#U.S. foreign relations

[firstoccupier]

The Heavy Cost of Engagement: An Exposé on America's Military Conflicts Since WWII

In examining the profound economic and human costs of America’s military engagements since World War II, we uncover a staggering reality that defines the nation’s foreign policy strategies. The price of wars waged has reached approximately $6 trillion, coupled with the tragic loss of over 100,000 American military personnel. This investigatory piece highlights the rhetoric of “bush wars” and…

[latestnews-now]

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken embarks on a crucial European visit, attending NATO’s final foreign ministers meeting before President Biden leaves office. With Ukraine's war against Russia and transatlantic security as key issues, find out how the Biden administration plans to strengthen Ukraine's position before the power transition. Stay tuned for the latest developments from Brussels and Malta.

[hisradiantfire]

Disbelief, Reactions to MLK Jr.

In this thought-provoking episode, we confront the uncomfortable truths surrounding Martin Luther King Jr. and the broader implications of deception in both the Church and society. Join Christopher as he delve into the journey of discovering hidden narratives and the impact of misinformation on our understanding of historical figures. Through personal reflections and insightful thoughts, we explore the importance of truth, the consequences of ignorance, and the necessity for deeper biblical knowledge in navigating today's complex spiritual landscape.

Here is the latest from Radiant Fire Radio...

[inc-immigrationnewscanada]

Brian Schatz's Shocking Move as Senator

In a dramatic turn of events that could significantly impact the landscape of American foreign policy, Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) has taken a stand that could delay or derail Donald Trump’s plans for the U.S. Department of State. With a firm declaration of a “blanket hold” on all of Trump’s nominees for diplomatic positions, Schatz has ignited a firestorm of discussion, debate, and…

[narrative-theory]

Iran's Reformist President – Scott Ritter

[silent-calling]

All this is true, but also Snowden went about things in a completely shit way. He didn't blow any whistle, he stole massive amounts of sensitive information (outside of the shady shit NSA was doing) and just out that shit anywhere he could before fleeing the country.

Like, we've very much got a system and protocol for handling the "hey, this is fucked up and probably illegal" actions, and he completely ignored it.

[rebuiltzine]

Marco Rubio Schools Van Hollen: A Senate Smackdown and a Wake-Up Call for Term Limits

Washington, D.C. – Today’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing was supposed to be a routine check-in on the President’s FY2026 budget for the State Department. You know — diplomacy, foreign aid, grown-up stuff. But Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen had other plans. Rather than ask a substantive question, Van Hollen took the opportunity to air his deeply personal disappointment in…

[firstoccupier]

Trump Ordered U.S. Troops to Leave Syria, Then Reversed It Days Later

In a move that left both allies and enemies scratching their heads, President Donald Trump ordered U.S. troops to withdraw from Syria in December 2018. The decision was controversial, with critics claiming it would abandon Kurdish allies and allow ISIS to regroup. But just days later, Trump reversed his decision, keeping U.S. forces in place—causing confusion and further tarnishing the…

[munaeem]

Why India Sees a Conspiracy in US-Backed Moves—and Why Washington Might Not Care

India is shouting into the wind. On May 9, 2025, the International Monetary Fund, with U.S. backing, approved a $1.4 billion loan to Pakistan. Five days later, a $1.3 billion loan went to Bangladesh. On May 14 and 15, the U.S. sold $225 million worth of advanced AMRAAM missiles to Turkey. To New Delhi, these moves aren’t isolated. They’re a pattern—an anti-India trifecta that emboldens its…

[ivygorgon]

Text TRENDING to 50409 to quickly sign pro Palestine petitions.

You can choose to send the letters to your elected officials as email, fax, or even first class mail!

Here's the top trending letter right now:

An open letter to the President & U.S. Congress

Israel still blocking aid - Arms Embargo NOW

194 so far! Help us get to 250 signers!

