Fire-weapons have been used from ancient times. Napalm-like weapons were used by and against the Romans and Greeks. One term used for them was “wildfire”; another was “Greek fire”, as incendiaries were widely used by the Greeks. Some ships were equipped to shoot other vessels with flaming oils emitted from tubes in their bows. Individual soldiers were equipped with flaming[Read More…]
Israeli Settler-Colonialism “For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived.” “We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build[Read More…]
Maybe we just have to admit that the day of violence is here, and maybe we just have to give up and let violence take its course. The nation won’t listen to our voice – maybe it’ll heed the voice of violence. – Martin Luther King, Jr. (1) In “Martin Luther King Jr. and the Cold War”, Thomas Noer describes[Read More…]
Yesterday morning, while I was drinking coffee and reading and my wife was getting ready for work, we heard an emergency alert sound from our phones. I figured it would be a storm warning, but the weather was clear. My wife looked at her phone and said a missile was coming. She immediately sprang into action, grabbed a gallon of[Read More…]
“Are we supposed to kill women and children?” “Kill everything that moves.” (2) In Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (Metropolitan Books. New York. 2013), Turse writes that the US military’s official position, and the popular understanding in the US, is that leadership “has never condoned wanton killing or disregard for human life.” (2) On the rare occasions[Read More…]
Comparing testimony from Vietnamese women and American soldiers, Gina Marie Weaver, in her book Ideologies of Forgetting: Rape in The Vietnam War, finds that rape of Vietnamese women by American troops during the US invasion of Vietnam was a “widespread”, “everyday occurrence” that was essentially “condoned”, even encouraged, by the military, and had its foundation in military training and US culture. [Read More…]
In 1951, the US placed nuclear weapons in Guam, and Truman gave the order to use them on North Korea. That order was not sent – literally, by accident. The reason: Truman was in the process of removing General MacArthur “because he wanted a reliable commander on the scene” in case he “decide[d] to use nuclear weapons”. … “In the[Read More…]
In 1945, US president Harry Truman (who had dictatorial control over the atomic bomb) and his advisor James Byrnes intentionally prolonged the US war with Japan until, and apparently so that, they could target Japanese civilians, without warning, with atomic bombs. The bombings were planned and carried out, as Alperovitz notes in an almost thousand-page study, in a way that[Read More…]
Gelhorn prize winner Gareth Porter notes this week that in 2008, after the US had destroyed Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of people and sending millions fleeing, George W. Bush wanted to establish indefinite military occupation of the country. But the then Iraqi government lead by prime minister Nouri al Maliki “rebuffed that demand” and forced the largely defeated US[Read More…]
Paul Atwood, a Senior Lecturer in American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, provides a concise summary of the history that informs North Korea’s “relations with the United States” and “drives its determination never to submit to any American diktat”. Excerpts from Atwood’s summary are here used as a framework, with other sources where indicated. Atwood notes it is[Read More…]
One of the world’s leading rocket scientists, national security advisor and MIT Professor Theodore Postol, who has won awards for debunking claims about missile defense systems and has been a scientific adviser to the US Chief of Naval Operations, says today in a nine-page report that a four-page report released by the Trump administration yesterday intended to blame the[Read More…]
Dr. Noam Chomsky, a scholar who taught classes on US foreign policy at MIT and whom International Business Times notes is “one of the world’s most eminent academics and political commentators”, gave a more than one hour-long interview this week to Democracy Now. In it, he points out that while the US government and oligarchy (see below) encourages US[Read More…]
Interviewer: “All sides in this war have been accused of civilian casualties, but Western media has been almost completely silent about the atrocities committed by the rebels” [who, according to internal US government analysis, operate predominantly under the umbrellas of al Qaeda and ISIS, which are directly sponsored by US-backed dictatorships including Saudi Arabia and Qatar].Syrian president Bashar Assad: “Whenever[Read More…]
