Global

Congratulations to us! Talk about the art of the deal! Whether we know it or not, in the wake of those presidential Fourth of July festivities on the Washington Mall (“the biggest ever fireworks”), we’re all Saudis now. And here’s the good news: it only cost the Pentagon $1.2 million extra -- which, in the twenty-first century, is military chump change -- for those spectacular fly-overs, the uniformed personnel gathered in the rain, and the otherwise largely useless tanks hovering here and there in Washington.

I spoke with Senator Mike Gravel on Thursday and asked him whether it seemed fair to him to be excluded from Democratic Party Presidential Primary debates on the basis of his performance in polls that did not include his name among those whom people could say they supported.

Of course, he said that it did not. But he also raised some additional questions, and told me what he would say if included in a debate.

Gravel said that 70,000 supporters had donated to his campaign. That means he has qualified for the debates by the factor that he couldn’t be prevented from competing in, namely number of donors. In this regard he differs from some of the candidates being included in the debates; they have not achieved the required number of donors, but are being included on the sole basis of their performance in polls in which they had the distinct advantage of their names being included.

I want Tulsi Gabbard in the Democratic Presidential debates because she speaks out against wars. She raises the topic unasked. She wants various wars ended or not launched. She wants impeachment made automatic for presidents who launch wars. What’s not to love?

I also want Mike Gravel included for the same reason. If anything, he’s even better than Gabbard. But Gravel openly says he doesn’t want to be elected; he just wants to improve the debates. I wish Gabbard would say the same thing. Here’s why.

February 15, 2003, saw the biggest public demonstration in world history. It was against the obvious lies being used to launch a war against Iraq. Whistleblower Katharine Gun risked her freedom to expose the war in March 2003. The United Nations refused to support the war, and its Secretary General joined many world governments in denouncing the war as a fraud and a crime.

In 1825, long before anybody even thought about air flight, the US Navy began operations in the Pensacola, Florida area, when the federal government built a naval yard on Pensacola Bay.

90 years later, in 1914, the naval yard became home to the Navy’s first permanent air station. Since that time, NAS (Naval Air Station) Pensacola has served as the primary training base for naval aviators and has housed the Blue Angels aerobatic programs, which will be giving 61 shows at 32 locations from March through November of 2019. The two Blue Angel shows in Duluth are scheduled for July 20 – 21, 2019.

Stéphane Brizé’s award-winning At War (En Guerre) is a French
feature about unions, strikes and class struggle being released in
America shortly after Bastille Day, which commemorates that “other”
French Revolution. In this movie a German-owned company reneges
on promises to keep a factory open in an economically depressed
region of France, despite the workers’ sacrifices, agreeing to cutbacks
on wages and benefits, plus the firm’s receiving of subsidies and tax
credits from the French government. The “problem” is that although
the factory makes a profit, it is not profitable enough for shareholders
obsessed with “competivity” in our increasingly globalized planet.
 
In the workers’ fight to prevent the plant from closing and not lose
their jobs the proletarians resort to industrial actions that become
increasingly militant, including walking off the job, sit-down strikes,
occupations, etc. The failure of the French government and courts to
decisively support the strikers pushes them towards more direct
action. At one point the German CEO is roughed up after a failed

“The easy movement of high ranking military officers into jobs with major defense contractors and the reverse movement of top executives in major defense contractors into high Pentagon jobs is solid evidence of the military industrial-complex in operation.”

I was utterly stunned when I read these words of former Wisconsin senator William Proxmire, quoted in an essay by William Hartung, not because of the point he was making — like, what else is new? — but because he said them in . . . 1969.

Oh my God, fifty years ago!

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Tourists, gamblers, traders and residents can now
travel by train between Bangkok and the Thai-Cambodian border for the
first time after tracks were cut 45 years ago, when U.S. and Cambodian
forces began losing their war against Pol Pot who later unleashed
Cambodia's "killing fields" regime.

The new rail link ends one of the last disruptions caused by the
regional U.S.-Vietnam War and tightens the peacetime economies of
former enemies Thailand and Cambodia.

The two countries recently extended an existing Bangkok-Aranyaprathet
railway line which crosses eastern Thailand. They repaired its final
3.5-mile (5.7-kilometer) link between Aranyaprathet and Ban Klong Luk
Border Station on the Thai side of the frontier.

On July 1, the State Railway of Thailand's trains began scheduled
departures from each station twice a day -- two at dawn and two at
lunch time -- for a total of four trips.

Each journey takes about five hours to complete 134 miles (216
kilometers). Tickets cost less than $2.

The latest U.S. House of Representatives version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which is beyond global in scope and not the least bit defensive, offended Donald Trump’s desire for limitless power and spending in dozens of ways detailed by the people he employs to write things longer than tweets — and that was before it was amended. And the amendments are shockingly good.

It’s Karl Marx meets the Marx Brothers in Antaeus Theatre Company’s adaption of Bertolt Brecht’s 1944 play The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Brecht, who wrote The Threepenny Opera and Mother Courage, is best known for his leftwing agitprop. But many forget what Antaeus wisely remembers - while the German playwright may have been a master polemicist and propagandist (often against the master race) Brecht also had a caustic wit which reaches new heights of Marxist mirth in this production at the Kiki & David Gindler Performing Arts Center.

By a vote of 219 to 210, at 2:31 p.m. on Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an amendment introduced by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar requiring that the U.S. military provide Congress with the cost and the supposed national security benefits of every foreign military base or foreign military operation.