Author Archives: Richard Fernandez

in the last 10 years of his life, Epstein bragged to various people, including journalists, that he was advising a whole assortment of foreign leaders who included Vladimir Putin, Mohammed bin Zayed, Mohammed Bin Salman, various African dictators, Israel, the British — and, of course, the Americans…. He also told several of the same people …

Continue reading “Was Jeffrey Epstein a Spy?”

Po-Shen Loh has resurrected the United States International Mathematical Olympiad team, leading it to four first-place rankings in the last six years as the team’s head coach.

What’s a sovereign nation to do? When Moïse came to power in February 2017, he had little or no access to some of the economic levers that two of his predecessors, Joseph Michel Martelly and René Garcia Préval, had enjoyed. The latter were able to benefit from more than US$4 billion from the PetroCaribe fund, …

Continue reading “No foreign money, no foreign troops”

This is true for the much-worried-over Delta variant. It is also true for all the other variants, and for the original strain. Most remarkably, it has been known to be true since the very earliest days of the pandemic — indeed it was among the very first things we did know about the disease. The …

Continue reading “Whew”

But on July 12 Merkel expressed doubt the upcoming talks with Biden would resolve the disagreement between Berlin and Washington over Nord Stream 2. … U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on June 23 reiterated warnings about Nord Stream 2 during meetings in Berlin with Merkel and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. Blinken said he and …

Continue reading “Merkel refuses to go with the Biden Nordstream 2 program”

The price of oil surged to $75 a barrel the other day under President Joe Biden’s green energy policies. The price was as low as $35 a barrel under former President Donald Trump because he believed in American energy dominance (“Drill, baby, drill”). So, more oil meant lower prices at the pump. It was effectively …

Continue reading “Skyrocketing prices a bonanza for OPEC”

Thanks to a “wobble” in the moon’s orbit and rising sea levels, every coast in the United States will face rapidly increasing high tides that will start “a decade of dramatic increases in flood numbers” in the 2030s.

‘For the people that are protesting and looting, please do so carefully and please do so responsibly. Because you cannot hold people responsible for defending what they love,’ Zuma said. The 37-year-old, who has his own ambitions to run the country, said that ‘finger pointing’ was not going to help because the government must ‘feed …

Continue reading “‘Please loot carefully and responsibly’ says Zuma son”

NetBlocks metrics show that communications platforms WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and as well as some Telegram servers are disrupted on government-owned ETECSA (Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba, S.A. / AS27725) including Cubacel, the cellular network operated by Cuba’s sole telecommunications company. Findings corroborate user reports of disruptions to the services.

The old global world is going down. Biden’s political challenge is how to avoid becoming the Chernenko of a collapsing edifice. He will either transition to a new, more sustainable political order or go down in history as the captain of the new Titanic.

Biden’s remarks disappoint leaders in Havana. Before Biden came to office, they hoped he would follow in President Barack Obama’s footsteps and thaw relations with the island, reversing Trump’s actions that tightened the Cold War-era U.S. embargo. On the campaign trail, Biden said he would reverse policies on Cuba that “have inflicted harm on the …

Continue reading “There’s no money left to bail Communism out”

More than 1200 people have been arrested in the lawlessness that has raged in poor areas of two provinces, where a community radio station was ransacked and forced off the air Tuesday and some COVID-19 vaccination centres were closed, disrupting urgently needed inoculations. Many of the deaths in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces occurred in chaotic …

Continue reading “South African protesters loot to protest Zuma arrest”

New at the Belmont Club. Is the geriatric Washington mindset able to cope with a changed world?

“At times, one of the suspects in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was a confidential source to the DEA,” the DEA said in a statement.

Jimmy Cherizier, a former police officer known as Barbecue who heads the so-called G9 federation of nine gangs, railed against police and opposition politicians whom he accused of colluding with the “stinking bourgeoisie” to “sacrifice” Mr Moïse.

Haiti (AP) — Gangs in Haiti have long been financed by powerful politicians and their allies — and many Haitians fear those backers may be losing control of the increasingly powerful armed groups who have driven thousands of people from their homes as they battle over territory, kill civilians and raid warehouses of food.

Thousands of Cubans took part in rare protests Sunday against the communist government, marching through a town chanting “Down with the dictatorship” and “We want liberty.” The protest in San Antonio de los Banos, a town of some 50,000 people southwest of Havana, came as Cuba is experiencing its toughest phase yet of the coronavirus …

Continue reading “Covid brings out protesters in Cuba”

According to Colombian paper the president had been dead an hour before commandos showed up.

From the NYT On the streets, vigilantes prowled for suspects, and the police killed at least three people in gunfights. The vast majority of those arrested have turned out to be from Colombia — former military men said to have turned mercenaries — as questions arose about why it had been so easy for attackers …

Continue reading “Suspected mercenary got job by applying to job ad on the Internet”