STEPHEN LENDMAN—According to the High Court ruling, the right to peaceful protests includes public flag-burning – a far stronger action than kneeling or sitting during the national anthem. Thomas Jefferson once said (f)ree speech and other fundamental rights “cannot be limited without being lost.” Former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall stressed “(a)bove all else, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression (regardless of its) ideas…subject matter (or) content.”
AMERICAN STUDIES
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D. ORLOV—In short, Russia is to most Americans a mystery wrapped in an enigma, and there simply isn’t a large enough pool of intelligent Americans with good knowledge of Russia to draw upon, whereas to many Russians the US is an open book. As far as the actual American “intelligence” and “security” services, they are all bloated bureaucratic boondoggles mired in political opportunism and groupthink that excel at just two things: unquestioningly following idiotic procedures, and creatively fitting the facts to the politics du jour. “Proving” that Iraq has “weapons of mass destruction”—no problem!
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Palestinians’ Great March of Return: What You Need to Know
17 minutes readRICHARD HARDIGAN—For the last seven weeks, many Palestinians in Gaza have been involved in the Great March of Return, which is modeled on the 2011 Nakba Day demonstrations, when Palestinian refugees from Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and the Palestinian territories approached the border with Israel, demanding their right to return to the lands from which they were evicted. Beginning March 30, Gazans have been marching to the fence that Israel has created in order to keep them out. More than two thirds of Gaza’s two million residents are descendants of refugees created during the Nakba, and their right to return to their homeland is enshrined in several United Nations Resolutions.
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GARY LEUPP—Whether this is a temporary setback or the collapse of diplomatic efforts, Trump looks bad in this situation. He seems petulant and hypocritical. Yes the North Korean statement by a high-ranking woman in the Foreign Ministry is defiant, but many Koreans are like Trump in that when attacked rhetorically, they counterattack rhetorically. In this case the insulting language was intended to echo Trump’s language vis-a-vis the DPRK.
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The Geopolitics of Impeachment: Recalling Nixon in the Trump Era
24 minutes readCALEB MAUPIN—The same forces that maneuvered to bring down Richard Nixon, undoubtedly see Donald Trump as a threat and are actively discussing the idea of removing him. Trump has done a great deal to appease these forces, including de-regulating Wall Street and bombing Syria. However, the media campaign against Trump and the wave of fresh accusations has not ceased.