Open on my desktop as I type–>

From Oneindia News: “Early Tuesday morning, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — the IRGC — claimed it launched a massive drone and missile attack on a U.S. military base in Bahrain… and says it destroyed the main command building“.

From Jason Jay Smart: “Kremlin patronage is built on one promise: protection for allies under fire, and Iran is now demanding proof. Visible protection would mean air defense, escorts, deployments, and senior crisis travel to Tehran. Instead, there is no public evidence of protective deployments, and the only confirmed Russian military movement described is evacuation, not reinforcement“.

From The Sun: “Footage circulated online showing flames inside the grounds of the consulate and smoke rising over the area“.

From Anna Danylchuk: “Russian banks prepare a decision that will allow ordinary employees to suspend the withdrawals of cash by the customers in any branch of these banks, similar to ATM restrictions million of russian already suffer from.”

The good news: Russia is collapsing. It’s banks feel the heavy squeeze; it can’t abet the defense of any alley while it falls; and it is watching its Soviet / post-Soviet spheres of state control and influence contract and dissolve.

The bad news: Donald Trump has initiated adverse processes that will coarse through the networks of absolute power, crime, and terror for years to come. Worse–and in the interest of his own grasp on power–he has stripped away some portion of America’s most accomplished, experienced, and knowledgeable counterintelligence / counterterrorism professionals and put in their place favored unqualified associates, family, and, in general, sycophants. He may not be solving the nation’s defense and security challenges as much as defining it as himself, i.e., another paranoid-delusional dictator calling critics criminals while acting to aggrandize and enrich himself at every opportunity.

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