Articles by: Robert J Barsocchini

The Other Hiroshimas: A Review of ‘Napalm: An American Biography’, by Robert M. Neer

The Other Hiroshimas: A Review of ‘Napalm: An American Biography’, by Robert M. Neer

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…]

by 10/08/2018 1 comment Book Review
Israeli Settler Colonialism and Occupation Fact Sheet

Israeli Settler Colonialism and Occupation Fact Sheet

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…]

by 17/05/2018 1 comment Palestine
MLK’s Political Evolution Through The 1960s

MLK’s Political Evolution Through The 1960s

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…]

by 22/01/2018 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
What It Was Like Thinking A Ballistic Missile Was Speeding Toward Us In Hawaii

What It Was Like Thinking A Ballistic Missile Was Speeding Toward Us In Hawaii

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…]

by 15/01/2018 1 comment World
A Look at “Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam”, by Nick Turse

A Look at “Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam”, by Nick Turse

“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…]

by 28/11/2017 Comments are Disabled Book Review
American Rape of Vietnamese Women Was “Considered Standard Operating Procedure”

American Rape of Vietnamese Women Was “Considered Standard Operating Procedure”

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…]

by 02/10/2017 2 comments Imperialism
Truman Put Nukes In Guam And Gave The Order To Nuke North Korea

Truman Put Nukes In Guam And Gave The Order To Nuke North Korea

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…]

by 16/08/2017 2 comments Imperialism
Key Myths And Facts About The Atomic Bombings Of Japan

Key Myths And Facts About The Atomic Bombings Of Japan

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…]

by 07/08/2017 2 comments World
Tracing Potential US View of ISIS As Strategic Asset

Tracing Potential US View of ISIS As Strategic Asset

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…]

by 16/05/2017 1 comment World
Endless Atrocities: The US Role In Creating The North Korean Fortress-State

Endless Atrocities: The US Role In Creating The North Korean Fortress-State

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…]

by 26/04/2017 4 comments Imperialism
A Syrian man collects samples from the site of a suspected toxic gas attack in Khan Sheikhun, in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, on April 5, 2017.
International outrage is mounting over a suspected chemical attack that killed scores of civilians in Khan Sheikhun on April 4, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Omar haj kadour

MIT Rocket Scientist Questions White House Claims On Syria Chemical Attack

  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…]

by 13/04/2017 1 comment World
US Public Directed To Condemn Chemical Attacks And Election Interference – Unless Carried Out by US or Collaborators

US Public Directed To Condemn Chemical Attacks And Election Interference – Unless Carried Out by US or Collaborators

  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…]

by 07/04/2017 2 comments Imperialism
US Selectively Invokes Liberal Virtues To Serve War Propaganda: Bashar Assad Today; Bertrand Russell In 1922

US Selectively Invokes Liberal Virtues To Serve War Propaganda: Bashar Assad Today; Bertrand Russell In 1922

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…]

by 04/04/2017 1 comment Imperialism
Largest Hunger Crisis Since Creation of UN Underway As US Hoards Food To Feed Harmful Addiction

Largest Hunger Crisis Since Creation of UN Underway As US Hoards Food To Feed Harmful Addiction

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…]

by 22/03/2017 1 comment World
Murky Picture of Death Figures begins To Emerge From US/Iraqi Mosul Siege

Murky Picture of Death Figures begins To Emerge From US/Iraqi Mosul Siege

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…]

by 18/03/2017 1 comment World
Nationalist Propaganda Has Many Progressives Demonizing ‘The Russians’

Nationalist Propaganda Has Many Progressives Demonizing ‘The Russians’

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…]

by 15/02/2017 2 comments World
On Email Hacking Allegations, West Establishment says Trust Torturers, Distrust Torture-Whistleblowers

On Email Hacking Allegations, West Establishment says Trust Torturers, Distrust Torture-Whistleblowers

  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…]

by 28/01/2017 1 comment World
Democrats’ Lack Of Protest Under Obama More Likely An Expression Of Ignorance Than Hypocrisy

Democrats’ Lack Of Protest Under Obama More Likely An Expression Of Ignorance Than Hypocrisy

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…]

by 21/01/2017 2 comments Imperialism
US Corporate Press Selectively Publicizes Disagreements Between CIA, President

US Corporate Press Selectively Publicizes Disagreements Between CIA, President

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…]

by 07/01/2017 1 comment World
Carter Helped Argentine Satellite Dictator Drown Thousands of Dissidents: New Docs

Carter Helped Argentine Satellite Dictator Drown Thousands of Dissidents: New Docs

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…]

by 18/12/2016 1 comment Imperialism
US Gov’t, Oligarchs Behind Planned Fake News Flagging on Facebook

US Gov’t, Oligarchs Behind Planned Fake News Flagging on Facebook

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…]

by 16/12/2016 1 comment World
1943 Gov’t Film Offers Sharp Contrast With Current US Elite Attitude Toward Russia

1943 Gov’t Film Offers Sharp Contrast With Current US Elite Attitude Toward Russia

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…]

by 12/12/2016 1 comment Imperialism
NYT, WaPo Fake News Still Bringing Real Guns To Iraq, Killing Thousands

NYT, WaPo Fake News Still Bringing Real Guns To Iraq, Killing Thousands

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…]

by 09/12/2016 2 comments World
Are US Corporate-Media Businesses ‘Independent’?

Are US Corporate-Media Businesses ‘Independent’?

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…]

by 04/12/2016 Comments are Disabled World
On The Knife-Edge of Western Globalization: A Stint At Standing Rock

On The Knife-Edge of Western Globalization: A Stint At Standing Rock

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…]

Despots “Donate” To Clinton Foundation, Receive Weapons From Hillary: Leaked Docs

Despots “Donate” To Clinton Foundation, Receive Weapons From Hillary: Leaked Docs

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…]

by 26/08/2016 1 comment World
Hillary Clinton Invoked Possible Assassination Of Obama As Reason To Stay In Race in ’08

Hillary Clinton Invoked Possible Assassination Of Obama As Reason To Stay In Race in ’08

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…]

by 12/08/2016 2 comments World
Single Worker May Slit Throats Of 600 Dogs Per Hour, 8 Hours A Day, For 40 Years

Single Worker May Slit Throats Of 600 Dogs Per Hour, 8 Hours A Day, For 40 Years

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…]

by 22/07/2016 1 comment Life/Philosophy
UN: Root Of US Police Terror Is ‘Lack Of Accountability For Perpetrators’

UN: Root Of US Police Terror Is ‘Lack Of Accountability For Perpetrators’

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…]

by 09/07/2016 2 comments Human Rights
July 4th Reflections From Frederick Douglass

July 4th Reflections From Frederick Douglass

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…]