The UN notes the world is “facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the UN … more than 20 million people across four countries face starvation and famine. Without collective and coordinated global efforts, people will simply starve to death. Many more will suffer and die from disease.” One of the reasons scholars like Gary Francione have said[Read More…]
A prominent Iraqi Sunni politician, Khamis Khanjar, who is in touch with civilians on the ground in the ISIS stronghold of Mosul, which is being bombarded by US airstrikes and Iraqi ground forces, told Washington this week that …a sudden surge in civilian casualties … [is threatening] to undermine the effort to crush the [ISIS] militants. …at least 3,500 civilians[Read More…]
Neocon and neoliberal war propaganda, as exhibited in the Washington Post, New York Times, etc., “has turned much of the liberal/progressive community” in the US “into a pro-New Cold War constituency willing to engage in a new breed of McCarthyism”, Robert Parry notes today. (This author has personally witnessed similar displays.) Leading Russia expert Stephen Cohen, a professor at Princeton,[Read More…]
British mainstream paper the Daily Mail reported that former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, says he can attest first hand that the Clinton/Podesta materials handed to Wikileaks were leaked from a Washington insider, not stolen by Russia. But the Daily Mail, knowing the majority of people won’t read into the article, says, in the large, bold-lettered article summary beneath the[Read More…]
As Democrats express disgust at and prepare massive protests against Trump on his inauguration day (as was also done regarding Bush Jr.), respected analysts detail how the public has been kept ignorant of Obama’s actual policies and instead exposed to sycophantic praise, distortion, and omission regarding his actions. John Pilger quotes a typical example of Obama’s treatment in Western neoliberal[Read More…]
The US corporate press was abuzz with front page, top stories today about the disagreement between incoming president Trump and some figures from the CIA and other intelligence agencies regarding the leaking of facts about Hillary Clinton, which some in the US speculate caused her to lose the election. Some US establishment figures claim the information was stolen and released[Read More…]
Newly declassified documents pertaining to ‘Operation Condor‘, a deadly crackdown on pro-democracy sentiment in US satellites in Latin America, reveal that the government of Jimmy Carter provided assistance to the US proxy dictator in Argentina that helped him drown thousands of dissidents in the ocean or rivers. The revelations add to Carter’s already bloody legacy, which includes numeroussimilar crackdowns in US[Read More…]
Facebook is adding a new feature wherein a group that the Washington Post calls an ‘independent third party fact checker’ will decide whether stories are real or fake, and flag ones the group decides are fake. WaPo leaves out of its report that the ‘independent fact checker’, the Poynter International Fact-Checking Network, receives funding from a US government-funded group, the[Read More…]
The film The Battle of Russia, produced in 1943 by the US War Department (which was renamed the Defense Department in 1949), illustrates a respectful and favorable US elite view of Russian history, the Soviet/Russian people, and Stalin for defeating Hitler in World War II and proving that the German reich (empire) was not invincible. The film was originally intended[Read More…]
Fake news propagated by the US government and collaborating organizations such as the New York Times and Washington Post helped create an environment in which the US was able to illegally invade Iraq in 2003, killing at least one million and possibly upwards of two million people, including the deaths of some 4,500 US soldiers, according to a meta-study by[Read More…]
Professor Noam Chomsky is one of the most cited scholars in history. His work continues to be prominently taught in classes at top US universities like Yale. He teaches classes on US government at MIT, and has written some 100 books on political and social science topics. He has been voted in multiple polls as the world’s most important public[Read More…]
Armed men in jackboots, some masked and toting assault rifles, stand mockingly, defiantly, heavily on the mound of graves – a sacred indigenous burial ground. A site non-natives can understand as similar to Arlington National Cemetery. How US nationalists would feel if the situation were reversed, and people were occupying or plowing up Arlington to bury a pipeline that will[Read More…]
