Donald Trump

Tom ENGELHARDT

The Defender 2020 in Europe is set to be the third-largest military exercise on the continent since the Cold War

As people march off to the polls today to pick their favorite political actor of the year, I hear precious few voices openly asking what seem to me to be obvious questions, like WHO produced the movie that is their candidacy? Who directed it? Who wrote the script? Who are the investors that will be expecting to see returns on their investment, if their movie and their best actor should somehow win? And how far do the networks of wealth, influence and control extend beyond those public faces inside the campaign?

UN Secretary-General António Guterres received an honorary degree from the New School university in New York City on Feb. 17. He spoke at length on “women and power,” blaming patriarchy for the injustices inflicted on women and girls. MARK GARTEN/UN PHOTO 
With International Women’s Day, March 8, on the horizon, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres blasted the intractable power of patriarchy, the cause of overwhelming gender injustice and an abuse of historical proportions, in his view.

People have always wondered what makes America so paranoid. The historian Richard Hofstadter wrote about it in 1964 in a famous Harper’s essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” that he later expanded into a book.

Richard Grenell, until recently US ambassador to Germany, is now acting national director of intelligence. He has worked for a Moldovan politician whom the US has accused of corruption, and the author of this op-ed, a former Moldovan ambassador to the UN, says that “knowingly or not,” Grenell tolerated the politician’s deceit.

Few in Israel expect the country’s third general election in a year to end with a markedly different outcome from the previous two. Barring a last-minute upset, most of those turning out on Monday assume the political stalemate will continue. There are already rumblings from politicians of an imminent fourth round of voting.
Paradoxically, much of the Israeli electorate – at least the Jewish majority – agrees on political fundamentals. They believe it is time to permanently seize much of the territory that was one day meant to form the basis of a Palestinian state.

Judicial proceedings are taking place in DC federal court where the judge has ruled inadmissible the question whether the democratically elected Nicolás Maduro or the Trump-chosen Juan Guaidó is the legitimate president of Venezuela.

Throughout the history of Western Civilization there are times, but only on rare occasions, when people en masse feel compelled to run into the streets, similar to the storming of the Bastille 1789, screaming at the top of their lungs: “Stop the Madness!”

Ben Norton reports from Nicaragua, where the US embassy and OAS successfully lobbied for the release of violent criminals who…
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