Imagine living in a country where armed soldiers crash through doors to arrest and imprison citizens merely for criticizing government officials.

Imagine that in this very same country, you’re watched all the time, and if you look even a little bit suspicious, the police stop and frisk you or pull you over to search you on the off chance you’re doing something illegal.

Keep in mind that if you have a firearm of any kind (or anything that resembled a firearm) while in this country, it may get you arrested and, in some circumstances, shot by police.

If you’re thinking this sounds like America today, you wouldn’t be far wrong.

BY JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Russia’s objectives in Ukraine have not changed, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday during a press conference in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. 

“Nothing has changed,” Putin confirmed, saying that the final goal is “to liberate Donbass, to protect these people and to create conditions that would guarantee the safety of Russia itself. That’s it.”

The president clarified that while the goals stay the same, the tactics used to achieve them may change according to what the military considers appropriate. However, he insisted that “everything is going according to plan.”

One prince rides out from the West, the other from the East, destined to do battle until Judgment Day decrees there must come a time of peace. Ancient legends have always fascinated me, and it has always seemed that this is always with us: the past, the present and the future all knotted together in a repetitive loop.

This is what I find most frustratingly hypocritical with the US/UK stance. They are the architects of aggression and expansionism, so have absolutely no claim to a moral high ground, yet they manipulate and propagandise themselves as if they do.

BY Henry Kamens,

MADRID, June 28 (Reuters) - As they waited for the arrival of U.S. President Joe Biden and other world leaders in the high-security NATO summit venue on the outskirts of Madrid on Tuesday, international officials and journalists were bemused to find "Russian Salad" on the top of the in-house restaurant menu.

UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss told a hearing on Tuesday that she has raised human rights concerns with Britain’s allies in the Gulf, but when pressed couldn’t name a single time she did. Despite insisting that the UK should oppose “authoritarian regimes” around the world, Truss said that Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing totalitarian states are “partners.”

In a speech to Commonwealth leaders last week, Truss argued that Britain and its former imperial territories should act as a “bulwark”against Russia and China, and a “robust counterweight to authoritarian regimes” in general. Regarding Russia, Truss has taken an uncompromising position, telling reporters at the NATO summit on Wednesday that Britain and her allies must “defeat Russia first, and negotiate later.”

ROD DREHER: Crazy stuff in Washington today at the January 6th hearings. Take a look at this clip of Gen. Mike Flynn refusing to answer whether he believes in the peaceful transfer of power in the US, by taking the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. My God, this guy. This retired three-star general.

President Trump thought Mike Pence deserved to be hanged, according to testimony from Mark Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson.

The war in Ukraine is the culmination of a 30-year project of the American neoconservative movement. The Biden Administration is packed with the same neocons who championed the US wars of choice in Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Syria (2011), Libya (2011), and who did so much to provoke Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The neocon track record is one of unmitigated disaster, yet Biden has staffed his team with neocons. As a result, Biden is steering Ukraine, the US, and the European Union towards yet another geopolitical debacle. If Europe has any insight, it will separate itself from these US foreign policy debacles.

By JEFFREY SACHS

On the evening of November 9, 1989, thousands of East Germans—including a 35-year-old chemist named Angela Merkel—peacefully crossed into West Berlin amid chaos and the confusion at the Berlin Wall. Within hours, the gates of the most notorious symbol of the Cold War opened for good, as champagne flowed and jubilant Germans with pickaxes began to lop off large chunks of the wall.

1989-2001: America’s Long Lost Weekend

From the fall of the Berlin Wall to 9/11, we had relative peace and prosperity. It was an opportunity to salve some festering national wounds. We squandered it completely—and helped give rise to the crises we’re dealing with today.

Biden’s Endgame Shouldn’t Be Victory for Ukraine

There is no realistic scenario for Ukraine to win. Washington should push for a settlement.

By Tulsi Gabbard, a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and  Daniel L. Davis, a senior fellow at Defense Priorities.

Elvis Is a Con… Baz Luhrmann’s biopic scrambles to reassure us with a woke Elvis while failing to understand what really made him the King.  BY JACK HAMILTON

Hello? I beg to strongly differ with Hamilton who by all means is an expert on popopopop, while Old Gus is just an old bloke…

Jack Hamilton is Slate’s pop critic and associate professor of American studies and media studies at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination. I could not care less about the qualifications.

https://slate.com/culture/2022/06/elvis-movie-2022-austin-butler-tom-hanks-racist.html

The war in Ukraine is rapidly reaching a crucial point with the Russian forces inexorably drawing ever closer to complete control of the Donbass. Once the Donbass is completely under the control of the Russians it is an open question as to how much further into the state of Ukraine they will advance. At the present time they show no inclination to stop their advance and will probably continue until they control the whole of the coastline region up to and including the city of Odessa.

By James O’Neill

Dear Jeff Bezos,

fascists to the end of time…..

The Supreme Court is relentlessly funding and empowering Christian fascism. It not only overturned Roe v. Wade, ending a constitutional right to an abortion, but ruled on June 21 that Maine may not exclude religious schools from a state tuition program.

In Shaftesbury or Lost and Found — a “genre” painting by William MacDuff and shown at the Royal Academy in 1863 — the crumpled hand-bill in the foreground advertises a meeting of the Ragged School Union under Shaftesbury’s presidency. Its activities included setting up homeless street arabs as shoeblacks, hence the interest shown by the two boys in the print of their benefactor.

Gus, Cartoonist since 1951, has modified the painting to include JEREMY CORBYN....

FROM Matt Kennard