WAR CRIMES & CRIMINALS

The confiscated assets include two buildings – the Iranian Cultural Center in Ottawa and Center for Iranian Studies in Toronto – as well as some $2.6 million seized from Iranian bank accounts and a couple of vehicles. The two properties have been sold for $26.5 and $1.85 million respectively, while the proceeding were transferred to several families in the US, who sought share of the assets as a compensation for various acts of terrorism they blamed on Iran. Court documents confirming that the funds have been distributed are dated August 7, yet only caught eye of local media on Friday.

GLEN FORD—Bolton lasted a year and a half in the Trump White House, despite his many acts of disrespect for his boss, because Trump sees himself as a master of international showmanship, as opposed to diplomacy — a discipline that Trump is far too undisciplined to fathom. In Trump’s imagined global drama, Bolton would serve as the bad cop, but only to set the stage for Trump to step in and forge the big “deal” with the U.S. adversary. Voila: peace a la Trump. But Bolton kept ruining the show, sabotaging negotiations with the intent to make them unsalvageable

WJ ASTORE—I’ve written about Mattis before.  Trump may have picked him in part because he looks a little like George S. Patton of World War II fame.  While serving under Trump, Mattis was deferential but not as big of an ass-kisser as most of Trump’s subordinates.  Mattis was a disappointment nonetheless, bought off by all the money Trump and the Republicans (and Democrats as well) shoveled to the Pentagon.

RAINER SHEA—In living memory, the people of North Korea have endured an act of violence that’s equivalent to the Holocaust. When the U.S. partnered with the right-wing south Korean dictator Syngman Rhee to provoke the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea into war, the Americans took an approach to warfare that amounted to crimes of genocide under international law. By carpet bombing all the major cities in North Korea without exception, burning down every town in North Korea, and committing atrocities like pouring gasoline down air ducts and burning North Korean children alive, American troops killed 1.55 million innocent North Korean civilians. This amounted to a population loss of about one-fourth for north Korea.

JEREMY KUZMAROV—Analysts in Washington and Europe are of the belief that the explosion may offer a glimpse of technological weaknesses in Russia’s new arms program. The deeper concern, however, should be of the perilous consequences of the new Cold War and arms race that is developing between the United States and Russia.