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Best of the Web: Spain refuses to provide military support for US attack on Iran

Washington has withdrawn its tanker planes from the Morón air base in Seville after being denied permission to use it in Operation Epic Fury
spain base uasf moron
© David Arjona (EFE)Military aircraft at the Morón air base in Seville.
Spain is refusing to support the U.S. and Israeli military operation against Iran and has distanced itself from the position adopted by France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, which have shown themselves willing to undertake "proportionate defensive action" in response to Tehran's attacks on the Persian Gulf countries and Cyprus. "Each country makes its own foreign policy decisions. Spain has a very clear position: Europe's voice must be one of balance and moderation at this time, working towards de-escalation and a return to the negotiating table," Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said on Monday. "A logic of violence, as we are seeing, only leads to a spiral of violence, and unilateral military actions outside the United Nations Charter, outside any collective action, have no clear objective. Europe must defend international law, de-escalation, and negotiation," he insisted.

Comment: Trump has threatened to 'end all trade with Spain'.

He did so in front of the German Chancellor, who's visiting DC.

The Chancellor AGREED with the American president.


The EU is all but dead.


Star of David

Best of the Web: Israel strikes girls' school in Iran, killing up to 160 (UPDATED)

mmmmm
An Israeli strike has hit an elementary girls' school in Minab, a city in the Hormozgan province of southern Iran, killing at least 51 people, state media reported, as the immediate civilian cost from Israel and the United States' huge bombardment of Iran comes into sharper focus.

Iran's Mehr news agency also reported that at least two students were killed by an Israeli attack that hit a school east of the capital, Tehran.

Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera's Mohammed Vall said of the attack on the girls' school, "There are new reports confirming the number of people killed in that strike has now gone above 40. That's a civilian target, and that's one of the targets that might really become problematic with regards to this campaign by the Americans and the Israelis, who are saying that they are targeting only military targets and they are trying to punish the regime, not the people of Iran.


Comment: Tass reports:
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmail Baghaei said that the strike by the United States and Israel killed up to 160 schoolgirls in the southern city of Minab.

"The Zionist regime's attack on the school in the city of Minab killed 150-160 of our girls, which is a terrible crime," he said, as quoted by ISNA.




Snakes in Suits

Best of the Web: The Talented Mr. Newsom

gavin newsom
Gavin Newsom
Gavin Newsom could be our next president. But does anyone - including him - know what he stands for? A detailed look at his life suggests the answer might be no.

California has every natural and economic advantage: a long, beautiful coast, great weather, a generations-long stranglehold on cultural production in Los Angeles and advanced technology in Silicon Valley.

Yet years of Democratic misrule have made the state so unlivable its taxpaying residents are fleeing en masse. Building houses, or high-speed rail, or anything else in California is nearly impossible. Meanwhile, the state has done all it can to make itself a home for unemployable illegal migrants, including offering them free medical care.

One might think this record would make Gavin Newsom, California's Democratic governor, an unattractive presidential candidate.

One would be wrong.

Uzi

Best of the Web: Israeli troops fired 900+ rounds at Gaza medics - report

Red Crescent workers protest
© Getty Images/Anadolu/ContributorRed Crescent workers • April 2025
Hundreds of rounds were fired at aid workers during a March 2025 massacre at Tal as-Sultan, an independent investigation says.

Israeli soldiers fired over 900 rounds at a convoy of clearly marked emergency vehicles in Rafah in 2025, killing 15 Palestinian aid workers, some of them shot at close range, an independent investigation has found.

The attack took place on March 18, 2025 in the Tal as-Sultan area of southern Gaza, where local responders had been dispatched to collect wounded civilians. Fifteen Palestinian aid workers were killed, including medics from the Palestine Red Crescent Society and members of the Civil Defense.

The victims were traveling in five ambulances and one fire truck, all clearly marked and operating with emergency lights, when they came under sustained gunfire, according to a report released on Monday by independent research agency Forensic Architecture and audio investigation group Earshot.

Telescope

Best of the Web: Caltech astrophysicist fatally shot on porch of his rural home

Carl Grillmair
© IPAC / CaltechCarl Grillmair worked at Caltech’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center. He was a principal investigator on the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope, and his research earned him numerous accolades.
  • An acclaimed Caltech astrophysicist was fatally shot on his porch in Llano early Monday.
  • A suspect, Freddy Snyder, 29, was arrested and charged with Carl Grillmair's slaying as well as carjacking and burglary.
  • Among the scientist's accomplishments was the 'ingenious discovery' of water on a planet outside our solar system.
An accomplished Caltech astrophysicist with more than four decades of research contributions in galactic astronomy and the study of distant planets was fatally shot in a rural area of the Antelope Valley on Monday morning. A suspect in the shooting has been charged with murder.

Comment: This is the third "highest profile" tragic loss in less than 4 years.

First one was back in 2022, in what was a classical missing 411 case: Body found in Chile identified as Warwick University professor Tom Marsh: 60-year-old was found dead two months after vanishing from remote mountain observatory

Second case: Who was Nuno Loureiro? MIT professor gunned down in apartment near university


Snowflake Cold

Best of the Web: 5,000 flights cancelled as US east coast digs out of record 3 FEET snow - over 600,000 properties without power

A groundskeeper clears snow from the walkways inside the Trinity Church graveyard in lower Manhattan during a snow storm, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, in New York.
© Seth WenigA groundskeeper clears snow from the walkways inside the Trinity Church graveyard in lower Manhattan during a snow storm, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026, in New York.
A major storm hit the US east coast on Monday, bringing record-breaking snow that caused disruptions for millions and thousands of flight cancellations.

