Several commentators have claimed that Benjamin Netanyayhu is thumbing his nose at President Biden and is ignoring the desire of the Biden administration for Israel to adopt a less aggressive stance towards the Palestinians, Lebanon, and Iran. For example, in October of 2024, Tom Engelhardt wrote: “But if you want a measurement of just how far…
By Donald A. Smith, PhD. Using my own lyrics and Suno.com for the music, I created this variation of America the Beautiful. Imagine that it’s sung by a neoconservative or by, say, the CEO of Lockheed Martin. Also available on youtube here and on Rumble here. 1. 2. 3. O beautiful for endless wars,…
Using my own lyrics and Udio.com for the music, I created a rock opera about U.S. militarism. This is part one, on U.S. illegal and disastrous wars since WWII. (Also available on Youtube here.) Part Two, on the war in Ukraine is here. The finale is Blessed are the Peacemakers. How many wars will…
Defense News reports: ‘Not prepared’: Congressional panel calls for huge defense buildup. The chair of the panel (Jane Harman) has ties to defense establishment and was lauded by the CIA for distinguished service. The co-chair (Eric Eldeman) is a neocon. The 2022 NDAA authorized the creation of the panel, as reported in 2023:Congress announces commission…
by Donald A. Smith, PhD This is an extended version of my essay published in Common Dreams as Who is to Blame for the War in Ukraine?. Here are four views about the war in Ukraine, listed in order of increasing cynicism about U.S. culpability for the crisis: The Russian invasion of Ukraine was totally…
Dennis Kucinich: the US engineered a coup to drag Ukraine into a conflict by Donald A. Smith, PhD In this April 2, 2024 interview with Judge Napolitano, Dennis Kucinich says: “What’s happened is that the U.S. State Department and U.S. Government basically engineered a coup in Ukraine and used that to drag Ukraine into a…
In Bellingham on Jan 28, 2024 the Washington State Democratic Central Committee passed a resolution written by me, Donald A. Smith, PhD, along with Sharon Abreu and Linda Boyd, calling for a less militarized foreign policy and for a “just transition” to a peace economy. Resolution on the Urgency of Transitioning to an Economy Based…
By Donald A. Smith Using data from VoteView and software that I wrote, I made visualizations of U.S. senators based on their 2023 rollcall votes. The visualizations use Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and tsne to project their voting data to 3d. Senators who voted the same on more bills/resolutions appear close together. Votes of Senators…
In Jeffrey Sach’s NATO Expansion & Ukraine’s Destruction, he quotes NATO Secretary0-General Jens Stoltenberg saying, “So, he [Putin] went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite.” When Prof. John Mearsheimer, I, and others have said the same, we’ve been attacked as Putin apologists. The same…
Tuesday night I attended the Bellevue City Council Climate Forum at Eastshore Unitarian Universalist Church in Factoria. The candidates that appeared were, from the left, John Stokes (incumbent), Paul Clark (Stokes’ challenger) , Mo Malakoutian, Janice Zahn (incumbent), Betsi Hummer (Zahn’s challenger), and Dave Hamilton. Malakoutian’s challenger, Alex Tsimerman, did not appear. ( You can…