Satellite imagery of the Middle East is unusually difficult to acquire at present. Two of the largest commercial providers, Vantor and Planet, have complied with requests from the U.S. government — their biggest customer — to limit, delay or indefinitely withhold the publication of imagery of the region while the war is ongoing, making it difficult or impossible to assess Iran’s counterstrikes. Those restrictions began less than two weeks into the war.
Wednesday Reads
Posted: May 6, 2026 Filed under: just because | Tags: Donald Trump, Ebrahim Rezaei, Esmail Baghaei, Iran war negotiations, Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, Project Freedom, Strait of Hormuz, Ted Turner, Trump's ballroom 6 CommentsGood Day!!
I spent the last 3 days reading books and relaxing, and mostly avoiding watching or reading news social media. My RA pain had been pretty bad lately, and it has definitely improved as a result. I’ll have to see what happens after I engage with the news for this post, but at the moment I plan to go back on a news diet when I finish. I definitely think my health is improved by avoiding news about Trump.
Here’s what’s happening this morning:
Cable news Legend Ted Turner has died.
The New York Times (gift article): Ted Turner, Creator of CNN and the 24-Hour News Cycle, Dies at 87.
Ted Turner, the media mogul who cut a brash and vivid figure on the American scene of the late 20th century by dominating the cable television industry, creating the 24-hour news cycle with CNN, and extending his restless reach into professional sports, environmentalism and philanthropy, died on Wednesday at his home near Tallahassee, Fla. He was 87.
Phillip Evans, a spokesman for the family, confirmed the death. Mr. Turner announced in 2018 that he had Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder.
Ted Turner
Mr. Turner’s signature creation was CNN — the Cable News Network — which revolutionized television news in 1980 by presenting it all hours of the day and eventually inspiring other media operations to follow suit. But his portfolio of business ventures bulged with much more, and their impact on American culture was considerable.
As a spinoff of CNN, Mr. Turner created the channel CNN Headline News and CNN International. He founded the cable and satellite sports and entertainment “superstation” that became known as TBS and spawned a sister channel, TNT, both of which continue to reach millions of homes.
In 1985, he bought for $1.5 billion the MGM studio’s library of films and nine years later created the cable franchise Turner Classic Movies, or TCM. He made a similar purchase of Hanna-Barbera cartoons and, relying on them, created the Cartoon Network in 1992. And in 1996, he merged his conglomerate, Turner Broadcasting System, with Time Warner to create one of the world’s largest media companies.
Along the way, he found the time and energy to captain the winning yacht in the America’s Cup race in 1977 and to take an active role as owner of the Atlanta Braves, giving the team extended national exposure on Turner-owned television.
“I’m trying to set the all-time record for achievement by one person in one lifetime,” he told the journalist Dale Van Atta in a Reader’s Digest article in 1998. “And that puts you in pretty big company: Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Gandhi, Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Washington, Roosevelt, Churchill.”
Not even his staunchest admirers placed Mr. Turner on that high a pedestal. But even a bitter rival like the media magnate Rupert Murdoch — who once had his New York Post run the headline “Is Turner Insane?” — had to concede that he was one of the most influential figures in the history of mass media.
An Atlanta-based entrepreneur, Mr. Turner took astounding risks in business, often teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and then roaring back to multiply his fortune.
Against the advice of colleagues and the conventional wisdom of his industry peers, he poured millions of dollars into pioneering ventures that combined cable and satellite broadcasts. He warred against the big television networks. He almost lost his shirt in Hollywood but emerged from these gambles and brawls as a billionaire astride a vast cable empire of news, sports and entertainment channels.
Of course the big story is still Trump’s war with Iran. It’s difficult to know what to believe about what’s going on, since Trump and Hegseth lie constantly.
CNN reports the Trump/Hegseth line: US and Iran closing in on memorandum aimed at ending war, source says.
The United States and Iran are moving closer to an agreement on a short memorandum to end the Iran war, a regional source familiar with the negotiations said, although Trump administration officials cautioned that talks had previously fallen apart at the last minute.
The White House received positive feedback from Pakistani mediators on Tuesday that the Iranians were progressing toward a compromise, two administration officials told CNN while offering some skepticism about Pakistan’s optimism.
From CentCom: Project Freedom at Strait of Hormuz
But a renewed diplomatic push has emerged in recent days, the regional source said. President Donald Trump appears to be simplifying issues in peace negotiations so moderates in the Iranian regime can come back to the negotiating table, the source added, with the aim being to tackle thornier issues later.
