Every gift discarded, every device rejected

Such is the final symbolic act of the American state visit to Beijing (13-15 May 2026). Nothing gifted by the Chinese diplomatic counterparts was allowed on board Air Force One. The measure of mistrust just cannot be higher. The ostentatiousness of the act boggles the mind. The symbolic failure of the gesture cannot be overestimated.

Gifts may be poisonous. No doubt about that. Think about the cell phones that Palestinian leaders purchased, the cell phones that were tampered with by the Israeli secret services, the cell phones that were detonated, killing or maiming the users of those cell phones.

Think about the notorious infected blankets that the European conquerors of North America presented to the Indians. The purpose was to do away with the indigenous peoples in a surreptitious and efficient way. Or, for that matter, think about the alcohol generously sold to the same Indians for the purpose of weakening their health and paralysing their will.

Why, think about China itself, about the opium that was forcibly sold to the Chinese in the 19th century. Two protracted wars were waged over the right of the Europeans to bless the indigenous people with this good!

Think about the Trojan Horse. Legend or no legend, the principle was known and well established in antiquity. Gifts may be dangerous, and oftentimes they are.

Hence an interesting development of the meaning of the German word Gift, whose initial sense overlapped with that of the English word gift, but with time came to denote… poison!

Think about drug dealers who gift or give freely the first few doses of a drug to hook the person on the substance, to make him addictive.

Also the English language has an expression showcasing the troublesomeness of receiving gifts. The expression is to receive a white elephant, i.e. to get a gift that costs a lot to maintain but provides no usefulness (white elephants were considered sacred, hence one could not use them for any kind of work, but one, obviously, needed to feed them).

So, who knows, the Chinese may have concealed spying malware or whatever malicious things in their gifts, down to biological material. The American delegation acted verbatim on the old maxim: Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes, which in our context would be: Timeo Sinae et dona ferentes, meaning: I fear the Chinese, even those bearing gifts (The Aeneid, Book II).

How should that act on the part of the American delegation be construed? A message of mistrust of the Chinese? Real, palpable fear of being threatened by Chinese technology? How was that gesture perceived by the managers of the Middle Kingdom?

Almost a century back the Chinese were American allies in Washington’s fight against Japan. After the war came a split: Americans backed Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of China’s nationalists, against Mao Zedong, the leader of China’s communists. Chiang Kai-shek lost to the communists and found refuge on the island of Taiwan. Americans recognized Taiwan as ‘China’ and tried to ignore mainland China in the hope of reversing the historical process. Nothing came out of it. Communist China, poor and backward as it was, showed no signs of disintegration, so much so as it was backed by the Soviet Union. But then the fate smiled at Americans: Nikita Khrushchev, the USSR’s leader, fell out with Mao Zedong, which later even culminated in border skirmishes. That was something that Americans had been waiting for. Washington reversed its political course and did its best to win Beijing over to its side against Moscow. Americans withdrew recognition for Taiwan and recognized mainland China as… China proper. Much later came the years of economic cooperation in that American businesses were for a large part outsourced to China. The fall of the Soviet Union – history’s another gift for the United States – seemed to seal the fate of the globe: the United States emerged as the only dominant power, Russia – the Soviet Union’s political heir – was assigned the role of the provider of resources, while the Middle Kingdom was supposed to happily accept the role of the world’s manufacturer.

Things may have stayed that way till this day but for America’s greed and arrogance. Gradual military encirclement of Russia in terms of expanding NATO and engineering unrest in the post-Soviet area (Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan) along with a simultaneous political assault against China as America’s most dangerous political and economic rival pushed Moscow and Beijing in their mutual embraces. Khrushchev’s political mistake has been corrected: Moscow and Beijing have begun to cooperate against the West, against the United States, though openly no such declaration has been issued.

