“The good news is that the recently passed Republican tax reform package partially shifted the country to a territorial tax system. The bad news is that it only benefits companies.”
Read more: https://reason.com/archives/2018/02/12/americas-punishing-worldwide-t
“A controversial Israeli law passed by the country’s parliament, the Knesset, in 2011, allows Israeli individuals, corporations, and even the state itself to punish anyone who supports the boycott of Israel itself, or Israeli owned businesses.”
Read more: https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2018/2/5/israels-attempt-to-criminalise-bds
“Syria’s government on Tuesday rejected efforts led by the United Nations to form a committee to rewrite Syria’s constitution, the main result of a peace congress among Syrian groups in Russia last month. Participants at the Sochi congress, a centerpiece of diplomatic efforts by Damascus’ ally Russia to end the war, agreed on Jan. 30 to set up the constitutional committee in Geneva, and to hold democratic elections in Syria.”
“Saudi Arabia has recruited an array of foreign consultants and public relations firms to draw up and promote its new multi-billion dollar aid plan for Yemen, one that could reduce imports of vital goods into a key rebel-held port.”
“I can’t help but wonder whether the North Korean people are more afraid of their government than Samsung, Nike, and other big businesses are scared of the U.S. government. I also can’t help but wonder whether it matters to a North Korean whether he dies from North Korean socialist policies or U.S. sanctions policies.”
Read more: https://www.fff.org/2018/02/12/patheticism-u-s-sanctions-north-korea/
“February 7, 2002 remains a grim day in the modern American calendar, and one that, I think, should be marked every year, along with other key dates — August 1, 2002, for example, when the ‘torture memos,’ seeking to redefine torture so that it could be used by the CIA, were issued by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, written by John Yoo and approved by his boss, Jay Bybee, and December 2, 2002, when Donald Rumsfeld approved his own specific torture program for use at Guantánamo, which was initially intended for use on just one prisoner, Mohammed al-Qahtani, but which ended up being used on one in six of the prisoners, according to a former interrogator who spoke to Neil A. Lewis for a New York Times article in January 2005.”
“George W. Bush should have permanently taught Americans that presidents are most dangerous when seeking to con the nation into unnecessary wars — for democracy or any other pretext. Unfortunately, the recent media consecration of Bush may be expunging that bitter lesson.”
“The debt has increased 123 percent over the past decade as the nation sought to break free of the financial crisis and the tepid growth that followed. Total debt is now nearly 105 percent of gross domestic product, just shy of its highest level since World War II. The most recent Congressional Budget Office projections have the trajectory leading to a debt-to-GDP ratio of 150 percent by 2047, well past the point where financial crises typically occur. In addition, the budget deficit is likely to swell, with the CBO projecting an increase from 2.9 percent of GDP in 2017 to 9.8 percent in 2047.”
Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/13/us-security-chief-calls-national-debt-a-dire-threat.html
“With US forces holding the purse strings and oil fields in Syria, the US intends to make Syria an international pariah state much like North Korea.”
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/us-syria-assad-remove-north-korea-2018-2
“‘I refused to secretly spy,’ he said, ‘because my honor meant more to me than my freedom.’ His prosecution was political, he said, an extension of the bitter rivalry between the nation of his birth and the one where he’d chosen to spend his life.”
Read more: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/05/ahmad-sheikhzadeh-spy-iran-nuclear-program-fbi/