TORONTO — In a near repeat of Saudi Arabia’s feud with Qatar last year, the diplomatic spat between the Saudis and the Canadian government seems to have spiralled out of control after it began last Friday.
PERSIAN GULF — Long-seething tensions in the Middle East are coming to a boil once again as tit-for-tat verbal salvos between the U.S. and Iran have moved beyond tweets and declarations alone and are now shifting toward the realm of concrete actions and demonstrations of military force.
HAIFA, ISRAEL — On Wednesday, during a speech at a naval parade in Haifa, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to deploy the Israeli military to Yemen if the country’s resistance movement blocks the Bab al-Mandab Strait on Yemen’s western coast.
This is one way to get around draconian sanctions – an ‘old world’ approach to bartering your way towards growth and prosperity.
(MPN Op-ed) — Speaking in Madrid on Friday, Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno told an audience that WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange would need to leave Ecuador’s London embassy “eventually.” Moreno offered no time-table for Assange’s possible exit, which several sources just last week asserted could take place within “weeks” or even “days.” Assange has spent over […]
Saber-rattling threats can easily escalate, and the markets took notice, causing the price of oil to rise to $74 per barrel. The US has set November as the deadline for countries to get their imports of Iranian oil to “as close to zero as possible.” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the US will be lending its support to dissidents in Iran with a new 24/7 Farsi-language channel. [...]
In the first hour JP Sottile joins me to break down the recent Trump-Putin Summit in Helsinki. We start off with Trump’s recent reversal on comments he made stating that Russia didn’t interfere with the election. JP and I then get into the press conference itself and pick apart some of the major takeaways. JP talks about Bill Browder and Putin’s allegations about him and Hillary Clinton. We also talk about the strange “dry mouth” that Trump appeared to have during the presser and explore Trump’s possible health problems.
At some point along their quest for regime change, US officials must consider how ‘sanctions’ end up hurting everyday working people everywhere.
IMAGE: North Tehran by day. (Patrick Henningsen @21WIRE)
Antiwar.com
Obsessive media focus on President Trump’s personal indecencies undoubtedly contributes to important news stories not seeing the light of day. In that regard, it’s no wonder the U.S. public is generally unaware of U.S. military interventions in parts of the world, particularly in Latin America. That way, U.S. imperial excess gets a pass.
Political ramifications would be more likely if stories like two recent good examples from Argentina were known about. One of them is a warm-up to the other, which is the main show here.
