|By James M. Dorsey| A series of Gulf and Middle East-related developments suggest that resolving some of the Middle East’s most debilitating and devastating crises while ensuring that efforts to pressure Iran do not perpetuate the mayhem may be easier said than done. They also suggest that the same is true for keeping US and Saudi interests aligned. Optimists garner hope from the fact that the US Senate may […]
|By Matein Khalid| US and global equities surged on news of the US House of Representatives pass the tax reform bill, Cisco and Walmart posted blowout earnings and a potential bidding war emerged for Fox’s media assets. The rally on Thursday followed a week of carnage in the US high yield debt markets, flattening of the US Treasury yield curve and losses in the major stock market indices worldwide. […]
When The Washington Post broke the story this week that President Trump shared highly classified intelligence from a U.S. ally with Russia, not everything the reporters knew made it into print. Halfway through the story, this paragraph referring to the ISIS plot revealed by Trump appeared: “The Post is withholding most plot details, including the name of the city, at the urging of officials who warned that […]
Good morning. Here’s our morning roundup of all the media news you need to know. Want to get this briefing in your inbox every morning? Subscribe here. A few more Americans now know H.R. McMaster, who resembles an aging Mr. Clean with horn-rimmed glasses. But they don’t know him nearly as well as Tom Ricks. His journalism experience reveals a distinct reason to doubt McMaster’s defense of […]
President Donald Trump‘s controversial travel ban has reached the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, with a three-judge panel discussing its constitutionality on Monday, May 15. Trump first issued a travel ban preventing people from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. Affected countries included Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Yemen and Somalia. The ban stirred great controversy and opposition, and a U.S. judge granted emergency stay. Faced with […]
Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation, With Moon Jae-In’s victory in South Korea, the period of tension on the Korean Peninsula is likely to end. With the rise to power of the new president, South Korea can expect a sharp decline in hostilities with North Korea as well as a resumption of dialogue with China. An expected and highly anticipated victory was confirmed in South Korea on […]
Good morning. Here’s our morning roundup of all the media news you need to know. Want to get this briefing in your inbox every morning? Subscribe here. Washington was convulsed last night by icy nastiness, harsh language and people crying foul. Oh, that was the deciding game in a hockey playoff between the historically hard-luck Washington Capitals and Pittsburgh Penguins, just one of three major sports distractions […]
What should we make of the global ransomware attacks which happened today? We’ve documented that the intelligence services intentionally create digital vulnerabilities, then intentionally leave them open … leaving us exposed and insecure. Washington’s Blog asked the highest level NSA whistleblower ever* – Bill Binney – what he thinks of the attacks. Binney told us: This is what I called short sighted finite thinking on the part […]
A shake-up of the overarching Israel Broadcasting Authority — widely considered an outdated and wasteful enterprise — has been decades in the making. At one point it was said to have had up to 18 unions for about 1,800 employees. Israeli officials and experts across the political spectrum said that reform was essential. Continue reading the main story But the way it is unfolding appears chaotic and […]
By Dustin Volz | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON A U.S. far-right online activist credited with initially sharing on Twitter hacked emails from the French presidential campaign of centrist Emmanuel Macron is the latest conservative media figure to receive White House access from the Trump administration. Jack Posobiec, a Washington-based writer at the Rebel Media, a Canadian online political and social news commentary platform, attended the daily press briefing on […]