#US Foreign Relations

[ivygorgon]

AN OPEN LETTER to THE PRESIDENT & U.S. CONGRESS

No more arms transfers! Ceasefire now. The hostages must come home.

637 so far! Help us get to 1,000 signers!

Last week, President Biden expressed his outrage over the Israeli military’s killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers directly to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Within hours, the Israeli cabinet voted to increase aid deliveries in Gaza — a welcome sea change in its months-long siege that can help tens of thousands of people avoid famine.

There’s no need to wait for the Israeli military to make another deadly decision for President Biden to do all he can to save lives now. President Biden should enforce U.S. law immediately to suspend U.S. military aid to Israel and ensure the indiscriminate killing of aid workers and mass starvation of Palestinians ends today. We need the focus to shift to peace negotiations, rescuing the hostages, and rebuilding.

The U.S. government is likely the only one capable of swaying the Israeli government from deepening the crisis and tipping the entire region into all-out war. It must do so. Americans overwhelmingly want the carnage to stop.

Thanks.

▶ Created on April 8 by Jess Craven · 636 signers in the past 7 days

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[el-ffej]

Also: Sincere apologies to Canadians for having to deal with our stupid decisions.

US President Donald Trump has said he is serious about wanting Canada to become the 51st state in an interview that aired during the Super Bowl pre-show. “Yeah it is,” Mr Trump told Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier when asked whether his talk of annexing Canada is “a real thing” – as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently suggested. “I think Canada would be much better off being the 51st state because we lose 200 billion dollars (£161 billion) a year with Canada. And I’m not going to let that happen,” he said. “Why are we paying 200 billion dollars a year, essentially a subsidy to Canada?” The US is not subsidising Canada – it buys products from the natural resource-rich nation, including commodities such as oil.

[fandfnews]

Azerbaijan Emerges as Key Contender for Abraham Accords Expansion Following Trump-Aliyev Exchange

In a striking signal of shifting regional dynamics, former U.S. President Donald Trump shared a video of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Truth Social, marking what analysts are calling a potential breakthrough in expanding the Abraham Accords eastward. The video, taken from Aliyev’s speech at the Shusha Global Media Forum, featured the Azerbaijani leader praising Trump as a “leader who ends…

[progressivemillennial]

“If I have one message to give to the secular American people, it’s that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don’t know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.”

― Marjane Satrapi, Iranian graphic novelist

[shoku-and-awe]

New train etiquette posters from Seibu Railway [x]

[thoughtlessarse]

Why is the UK receiving economic aid from the US?

We like infographics.

[ultrakeencollectionbreadfan]

To my Canadian followers:

I am deeply ashamed and embarrassed by President Donald J. Trump's recent behavior towards your country. I know it probably doesn't mean that much coming from just one person, but I hope my apology counts for something. I just want to let it be known that Trump doesn't speak for all of us.

To my American followers:

As mentioned above, my previous statement was to show Canadians that Trump doesn't speak for all of us and, in many cases, only speaks for himself. There are many individual Americans and American localities who really appreciate our relationship and would be willing to salvage it. I'm not going to let Trump fray the U.S.-Canada bond, and neither should you.

[death-of-cats]

Even though I think it would be a missed opportunity, I’m actually okay with the idea of Stannis beheading Theon at the beginning of TWOW. I mean it’s what Theon explicitly prayed for - a sword, to die as Theon. Let that boy get what he wants for once in his life. 

But also I think it’s funny for the effect it would have on Stannis, once it comes out Bran and Rickon are still alive. Imo the idea of killing a man for the wrong crime would really get under Stannis’s skin. Pretty much everyone else in ASOIAF would be like, “he was still a turncloak, he still killed other people, who gaf?” The answer is Stannis. Stannis gaf. It would needle him. He’d grind his teeth over it. I mean more so than he already does. 

[liorlenn]

(Spoilers for KCD2 romance)

One thing that really surprised me about Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (particularly the Hansry romance) was the direct reference to Galehaut and Lancelot (let me tell you I CHEERED), so I wanted to start talking about some other queer medieval Arthurian texts and Arthuriana adjacent texts.

