Booker whiffs on most important right or wrong moment of his life

 

 

Booker whiffs on most important right or wrong moment of his life

On Monday, NJ Senator Cory Booker filibustered the Trump assault on American democracy for 25 hours. He’s being lauded by Democrats, progressives and those terrified by the deranged Trump agenda.

One of Booker’s soundbites being heralded is “This isn’t about a left or right moment. It’s about a right and wrong moment.”

Alas, Booker didn’t spend 25 minutes, not even 25 seconds on the critically important right or wrong moment he got to vote on 3 days later. Like he did last November, Booker joined all but 15 of his Democratic colleagues to vote down Bernie Sanders 2 Senate Joint Resolutions to quash the latest tranche of $8.8 billion in genocide weapons the US is sending to Israel.

In so doing Booker destroyed every vestige of his claim to represent responsible governance. Booker knows Israel is committing genocide in Gaza in their quest to kill or remove every one of the 2,300,000 Palestinians (less the hundred thousand or so already dead) from Gaza to add to Greater Israel. He knows the genocide would be impossible without the roughly $30 billion in US weapons Israel uses to wipe out every vestige of life in Gaza.

Senator Booker’s astonishing filibuster has likely vaulted him near the top of potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidates. And to remain viable, Booker has booked support from the most critical element of US electoral viability…the Israel Lobby.

DuPage County completes Red to Blue revolution

 

DuPage County completes Red to Blue revolution 

 

It used to be when there were contested races in DuPage County local elections, Republicans would win nearly very one if not everyone.

 

But it’s not an April Fool’s joke that on April 1, Democrats won 49 of 49 contested local races in DuPage County. That puts an astonishing period on the statement launched 19 years ago by the tiny DuPage Democratic Party: Turn DuPage Blue.

 

How did this happen? Several reasons. Highly qualified, highly motivated candidates. Millions of steps engaging voters at the door on issues of urgent concern. Possibly 2 unintended allies….Donald J. Trump and Elon Musk.

Miclaucic’s “Cognitive War” is simply renaming ‘Propaganda War’

 

Miclaucic’s “Cognitive War” is simply renaming ‘Propaganda War’

Michael Miclaucic’s Chicago Tribune op-ed “The West is losing the cognitive war with Russia and China” is hyperbolic nonsense

Ask a hundred folks who study US foreign relations what ‘cognitive war’ is and you’ll likely draw a hundred blanks.

Yet, esteemed foreign policy educator/journalist Michael Miclaucic spends nearly a thousand words trying to convince Trib readers there is such a thing as cognitive war and that America is ominously losing this war to China and Russia in the real war for world domination.

Miclaucic defines it as “the strategic manipulation of information and redirection of perception for the purpose of waging war and achieving war goals.” That is simply propaganda, a nation putting its best foot forward in defining its actions and goals in the world stage. And it has been around since the first peoples began waring with each other thousands of years ago.

Miclaucic posits US foreign policy is just fine but that we’re losing this propaganda war to “sworn enemies Russia and China.”

He’s wrong on both points. US foreign policy is not fine, it’s a mess. Enabling Israeli genocide in Gaza. Making the Russian invasion of Ukraine inevitable thru 23 years of NATO expansion onto Russia’s borders. Publicly proclaiming getting prepared for war with China. Sanctioning dozens of countries and likely thousands of foreign individuals simply for not buckling to our foreign policy demands.

Nor are Russia and China America’s sworn enemies. The former is pushing back against US adventurism with NATO expansion in Europe. The latter is responding to US ramping up possible war over Taiwan. Neither entanglement is connected to America’s true national security interests.

It’s not better messaging from China and Russia that has caused much of the world to withdraw from US unipolar dominance to join BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It’s America’s bullying and belligerence worldwide marking the end of America as the world’s sole superpower.

Michael Miclaucic’s ominous warning of US decline harkens back 70 years ago when commentators screamed ‘The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming.’ Nothing much has changed for Miclaucic except now it’s ‘The Russians and Chinese are coming, the Russians and Chinese are coming.’  

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL

Why do so many leaders remain stupid about Ukraine war?

 

Why do so many leaders remain stupid about Ukraine war?

 

The 3 year long destruction of Ukraine should never have occurred.

 

Had leaders in the US, NATO and Ukraine simply used common sense, Ukraine would not be a shell of its former self before the February 24, 2022 Russian invasion that has largely destroyed it. Ukraine economy shattered. Hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded. Over 10 million fled. Over 45,000 square miles lost to Russia forever.

 

This occurred from massive stupidity by all the leaders in the countries involved.

The stupidity starts with US presidents going back to Bill Clinton. In 1999 he broke the deal with USSR/Russia that he would not expand NATO eastward to their borders. From 1999 thru 2023 US relentlessly doubled NATO from 16 to 32 members.

