CCI Friends, current international relations and politics have begun crumbling before our eyes in the past few months. The discontent felt by near 70% of Americans, the phenomenal shift at the grassroots toward Bernie Sanders, and the totally unexpected rise of Donald Trump to the Republican ticket are creating reverberations of change that are unmistakable.

Now to create and risk solutions to the status quo that will make this potential transition-in-process easier (it could be quite difficult). The article below by yet another USAF career military officer informs and educates us on one simple solution: drop the military aspects of NATO (which seems almost unthinkable – but it’s possible!) and retain the NATO Partnership for Peace Program. If this shift is accomplished, it could become a genuine humane effort that concentrates on cooperation and goodwill among nations––rather than continuous wars.

Sharon

Russia Insider
July 21, 2016

Trump Hits NATO Hard

How long before a NATO exit and for the outdated military and political alliance to crumble?

Theodore McIntire

The author is a Major (Retired) of the US Air Force and a peace activist.

In the United States, throughout Europe, and all around the world the public is clamoring for imaginative solutions and new leaders to meet the challenges of our global society. Increasingly voters are rejecting old, tired and misapplied 20th century solutions to the real, important and pressing issues of the 21st century.

Whether or not you agree with Donald Trump, it is painfully obvious he has some fresh, imaginative and futuristic visions, possibly inspired by his and others famous television programming.  He is willing to explore strange new ideas, to breathe new life into the Republican Party and the civilization it created, and to boldly go where no politician has gone before.

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Friends, what a propitious time for David Swanson to come out extolling President Kennedy’s prescient remarks some 50 years ago!

This piece is dense and long, but it gives the moral and rational roadmap we need to use today as we deal with Russia in yet another crisis point fraught with the possibility of nuclear annihilation.

Sharon

David Swanson’s Blog
July 17, 2016

Best Speech a U.S. President Ever Gave

In planning an upcoming conference and nonviolent action aimed at challenging the institution of war, with the conference to be held at American University, I can’t help but be drawn to the speech a U.S. president gave at American University a little more than 50 years ago. Whether or not you agree with me that this is the best speech ever given by a U.S. president, there should be little dispute that it is the speech most out of step with what anyone will say at either the Republican or the Democratic national convention this year. Here’s a video of the best portion of the speech:

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CCI Friends,

Increasingly economists, etc., are emerging to “Speak Truth to Power.” Here another: Ray Kinsella in the Irish Independent. Hopefully these truth tellers will stimulate a bulwark of people power to defeat this dangerous militarization of Europe with NATO on Russia’s borders.

Sharon

The Irish Independent
July 11, 2016

The militarisation of Europe is a far greater threat than Brexit

Ray Kinsella

The most searching challenge that the EU faces is not the fallout from Brexit – it’s from the militarisation of Europe and the US-led Nato encirclement of Russia, endorsed by the Nato Summit in Warsaw last weekend.

It is as misconceived as austerity and authoritarianism, which are at the heart of the European crisis. But it is infinitely more dangerous. If the Chilcot Report on the war in Iraq proves anything, it is that the momentum towards armed conflict, once started, becomes difficult to contain.

Militarisation will make it much more difficult to deal with the EU’s migration crisis, itself largely a consequence of the catastrophic effects of Western military intervention. A conflagration between US-led Nato and Russia would increase the numbers of refugees in Europe by an order of magnitude. As for the impact of such a conflagration on the European and global economy – well, all bets are off. We could not begin to model the impact – but we can look at post-war Europe and Iraq and Syria and Libya… Only what are euphemistically termed ‘Defence’ industries do (exceedingly) well out of war.

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