I’m by no means an expert (I focus more on Welsh poetry and prose) but medieval Welsh literature includes some Arthurian literature, so I know a little about Arthurian Literature in general. Most of these stories are either Old French or German and about 13th century. SGATGK is 14th century.

For one, I want to say that the tale being referenced in the game is the Vulgate Cycle or the Lancelot-Grail Cycle (the Vulgate Cycle itself is multiple parts, with Lancelot’s (The Story of Lancelot/Prose Lancelot) being the largest). It’s a big ol’ mash up and retelling of a huge part of the early tradition + new stuff. There’s also the Post-Vulgate which is itself a retelling of the Vulgate Cycle. This is NOT the one you want if you’re looking for Lancelot and Galehaut.

Another thing of note about the Vulgate is that Galehaut and Lancelot are not the only ones I would give the old side eye. Gawain says (about Lancelot even!), “If God were to grant me my health… I’d immediately wish to be the most beautiful maiden in the world, happy and healthy, on condition that he would love me above all others…” Come on man.

Now, for other queer texts!

First up, I have to plug my best friend and my silly rabbit: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Thanks to the movie (which was good but fairly different) this one is a bit more well-known. I could talk endlessly about the moral of the original story and I think the Gawain Poet is incredibly talented at weaving together imagery. I also appreciate Gawain’s willingness to kiss women AND men. Some argue that it’s not queer because of differing social norms but personally I think Gawain wanted it. And by it, haha well let’s jusrt say—

Next we have Parzival/Percival (referencing the German “version” by Wolfram von Eschenbach here. Each iteration of a “Percival”, including Chrétien de Troyes’ earlier (and unfinished) Story of the Grail, all have their own differences). This one is even more up to interpretation than SGATGK. There’s a very explicitly performative aspect to Parzival’s presentation (his gender is “knight”), focusing distinctly on clothing and the role clothing plays in others’ reactions to him that I think is very relatable. I don’t have much else to say about this one unfortunately. I read parts of it once years ago but it was super interesting and there has been scholarship done on Parzival and gender so…. take what you will from it.

The next stories are Arthurian adjacent (as in, medieval stories about knights). First off: Le Roman de Silence is either about a woman knight or a trans knight who is… sighs. Forcibly outed. Interesting read but definitely a bit of a downer if you interpret Silence as a trans man.

Yde et Olive, however is very explicitly about a trans man! Happy ending too! I was incredibly surprised to read a 13th century story about a trans man getting magical/miraculous top and bottom surgery (yes, forreal).

And to cap off this small list, here is some medieval Welsh literature. This one is just me being a little wistful, but let me tell you about Blodeuedd/Blodeuwedd and the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi (Math fab Mathonwy). This one is…sad. It’s not a good ending for Blodeuedd, but I could wax poetic about her: how she was fashioned from flowers to fulfill a gendered role. How she failed to do so and was punished.

There are plenty of other stories with queer interpretations in Arthuriana and other medieval literature (do not get me started on Guinevere and Morgan le Fay’s whole… thing. Also Luned and her Lady…) and there are plenty of modern/early modern retellings that are explicitly queer. I just wanted to stick to medieval texts for this and also limit myself to a select few among that even.

[onlytiktoks]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ben Meiselas at MeidasTouch:

I never thought I'd have to report on something like this, but here we are. Today, in what will go down as one of the most shameful moments in American history, Donald Trump and JD Vance turned an Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into a pro-Putin spectacle. Trump, in his usual incoherent bluster, berated Zelenskyy, spewing Russian propaganda while openly gambling with the lives of millions of Ukrainians. At one point, Trump had the audacity to tell Zelenskyy that he should be "thankful" for U.S. aid—completely ignoring the reality that Ukraine is fighting for its very existence against Putin’s aggression. JD Vance joined in, attacking Zelenskyy with Kremlin-approved talking points about forced conscription and military struggles, as if parroting Russian state media was now a requirement for Trump’s inner circle. But here’s the difference between real leadership and whatever circus act Trump thinks he’s running—Zelenskyy stood his ground. Calm, resolute, and fearless, he pushed back against Trump’s nonsense and refused to be intimidated. [...] The contrast could not have been starker. Earlier in the day, Zelenskyy met with a bipartisan group of U.S. senators who reaffirmed their commitment to Ukraine. That’s how actual diplomacy is conducted. Then he walked into the Oval Office and was met with nothing but lies, cowardice, and disgrace from Trump and his lackeys.

