Seymour Hersh’s new memoir, Reporter: A Memoir, occasionally notes the failure of the exposure of wrong-doing to result in accountability or policy reforms. That’s the closest the book generally comes to touching on any motivation behind Hersh’s work related to ending war or torture or any other evil. The exception is the bit about Hersh’s time working for Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign. In 1960, in Chapter 3, Hersh joins the U.S. Army without one word as to why. In
What Took Down ACORN May Take Down the Rest of Us
In Seymour Hersh’s new account of his career, Reporter: A Memoir, he recalls that Martin Luther King Jr. told him upon the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that he planned to register 900,000 Negroes to vote. King would go on to oppose war and organize poor people across racial lines before being killed.
In a new film called ACORN and the Firestorm we’re told that ACORN registered 833,113 poor people to vote in 2008.
Tangier Island Is The Earth
It’s nice to look down on the poor foolish residents of Tangier Island, a little speck of land sinking into the Chesapeake Bay. Some 87% of the residents who voted in 2016, voted for Trump. The Mayor of Tangier says that being mayor is only his second job; his first is killing some of what remain of the crabs in the Bay. Residents imagine that the U.S. government will save their island from going under by building a wall. They imagine that Trump will make that happen. Yet Trump famously told
Trumperial Presidency
A January 29th letter from the U.S. president’s lawyer Marc Kasowitz claims that the president cannot possibly obstruct justice, can refuse a subpoena to testify, and cannot be indicted while president. The letter also seems to claim that he can pardon himself for his crimes. The hope that such a reading misinterpreted the letter was pretty well smashed when the same president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said this weekend that the Constitution says the president can pardon himself.
Here’s what
Talk Nation Radio: Greg Shupak: Media Tells Wrong Story About Palestine
Greg Shupak is the author of The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel, and the Media, which can be purchased on the website of OR Books. He has a PhD in Literary Studies and teaches Media Studies at the University of Guelph in Toronto. His fiction has appeared in a wide range of literary journals and he regularly writes analysis of politics and media for a variety of outlets including Electronic Intifada, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, In These Times, Jacobin,
Memorial Day THIS
“Memorial Day is a time to remember, appreciate, and honor the selfless patriots who gave the ultimate sacrifice in service to freedom. At a time when our country seems so divided, we must not forget that it is because of their service and sacrifice that we live in the most free and prosperous nation on Earth.” —Congressman Tom Garrett
It would be difficult to count all of the lies in the above statement. Let’s just highlight a few.
Let’s start with “most free.”
The British-based Legatum
Talk Nation Radio: Gail Davidson on Lawlessness of U.S. Sanctioning of Torture
Gail Davidson is a legal activist working for a better world through advocacy and education to enhance understanding of and compliance with, international human rights and humanitarian law. She is the founder and Executive Director of Lawyers Rights Watch Canada a volunteer-run committee of lawyers and other human rights defenders in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the UN that promotes international human rights and the rule of law through advocacy,
Tim Kaine’s War Scam Hits a Speed Bump
Virginia ought to be in the running for worst U.S. senators in the country, a couple of walking catastrophes empowered in part by their status as Democrats and, in one case, the status of rightful Vice President if not for various outrages, real (the Electoral College, vote suppression) and imagined (Vladimir Putin’s evil manipulation of the time-space continuum). While Senator Mark Warner loves him some torturers he can confirm to high office, Tim Kaine has bigger plans.
Senator Tim Kaine has
War Is Love
Photo by Truthdig.
On Monday I was arrested along with many other people in the street in front of the U.S. Capitol, participating in the new Poor People’s Campaign, the first multi-issue coalition we’ve seen in years that properly takes on militarism rather than indulging the fantasy of a $1 trillion a year military coexisting with decent humanitarian and environmental policies.
Yet it was hard at this peaceful gathering and in the “training” before it not to notice people’s habitual
Talk Nation Radio: The Movement Music of Tom Neilson
This week on Talk Nation Radio we will be speaking with and listening to the music of Tom Neilson. He has received over two dozen awards, including two song of the year awards from Independent Musicians. In 2017, he received the Arab American Women Association Award for Education About Palestine Through Performance Art. In 2015 he was nominated for the United Nations Nelson Mandela Award for Lifetime Achievement in Peace and Justice. Tom and his partner Lynn Waldron will be performing this September