Parts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts have seen nearly 37in (94cm) of snowfall, with more than 19in in New York City's Central Park, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.

Weather warnings stretched from North Carolina to northern Maine, with some in place further north in parts of eastern Canada.

More than 600,000 properties on the US east coast endured power outages, while the Boston Globe - a major US newspaper - said it will not go to print for the first time in its 153-year history due to the storm.

Travel across the region has been severely limited, with some states and cities implementing travel bans during the worst period of the storm.


Wolf

Best of the Web: "A Different Species": Epstein's Pseudo-Elite Psychopathy

young jeffrey epstein
© Stephen OgilvyJeffrey Epstein, 1980
The partial release of the Epstein files has prompted some interesting responses. Yuri Bezmenov's Ghost posted:

From the Epstein files, you can see how he saw himself as spiritual elite, an awakened elect, above standard morality. That "elect" status gave him a moral blank check that licensed the predation. His transhumanist POV was also a part of this frame.
Comedian Duncan Trussell took this observation even further, comparing the Epstein revelations to a hypothetical disclosure of alien life in conversation with Jeremy Corbell:
With the Epstein files you get a form of catastrophic disclosure, not disclosure of UAPs or extraterrestrial life, disclosure of the fact that the super elite — they don't follow the same laws we do. They don't have the same view on ethics, morality. It's almost a different species, in fact. And watching the sort of impact that that's having on the psyche of people who probably haven't gone as far out on thin ice as you and I have is really interesting, because you're looking at people getting red-pilled in the most extreme way, where you look at these emails, it's not just emails Epstein wrote. It's emails to Epstein from people who were sucked in by that power, into that orbit. And even though Epstein wasn't like, "I'm going to puppeteer this person," just something about hanging out with that, seeing the hedonism, seeing what it's like to be in a room with all these very powerful people — it's seductive. Just standing next to it makes you want to become part of it. And that doctor, what's his name? Attia.

Arrow Down

Best of the Web: Pope Leo rejects Trump invitation to join Gaza 'Board of Peace'

Pope Leo XIV
© WikimediaPope Leo XIV during an audience with the media, on May 12, 2025
The Vatican flatly rejected a U.S. invitation to join the Trump-led "Board of Peace" for Gaza.

Pope Leo XIV, the U.S.-born Pontiff, has formally declined U.S. President Trump's invitation for the Vatican to join his so-called Peace Board for Gaza. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem previously described the project as "a colonialist operation focused on others deciding for the Palestinians."

According to Trump, the board — which he will head — will oversee Gaza's governance and reconstruction. Trump has said that the board may later address other global conflicts under his leadership.

But in delivering the Pope's firm "no," Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, insisted that "at the international level it should above all be the U.N. that manages these crisis situations," not a U.S.-led board.

AK47

Best of the Web: Is British intelligence radicalising children in Syrian ISIS prisons for the long war against Iran?

ISIS black flag
12 years later, Angloids are still deploying 'Jihad Inc.' around the ME chessboard
British Intelligence is never too far from the wars and chaos in the so-called Middle East region. In Syria MI6 has taken centre stage for the last 75 years in the intelligence operations to overthrow successive Syrian governments and now the aim is the final war against Iran with Syria as the staging post.

In September 2025, the Express was issuing dire warnings that "tens of thousands of ISIS extremists could be unleashed on Britain and the West if the camps holding them in Syria are taken over by a new regime", meaning the Al Jolani/Al Qaeda regime brought to power by London, Washington, Ankara, and Tel Aviv. At the same time, CENTCOM was urging countries to repatriate their ISIS citizens to reduce the pressure on the overcrowded and sordid camps overflowing with unrepentant fighters and their families.

Fast-forward to February 2026, and that is exactly what has been allowed to happen. The 'New Syria' forces, comprising ISIS, Al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood factions, some Syrian, the majority foreigners, have seized the ISIS holding camps in north-east Syria from the former caretakers — the US/Israeli-backed Kurdish Separatists.

Suddenly, Washington's support for the Kurdish autonomous region appeared to collapse in favour of an HTS/Al Qaeda centralised regime. The former promises of Kurdish independence and privilege within Syrian borders seemed to dissipate rapidly as Al Jolani's murderous militias released their own relatives and former ISIS comrades from some of the biggest prison camps in this oil-rich corner of Syrian territory.

Arrow Down

Best of the Web: Europe's mounting avalanche death toll: 86 so far this winter with record downfalls burying ski resorts

An avalanche on Tuesday in the Zermatt region of Switzerland
An avalanche on Tuesday in the Zermatt region of Switzerland
Europe's avalanche crisis is escalating, with 86 people including at least four Brits killed this season as severe snowfall and unstable mountain conditions wreak havoc across the Alps and beyond.

France has recorded the highest toll so far with 25 deaths, followed by Italy with 21 and Austria with 14, while Switzerland has lost nine and Spain eight.

Slovakia reported four deaths and Slovenia three, with a single death in Andorra.

The vast majority of victims were caught in wind slab avalanches or collapses linked to persistent weak layers buried deep within the snow, often triggered after fresh downfalls.

Most were skiing off piste or travelling in backcountry terrain, with others killed while mountaineering, climbing or hiking.