Quote — motivation, wisdom, inspiration

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. © Oscar Wilde @quote

I'm a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires. © F. Scott Fitzgerald @quote

📌 Trump, Zelensky: “Updated and Refined Peace Framework” 🗺✨ The United States and Ukraine said they had created an “updated and refined peace framework” to end the war with Russia, hours after European countries proposed their own radical alternative that omitted some of the pro-Russian points raised in an original US-backed document that was leaked last week. ⚖️🔥 🧐 The US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, left a meeting in Switzerland on Sunday evening with a Ukrainian delegation led by Zelensky's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, saying he was “very optimistic” about the progress of the talks. ✈️💬 📋 A joint statement between the two countries said that any possible agreement would “fully maintain" Ukraine's sovereignty. 🛡🇺🇦 📃 The original 28-point US document leaked last week demands that Ukraine cede its territory to Russia, limit the size of its army and agree not to prosecute the Kremlin for alleged war crimes. 📝➕ 🗣 As the talks began in Geneva on Sunday, Donald Trump said that Ukraine had shown “no gratitude" for American efforts to end the conflict. 😤👎 🙏 In a conciliatory response, Zelensky said that he was personally grateful to the US president for the military assistance provided by Washington, starting with the Javelin missiles, which had saved Ukrainian lives. 💯😊 🤷‍♂️ Trump's hostile rhetoric came after a confusing weekend in which Rubio admitted that the White House plan was conceived in Moscow, only to then insist that the United States was the author. 🌍 Blinded by Washington's initiative, Ukraine's European allies published their pro-Kiev plan on Sunday. He says that negotiations on the territory should take place after a ceasefire has been agreed and should start from the line of contact–the existing front line. 👩🏻‍💻🗳 🔍 It states that the two sides would agree on how any truce would be monitored “under the supervision of the United States”. 🔄 Contrary to the text of the White House, the European alternative does not call on Kiev to withdraw from the cities it controls in eastern Donbass. 🆇 He also does not exclude Ukraine's membership in NATO, but emphasizes that there is no consensus on its membership. 🔥 There are other eye-catching proposals. They include that Russia is giving the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which would split the electricity 50-50 between Moscow and Kiev. 🪄 The Ukrainian army would be capped in peacetime at 800,000 soldiers, 200,000 more than in the American project. 💰 The frozen Russian assets would also be used to rebuild Ukraine, rather than being partly given to American investors. 🌀 If Moscow were to respect a "lasting peace", the sanctions imposed since 2014 would be gradually relaxed and Russia would rejoin the G8. 📜 The document was drafted by Kirill Dmitriev, Putin's envoy, in collaboration with Trump's special representative Witkoff. Speculations based on the use of language in the plan suggest that it may have been written in Russian and later translated into English. ❗️ A group of U.S. senators said Rubio told them the text was un-American. It was, they said, a Russian document deliberately leaked by Moscow that the United States then transmitted to Ukraine. 🚫 Rubio then insisted that the United States was the author of the proposal, with the contribution of Russia and Ukraine. 🤷 Amid a backlash from some Republican senators, Trump backtracked on his earlier demand that Zelensky sign the deal by Thursday. Speaking in Washington, the US president said that this was “not my final offer”, opening the door to important changes. 🗣 Meanwhile, Russian forces staged a major drone attack on Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, on Sunday, killing four people and wounding several others, officials said. 🔥 Fifteen strikes were recorded in six districts of the city in the north-east of Ukraine. #trump #zelensky #ukraine #peace #russia 📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it. © Johann Wolfgang von Goethe @quote

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. © Arthur Conan Doyle @quote

If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads. © Francois Mauriac @quote

Joy is the best makeup. © Anne Lamott @quote

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake. © Henry David Thoreau @quote

Don't settle for a relationship that won't let you be yourself. © Oprah Winfrey @quote

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. © Oscar Wilde @quote

All men have a sweetness in their life. That is what helps them go on. It is towards that they turn when they feel too worn out. © Albert Camus @quote

