Don’t believe the “experts” – Trump sent Pence to the APEC Summit not because he could care less about the Asia-Pacific, but precisely because he cares so much about the region that he wanted to insult its rising hegemon by dispatching his subordinate to issue an ultimatum to Chinese President Xi instead of doing so…
Trump declined to attend the November 17 – 18 Papua New Guinea Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. Nor did he attend the November 11 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Singapore. Mike Pence and John Bolton attended in his place. According to Singaporean diplomat Tommy Koh, “(t)o Asians, turning up for a meeting…
The Syrian Army unleashed a major assault across the southeastern part of Idlib province on Saturday, a military source told Middle East news site Al-Masdar in a breaking report. According to the source, government forces pounded jihadist defenses across the southeast Idlib axis with a plethora of artillery shells and surface-to-surface missiles. This latest exchange between the Syrian military and jihadist rebels comes…
There have been sporadic, but regular reports of “mysterious helicopters” extracting ISIS militants from battlefields in the Middle East. Most recently, on November 13th, Syria’s official news agency SANA cited an anonymous source claiming that US-led military helicopters conducted an operation in the village of al-Suwayda in Hasakah province near the border with Iraq. They…
There was something gruesomely familiar about the way we commemorated the supposed end of the First World War a hundred years ago. Not just the waterfalls of poppies and the familiar names – Mons, the Somme, Ypres, Verdun – but the almost total silence about all those who died in the First World War, whose eyes were…
One of the things to look forward to in the upcoming holiday season is the special treats that one is allowed to sample. Fruitcake and nuts are Thanksgiving and Christmas favorites. They usually come in tins or special packages but it seems that this season some of the nuts have escaped and have fled to…
