The legal word ’emoluments’ is not often bandied about. A more common phrase is ‘time to talk turkey’, that is, ‘time to talk the hard facts’. It was time to talk turkey, ’emoluments’ and more this week as a US Senator spoke
Category: Middle East
Iran-US Draft Memorandum to End the War
Declaring upon the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding an ‘immediate and permanent end to the war on all fronts’ As released by the US at the G7 meeting in Europe — June 17, 2026
MMA Fight & MOU from the White House
The weekend at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. 20500 featured dueling events. One took place in a rapidly constructed arena called ‘The Claw’, the other took place from the Executive Residence of the U.S. president, as social media announcements were released about ending a war….
Escalation
A Day in a War (Provocation and Escalation)
Death of Yahya Sinwar in Gaza War — What’s Next?
News reports of the death of the Hamas leader began to leak out yesterday. Today more details are being revealed. One of his last acts, it seems, as Sinwar lay gravely injured by an Israeli tank shell explosion was… to turn toward a hovering drone monitoring him and throw a stick at it…
Carnage in Gaza Continues
The News from Gaza continues to evidence devastation and death. The humanitarian crisis grows as food, water, supplies dwindle and safe-zone areas turn into killing zones… the consequences for Israel and the Palestinians are grave and extend far beyond the carnage the world is now graphically witnessing
Israel and the US, What’s Next?
The next phase of the Gaza-Israel war has come into public view and with it a break between Israel and the US has become more and more evident. The carnage visible is overwhelming in the war, and calls for a ceasefire seem far-off possibilities. What’s next?
The US, Israel, War & Consequences
The consequences of the Gaza-Israel 2023 war are shockingly deadly… another Mideast war, on-the-ground, air-to-ground, in the courts of public opinion, and now in an international court. The US in alliance with Israel is being tested as Israel’s war grinds on with horrifying ‘collateral damage’. This must change, the war in Gaza must end
Gaza-Israel, Whence Next
Some, a few, are looking toward solutions to decades of hatred, extremism, and ongoing wars in the Middle East. Today, as 2024 arrives amid bombs, bombardments, and globally reverberating blasts, let’s look at words, pics, on-the-ground realities, and ‘off-ramps’
Blowback Far Beyond Gaza-Israel
Acknowledging the seemingly insoluble problem of the Middle East wars, now in a Gaza-Israel incarnation, few believe there are solutions to interminable conflict. The history is one of ‘begats’. After all, it’s ‘Biblical’, right?
Option to Nuke Gaza? Nuts
What can one say when a religious zealot in a government controlling nuclear weapons declares that a nuke could be dropped on a population of approximately two million in a nearby city? Perhaps the word that describes this type of nuclear zealotry is “nuts”, not “metaphorical”. Who is Amihai Eliyahu? And who are the “Amalek” […]
October Disaster in the Mideast
(Thread) On 7 October 2023, Palestinian militant groups, mainly Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, with other groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, launched a major attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip (Wikipedia | Gaza-Israel conflict) … the multi-year conflict, now as expanding war, is delivering catastrophe and international impact
The Movement and the Madman
Nuclear Disaster Averted The PBS ‘American Experience’ documentary film in 2023 brings into light how the 1969 Vietnam Moratorium peace movement acted to prevent President Richard Nixon’s order to use nuclear weapons.
Another Perspective on Ukraine-Russia and What Comes Next
Perspective is essential in understanding causes of war — and roads to peace. Strategic Demands strives in our work to see security, and mutual security, with a realistic perspective. Here, Anatol Lieven, brings a “Responsible Statecraft” perspective…
Afghanistan, the US announces its withdrawal
Fifteen years ago, we said the US Afghanistan war was a profound disaster, a choice to invade that would end in failure as so many invasions in the past have ended. Today, some twenty years from the war’s inception, the US president declared the withdrawal of US troops
Cyber attack on Iran’s nuclear Natanz site
April 11, 2021 Negotiations with Iran intercepted by reported attack on the operation systems of the Iranian nuclear facility at Natanz. International news reports top of the news…
In the Gulf and in the U.S. on Christmas Eve
On Christmas eve, here in the U.S., hoping that the departing president, who’s railing at his election loss and now has ordered a breach in transition communications between the Defense Department and incoming Biden staff, is not, calamitously, planning to order a war…