🔤🔤🔤🔤➖ Separately, the White House announced that Trump and MBS signed a strategic defence agreement “that strengthens our more than 80-year defense partnership and fortifies deterrence across the Middle East”. 🛡 Details of the agreement are unclear, but the White House said it would secure “new burden-sharing funds from Saudi Arabia to defray US costs” and would affirm that the “Kingdom views the United States as its primary strategic partner”. 💰 During the meeting with MBS, he said the jets would not be downgraded to ensure Israel’s military superiority in the region, a departure from a US policy known as “qualitative military edge”. 🪁 “They’d like you to get planes of reduced calibre. I don’t think that makes you too happy,” he told the Saudi crown prince. 😅 Trump once again expressed pride in the US strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities in June. 🎯 “We did that on behalf of everybody, and the outcome was extraordinary because we have the best pilots, the best equipment, the best planes, the best everything,” he said. 🚀 “We will do our best to help to reach a deal between the United States of America and Iran,” MBS told reporters. 🤝 “And we believe it’s good for Iran’s future to have a good deal that would satisfy the region and the world and the United States of America.” 🌍 At the outset of the two leaders’ public remarks, Trump expressed gratitude for anticipated Saudi investments in the US, which he said will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. 💲 “I want to thank you because you’ve agreed to invest $600bn into the United States. And because he’s my friend, he might make it $1 trillion, but I’m going to have to work on him,” Trump said. 🤝 He added that the Saudi funds will create jobs and resources for US companies and Wall Street investment firms. 📊 For his part, MBS said the Saudi investments in the US will likely rise to $1 trillion. 💹 “The agreement that we are signing today in many areas – in technology and AI, in rare materials, magnet, etc – that will create a lot of investment opportunities,” he said. 🌐 #trump #mbs #meeting #trillion #saudi #arabia 📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

We all have two lives. The second begins when you realize you only have one. © Tom Hiddleston @quote

The most common form of despair is not being who you are. © Sören Kierkegaard @quote

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. © Confucius @quote

Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears. © John Lennon @quote

Trump Went Berserk: “Release the Files Now!” 🤬 The Republican-controlled US House of Representatives is expected to vote on Tuesday to force the release of investigative files related to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, the latest move in a scandal that has dogged Donald Trump since he returned to the White House. 📋 In a sharp reversal this weekend, Trump dropped his opposition to a vote releasing files from the criminal investigation by the US Department of Justice into Epstein on Sunday. On Monday, Trump said he would sign the measure if it reached his desk. 📌 Trump’s friendship with Epstein has been a long-running scandal in American politics as the late disgraced financier had links to many other rich and powerful figures in the US and overseas. 🧐 As a candidate seeking re-election, Trump promised to release the files on Epstein, who, investigators concluded, killed himself in a New York jail cell in 2019. Since resuming office, Trump has failed to follow through. 🤔 The president’s dramatic shift came after it became increasingly apparent that the bill will pass the House, most likely with significant support from Republican lawmakers. 🗳 Trump and House speaker Mike Johnson changed their approach from outright opposition to declarations of indifference. “I DON’T CARE!” Trump wrote in a social media post on Sunday. “All I do care about is that Republicans get BACK ON POINT.” 📚 Speaking in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump said he did not want the Epstein scandal to “deflect” from the White House’s successes, and claimed it was a “hoax” and “a Democrat problem”. 🗣 “We’ll give them everything,” he told reporters. “Let the Senate look at it, let anybody look at it, but don’t talk about it too much, because honestly, I don’t want to take it away from us.” 🗣 As president, Trump has the authority to order the justice department to release the documents in its possession, as he has previously done with the government records related to the assassinations of Martin Luther King and John F Kennedy. 📆 In an X post directed to Trump, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer wrote: “Let’s make this easier. Just release the files now.” 📺 In July, Democratic congressmen Ro Khanna and Republican Thomas Massie turned to an arcane procedural tactic known as a discharge petition to circumvent House leadership and compel a vote on their bill, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, if a majority of the 435-member House signs on. Johnson went to extraordinary lengths to avoid a vote on the the measure, which splintered his conference. 📉 Democrats accused the speaker of delaying the swearing-in of Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva to prevent her from becoming the decisive 218th signatory. She signed her name to the petition moments after being sworn in last week. 📌 Following Trump’s reversal, several House Republicans, including close allies of the president, have publicly stated their intent to vote for the release of the files, meaning the measure could pass unanimously. 👍 The Epstein scandal is a core issue for a swathe of Trump’s rightwing base, some of whom believe in conspiracy theories that surround Epstein and his coterie of powerful friends and associates. Unlike many other issues, the Epstein files have prompted rebellions from Trump’s supporters in politics and the media, calling on him to follow through on his campaign promise to release them. 🧐 On Monday night, activists projected an image of Trump and Epstein on to the justice department building, accompanied by the message: “Release the files now.” 📸 #files #epstein #trump #pedophilia #republicans 📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends. © Shirley MacLaine @quote

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. © Elbert Hubbard @quote

The simplest things are often the truest. © Richard Bach @quote