The political sine wave for the United States could be traced something like this: from friendly China (Chiang Kai-shek) to unfriendly China (Mao Zedong), to friendly China again (Prime Minister Zhou Enlai), and again to a rather unfriendly China (Xi Jinping). The discarded gifts and the rejected devices merely illustrate the current state of affairs.

May 2026 – a look at some countries

USA

Trump’s greatest achievement is that he kills or kidnaps presidents. If he merely killed or kidnapped presidents, that would somehow be fair in the world of gangsters. But the fact that he kills primary school girls as collateral damage, causes inflation, lowers people’s standard of living across the globe through the energy crisis, and stubbornly sticks to his ideas is, to put it mildly, a sign of a penchant for dictatorship and the mindset that the best course of action is to turn everything upside down, without a second thought.

And so a void is emerging in the USA, because if the Democrats come to power again, America will once more be destroyed socially and spiritually, ethnic replacement will continue, and fentanyl will be made ever more popular. The Dems (read: the demons) will resume their gender and climate change nonsense, will incite hostility towards Russia, and so on and so forth. The void is emerging because people have no sensible candidate to vote for. I keep asking myself: how is it possible that such a great nation can produce something entirely new? OK, the big tech firms, AI and their achievements have been breathtaking, but Europeans, Asians, South Americans and, above all, North Americans are waiting for breathtaking new leadership in Washington.

UAE

The United Arab Emirates is leaving OPEC because:

their so-called friends, such as Saudi Arabia, did not come to their aid during the Iranian attacks;
they have the largest oil production capacities in the Persian Gulf and want to exploit them as quickly as possible before they run out of oil. They want to sell it now at the highest possible price, and today’s price levels of over $100 a barrel represent an opportunity for them to hoard money in a stagnant global economy.
they follow Trump’s lead: away from multilateralism. Participation in international alliances and cooperation is pointless. This may well be the start of a potential avalanche of withdrawals: the US from NATO, Eastern European countries from the EU, and so on.

Hungary

Peter Magyar’s victory delighted the Brussels elite, but they don’t understand people, and Magyar will disappoint them, because:

Magyar is not a pro-Ukrainian leader. Like Orbán, he opposes direct military support and the dispatch of weapons from Hungary. Furthermore, he is strongly opposed to a fast-track route for Ukraine’s accession to the European Union.
Likewise, the new Prime Minister supports the strict protection of Hungary’s borders and firmly rejects any mechanism for the compulsory resettlement of migrants within the EU.
The same applies to social policy, where pensions are not being cut in 2013 and 2014. Hungary’s budget deficit is therefore growing ever larger.
Although Magyar has expressed his desire to gradually move away from Russian oil, he is continuing his predecessor’s policy on nuclear energy. The new government has stated that it will not halt the controversial expansion of the Paks nuclear power plant, which is being carried out in close cooperation with the Russian state-owned giant Rosatom. The key to the issue of energy resources from Russia seems to lie in these words from Magyar: “Russia will be here, and Hungary will be here. We will try to diversify, but that does not mean we want to part ways.” Everything suggests that the new Hungarian Prime Minister is, in fact, a ‘light version’ of Viktor Orbán, which may seem surprising at first glance, but when a country is so heavily dependent on Russian energy supplies, the room for manoeuvre is truly limited.

Israel

The country under Zionist rule is waging a merciless war against other religions. The Zionists want to reach the Euphrates and, who knows, perhaps establish a thousand-year empire. Their targets are not only Islamists, whether Sunni or Shia, but also Christians. The demoralisation of Israeli soldiers has reached such a point that they are destroying and burning down entire villages. Recently, everyone was shocked by a photo of an Israeli soldier in southern Lebanon destroying a statue of Christ with a heavy hammer.

Source: X

The hatred and the scale of Israel’s attacks on Iran mean that Tel Aviv is already running short of air defence missiles. It seems that the Israelis are overplaying their hand and that this could end badly for them.

Thou shalt not say no to Donald Trump!

