Author: nick
The Trump administration is finally, slowly, beginning the process of refunding the illegal tariffs it collected over the past year, and some private companies say they will speed those refunds along to consumers. In theory, this is a straightforward act of restitution. In practice, it reveals a more complicated—and, for many consumers, likely less satisfying—truth about tariffs. This week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) opened a new online portal to allow companies to submit tariff receipts and request refunds. Those refunds are required because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in February that the Trump administration did not have the…
“The blockade scares them even more than the bombing — they’ve been bombed for years, but the blockade they hate.” That’s President Trump talking to Fox News’ Martha MacCallum in a very telling statement. And it may well be that the factionalized Iranians simply cannot come up with any kind of unified agreement to present American negotiators. It also may well be that there’s no such thing as an agreement, other than unconditional surrender. All nuclear activity stops. Enriched uranium must be transferred from Iran to America. All proxy and other forms of terrorism must be stopped. The Strait of…
They have a hard time figuring out who the hell can speak for the country, the president told MS NOW’s The Weekend host Jacqueline Alemany in a call. Source link
The way Iran has been able to stand up to the West has become a source of admiration across the formerly colonised world. Where does that confidence come from? Abdel Hamid Baalbaki, Lebanon, War, 1977. (Via Tricontinental Institute) By Vijay PrashadTricontinental: Institute for Social Research During some of the worst days of the illegal U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, I was talking to friends who were in the civilian areas being bombed. Some of them are scholars, others poets and artists, some work in the government, others in institutions of different kinds. All of them, regardless of their views of the government, stood…
Reprinted with permission from EricMargolis.com. Once upon a time there was a magical little country named Lebanon. It was created by French imperialists out of the post-World War 1 wreckage of the Ottoman Empire as a mountainous stronghold for Levantine Maronite and Orthodox Christians. Imperial Russia sought to assert its influence as defender of Lebanon’s Christians. The British and French thwarted Russia’s efforts and created two new states, Syria and Jordan. After the war, Israel was created by Britain. Some 750,000 Arabs who had been living in what was known as Palestine and Syria were driven from their homes by…
The end of Viktor Orbán’s premiership in Hungary has been greeted with whoops and cheers throughout Europe’s halls of power. “Hungarians have struck a blow for democracy,” the Economist claims. “Citizens … mobilised to take their country back,” the Guardian informs us. Well, I’m not going to pretend that Orbán’s rule did not contain blatant gerrymandering and corruption. I made critical points about his Fidesz government before as well as after the election. But the hypocrisy is difficult to stomach. We can talk about “democratic backsliding” in Hungary. But I don’t think that it can be compared to some sort…
The Republicans are beginning to make frightened, unhappy noises about the upcoming midterm elections, and one hesitates to tell them they’re wrong to be afraid. President Donald Trump’s popularity is at or around its all-time low, the party’s popularity is in comparable territory, and the Democrats are sitting comfortably ahead in generic ballot polling. A Virginia redistricting scheme passed on referendum this week; if it holds up in court, it is likely to secure some number of new congressional seats for the blue team, much like a similar referendum in California last November. While the Democrats’ own dismal popularity (below…
The Southern Poverty Law Center has been indicted for fraud and is accused of having funded organizers, supervised racist posts, and coordinated transportation to the Unite the Right rally in 2017. Source link
Mollie Hemingway, the editor-in-chief of The Federalist news site, joined the RCP Podcast on Thursday to talk about her new book on Justice Alito, the fallout from the leaked Dobbs decision, and what she described as an erosion of the long-standing tradition of collegiality on the Supreme Court.Mollie’s book: “Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution””What happened to the justices after the Dobbs decision was leaked was unconscionable,” she said. “These are people who are not used to being in political scrums and had to be moved to secure locations, had to wear bulletproof vests…
The arrest was supposed to humiliate and expose the hypocrisy of the Islamic Republic. Instead, it ruined the lives of a family fleeing from the theocracy. On April 4, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that he had revoked the green cards of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani’s niece and grand-niece, who had pushed “propaganda for Iran’s terrorist regime while enjoying a lavish lifestyle in Los Angeles” and were now in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. The New York Post ran a cover story and several other articles about the “sex appeal” of Soleimani’s alleged grand niece, featuring her bikini…