International issues

It's virtually certain that Trump will go down in history as one of the worst American presidents. Probably the worst'est of them all. His first term was horrible. His second term is an even scarier horror show of incompetence, immorality, incoherence, and incessant lying. But other than that, he does seem fairly capable of remodeling White House bathrooms. There will be a lot of competition for Trump's greatest failure. Tariffs, Iran war, inflation, election interference, killing of innocent protesters, decimating science programs, attacking journalists -- to name but a few of Trump's least favorite hits. I suspect that one issue…

I just checked. Sadly, The Onion satirical news site doesn't seem to have a story yet about Trump announcing today that he plans to charge ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz a 20% toll after the United States takes control of the Strait, because Trump is upset that Iran has been seeking to charge ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz a smaller toll when they had control of the Strait. This absurdity would be funny if it wasn't so deadly serious. After all, Trump's Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said just a few weeks ago: No country is…

I should have known. Not to say to people, "I'm enjoying the World Cup, in part because soccer is one place where Trump isn't mentioned." Except now he is, having interfered in FIFA's, the soccer (football to the rest of the world) federation's, decision to issue a red card to a star American player that disqualified him from the United States team's match in the round of 16 against Belgium tomorrow. Trump screws up everything. So I guess it isn't surprising that he has screwed up the World Cup. It's just another reason for the rest of the world to…

On the advice of a friend, I just finished watched Chernobyl, a five-episode HBO miniseries about the 1986 nuclear plant disaster in what is now Ukraine, but at that time was part of the Soviet Union. This historical drama aired in 2019 during the first Trump administration. Which is fitting, because a central theme in Chernobyl is how far Soviet authorities were willing to go to keep the truth about the disaster from becoming known. To the people who lived near the nuclear plant. To the workers charged with dealing with the meltdown. To the world at large. Authoritarian regimes…

If you've been in a coma for the past ten years and have just returned to everyday consciousness, here's something important for you to know: Donald Trump is the president of the United States and he's an incessant liar. A world-class liar, in fact. Trump also is a sociopath, since he couldn't care less how his lies affect other people and, indeed, the entire world. For the rest of us, what I've just said is what we've been suffering with for over a decade. Trumpian lie after lie after lie. Many times a day, every day, virtually nonstop. This was…

Unless Trump reaches a deal with Iran's leaders, he says that tomorrow, at 5 pm on April 7, Pacific time, he will order our military to destroy every power plant and bridge in Iran within four hours. That destruction, Trump says, will take Iran 100 years to repair, sending the country "back to the Stone Age." This horrific act would be a war crime. No doubt about it. I only hope that our military leaders have more sense than Trump and refuse to carry out his illegal orders. Unfortunately, that seems unlikely, since Pete Hegseth, the Defense Department Secretary, has…

If you didn't see the 20 minute speech Trump gave yesterday in prime time, depriving Americans in several time zones of some actual quality television watching, congratulations. You saved yourself from 1/3 of an hour of what amounted to Trump reading from his recent Truth Social posts. I listened to the speech as I was driving home from my Tai Chi class, so I didn't waste any time on the speech. In short, Trump said nothing new, intelligent, or useful. He lied about all kinds of things (no big surprise). He didn't articulate a clear reason for why he started…

Trump lies incessantly. Always has. Always will. He'll never stop lying until his last falsehood gasping breath. All of Trump's lies are despicable. But the lies Trump told about why he started a war with Iran are beyond despicable, because they've cost the lives of thousands of people so far, including thirteen American service members. Trump has thrown out a variety of reasons for the Iran war. None of them make much sense. However, his favorite reason, because it is the scariest, is that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States because Iran was close to having a…

I'm no fan of Iran. I don't know anyone who is. For sure, Iran had to be prevented from building a nuclear weapon. But they were nowhere close to being able to do this. And eight months ago Trump said that the Iranian nuclear program had been obliterated by U.S. strikes, leaving them years away from being able to fashion a nuclear weapon, and about a decade away from having a ICBM capable of striking our country with a nuclear bomb. So clearly there was no imminent threat to the United States from Iran. But Trump attacked anyway, for reasons…

After three days of intense bombing of Iran by the Israeli and American military, I'm becoming increasingly worried that Iran is going to become the new Gaza: lots of civilian deaths even though those people had nothing to do with the purported reason for going to war, and large swaths of the country reduced to rubble even though destroyed areas had no military significance. I'm going to let tweets shared today by some of the people that I follow on X, formerly known as Twitter, do most of the speaking for me. The beauty of X, as with Blue Sky,…

Last night I was enjoying a hot bath, about to read more of an entertaining thriller novel, when I noticed that a real-life "thriller" message had appeared on my iPhone. The New York Times was reporting that Israel had attacked Iran. Soon that was followed by additional news. The United States also was attacking Iran. My wife and I weren't about to trade watching more of the new season of Bridgerton for CNN or MSNBC, but by chance Trump's address to the nation about the Iran attack was on just before we headed off to bed. We wondered why Trump…

Since I'm a big fan of Apple TV's terrific spy thriller, Tehran, from watching the third season of this Israeli production I know that the fanatical clerics who control Iran have been seeking a nuclear weapon. That's obvious from both the fictional plot of Tehran, and the reality of Iran's nuclear ambitions. Virtually nobody in the world wants to see the wacko Islamist fundamentalist rulers of Iran get a nuclear bomb. Back when Obama was president, a treaty was reached with Iran that prevented Iran from enriching uranium to the level needed for a bomb. Since the treaty was working…

When it comes to Trump demanding that the United States own Greenland, trying to figure out why our Authoritarian-in-Chief is so obsessed with this reminds me of Carrie's evidence wall in Homeland -- where Claire Danes' bipolar CIA agent character would pin oodles of photos, clippings, post-it notes, and such, sometimes connected with strings, in an attempt to figure out who lay behind a terrorist plot. Fortunately, Trump isn't nearly as sophisticated as the evildoers in Homeland. While it can be really tough to figure out what Trump will do, because he changes his mind so often he doesn't even…

It's beyond embarrassing to have a president of the United States behave with less maturity than a three year old. But here we are, stuck with Toddler Trump in the Oval Office for the foreseeable future. Trump loves to play with his military toys. He was positively gleeful after our competent armed forces abducted Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela, last weekend. But like I said in my previous post, there's plenty of reasons to believe that after this initial tactical success, in the long run Trump's Venezuelan caper will go badly. Well, also in the short run. Because it's…

I'm tempted to say that Trump just did the unthinkable. But when it comes to all things Trumpian, thinking usually is the farthest thing from the Donald's mind. So for our Authoritarian-in-Chief, nothing is unthinkable, because everything is just whim, primal urges with no coherent thoughts. I'm confident that attacking Venezuela so American special forces could abduct President Nicolas Maduro and his wife is going to turn out badly. The main reason I say this is simple: whatever Trump does almost always turns out badly. So the odds are strongly in my favor. Trump's tariffs have turned out badly. Trump's…

There are many sins against humanity that Donald Trump can never be forgiven. One sin, among many, is Trump so often siding with Putin, Russia's dictator, against Zelenskyy, Ukraine's democratically-elected president. Trump simply has no moral center, no values to guide him other than what seems best for Donald Trump. He couldn't care less about Ukraine defending itself against the unprovoked invasion by Russia in February 2022. Biden didn't do enough to help Ukraine either, but at least his heart was in the right place, and Biden successfully advocated for Congressional support in the form of weapons and financial assistance.…