From IMEU on November 1: The Biden administration acknowledged earlier this month that Israel is blocking aid into Gaza in violation of US law. That should have meant an immediate cutoff of weapons. Instead, the weapons are still flowing — and aid into Gaza has decreased to its lowest level in a year. It is estimated that as many as 62,000 Palestinians in Gaza may have starved to death since last October. The US cannot continue its complicity in these war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The global community recognizes Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and erasure of Palestine. The global community recognizes US support of this genocide. We want action immediately.

According to Data For Progress, the majority of America - 56% of Republicans and 86% of Democrats - support a permanent ceasefire. 70% of Democrats support restricting weapons funding to Israel. Are you going to listen to the people? Are you going to center humanity?

President Biden’s administration continues to supply and fund Israel while knowing since October 2023 that Israel has been targeting civilians. Secretary Blinken knew that Israel was blocking aid from entering Gaza and lied about it. This is continued participation in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and a violation of Leahy Law, which prohibits our government from funding foreign forces who are implicated in gross human rights violations, including targeting civilians and deliberately preventing access to humanitarian assistance.

International scholar and lawyer, Francesca Albanese, has documented how Israel’s gross human rights violations and war crimes are genocidal acts, including their targeting of hospitals and healthcare workers, targeting journalists and civilians, using starvation as a weapon, etc. Israeli government officials have repeatedly expressed genocidal intent. Sites of learning, culture, and historical memory — universities, mosques, churches, museums — have been decimated. The Gaza Strip's ability to produce food and clean water has been severely destroyed by Israeli airstrikes and bulldozers which have razed farms and orchards. People have unearthed mass graves with evidence of torture. As people of conscience, we will not ignore this.

I am demanding you to take immediate steps to stop Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and massacres in Lebanon by calling for no more weapons or funding to the Israeli military. I support Senator Sanders’ Joint Resolutions of Disapproval to block arms sales to Israel.

The ICJ ruled that Israel should do everything in its power to prevent genocide. Never again means never again for anyone. All people - including Palestinians - deserve to live with freedom and safety which means first stopping this genocide and then ensuring liberation from occupation and apartheid. The liberation and safety of Palestinians, Israelis, Jewish people, Muslim people, and Lebanese people are intertwined. There can only be true safety when we are all free from oppression.

▶ Created on November 8 by Alice · 193 signers in the past 7 days

Text SIGN PPMUKN to 50409

Liked it? Text FOLLOW all_about_love to 50409

Senators are going to vote on whether or not we should continue to send aid to Israel on Wednesday, November 13th. Call them, bombard their phone lines with calls. Every fucking day. We have a chance of doing something about this.

[dailymore-news]

Trump Defends $400 Million Jet Gift from Qatar

DailyMore Newsroom | May 12, 2025 In a bold statement recently, former U.S. President Donald Trump defended his acceptance of a $400 million private jet gift from Qatar. This act has sparked widespread debate. Trump has always attracted controversy. He denied any ethical violations in his acceptance of the lavish gift. Trump insisted that the transaction was part of a larger business agreement…

[steadyscopemedia]

Trump Discusses Key Global Issues in Call with Turkish President Erdoğan

In a recent social media post, President Donald J. Trump shared details of a productive telephone conversation with Turkish President Recep Erdoğan, highlighting a range of pressing global issues, including the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, as well as tensions in Syria and Gaza. The call, described by Trump as “very good and productive,” underscores the administration’s commitment…

[xtruss]

Trump’s Wanton Tariffs Will Shatter The World Economy! Economic Warfare Is Also A Test For U.S. Democracy.

— Edward Alden | April 3, 2025 | Foreign Policy | An Argument

U.S. President Donald Trump Holds-up a Chart Showing New U.S. Tariff Rates, Seen in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington on April 2, 2025. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

On Wednesday, Donald Trump declared economic war on the world. Using emergency powers in ways never envisioned by Congress, spinning a history of supposed exploitation by friend and foe, and making up fantastical numbers to quantify his grievances, the U.S. president in one afternoon tore up nearly a century’s worth of efforts to build a mostly peaceful and prosperous global economic order.

Whatever is written from here on about Trump, the word “conservative” should never again be attached to his name—he is a revolutionary, tearing down the old order and watching from the comfortable perch of his wealth and power to see where the pieces land. The question now is whether the rest of the country—Congress, the courts, the American people—will follow him into the abyss.

