United States

Apparently Trump's efforts to call out reporters for their biased, misleading, inaccurate and/or often just outright false reporting (A.K.A. "Fake News") is now tantamount to endorsing human rights abuses by dictators the world over...at least according to Politico.  Per an article published earlier this morning, Politico argues that "by aligning themselves with Trump’s words, despots have been able to use the U.S. president as a shield for their attacks on press freedom and human rights."

Authored by Robert McCoy via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

While the military and political environments on the Korean Peninsula have evolved, American policy towards the North has not changed since 1991

North Korea’s Hwasong-14 ICBM. Photo: KCNA via Reuters

The reality is North Korea has nuclear weapons – perhaps thermonuclear bombs – and they are probably miniaturized enough to fit atop its missiles, one of which will soon be, if not already, able to reach all parts of the continental United States.

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

In the first two installments of this series, I discussed the potential for the U.S. federal government to make some spectacularly foolish moves against its own people in the realms of cannabis and Bitcoin.

My basic assumption is that government tends to despise freedom, and that “leaders” of an empire in decline like the U.S. are particularly vulnerable to very bad decisions.

What a difference a year makes: last December, just as the ECB was about to shock the market with the announcement of its first €20 billion QE tapering, macroeconomic data mattered, especially since the Fed's tightening intertia appeared to truly be data-dependent, if only for a very short period of time.

On Thursday, the Palestinian armed group al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades announced in an official statement that its fighters fired several rockets from Gaza strip targeting Israeli settlements north of it. The statement was released by al-Nasser Salah al-Deen news agency “al-Buraq” and the armed group stressed that this is only the first response to Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and warned that more will follow.