Politics

To awaken Thursday to front-page photos of U.S. sailors kneeling on the deck of their patrol boat, hands on their heads in postures of surrender, on Iran’s Farsi Island, brought back old and bad memories.

In January 1968, LBJ’s last year, 82 sailors of the Pueblo were captured by North Korea and held hostage with Captain Lloyd “Pete” Bucher, and abused and tortured for a year before release.

In the final 444 days of the Carter presidency, 52 Americans were held hostage in Tehran, and released only when Ronald Reagan raised his hand to take the oath.

Submitted by Tom Kool via OilPrice.com,

The great Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - the long-time dictator of crude oil prices for the world - is struggling on all fronts.

The Saudis are losing their proxy wars in both Syria and Yemen; their OPEC leadership is under threat; they are not winning the crude oil price war; and its long-running alliance with the West is in question.

Iranian naval Commander Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi has accused Washington of going ahead with their plans of a Middle East war amid ongoing and deliberately orchestrated chaos and violence originating from the Pentagon. The Commander says that Washington is intentionally provoking Iran into military escalation, due to a desire for World War 3. Globalresearch.ca reports: His remarks followed seizure of two small US vessels illegally operating in Iranian waters, briefly detaining their crew members.

Israel have canceled a planned primary election for party leadership, placing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the leader of Israel until at least 2023.  An internal court ruled that the Likud Party should not spend the $1 million needed to hold a vote . Sputniknews.com reports: “In these conditions, the election is no longer necessary and Likud leadership has declared the winner as Benjamin Netanyahu,” a Likud spokesman told AFP.

Newly released emails from Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reveal that the former Secretary of State met regularly with criminal Henry Kissinger.  The pair met regularly and had an unusually close relationship, the emails reveal. Kissinger applauded Clinton’s foreign policy in a particularly revealing handwritten message.