Richard Donelan

@Bill43111 @atrupar The bellboy pillbox hat hairdo rising from his head like a flan and his too long beard emphasize the length of his already large head.

If she ever turned into a werewolf, it would be one of those jolly breezy werewolves whom it is a pleasure to know.

I can't get over the fact that Dune is about an oppressed people fighting for their homeland, waging a jihad to bring down a hegemonic empire by threatening to cut off the flow of their most precious commodity after the empire had assassinated their religious leader's father.

@TheMonologist Best pirate movie ever made.

ERROL FLYNN and BASIL RATHBONE in fine swashbuckling form in this mid-30’s box office hit, directed by the great Michael (Casablanca) Curtiz. CAPTAIN BLOOD (1935) #OliviadeHavilland

Good morning from Nuuk, Greenland 🇬🇱 March 19, 2026 (08:58am) Temp: -13°C.

RARE GOOD NEWS in 2026: Monarch butterfly numbers have surged in Mexico by 64% this year, with the area they cover in Mexican forests growing significantly!

@RonFilipkowski A disaster foreseeable by everyone but Trump.

Despite Hegseth’s bravado this morning, the last 24 hours are clearly the worst for Trump’s folly, with massive refineries hit in multiple countries. The impact on the US and global economy is going to be brutal and affect every American. This war is a disaster.

@IhabHassane @peter_sarris Disappearing Christians | William Dalrymple | The New York Review of Books share.google/e7vb2leo6sJ0md…

The Jared Kushner problem is being greatly underestimated.

🚨 BREAKING: Israeli media: A missile has struck a chemical weapons storage facility in Haifa, and the incident is under censorship.

🚨 Joe Kent says Ali Larijani was negotiating peace and was killed. Qatar’s gas could have stabilized energy markets — it was hit too. He says Tel Aviv doesn’t want peace, it wants permanent war, and America is the weapon.

NOBODY KNOWS HOW FUCKED THE SITUATION IN THE PERSIAN GULF ACTUALLY IS. 3,200 ships are TRAPPED in the Persian Gulf right now. Crews are running out of drinking water. One ship called the local port authority and BEGGED for permission to dock — just to get water. They were DENIED. 💀 Let that sink in. These aren't military ships. These are commercial vessels — carrying oil, grain, electronics — with civilian crews who are now stranded with NO supplies and NO way out. – 3,200 ships STUCK ⚠️ – Crews running out of WATER 💀 – Port authorities REFUSING to let them dock ⚠️ – Multiple ships reporting the SAME situation 💀 ⚠️ For context — the Suez Canal crisis in 2021 blocked 400 ships. This is EIGHT TIMES worse. And nobody is talking about it. They're showing you missile interceptions and oil price charts. They're NOT showing you thousands of crew members slowly running out of drinking water in the middle of a war zone. If these ships start getting abandoned, the environmental disaster alone would be catastrophic. Thousands of tons of fuel, cargo, chemicals — just sitting there. This is not a shipping disruption. This is a HUMANITARIAN CRISIS unfolding in real time. Prepare accordingly. 🚨🚨🚨 X is hiding this. Follow + RT before it disappears. 🔥

@svdate @RudeFulk “And the kayfabe’s gold glare Slammin’ slams everywhere. . .

This could be the single dumbest thing our country has ever done.

Gas prices are up. Families are hurting. Michele Tafoya's solution: skip your Starbucks. Respectfully, she's Marie Antoinette with a travel mug.

@StephenGrove19 @AntigoneJournal Remarkably so. Been a “Declinophile” since high school. I would never have imagined that a man known for going crazy in public could provide such an astute and charming appreciation of Gibbon’s masterwork.