To say no to President Trump would be saying no to God – these are the words that Christian minister Paula White-Cain – the White House Senior Advisor and head of the White House Faith Office said in 2025. These words stirred much uproar among Christians of many denominations. They rightly stated that no man can be adored like God, no man can be looked up to like he is a deity.

The White House’s main resident – Donald Trump – a psychological reincarnation of Benito Mussolini – received a powerful boost for his ego from this female minister. Paula White-Cain is said to have been contacted by Donald Trump many years ago, before his first presidential term. He is supposed to have been struck by the profundity of her preaching. No wonder: like draws like. Paula White-Cain is every inch as narcissistic as the American president is. She was heard (and recorded) on an occasion to say: “Wherever I go, God rules. When I walk on White House grounds, God walks on White House grounds. I have every right and authority to declare the White House holy ground, because I was standing there and where I stand is holy.” Her self-esteem is just staggering!

Paula White-Cain, born in 1966, a Christian minister, has been married three times (to Dean Knight, a musician, with whom she has a son; to Randy White, a preacher; and Jonathan Cain, a keyboardist and songwriter). She herself is from a broken family, with her father being a suicide. Despite those life hardships she managed to amass a fortune, complete with a real estate and a private jet. She generates money through her evangelism (including televangelism), book writing, and various business ventures.

Why, Donald Trump has also tried his hand at various enterprises and – what a coincidence! – he also has had three spouses (Ivana Trump, the mother of his three first children; Marla Maples, mother of one of his daughters; and Melania Trump, mother of his youngest son).

Paula White-Cain’s evangelism attracts thousands of followers. She makes believe she “speaks in tongues” and she delivers people from bad spirits causing the people to fall on the ground during the process and behave in uncontrolled ways. She acts self-assured and – you guessed it right – she does all those things for the good of the poor, including the poor in – yes! yes! – Africa. (You will have noticed, dear reader, that all the philanthropists of the world are somehow concerned with the Dark Continent, but never mind.)

Isn’t Paula White-Cain just the right person to accompany somebody like President Donald Trump? They both look for narcissistic supply of admiration from the masses of people, they both know how to ingratiate themselves with the common man, and they both have been extremely successful in enriching themselves and gaining social status.

One can wonder which is worse: a Leonid Brezhnev taking cues from Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx’s political-cum-philosophical tenets or Donald Trump being influenced by Paula White-Cain’s ministry and hr interpretation of the Holy Scripture. One can also legitimately wonder whether Leonid Brezhnev really cared about Marxism-Leninism, and, similarly, whether President Donald Trump really cares about religion, any religion. Rather, both leaders use(d) the ideology or religion for their self-aggrandizement. When Ivanka, Donald Trump’s daughter (from his first marriage) married Jared Kushner, she converted to Judaism, her husband’s religion, which shows that she was not raised by a genuinely Christian father.

President Donald Trump needs a bunch of ministers in the White House precisely for the purpose of raising his status in the eyes of still believing American Christians. The words said by Paula White-Cain that you cannot say no to Donald Trump because that would be like saying no to God himself turn the American president into a Caesar-like figure. We know that Roman emperors enjoyed the status of being divine. The United States is an echo of the Roman Empire: we have the senate and the senators, we have the Capital, we have the eagle as the national emblem (all the trappings derived from ancient Rome) and Latin inscriptions like the familiar e pluribus unum (out of many – one) seen on coins and paper bills.

Roman emperors were not deified within a day. It was a process. Are we witnessing something like that in the case of present-day America?

Christians, as said above, were enraged by what Paula White-Cain said about President Donald Trump, but some of them – and we think about Christian Zionists – had done the same long before they heard those words from the female minister. It is the Christian Zionists who notoriously deify the nation of Israel. They are used to saying that ‘who touches Israel touches God’, which is a loose quotation of Zechariah 2:8, which says: ‘For he who touches you touches the apple of His eye.’ It is then the Christian Zionists who have long ago equated one ethnicity with God himself. Why should they be bothered so much when the deification is extended to Donald Trump? After all the incumbent American president is Israel’s best friend, waging wars at the behest of Tel Aviv. If Donald Trump is doing his best to Make Israel Great Again, why deification should be withdrawn from him? Doesn’t he deserve it?