As the whole world knows by now, Trump has reversed decades of U.S. support for freer trade that had enabled an extraordinary period of global prosperity. In its place, he marched the United States all the way back into the 19th century—when, he noted in glowing terms, the U.S. Treasury was financed in good part by tariffs rather than income taxes. As of April 5, under his latest executive order, all imported goods will face a tariff of at least 10 percent, and as of April 9, most will face much stiffer rates, as high as 49 percent. Using calculations that exist only in the fevered dreams of his advisors, Trump announced “reciprocal” tariffs on most U.S. trading partners—penalties meant to partially offset (“We are being very kind,” he said on Wednesday) the harm supposedly done to the U.S. economy by unfair foreign trading practices.

According to World Trade Organization figures, the European Union’s trade-weighted average import tariff is just 2.7 percent. But by mashing together tariffs along with various regulatory barriers and the imaginary discriminatory effects of European value-added taxes (which apply to purchases regardless of origin), the wildly fabulating president claimed an effective EU tariff on U.S. goods of 39 percent. Magnanimously, he said, Europe will face only a 20 percent tariff on future exports to the United States.

The actual calculations appear to have been made using kindergarten arithmetic. After Trump’s Rose Garden speech, the White House confirmed that the new tariff rates were derived from a simple calculation of the size of the U.S. trade deficit with each country—a methodology with no basis in any economic research whatsoever on how trade deficits are caused.

For those keeping score, some of the biggest losers are the countries that have benefited most from the efforts during the first Trump and Biden administrations to force supply chains to move out of China. Malaysia will face a 24 percent tariff, Thailand 36 percent, Vietnam 46 percent, and Cambodia 49 percent. That is nearly as high as the 54 percent total tariff that China will now face, though for some Chinese goods it will be higher. The United States has not charged broadly based tariffs at such levels since the 1930s and then only for a few years.

The relative winners, if there are any, may be the North American trading partners that Trump has threatened most since taking office—including economic coercion aimed at forcing Canada to become the “51st state.” Canada and Mexico will not face any additional duties, although they have already been hit with 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum and the United States has launched “national security” trade investigations into lumber and copper exports that will likely result in additional duties. U.S. importers of Canadian and Mexican products will also continue to pay the 25 percent tariff already imposed on goods not fully compliant with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement and will be partially hit by a new 25 percent tariff on auto imports effective April 3. That tariff will especially hurt Japanese and South Korean auto exports, but importers of North American-made cars will still be charged the tariff on the “non-U.S. content” in vehicles from Canada and Mexico—an egregious violation of Trump’s own trade agreement with these countries, in case anyone is still paying attention.

The announcement should end any debate over whether Trump wants to use tariffs as a cudgel to negotiate reductions in trade protection abroad. He made it clear that he intends them to be more-or-less permanent. While there may be some room for negotiated deals, Trump used his entire Rose Garden speech to tout the virtues of tariffs as a tool to force manufacturing to locate in the United States to bypass the tariff wall—and to raise revenue to reduce the national debt and enable other taxes to be cut. So ends the wishful thinking of America’s corporate leaders, most of whom believed until Wednesday afternoon that this was all a clever negotiating ploy by a business-friendly president to free up trade. U.S. stock markets have responded accordingly.

Retaliation from other countries is certain, and it’s hard to predict what forms it will take. American farmers will likely pay the highest price as always, but the complete abandonment of all trade rules and norms by the United States means nothing is off the table. Expect measures aimed at harming the technology sector and other centers of U.S. economic power.

But Trump’s convictions on trade are so deep-seated—beliefs he has held for 40 years or more despite enormous changes in the world—that retaliation by the same foreign countries he is convinced wish to harm the United States is unlikely to be effective. The more relevant question is whether he has finally gone too far even for his own supporters.

