Donald Trump

The stepping back from the brink of war last week seems to have been achieved by the Trump administration and Iran both working together behind the scenes to coordinate a face-saving de-escalation. Both sides knew war would be disastrous and balked. At least for now.
Iran’s barrage of ballistic missiles on two U.S. bases in Iraq in the early hours of January 8 was more a symbolic show of defiance by the Islamic Republic than any serious attempt to inflict American casualties.

The magazine Index On Censorship was founded way back in 1972. I can’t say I have ever been enamoured with it, although I did contribute a couple of news reports in 1990, for which if I recall, I was not paid.

Trump’s response to the attack on two US military bases showcase a hopeful about face on a dark age agenda which many thought could lead nowhere but World War III in the immediate days following Soleimani’s murder on January 3.

This year, the status of women on many fronts, from political involvement to personal justice, will be evaluated in international forums. It is widely recognized, for starters, that women in poor countries need more access to information on basic health care for themselves and their families. Here, polio vaccination in Afghanistan. CREATIVE COMMONS

The United States is relying more heavily on illegal unilateral coercive measures (also known as economic sanctions) in place of war or as part of its build-up to war. In fact, economic sanctions are an act of war that kills tens of thousands of people each year through financial strangulation. An economic blockade places a country under siege.

In the 2016 science fiction sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence, actor Jeff Goldblum, describing the targeting priorities of aliens invading the Earth, says, “They like to get the landmarks.” In both Independence Day and its sequel, movie viewers were treated to scenes of macabre-looking extraterrestrials destroying the Empire State Building, the White House, Los Angeles’s Tower Records building, and London’s Tower Bridge and “the Eye” wheel.

Daniel LARISON
Walter Russell Mead makes another far-fetched claim:

President Trump, with Vice President Pence, White House advisers and military personnel, speaking on Jan. 8, 2020, about Iran’s missile strikes against Iraqi military bases housing US troops, days after Trump ordered the killing of Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani. Much of the current crisis, the author writes in an analysis, stems from Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Iran nuclear deal. WHITE HOUSE PHOTO

“Pelosi is crushing McConnell, step by strategic step.”
So a true-blue liberal website known as the Daily Kos declared in a bizarre headline last month. It’s as good an example as any of how completely Democrats have retreated into a fantasy world all their own.

Press TV – January 12, 2020 Defence secretary, Ben Wallace, has warned that in future Britain may have to contemplate fighting wars without the United States. In an interview with the Sunday Times, Wallace made the extraordinary claim that the prospect of the United States retreating from a global leadership role under Donald Trump keeps […]