Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
President Trump was obliged to hold a joint press conference when Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull visited the White House on Friday. This gave reporters an increasingly rare opportunity to question him in a formal setting. I feared they would waste the two questions Trump allowed to ask redundant ones about the Russia investigation. Therefore,… Read more.
President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Russia had information that the United States was planning to launch new missile strikes on Syria, and that there were plans to fake chemicals weapons attacks there. ‘We have information that a similar provocation is being prepared … in other parts of Syria including in the southern Damascus… Read more.
Syrian warplanes took off from an air base which was hit by US cruise missiles on Friday, and carried out air strikes on rebel-held areas in the eastern Homs countryside, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. (Reuters, April 7, 2017) Only God knows what “message” Trump thought he was sending with his pinprick strikes.… Read more.
The US military launched 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield late on Thursday, in the first direct American assault on the government of President Bashar al-Assad since that country’s civil war began six years ago. The operation, which the Trump administration authorized in retaliation for a chemical attack killing scores of civilians this… Read more.
The deadliest chemical weapons attack in years in Syria killed dozens of people in northern Idlib province on Tuesday morning, including children, and sickened scores more, according to medics, rescuers and witnesses in the rebel-held province, who said the gas had been delivered by a government airstrike. A few hours later, according to several witnesses,… Read more.
President Obama insisted – from the outset of the Syrian Civil War in 2011 – that it made no sense for the United States to go “all in” because there could be no military solution. No doubt he was mindful that the underlying sectarian conflict that gave rise to it had already bedeviled U.S. efforts,… Read more.
Egypt’s new capital city moved a step closer to reality with the announcement that Chinese developers will largely fund the mega project. The China Fortune Land Development Company (CFLD) agreed to provide $20 billion for the currently unnamed city, after a meeting between heads of the firm and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi. This… Read more.
A boy, covered in blood and in obvious shock, became the “image of the war” in Syria last week. It “sent shock waves around the world,” evoking conscience-stricken calls for the international community to “act now” to prevent a recurrence. The media abandoned all pretense of objectivity as it validated this reaction. On Monday’s edition of… Read more.
I have been venting exasperation with President Obama’s Bush-Lite war on terrorism almost from day one of his presidency – as such commentaries as “Obama Saluting War Dead Will Be Defining Image of His Presidency,” October 30, 2009, and “Demystifying ISIS: Case against Obama’s Bush-Lite War on Terrorism,” September 10, 2014, attest. I have been particularly… Read more.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has abruptly declared that he is withdrawing the majority of Russian troops from Syria, saying the six-month military intervention had largely achieved its objective… Western diplomatic sources were both sceptical and startled by Putin’s unexpected and mercurial move… Putin and US President Barack Obama spoke on the phone on Monday,… Read more.
