Over the past few weeks, Paris and France at large have been rocked by the gillet jaunes ('yellow vests'), who have taken to the streets. The protestors were ostensibly motivated by French President Emmanuel Macron's fuel tax, that puts disproportionate stress on rural French ...read more
Donald Trump announced this weekend that the United States will withdraw from the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (or INF for short) because Russia has "not honored" it. At his rally in Nevada, he offered up a word salad of an explanation, which may please both ...read more
Before I began to seriously practice Martial Arts, I thought that guys with the biggest muscles and the meanest looks were the toughest fighters. I would always be awed by guys in my secondary school (that's high school for you Americans) who could lift lots of weight and had ...read more
Standing between the complete break down of the international framework that has kept world peace for the past 70 years is one man -- Emmanuel Macron, the independent centrist who made it to the second round of the French presidential election this past weekend. Macron will be ...read more
There have probably been thousands of articles and parodies written about Donald Trump since he secured the Republican nomination and rode a wave of white nationalism and racism into the Oval Office, but nothing can ever come close to matching the dick-swinging insanity that ...read more
In the wake of Vladimir Putin's continued expansionist aggression in Crimea and the Ukraine, Sweden -- one of the world's most peaceful and stable countries -- is reinstituting military conscription. From NPR: Amid escalating anxieties over recent Russian activities, Sweden has ...read more
In the middle of Donald Trump's ongoing meltdown, Steve Bannon still had time to instruct Trump to have Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reduce the United States to a sleazy extortion racket: BRUSSELS — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, echoing his boss in Washington, warned on ...read more
Let's just dispense with the pleasantries and call Donald Trump what he is: a bourgeoning traitor to the United States of America. There's a very strong possibility he's been compromised by Vladimir Putin, so says a detailed report that our intelligence agencies had enough ...read more
The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From The Guardian: The retreat of western forces from Afghanistan could come sooner than expected, the head of Nato has said as he conceded that the recent Taliban strategy of "green on blue" killings had been successful in sapping morale. In ...read more
NATO leaders sealed a landmark agreement on Monday to hand control of Afghanistan over to its own security forces by the middle of next year, putting the Western alliance on an "irreversible" path out of an unpopular, decade-long war. A NATO summit in Chicago formally ...read more
The lawyer representing a US soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians in their homes has said there is little proof of his client's guilt. John Henry Browne said there was "no forensic evidence" against Staff Sgt Robert Bales and "no confession". He also dismissed ...read more
Prospects for an orderly withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan suffered two blows on Thursday as President Hamid Karzai demanded that the United States confine troops to major bases by next year, and the Talibanannounced that they were suspending peace talks with the ...read more
It was only a matter of time before the political and economic reality set in for team Rick Perry. Their candidate, a religious nut and corporate hack was only going to appeal to the base of the party - not the crucial middle needed to win a general election. Perry's ...read more
Glenn Greenwald tears into progressives heralding the victory in Libya as a symbol of Obama's foreign policy wisdom: I'm genuinely astounded at the pervasive willingness to view what has happened in Libya as some sort of grand triumph even though virtually none of the ...read more
(Prince Turki al-Faisal - Image via Wikipedia) According to a report in the Guardian, the Saudi government is planning on building nuclear capabilities in response to Iran's proposed nuclear program: A senior Saudi Arabian diplomat and member of the ruling royal family has ...read more
Image via Wikipedia Bob Cesca responds to the Republican's new tactic of defunding the war in Libya: Just to recap, if anyone opposed the $1 trillion war in Iraq, they were branded as unpatriotic America-haters. But our limited assistance in a NATO mission is worthy of ...read more
