This is the way to stand up to these bullies! Respect ✊

9,342 - that’s how many times you could wrap dollar bills round the world to match how much money Donald Trump cost shareholders and their associated pension plans with his tariffs announcement.

Another must read from the ever excellent Carole Cadwalladr open.substack.com/pub/broligar...

If a company with say 140K employees and some powerful links to defence contracts faced a 30% stock drop, what tools might the Fed theoretically use to stabilize it?

Who stands to gain from crippling the UK? Was a bad actor responsible for the substation fire that has closed Heathrow - and probably for days? Where are the triple redundancies for an event like this? BIG lessons will need to be learned!

Political Sadism and Defying the Power of Cruelty www.commondreams.org/opinion/defy...

Has Peter Mandelson, our ambassador to the US divested from Global Council yet, as he said he would? Is this a professional conflict of interest or just real Politik? Or as I suspect - a bit of both?

Absolutely @eddavey.libdems.org.uk

And as Jeff Bezos, owner of the blushing Washington Post, announces that they are, from here on in, going to sidestep politics in their editorials, the irony of their slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is clanging like the bells of the Notre-Dame

Are you now or have you ever been a non-supporter of MAGA? Musk’s new digital McCarthyism inquiry, where non-compliance gets you blacklisted

Make it stop H Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt: Donald Trump “looks forward to watching the game tonight — and we look forward to the United States beating our soon-to-be 51st state, Canada."

Pres Trump: ‘I think Europe has given $100bn [to Ukraine] and we’ve given, let’s say, $300bn plus.’ The most reliable figures show the EU has given $138bn to Ukraine, while the US has given $114bn. In 2024 Europe and Canada provided nearly 60% of NATO’s security aid to Ukraine.

Even Grok doesn’t support Trump’s obvious lies: “The war in Ukraine was started by Russia when it invaded Ukraine in February 2022. This invasion is widely recognized internationally as an act of aggression by Russia against a sovereign nation.”

For avoidance of any doubt regarding the Paris meeting Monday

Emergysse What if all the six tech leaders were standing on Trump’s podium because they were all nudged to do so by their respective AIs? Asking in response to an unconscious prompt.

Top tip. Don’t have insomnia in the middle of a coup. An executive order has now given DOGE oversight of all government departments. It’s a complete takeover of the federal government by Musk. A Musk ‘team lead’ will now make all hiring decisions according to a ‘data-driven’ model

How utterly dysfunctional that in Trump’s Oval Office there isn’t an aide capable of addressing a poor little boy’s urgent need to pee. He tried telling both the primary adults there, his Dad and the President - and neither of them knew how to handle it or even seemed to care

What is the official webpage for the Dept of Government Efficiency? I can only get either a page that seems like an official page but is a front for crypto and another where it says I am blocked - doge.gov - any idea what’s going on?

It will be an infuriating exercise in hearing Labour and conservative gaslight but at least Green, SNP and LD will have an opportunity to counter their gross misleading of Parliament with a few facts

It's over 100,000! That means a debate in Parliament. Let's keep it rolling.

Anyone else finding the idea of the world’s richest man using his muscle and legalised bribes to the Trump campaign, to illegally prevent the poorest in America getting money they are legally entitled to by acts of congress, utterly unpalatable

Have Musk’s six musketeers been arrested yet?

The world’s richest man who no one elected just walked into the US Treasury, stole your Social Security number, and Trump let him. You deserve to know why this is happening - call your member of Congress and Senators (202) 224-3121 and ask why.

With the FBI neutered - which US organisations can still look at domestic wreckers and investigate them in a fireproof way that unelected billionaires can’t f**k with?

“Journalists have spent months agonising over how not to normalise Trump. I have a variation on this theme: Please do not normalise Rupert Murdoch,” writes @arusbridger.bsky.social. www.prospectmagazine...

You know what to do

If I were adept at creating a cartoon I’d be celebrating the fifth anniversary of Brexit with an image of Boris Johnson in Union Jack shorts repeatedly punching himself in the face while chanting all his ridiculous slogans while the EU looked on shaking its head in pity

Heathrow needs four runways not three - but a moratorium on more flights - it would clean up the London skies from planes stacking

With the terrible tragedy over the skies of D.C., it’s time to prioritize safety. Trump must end the hiring freeze on air traffic controllers and restore the aviation safety advisory committee he dismantled on Jan 22.

Has Trump cut all military support to Ukraine? I’m asking because it appears there’s a 90 day “pause” initiated for foreign aid by the US but does this include Ukraine? US orders immediate pause to foreign aid, leaked memo says www.bbc.com/news/article...

Led by Donkeys strike again at the Tesla Factory in Germany…

I learned a useful German compound word today… Backpfeifengesicht… a face you want to slap or a slappable face? Who is most deserving of that description though?

Given that a seig heil salute offence is punishable by up to three years in prison (Strafgesetzbuch section 86a) in Germany can we perhaps contrive to have Elon Musk appear as a guest speaker at an AFD Night Rally?

Essential reading www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

So now we have the two main opposition parties distancing themselves from Brexit and the mess it generated. Starmer left uselessly holding the Norwegian Blue. An own goal almost as obvious as the mistake itself of the self imposed sanctions of the turd that can’t be flushed or polished.

Anyone up for playing a fiddle?

If you haven’t yet discovered the Carole Cadwalladr/Peter Jukes Podcast “Sergei and the Westminster Spy Ring” you are missing a really vital piece of journalism coming at us via social media. It’s a very slow burn, but by episode 3, I promise you’ll be counting the days waiting for episode 4 to drop

Nothing says “taking back control” like witnessing a multi-billionaire dictate the subject of debate in our political arena… demonstrating to his would be future boss that he has a useful asset for the coming Trump grift

This is a fun fantasy threadreaderapp.com/thread/18745... At the very least it should be a SNL sketch…

Trump announces that the annexation of Panama, Greenland and Canada will be his last territorial claim as Peter Mandelson clutches assurance in the form of a piece of white paper (satire alert)

It’s not just that Brexit was immensely stupid and self destructive for the UK - it’s also having to watch the EU build more and more global connections while we are on the sidelines unable to even fund the most basic structural repairs that the EU would have done for us for free