Montenegro, formerly part of Yugoslavia before that country broke up in the early 1990s, finally became an independent state in 2006 and joined NATO in 2017. In a recent interview, Donald Trump was asked about the clause in the NATO treaty that requires that an attack on any member be treated as an attack on every member. The questioner asked him whether the US would go to war if Montenegro, with a population of just 630,000, was attacked.
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It is routine to see overt and ostentatious displays of patriotism at sporting events in the US. Of course, these days ‘patriotism’ means symbolic acts like singing the national anthem and God Bless America, praising the military and the police forces by having them involved in ceremonies such as hauling out a massive American flag onto the field, military flyovers, the cameras panning to service members in the crowds and thanking them for their service, and even reunions where service members returning from one of the many never-ending wars are shown meeting their family members at the game.
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There has been much speculation about what Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin said at their two-hour long private meeting in Helsinki. Trump likes these one-on-one meetings and had one with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un too, prior to the later meeting with aides. But of course, these meetings are not exactly one-on-one and hence not entirely private. Along with them were two translators.
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Jackie Robinson is known mainly for the fact that he was the first black baseball player in the major leagues. He was an anti-Communist and thus he was persuaded to speak against Paul Robeson before HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee, but he knew that he was being used as a pawn by the white power structure. While that appearance tarnished his image and resulted in him being called an Uncle Tom and an Oreo, largely forgotten is the fact that the rest of his life was devoted to advancing the cause of black athletes and breaking down color barriers and pushing for integration in every aspect of society. And his actions have reverberated down to this day.
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20-year old Walter Carr was due to start a new job with a moving company near Birmingham, Alabama. But the day before his first day was to start at 8:00am, his car broke down. Since he lived 20 miles away, he decided to walk through the night to get to work on time. When the owner of the moving company heard about the dedication of his new employee from the woman whose stuff Carr was scheduled to move, he drove from Tennessee to give him his own car, a 2014 Ford Escort.
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At the joint press conference following their summit meeting, Donald Trump made an unusual statement where he seemed to suggest that he was more inclined to believe Russian president Vladimir Putin rather than his own intelligence agencies about Russia’s role in US elections.

“My people came to me, [Director of National Intelligence] Dan Coats came to me and some others, they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

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The issue of Russia and Donald Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin has become the subject of great debate in the US, with much heat but less light. In this discussion on Democracy Now!, Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshare Fund, takes the position that the recent summit was a bad idea and gives his reasons. Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept disagrees. The discussion is much more substantive than what you usually get on commercial talking head TV.

The subtitle of this excellent new book by sportswriter Howard Bryan pretty much says what it is all about: Black athletes, a divided America, and the politics of patriotism. I am not a huge fan of American professional sports (as regular readers know, cricket is my thing) but this book is not about sports but the politics of sports, especially as it relates to the role that black athletes have played in advancing social justice. The book provides a much needed historical context for the recent movement started by Colin Kaepernick to kneel during the playing of the national anthem to protest police brutality and social injustice. Bryant writes with anger and passion about the way that so many major black athletes have shirked the responsibility that they were entrusted with by their predecessors to use their celebrity power improve the conditions of the black community and fight police brutality and injustice.
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