The plan to protect America by shooting down missiles mid-air
IN THE 1980S scientists working on Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative proposed what seemed like a madcap scheme to defend America. Thousands of interceptor satellites would orbit Earth and attack enemy missiles as they took off. The idea fizzled out. It has been resuscitated by Donald Trump, who on May 20th said that his Golden Dome missile-defence shield would cost $175bn in total, take two to three years to complete and offer 'close to 100%' protection.
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Sky News
13 minutes ago
- Sky News
Israel-Iran live: 'Bullseye!!!' - Trump claims Iran strikes caused 'monumental damage'; says he's open to 'regime change'
Donald Trump has asked why there would not be a "regime change" in Iran following US strikes, calling to "make Iran great again". Meanwhile, Iran's UN envoy says the current situation provides a "historic test" for the body. Watch and follow the latest below.
The National
29 minutes ago
- The National
SNP must woo voters to turn our indy hopes into reality
As we approach next year's election, polls suggest the notion has never been more popular – and yet the formation of a Unionist administration at Holyrood is more on the cards than at any time since 2007. We need serious action to prevent this outcome. And we don't have long. On Saturday, we made a start. The SNP's National Council meeting in Perth rightly was not open to the press or public. It provided a safe space for party activists to have a candid debate with its leadership, away from our opponents and detractors. READ MORE: US enters war with Iran after Donald Trump orders bombing of key nuclear sites I for one feel heartened at the tenor and content of the discussion. We haven't yet got the answers, but at least we are now asking the right questions. Over the months ahead, party members need to devise and unite behind a strategy to win a majority at next May's Scottish Parliament election. First things first. Political independence for our country will be central to the party's message. How could it be anything other than that? There is no point to the SNP if the party does not represent the ambition of self-government, now shared by a majority of our citizens. Frustration and fatigue have eaten away at our capacity in this movement. It has made us question the motivation and integrity of comrades. Repeated comments on social media – and indeed in the columns of this paper – suggest that the SNP has deprioritised independence. The party's leader is accused of shying away from the arguments. But no-one present in Perth on Saturday could have left with that impression. I saw a party leader there who not only demonstrated commitment to the political objective of an independent Scotland but who also offered a serious strategic assessment of how to achieve it. The internal chaos that consumed the party a year ago has dissipated; the haemorrhaging of support stemmed; the party in government stabilised. These were not ends in themselves but necessary steps to regroup and redeploy in the fight for our country's future. Now we need to get back to business: being the political leadership of the movement for national autonomy. It's time for phase two. The SNP need to convince people who want Scotland to be independent to vote for a party that will fight for their right to make that choice. That means confronting the yawning gap between support for independence and for the party. Awareness is growing that this needs a sophisticated approach – different people don't vote SNP for different reasons. So, we need to talk to them differently. Being performative isn't good enough. Just repeating the word doesn't make it happen. Two major groups of people matter in this. Firstly, those who tell pollsters that they think Scotland should be independent, but intend to vote for parties that are against it. It is not that their support for independence is weak, more that they don't see how independence is relevant right now. They are worried about paying this month's bills, about getting a health appointment, about their kids going to war. So, we need to talk about the why of independence. We need to make it relevant. We need to show how making our own decisions means we can make better ones. Our manifesto must spell out how control of our own resources affects key aspects of people's lives. It is about getting power for a purpose. The second group are those who want Scotland to be independent but do not vote. Some have never voted; some have given up because they no longer see how voting will achieve what they want. They have been ground down by the intransigence and denial of the UK state. For this group we need to talk about the how of independence. We need to make next year's vote an assertion of the Claim of Right. People have been denied the opportunity to consider this country's constitutional future not by the SNP government but by serial UK administrations, whose actions have been underwritten by the UK Supreme Court. This is unacceptable. It must change. And next May we need to invite people to demand that change. If they do, then we need explain our plans for executing their mandate. No more pretending that it will just happen because we vote for it. It will require a massive campaign to mobilise the political will of the people behind their government. This will be the time for civic conventions, for mass public information, for cross-party alliances, for legal and diplomatic effort at home and abroad. To do any of this we need to win the election. That is why the SNP must ask all those who want Scotland to be independent to give, indeed ,or lend, the party their vote. We need to do that with humility and without illusion. And those independence supporters who are thinking of not voting need to think again. Not because one vote changes the world, but because it creates the conditions where their hopes are more likely to become reality.
