Lebanon’s Al-Nahar newspaper refuted reports that Shakira had cancelled a performance in Israel before her appearance in Bshareh in Lebanon. There appears never to have been a scheduled such performance on her schedule. The initial news was carried widely, including by the Jerusalem Post. Her concert producer, Live Nation, tweeted the below: The media has […]
Is Roseanne Barr what America has Become?
The cancellation of Roseanne Barr’s situation comedy reboot at ABC/Disney is not, as some of my more serious acquaintances on social media are saying, unimportant. Barr’s attack via Twitter on former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett (who, Barr said, looked like the offspring of a union of the Muslim Brotherhood and planet of the apes), is […]
India stands with Iran against Trump Sanctions
India’s External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj, on Monday did not mince words in delivering a sharp rebuke to US plans for sanctions on trade with Iran, including National Security Adviser John Bolton’s threats against third parties like India. She said, according to The Hindu, “Our foreign policy is not made under pressure from other countries […]
On Memorial Day, US Troops still Dying in Afghanistan but 1/2 the Country is Lost
The Afghanistan government controls only about half of Afghanistan, 229 of 407 districts. Maybe because it is a bad news story, our Afghanistan War, the longest in our history, keeps slipping our minds, along with thoughts of the Americans still fighting there. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, has issued a report […]
Legal? Despite Withdrawal Pledge, Trump’s Massive Mission Creep in Syria
The US is warning Syria against attempting to recover lands lost to rebels south of Damascus. Some of those rebels are ISIL or affiliated in some way to al-Qaeda. That is, the US is now doing the opposite of what it said it was going in to Syria to do. It is often alleged that […]
China’s Green Shift is Positioning it to Overtake US in Energy Technology, Security
The Guardian reports that air pollution in 62 Chinese cities fell by 30% between 2013 and 2016, according to the World Health Organization. Beijing, the capital, fell from a global 4th place ranking on polluted air to 187th. I was in Beijing in March, 2015, for a conference, and did a jaunt out to the […]
How Peak Hype crashed Trump’s N Korea Summit/ Nobel Peace Prize
Trump’s petulant letter to North Korean President Kim Jong Un cancelling the planned Singapore summit between the two leaders was all but foreordained. The entire endeavor was poorly conceived and badly planned, and attended with fantastic, typical Trump snake oil and hype. North Korea does not have the slightest intention of renouncing its nuclear weapons. […]
Khamenei, in reply to Trump, gives Europe 6-point Ultimatum on Nuclear Deal
Iran’s clerical Leader, Ali Khamenei, weighed in on Trump’s violation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or Iran nuclear accord of 2015, which the US signed off on along with the rest of the UN Security Council and Germany (informally representing the European Union). Speaking frankly to Iran’s European trading partners, the ayatollah […]
Palestine takes Israel to Int’l Criminal Court at Hague over Gaza Massacre
Palestine has submitted a formal referral to the International Criminal Court in the Hague over Israeli sniping with live fire at peaceful Gaza protesters this spring, which killed some 60 persons and literally wounded thousands. Palestine, which is a cautious and timid government, had earlier declined to go to the ICC, in hopes instead of […]
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