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Aug 20, 2025 - World

Countries agree to resume trade links and work to resolving border dispute after visit to Delhi by top diplomat Wang YiIndia’s prime minister and China’s foreign minister have hailed “steady” progress in their countries’ fractious relationship, agreeing to resume trade and other ties, as well as work towards resolving the long-running Himalayan border dispute, amid a global geopolitical shake-up instigated by Donald Trump’s tariff regime.According to statements from China’s foreign ministry, the two sides agreed to resume direct flights – reiterating a pledge made in January – as well as issuing visas to journalists and facilitating business and cultural exchanges. Continue reading...

Aug 20, 2025 - World

I don’t know why, but few are saying what’s plainly obvious about the president’s “summit” with his Russian counterpart. He’s afraid of him.Donald Trump made all kinds of noise about “severe consequences” that Vladimir Putin would face if he did not agree to a ceasefire with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the war in Ukraine.Trump created conditions, however feeble they may have seemed, in which he appeared to negotiate from a position of strength. “I’ve solved six wars in the last six months,” he said before the trip — all lies.Then, when the moment came, nothing. Trump got nothing.Not so for Putin.“The extraordinary meeting at Anchorage’s Elmendorf Air Force base has ended Putin’s pariah status and brought Washington’s stance on the war closer to Moscow’s,” the Financial Times reported.“And Putin did not need to budge an inch.”Liberals and Democrats tend to think Trump gets along with Putin due to them being birds of a feather. Putin is a strongman. Trump is a strongman. Both love power. Both hate liberal democracy. While true, that doesn’t explain the president’s dramatic heel-turn.But fear does.The White House clearly believed it was important, not only for the meeting but for the president’s image at home, for him to look strong beforehand. Professor Heather Cox Richardson has the context:“US envoy Steve Witkoff had been visiting Moscow for months to talk about a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine when he heard through a back channel that Putin might be willing to talk to Trump in person to offer a deal. On August 6, after a meeting in Moscow, Witkoff announced that Russia was ready to retreat from some of the land it occupies in Ukraine. This apparent concession came just two days before the August 8 deadline Trump had set for severe sanctions against Russia unless it agreed to a ceasefire.”But then, Putin said “Not gonna happen.” Moreover, Putin said Trump really got a raw deal with the 2020 election. He totally won. So unfair! And with that combo of flex and flattery, Putin “got what he wanted — to play for time and press his military advantage over Ukraine,” exiled Russian political scientist Ilya Matveyev told the Financial Times.Here’s how it looked to Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich: “The way that it felt in the room was not good. It did not seem like things went well. And it seemed like Putin came in and steamrolled, got right into what he wanted to say and got his photo next to the president and then left.”She went on:“Of course, that is only the piece of the picture we have right now and certainly President Trump, who is the host and who is the president, would not want to enable something that would make him look weak.”Too late.Now the president can be “safely ignored,” Anne Applebaum wrote.“If the US is not willing to use any economic, military, or political tools to help Ukraine, if Trump will not put any diplomatic pressure on Putin or any new sanctions on Russian resources, then the US president’s fond wish to be seen as a peacemaker can be safely ignored,” she said.She even enumerated the moments of disgrace.“It was embarrassing for Americans to welcome a notorious wanted war criminal on their territory. It was humiliating to watch an American president act like a happy puppy upon encountering the dictator of a much poorer, much less important state, treating him as a superior. It’s excruciating to imagine how badly Trump’s diplomatic envoy … misunderstood his last meeting with Putin in Moscow if he thought that the Alaska summit was going to be successful.”I don’t know if Putin has something on the president (kompromat). I don’t know if Trump is in Putin’s pocket. I can speculate, but I don’t know. What I do know is Trump talked a good game and choked. I know he humiliated himself and America. And I know something else.All this is rooted in cowardice. It’s safe to attack friends, because they won’t fight back, because they’re friends, but it’s not safe to attack enemies, because they will fight back, and because they are enemies.Trump’s MO has always been to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, to whomever he wants, safe in the knowledge that no one has the will to stop him. That holds up as long as the “no one” in question is American or an American ally. Actual enemies, though? Nuh-uh.A few months ago, Trump was “very tough” with Zelensky in the Oval Office. He was less “tough” with him on Monday, but Trump knows Zelensky will never fight back, as Zelensky needs America’s support to defeat an even more malicious opponent.But Putin?He gets smiles, handshakes, the red-carpet treatment. He gets photos of himself riding in “The Beast” with the United States president and of American troops seeming to kneel in front of his plane, all of which is for the purpose of make-believing back home that Russia is once again America’s equal and that the glory days of empire are soon to return.All because Trump is scared.It’s a pattern we’ve seen so often Robert Armstrong came up with an acronym to memorialize it: TACO or “Trump Always Chickens Out.” Trump “does not have a very high tolerance for market and economic pressure, and will be quick to back off when tariffs cause pain,” Armstrong said.Same thing with foreign affairs. According to one analysis, Trump has threatened “severe consequences” 22 times against adversaries, but pulled the trigger just twice. He has chickened out even in the face of America’s weakest foes. For instance, the Taliban conceded absolutely nothing in exchange for American troops leaving the country in 2021.Liberals and Democrats spend a lot of time thinking about the unseen. Is Trump compromised? Is he in Russian pay? And so on. But we don’t spend enough time on the seen, which is damning enough all by itself.Trump is the biggest chicken on the planet.Putin knows it.If only the Democrats would come around.

