The risk of WWIII is constantly growing. Four years ago, when former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Senator Sam Nunn issued a warning that the “world needs a wake-up call” about “Sleepwalking toward the Nuclear Precipice”; presently, it is no longer “sleepwalking” but “accelerating.” Ukraine is the apparent country for its start, thus taking over the dubious baton from Serbia for WWI and Poland for WWII.

On February 14, Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that his panel had “made available to all Members of Congress information concerning a serious national security threat.”

James W. Carden talks with Branko Marcetic, a staff writer with Jacobin magazine and the author of Yesterday’s Man: the Case Against Joe Biden. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Guardian, In These Times, the Nation and ACURA.

When Russian forces expanded their military presence in Ukraine in February 2022, U.S. officials and most of the Western news media portrayed the development as a brazen act of aggression by a dictatorship against a peaceful democracy. The reality was much more complex. Ukraine had allowed itself to become NATO’s pawn in Russia’s security zone. Such a move was bound to create severe tensions, not only between Russia and Ukraine, but between Russia and NATO. In February 2022, regional tensions reached the point of being a full-fledged proxy war between the West and Russia. Moreover, the United States and its NATO allies endeavored to portray the fighting in Ukraine as exceptionally evil.

The spectre of Armageddon has been raised often enough during the 2-year old war in Ukraine that the reference to it in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s state of the union address on Thursday had a familiar ring about it. Therein lies the risk of misjudgement on the part of the western audience that Putin was only “crying wolf”.

Matlock, now 95 years old, offers a classic example of why our leaders would benefit greatly from more wisdom and less intelligence.

“The project required the complete abolition of words… to preserve health and save time.” Jonathan Swift. “Gulliver’s Travels”.

If I was writing this review as a drama, where I could make things up, I would say “Congratulations to the Deep State (aka CIA & Co), which has moved from propaganda films into propaganda theater. However, Langley guys, you need some theatrical help. Your “Russian Troll Farm” at the Vineyard is the most crude, amateurish, nasty piece of pseudo-theatrical claptrap I have seen reviewing theater since 1998 when I became a member of the Drama Desk.”

The books I picked & why

Alexander Ward’s carefully researched new account argues Biden is POTUS in name only