 

Reasons likely many but all stupid. Smart diplomats, historians and political scientists were aghast, declaring this would inevitably lead to a US Russian confrontation. It took 23 years but stupid presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden all stupidly succeeded into provoking Russia to attack.

 

Odd, but only Trump was not stupid enough to add to NATO during his first term. He was however incredibly stupid to begin arming the Kyiv neofascists to wipe out the Russian leaning Ukrainian separatists in Donbas. That, along with NATO expansion, ensured Russia would intervene.

 

Western European NATO giants England, France and Germany also took their stupidity cue from Uncle Sam. They were getting cheap energy from Russia but stupidly bowed to US demands to weaken, isolate Russia thru NATO expansion and Kyiv warfare on Donbas Ukrainians. They were cool with replacing cheap Russian gas with exorbitant US LNG. Now they’re economies are crumbing, allowing inroads from MAGA like political opponents. Incredibly, instead of telling Uncle Sam to take a hike, they’re stupidly planning to squander hundreds of billions of their vanishing treasure to keep the war going till they all collapse.

 

If we were awarding a Stupid Prize, it must go to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. The comedian turned politician campaigned for the Ukraine presidency on a platform of peace with the Donbas Ukrainians being brutalized by the Kyiv government. It got him elected with big majority of Donbas voters. Alas, Zelensky was too stupid to realize the Kyiv neofascists would never allow him to make peace with Donbas separatists they sought to destroy. To save his presidency, possibly even his life, Zelensky abandoned his voting base.

 

Zelensky even stupidly amassed 60,000 elite troops on the Donbas border in early 2022 to finish off his constituents there

 

All that achieved, along with stupidly begging NATO for membership, was to provoke the Russian invasion.

 

Once started, Zelensky became stupider and stupider. He wisely prepared to sign a peace deal with Russia in the first 2 months which would have ended the war without Ukraine losing a single square mile of territory. But Zelensky stupidly caved to stupid US and UK leaders who told him he could win with US/NATO weapons…but no troops. That stupidity sent Ukraine into failed state status.

 

Ukraine is now on the cusp of peace being negotiated 2 leaders, Trump and Putin, employing common sense instead of stupidity. But the US Democratic Party, Ukraine, UK, French, German and other NATO leadership remain mired in stupidity that this senseless war must continue till the last Ukrainian soldier is dead.

 

They all forget the first rule of sane, peaceful governance: Don’t do stupid.

Will Duckworth finally join Durbin in opposing weaponizing Israeli genocide in Gaza next week?

 

Will Duckworth finally join Durbin in opposing weaponizing Israeli genocide in Gaza next week?

Seventeen of Illinois’ 36 US Senators have served during my 80 years. But none has been more supportive of senseless US war than current Junior Senator Tammy Duckworth.

She exploited her service in America’s monstrous Iraq war to gain first, the House of Representatives, and for the past 9 years, the Senate.

Duckworth never fails to embrace unrelenting US wars and regime change operations worldwide. But her support of US enabling the Israeli genocide in Gaza with tens of billions in weapons is the most grotesque.

Last November Duckworth voted to kill Bernie Sanders 3 Senate Joint Resolutions to end the Israeli genocide by cutting off the genocide weapons train, without which it would collapse. To his credit, colleague Dick Durbin voted for all 3 resolutions.

Genocide opponent Bernie will try again next week, introducing 2 Senate Joint Resolutions to block Trump’s latest tranche of $8.8 billion in weapons designed to kill or remove every last Palestinian from Gaza. That massive 8.8 billion includes 35,000 two thousand pound bombs and 3,000 Hellfire missiles among thousands of other munitions and guidance kits.

I frequently implore Senator Duckworth to switch from supporting US enabling Israeli genocide to opposing it. She replies with long, disingenuous responses declaring her support for peace and aid for the 2,300,000 Palestinians marked for death and disappearance from the Gaza Israel covets. But she never works to end the genocide by voting down the genocide weapons deliveries making the genocide possible. Weapons deliveries are good for US weapons makers, Israeli genocide practitioners and Duckworth's political career. 

 

Let’s hope Sen. Duckworth has an epiphany next week and votes to end the US weapons train enabling genocide instead of continuing it till every last Palestinian in Gaza is dead and gone.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL

UK to push 250,000 Brits into poverty to increase unneeded defense spending

 

UK to push 250,000 Brits into poverty to increase unneeded defense spending

 

Now that President Trump has bailed on endless US funding of failed Ukraine war, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has picked up the slack.

 

Starmer is delusional that Russia seeks to recreate the Soviet empire. He joins equally delusional French President Emmanuel Macron that the EU must replace the disappearing $175 Billion in

US treasure to continue the lost Ukraine war.