But jokes apart. Deification of a nation or an individual is a path into the abyss. History knows of such deifications and the results they entailed. Woe to the world in which a nation or a man is equated with God.

Would you like to be the American vice president?

The talks in Islamabad, Pakistan, have come to a grinding halt. 21 hours bore no fruit. Americans, despite having lost the war to Iran, raised their demands and obviously sought no settlement. It is highly likely they are trying to regroup and strike again: they are playing for time. They have done so twice before so we may rest assured they will do it again. They will strike while the negotiations are in full swing if they are resumed, and most likely they will be resumed.

Yet, it is not the negotiations that we’d like to focus aur attention on. It is the person of the American vice-president JD Vance. He was sent by President Donald Trump to Islamabad to carry out the talks. One might think JD Vance is the second most powerful man on planet earth. Sadly, far from it. JD Vance had absolutely no empowerment to conduct the negotiations. He called Donald Trump eleven times during his stay in Islamabad – a sure sign he had absolutely no leeway, or – worse – Donald Trump did not trust him enough.

Second, JD Vance was accompanied by Jared Kushner (Trump’s son-in-law) and Steve Witkoff (both of Jewish extraction), who were certainly sent to guide the vice president and see to it that he does not depart from the direction that is satisfying for Israel.

Third, JD Vance, while still on board the plane bound for Washington on his way back from Pakistan called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ‘reported’ (that’s precisely the word that Benjamin Netanyahu used giving account of the call to the journalists) about the talks. Let this sink in: the American vice-president reported over the telephone to a foreign head of state even before he did so in person to his superior, the president of the United States.

The position of the American second-in-command is unenviable! For all the splendour and what not, JD Vance is compelled to play a role he certainly – if he is a man of ambition – does not enjoy playing. Unless, of course, JD Vance is not a man of ambition, unless he only cares for the trappings of power. Who knows?

Thucydides’ Trap

In recent decades, the US strategy towards China has been based on economic opening towards the Middle Kingdom, which was particularly evident in the outsourcing of American manufacturing there. This was made possible by the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, who facilitated and advocated this opening. The subsequent leaders of the People’s Republic of China (Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao) zealously fulfilled Deng’s legacy, although the current leader, Xi Jinping, has violated one of his predecessor’s most important teachings: the famous 24 character-mantra. Deng’s testament read as follows: Observe coolly and calmly, secure your positions. Gain trust, conceal your capabilities, bide your time without stepping out of line, do not raise your head if you wish to retain your leadership.

Xi broke ranks: he flooded the West with cheap goods of ever-improving quality, sold US Treasury bonds, hoarded gold, built artificial islands for his bases in foreign waters in the South China Sea, expanded his fleet, developed hypersonic missiles, landed on the moon, helped the Serbs, Iranians, Russians, won over half of Africa, and built the world’s longest bridges, dams and cities. A colossal emperor!

Meanwhile, the US empire survived only thanks to innovation and increased productivity. That is not enough. The Americans know this and, in response to China’s abandonment of Deng’s policies, have sent Emperor Trump to the front line. The guns are now thundering against Beijing’s allies; tariffs and sanctions are being imposed. But… if this continues, it could well end in a kinetic, direct conflict between the US and China.

Many political scientists see parallels here with the so-called Thucydides Trap. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides wrote a famous work, The History of the Peloponnesian War, which describes the conflict between the two greatest city-states. The aforementioned “trap” suggests that ancient Sparta, seeing its position in Hellas under threat, sought an escalation with Athens, which claimed the role of hegemon. At that time, the Greek world was bipolar, which threatened to escalate. This occurred in 431 BC. According to Thucydides, this war was inevitable precisely because one of the city-states wanted to retain the status of hegemon and the other wanted to attain that status. However, the war ended with both the Spartans and the Athenians losing their influence.

