Victor Grossman reports from Germany, giving a European left perspective on the recently concluded G20 Summit in Hamburg. Was anything accomplished in polished conference rooms and luxurious hotel suites carefully protected from the wild, fiery street scenes? Was it worth hundreds of injured police officers and arrests and millions in damage? His answer: maybe.
Reader Comments: Rearming Germany; Martin Luther King Today; Obama Commutes Sentences of Oscar Lopez Rivera and Chelsea Manning - Now Commute Leonard Peltier Sentence; Obama's Farewell Address; Meryl Streep; Cuban Medical Internationalism; Privatization Articles; Puzder Confirmation as Labor Secretary Pushed Back; Rodrigo Duterte - Readers Disagree;
Announcements: Whitney Museum - Free Inauguration Day `Diversity' Show; Trumpism: How Should the Left Respond?; more...
Hit that old song again, loud and clear! "Over there, over there, Send the word, send the word, That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming." Yes, sirree! Shades of 1918 and the Battle of the Marne! Shades of 1944 and the beaches of Normandy! But no, not just shades and not just words have already been sent. The U.S. is sending significant military assets to Germany, and to countries bordering Russia.
The reality of life in post-Soviet Eastern Europe is not at all what was promised.
The attempted military coup in Turkey and the possibility of a President Trump may have more Americans considering the military option. It's tempting to conclude that the same folks who approve of a military intervention into politics support Donald Trump's intervention into politics. Trump is, in a way, a one-man coup. He is an outsider. He has contempt for the normal workings of democracy.
Astounding increases in the danger of nuclear weapons have paralleled provocative foreign policy decisions that needlessly incite tensions between Washington and Moscow. It's been 71 years since atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and humanity's memory of those events has dimmed. The bombs that obliterated those cities were tiny by today's standards.
Propping up dictators, rigging elections and aligning with some of the world's more unsavory characters is an accurate description of U.S. foreign policy past and present. It's also a fair characterization of the narrow gamut of thinking for both the wise oracles who urge containment and the hawks promoting armed confrontation. The book focuses on these elite policy makers who have become not just complacent with, but complicit in, U.S. hegemonic crimes worldwide.
US President Obama supports Chancellor Merkel's efforts at finding a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis. But hawks in Washington seem determined to torpedo Berlin's approach. And NATO's top commander in Europe hasn't been helping either.
Reader Comments - Vietnam - What Really Happened?; Chapel Hill Murders - Honor Their Memory; Chocolate, Mayan civilization; Ukraine; How Radical Change Occurs; Adjunct Profs; Teacher Unions; West Virginia Coal and Blood; Public Pensions; Water Privatization; Save the Postal Service; Timbuktu; UMass Backs Down on Iranian Student Ban; Artistic Expression; Support the Greek People;
Announcements; Today in History - FDR Signs Order for Internment of Japanese Americans
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