WORLD WATCH

GUEST COMMENTARY - For years, as ever-bigger corporate combines grabbed ever-bigger chunks of market power, America's political, media and academic establishment scoffed at critics, drowning them out with jolly rounds of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah."

GUEST COMMENTARY - I recently participated in a commemoration of Martin Luther King's address "Beyond Vietnam—A Time to Break Silence," originally delivered on April 2, 1967, at New York City's Riverside Church.

UNITED NATIONS - Russia’s brutal war upon the nation of Ukraine should remind us that, for thousands of years, great powers have used their military might to launch military assaults upon smaller, weaker societies.

WAR WATCH - US Americans, as products of television and Hollywood, want good guys and bad guys.

NUCLEAR EQUATION - While the invasion of Ukraine is a body blow to worldwide hopes for peace, it is still an opportunity to reassess establishment thinking about nuclear deterrence. 

HISTORY REPEATS - In 1954 one of the greatest frauds in US politics culminated in 36 days of televised hearings.

RUSSIA / UKRAINE WAR - I must be getting old. Jerry Brown is starting to make sense to me. Arnold Schwarzenegger is sounding like an international statesman.

WAR WATCH - Russia launched its massive invasion of Ukraine on February 24 flagrantly violating the most fundamental norm of international law—

NUCLEAR WAR - In response to the rising brutality of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, some Americans say they support making Ukrainian airspace a “no-fly zone” for Russian war planes.

WAR WATCH - One of the more interesting developments in Putin’s war on Ukraine is the retreat of China from full-fledged support of Russia.

GUEST COMMENTARY - It is hard to describe the excruciatingly painful destruction Putin is inflicting on Ukraine.

GUEST COMMENTARY - In 2003, General David Petraeus asked “tell me how does this end”—the most memorable quote from the Iraq War.

THE ROYALS - As Prince William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, prepare for a trip to Jamaica, many well-known leaders in the country are demanding an apology and slave reparations from Great Britain who once colonized the Caribbean country, according to the Associated Press.

THE DOCTOR IS IN - An interesting memory during my Planning/Transportation Days at the MVCC (Mar Vista Community Council) haunts me still:

JOURNALISTS AT WAR - Brent Renaud. Marina Ovsyannikova. One a US filmmaker killed by Russian troops on March 13 while working on a documentary about refugees. The other, an editor-producer on Russian state TV’s Channel One who dramatically interrupted a news broadcast to hold aloft a sign denouncing Putin’s war. She was immediately arrested.

UKRAINE WAR - All eyes are on Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zalensky as he is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress Wednesday via video link at the U.S. Capitol. 

MILITARY COMPLEX - The Cold War, from 1945 to 1989, was a wild Bacchanalia for arms manufacturers, the Pentagon, the CIA, the diplomats who played one country off another on the world’s chess board, and the global corporations able to loot and pillage by equating predatory capitalism with freedom.

 GUEST COMMENTARY - War’s grim reality is recognizable wherever it occurs.

OIL PRODUCTION - The shock to the global financial system from the Russia-Ukraine war isn’t only driving up the cost of gasoline in the U.S., but also raising the price of gas to heat homes,

WORLD WATCH - Bennett’s journey to Moscow was bound to fail from the onset; but for Bennett, who thought the trip would provide him an opportunity to show statesmanship, instead it sadly revealed his shortsightedness and self-indulgence.

WAR WATCH - Putin may not quite be Hitler, but he is using der Fuhrer’s playbook.