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Blog postIf true, Trump's retention of Top Secret nuclear information is a crime just short of that of the Rosenbergs.
I held a “Q” clearance (for nuclear programs). The government did an additional, rigorous background check on me, monitored my finances, travels, communications, etc. Top Secret documents are need-to-know only, always secured, access logged and signed for. They never, ever, leave secure control. It’s no joke. Nuclear is as sensitive as it gets. And Trump had TS/SCI-Q documents -
Blog postc/o The Nation
When radical Republican officials sabotage elections, President Biden may need to invoke the Insurrection Act and send troops to ensure a clean vote count.
With the possible elevation of MAGA election deniers to top state leadership positions in November, Arizona is positioning itself to become the Fort Sumter of this century. These ultra-right radicals have been vocal about their intention to rig future elections, thus triggering a constitutional crisis. P -
Blog postWith the J6 plotters we can follow one of two paths: Truth and Reconciliation 2.0 or Nuremberg Trials 2.0. I favor the latter and here’s why.
January 6 Committee hearings. Department of Justice investigation. Fulton County District Attorney probe. New York attorney general’s fraud investigation. Could it be that the walls are finally closing in on Donald Trump? That the justice system, from whose grasp he’s almost always managed to slip away, will prove to be his undoing? -
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Blog postAre we seeing the decline of right-wing rant media? Don't bet your cable subscription on it.
Off-the-rails far-right “InfoWars” fabulist Alex Jones tremulously awaits a multi-million dollar defamation penalty that, by most accounts, will bring him to financial ruin. Well deserved too. In a twist of sweet karma, his ruination is being brought about by the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims, who have successfully sued Jones after years of his spreading conspi -
Blog postThe GOP's plan to purge the federal bureaucracy is one leg in an ongoing coup to neuter democratic government and impose a strongman-led autocracy.
Senator Josh Hawley epitomizes the dollar store fascist. On the morning of January 6, 2021, he’s all kruppstahl-faced and blackshirt fist-waving from behind the safety of police lines at the U.S. Capitol, riling up the mob about to storm the building. By afternoon, he’s scampering for his life out a back door. All posture, no guts. Whe -
Blog postVichy banner grafted onto Old Glory: symbolizing today’s Republican Party What Philippe Pétain, Jefferson Davis & Lindsey Graham have in common.
In his latest piece in The Atlantic, “The Most Pathetic Men in America,” Mark Leibovich zeroes in on Donald Trump’s most slavish congressional enablers, Kevin McCarthy and Lindsey Graham. With his rapier-like pen, Leibovich describes Graham as a boy in his father’s small town saloon:
Short and pudgy, Lindsey wa -
Blog postIs there any hope for a people three-quarters of whom believe in angels and over half of whom read below the sixth grade level? Misinformation and populism go hand-in-hand.
The United States has the largest economy on the globe, is the leader in medical technology and research universities, not to mention space exploration and military prowess. Yet you wouldn’t believe it by the following statistics:
77 percent of Americans believe -
Blog postWhy do things the easy way, like googling info, when you can waste millions on grooming clods from the Urals to be James Bonds?
Remember the TV series, “The Americans”? Well, the essence of the plot is real. Patiently planting and cultivating “illegals” is a tried and true ploy of Russian intelligence. CNN reports on a Russian “illegal” operation that has been blown wide open. The revelations, which will become more public over time, offer a fascinating glimpse -
Blog postPreparing for the post-Putin era admittedly is a tall order, but it must be done. Hints may be revealed in the White House's upcoming National Security Strategy.
I heard on the radio today the old Scorpions hit, “Wind of Change”:
Listening to the wind of change
The world is closing in
Did you ever think
That we could be so close, like brothers
The futu -
Blog postBoris Bondarev
More such protest resignations could bring down Putin's whole security state house of cards.
A lot of press attention is being given to Boris Bondarev, a mid-level, Geneva-based Russian diplomat specializing in arms control, who summarily quit out of protest over Russia’s war against Ukraine. In his open letter, Bondarev said,
For twenty years of my diplomatic career I have seen different turns of our foreign policy, but never have I been so ash -
Blog postWaging war against civilians is the recourse of cowards and is self-defeating. And then come the war crimes indictments
We continue to be stunned by daily reports and images of Russian troops indiscriminately massacring Ukrainian civilians, obliterating cities, shelling schools and hospitals, raping, pillaging and starving the population. It’s as though, failing utterly in warfare, the Russians are going on an uncontrolled rampage of vengeance against the Ukrainian people. Just t -
Blog postShould Americans re-elect Trump, they will have forfeited any right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
In their book, Peril, Bob Woodward and Robert Costa relate how Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley feared that an unstable President Trump was about to order a nuclear strike on China around the time of the November 2020 election. Milley directed military commanders to refuse to carry out such an order by the commander in chief unless they also consu -
Blog postDayan, Sun Tzu, Mannerheim
What do Moshe Dayan, Carl Mannerheim, Volodymyr Zelensky and General Valery Zaluzhny all have in common? That intangible ingredient for victory: morale.
What Sun Tzu, Moshe Dayan, Napoleon & General Zaluzhny Tell Us on How to Beat the Russians
In war college, we studied Sun Tzu, who, among many wise insights on war, said: “He who is prudent and lies in wait for an enemy who is not, will be victorious.”
