Author: nick

[ad_1] A pair of F-35s in flight. Photo: 1st Lt. Erik D. Anthony, US Air Force. Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan met Donald Trump at the airport in Ankara, which heads of state generally do not do. There were cannons. There were soldiers on horseback. Jets flew overhead trailing red, white, and blue smoke. Then the two men sat down at the presidential palace in Ankara and Trump, asked about the sanctions his own administration imposed on Turkey, said this: “We don’t want to sanction friends.” The sanctions came down in December 2020, from Trump’s own White House, on Trump’s…

[ad_1] From bridge to fortress: How the Kremlin is recasting Kaliningrad Kaliningrad Oblast is a Russian semi-exclave on the Baltic Sea, separated from mainland Russia and located between Lithuania and Poland – both members of the EU and NATO. The region itself was created after the Second World War from the northern part of former East Prussia, transferred to the USSR under the Potsdam agreements in 1945. This makes Kaliningrad simultaneously a Russian territory, a former German space, a Baltic region, and Moscow’s military outpost on the border with the European Union. Unlike most Russian regions, Kaliningrad for a long…

[ad_1] Photograph Source: NASA – Public Domain Montana, the fourth-largest and one of the least populated states in the Union, has been savagely ill-treated in the past and left with injuries that continue to plague us long after those who made the decisions aren’t in office or alive to be held accountable. Elected officials, at the local, state, and national level have and continue to make enormous mistakes, largely in service to corporations not “We, the people.” Need examples? How about the Berkley Pit, one of the largest bodies of toxic water in the world the Copper Kings left behind…

[ad_1] A federal judge in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, sentenced police officer Jaron Taylor to three years of probation and $38,670 in restitution for his part in an auto insurance fraud scheme. Prosecutors said Taylor worked with other officers to file false insurance claims for stolen or damaged vehicles. They helped each other by writing fake police reports, staging vehicle thefts, and using their positions as police officers to make the fraudulent claims appear legitimate so they could collect insurance payouts and avoid paying loans on vehicles worth less than they owed. The post Brickbat: Friends Helping Friends appeared first…

[ad_1] This is true. The data come from the World Bank. According to the data, China’s GDP last year was $41.2 trillion, compared to $30.8 trillion for the United States. These numbers are GDP measures by purchasing power parity. This measure applies a common set of prices to all goods and services, regardless of whether they are produced in the United States or China. This means a car, a washing machine, a hospital visit, and a haircut are assumed to carry the same price, regardless of which country it is produced in. There is an effort to adjust for quality…

[ad_1] In a moment when global attention remains fixed on conflicts in the Middle East, political turmoil in Venezuela, Sudan’s ongoing war, and Cuba’s deepening humanitarian crisis, the unfolding situation in Albania has slipped out of view. That relative silence comes despite one of the country’s largest civic mobilizations in years. In May, a section of coastline in Zvërnec—near Vlora—was fenced off and placed under private security, restricting access to part of the Vjosa-Narta protected area as bulldozers arrived on site. One of Europe’s most sensitive coastal wetlands and part of the wider Vjosa delta ecosystem, the area is home…

[ad_1] Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently – Rosa Luxemburg  Every democracy worthy of the name recognizes a simple but indispensable truth: dissent is not its enemy but its lifeblood. The freedom to criticize those in power, expose injustice, challenge entrenched authority, organize collectively, and imagine a more just future is the foundation upon which a meaningful democratic society rests. Without the right to dissent, citizenship becomes obedience, violence is normalized, politics collapses into spectacle, corrupt power is legitimated, reason disappears into an abyss of lies, and freedom is…

[ad_1] By eliminating the political cost of military casualties, drone warfare has enabled four successive American presidents to expand executive power and wage permanent, undeclared wars around the globe. The United States has carried out tens of thousands of drone and air strikes since launching its first confirmed attack outside a declared war zone in November 2002, killing an estimated 8,871 to 17,274 people across at least five countries according to independent tracking data. Al Jazeera reported in March 2026 that since September 11, 2001, the United States has engaged in three full-scale wars and conducted air strikes in at…

[ad_1] Photograph Source: U.S. Department of State – Public Domain Why are they so afraid?  The Trump administration, pathologically obsessed about the exaggerated reach of the International Criminal Court, have decided to take to the barricades.  In a July 13 media note released by a spokesperson for the US State Department, something akin to a declaration of war was made against the Hague-based tribunal.  Secretary of State Marco Rubio was getting bolshie about it, announcing “a sweeping campaign to dismantle the threat posed by [the court] to US sovereignty.”  The effort promises to “feature a whole-of-government response to systematically disable the ICC’s ability to operate, target…

[ad_1] Nigel Farage has just taken the biggest gamble of his decades-long political career. To try to draw a line on the financial scandals that have dogged him for the past few months, the Reform UK leader has asked the voters to decide his fate. He has resigned as the member of Parliament for Clacton and will face a by-election in August to try to win his job back. The big gamble here is not really whether Farage will be returned to parliament. Barring some freak event, he can be reasonably confident of victory—his Clacton constituency, on the Essex coastline,…