The historian Graham T. Allison has expanded on the concept of Thucydides’ Trap and, in his study, described 16 examples of it, 12 of which ended in war, e.g.:

[1] Late 17th to mid-18th century – Kingdom of France vs. Kingdom of Great Britain – war

[2] Mid-19th century – France vs. German Empire – war

[3] Mid-20th century – United States vs. Empire of Japan – war

Allison’s concept has been criticised by many political scientists, such as Hal Brands and Michael Beckley. They argued that in many of the cases identified by Allison as the Thucydides Trap, it was not the impending overtaking of an old hegemonic power that triggered the war, but rather the rising power struck first when its rapid rise turned into stagnation.

At present, however, we are seeing that the Chinese economy may be stagnating in the face of the new oil crisis and tariffs.

Cat turned mouse

Three weeks into the war and it has emerged that the predatory cat – the United States (and Israel) – has turned into the mouse, while the mouse – Iran – has become the cat. What a turn of events! The United States has stepped into a quagmire and now has difficulties extricating itself from it. Is this the beginning of the end of the global superpower?

It was in 1979 that the Soviet Union deployed its troops to Afghanistan. The Western world condemned the action. The Soviets stayed in Afghanistan for a decade and then withdrew. They withdrew on the eve of the collapse of the first state of the workers and the peasants.

The same seems to be happening to the United States. Its troops have not put their boots on the ground as yet, but its air force and its missiles are operating against Iran, while Iran is striking back, and striking back successfully. Targets are hit not only in Israel but also in all the Persian Gulf countries that have American military bases. The leaders of those countries must have nurtured hopes of security once they had invited American soldiers on their soil, now they must regret it. It is also a signal to other countries having American bases: a warning to Poland, Romania, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Italy. Safe are they not.

In an attempt to save face, the American president has recently talked about negotiations with the Iranian leadership. The problem is that Iran denies ever taking part in any negotiations. President Donald Trump has issued a forty-eight-hour ultimatum, threatening that if the Strait of Hormuz was not made accessible to vessels from around the world, American troops would destroy Iranian power plants. The forty-eight hours did not elapse and the American president extended the period by a further five days. He is losing face. Worse, the American president is divorced from reality. And still worse, the American president has unleashed a war on purely ideological or religious grounds of ‘destroying the enemies of Israel, God’s chosen people.’ Wasn’t it the same in the case of the Soviet Union, whose military intervention in Afghanistan was dictated by the ideological urge to come to the aid of Afghan communists? Afghanistan did not threaten the Soviet Union at that time, nor is Iran a threat to the United States nowadays.

Tehran has become self-confident and daring. It is not waiting for the Americans and the Israelis to propose a ceasefire. Rather, Tehran has laid down conditions, and these are conditions of a victor:

[1] the US must withdraw from the region its military units,

[2] the US must unilaterally put an end to the hostilities,

[3] the US must pay Iran compensation for all the material damage and loss of human life.

One might say, it is Tehran that has issued an ultimatum rather than the United States.

It is not merely that Iran seems to be gaining the upper hand: almost the whole world is on Iran’s side. Why? Because the whole world saw that the United States and Israel attacked Iran unprovoked, during the negotiations; because the whole world perceives the hostilities as a war of aggression on the part of the United States and Israel; because the whole world has had enough of American bullying, of American policing.

Iranians have surprised the world with the missiles that they have at their disposal. Some of them develop speeds of more than 10 Mach. Some of them have a reach of 4000 km (Iranians attempted to hit the American base on Diego Garcia Island on the Indian Ocean). Iran has decentralized its command centre; Iran has learnt to strike back asymmetrically. Iran is militarily supported by Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and the Houthis in Yemen. Iran is also backed up by Russia and China, both of which supply it with satellite data.

