(4 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, November 28, 2018
Trump wants out of Mideast, blames Oil and Israel for Having to Stay In an interview with The Washington Post on Tuesday, Trump bruited the notion of removing US troops from the Middle East. He said that Israel and oil were the only reasons the US was in the region and that oil no longer justified the US military presence. Trump can get out if he wants to. That he doesn't do it is owing not to lack of capacity but to cowardice.

SHARE        Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Bowing to Saudi Pressure, Trump stops UN Yemen Ceasefire (-CNN) The US began supplying the Saudis with logistical support such as in-air refueling of their fighter jets and bombers, and strategic help with identifying key targets. The US military has been frustrated for some time by the Saudi insistence on hitting targets that hurt civilians, such a bridges over which food is delivered, even though Washington has advised against it.

SHARE        Sunday, November 25, 2018
India Doubles Iran Oil Imports: Are Trump's Sanctions Cratering? The Trump administration was constrained to give eight Asian countries "waivers" allowing them to import Iranian oil without risking sanctions by the US Treasury Department Office of Foreign Asset Control. The US places third party sanctions on firms and governments trading with sanctioned countries like Iran.

SHARE        Friday, November 23, 2018
CIA has Recording of Saudi Crown Prince planning Hit on Khashoggi: Turkish "Hurriyet" Last week, someone leaked that the CIA had concluded that Mohammed Bin Salman odered the hit and that the CIA had audio of Khalid Bin Salman, the Saudi ambassador to the US, luring Khashoggi to the Istanbul consulate with promises that he would be safe.

(1 comments) SHARE        Sunday, November 18, 2018
Trump tries to counter CIA Leak on Bin Salman complicity in Khashoggi Murder Trump attempted on Saturday to push back against his own Central Intelligence Agency's assessment that Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and his brother Khalid (the Saudi ambassador to the US) were behind the assassination at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

SHARE        Sunday, November 11, 2018
The Lessons of World War I -- Don't Trust Hateful Politicians like Trump Just as Serbia set events in chain then, so too could Iran today. Trump and Pompeo have spoken of crushing Iran. But Russia and China don't want Iran to be erased. Neither do Syria (pro-Iran) or Iraq, which even Trump gave a waiver because trade with Iran is crucial to its future.

(3 comments) SHARE        Thursday, November 8, 2018
The Top 11 Things the Dems Absolutely must Do in the House Progressive Democrats in the House must be prepared to fight like hell against the Pelosi-Schumer establishment, which will try to make them quiescent and go along with corporate priorities. What 2016 showed is that that platform is a formula for humiliating defeat and irrelevance. Democrats have to stand for something or people won't bother to vote for them.

SHARE        Tuesday, November 6, 2018
Your Health, Social Security, and Safety Depend on Voting Democratic Today Today's midterm elections are among the more fateful in recent American history, quite simply because there is a madman in the White House whom the Republican Senate and House have absolutely refused to rein in.

(2 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Top 5 Mistakes GOP's Wohl Made in allegedly framing Mueller for Sex Charges Republican activist Jacob Wohl allegedly set up a phony company called "Surefire Intelligence," charged with paying supposed women victims of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to allege sexual abuse. Wohl used his own email address to set up the site, and give his mother's telephone number as the contact.

(3 comments) SHARE        Sunday, August 12, 2018
The Saudi Problem: Wildly Erratic, and Savagely Lashing out from Yemen to Qatar to . . . Canada? There is increasing evidence that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were part of the plot to put Trump into office and then to manipulate him, a story the Washington press often ignores in favor of a sole fixation on Russia. A Twitter account that has been linked to Bin Salman even briefly seemed to threaten a 9/11 style kamikaze attack on Toronto.

SHARE        Tuesday, August 7, 2018
Manafort's alleged Corruption is How America Works, not Deviance Representatives have to start fundraising the day they are elected for the election only two years away. They have to promise favors to the donors. The US is peculiar among the industrialized democracies in allowing more or less open bribery. Manafort was the fixer, the go-between. Manafort is not a criminal in the sense of a deviant. He is all too normal in the US political system. He is how the system works.

SHARE        Saturday, August 4, 2018
Jared Kushner Tries to Strip Refugee Status, Aid from Millions of Displaced Palestinians The far, far right Likud Party that rules Israel has finally found a White House that despises the poor and oppressed as much as it does, and which is happy to try to dissolve the body of the displaced Palestinians in the acid bath of malign neglect, for all the world like "cleaners" in a mob movie.

(2 comments) SHARE        Monday, July 30, 2018
Top 5 Things Released Palestinian Activist Ahed Tamimi Learned in Colonial Israeli Prison The Israelis have warred on, displaced, and occupied being irrational and dangerous. One of the purposes for which the Israelis keep Palestinian stateless is precisely that stateless people don't have the right to have rights -- and certainly not the right to securely hold property or receive money transfers.

(3 comments) SHARE        Monday, July 23, 2018
Trump and Iran's Rouhani Threaten each other with the Mother of all Wars Iran signed a treaty with the US in 2015 and observed all its requirements. Trump has torn that treaty up and launched covert operations to destabilize the country. Trump is the aggressor here, and Rouhani was just saying that Iran would defend itself very effectively if attacked.

(2 comments) SHARE        Thursday, July 19, 2018
Benedict Trump White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders acknowledged that Russian President Vladimir Putin asked Donald Trump to let Russian security forces interrogate former US ambassador in Moscow Mike McFaul on US soil, and that Trump did not dismiss the request out of hand. He would, Sanders said, take it under consideration and consult his cabinet about it.

(2 comments) SHARE        Saturday, July 14, 2018
An Offer they Can't Refuse: Trump's Having bloodied May quite publicly, having threatened her and slapped her around, Trump then met with her in public and put the illusion of honor back in place. The special relationship is the most special. Theresa May is the best thing since sliced (white) bread. The interview was "fake news."

(1 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, July 11, 2018
No, Trump is not going to Save UK or Theresa May from Economic Consequences of Brexit May's government is so decrepit, with three major resignations in the past week, that she is barely surviving well enough to host Trump as it stands. And Trump is like a shark who smells blood in the water. May will be lucky if he doesn't just steal the china from Windsor Castle, aware of how weak she is.

(2 comments) SHARE        Sunday, July 8, 2018
Iran: Trump's Tweets have added $10 to cost of Oil, Upping cost of Gasoline Trump is a one man inflation-machine. The trade wars he is picking will cause consumers to have to pay more for automobiles and lots of other commodities. His own voting base will suffer most, since they probably shop in Walmart, the chief marketing agent in the US for the goods produced by the Chinese Communist Party.

SHARE        Thursday, July 5, 2018
Three Grievances America's Founders Would Have Had Against Trump One grievance had to do with the independence of the judiciary, which they believed the king had undermined. Trump, in his attacks on the Mueller investigation, on the Department of Justice, and on judges who cross him, is guilty of the same sort of interference in the judiciary.

(8 comments) SHARE        Saturday, June 30, 2018
Report: Trump hopes for Deal with Putin over Iran in Syria, US Exit al-Assad and Iran want the US back out of eastern Syria, but it is not clear to me that Putin cares that much one way or another. He just wants Damascus to regain its stability and for the Syrian radical Muslim movements to remain crushed, so that they don't blow back on the Russian Caucasus.