A one-page plan being floated internally contains provisions that have been at the heart of negotiations to end the conflict, a person familiar with the plan told CNN. The document would declare an end to the war while triggering a 30-day negotiation period on resolving sticking points, including on nuclear issues, unfreezing Iranian assets and future security in the Strait of Hormuz, the person said.
Precise details of the plan couldn’t immediately be verified, but the source familiar said it would include discussion of a moratorium on uranium enrichment for a period of longer than 10 years. A previous US proposal had set it at 20 years.
The plan also requires Iran to ship its stockpile of highly enriched uranium out of the country, but details were still being negotiated.
News of positive movement from the Pakistanis helped spur Trump on Tuesday to announce a pause of “Project Freedom” – an operation to guide stranded ships out of the strait – citing progress in negotiations with Iran, the administration officials said. The pause came after Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that Operation Epic Fury had ended and that the administration’s full focus was on Project Freedom.
The regional source told CNN that the harder the US pushed its agenda of Project Freedom and Operation Epic Fury, the more the hardliners in Iran stood up and had a bigger voice.
The Guardian reports on Iran’s reaction: Middle East crisis live: US proposal to end war a ‘wishlist, not a reality’, warns Iranian official.
‘American wishlist, not a reality’: Iranian officials cast doubt on US proposal to end war.
Ebrahim Rezaei, the spokesperson of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission, has poured cold water on the Axios report claiming the US and Iran were nearing a one-page memorandum to end the war, saying it was an “American wishlist [and] not a reality”.
Ebrahim Rezaei
In a fiery statement on X, he said: “Americans will not gain in a lost war what they failed to achieve in face-to-face negotiations. Iran has its finger on the trigger and is ready; if they do not surrender and grant the necessary concessions, or if they or their lapdogs attempt any mischief, we will respond with a harsh and regrettable response.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, also responded to the Axios report, telling the Iranian Isna news agency that the US proposal is still being reviewed by Tehran.
“Once Iran concludes its assessment, it will convey its views to the Pakistani side,” Isna reported, adding that the US demands detailed in the Axios report “included excessive and unrealistic demands that have been strongly rejected by Iranian officials in recent days”.
Isna reported that the Iranian negotiating team is solely reviewing the “termination of the war” and the nuclear issue is not currently being discussed.
That doesn’t sound like an agreement is coming soon. And Trump is issuing threats.
AP: US and Iran appear to move closer to ending their war as Trump threatens more bombing.
The United States and Iran appeared to be moving closer Wednesday to an initial agreement to end the war, as U.S. President Trump sought to pressure Tehran with threats of a new wave of bombing if a deal is not reached.
Trump posted on social media that the two-month war could soon end and that oil and natural gas shipments disrupted by the conflict could restart. But he said that depends on Iran accepting a reported agreement that the president did not detail.
“If they don’t agree, the bombing starts,” Trump wrote.
Trump made his latest comments after he suspended a short-lived U.S. effort to force open a safe passage for commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway through which major oil and gas supplies, fertilizer and other petroleum products passed before the war.
Iran’s effective closure of the strait has sent fuel prices skyrocketing, rattled the global economy and put enormous economic pressure on countries, including major powers such as China.
China’s foreign minister called for a comprehensive ceasefire Wednesday after meeting in Beijing with Iran’s top envoy. Wang Yi said his country was “deeply distressed” by the conflict, which began Feb. 28 when the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran.
China’s close economic and political ties to Tehran give it a unique position of influence. The Trump administration is pressing China to use that relationship to urge the Islamic Republic to open the strait.
Meanwhile it appears that the Trump administration has been trying to conceal how much damage Iran has done to U.S. bases in the Middle East region.
The Washington Post (gift article): Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported, satellite images show.
Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment atU.S. military sites across the Middle East since the war began, hitting hangars, barracks,fuel depots, aircraft and key radar, communications and air defense equipment, according to a Washington Post analysis of satellite imagery. The amount of destruction is far larger than what has been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government or previously reported.
The threat of air attacks rendered some of the U.S. bases in the region too dangerous to staff at normal levels, and commanders moved most of the personnel from these sites out of the range of Iranian fire at the start of the war, officials have said.
Since the start of the war on Feb. 28, seven service members have died in strikes on U.S. facilities in the region — six in Kuwait and one in Saudi Arabia — and more than 400 troops have suffered injuries as of late April, the U.S. military said. While most of the wounded returned to duty within days, at least 12 suffered injuries that military officials classified as serious, according to U.S. officials who, among others, spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Iranian state-affiliated news agencies, however, have from the start regularly published high-resolution satellite imagery on their social media accounts that claimed to document damage to U.S. sites.
Images of damage to Camp Buehring in Kuwait, released and annotated by Iranian state-affiliated media. Washington Post illustration.
