The rolling musical chairs continues. Mike Pompeo of the CIA is expected to be nominated as the new US Secretary of State as Rex Tillerson, long seen as an irritant to the President, is summoned back from Africa. Pompeo, 30 December 1963, is more hawkish than Tillerson on Iran which appears to … Read more
The Skripal attempted assassinations have brought the Sergei Magnitsky affair back into the headlines, as well as Deutsche Bank scandal, money-laundering suspect Russian funds into the New York property market, which may impact on the Mueller Investigation. Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer, imprisoned after reporting officials for major fraud and died as … Read more
There’s a welter of claims, counter-claims and hot denials flying over the Stormy Daniels affaire. She’s a porn star who allegedly had a one night stand with Donald Trump four months after his youngest son Barron was born; and was paid off by his lawyer in a confidentiality agreement just before the … Read more
The Eurosceptics have swung the Italian election, where immigration and the economy were the two key issues in addition to political corruption. The two parties garnering most votes campaigned on a radical overhaul of the EU’s legally binding restrictions on public spending and low taxes. The result is being compared with Brexit … Read more
Rick Scott, Governor of Florida, was headlined as reversing his long-held support for the NRA in saying under-21s should be barred from owning guns after the Stoneman Douglas shooting. Though he still voted against any restrictions on assault weapons and is deemed not to have given up much. He can’t stand for Governor … Read more
Two were missed off the White House whirlygig (below) – Gary Cohn and HR McMaster. Cohn, Trump’s top economic adviser, has been rumoured to be on the brink of leaving for months but stayed to stop the president from imposing steep tariffs. He believes passionately that protectionism is economically backward and won’t … Read more
An epidemic of conspiracy theories is another sign of our time. Mass shootings become ‘false flags’ staged by governments. Teenage survivors telling their stories are dubbed crisis-actors. Attempts to censor these delusional rants are taken as proof of a conspiracy to bury the truth. Mob hysteria, or Mass Psychogenic Illness (MPI), has always … Read more
There are a dizzying number of disagreements spewing out of the Oval office, so for clarity sake I’ll skip some of the astro-detail. Jared Kushner has had his security clearance downgraded, preventing him seeing top level intelligence, because of concerns that foreign countries were in a position to take advantage of his complex … Read more
The ‘eloquent, purposeful, and clear-eyed’ response from the pupils of Stoneman Douglas School to the killing of 17 of their friends has evoked admiration (mainly). The reaction does seem different with this mass shooting, as if teenagers have had enough. An insightful piece in Slate (URL below) notes some of their tactics: *Give … Read more
After North Korea’s diplomatic triumph at the Winter Olympics, the jousting is back as the US administration redoubles its effort to starve Pyongyang of resources and force it to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Quite how Kim Jong Un will respond to Trump’s announcement of the “heaviest” ever set of U.S. sanctions against North Korea … Read more