It may be too early to celebrate, but I feel, today, a bit more relaxed than I have been for a long time. Still six days to go before Donald Trump ejects the current not-quite-there occupant out of the White House and takes over the nuclear suitcase. And somehow, because the clueless, thickheaded Joe Biden had made us so nervous, with the dangerous escalations in the war between Russia and the U.S. proxies–which seemed to have brought us perilously closer to catastrophic nuclear war between the two greatest powers on earth: Russia and the U.S.–the promised ascension of Donald Trump is something to be grateful for.
Why? Because Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Donald’s children love life so much, it is more likely they will have the common sense to see the other person’s point of view, and weigh the risks to each course of action.
Until now, it had seemed necessary for me to inform my friends, and my readers, about my own fears: this is what love and caring for your friends and loved ones should mean: to speak of uncomfortable thoughts when it was preferable and more comforting to engage in petty quarrels and differences, or to get 30-second kicks from funny cat videos from Facebook and Tik-Tok.
And why was I convinced that my informers were telling the truth, speaking Truth to power, even at the risk of endangering themselves?
The answer: my G-20 of mainly highly informed, experienced, courageous, principled, antiwar thinkers, observers, and commentators on Russia, the Ukraine and Middle East Wars, geopolitics and military strategy, some with personal contacts and sources within Russia and elsewhere were often people with huge reputations, such as Jeffrey Sachs, adviser to the United Nations, the State Department, and Gorbachev, and with PhDs from Harvard and Columbia, and multiple well-received books. John Mearsheimer, head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago, with books and predictions which had proved to be correct by subsequent events. Many of these 20 plus sources had been right in predicting the outcome of the Ukraine War, and the madness of having started it in the first place. On some points, they may differ (for example, Scott Ritter disagrees with John Mearshimer’s opinion that allowing Ukraine to have nuclear weapons when the Soviet Union was dissolved would have been a better idea. But nearly all agree that the war that is currently destroying Ukraine and Ukrainians was a foolish idea, and that the U.S. bore ultimate responsibility for it. Also, when more than a majority of these thinkers agree on some view that goes against the Authorized Narrative, this usually signals to me that they are most likely to be right:
So here is my list of G-20 intellectuals, which I further break down into:
Top Ten Original Thinkers, Scholars, and Influential Voices:
Noam Chomsky (Father of Anti-war thinkers)
John Mearsheimer (world authority on Great Power geo-politics)
Jeffrey Sachs
Richard Wolff
Scott Ritter (his passion and courage, and sources; his concern about nuclear escalation)
Alexander Mercouris and “the Duran” (One can easily get addicted to Alexander’s voice, his choice of words, and his apparent amusement at any preposterous idea or happening)
Annie Jacobsen (Woman author of Nuclear War: A Scenario: Essential reading)
Larry C. Johnson (ex-CIA)
Ray McGovern (ex-CIA)
Col. Douglas MacGregor (ex-US Army)
George Galloway, MP
Top Seven Hosts of Podcasts
Judge Napolitano: “Judging Freedom”
Nima L. Alkhorshid: Dialogue Works)
Mehdi Hassan
Lex Friedman
Danny Haiphong
Larry Wilkerson
Tucker Carlson
Other Influential and Well-Connected or Wise Sources
Pepe Escobar
Norm Finkelstein
Pascal Lottaz
Professor Ted Postol
Dmitry Orlov
Non-Scholarly Influential or Unique Voices
RFK Jr
Jill Stein
Mohammad Marandi
Bassem Yousuff
The T20 plus 5
To the T20, I add three writers/thinkers who have contributed much by being antiwar, anti-hypocrisy, and/or pro-freedom of speech:
Dave Chappelle
George Carlin … (a bit of doubt, self-doubt, as well as other-doubt)
Richard Pryor (proposed by George Galloway)