Robert Koehler:  “We believe,” he wrote (a week after the bombings … to Secretary of War Stimson): … “that the safety of this nation – as opposed to its ability to inflict damage on an enemy power – cannot lie wholly or even primarily in its scientific or technical prowess. It can be based only on making future wars impossible. … Making future wars impossible! What if American political forces had sufficient sanity to listen to Oppenheimer? … Read here …

Read more

Andre Damon:  Facing the failure of Kiev’s military offensive, the United States is desperately seeking to use the provision of ever more destructive and indiscriminate weapons to reverse its setbacks on the battlefield. … The aim of the decision to use cluster bombs—regardless of its long-term impact on civilians—is to kill as many Russian soldiers as possible. … the US-led war against Russia in Ukraine is a war for American global hegemony, in which Ukrainians are mere cannon fodder … Read here …

Read more

Colin Todhunter: Irish MEPs Mick Wallace and Claire Daley have been staunch critics of the EU stance on Ukraine … “The damage to Ukraine is devastating. Towns and cities that endured for hundreds of years don’t exist anymore. … The pro-Western government opened the doors wide for massive structural adjustment and privatisation programmes … Over three million hectares of agricultural land are now owned by companies based in Western tax havens.  Ukraine’s mineral deposits alone are worth over $12 trillion. Western companies are licking their lips. … Read here …

Read more

Eric London: There is no lack of political and constitutional reasons for prosecuting Trump. … ran roughshod over the population’s most basic democratic rights … an attempt to overthrow the Constitution … a Hitlerian initiative to separate immigrant children from their parents … pardoned war criminals, declared that “torture works,” … However, the Democratic Party-led prosecution of Donald Trump addresses none of these crimes … the Justice Department’s indictment of Trump focuses solely on his transgressions against the national security apparatus … Read here …

Read more

William J. Astore:  Empires built on dominance achieved through a powerful, expansionist military necessarily become ever more authoritarian, corrupt and dysfunctional … they are fated to fail ... The problem suggests its own solution (not that any powerful figure in Washington is likely to pursue it). America must stop clinging bitterly to its guns … all the militarized trappings of empire, including America’s vast structure of overseas military bases and its staggering commitments to weaponry of all sorts, including world-ending nuclear one … Read here …

Read more

Jeffrey D. Sachs:  The Biden administration’s insistence on NATO enlargement has made Ukraine a victim of misconceived and unachievable U.S. military aspirations … Recognizing that the war was provoked helps us to understand how to stop it. … The first was the U.S. intention to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia in order to surround Russia … The second was the U.S. role in installing a Russophobic regime in Ukraine by the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, in February 2014. … Read here …

Read more

Robert C. Koehler:   (from Steve Taylor’s essay) “. . . we belong to the Earth rather than to a nation . . .”… our identity – is not as Americans but as inhabitants of this planet, which we share with seven billion other members of the human race, not to mention with every other species, every plant, every handful of soil, every drop of water… “when people are made to feel insecure and anxious, they tend to become more concerned with nationalism, status and success. …Read here...

Read more

Medea Benjamin – Nicolas J. S. Davies: On May 16, 2023, The New York Times published a full-page advertisement signed by 15 U.S. national security experts about the war in Ukraine. It was headed “The U.S. Should Be a Force for Peace in the World,” … The statement calls the war an “unmitigated disaster,” … President Biden, who is now pursuing his own policy error of historic proportions by prolonging this war, would do well to take the advice of today’s policy experts … Read here …

Read more

Robert Koehler:   More mass killings. More bloody “normal” — not just in Texas, not just in the United States, but around the world. … This is about dehumanization. And it’s not an individual flaw. It’s part of our collective psychology. Ironically so. … Transcending war can only start by turning victims back into human beings … Humanity, having divided itself into “us” and “them,” is under its own threat to commit suicide, rather than attempt to understand itself. Lost souls with guns are just doing their part of help out. … Read here …

Read more

Frankie de la Cretaz: Professional women’s tackle football is on the cusp of a mainstream breakthrough … Women’s sports in general — especially basketball and soccer — are also being recognized for the moneymakers they have the potential to be. … Tackle football is increasingly recognized as inherently unsafe … But advocating for women to have the same opportunities as men in a game as ethically complicated as football is sticky. ​“We are literally talking about equality in dementia” … Read here …

Read more

Edward Curtin: The wheel of history has turned and 2023 resembles 1968 in many ways while getting worse in others. The divide in the country remains but has greatly widened. The CIA and the intelligence agencies totally control the mainstream media now. The Pentagon’s budget has increased exponentially. The U.S. wages a savage war against Russia in Ukraine … Read more …

Read more

JohnRichardson@Daily Kos: A lot of people don’t realize not only just how high taxes on the rich used to be, but also just where exactly did those monies used to go and what exactly they did to better the lives of the average American. There is such a thing as cause and effect here on this planet. Reagan being the ultra-rich’s golden boy… Read here…

Read more

Edward Curtin: In my seventy-plus years from 1946 to now, the chorus of fear-mongering bullshit has never ceased – only grown louder. The joke is on us. Ha Ha Ha.” … -Oliver Stone, Chasing the Light … Perhaps silence is the best response to the endless cavalcade of official lies that is United States history. … Wealth and power are the main drivers of the media chicanery that has captured so many minds…. Read here…

Read more

Alan Macleod : It has now been one week since Seymour Hersh published an in-depth report claiming that the Biden administration deliberately blew up the Nord Stream II gas pipeline without Germany’s consent or even knowledge – an operation that began planning long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. … Hersh – … claims that in June, U.S. Navy divers traveled to the Baltic Sea and attached C4 explosive charges to the pipeline. Read more

Read more

Michael Hudson: The collapses of Silvergate and Silicon Valley Bank are like icebergs calving off from the Antarctic glacier. The financial analogy to the global warming causing this collapse is the rising temperature of interest rates, which spiked last Thursday and Friday to close at 4.60 percent for the U.S. Treasury’s two-year bonds. … Read here.

Read more