CAPITALIST TENTACLES & FRONTS

PETER KOENIG—The IMF has been instrumental in helping to destroy the economy of myriad countries, notably, and to start with, the new Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, and Greece, Ukraine and lately Argentina, to mention just a few.  Madame Christine Lagarde, as chief of the IMF, had a heavy hand in the annihilation of at least the last three mentioned. She is now taking over the Presidency of the European Central Bank (ECB). There, she expects to complete the job that Mario Draghi had started but was not quite able to finish: Further bleeding the economy of Europe, especially southern Europe into anemia.

DARIUS SHAHTAMASEBI—We don’t need a Foreign Affairs article to tell us that regime change is the ultimate goal of Washington’s war hawks with respect to Iran. Even with Bolton gone in spectacular, Trump-Twitter-style fashion, this will never change. Iran has too much oil and natural gas and acts too independently for America’s liking, forging strong ties with Russia, China, North Korea, Syria and attempting to bypass the US dollar on multiple fronts.

The country that constantly brags about being the most generous nation on earth has no qualms about plotting to cut medical services to the poor worldwide—how revoltingly low and sordid can American policy get? Apparently there is no limit.

UMAIR HAQUE—And yet…there they are. They’re untouchables — a mafia of smug, unbelievably stupid white dudes, who’ll never pay any price whatsoever for being so incredibly wrong that they ended up leading a society hurtling off the cliff edge of ignorance into the abyss of jaw-dropping stupidity. In any sane society, a Bret Stephens — a denier of climate change, fascism, stagnation, inequality — would have been exiled from being a columnist years ago, publicly disgraced, a national humiliation.

According to the “Leticia Amazon pact”, the Amazonian countries will “strengthen coordinated action”, “establish [a] regional cooperation mechanism”, “increase efforts associated with monitoring forest cover”, and “strengthen the capacities and participation of indigenous and tribal peoples”, among other actions. The pact was thin on specifics, however.