mentalunrest’s 2016 Person of the Year

I’ve decided to riff on Time Magazine and name my own Person of the Year, plus four entries for the short list. Needless to say that my take will differ a bit. 1. Vladimir Putin The Russia President changed the decades-long Neoliberal regime change machine in addition to changing the West’s entire narrative. Do a word cloud […]

PUTIN SHOWS OBAMA WHAT ‘DEGRADE AND DESTROY’ ISLAMIC STATE LOOKS LIKE

Did Russia just pull a fast one on the US by withdrawing military forces from Syria? Well, before we get to that — do you remember when President Obama shared his plan to “Degrade and destroy” Islamic State (or ISIL or ISIS)? You know — the group that talked about establishing a brutal, medieval-era caliphate; […]

RANDOM RUSSIA-ISIL-US THOUGHTS

Russia, now on its fourth day of bombing Islamic State and other terrorist fighters in Syria, estimated that its operation will conclude in 3-4 months. This means Russia will have been able to accomplish what the US has been trying to do for over a year — “degrade and destroy” ISIL. Remember that? Russia’s success […]

EU GIVES RUSSIA THE UKRAINE HEAD FAKE – AND OTHER NEWS

Russia President Vladimir Putin must be having a Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot moment after the latest Ukraine events. Putin negotiated with Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko, Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s François Holland in Minsk for hours to hammer out a ceasefire agreement between the Ukrainian government and the eastern Ukraine rebels. As a side note, the US was […]

APEC NOTES: WHAT’S LEFT FOR OBAMA, PUTIN OR JINGPING TO SAY?

I want to post some thoughts about the latest APEC summit since most news agencies either ignored key events in the months prior to this meeting, or their approach to distribute “news bits” in the namesake’s most literal way possible prevents the grasp of an emerging new world: America’s status as the all-powerful world leader is being challenged, […]

AMERICA’S GIFT TO RUSSIAN GAS KINGS AND QUEENS

The logic is straightforward – NPR reports that the Ukraine government spends about 7.5 percent of the country’s GDP on gas through a subsidy to its citizens. Over 60 percent of Ukraine’s gas comes from Russia. Plus, Ukraine’s gas bill is overdue by more than USD 3 billion. Russia’s increases in the price of gas […]

WARNING – MCCAIN’S THINKING AGAIN

My initial dilemma was whether or not I should write about Senator John McCain’s latest bout of tangential erraticism, better known at the moment as his recent Pravda.ru op ed response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s NY Times article. My subsequent decision point was to decide how much time to spend on my response. Hint: I’m […]

WHAT DO THE RUSSIANS THINK ABOUT SYRIA NOW?

Russian President Vladimir Putin said two interesting things during an interview with the Associated Press and a Russian television station about his support for embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The first item, which most of us have heard before, is that Putin finds the idea of Assad using chemical weapons to be “absurd” since Assad’s […]

POPCORN ALERT: SAUDIS ISSUE THREAT TO RUSSIA

Remembering what I wrote regarding Russia’s terrorism concerns during the 2014 Winter Olympic games they will host in Sochi, this article I read in As-Safir [CLICK FOR ENGLISH TRANSLATION] about Russian President Putin’s meeting with Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan is probably the most mind-blowing piece of news I read […]

IS FRIEDMAN TRIPPIN’?

The question is which drugs Thomas L. Friedman took before writing his Obama, Snowden and Putin article for the NY Times? The first piece of madness he wrote referenced President Obama’s surveillance reforms: Considering the breadth of reforms that President Obama is now proposing to prevent privacy abuses in intelligence gathering, in […]