This afternoon, Kremlin assets JD Vance and Donald Trump acted like a toddlerish jerk towards Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House.

Zelensky = hero.

Trump/Vance = zeroes.

See Also:

Daily Kos: Zelenskyy shows true leadership as Trump implodes in Oval Office meltdown

The Guardian: Ukraine ‘gambling with world war three’, Trump tells Zelenskyy in fiery meeting

HuffPost: Trump Berates Zelenskyy In Oval Office, Makes Putin's Points For Him

The Contrarian: A confrontation in the Oval Office and a fractured wartime alliance

[alyfoxxxen]

State Department enacts widespread layoffs, cutting 1,353 staff as part of reorganization - CBS News

[zvaigzdelasas]

There is an vanishingly slim but theoretically realistic possibility due to current geopolitical trends of Russia changing recognition of Abkhazia to being a region of Georgia while the US changes stance to recognize it as an autonomous/independent Republic

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

June 23, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Jun 24, 2025

In a timeline of Trump’s decision to drop 12 of the reportedly 20 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs the U.S. military possessed on Iran, New York Times reporters confirmed what Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo judged from the beginning: Trump wanted in on the optics of what seemed to be Israel’s successful strikes against Iran.

Andrew Perez and Asawin Suebsaeng of Rolling Stone reported conversations with administration officials who confirmed there was no new intelligence to suggest Iran was on the brink of producing nuclear weapons.

Mark Mazzetti, Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, Eric Schmitt, and Helene Cooper reported yesterday in the New York Times that Trump had warned Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu against striking Iran but changed his mind after seeing how Israel’s military action was “playing” on television. The reporters write: “The president was closely monitoring Fox News, which was airing wall-to-wall praise of Israel’s military operation and featuring guests urging Mr. Trump to get more involved.”

Trump began to hint he had been part of the operation, and military advisors began to draw up plans for a strike. According to the reporters, by June 17—three days after his military parade had fizzled and more than 5 million Americans had turned out to protest his administration—Trump had decided to bomb Iran.

Rather than keeping the mission quiet, Trump issued increasingly aggressive social media posts appearing to hint at a strike. David E. Sanger of the New York Times cited reports from Israeli intelligence saying that Iranian officials had removed 400 kilograms (about 880 pounds) of enriched uranium from the Fordo enrichment plant to another nuclear complex, although at least some equipment and records would likely have remained there.

Republicans have talked about bombing Iran to stop its nuclear aspirations since the early 2000s, but the relationship between the U.S. and Iran relating to nuclear technology actually reaches back to 1953. In that year, under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the United Kingdom supported a coup against the elected Iranian prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, after he called for the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, in which British interests controlled a majority stake.

In his place, the former leader of the country, Mohammad Reza Shah, retook power. In 1954, Iran accepted a 25-year agreement that gave western oil companies 50% ownership of Iran’s oil production.

At the same time, President Eisenhower proposed trying to defang international fears of nuclear war by shifting nuclear technologies toward civilian uses, including energy. On December 8, 1953, he spoke before the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City on how atomic energy could be used for peaceful ends. The initiative, known as “Atoms for Peace,”

provided reactors, nuclear fuel, and training for scientists for countries that promised they would use the technology only for peaceful civilian purposes.

In 1967 the U.S. supplied a nuclear reactor and highly enriched uranium to Iran, and trained Iranian scientists in the United States. In 1974, according to Ariana Rowberry of the Brookings Institution, the shah announced he intended to build 20 new reactors in the next 20 years.

Then, in 1979, the Islamic revolution in Iran forced out the shah and put Islamic leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in power. After the U.S. admitted the shah into the country for cancer treatments, Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy, taking 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. The U.S. cut diplomatic ties with Iran, imposed sanctions, froze Iranian assets in the U.S., and ended the civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with Iran.

