protection racket.
But let us not mistake this for mere farce. The stakes are dire. The European bourgeoisie, though seething at their subjugation, dare not defy their American paymasters, for fear of provoking an all-out trade war – or worse, losing the military backing that sustains their own imperialist ventures in Ukraine.
They are trapped in a spiral of their own making, forced to bankroll US arms shipments, to prop up Nato's blood-soaked adventures, all while their own workers face the coming storm of economic devastation.
History teaches us that empires built on extortion do not endure. The Roman tax farmers, the Habsburg enforcers, the British East India Company – all eventually crumbled beneath the weight of their own rapacity. Trump's gangster diplomacy is no different. It will end the same way.
Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee
ON Monday, we were informed on BBC Scotland that a celebration had taken place in respect of the 70th anniversary of the opening of the Dounreay nuclear power plant. In attendance was a chap calling himself King Charles and a non-Scottish manager of the site who made me feel squeamish as I listened to his sycophantic fawning over the said King's attendance.
Can I just clarify the background to this development back in 1955? The idea of developing nuclear energy at that time was filled with the possibility of a major disaster happening. The year, 1955, was just a decade after the horrific Hiroshima and Nagasaki tragedies. Nuclear weapons and power production were issues of dread for the general population.
So, if this development was going to happen, where should it go? Obviously, Westminster decided that it should be located as far away from London as possible.
Look at your map and you will see that Dounreay is as far from London as you can get without ending up in the Pentland Firth. The residents of Thurso and Wick would be obliterated if anything untoward happened, but they were expendable. In fact, probably most of Scotland would end up the same way.
I was a wee boy in a small rural Highland primary school back in the mid-50s. I well remember the gift we were all given at that school. It was a glossy magazine with the front cover showing the impressive Dounreay dome. It was designed at deflecting attention from the dangers and promoting the idea that we were at the cutting edge of technology.
I believe all schoolkids up here would have been given a copy too, so that our minds would be shaped to accept this thing that terrified those down south. A few jobs were created for workers at Dounreay but that was insignificant compared to the perceived dangers.
Along with the nonsensical Protect And Survive booklet that was distributed at that time regarding saving yourself in the event of a nuclear attack, this magazine that we children received was just government propaganda to influence, lie to and control the population. Officials must have been laughing to themselves as they prepared them.
Today, they still use the same methods and our voters are still inclined to believe them. Without truth, what hope is there for Scotland or even society at large?
Alasdair Forbes
Farr, Inverness-shire
THE statement by Keir Starmer that the UK would move to recognise a Palestinian state, if Israel did not agree to a ceasefire and take steps to end the war, is more than a little contradictory given previous statements.
The statement noted that Palestinian statehood is the 'inalienable right of the Palestinian people' and the UK Government is committed to delivering a two-state solution, with a 'safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state'.
It therefore seems rather odd that, despite a previous commitment to recognising a Palestinian state, this should now come with conditions attached.
Alex Orr
Edinburgh
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Spectator
28 minutes ago
- Spectator
What Putin wants from his meeting with Trump
With just a day to go until the expiry of his ultimatum to Vladimir Putin to halt the war on Ukraine or face dire consequences, Donald Trump has once more reset the clock. Trump intends to meet in person with President Vladimir Putin of Russia as soon as next week, the New York Times has reported. That summit will be followed by a second, trilateral meeting including Trump, Putin and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, Trump reportedly told top European leaders in a conference call on Wednesday night. The announcement came after Trump's envoy, real state developer Steve Witkoff, met Putin for three hours of talks at the Kremlin. Trump wrote on social media that he had 'updated some of our European Allies' about the Witkoff talks. 'Everyone agrees this War must come to a close, and we will work towards that in the days and weeks to come.' A week before, Trump had professed himself 'disappointed' with Putin's continuous broken promises and moved up a previous 50-day deadline for the Kremlin to cease fire to just eight days – an ultimatum due to expire this Friday. And just hours before he hinted that he was ready for direct talks with Putin, Trump followed through on a threat to impose secondary sanctions on countries which imported Russian oil. 'India … doesn't care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine,' Trump said before announcing a 25 per cent tariff on Indian exports to the US due to begin in 21 days. Whether Trump will now actually impose those tariffs in light of his new plan to open talks with Putin is unclear. Trump, famously, considers himself a master of the art of the deal. He favours high-profile, face-to-face summit meetings with world leaders, whether friend or foe. In 2018 he met Putin in Helsinki for a long meeting that cosplayed the high-stakes summits between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev that laid the groundwork for the end of the Cold War. But no deals resulted from that Trump-Putin summit, despite the fact that Putin was at the time already illegally occupying Crimea and his proxies controlled parts of eastern Ukraine. Instead, the main soundbite was Trump appearing to side with Putin over his own intelligence establishment on the subject of Russian interference in the 2016 US elections. 