Sharon Tennison, President of the Center for Citizen Initiatives, sends the following report on the Russians Meet Mainstream America! (RMMA) program.
Analysis
Mark Hertsgaard: The Secret Daniel Ellsberg Really Worries About
The author and former military analyst tells The Nation that it’s still US policy to launch a first-strike nuclear attack.
Daniel Lazare: War Fever
There is a fever that seizes this land from time to time and it is the fever of war, a condition that this time seems immune to all known cures, starting with reason, as Daniel Lazare explores.
Stephen Walt: America Can’t Be Trusted Anymore
One of the most overused cliches in contemporary U.S. diplomacy is Ronald Reagan’s invocation of a Russian proverb: “Trust but Verify.”
Jacob Heilbrunn: Back to Brinkmanship
AT THE heart of the original Cold War was nuclear confrontation. In his 1945 essay “You and the Atomic Bomb,” which he wrote two months after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, George Orwell coined the term “cold war” to describe the new epoch that he saw emerging after the fall of Nazi Germany and the rise of the Soviet Union and the United States.
Citations Needed PODCAST: What is Wrong with MSNBC?
What is the point of having a liberal cable news network when it ignores so many major issues on the Left and pushes a narrative that, in the aggregate, does little beyond selling more weapons systems and inflaming US-Russia proxy wars in Syria and Ukraine?
Stephen F. Cohen: ‘Russiagate’ Allegations Continue to Escalate the Danger of War With Russia
Incessant Kremlin-baiting of President Trump is risking a Cuban Missile-like crisis that he, unlike JFK in 1962, may not be permitted to resolve peacefully.
Glenn Greenwald: The Psychology of Russiagate
Glenn Greenwald on Russiagate and the comforting answers it offers to despondent liberals.
Volodymyr Ishchenko: Denial of the Obvious: Far Right in Maidan Protests and Their Danger Today
Recently the massive rallies of the far right parties, the powerful public presentation of the National Militia affiliated to Azov’s “National Corps” party, escalating attacks by extreme right groups against leftist, feminist, LGBT, human rights events brought Ukrainian radical nationalists back into the center of the public discussion.
Missionaries of Modernity (Paul Robinson)
Missionaries of Modernity by Antonio Giustozzi and Artemy Kalinovsky looks at the part played by foreign advisors in developing countries during and after the Cold War.
Katrina vanden Heuvel: The US Still Considers Itself a Global Policeman
We have arrogated to ourselves the right to attack other sovereign countries when they offend our judgments of proper behavior—about human rights, against civil war on the European continent, against chemical weapons. Of course, we do not attack our allies such as Saudi Arabia in Yemen, or Israel in Gaza for engaging in such activities.
Japan Charts More Independent Course to Improve Russian Relations (Robert Shines)
While the argument may indeed by made that Japan is already fully aligned with the U.S. due to their mutual defense treaty, this did not stop Japanese Prime Minister Abe from meeting with Russian President Putin in Sochi in the past month. Previously, the U.S. expressed its desire for the meeting to only occur after Japan’s G-7 meeting this past week.
Robert Fisk visits the Syria clinic at the centre of a global crisis
This is the story of a town called Douma, a ravaged, stinking place of smashed apartment blocks – and of an underground clinic whose images of suffering allowed three of the Western world’s most powerful nations to bomb Syria last week.
John R. MacArthur: Humanitarian Wars
It’s less useful to condemn this or that unscrupulous politician – the two Bushes, Tony Blair, Sarkozy, the Clinton couple, Obama – than to dig deeper and arrive at an understanding that the ideology of humanitarian intervention is not intrinsically virtuous anywhere, including in Syria.
Paul Pillar: Non-Accomplishment in Syria
The missile strike against Syria in response to an alleged chemical attack has given many people a cathartic moment without having to produce any new and effective ideas about how to deal with the ugly conflict in Syria.
The Bigger Nuclear Risk: Trump or Clinton? (Robert Parry)
If the U.S. election comes down to Hillary Clinton v. Donald Trump, the American people will have to decide between two candidates who could risk the future of the planet, albeit for very different reasons, writes Robert Parry.
Michael Lind: Trump in a New Cold War
Jacob Heilbrunn and Michael Lind discuss the new Cold War of America vs. Russia and China.
A New-Old Plan to Save the World … That Has No Hope of Saving the World (Stephen Walt)
Why a big-name D.C.-based think tank’s report on U.S. foreign policy is unimaginative, predictably U.S.-centric, and a recipe for failure.
James Carden: Trump Just Launched Another Illegal Attack Against Syria
With these latest strikes, the administration is putting the US on the wrong side of international law and is running the risk of a hot war with Russia and Iran over a chemical weapons attack about which we still have little evidence.
Ray McGovern: Attacking Syria: Thumbing Noses at Constitution and Law
It was a sad spectacle to see U.S. brass rubbishing the Constitution and trying to silence critics of the U.S. strike on Syria, says Ray McGovern in this commentary.