The National
33 minutes ago
- The National
Kenny MacAskill: Donald Trump bombing Iran is illegal and insane
The greatest Scottish football player of my lifetime was more noted for his reticence rather than his eloquence, instead, letting his feet do the talking on the pitch and his tactics when in management. But it sure isn't funny when the president of the United States, a nuclear power with a formidable arsenal, states 'maybe I will, maybe I won't' when playing as a cat would with a mouse but about a strike on Iran. Now he's gone and done it let's be clear this is both illegal and insane. It's a clear breach of international law and threatens all of humanity with destruction. This wasn't an off-the-mike gaffe as with Ronald Reagan and his crass quip about commencing bombing Russia in FIVE minutes. READ MORE: John Swinney calls for 'diplomatic solution' after US bombs Iran Trump's was a premeditated statement seeking not just to put pressure on the Iranian regime but to demand its unconditional surrender. It was playing with the lives of tens of millions of people both in Iran and around the globe. Bullying and bombastic just doesn't cover it. Those in this country who have been craven or sycophantic to the US president are finding that they get nothing in return from him or his oligarchic mates. The office of a democratically elected president has to be respected even if he demeans it. But no more than that. State visits, let alone invites to his supposed ancestral lands are simply humiliating. No evidence has been found that Iran is planning to create a nuclear bomb. That doesn't come from me or even from international agencies but instead from US military intelligence. Of course, the Iranian regime isn't pleasant and many there, if not most, yearn for change. No doubt there's a few in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who would love to have a nuclear bomb but the fact of the matter is they don't, and the evidence shows they're not even planning it. The rhetoric from US hawks and neo-cons is false and about endless war and US domination. Forcing regime change is wrong and illegal. US American intervention may simply stiffen the regime as folk rally to the flag. Israel's attacks are not on the ayatollahs but on the people of Iran. They're the ones suffering and any regime change would likely be for the worse. There's plenty of evidence for that across the Middle East. Moreover, the art of diplomacy is also about dividing your enemies, but this is uniting Shia and Sunni. As with Iraq disaster beckons for both the Middle East and the world. Of course, the Israeli playbook was to try to tip the United States into the war it started but cannot win on its own, and to take the eyes of the world off the genocide it is perpetrating in Gaza. Time will tell if they succeed with the former but it's working on the latter. News coverage on the BBC has been about attacks on Israeli hospitals causing no deaths while civilians die by the hundreds in Iran and life as we know it ended in Gaza. Job half done for Netanyahu and his cronies. What's happening in Iran isn't just a worsening of the risk but part of the Israeli plan. It's why the independence movement must be unequivocal in its opposition to the American escalation and increase its calls for an ending of the genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing throughout the Occupied Territories. Starmer's Labour Government is the most supine and craven in living memory. Harold Wilson at last had the courage to reject Lyndon BJohnsons requests and probably demands for even a token force in Vietnam. Blair was joined at the hip with Bush in a shared enterprise for which the UK received nothing other than scorn in the US and contempt around the world. Now Starmer simply submits the news clips showed him scrambling to pick up papers which Trump had dropped. He's have been as well prostrating himself and licking Trumps boots. Condemnation not endorsement of Trumps actions is what's required. But what's happening in Scotland? The SNP were to be commended for their voice in Westminster on Palestine. But on Iran things have become strangely muted. Meanwhile, as the barbarity on the ground in Gaza worsens, the UK Government seeks to proscribe protesters while aiding the genocide enablers. Holyrood should be speaking out loud and clear – not in our name. It's not Kneecap (above) or Palestine Action who are the threat to our society and planet but those complicit and colluding in the genocide and war. We should be ceasing fuelling US war planes at Prestwick not deplatforming an Irish rap band at a music event. The old SNP and CND were once almost synonymous. Sadly, in many cases now war hawks have supplanted the old stalwarts. The united opposition to nuclear weapons is now questioned by some and even abandoned by a few. But the wider Independence movement remains true to the maxim of Bairns not Bombs. It must speak out ever louder now – no war for Trump and Israel.
