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Rob Jetten acknowledges grief and pain of Moluccan families as crowdfunded monument unveiled in RotterdamThe Dutch prime minister, Rob Jetten, has formally apologised for the “heartless” mistreatment of thousands of Moluccan soldiers who fought for the Dutch colonial army during Indonesia’s struggle for independence.About 12,500 people – men who had served in the Royal Dutch East Indies and their families – came from a group of Indonesian islands to the Netherlands in 1951, many having been given no choice. They thought it would be a temporary evacuation after Indonesia had won independence. Continue reading...

Donald Trump's habit of punishing Republicans who cross him may have just cost him the political cover he needs to sell his Iran deal, according to political analyst Sabrina Haake, who argues the president's domestic vendettas are actively undermining him abroad.In her latest newsletter, Haake makes the case that Trump's "personal thirst for revenge at home is hurting him on Iran." Her logic is straightforward: the lawmakers Trump targeted in primaries, several of whom lost as a result, no longer owe him anything and are now free to attack his foreign policy without fear of consequences. As she puts it, they "have zero Fs left to give."The result has been a chorus of Republican criticism aimed at the memorandum of understanding that ended Trump's war with Iran. Haake points to Sen. Bill Cassidy, who called the agreement "the worst foreign policy blunder in decades" and warned that Iran learned "threatening the Strait of Hormuz works." Sen. Thom Tillis flagged the war's $100 billion price tag, while Rep. Thomas Massie noted that figure is five times what Congress spends annually on roads and bridges. Even former Vice President Mike Pence said the deal "smacks of appeasement," and Sen. Ted Cruz blasted a reconstruction fund he described as handing "billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics."Haake's central argument is that this is a self-inflicted wound. Trump alienated the very voices he would now need to defend the agreement, and he is reportedly planning to skip the congressional review required under the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, a move that members of both parties have urged him not to make. Having burned those bridges, she contends, he is left without allies to make his case.The analyst is also sharply critical of the deal's substance, which she says bears no resemblance to the "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER" Trump demanded fifteen weeks ago. Instead of regime change, disarmament, or American control of Iranian oil, Haake writes that the MOU waives sanctions immediately, lets Iran resume oil exports, and steers an estimated $300 billion reconstruction package toward the country, while securing only a temporary 60-day window of toll-free passage through the Strait of Hormuz. She frames it bluntly as the US "effectively paying Iran to stop threatening international shipping."

A former senior Pentagon official sounded the alarm on Sunday over their belief that the Trump administration was likely to bury an internal investigation into an incident that coincided with the launch of the U.S. war against Iran, an incident one Democratic lawmaker described as “one of the most horrific episodes” of the “illegal Trump war.”Trump’s Operation Epic Fury began with “double tap” strikes on Shajareh Tayyebeh, an Iranian girls’ elementary school, which killed at least 156 people, 120 of them children. Trump initially blamed Iran for the strikes before it became clear that a U.S.-made Tomahawk missile was used in the attack.While the U.S. military is reportedly still investigating the incident, several former Pentagon and national security officials “expressed doubt” to The Guardian for its report published on Sunday that the results of the investigation would ever be made public.“It’s very rare that you would have a military operation and not have some incidents where there was a mistaken target and civilians are harmed or killed, but then there is a system for investigating, assessing accountability and taking responsibility,” one former senior Pentagon official told The Guardian, speaking on the condition of anonymity.“There’s a very clear process for this, and I’m very doubtful that the [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth Pentagon will follow through.”Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ), also speaking with The Guardian, said that she had vigorously pressed the Trump administration for answers, only to be stonewalled.“The US strike [on the girls’ elementary school] is one of the most horrific episodes of the entire illegal Trump war in Iran,” Ansari said.“Donald Trump is hiding the truth from the American people and Congress, and deflecting blame to Secretary Hegseth, because he does not want the public to know the true horrors of what he unleashed on the Iranian people with absolutely nothing to show for it.”

For one day every June, South Africa’s searing racial inequality seems to melt away at Comrades raceIn the early morning dark, thousands of runners waited, jostling with anticipation. South Africa’s national anthem rang out. Then the haunting swell of Shosholoza, first sung by Zimbabwean migrant workers in South Africa’s goldmines. Finally, that unmistakable, spine-tingling piano: Chariots of Fire.Runners gather before the start of the marathon Continue reading...

While Donald Trump is being excoriated by Republicans over his Iran deal, which one GOP lawmaker called “… a tremendous foreign policy blunder,” MS NOW’s Bill Rohde stated on Thursday morning that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth can expect that his role in advising the president to launch the war has put his job at risk.Discussing the blowback Trump is facing over the war that, for the moment, has ended in a stalemate, Rohde claimed that Hegseth is already a prime target instead since he is already on the outs with a substantial number of Republican lawmakers.“At some point. President Trump is the person most responsible for this strategic defeat and failure,” Rohde told the "Morning Joe” co-hosts. “But I would argue the person second most responsible, who is in the most dangerous position politically, is Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He repeatedly lied to the American public in his press conferences about the progress of the war, and he also refused to give basic information to members of Congress. There's a lot of ill will among senators and House members towards Pete Hegseth.”Quoting Hegseth asserting “The aftermath of this is going to be in our interest,” Rohde asked, “Did he warn the president about the Strait of Hormuz before this war? Was he honest with the American public? And to the 50,000 Americans who risked their lives in the 13 soldiers who died? You know, his performance is just something that has to be looked at.”Co-host Willie Geist added, “We haven't seen the defense secretary in public much since those podium-banging news briefings that he would give every week, where he would lecture the media about how to cover the war, what was actually happening, and from all the reporting that he would show the president of the United States an iPad with things blowing up to show that they were doing well. It turns out this is a much, much more complicated problem than can be solved by blowing things up.” - YouTube youtu.be