@AntigoneJournal Marvellously vivid, elegant and insightful writing

Timely reminder of when this guy reviewed that guy... Iggy Pop on Gibbon's Decline and Fall (Classics Ireland, 1995): Caesar Lives by Iggy Pop In 1982, horrified by the meanness, tedium and depravity of my existence as I toured the American South playing rock and roll music and going crazy in public, I purchased an abridged copy of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Dero Saunders, Penguin). The grandeur of the subject appealed to me, as did the cameo illustration of Edward Gibbon, the author, on the front cover. He looked like a heavy dude. Being in a political business, I had long made a habit of reading biographies of wilful characters — Hitler, Churchill, MacArthur, Brando — with large profiles, and I also enjoyed books on war and political intrigue, as I could relate the action to my own situation in the music business, which is not about music at all, but is a kind of religion-rental. I would read with pleasure around 4 am, with my drugs and whisky in cheap motels, savouring the clash of beliefs, personalities and values, played out on antiquity’s stage by crowds of the vulgar, led by huge archetypal characters. And that was the end of that. Or so I thought. Eleven years later I stood in a dilapidated but elegant room in a rotting mansion in New Orleans, and listened as a piece of music strange to my ears pulled me back to ancient Rome and called forth those ghosts to merge in hilarious, bilious pretence with the Schwartzkopfs, Schwartzeneggers and Sheratons of modern American money and muscle myth. Out of me poured information I had no idea I ever knew, let alone retained, in an extemporaneous soliloquy I called ‘Caesar’. When I listened back, it made me laugh my ass off because it was so true. America is Rome. Of course, why shouldn’t it be? All of Western life and institutions today are traceable to the Romans and their world. We are all Roman children for better or worse. The best part of this experience came after the fact — my wife gave me a beautiful edition in three volumes of the magnificent original unabridged Decline and Fall, and since then the pleasure and profit have been all mine as I enjoy the wonderful language, organization and scope of this masterwork. Here are just some of the ways I benefit: I feel a great comfort and relief knowing that there were others who lived and died and thought and fought so long ago; I feel less tyrannized by the present day. I learn much about the way our society really works, because the system-origins — military, religious, political, colonial, agricultural, financial — are all there to be scrutinized in their infancy. I have gained perspective. The language in which the book is written is rich and complete, as the language of today is not. I find out how little I know. I am inspired by the will and erudition which enabled Gibbon to complete a work of twenty-odd years. The guy stuck with things. I urge anyone who wants life on earth to really come alive for them to enjoy the beautiful ancestral ancient world.

@StoliarSteve 😎

Tasty side dish for French cannibals: Edith Pilaf.

@lizlegs1 @jeremyscahill Well said.

@jeremyscahill Trump is a snake and people doing any sort of business with him are 100% fools. He uses others loyalty, but has none. It's all a game to garner more money and power. At this stage we have no allies but Israel and with allies like them, who needs enemies.

Wall Street Journal: "America’s Arab allies are now fuming that they don’t seem to have any influence with the Trump administration despite heavy investments of time and money."

@jeremyscahill @Pumpkanpie Did they miss the relish with which he declaimed “The Snake”?

Trump’s DOJ just subpoenaed James Comey. 130+ subpoenas issued. Judge Aileen Cannon overseeing the grand jury. Everyone who ever investigated Trump is now being investigated by Trump. Comey. Brennan. Strzok. Page. McCabe. Jack Smith. McCabe’s lawyer called it “a vendetta in search of a crime.” The same DOJ sealing the Epstein files. The same DOJ that subpoenaed the Fed Chair with zero evidence. The same Pam Bondi appearing before House Oversight on April 14th. 130 subpoenas for his enemies. Zero documents released on Epstein. Never stop connecting the dots.

@RockNRoLL_85 Yes.

Is “Do It Again” by Steely Dan a better song than “Midnight Rider” by the Allman Brothers?

@atrupar “We put our two best folks on it.” Right - the president’s son-in-law (who simultaneously is working on private deals in the Middle East to enrich himself) and a corrupt, Putin-owned money-laundering real estate chump. Believe me America has many, many others better for the job.