Newly leaked documents provide further details on what Harpers magazine calls the Clinton family’s “slush fund”, the Clinton Foundation. As Secretary of State (the US government position chiefly responsible for coordinating US international arms trafficking), Hillary Clinton accepted millions of dollars in “donations” from the dictator of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa, then increased US weapons sales to him[Read More…]
After Donald Trump’s comment this week that could possibly have been interpreted to be leaning towards brushing with suggesting the assassination or imprisonment of Hillary Clinton, or, more likely, as Robert Parry pointed out, some kind of violent revolution, Clinton Tweeted: “A person seeking to be the President of the United States should not suggest violence in any way.” Putting[Read More…]
Every workday, for eight hours a day, often for many years on end, a worker gets up and has breakfast, then goes in to the office, picks up a blade, and starts slitting the throats of live dogs. That day, he or she will personally slit the throats of about 600 or more dogs per hour, every hour, all day,[Read More…]
US police kill approximately 1,000 people per year according to Federal statistics, disproportionately targeting particularly African and Native Americans. The UN expert panel on people of African descent observed this week that these killings “demonstrate a high level of structural and institutional racism. The United States is far from recognizing the same rights for all its citizens.” The two men[Read More…]
Frederick Douglass, one of the most brilliant minds in history, had many praises for the US and its founders. However, he experienced the nation more fully than any of them, beginning his life a victim of the totalitarian fascism they practiced and promoted, and ending it a statesman and a friend of President Lincoln. Thus his understanding and analysis of[Read More…]
Nord Stream sabotage was to undercut Germany, says Seymour Hersh 
It Will Be Hard And Cost A Lot Of Blood For Ukraine To Kick Out Russians, Says Top U.S. General 
Saudi – Iran rapprochement: A chance for peace 
Day 30 of the NREGA Protest: Students and Activists Detained by the Delhi Police 
An Irrational Verdict? 
Trump Rot at the EPA 
AUKUS, the Australian Labor Party, and Growing Dissent 
Palestinians Don’t Exist? 
The Long Arm of Washington Extends Into Africa’s Sahel 
Radio Fatherland!! 
Bellies of the Rich Swell Further on the Back of Hunger 
The Big Picture And The Small – Part II 
2500 people urge Chief Minister of Karnataka to protect farmers, pastoralists and Dalits from Supreme injustice 
Our Global Water Crisis 
3.5 Million March Across France Opposing Macron’s Pension Reform 
Election Commission of India must question the presence political nominees on BEL’s and ECIL’s Boards 
Ihan Omar Introduces Legislation to Combat Islamophobia 
Narendra Modi’s Cricket Coup 
The Big Picture And The Small 
Prophesies, Then and Now – My Life at World’s End 
How the Cuban Government and Its People Collaborated on the Family Code 
Stop Criminalizing Journalism and Human Rights Activism: Release Irfan Mehraj and Parvez Khurram 
Politics of Bhagat Singh’s trial 
The Tragedy of Footpaths: Impressions of a Pedestrian in Bangalore 
Altruism exists in nature, Reciprocal altruism in humans U.S. Trying To Cover Up Its Role In Nord Stream Sabotage, Says Seymour Hersh 
Open Letter To Rahul Gandhi, Indian National Congress Party 
Future Scenarios in Ukraine West Sends Depleted Uranium Weapons to Ukraine: MEP to Warmongers – “You Make Me Sick!” 
Sri Lanka’s unconvincing response to Universal Periodic Review’s forthright findings 
Kisan Mahapanchayat stages massive rally in Delhi 
The betrayers of Julian Assange 
The Truth About Our Failure to Curb Carbon Emissions 
They’re liars, Mexico’s President on U.S. 
Grameena Pedala Sangham, Telangana State conference, is an important mile-stone 
Imperial Visits: US Emissaries in the Pacific Enough is enough. Restore parliament 
Disgrace at the New York Times 
‘Israel is (Not) Back to Africa’: How African Countries are Challenging Israeli Plot on the Continent 
A Highway to Peace or a Highway to Hell? The Vast Power of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex 
Our beloved K.P.Sasi is no more. Filmmaker, cartoonist, writer, mentor, friend and above all tireless activist championing the cause of every underdog, Sasi breathed his last, mid-afternoon this Christmas day – after battling a medical condition for months. I remember the last time I met him, almost exactly a month before he passed away, at the ayurvedic healing center in[Read More…]