 

Starmer wants to boost UK defense spending to 3% of GDP from the current 2.3% tho no foreign enemy is anywhere in sight. To pay for this senseless squandering of UK treasure, Starmer proposes cuts in welfare spending. He appears oblivious of reports that such cuts may push 250,000 Brits into poverty, including 50,000 kids.

 

Alas, Starmer also remains oblivious that the hundreds of billions the US and EU has squandered in Ukraine has merely cost Ukraine hundreds of thousands of casualties, 10 million fled and 45,000 lost square miles of land. But the only words echoing in Starmer’s brain are: ‘The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming.’

Criminal Yemen war, not criminal war plan leak is what should provoke outrage

 

Criminal Yemen war, not criminal war plan leak is what should provoke outrage

 

Congressional Democrats are apoplectic Trump’s national security team allowed a journalist onto their Signal app chat discussing upcoming US bombings in Yemen. Interloper Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, then wrote in a piece he was informed of plans for the Yemen strikes which included information about "weapons packages, targets and timing" shortly before the attacks took place. Astonishing.

 

Trump’s critics are calling for an investigation and immediate resignation of top Trump officials Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and national security advisor Mike Waltz. They further charge criminal violations of US national security laws.

 

Instead of playing politics, they should be playing peace, demanding President Trump cease all military actions against Yemen without first requesting war authorization from Congress as required in the Constitution. Should Trump make that request they should turn him down flat.

 

America has no urgent national security interest to drop a single bomb on the pitifully poor country of Yemen over 7,000 miles from the Homeland. Yet America has spent most of the last decade causing death to hundreds of thousands of Yemenis. From 2015 to 2022 under Obama, Trump, then Biden, the US fueled the crazed Saudi Arabia war to pick the winner in the Yemen civil war. To placate our murderous ally Saudi Arabia, the US turned on the Houthi movement (Ansar Allah) who we had been allied with to combat al Qaeda in the region.

 

That Saudi intervention failed spectacularly, resulting in a ceasefire in 2022 that humiliated Saudi Arabia. But when the US fueled Israeli genocide in Gaza largely destroyed the 139 square miles there, the Houthis came to Gaza’s defense, attacking Red Sea shipping to disrupt Israeli operations. Instead of ending the genocide by cutting off the US weapons making it possible, President Biden ordered massive bombing to keep the genocide unhindered.

 

Trump returned to the presidency during a genocide ceasefire he largely brokered. That was good. But when Israel restarted the genocide several weeks ago, Trump jumped all in with a massive new bombing campaign. For Trump and his war crazed minions, thousands of Yemenis must die in order for Israel to kill or remove all 2,300,000 Palestinians from Gaza. That was grotesque.

 

Every Democrat complaining about an insignificant communications boo-boo should hang their heads in moral shame. They care not one whit about how many Yemenis and Palestinians must die in or to stay on the good side of the US Israel Lobby.

Chicago Tribune still not allowing valid opinion supporting Trump peace initiative in Ukraine

 

Chicago Tribune still not allowing valid opinion supporting Trump peace initiative in Ukraine

For at least the third time the Trib published multiple letters, none of which support the US Russia peace talks in Ukraine

The letter ‘Comfort to enemies’ asserts without substantiation that Trump’s peace initiative is giving “aid and comfort to our enemies.” While we have no direct knowledge of what transpired between Trump and Putin, it is clear both are seeking a quick end to senseless war in its fourth year. Everyone of good will should support a prompt, successful resolution.

‘Reminiscent of 1938’ is even more unhelpful in seeking an end to this war. The author turns history on its head. England, France and Italy allowed Germany to annex the Czech Sudetenland that was still untouched by Nazi Germany in a time of peace. The negotiation today is not appeasement; it’s quickly getting the best possible settlement given the facts on the ground. The current four Ukraine oblasts conquered will never return to Ukraine. This stark reality is recognized by everyone involved, including Ukraine President Zelensky. Disastrously for Ukraine, more territory is lost to Russia every day this war continues. Most important of all is urgency of achieving peace to eliminate the risk of this conflict spiraling into a nuclear one.

Time for the Trib to put that critically needed viewpoint into print and online.

Ukraine and Israel are not US allies

 

Ukraine and Israel are not US allies

 

They are essentially US Trojan Horses used to project US power dominance in Europe and Middle East respectively.

 

Both US Trojan Horses have come up lame and are heading for the glue factory.

The US marched their Ukraine Trojan Horse up to Russia’s borders armed with NATO entrance papers and billions in US weapons. When Russia pleaded with the US for years to discuss Russia’s valid security concerns, the US replied ‘Nyet.’ Former President Biden knew Russia would attack but believed any invasion would be a Vietnam style quagmire for Russia. Biden saw the upcoming Russian collapse as the shining achievement of his half century anti-Russian Cold War mantra. That failed spectacularly.

