"President Donald Trump on Monday sent a four-page letter to Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, threatening to permanently freeze US funding to the United Nations agency in the midst of a global pandemic that has made international cooperation as crucial as ever," Common Dreams reported Tuesday. This comes as "Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday pledged $2 billion to the WHO to tackle the coronavirus pandemic and said he supported a 'global review' of the international response to the outbreak, but only if it is led by the WHO and only after the virus has been contained," Fox News reported Monday. What are we to make of this?
As Trump continues the removal of various inspectors general, "the firing of State Department IG Steve Linick might be the most problematic," the Washington Post's Aaron Blake wrote in a Tuesday analysis. "Linick, we've come to find out, had been investigating Secretary of State Mike Pompeo personally, as well as a major decision Pompeo had approved on an arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Both the White House and Pompeo have said the removal of Linick was Pompeo’s call." Why is this problematic?
"US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has threatened that Washington will 'exact consequences' if the International Criminal Court (ICC) moves ahead with a potential war crimes investigation into Israel," PressTV reported Sunday. In response to this, "a bipartisan group of US House and Senate legislators sent separate letters to Pompeo urging him to defend Israel, a firm US ally, against ICC investigations, saying the tribunal's assertion amounted to a 'politicization' of the court's mission," PressTV continued.
Is it true that a "disinformation campaign aimed to justify the assassination of Qassem Soleimani by painting him and Iran as willing enablers of al-Qaeda," as The Grayzone reported Tuesday? According to the outlet, the propaganda operation relied heavily on a shoddily sourced book entitled “The Exile." What's really going on here?
GUESTS:
Niko House — Political activist, broadcast journalist and founder and CEO of the MCSC Network.
David Schultz — Professor of political science at Hamline University.
Elisabeth Myers — Former editor-in-chief of Inside Arabia.
Dr. Ajamu Baraka — Journalist, American political activist and former Green Party nominee for vice president of the United States in the 2016 election.
Gareth Porter — American historian, investigative journalist, author and policy analyst specializing in US national security issues.
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