Politics

I’ve been pretty explicit in this space for some time about how I think the Donald J. Trump phenomenon is based in something real. I mean, the grievances to which he speaks are not phantoms. What I find impossible to accept is that Trump is anything other than a voice of resentment. If he offered some kind of way to redress those grievances, to do something concrete about them, things would be different. If he had the moral probity and personal character to lead others to solutions, things would be different.

Amid growing hostilities, the Philippines has impounded a North Korean cargo ship. The boat was seized following tough new UN sanctions introduced as a response to North Korea’s recent nuclear and ballistic missile tests. Speaking on state run radio on Saturday, the Presidential spokesman Manolo Quezon said that the 6,830-tonne vessel, Jin Teng ,would not be allowed to leave Subic port, north-east of the capital Manila, where it had been docked for three days. He also said the boats crew would be deported.

Overnight both freedom of press and democracy officially died in Turkey, with time of death just before midnight, when Turkish authorities stormed the Zaman daily, a newspaper staunchly opposed to president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and after using tear gas and water cannon they seized its headquarters in a dramatic raid that raised fresh alarm over declining media freedoms.

The police used water cannon late on Friday at a hundreds-strong crowd that had formed outside the headquarters of the Zaman daily in Istanbul following a court order issued earlier in the day.

Authored by Eric Zuesse,

Peter Ford, who was the UK’s Ambassador in Syria during 2003-2006, was asked by the BBC in their “The Big Questions” interview on February 14th, whether the current Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would have to be a part of the solution in that country after the war is over, and Ambassador Ford said: