A blog about a criminal enterprise
This is not an article intended to praise Qassem Suleimani, the Commander of Iran’s military who was whacked by President Trump with several Hellfire Missiles fired from a US drone at his vehicle outside the Baghdad Airport.
What I do decry, however, is the almost universal characterization of Suleimani as “the baddest of the bad,” or as the NY Times labeled him in Sunday editorial condemning
By Dave Lindorff
As far back as at least the American Revolution, there was an unwritten rule among combatants that you don’t kill the commander in the field of battle. That’s why generals could be seen directing their troops while sitting astride a horse behind the front lines —easy targets for anyone equipped with a rifled barrel on their long gun to pick off. The reason they felt relatively safe doing so was that it was that both sides understood that if commanding officers were
By Dave Lindorff
Gentle reader, I am afraid cannot bring myself to offer you the expected “Happy New Year” greeting at the start of this decade.
The traditional phrase for today sticks in my craw. It just seems too ridiculous and inappropriate to our reality to be uttered with any sincerity.
2020 and the decade that it is ushering in is not going to be a “happy” time for the vast majority of us humans on this planet or even to those of us living in this most fortunate of nations, geographically
By Dave Lindorff
The latest Trump administration news is a Washington Post article reporting that Trump’s “personal lawyer” Rudy Giuliani, was working a private “back channel” negotiation this past year with embattled Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a failed effort to persuade Maduro to quit his office and leave the country.
The Post, and some of the congressional Democrats who are always salivating at opportunities to raise further impeachment issues with which
“Speaking Truth to Empire” on KFCF 88.1 independently owned and locally operated since 1975 in Fresno, Dan Yaseen interviews Linda Pentz Gunter, she founded Beyond Nuclear.org in 2007 and serves as its international specialist as well as its media and development director. Prior to her work in anti-nuclear advocacy, she was a journalist for 20 years in print and broadcast, working for USA Network, Reuters, The Times (UK) and other US and international outlets. In 2018,
By Dave Lindorff
In 1966, during the early years of the America’s war against Vietnam, Congress passed and President Johnson signed into law a Freedom of Information Act. It wasn’t all that great at the time, though. Indeed, it took the courageous act of two men, Daniel Ellsberg and his co-conspirator, Anthony Russo, to steal and then copy thousands of pages of a secret US government study of the history of that war, known as the Pentagon Papers, in 1969, and to then, at great personal risk,
By John Grant
Donald Trump’s narcissistic, authoritarian instincts and the man’s clear admiration of Vladimir Putin’s gangster-capitalist leadership style makes me think of archetypal killers. During his campaign for president he spoke often of killing; he would anonymously refer to some of his business friends as “real killers,” which was meant as a compliment on their skills and effectiveness. There was the remark he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Lately,
By Dave Lindorff
A lot of pundit verbiage and Democratic Party internal debate as well is being wasted on the question of whether Trump could be convicted successfully in a Senate currently run by a lickspittle Republican majority afraid of their shadows and devoid of any concern for the fate of Constitutional government.
Let’s accept that the 2-plus Republicans among this bunch of gutless partisans that would have to join all or most of the 47 Democrats and independents in the Senate in order
By Ron Ridenour
On June 12, 1987, the greatest president in the history of the United States of America (according to US opinion polls), Ronald Reagan, challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. Twenty-nine months later, November 9, 1989, the communist party leaderships of the DDR and Soviet Union, complied and opened the wall.
I call upon the prime minister of the “United Kingdom”, Boris Johnson, to do the same at Belmarsh Prison where political prisoners, such as Julian Assange,
By Ron Ridenour
Did a coup d´état take place in Bolivia with the removal of President Evo Morales? Certainly, an internal coup was a major cause, along with a rebellion calling for Morales’ resignation. When the commander of the armed forces, backed by many generals, publically calls for the president to abdicate, that is an internal coup. Did the US orchestrate this coup? Well, it would be nothing new.
The 1823 “Monroe Doctrine” asserted that Latin America belonged in the US’s backyard.