FlyTheNest

Morning all.

Good morning, and it is a good morning, I have broadband.

gilsey wrote: Tue Mar 17, 2026 10:14 am Good morning, and it is a good morning, I have broadband.

I wondered where you were !!!

"Iran's got Trump by the throat" declares Russian newspaper.

“Trump wanted to strangle Tehran, but he’s tightened the noose around his own neck.” Plus, reaction in the Russian press to Mr Nobody Against Putin winning an Oscar [spoiler alert: there isn’t much.] "

Still interesting that there was anything at all ?

'Like buying a ticket to the Titanic': EU leaders reject Trump's Hormuz demands •



There is still a small doubt that the brits and frogs will make some moves to help Trump (very slowly!) as the high fuel prices bite more ...

but balance that against the voters being against the whole thing ?

This is RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire . That word 'defensive' is doing a lot of heavy lifting ...



"Roads have been closed and protective screens have gone up around an RAF base used by the United States Air Force (USAF) to launch operations against Iran.

The UK government has approved the use of US bases on its territory for "defensive" strikes on Iranian military sites and British forces have been deployed to help defend its allies in the Gulf and Cyprus but has refused to get involved in the wider war."

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp854ez929yo

For all those trying to claim it's just 'the left' refusing to support Trump and the Israelis here's a Trump appointee with multiple historic links to the far right (including Nick Fuentes and the so called 'Proud Boys').

Geography ...



(Early 2003 the top US General Shinseki estimated it would take several hundred thousand troops to secure Iraq.)

The G Liveblog had yards of blurb on the Reform thing, and this was it --

Crace

"" Looking around Glaziers Hall in central London, the venue for the latest stunt, it was hard to escape the feeling that Reform may be hitting the law of diminishing returns. A press conference too far. Bread and circuses.

There were 50 or so Reform supporters sitting behind the podium, most of whom didn’t look too thrilled to have been invited. In front of the lectern, just two rows of seats for the media and a couple of Reform MPs who had nothing better to do. The Chuckle Brothers were going to have their work cut out. ""

I mean to be fair Alexander the Great conquered the entirety of the Persian empire from the Mediterranean to India, never mind just Iran, with about 30000 guys with spears. Add on a few mercenaries and auxiliaries and you can get the number up to about an average Premier League football crowd.

The Achaemenid Persian empire was a very different beast to Iran though. Rather than the multiple layers of succession the Iranians have purportedly put in place the Persians were constantly indulging in coups and fratricide. Despite despotically ruling a vast empire they were always vulnerable to someone with a bigger stick coming along and buggering things up. Alexander didn't even have to kill Darius III, he just destabilised things enough that Darius' own men did the deed and so died the last Zoroastrian emperor.

Then what did Alexander do? He smashed and burned everything in sight, Persepolis he burned (according to some sources) on the suggestion of a drunken Greek courtesan while they were carousing. Then he had lots of cities built mostly named after himself.He was very much the Trump of his day apart from a few notable differences. As far as we know he wasn't orange, although if he did die of alcoholism as reported by some sources he most probably did turn a bit yellow at some point as a result of jaundice. As was expected back in those days he fought with his army rather than claiming he was disabled by a minor foot complaint. He was also flamboyantly bisexual but then so was just about everyone in the Greek world back then. Most importantly though he won. Leading to a couple of centuries of weirdness which involved the Bactrian and Indo-Greeks in Afghanistan and Pakistan fighting on elephants, converting to Buddhism and eventually getting into a scrap with the Chinese.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_th ... nly_Horses

I went to visit my uncle (Dad's brother) in hospital when his cirrhosis of the liver was so bad they'd deemed it terminal. Before I arrived nobody had warned me about the jaundice. He wasn't just a bit yellow, he was almost the colour of a banana. It was quite off-putting to say the least.