Iran turned to Pakistan, China, and Russia to expand its nuclear program. Tensions between the U.S. and Iran increased until Republican politicians talked about bombing the sites of Iran’s nuclear program. Famously, Arizona senator John McCain joked about bombing Iran in 2007 when he was running for the Republican presidential nomination, singing “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ classic song “Barbara Ann.”

McCain lost the 2008 election to Democratic president Barack Obama, and in 2013 at the beginning of his second term, Obama began high-level talks to cap Iran’s enrichment of uranium that could be used for weapons. In 2015, forty-seven Republican senators, led by then freshman senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, tried to blow up the talks, sending an open letter to Iranian officials to put them on notice that “the next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”

This was an astonishing breach of the longstanding U.S. tradition of presenting a united front in foreign negotiations. Nonetheless, in 2015 the U.S., Iran, China, Russia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the European Union signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that limited Iran’s enriched uranium in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.

At about the same time, negotiators settled an unrelated case between the U.S. and Iran at The Hague, involving the return of American prisoners to the U.S. and Iranian assets frozen in the U.S. to Iran. Since Iran was cut off from international finance systems at the time, the U.S. returned some of those assets in 2016 as Swiss francs, euros, and other currencies. Donald Trump, who was then running for the presidency, insisted that the Obama administration had sent “pallets of cash” to Iran as part of a deal to free the prisoners. “Iran was in big trouble, they had sanctions, they were dying, we took off the sanctions and made this horrible deal and now they’re a power,” Trump told reporters.

Then, in 2016, voters put Trump in the White House. Although the nuclear deal appeared to be working, Trump left it in 2018, calling it a “horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made.” Without the U.S. the agreement broke down. Iran resumed its program for enriching uranium.

A week and a half ago, on June 12, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched strikes against Iran, and on June 21, Trump ordered strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear sites, claiming that after 40 years of Iranian hostility, “Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”

In fact, the effect of the strikes is not at all clear, although Trump insisted yet again this afternoon that “[o]bliteration is an accurate term!... Bullseye!!!”

Trump’s strikes on Iran underscore how Republican leaders see governance. They seemed to see the careful negotiations under Obama and the international inspections that certified Iran’s adherence to the JCPOA as signs of weakness, preferring simply to use American military might to impose U.S. will. Trump has combined that dominance ideology with his enthusiasm for performances that play well on television.

This afternoon, Iran responded to the U.S. strikes with its own missile attack on a U.S. military base in Qatar, after warning of the upcoming attack to enable Qatar to intercept the missiles.

Trump posted on social media: “Iran has officially responded to our Obliteration of their Nuclear Facilities with a very weak response, which we expected, and have very effectively countered. There have been 14 missiles fired—13 were knocked down, and 1 was ‘set free,’ because it was headed in a nonthreatening direction. I am pleased to report that NO Americans were harmed, and hardly any damage was done. Most importantly, they’ve gotten it all out of their ‘system,’ and there will, hopefully, be no further HATE. I want to thank Iran for giving us early notice, which made it possible for no lives to be lost, and nobody to be injured. Perhaps Iran can now proceed to Peace and Harmony in the Region, and I will enthusiastically encourage Israel to do the same. Thank you for your attention to this matter! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA”

Ten minutes later, he posted: “CONGRATULATIONS WORLD, IT’S TIME FOR PEACE!”

Republican dominance politics began in the 1950s as a way to prevent the federal government from protecting Black and Brown civil rights. Since then, it has reinforced the idea of asserting power through violence. And it has always reinforced the power of white men over women and racial and gender minorities.

Today the U.S. Supreme Court granted the Trump administration's request to allow it to deport migrants to places other than their country of origin, often to countries plagued by violence. The administration has claimed this power as part of its campaign to scare immigrants from coming to the U.S. by demonstrating that they could end up in a third country with no recourse. The court majority did not explain its reasoning; the three liberal justices—Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor—dissented sharply.

“In…earlier rulings, the court cleared the way for the government to treat as many as a million migrants as removable who previously weren’t,” legal analyst Steve Vladeck told Angélica Franganilla Díaz and John Fritze of CNN. “And today’s ruling allows the government to remove those individuals and others to any country that will take them—without providing any additional process beyond an initial removal hearing, and without regard to the treatment they may face in those countries.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON