Despite being hit hard, Hezbollah is rebuilding and rearming. Lebanon is unwilling to disarm Hezbollah because Shiites would see it as a threat to all Lebanese Shiites and it would cause a civil war. A localized war for a few months against Israel is a lot better than a civil war that could be much longer and destroy much of the country. Hezbollah sees their ultimate enemy as the United States which they see as the font of corruption. Hezbollah cooperates with anti-American elements and governments in Latin America.
“In recent months Russia has flown fighter jets into Estonian airspace and sent dozens of drones deep into Polish and Romanian territory. Its ally Belarus has repeatedly brought Lithuanian air traffic to a standstill by allowing giant balloons to cross its borders. And last week, Moscow’s top envoy Sergey Lavrov issued a veiled threat to Finland to exit NATO.”
“They are members of an offshoot of a pro-Palestinian group dubbed the Turtle Island Liberation Front, the complaint said. During a news conference Monday, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli described the group as a “radical anti-government” group.
They each face charges including conspiracy and possession of a destructive device, court documents show.
The group is alleged to have been plotting to set off a series of bombings at multiple targets in California beginning on New Year’s Eve and also planned to target Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and vehicles Attorney General Pam Bondi said on social media.”
“The administration’s tactics with U.S. attorneys — bypassing the Senate or sidestepping federal judges to keep unvetted prosecutors in place — are a crucial component of Trump’s effort to deploy the Justice Department against his perceived enemies. He has relied on loyalist U.S. attorneys to pursue what critics call baldly political investigations and prosecutions, including those against New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey.”
“Some $1.6 trillion in annual imports are subject to the tariffs, while at least $1.7 trillion are excluded, either because they are duty-free or subject to another tariff, according to a POLITICO analysis based on last year’s import data.
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In an interview with POLITICO on Monday, Trump said he was open to adding even more exemptions to tariffs. He downplayed the existing carve-outs as “very small” and “not a big deal,” and said he plans to pair them with tariff increases elsewhere.
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In addition to the exemptions from Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, more than $300 billion of imports are also exempted as part of trade deals the administration has negotiated in recent months, including with the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan and more recently, Malaysia, Cambodia and Brazil. The deal with Brazil removed a range of products from a cumulative tariff of 50 percent, making two-thirds of imports from the country free from emergency tariffs.”
An unstrategic mishmash of tariffs is not good for the economy.
The US is having trouble building its navy partially because it doesn’t have enough skilled people. It takes 8 years to get people fully up to speed, and it is having trouble keeping its aging workforce on the job.
The reasons for current military action against Venezuela given by Trump and his allies are various. And the list of reasons to justify war sound a lot like Putin before and after invading Ukraine and W Bush before and after invading Iraq. Reasons for action in Venezuela include: drugs, terrorism, the influence of Russia and Iran, stolen land, stolen oil, opening up Venezuelan oil to American companies, and Maduro being the illegitimate ruler of Venezuela.
Russia has threatened to invade Kazakhstan. Russia is producing more weapons than it has in a long time. If it didn’t need them in Ukraine, it could use them to invade Kazakhstan.