Hell No! We can’t go!: Why on Earth Would the US Go to War with Iran over an Attack on Saudi Oil Refineries?

 By Dave Lindorff

President Bone Spur, backed by his war-mongering Secretary of State Mike “Armageddon” Pompeo, tweeted yesterday that the US military is “locked and loaded,” ready to attack (bomb) Iran if it can be proven that Iran was behind a drone bomb attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil refineries.

There are plenty of news media in the US that are seconding that notion of reflexively starting a hot war with Iran if it can be shown that Iran and not Houti forces in Yemen attacked Saudi oil read more

Really remembering 9-11: Recalling the Hundreds of Thousands of Civilian Victims of America’s Endless ‘War on Terror’

By Dave Lindorff

Now that the flags are back waving from the tops of flagpoles across the country, and the maudlin paeans to the close to 3000 lives lost in the airplane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, it’s time we gave a thought to the dead who were ignored.

According to very conservative estimates, as reported by the “Costs of War” project of Brown University’s Watson Institute on International and Public Affairs, nearly 250,000 civilians have been read more

The media war-machine is kicking in: US Media Keep Saying Iran is ‘In Violation’ of a Nuclear Agreement the US Withdrew From

 By Dave Lindorff

Yes, Iran is increasing the number of centrifuges it is using to refine nuclear fuel, and yes, it is refining that fuel to a higher percentage of U-235, the isotope that allows the uranium to begin a chain reaction necessary for both fueling a nuclear reactor and for creating an atomic bomb.

But in taking these steps, Iran is not, and indeed cannot be “in violation” of the agreement on its nuclear program that read more

Growing harassment of Muslims, activists and journalists: Are Terrorist Watch Lists Expanding Under Trump?

By Dave Lindorff

My wife, Joyce, and I recently traveled to Vienna for a week, where she had been invited to perform on Austrian state radio. Passing through Heathrow on our way home, we were separated by an automated security gate. The gate, which required you to scan your boarding pass, allowed Joyce through, but when I ran my pass, it flashed “Invalid.”

A security attendant pointed me to a transit desk where read more

Hiroshima & Nagasaki Nukes More about Scaring Stalin than about Ending WWII

By Dave Lindorff

Almost three-quarters of a century ago on August 9, 1945, the United States dropped a 22-kiloton plutonium bomb called the “Fat Man” on Nagasaki.

The total destruction of that city, and the instant incineration of 40,000 mostly civilian people, occurred just three days after the destruction of Hiroshima by a 15-kiloton uranium bomb, which instantly killed 70,000. This criminal one-two punch by the US launched the atomic age.

The bombings have always been, and still are,  presented to young Americans in school history texts, and to Americans in general by government propaganda, as having been “necessary” to end read more

Remembering Ted Hall and Klaus Fuchs Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Spies Who Prevented a Criminal US with a Nuclear Monopoly from Making More of Them

By Dave Lindorff

Cambridge, UK, Aug. 6 — Seventy-four years ago today, the US dropped the first ever atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, a non-military target of several hundred thousand, instantly vaporizing some 70,000 people, mostly civilians, and causing the painful, slower death of another 70,000 who died of burns and radioactive damage to their bodies over the next four months. Another 60,000 died later over the years of cancers caused by the bomb’s radioactive pulse and read more

Keeping this president busy’s a good idea: Let’s Just Let Trump Spend the Whole War Department Budget on Building Walls

By Dave Lindorff

Liberals are upset that the new Supreme Court, packed with conservatives, has decided President Trump can have $2.6 billion of the Pentagon’s new FY 2020 $738 billion budget to build some wall along the Mexican border.

But I think they’re thinking  all wrong about this. Instead of complaining and fighting a losing battle against Trump’s nutty idea of walling off the southern border (most immigrants come into the US by plane, or read more

Trump’s AmeriKKKa: Presidential Racism: Shining Example Of America’s Somber Status Quo

By Linn Washington, Jr.

 Donald Trump is an asshole – as in a definition of that body part descriptor applicable to an irritating personality disorder: a detestable, spiteful, stupid person.

The now former British Ambassador to the United States described the 45th U.S. President as “a very stupid guy” and a “pompous fool” – polished phrases consistent with a definition of an a-hole.

No surprise that news media coverage of the Ambassador’s read more

To paraphrase Yogi Berra, ‘It’s 2016 déjà vu all over again…’: Corporate Media’s Trashing of Bernie Sanders Starts Anew

By Dave Lindorff

In 2016, we learned that the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton Campaign, even before the primary season began, conspired to sabotage the campaign of her leading opponent for the presidential nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).  The conspiracy, that ranged from obtaining campaign debate questions in advance for Clinton and front-loading primaries in states where she could pile up an imposing lead to getting a complicit liberal media to count pledged but read more

Hong Kong and Puerto Rico: Two Colonies Doomed to 2nd-Class Status and Remote Central Government Control

By Dave Lindorff

Two images of massive demonstrations speak volumes about the striking similarity between Hong Kong and Puerto Rico, one an island and peninsular former colony of Britain, now returned to China, but still existing in a kind of neo-colonial relationship to that country, the other an island colony of the United States ever since the US conquered it and its people from Spain as a spoil of war in the 1989 Spanish-American War. Both places contain read more