What if? What if the United States will be compelled to admit its defeat? Will it be another Vietnam or worse for America? The image of a superpower will have vanished in thin air. The Gulf states might as well demand that Washington withdraw its troops from their territory. Why should they have them on their soil? To further expose themselves to attacks? Iran – in league with China – might begin the sale of its oil and gas in return for the Chinese currency. That might lead to the end of the petrodollar. And if the dollar stops being in demand worldwide, the United States will spiral into a position of a country that will have difficulties solving its financial problems. Without the dollar as the international currency all American economic might will shrink. Till now, for decades nations would have bought dollars – i.e. sold goods and services – to stock them and to have currency for purchasing oil. Once this scheme comes to an end, America will cease to be flooded by foreign goods and services: America will be compelled to manufacture things on its own. Due to the outsourcing, there are not so many factories, engineers and skilled workers in the world’s most admired democracy. Rebuilding will take time…

The war against Iran was to be a walkover. The United States has already handled, in one way or another, Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Venezuela. Americans thought that Iran was to be yet another intervention of the same small calibre. How wrong they were!

When you drink alcohol, you feel good after the first couple of drams. Then slowly but surely the substance begins to impede your speech and motor activity. Eventually one of the drams becomes one too many. They say proverbially: one over the eighth. Was the attack on Iran – after Venezuela, Libya, Syria – one over the eighth?

Extraterrestrials – Donald Trump’s only hope

Yes, history has witnessed cases that are strikingly similar to the ongoing US-Iranian war. Of the many examples the most telling and revealing is the relatively recent military conflict between Italy and Greece that took place from 28 October 1940 to 23 April 1941 and has come down in history as either the Greco-Italian War or Italo-Greek War. Benito Mussolini, Italy’s ruler, wished to vie for the leadership in the axis (whose core was made up of Italy, Germany, and Japan) with Adolf Hitler. Benito Mussolini – a highly narcissistic individual – wished to assert himself, wished to show off that he, too, can pull off a blitzkrieg victory. By the end of October 1940, the German armies had walked over Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. Benito Mussolini could only brag about conquering the economically backward Ethiopia. To be precise, he could not brag about conquering this country because Ethiopians resisted him bitterly, the Italian troops advanced but slowly, and Italy’s ruler needed to eventually resort the chemical weapons. So, to bolster his ego, Benito Mussolini decided to invade Greece. The task seemed all the easier, because Mussolini had a bridgehead across the Adriatic in Albania, a bridgehead neighbouring Greece, which he had conquered within five days in April of 1939. Hang on, you might say! So, Mussolini had his own blitzkrieg!

Not exactly. Albania was small and weak and backward. Its conquest was easy. Albania to Italy was not even like Denmark or Norway to Germany. Greece, however, appeared to be the right morsel. Neither too large, nor too small: just the right size for an impressive conquest. Greece’s area amounted to 110 thousand sq km as compared to Italy’s 300 thousand sq km, whereas Greece’s population stood at 7 million as opposed to 44 million of Italy’s.

The pretext for war? It was not hard to create one. Well, Italy, as Germany’s ally, had already been at war with the United Kingdom, so Rome needed only to accuse Athens of being on friendly terms with London and consequently of posing a threat to Italy’s security. Never mind that Greece was much smaller than Italy; never mind that Greece and Italy were separated by the Adriatic Sea; never mind that Greece’s military and economic potential was no match to that of Italy’s. Greece posed a threat to Italy. Period. Therefore, Greece needed to be conquered.