For this examination — one of the first comprehensive public accounts of the damage to U.S. facilities in the region — The Post reviewed more than 100 high-resolution Iranian-released satellite images. The Post verified the authenticity of 109 of the those images by comparing them with lower-resolution imagery from the European Union’s satellite system, Copernicus, as well as high-resolution images from Planet where available. The Post excluded 19 Iranian images from the damage analysis because comparisons with the Copernicus imagery were inconclusive. No Iranian imagery was found to have been manipulated.
In a separate search of Planet imagery, Post reporters found 10 damaged or destroyed structures that were not documented in the imagery released by Iran. In all, The Post found 217 structures and 11 pieces of equipment that were damaged or destroyed at 15 U.S. military sites in the region.
Experts who reviewed The Post’s analysis said the damage at the sites suggested that the U.S. military had underestimated Iran’s targeting abilities, not adapted sufficiently to modern drone warfare and left some bases under-protected.
“The Iranian attacks were precise. There are no random craters indicating misses,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a retired Marine Corps colonel, who reviewed the Iranian images at The Post’s request. The Post previously revealed how Russia provided Iran with intelligence to target U.S. forces.
Read the rest and view more images using the gift link above. I wonder what it will take to repair the damage?
Here’s a bit of hopeful news from The Washington Post: Poll finds broad rejection of religion-related messages from Trump, Hegseth.
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Take care, everyone. I can’t wait to get back to my book.
Totally understand. Been watching videos about visiting places in South America. It’s like a little getaway to these kewl floating islands that people live on in Bolivia today.
Great Post!
Thanks!
NBC News: Howard Lutnick faces congressional showdown after Epstein files revealed island visit.
Over the years, the households of New York financier Jeffrey Epstein and billionaire businessman Howard Lutnick, now the U.S. commerce secretary, overlapped in seemingly conventional ways, like the need for a good painter. Another time, Epstein received the résumé for Lutnick’s nanny.
They were, after all, next-door neighbors for more than a decade in an elite Upper East Side enclave of Manhattan.
But their lives also intersected in far more influential or personal ways, such as when, in 2012, Lutnick, his wife and their four young children sailed on a yacht to have lunch with Epstein on his private Caribbean island. Or seven months later, when an aide to then-Prince Andrew wanted Epstein’s opinion about Lutnick, then the CEO of the Wall Street brokerage and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald.
“What is your view on Howard Lutnick? Just met him with PA,” wrote the aide, referring to Andrew, who was angling to do business with Cantor Fitzgerald.
“My neighbor smart,” Epstein replied.
The relationship between Lutnick and Epstein spans years both before and after Epstein was convicted in 2008 for soliciting a minor for prostitution in Florida. Their email communications, which were sporadic, are in the millions of pages of Epstein investigation documents the Justice Department released this year.
Much more at the llink.
ProPublica: Babies Are Bleeding to Death as Parents Reject a Vitamin Shot Given at Birth.
They entered the world the way babies should, with piercing cries announcing their arrival. They passed their newborn screening tests. Some made it to their 2-week wellness visits without concern.
Then, without warning, their systems began to shut down. A 7-week-old boy in Maryland developed sudden seizures. An 11-pound girl in Alabama stopped breathing for 20 seconds at a time. A baby boy in Kentucky vomited before becoming lethargic. A brown-haired girl in Texas, not yet 2 weeks old, bled around her belly button.
Desperate to save them, records show, doctors inserted tubes into their airways and hooked them up to IVs. They ordered blood transfusions. They spent half an hour trying to resuscitate one boy until his parents told them they could stop. They shaved another boy’s soft locks to embed a needle directly into his skull to reduce the pressure in his brain.
None of it was enough.
At the morgue, the babies were brought in with their diapers and blankets and with their hospital ID bracelets still wrapped around their tiny ankles. The pathologists’ findings were like those you would typically see in ailing adults, not newborns — the kind of bleeding seen during strokes or brain tissue loss similar to what happens when radiation is administered to treat cancer.
Their autopsies, which took place over the last several years, all came to the same conclusion: The deaths were caused, in whole or in part, by a rare but potentially fatal condition known as vitamin K deficiency bleeding.
In almost every case, the babies’ deaths could have been prevented with a long-standard vitamin K shot. But across the country, families — first in smatterings, now in droves — are declining the single, inexpensive injection given at birth to newborns to help their blood clot.
More Political Prosecution by the DOJ/FBI.
aaronparnas
BREAKING: The FBI is now raiding the offices of Senator Louise Lucas, the Democrat who led the charge to redistrict Virginia, as part of a “corruption” probe, per Fox News (that conveniently is on the scene).