Earlier this month Duterte visited three Chinese warships on Mindanao island in the Philippines—the first Chinese navy port call to the country since 2010.
Earlier this month Duterte visited three Chinese warships on Mindanao island in the Philippines—the first Chinese navy port call to the country since 2010.
The new pick for U.S. trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, recently signaled the new administration’s get-tough approach to China over trade issues.
Against a backdrop of growing islamophobia, we are compelled to ask an urgent question: are Islamic values compatible with Western values?
The new U.S. administration’s unorthodox diplomacy will run up against the U.S.’ own national security establishment, as well as those of China and Russia.
Tuesday’s voyage of the destroyer USS Lassen through waters claimed by China in the South China Sea had the potential to escalate an already tense situation.
With the announcement of a presidential bid by Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton on April 12, many are starting to question what impact another Clinton in the White House would have on the world’s largest nation, China.
Last weekend, Israeli media sources the Times of Israel and Channel 10 reported that United States President Barack Obama did not support Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace efforts. The Times of Israel article wrote, “Citing unnamed sources close to the negotiations, Channel 10 news said that Kerry sought Obama’s ‘political backing for confrontation […]
In the end, Terry, Diaz and Meyer found themselves on the sharp end of the stick for their efforts: the US Department of Justice, agencies like DHS and the Department of State, and the usual entourage of corporate and political underwriters, including the government of Mexico, all had a hand in creating scenarios designed to transform good guys into villains, narratives that ended in Terry’s death at the hands of a cartel gunman, Diaz’s imprisonment for ‘exercising excessive force’ during the arrest of a suspected drug trafficker, and in Meyer’s case, the loss of a high-paying job with a multinational defense contractor, and blowback that now has this decorated young veteran on the ropes in the court of public opinion. Let me tell you something. The only ‘mental problem’ from which Meyer suffers is a chronic case of integrity, an inability to distort the truth to accommodate political reality.
Consider–if Terry, Diaz and Meyer had ‘occupied Wall Street’ instead of the killing zones along our SW border and in Afghanistan, they might have been poster boys for the March of History, and on top of it all, alive, free, and gainfully employed.
…evidence that the US did in fact sign such an agreement with Mexico, authorizing ATF, in cooperation with Mexican authorities, to implement the gun-walking ‘sting’ that provided Mexican gunman with killing tools used to fire on and murder US agents would corroborate the intent and involvement, at the highest levels, of ATF officials, of the Attorney General (either Holder or his representatives would have had to sign off on the operation), and of the President of the United States—who, as Holder’s supervisor, must be held accountable for the decisions and actions of his subordinates.
It would be difficult, as well, to believe that Eric Holder would have undertaken such a risky endeavor, such a politically sensitive gamble, without a discussion having occurred between Holder and Obama before the implementation of the ATF operation. The stakes, in terms of US-Mexico relations, would have just been too high.
Did the US get away clean? Almost. As close to it, maybe, as Fate allows. For the past few days, another story, a sidebar to the bigger report, has been gaining steam: one of the Stealth Blackhawks used to invade the bin Laden compound crashed as a result of a ‘hard landing.’ An accident. No matter. It turns out that the Stealth Helicopters used to transport the Navy SEALs are “never-before-seen,” state-of-the-art military technology, composed of carbon fibers that resist standard detection by the enemy. Cutting edge, top-secret, and not available to the world.
The discovery of a drug tunnel, no matter how long it may be or how lavishly outfitted–even the seizure of millions in coke or marijuana–means nothing, unless it leads authorities, in hot pursuit on both sides of the border, up the criminal hierarchies, to the drug lords, and their corrupt accomplices in the police, military, banks, business, and government. To everybody waiting, in Mexico and the US, for their ‘taste.’