Author: Walt Zlotow

Steve Chapman’s Chicago Tribune column "On Taiwan, China is hurting its own cause" is pretty far off base in analyzing recent US provocations against China over Taiwan and China’s response.

For starters, he failed to characterize both Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan and Biden’s commitment to defend Taiwan as irresponsible provocations that would absolutely provoke a Chinese response. They continue the 7 years of America’s ‘pivot to Asia’ started by President Obama and continued uninterrupted by Trump and Biden, largely overturning our One China Policy begun by President Nixon in 1972.

Then to characterize China’s relatively measured tit for tat response as “designed to terrorize Taiwan and the US into acts of appeasement” or “conducting a dry run in preparation for an attack on Taiwan” is ludicrous.

Continue reading “Steve Chapman Column on China Disappoints”

Every year the four-day period August 6–9 brings to mind the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. This year is marks the 77th anniversary of those horrific acts. Given recent U.S. withdrawal from 3 nuclear treaties and US boasting about spending a trillion dollars to upgrade our nuclear stockpile, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds to midnight in 2020. That’s the symbolic closest we’ve come to nuclear winter in the entire nuclear age.

I learned of the atomic bombings 71 years ago at age 6 and have been haunted by them ever since. For the first decade afterward, I swallowed whole the US fairytale that the military and political elite were unified in dropping the bombs to prevent a US invasion and its estimate of a million US casualties.

Continue reading “Many Top Military Leaders Opposed Atomic Bombings”

Did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wake up one morning and say to herself, "How can I provoke war with China? Bingo, I’ll schedule a trip to Taiwan crossing a red line for China that will provoke a strong response."

How did that work out, Nancy? Let’s see. Firing missiles near their Taiwan’s border including greatly ramped up military exercises. Sanctions against Taiwanese trade. Stop cooperating with US on climate change. Cancellation of future phone calls and meetings between Chinese and US defense leaders, for which future dates had not been announced. Cancellation of annual naval meetings under the China-US military maritime consultation mechanism. Suspended cooperation on the repatriation of illegal immigrants. Suspension of legal assistance on criminal matters. Suspension of efforts to combat of transnational crimes. Suspension of its anti-drug cooperation with the US which will speed the flow of fentanyl here to kill our youth.

Continue reading “Nancy, Red Means Stop… Not Go”

Today is day 159 in the Russo Ukraine war. It’s also day 159 that the US has funneled tens of billion s of weaponry into the war zone instead of pushing negotiations to end the war quickly.

Having provoked the war for 14 years since proposing NATO membership for Ukraine in 2008, the US has learned nothing from its perfidy, doubling down on its long mission to weaken and isolate Russia after breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The result? Thousands of needless Ukrainian deaths simply to prolong the US proxy war that should never have been fought and could have quickly been ended.

Continue reading “US Weaponry Ensures More Lost Ukraine Territory”

When it comes to dispensing with an inconvenient critic, Saudi Arabia and the United States sure differ on means of destruction.

Saudi Arabia’s ruler Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), upset by critical US resident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, simply channeled the Queen of Hearts in Alice In Wonderland and shouted "Off with his head." Compliant MbS assassins cornered Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, dispensed with his head, and other body parts as well, to feed to the fishes.

The US, faced with a similar inconvenient critic, US war crimes outing Australian journalist, editor, publisher and activist Julian Assange, took the slow, less blood curdling route: years of life degrading extralegal persecution.

Assange started WikiLeaks in 2006, dedicated to exposing nations’ dirty laundry through leaking classified info related to governmental corruption and war crimes.

Continue reading “Khashoggi Chop Job Took Seconds; Assange’s Chop Job Taking Years”

NATO should have been disbanded in 1991 upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union. But au contraire, the US goosed NATO membership from 16 at the time, to 30, in their effort to degrade the newly weakened Russia, while expanding its dominance over Europe; indeed the world.

But 31 years of expanding NATO up to Russia’s borders turned deadly in 2008 when Russia smacked down NATO wannabe Georgia for counting on US and NATO to support their incursion into Russian leaning breakaway Georgian provinces.

Learning nothing from that debacle, the US decided to wage war upon Ukraine democracy, supporting a coup against the democratically elected, Russian leaning Ukraine president in 2014. That led to civil war between the new ultranationalist, US brokered Ukraine government, and the Russian leaning Donbas region of Ukraine. 14,000 dead there provoked the Russian invasion to end Ukraine brutality and secure Russia’s borders against NATO expansion. Criminal yes, but completely predictable.

Continue reading “Sweden, Finland Joining NATO To Get ‘Free Stuff’”