Politics

This weekend may set a new record for number of Trump tweets and retweets. Starting with his congratulations on the Senate's passage of Tax Reform, Trump has interacted no less than 17 times with his social platform, although things seemed to accelerate following his Saturday noon tweet in which Trump responded to Flynn's plea agreement in which the president said that "I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"

A rabidly anti-Trump FBI agent who was fired from Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation relied on claims made in a largely unsubstantiated and highly salacious dossier provided by Washington DC-based opposition research firm, Fusion GPS - which enlisted former MI6 agent Christopher Steele to assemble the 34-page 'Dirty Dossier' in mid-2016.

Authored by M K Bhadrakumar via The Asia Times,

As on the soccer field in his youth, so in a tumultuous political career spanning four decades: Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has consistently shown his mettle as a fighter who won’t be satisfied with anything short of total victory. 

But in the battle that is now unfolding around him, and which is besieging him, there isn’t going to be a winner.

Submitted by South Front

On Friday a senior US official told Reuters that US President Donald Trump may deliver a speech next Wednesday recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Some Middle East experts speculate that such a move will be a major blow to the US relations with Arab countries and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. No US president or any western leader have ever recognized Israel’s control over all of Jerusalem.

We like Iceland, we’ve never been there, but that doesn’t matter. Besides the outstanding natural beauty, Iceland, unlike the US, UK and practically everywhere else, holds bankers accountable. Last time we checked, 29 had been jailed. As we discussed, it also holds its leaders accountable (partially – see below) when they are complicit in exonerating convicted child rapists. Such an event brought down Iceland’s government in September.