SAR #14357

One can be poor in time as well as money, the one causing the other.

The Grinch Who Stole Everything: Various of the Usual Suspects are negotiating a Trade In Services Agreement (TISA), which will significantly affect your life in a wide variety of ways. No, you have not heard of it. Or if you have, you have no idea what they are planning on. And you will not know what gets decided until five years after the treaty goes into effect. By mutual agreement (which does not include you and me) the negotiations are secret. And – by terms of the treaty – the provisions of the treat will remain secret for five years. No, it will not be debated and passed on by the Congress in open session. 
 
Back In The Saddle Again: US Special Forces have inflicted “heavy casualties” on ISIS while “advising” Iraqi soldiers repelling an attack in western Anbar province. 
 
Where's Kemal? Where's The Army? Watching Recep Erdogan drag Turkey back to the middle ages with dreams of a rekindled Ottoman Empire based in Koranic fundamentalism is disheartening. For years he has been imprisoning journalists who dared to not kiss his hem, and of late he's taken to rounding up TV personalities who dare mention the rampant corruption of his regime. Of late it has been the slow imposition of sharia precepts on the schools. Now Turkey has decided that while doctors must give all patients the care and treatment they have a right to, Cesarean birth is not a right. They're only women, let'em suffer. Better that the mother should die.

Under The Tree: The US is shipping 10 Apache attack helicopters to Egypt for the dictatorship to use in putting down civil unrest.
 
Being Israel: One of the advantages Israel has over other nations is a dispensation from Yahweh to ignore international laws and rulings that it finds inconvenient. The latest is a UN demand that Israel pay Lebanon $850 million in damages stemming from a 2006 airstrike that caused an immense oil spill. Don't bother to mention war crimes, Palestinian rights or international nuclear weapons laws. They've got a hall pass from God.

Home For Christmas: The US has shipped 'home' four Afghan prisoners who survived interrogation and ten years of living in cages in Guantanamo before it was discovered that they were not the worst of the worst, but merely collateral damage. And collaterally damaged.

Tradition: Once again the US is seeking to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela.
 
Say/Do: Pakistan, revolted by the barbarity of recent militant attacks, has begun hanging captured militants in revenge for their uncivilized actions.