Aug 20, 2025 - World

Ugandan official said the east African country does not have the capability to take in undocumented immigrantsUganda said it has not reached any agreement with the US to take in undocumented immigrants, contradicting reports that the east African country had struck a deal with the Trump administration to do so.Henry Oryem Okello, Uganda’s state minister for foreign affairs, told Reuters the country does not have the capability to take in immigrants. It comes as the US has deported migrants convicted of crimes in the US to non-native countries including South Sudan and Eswatini. Continue reading...

Aug 19, 2025 - World

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at a Tuesday press briefing that President Donald Trump is putting "tremendous public pressure" on Russia to end its war against Ukraine. Her example was "sanctions on India." "Look, the president has put tremendous public pressure to bring this war to a close. He's taken actions as you've seen — sanctions on India and other actions as well," Leavitt said in a video posted by journalist Aaron Rupar. "He has made himself very clear that he wants to see this war end. And he has scoffed at the ideas of others that have been raised that we should wait another month before any meeting takes place. The president wants to move, and he wants to bring this war to an end as quickly as possible."Trump alleged that India is indirectly financing Russia by making massive profits from its oil trade. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Tuesday that India is "just profiteering. They're reselling. This is what I would call the Indian arbitrage — buying cheap Russian oil, reselling it as product."Matt Smith, oil market analyst at Kpler, told CNBC, "India buys Russian oil at a discount due to sanctions, refines it into gasoline and diesel, and then sells the product back to regions that have sanctioned Moscow such as Europe."Before the invasion, India imported a minor amount of Russian crude oil. Now, however, CNBC said that imports of Russian oil have "surged." Currently, India is Russia's largest customer of oil, followed by China as the second-largest. Trump issued an additional 25% tariff on India that will begin at the end of the month, the Times of India noted Monday. Meanwhile, any crude oil being sold from Russia to India is on hold.Ahead of his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump told the press that he wasn't sure about whether he'd impose secondary sanctions on purchasers of Russian oil, in addition to the Indian producers. "If I have to do it, I'll do it. Maybe I won't have to do it," said Trump. Trump offered to relax sanctions in February if Putin agreed to a ceasefire, Bloomberg reported at the time. It wasn't a successful pitch, however. While the administration has threatened additional sanctions against Russia, it hasn't instituted any; instead, it has targeted India. See the clip below or at the link here. — (@)

Aug 19, 2025 - World

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell was caught off guard after conservative news outlet Newsmax settled a defamation suit with Dominion Voting Systems by agreeing to pay $67 million over bogus 2020 election claims.During a Tuesday appearance on his Lindell TV network, the pillow executive said he didn't understand why Newsmax would settle because President Donald Trump had hinted at an executive order banning voting machines."I think it's bizarre," Lindell remarked. "I think [network CEO] Chris Ruddy and the lawyers over at Newsmax are completely oblivious to what's coming out of the White House.""It's the most nonsensical thing I've ever seen," he continued. "We're getting rid of the machines. They've all got to go. For Newsmax to do this, I couldn't believe it."Lindell insisted that voting machine companies' "days were numbered" in the U.S."This stuff isn't just about getting rid of the machines," he said. "We're going to, the problems are going to be shown and what happened in the 2020 election.""We're not stopping until we show what actually happened and not just that election, other elections, and how fast the crimes go all the way back to Venezuela with these machine companies," Lindell added.The MyPillow CEO asserted that he would "never" stop attacking Dominion, even though he is facing a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit from the company.Watch the video below from Lindell TV.