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    Cubans Feel the Blow of US Sanctions

    In Havana, Cuba, the effects of sanctions imposed by the Trump administration have seeped their way into daily life: the long lines of cars outside gas stations, the dwindling stock on store shelves, the increasingly common apagones, or power outages. In early September 2019, Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel appeared on live television to address the […] More

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    Trump’s Farcical “Vision for Peace” in the Middle East

    The long-awaited “deal of the century” crafted by Jared Kushner and presented by his father-in-law, US President Donald Trump, finally saw the light of day on January 28. Playing the role of the most brazenly dishonest of “honest brokers,” Trump, accompanied by legally (and morally) troubled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, triumphantly announced his “win-win” […] More

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    Donald Trump and Elon Musk Invent the Wheel

    No one can claim that US president Donald Trump lacks empathy for at least some of the downtrodden. Interviewed by CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump responded to a question about Elon Musk. Given all that Musk has been through in recent times, Trump acknowledges that the poor fellow deserves the pity […] More

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    Putin Proposes, Trump Disposes

    In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin is proposing a new constitution. Meanwhile, in Washington, US President Donald Trump is disposing of the old constitution. The first is a demonstration of power meant to showcase the unity of the Russian political system behind a strong leader. The second is an act of desperation that reveals the […] More

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    Evangelical Blues, or How Supporting Trump Discredits Christianity

    Now in the final year of his first — or only? — presidential term, Donald Trump is in trouble. Haunted time and again by new revelations of shady, if not criminal, behavior, and ridiculed by his political peers, even including UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Trump is universally loathed — with few exceptions, Israel’s increasingly […] More

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    For Ali Khamenei, Trump Isn’t a Solitary Clown

    The hardest part of publishing articles in the news is drafting the story’s headline. Headlines serve two essential purposes: to give a general idea of the subject that the article exposes and to trigger the reader’s curiosity or interest. Because the headline must be pithy, the second objective includes a serious risk of misrepresentation. A […] More

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    Is Trump Making Space Great Again?

    With a stroke of a pen, Donald Trump created an entirely new branch of the armed forces last year. It’s the first new branch of the US military since 1947. The Space Force is not exactly a new idea. It’s a revival of a Reagan-era initiative that had been set up to oversee missile defense, […] More

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    Trump’s Anti-Politics and the Assassination of Iran’s General Soleimani

    The dust has settled for the time being in the US-Iran duel. Retreating from the conflict, US President Donald Trump tweeted “all is well” in response to Iran’s retaliatory strikes on airbases in Iraq hosting US troops on January 8. Shortly after, he went back to his “go-to” deterrent of choice: sanctions. Faced with the possibility […] More