Politics

According to a media report from Beirut, the Israeli army has heavily deployed troops and equipment along the Lebanese border and stepped up its military activities there. The latest report comes after the Beirut-based al-Akhbar newspaper said on Saturday that Israel was seeking to launch a new war on Lebanon. Press TV reports: For the second day on Wednesday, Israeli troops fired tear gas canisters at Lebanese herders and farmers working near the border with the occupied Palestinian territories, The Daily Star reported.

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

The United States is in the final stages of negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive free-trade agreement with Mexico, Canada, Japan, Singapore and seven other countries. Who will benefit from the TPP? American workers? Consumers? Small businesses? Taxpayers? Or the biggest multinational corporations in the world?

 

Did you watch the GOP debate last night? I did, and there were distressingly few instances of penis-comparing or other tabloid moments. It was actually a sober exchange. It may well have been Marco Rubio’s best debate ever. He will probably make a good president one day, but not this time. If that Rubio had been present at the New Hampshire debate instead of Robo-Rubio, we would probably be looking at a different scenario now. If, if, if. Ted Cruz was composed and articulate, but, as my boss tweeted last night:

US President Barack Obama has blasted the UK and France over their Libya policy in the aftermath of the 2011 overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Blaming them for the current chaos in Libya, he referred to the situation as a “mess”and in private called it a “s**t show.” In an interview interview with the Atlantic, Obama said he was wrong to believe the allies would be “invested in the follow-up” to Gaddafi’s ouster.

Julia Ioffe talked to some Russian officials and experts about the silly idea that refusing to attack Syria in 2013 encouraged Russian intervention in Ukraine, and this is what they told her:

“Wow, it’s kind of a revelation what you just said,” said a very surprised source from the Russian Foreign Ministry, who was not authorized to speak on the record, on hearing the question. “It’s not tied to any kind of reality. These things are not connected to each other in any way.”