UK - Up to 5,000 soldiers will be deployed on the streets amid fears that the Manchester suicide bomber had accomplices preparing further attacks, Theresa May has announced. For the first time in 10 years, the Prime Minister said the terror threat had been raised to the highest possible level, from severe to critical, meaning an attack is “expected imminently”.
UK - “I knelt by my bed as I heard the news. They said eighteen dead at the Ariana Grande concert; now it’s 22. Including an eight year-old. A 16-year-old. Others still missing. Another terror attack in Britain. A terror attack on our youngest girls, excited, thrilled, filled up by life after watching Ariana Grande perform. Cut down by ball-bearings from a home-made bomb as they piled out into the street with their mums, their friends, their futures ahead of them.”
UK - Katie Hopkins has been reported to police for calling for a “final solution” following the terror attack at Manchester Arena. The Mail Online columnist swiftly deleted the tweet, which echoed the Nazi term for the Holocaust, amid widespread condemnation for the “despicable” post. “Don’t you even dare,” read the tweet directed at Good Morning Britain host Phillip Schofield. “Do not be part of the problem. We need a final solution. #Machester [sic].”
UK - A very sad but awfully truthful 30-second reality check from a female BBC host speaking on MSNBC... "Europe is getting used to attacks like this... we have to because we are never going to be able to totally wipe this out... as ISIS gets squeezed in Syria and Iraq we're going to see more of these kinds of attacks taking place in Europe... and Europe is starting to get used to that..." She is 100% correct sadly, 2017 has seen a terror attack attempted in Europe every nine days! After the terrorist attack in Westminster in March, YouGov conducted the latest in a series of surveys asking how likely the public felt another attack on British soil was. Up 14 percentage points on July 2010, an almost unanimous 90 percent said that they thought it was fairly or very likely.
ISRAEL - Donald Trump ended his trip to Israel and the occupied West Bank without once mentioning the idea of an independent Palestinian state, a move cheered by Right-wing Israeli politicians and the Jewish settler movement. A two-state solution - with an independent Palestine next to a secure Israel - has been a cornerstone of US policy for decades but in his four months in office Mr Trump has cast significant doubt over whether America still supports it.
USA - President Trump may have all the good intentions in the world for making a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, but it won't happen unless there's a revolution in Islamic thought, a leading Middle East scholar said. But Harold Rhode, a leading Middle East expert, said it's not so simple. Rhode lived and studied at universities in the Islamic world for years and spent nearly three decades advising the US Defense Department on Islamic Affairs.
USA - While vaudevillian comedy-like shouting matches broke out in the West Wing of the White House between President Donald Trump and his senior advisers and between the White House press secretary and various presidential aides, world leaders gathered in Beijing to discuss the creation of modern-day land and maritime ‘silk roads’ to improve the economic conditions of nations around the world.
PHILIPPINES - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte declared the country’s south under martial rule for 60 days and cut short a visit to Moscow on Tuesday after Muslim extremists allied with the Islamic State group laid siege to a southern city.
USA - No doubt about it. The coup d’etat has been successful. The Deep State — aka the police state aka the military industrial complex — has taken over. The American system of representative government has been overthrown by a profit-driven, militaristic corporate state bent on total control and global domination through the imposition of martial law here at home and by fomenting wars abroad. When in doubt, follow the money trail. It always points the way.
UK - Twenty-two people, including an eight-year-old girl, were killed and 59 injured when a suicide bomber attacked concertgoers at Manchester Arena. A man set off a bomb in the foyer at 22:33 BST on Monday, at the end of a concert by Ariana Grande. Theresa May called the attack "sickening". Armed police have arrested a 23-year-old man in Chorlton, south Manchester, in connection with the attack.
PHILIPPINES - A unit of heavily-armed fighters from a group linked to ISIS has reportedly stormed a Philippine city and engaged in firefights with the national army, according to the Independent and other sources. Residents of Marawi City, in the south of the country, were asked to remain indoors as at least 15 gunmen from a Muslim rebel group called Maute stormed streets brandishing assault rifles. The group, which is also known as the Islamic State of Lanao, has reportedly received inspiration and support from ISIS. Soldiers and a special police force were deployed to the city after residents in a nearby village raised the alarm and called for help. Update: Philippines President Duterte has declared martial law in the entire Mindanao area amid the ongoing attack in Marawi.
ISRAEL - It is somewhat ironic that Donald Trump, a former real estate magnate, is the one seemingly departing from the position that this conflict is merely about competing claims to a piece of land. Instead, he appears eager to effect a paradigm shift: Rather than approaching Israel/Palestine as a property that a good negotiator can convince both parties to divide, he approaches the issue, at least initially, as a conflict of good versus evil that could easily be solved if only the good people of all religions would unite against those abusing faith for their wicked ends.
MIDDLE EAST - The US and Middle Eastern countries have backed a new pact that promises to provide extra troops for defeating Islamic State, singles out Iran for destabilizing the region, and says that Riyadh is to become the heart of the region’s counter-terrorism operations.
ISRAEL - Moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would end the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat warned on Saturday. “We believe that moving the US embassy to Jerusalem would mean the end of the peace process,” said Erekat, who is also secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), during a World Economic Forum meeting at the Dead Sea in Jordan on Saturday.
NORTH KOREA - North Korea is clearly led by an unhinged and tyrannical government that can’t be trusted with nuclear weapons. So you can understand why the US is so determined to stop their progress with these weapons. But at the same time, those nuclear weapons could one day guarantee that the leaders of North Korea will remain in power for a long time. Those weapons would make any potential aggressor think twice about trying to invade the bellicose nation, so there’s no way that North Korea is going to abandon its nuclear program.