 

The election of Trump has injected a healthy dose of realpolitik that acknowledges Biden’s folly. Trump is currently in negotiations to put America’s Ukraine Trojan Horse to pastoral retirement. Can’t come soon enough.

 

America’s Israeli Trojan Horse to dominate the Middle East is a horse of a different color. It’s more like Israel’s Trojan Horse near totally financed by Uncle Sam. America gets to sit back while Israel marches around their neighborhood committing genocide is Gaza, indiscriminately bombing innocents in Syria and Lebanon, and promoting US attacks on Yemen and eventually Iran. All this senseless carnage constitutes Israel serving as the US battering ram to recreate the Middle East according to its dominant worldview.

 

Like our Ukraine Trojan Horse, our Israeli Trojan Horse is failing to promote America’s true national interests. Most of the world’s 193 countries are aghast America promotes the most grotesque genocide this century. America’s standing may be at an all time low. Like with Ukraine, we’re enabling Israel to self destruct. It’s now a pariah state. Tourism and investment are in decline. Its military is demoralized both from significant casualties and having to commit genocide.

 

Both allies are flirting with wider war; nuclear in Ukraine, regional war in Israel.

America gets nothing from allies Ukraine and Israel except worldwide condemnation, squandered treasure and diminishing unipolar world dominance.

 

With allies like Ukraine and Israel, America does not need enemies.

Shackelford should be cheering, not lamenting US abandonment of global leadership in Europe

 

Shackelford should be cheering, not lamenting US abandonment of global leadership in Europe

 

In her Chicago Tribune op-ed ‘Who will pick up the global leadership America has abandoned?’ Elizabeth Shackelford is distraught America under Trump is pulling back from supporting the clearly lost war in Ukraine. She envisions Russia exploiting the demise of massive American defense spending in Europe to recreate the Soviet Union into Western Europe.

 

Shackelford appears oblivious NATO and endless US defense of Europe became obsolete when the Soviet Union disbanded 34 years ago. Instead of pulling back from defending Europe, America went on an expansion binge bringing NATO and its nukes right up to Russia’s borders. Sensible diplomats, historians and political scientists kept warning the US that this would eventually provoke violent Russia response, not suppress it.

 

Here we stand three years and a month today enmeshed in that violent Russian response largely destroying Ukraine as a viable state. Instead of praising Trump for seeking its settlement, Shackelford wants Europe to become the “Arsenal of Democracy” to keep that lost war going ad infinitum.

 

Shackelford is correct in wanting Europe to replace the upcoming US defense pullback with their own treasure. That process should have begun 34 years ago. But to claim that buildup must start with replacing America as Ukraine’s weapons supplier is preposterous, even delusional. 

 

Shackelford is in denial the longer the war continues, the more territory Ukraine will lose.

It’s time for Elizabeth Shackelford to bone up on US history. She should start with the sage advice of former president statesman John Quincy Adams who admonished current and future US leaders 204 years ago, America must not go abroad “in search of monsters to destroy.”

Rep. Casten should oppose US enabling Israeli genocide in Gaza, not criticize protesters

Rep. Casten should oppose US enabling Israeli genocide in Gaza, not criticize protesters

My Congressman Sean Casten took umbrage Palestinian protesters disrupted his Town Hall Wednesday. It became tense enough for police to step in and stop the Town Hall.

Five pro Palestinian protesters repeatedly interrupted Casten who was focused on discussing the Trump Musk government cutbacks. When a protester complained to Casten about US complicity in hundreds of Palestinian kids killed in Israel’s renewed attacks, Casten responded “run for office.” Disgusting.

That’s par for the course for Casten who has done nothing to end the US enabled genocide in Gaza for all 18 months of the slaughter destroying every vestige of life for 2,300,000 Palestinians in Gaza’s bombed out 139 square miles.

I know Casten’s denial of US enabled genocide in Gaza first hand. Shortly after it started in October, 2022 my West Suburban Peace Coalition engaged with Casten on Zoom. He refused to even consider that Israel’s utter destruction of Gaza’s 139 square miles and thousands of Palestinian moms and kids obliterated by US bombs might just constitute genocide. Casten simply parroted the Biden administration refrain that those obliterated Palestinian moms and kids resulted from Israel's self-defense.

In over a year since nothing has changed Casten’s view of the most grotesque US foreign policy in his lifetime.

Congressman Casten vows “absolutely” to continue Sixth District Town Halls. That is good. But the next one should focus on US enabled Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Casten should welcome anti genocide advocates to inform him and Sixth District voters of the urgent need to halt all further weapons to Israel, publicly condemn Israel’s genocidal attacks and vote at the UN for ending the genocide, not vetoing its condemnation.

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