Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today surprised regional politics and financial markets by calling snap elections on June 24, consolidating one-man rule in what used to be the region’s lone democracy. The Turkish lira rose sharply on the news, from 5.08 lira per euro to less than 5 per euro at this writing. Money in …
Continue reading Turkey’s Erdogan Hastens One-Man Rule After Syria Victory
There is a lot of concern over the possibility of a trade war between China and the U.S. In early April, President Trump announced that his administration was considering levying $100 billion of additional tariffs on Chinese exports, after the Chinese government responded to a previously proposed U.S. tariff hike on Chinese goods of $50 billion …
In the wake of last week’s cruise missile attack on Syria, there was a joke going around the internet saying that it doesn’t matter who Americans vote for, they always wind up getting John McCain as President of the United States. The humor derives from the fact that the past three presidents all ran for …
Continue reading Why Each US President Ends Up as Ruthless Interventionist These Days
The beginning of April saw a curious disinformation flood initiated by the Japanese media and then supported by the South Korean media. Allegedly, on March 9, 2018, while speaking on the phone with the US President Donald Trump, the Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping suggested a new format of the Korean settlement, which excludes the …
Continue reading For the Chinese Quadrilateral Peace Treaty Draft on the Results of the Korean War
The Trump administration delivered several dozen military strikes against Syria purportedly aimed at chemical production and storage facilities. It was an act the international community feared might lead to overt war in Syria between the US, Iran and Russia, but it came off a bit better: the strike seems to have been carefully calibrated, involved …
Over the past two months the news has been dominated by two bizarre but related events: 1) the alleged nerve agent poisoning of the exchanged Russian dual-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, England; and 2) the supposed gas poisoning of Syrian civilians by the Assad government, leading to the “retaliatory” April 13-14 …
Continue reading The British are Driving the West’s War Agenda—But Why?
In their book Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky distinguished between two kinds of victims: the worthy victims and the unworthy victims. The “worthy victims” are the victims (real and alleged) of leaders on the U.S. enemies list, such as Bashar al-Assad. The “unworthy victims” are those of the U.S. and its client states, …
When US President Donald Trump fired a barrage of Tomahawk missiles at Syrian government targets last week, it was a good day for defense contractors, at least. In the aftermath of the strike, which Trump claimed was in retaliation for an alleged chemical attack by the Syrian government, stocks in Tomahawk missile manufacturer Raytheon surged. …
Continue reading Neutral and Unbiased? Why ‘Think Tanks’ Lobby for War in Syria
The State Department’s new proposal mandating the disclosure of a visa applicant’s social media accounts, email addresses, and phone numbers is certainly Orwellian, but people who are offended by this have to get over it because there’s nothing that they can do other than stay away from the US and any other country that decides …
Continue reading Social Media Visa Vetting Sure is Orwellian, But Folks have to Get Over It
