Author: nick
A Trump-Kim summit would be a spectacle like no other. A carnival extravaganza with the Korean Peninsula holding center stage, and every handshake, expression, seating arrangement, and stray remark dissected by troupes of North Korea pundits across the world’s news networks. But like any great traveling carnival, a few days later ticket holders will be left with an uncomfortable queasiness and a sense that they’ve somehow been cheated. Spectacle, not strategy. As the media fawned over the prospect of another Trump-Kim carnival, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived in Seoul for two days of talks with South Korean Foreign Minister…
On June 25, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ordered a “40-day influence operation” involving the use of drones to hit targets deep inside Russia. The goal, according to Zelensky, was to compel Russia “to end the war” and to restart negotiations from a position favorable to Ukraine. It does not appear to have succeeded. In fact, over this period, Russia was able to exploit three Ukrainian weaknesses to strengthen its position The first is Ukraine’s dangerous shortage of manpower, which has left gaps in the lines protecting the cities of the country’s “fortress belt.” Over the summer, Russia has steadily advanced…
There are mounting indications that NATO countries are gearing up for a military showdown with Russia. The latest one goes beyond the usual confrontational, Russophobic rhetoric coming from the European Union’s foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas, the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, or NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. It even goes beyond the deepening support of NATO members for increased military spending and for Kiev’s missile strikes deep inside Russia. As the journalist Eve Hartley noted last week in the Wall Street Journal, European powers are mulling longer terms of military conscription as well as drafting…
After World War II, Dems lost touch with their New Deal roots. Now they’re coming back home. Source link
Hasn’t Bill O’Reilly done enough harm beating the drums for America’s failed foreign wars? But he’s still around somewhere, trying to top his earlier act with more of his trademark fever-swamp rants, now offering advice to President Donald Trump on the Iran War. His latest advice is the stuff of world historic war crimes. The danger is acute. The president watches Fox News “incessantly.” No one is real in Trump-world unless they are seen on TV. Those who are real assume a larger-than-life influence if they’ve been Fox fixtures. The passageway between Fox News and the Trump administration is like…
Reading tea leaves can’t predict a person’s future, but it can capture a gullible clientele with immersive, meditative ritual. The same applies to what currently passes for Russia expertise in the U.S.-led West. Attention given to certain news events related to next month’s elections for the Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, serves as a perfect illustration. As the liberal Yabloko party got dropped from the ballot, a chorus of analysts came up with predictable claims that Putin increasingly fears his own people. Ukrainian deep strikes and Western sanctions, the story goes, have forced him to tighten the screws…
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon told the RCP podcast on Thursday about the Justice Department’s plan to deploy roughly 1,000 election monitors around the country during the 2026 midterm elections, and a longer-term effort to clean up voter rolls and election integrity regulations around the country. She argues the expanded effort is intended to improve public confidence, monitor compliance with federal election laws, and identify irregularities, in a situation where a review of state voter rolls has already discovered nearly 400,000 dead people and 30,000 non-citizens registered to vote.”And that’s just in my review of the one-third of states that…
Alexis Antonio Cedillos-Campos, 19, an illegal from El Salvador, was arrested this week for stabbing 42-year-old Carmen Lizet Puch to death, then dousing her body in gasoline. Source link
Reprinted with permission from Trita Parsi’s Substack. The Trump administration believes it has turned the tables on Iran. Washington assesses that the rerouting of maritime traffic through the Omani corridor, combined with a global shift away from Persian Gulf oil, has reduced the effectiveness of Tehran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz. At the same time, the U.S. blockade has sharply constrained Iran’s ability to sell its oil. The result, in Washington’s view, is a status quo that imposes greater costs on Iran than on the United States. That calculation changes the strategic equation. Rather than being forced to accommodate…
President Donald Trump announced what he described as “ECONOMIC D-DAY” against Iran Wednesday. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that the U.S. would target Iran with the “MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY!” He further warned that “ANY country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports, or government entities to provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences.” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi responded on X Thursday morning, calling the threats “a diversion from America’s own crisis: unprecedented debt & surging interest costs” and citing the U.S. national debt’s recent…