'No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant,' wrote the late Republican Senator John McCain, decrying Trump's toadying to Putin as a 'disgraceful performance'. This time, the stakes for a Trump-Putin summit will be much higher. People are dying every day, Russian troops are relentlessly advancing, and Ukraine faces critical shortages of air defence missiles and military manpower. Trump has repeatedly vowed to bring an end to the conflict in Ukraine, and has made several threats to impose devastating sanctions on Moscow's oil and gas clients if Putin does not comply. The pressure will be on for Trump to actually persuade, cajole or force Putin to stop his air and ground offensives in Ukraine. It's significant that Europe will be completely sidelined from the proposed talks. Clearly, Trump expects to present whatever he agrees with Putin to the rest of the world as a fait accompli. But in one important sense, direct talks between Washington and Moscow will break a deadlock. Putin has resisted being seen to bow before US pressure. At the same time, the full-scale sanctions threatened by Trump would wreak chaos on the world economy by removing the 10 per cent of the world's oil supply provided by Russia from markets, sending energy prices spiralling. The result of this standoff has been a near-farcical game where Putin pretended to negotiate while Trump pretended to assemble a formidable battery of imaginary sanctions. That phase of phoney negotiations will soon be over. The next question is what incentive Putin will have to end a war that he believes that he is winning. Russian forces appear to be accelerating their encirclement of the strategic railhead of Pokrovsk in Donbas and are advancing towards Kharkiv. At the same time political unrest in Kyiv is growing, both over Zelensky's disastrously misguided attempt to bring anticorruption agencies under his control as well as the forced conscription of men into Ukraine's severely depleted army. Desertions of Ukrainian troops from the front line are, reportedly, soaring. Head of Ukrainian Military Intelligence General Kyrylo Budanov has warned that the country could face a military collapse this summer. Putin can be forgiven for believing that time is on his side. The stark answer to what Putin wants is that he is not fighting for land but rather is fighting to subordinate Ukraine and, as he sees it, prevent it from becoming a threatening Western proxy. That's importantly different to destroying Ukraine, occupying Ukraine, exterminating all Ukrainians, or other hysterical assessments of the Kremlin's intentions. But Putin has been very clear from the start of hostilities that he will not countenance Ukraine as a member of Nato. He also demands limits on the Ukrainian military and the restoration of rights to Russian language speakers and adherents of the Moscow-loyal party of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Most importantly, Putin wants regime change in Kyiv, which means the end of Zelensky – who is already six-and-a-half years into a five-year presidential term. How many of Putin's demands will Trump concede during their face-to-face negotiations? Many Ukrainians will ask what right Trump has to negotiate over their heads – exactly what President Joe Biden vowed never to do? Many Ukrainians fear that they are about to be sold down the river in a great power stitch-up reminiscent of the 1945 Yalta carve-up of post-war Europe. 'The war must end [but] it must be done honestly,' tweeted Zelensky on Wednesday after a conference call with Trump alongside other European leaders. 'We all need a lasting and reliable peace. Russia must end the war that it itself started.' Trump's apparent answer to Europeans' concerns has been to symbolically offer a follow-up trilateral meeting involving himself, Putin and Zelensky to give at least an illusion of Ukrainian participation. That seems to be a recipe for disaster. Putin hates Zelensky for defying him and turning the short, victorious war he planned into a long and bloody quagmire. Zelensky hates Putin for massacring and abusing thousands of his people – as well as for sending murder squads to Kyiv with orders to murder him in the first days of the war. Zelensky and Trump had a cordial meeting in Rome at Pope Francis' funeral – but the bad blood after Zelensky's humiliation in the Oval Office in February persists. Meeting Zelensky would legitimise him as the leader of a sovereign Ukraine, which is anathema to Putin. In short, the meeting is as unlikely as it would be disastrous if it ever happened. The good news is that in calling for direct talks with Putin, Trump has offered a quick route to the end of the war. The bad news is that it's likely to be on Putin's terms.
Reuters
28 minutes ago
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Trump tariff salvo sees India central bank return to out-of-favour rupee derivative tool
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BBC News
28 minutes ago
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Fight against Birmingham City Council's youth centre plans
Birmingham councillors are fighting against the city council's divisive youth services plans, amid fears over young people's futures being "put at risk".The council, which is recovering from a financial crisis, has reviewed the service in an attempt to make savings and wants to offload four centres to a third-party are Clifton Road Youth Centre in Sutton Coldfield, Naseby Youth Centre in Alum Rock, Maypole Youth Centre in Druids Heath and Lozells Recreation Labour-run authority wants to retain ownership of four others – Shard End Youth Centre, The Factory in Longbridge, The Lighthouse in Aston and Concord Youth Centre. Two Green Party councillors are now challenging the council cabinet's decision and have requested a "call-in", asking for it to be looked at again this of them, Julien Pritchard, argued they needed "cast iron guarantees" that youth centres would "stay open as youth centres"."It's incredibly disappointing that Labour councillors approved this and put our youth centres at risk," he said. "If no partner organisation is found, then these youth centres will close. That's an incredible risk to be taking with young people's futures and our communities."Last year young people in Birmingham made their voices heard, protesting and writing to councillors about how vital their youth centres were. Those voices must be listened to."Concerns over the city's youth service have been a recurring theme since the council effectively declared itself bankrupt in September 2023. 'Lives being lost' Fears over Birmingham's youth service have also been voiced by campaigners, including Alison Cope, whose teenage son Joshua Ribera was killed in a knife attack in 2013."Parents, schools and youth services are all struggling already," she warned last year."What is the priority for Birmingham? What does the council want? Does it want Birmingham to be a place where people feel welcome and safe to travel?"They are going to make cuts but let's make sure it's not going to result in lives being lost."The call-in request will now be considered at a council scrutiny meeting on Friday. Despite concerns, Mick Brown, the Labour cabinet member for children and families, recently said the plans provided a "clear and balanced approach" to managing the authority's youth service."[They propose] retaining key buildings in council ownership where direct delivery remains essential," he said during a cabinet meeting last month."But we're also ensuring we explore options like transferring other sites to trusted third-party providers who will continue to deliver youth services from those locations."This is about modernising our approach, ensuring that money we spend delivers the maximum value for our young people."He said that every site identified for transfer had at least two viable partner organisations. Follow BBC Birmingham on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
