American Committee for US-Russia Accord

While many on the left continue to accuse President Trump and his administration of colluding with the Russians, one well-known progressive thinker said such actions hurt their cause.

For the first time, the U.S. has deployed advanced Patriot missiles as part of military exercises in the Baltic region, escalating tensions with Russia and helping boost military industry stock prices to record highs. Aaron Mate of The Real News talks with Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the independent, non-partisan Arms Control Association.

Former British Ambassador to Russia Tony Brenton notes that “behind the misleading briefings, it is plainly the build-up of Russian troops in Syria that has precipitated the meeting [btwn Putin and Obama – ed] . Western commentators have offered the normal range of fanciful explanations for this: to replace the fading US presence in the region, or to put pressure on the Saudis over oil prices. The reality is simpler. As Putin says (and on this is to be believed), Russia’s overriding aim is to block the rise of Islamic fundamentalism which is a direct domestic threat to them in the Caucasus and elsewhere.”

A documentary debunking the Magnitsky myth, which was an opening salvo in the New Cold War, was largely blocked from viewing in the West but has now become a factor in Russia-gate, reports Robert Parry.

Princeton and NYU Professor Emeritus and Nation contributor Stephen F. Cohen talks to MSNBC’s Ali Veshi. According to Cohen “the relationship with Russia today is a dangerous as it has ever been in my lifetime. What does Russia want? It doesn’t want this relationship, it’s bad for Russia, it’s bad for Putin, it’s bad for the ambitions Putin has to rebuild Russia at home…”

When I first read the explosive New York Times story about Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, I had multiple reactions, writes Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi.

We are witnessing a striking shift in the global paradigm of how the world views nuclear weapon

It’s only now, when extremists pose a threat to the government itself, that the international media has woken up to the rise of the political right. For years now, however, the nationalist right has posed a risk to independent leftists on the ground…Svoboda also has a peculiar habit of resuscitating dubious World War II icons. Svoboda leaders, in fact, admire “proto-Nazis” such as Ernst Jünger, and are “understanding” of Goebbels.

When did support for spheres of influence become un-American?

Tucker Carlson had a heated exchange with neoconservative Max Boot over Russia and US Middle East policy.

The recently increased Russian involvement in Syria ought to be viewed as an opportunity, more so than as a threat or as something that needs to be countered. Although Moscow’s current involvement is only an extension of its longtime relationship with the Syrian regime, it represents just enough of a change to serve as the closest thing we are likely to have to a peg on which to hang some needed rethinking about the Syrian conflict.

Democracy Now! speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, co-founder of The Intercept, who notes that Democrats have had similar entanglements with foreign governments.

As the Ukrainian civil war heated up in summer 2014 a slew of articles began appearing claiming that Putin was ‘erratic’, ‘unstable’ etc. None of these were claims were based on anything approaching sound evidence. A classic example is Brian Whitmore “Putin’s Plan or Kremlin Chaos,” RFERL, 28 August 2014, www.rferl.org/content/putins-plan-or-kremlin-chaos/26556263.html.

Princeton and NYU Professor Emeritus Stephen F. Cohen argues that a new détente—cooperation in place of conflict—with Russia is imperative due to the unprecedented dangers of the new Cold War, with conflicts from Ukraine and the Baltic region to Syria fraught with real dangers of direct military action between the two nuclear superpowers.