Back in the days of the Vietnam war, there came to be something known as the Five O’Clock Follies, a term derisively used by reporters attending the daily briefings by the military where they would be told how wonderfully everything was going and how the enemy was bring crushed, when the reporters knew full well that the US was bogged down in a never-ending war that was causing many US casualties. That hiding of the truth recurred during the Iraq war as well and is surfacing now with Iran. It seems to be an inevitable consequence when wars drag on much longer than anticipated and casualties mount.

American presidents, especially in their second terms when things are not going well for therm, love to go to war. It his usually a sure-fire way of shoring up public support and wrapping themselves up with patriotic fervor. But that only works if the wars are short-lived or they do not have many casualties. People seem to be willing to accept massive death and destruction of ordinary people at the receiving end of US weaponry, however unjustified, but get upset when US troops start experiencing casualties. So nowadays presidents use aerial warfare with bombing campaigns and drone strikes, forfeiting the need to put in ground troops with all its risks.

In the current war against Iran, we mainly hear reports of what the US has done to Iran and very little about the retaliation. Given that we are now entering the sixth week and also given how much Trump lies about everything, it should be no surprise that The Intercept reports that the administration is hiding the true number of casualties.
[Read more…]

The Labour Party came into power in the UK in July 2024 in a landslide win that saw them win 411 seats out of 650, propelled by a public that was fed up with 14 years of Conservative rule. The problem was that Keir Starmer, now the prime minister of the UK, campaigned on bland statements instead of specifics and once in power, abandoned many of the issues that were sought by the party base, hewing to a more rightward direction instead. That, coupled with incompetence and poor choice of people appointed to key positions, resulted in his popularity quickly dissipating.

Just recently, he was in deeper trouble. The fiasco over his appointment of Jeffrey Epstein’s close buddy Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US and the forced resignation of his chief of staff had raised serious questions about his judgment. Then in late February, the party suffered a disastrous defeat at a by-election where the Green Party won a seat that had been comfortably Labour.

Hannah Spencer, a local plumber and Green party councillor, was elected as the party’s first MP in northern England after overturning Labour’s 13,000-vote majority.

Labour came third in the tightly contested race, 5,616 votes behind the Greens on 14,980 votes, while Reform UK finished second with 10,578 votes. The result represents a 25.4 percentage point drop in Labour’s share of the vote compared with 2024.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats lost their deposits as they won fewer than 5% of the votes, with both under 2%. The Greens’ victory in a Labour stronghold, its first ever in a Westminster byelection, establishes the party as a serious political force and a credible anti-Reform alternative.

It will deepen concerns among Labour MPs that Starmer’s party is haemorrhaging voters on the left in an effort to thwart the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform.

[Read more…]

Given her almost cartoonish expressions of support for Trump, why was Pam Bondi fired as attorney general? She had been aware that there were people who had Trump’s ear who had been pushing for her ouster but she thought that she could weather the storm or that at least he would give her a graceful way to exist, say over the next few months. But as is the case with Trump, loyalty for him is a one-way street, and he summarily fired her yesterday.

The New York Times reports that her main problem was that she had failed to secure convictions against people that Trump had wanted prosecuted, even though the cases against them were weak, so that even grand juries, usually so accommodating of prosector’s request to return indictments, refused to go along. But Trump doesn’t care if the people he appoints are given impossible tasks. For him, a failure is a failure, and even a sign of disloyalty to him.
[Read more…]

Even being an ultra-loyalist brown-noser wasn’t enough for attorney general Pam Bondi to keep her job as attorney general because Trump just fired her. She continued her sycophancy even after her ignominious ouster, saying that she will continue fighting for Trump in the private sector. This is understandable since she will be seeking a pardon for any and all transgressions committed by her.

So what caused her demise? After all, she threw a major tantrum at congressional hearings, insulted members of the oversight panel, rescinded prosecution of Trump allies, purged career attorneys who were deemed to be insufficiently cult-like, went after his foes, and praised Trump to the skies at every opportunity. All this would seem to be the kinds of things that would endear her to her narcissistic boss. Some of her appointees as US attorneys were thrown out by judges as being unqualified or not properly appointed but that kind of incompetence seems normal for this chaotic administration. Here is a timeline of her greatest hits during her time in office.
[Read more…]