Trade is not the glamorous issue over which one might have expected a grand struggle over U.S. democracy and the meaning of the Constitution, but that is what is about to ensue. The Constitution could not be clearer that regulating foreign commerce rests in the hands of Congress; Trump’s use of emergency authorities to set punishing tariffs is an egregious violation of the constitutional separation of powers. If the United States remains a functioning democracy—an increasingly big if—then Trump’s actions will not stand. The courts may strike some or all of it down, although the weeks and months these court cases could take would wreak economic havoc in much of the World.

Trump may have gone too far even for the most feckless Congress in U.S. history. On Wednesday night, the Senate—with four Republicans defecting from their leader—passed legislation to terminate Trump’s Jan. 22 “national emergency” declaration, which he used to slap tariffs on Canada. The House of Representatives will not follow quickly; there still seems to be naive hope among Republicans in the lower chamber that Trump will find negotiated resolutions that remove the tariffs. U.S. Rep. Jason Smith, the head of the once powerful Ways and Means Committee, said on Wednesday that the strategy “mirrors President Trump’s successful negotiating approach during his first term.”

Such illusions will fall away as members start hearing from all the small and large manufacturers, retailers, restaurants, auto dealers, farmers, and others in their districts whose profits will be swallowed by the new tariffs. And they will hear from constituents as prices for groceries, cars, and appliances soar. Special House votes in Florida and a Wisconsin Supreme Court vote on Tuesday showed that voter support for Republicans has crashed in the 10 weeks since Trump took office. Political survival will force some Republicans to take a stand.

These are the optimistic scenarios. When the United States last imposed tariffs of similar magnitude in the 1930s, the country and the world were much simpler places. Most trade was finished products going from one country to another, not the modern world of intricately linked supply chains in which components move back and forth across borders. The effects of the new tariffs could be magnified far beyond what the headline numbers suggest. Simply attempting to collect the duties could prove impossible. For the past century, U.S. Customs officials have had no need to verify the “origin” of most products, except for those in free trade areas, because all imports paid the same “most favored nation” tariff rates. Cross-border commerce may grind to a halt while the new system is implemented.

And no one in the White House has the slightest idea how economically disruptive—and politically destabilizing—the tariffs could be for all the developing countries that optimistically signed on to the U.S. vision of a rules-based global trading system. The last time the world’s major powers walked this far down the road to autarky was in the 1930s, and what followed shortly thereafter was the greatest conflagration the world has ever known. Things might turn out better this time. Or they might not.

— Edward Alden is a Columnist at Foreign Policy, the Ross distinguished visiting Professor at Western Washington University, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Author of When the World Closed Its Doors: The Covid-19 Tragedy and the Future of Borders and Failure to Adjust: How Americans Got Left Behind in the Global Economy.

[lettersfrom412]

U.S. aggression

President Trump styles himself as the great peacemaker – in Ukraine, the Middle East and elsewhere.

So what's with the saber-rattling on Greenland and Canada? It's not funny, and it's not in our national interests to pick fights with allies.

Please don't describe the benefits of U.S. control over the natural resources of Canada or Greenland. If we owned all of North and South America, we would be an even more indomitable nation. If we owned the Philippines and South Korea, we'd be in a better position to challenge China. It's silly, and it's not going to happen.

Canada and Greenland will never voluntarily join the United States – and the continuing threat to invade them is alarming. Please get the President to back off these childish fantasies once and for all.

[quillsword]

Putin Doesn't Seem to Have Gotten the Memo

Good grief. If Putin thinks he’s bringing his A game he better have something special up his sleeve. Playing dominance games with Trump is playing with fire. Dominance games? The silly stunts like being late for meetings or in this case a phone call and making others wait for you. It’s the political version of fighting for pole position. There are a lot of times when this sort of nonsense…

[hisradiantfire]

Moments of Grief... While Giving Care

Join Christopher In this heartfelt episode, we delve into the complexities of caregiving and the emotional toll it takes on those who provide support to loved ones. The host shares personal experiences of navigating grief, frustration, and the challenges of maintaining emotional balance while caring for others. Join us as we explore the highs and lows of caregiving, the importance of feeling your feelings, and the necessity of sometimes putting those feelings aside for the sake of your loved one. This episode is a poignant reminder of the resilience required in the face of life’s toughest moments.

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