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Posted on Aug 26, 2016 in Donald Trump, Eastern Europe, Elections-U.S., Foreign Policy Issues, Hillary Clinton, Middle East, Putin, Social Issues: Free Trade and Labor displacement., Syria, Ukraine and Crimea, Uncategorized | 0 comments

Will the greed of some capitalists bring about a class war?–How Trump and Clinton’s policies play into the equation.

  The growing wealth and income gap between the top 1 percent and the other 99 percent has reached staggering dimensions. And now, more than ever, the “have-nots” are made up largely by the middle class, which now includes many “workers.” Years ago I dismissed Marx’s class conflict theory as yet another, albeit more radical, utopian socialist dream. Then in my first, of a long line of classes, taken and then taught, about communism, in both theory and practice, I continued to be intrigued by Lenin’s 1917 tract: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Now, nearly 100 years after Lenin wrote his theory of imperialism, and the first time since The Great Depression, Lenin’s check-list for revolution appears close to being realized. Ironically that is largely due to the policies of the “haves” themselves. Whether this has come about mostly by greed or by ignorance is unclear. What is clear, however, is that policy differences between Tump and Clinton will go a long way towards deciding how peaceful a revolution...

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Posted on Jul 24, 2016 in Democratic Party, Donald Trump, E.U., Eastern Europe, Elections-U.S., Foreign Policy Issues, Hillary Clinton, Iran, Iraq, ISIS, Middle East, Putin, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine and Crimea | 0 comments

Trump’s destabilizing policies threaten America’s nuclear deterrence strategy–traitorous action or simply ignorance?

  Seventy years of bi-partisanship have gone into creating a credible deterrence strategy to cope with the challenges posed to our foreign policy in an era of nuclear powers and the means of delivering them. Our deterrence strategy rests upon the elimination and reduction of doubt as to whether certain actions against ourselves and our allies will produce a response by the U.S. that is unacceptable to a potential enemy. The weaving of alliances and other measures taken to implement and maintain this strategy has been supported by every President, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of State, both Republican and Democratic, since the fateful dropping of those early atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended World War II and ushered in the dangerous  nuclear age. This credibility of our response and commitments to our allies have been seriously, if not fatally, weakened by Donald Trump’s clearly ignorant insertion of doubt into the equation. He might as well have invited North Korea across the “no-man’s land” and across the 38th parallel and on into our...

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Posted on Nov 25, 2015 in Foreign Policy Issues, ISIS, Middle East, Russia, Shia, Syria, Turkey, Uncategorized | 0 comments

Turkey shooting down of Russian jet: Murky details. Russian intentions dubious. Tensions de-escalated.

By now most of you have heard that Turkey, our NATO ally, shot down a Russian military jet on Tuesday, November 24th. Some of the details are murky at this writing. Russian President Putin claims it was a “stab in the back,” that their plane had not crossed into Turkish air space, and the pilot was not given any warnings. Turkey, for its part, insists that their air-space was encroached and that they gave the Russian pilot ten warnings before their F-16 shot him down. The Turkish military has released a recording of a Turkish speaker saying, “change your heading.” Konstantin Murakhtin, the Russian navigator who was rescued yesterday, insists that they received no warnings. Videos of the Russian plane being hit and going down has gone viral on the internet, but it focuses on the distant sky and does nothing to answer the questions of airspace location and the presence or absence of warnings. Nor does it deal with the meaningful issue of what the Russian Su-24 fighter-bomber was doing...

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