According to former CIA official Marc Polymeropoulos, Donald Trump’s Iran deal, which has set off a deluge of criticism within the Republican Party, has left the leadership of Israel in a state of shock.Appearing on MS NOW with “Morning Joe” co-host Willie Geist, Polymeropoulos, who just returned from Tel Aviv, claimed he found a sense of betrayal during his visit. Geist prompted the 26-year veteran of the CIA with, “Marc, take us to Tel Aviv this morning. And what Bibi Netanyahu must be thinking; that he got his man in the White House in Donald Trump, that he went to the Situation Room, sold the war successfully. He thought that Donald Trump, the United States military, would come in and finish off Iran, take out the regime, and now he sits here this morning with this memorandum of understanding anyway, with explicit language that says there can be no attacks on Lebanon.”“So the Israelis I speak with are in a state of panic, one former Mossad official said, literally, ‘I can't believe this is happening,’” he reported. “But in some ways they should have known better,” he explained. “And one analyst actually told me, ‘Look, you know, Benjamin Netanyahu decided to ride the tiger — that's Donald Trump. And the tiger just turned around and just bit him on the rear end.’”“And like many of us predicted he would, he continued, “Because Trump was no dedicated, you know, savior. He was not the messiah for Israel. He's too transactional.”“Let me just add one quick thing, Willie,” he insisted. “Let's not forget at the end of the Biden administration, if you calculate what President Biden did after October 7th, he gave the Israelis $18 billion in military aid. Yet somehow, he is seen as not a supporter of Israel. That was preposterous. And right now, I think the Israelis are realizing that Trump was not who they thought he was, and that this MOU actually puts them in a very precarious national security situation, particularly in terms of ballistic missiles and what to do about Hezbollah, a terrorist entity sitting on their northern border.” - YouTube youtu.be

Donald Trump's highly controversial Iran peace deal is causing the Republican Party no small measure of angst, with conservative journalist David Drucker half-jokingly stating on MS NOW that the GOP is caught up in the throes of the “35 stages of grief" — a far cry from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's "5 stages of grief" when death approaches.Appearing on “Morning Joe,” the conservative “The Dispatch” pundit attempted to explain how Republicans — with Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) leading the charge — are laboring to defend the president just moments after co-host Mika Brzezinski read off widespread criticisms of the president and his deal from GOP lawmakers and conservative media outlets.Asked what he is hearing, Drucker reported, “We've talked about this before, but, you know, there were so many Republicans in Congress and and center-right thinkers who have believed that after nearly 50 years, the action President Trump took going to war against Iran with israel was a courageous decision, was the right decision, and the United States needed to see it through.”“And they were very gratified by the president's policy here,” he added, “And now they're going through the, you know, the 35 stages of grief, which is ‘If this is true, it's going to be really bad. Well, I don't know if it's true because I haven't seen the text. I'm not going to react until I've seen the text. All right. Well, I've seen the text, and now that I've, you know, now that I've looked at the text, maybe it's really not so bad because look, he did say he'll bomb them if they don't follow through.’”“There are others who are just very honest about their disappointment, about their disappointment with both President Trump and the deal,” he added. “But it's a real mixed bag politically. I will just say the president boxed himself in here, because this is what happens when you don't make a public case for major military action. The president never asked for the support of the American people, for the support of Congress, for support from our allies. And so when things inevitably bog down, because we were only willing to do so much militarily for understandable political reasons, the president didn't have any allies and friends with skin in the game who were there to back up the policy and see it through. And that's part of why he ended up looking for a get out of jail free card here." - YouTubeyoutu.be

Reacting to remarks Donald Trump made at a press conference in France on Wednesday that he could easily start bombing Iran again just before signing a peace deal with the war-torn country, left MS NOW’s Mika Brzezinski baffled and appalled.MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” began with a clip of the president standing between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, with Trump remarking, “It's a memorandum of understanding. If it doesn't get done in 60 days, that's all right. We go back to bombing. You know, I don't want to do that because it's so good, but we might have to because we're never going to let them have a nuclear weapon. But they've agreed not to and you'll see that very clearly in the agreement.”That led the “Morning Joe” co-host to ask incredulously, “What, what, what? It's like, I'm going to give you a gift and I'll bomb you if you don't take the gift that I'm giving you?”“President Trump yesterday repeatedly threatening to bomb Iran if the country violated the memorandum of understanding, which has finally been released,” she elaborated. “The president is defending the deal amid widespread criticism here at home, with one Republican senator calling it ‘the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.’”“The agreement appears to give Iran everything it wants in exchange for opening up the Strait of Hormuz, which was wide open before Trump started the war in late February,” she continued. “While Trump tries to spin the terms of a big win, here are the key items: Iran gets its sanctions lifted, gets access to hundreds of billions of dollars in reconstruction funds, and can now sell its oil across the world. Tehran's nuclear program also stays at its status quo while negotiations continue for the next 60 days.”Addressing co-host Joe Scarborough, she blurted, “Joe, I am aghast.” "Aghast, aghast, aghast,” Scarborough offered before teasing her with, “This is the first time you're going to be upset at what's been going on over the past decade.”“A couple of things really that bear repeating for the uninitiated, and certainly for some people that are listening to what Donald Trump is saying right now, that, ‘Oh, they've agreed not to have a nuclear weapon,’” he continued. “This is the same position they have had for 50 years as the Wall Street Journal editorial page and everybody else will tell you it is the same exact position that they've had for 50 years. Secondly, why would Iran not take this deal, this memorandum of understanding is as [MS NOW’s] David Rohde is reporting, and we'll talk to him about it in a second, everybody else is reporting, this is a dream. They [Iran] can't believe they got what they got from Donald Trump.” - YouTube youtu.be