The valiant Ukrainians are -
Blog postPutin aims to return the world to a hierarchical and largely anti-democratic time when Great Powers called the shots. He must be stopped.
British geographer Sir Halford John Mackinder famously wrote:
Who rules Eastern Europe commands the Heartland
Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island
Who rules the World Island commands the world
“Heartland” refers to the vast lands from the Volga to the Yangtze Rivers, essentially Russia and C -
Blog postPutin isn't being "misinformed." Rather he's a victim of his own fabulism and overweening hubris. Do you ever believe in your own b.s?
I’m not getting promotions and raises — It’s the fault of those damn feckless fools who run the company who feel insecure with my superior performance.
I’m very attractive, poised and smart. So, why aren’t members of the opposite sex making a bee line for me? — Why, they’re all losers, that’s why.
I started thi -
Blog postThe sole question concerning Putin's demise is not "if," but "when" — and who will slap on the cuffs, or put a bullet in his head.
In July 1917, Anton Deniken, chief of staff to a senior Russian general, reported to headquarters:
The offensive thus resulted disastrously, yet never before had I had the good fortune to fight with greater numerical superiority in bayonets and materials. Never had success seemed more assured. On t -
Blog postMy article in Washington Monthly, 2/28/2022: Vladimir Putin must pay a heavy price for his invasion of Ukraine. Here’s how we did that to the Soviets in the 1980s.
It’s time to make Mother Russia bleed for her crimes. We’ve done it before. We can do it again.
Many pundits are comparing Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine to Hitler’s aggression in Europe—former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Dov Zakheim told The Washington Post that P -
Blog postThe post-Soviet period is over. The time has come to revive and redefine containment policy to keep Putin in his box.
I was privileged to have had a ringside seat during the fall of communism in Europe. As aide to the State Department’s top official dealing with Europe, I got to read all the diplomatic and most intelligence reporting as events broke. And I was privy to our government’s policy deliberations. This included highly restricted transcripts of President George H -
Blog postGleiwitz False Flag Op, September 1939 Autocrats fill a timeless mold. They draw from the same bag of dirty tricks. My bet is that Putin indeed will invade Ukraine.
HITLER: “What makes a people or, to be more correct, a race is not language, but blood.”
PUTIN: “Our kinship has been transmitted from generation to generation. It is in the hearts and the memory of people living in modern Russia and Ukraine, in the blood ties that unite millions of our families… Fo -
Blog postThose who spread falsehoods about the pandemic share responsibility in countless deaths and therefore have blood on their hands. So, how to regard them?
The federal government is dispatching two 20-member medical teams from DoD to two regional hospitals in our area that are overwhelmed with COVID patients. People, including friends of ours, needing elective surgeries for joint replacements, cancer treatment, heart problems, etc. must wait patiently till the flood of pandemic cas -
Blog postMy piece in Dispatches From Exile, 1/31/21:
Public response to Trump indictments centers on timing. The closer to the 2024 elections, the greater the risk of violence. Two years ago, I wrote in the Washington Monthly: “Will America soon have its first Shawshank President? Will Donald Trump find himself fending off riots in the Attica mess hall? Tweetless and at the mercy of 2,000 ‘angry Democrat’ inmates?”
As the law closes in on our former crook-in-chief, sp -
Blog postIf we Americans proceed with national seppuku, bid farewell to peace, prosperity and human dignity.
I live not far from Fort Drum, home of the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division, which was heavily involved in the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts. Some 50 miles (80 km) to the northwest as the crow flies is Canadian Forces Base Kingston, ON, home of the 1st Canadian Division, many of whose service members also served in Afghanistan. Both divisions have rich histories, h -
Blog postc/o The Economist: "A Tsar is Born" My essay in "Dispatches From Exile," 12/28/21:
Old-fashioned partitioning of geography by potentates is as relevant today as ostrich feathered shakos and mutton chops.
In my latest piece in Washington Monthly, “How Back-Channel Diplomacy Can Prevent War With Russia,” I hold that,
A hair-trigger ‘Guns of August’ scenario of rapid escalations could cascade into armed conflict between NATO and Russian forces. Mor -
Blog postMy article in Washington Monthly, 12/28/21:
It’s not too late for Joe Biden to stave off conflict and chaos between Moscow and Kyiv. John F. Kennedy shows the way.
Barbara Tuchman’s Pulitzer Prize–winning book The Guns of August made such a deep impression on President John F. Kennedy that he asked his cabinet members, National Security Council staff, and all Army officers to read it. And when the world faced Armageddon over the Cuban Missile Crisis in -
Blog postMy piece in "Dispatches From Exile," 12/17/21:
What is it in their Faustian bargain that drives those with power from law abiding moral citizens to amoral criminals?
“One seldom recognizes the devil when he is putting his hand on your shoulder,” said Albert Speer after finishing up 20 years in prison for war crimes. Speer, one of Hitler’s top lieutenants, was one of the few very senior Nazis not hanged after the Nuremberg trials. His exquisitely fashione
Titles By James Bruno
The Foreign Circus: Why Foreign Policy Should Not Be Left in the Hands of Diplomats, Spies and Political Hacks
Mar 13, 2014
by
James Bruno
$4.99
Other Formats:
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