So, on October 28, 1940, Italian armies launched an offensive from Albania into northern Greece. Benito Mussolini was in for a big, big surprise. It did not take much time for the Greek troops to take the initiative and push the Italian divisions back across the border and into Albania! Small Greece retaliated and retaliated successfully! Europe was stunned, the British papers printed huge titles and elaborate articles about brave Greeks and their tenacious resistance. The war, which was planned for weeks at the most, protracted for half a year, and had Germany not intervened aiding its Italian ally, the war would have protracted for a couple of months more. The Italian soldiers and officers did not want to fight, as they righteously recognized that war as a war of aggression.

Eighty-six years fast forward and we are seeing the incarnation of Benito Mussolini in the person of American President Donald Trump, who is as narcissistic as the Italian ruler, strikes similar poses and presents to the world similar facial expressions. Donald Trump had walked over Venezuela, just like Benito Mussolini had walked over Albania, and decided to move in for the kill against Iran. Just like Benito Mussolini, Donald Trump had hoped for a quick, impressive campaign, for a blitzkrieg, and just like Benito Mussolini he was in for a big, big surprise. Iran, just like Greece eighty-six years earlier, has struck back and has struck back successfully. Iran’s population of approximately 90 million is smaller than the 350 million of the American population, while Iran’s area of 1.650 sq km is a few times smaller than that of the United States, which amounts to 9.800 sq km and still, and despite that, Iran is fighting back.

Now, Mussolini had the big brother in the person of Adolf Hitler and a big ally in the form of the Third Reich. Germany eventually came to Italy’s assistance. True, it was predominantly Germany that could enjoy the spoils of war: Italians were only granted small parts of Greece as their occupation zone, but at least Italy was rescued. Who is going to salvage America from the trouble it has got itself into? There is no big brother, there is no ally powerful enough to do it. The United States’ allies are smaller and weaker, and even they have refused to provide military aid. Russia and China might influence Tehran to stop the hostilities, but why should they do it? Both Moscow and Beijing remember that Washington has been hostile to them for years. Moscow remembers America’s involvement in the Ukrainian war, while Beijing is aware of the fact that Washington views China as America’s archenemy. Both Moscow and Beijing would certainly rather derive benefits from the current political circumstances. Besides, Iran is an economic partner of both Russia and China. Iran has been providing Russia with drones in the latter’s conflict with Ukraine. Now Russia feels obliged to show gratitude to Tehran and to give Washington the taste of its own medicine: now it is Russia that provides Iran with satellite intelligence and munitions of war, just as the United States has been doing it for years in reference to Ukraine.

That Greece in 1940 posed a threat to Italy was at least more convincing than that Iran poses a threat to the United States, as President Donald Trump has said. The straight-line distance between Italy and Greece is some 80 km, across the Adriatic, whereas the straight-line distance between the United States and Iran is… 10.000 km, across continents and oceans. The distance separating America from Iran is 125 times larger than that separating Italy from Greece. In 1940, theoretically Greek aircraft could reach Italian soil and bomb it; neither Iranian aircraft nor Iranian missiles can reach the United States’ territory.

There is one significant difference between narcissistic Donald Trump and narcissistic Benito Mussolini, and a similar significant difference between the ruling class of the United States and that of Italy eighty-six years ago. Mussolini and his clique at least acted on their own: there was no third country, political entity or foreign lobby to pressurize them into attacking Greece. It is much different in the case of the United States: American presidents and the American ruling class do the biddings of the Israeli lobby, which through such organizations as AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) or through the so-called Christian Zionists (American Christians mentally hijacked to follow Israel’s political agenda) are capable of drawing the United States into wars waged in the interests of Tel Aviv rather than Washington.

Let us face the same question again: Mussolini, once he had got himself in deep trouble, was saved by his big German brother. President Donald Trump has no big brother because the United States is the biggest brother on Planet Earth. The smaller brothers are either unwilling to extend a helping hand (Western Europe) or are America’s – how shall we put it? – opponents (Russia, China), or prefer to sit on the sidelines (India). Who for goodness’ sake will bail out poor Donald Trump? Extraterrestrials?