Category: peace and war

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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

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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

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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

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Dear Moderators of the Presidential Debates: How About Raising the Issue of How to Avert Nuclear War?

You mass media folks lead busy lives, I’m sure.  But you must have heard something about nuclear weapons―those supremely destructive devices that, along with climate change, threaten the continued existence of the human race.

Yes, thanks to popular protest and carefully-crafted arms control and disarmament agreements, there has been some progress in limiting the number of these weapons and averting a nuclear holocaust.  Even so, that progress has been rapidly unraveling in recent months, read more

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The Ongoing Dread in Gaza: So Many Names, So Many Lives

by Kathy Kelly
July 23, 2019

“I felt shaky and uneasy all day, preparing for this talk” – Jehad Abusalim, a Palestinian from the territory of Gaza

Jehad Abusalim, a Palestinian now living in the United States, grew up in Gaza. In Chicago last week, addressing activists committed to breaking the siege of Gaza,  he held up a stack of 31 papers. On each page were names of 1,254 Palestinians living in Gaza who had been killed in just one month of Israel’s “Operation read more

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Speaking Truth to Empire

Speaking Truth to Empire on KFCF 88.1 FM independently owned and locally operated since 1975 in Fresno, Dan Yaseen interviews Cindy Sheehan, one of  America’s leading antiwar and anti-Empire activist. They discussed Trump administration’s threats of war against Iran and Venezuela; they also talked about the sordid history of American Empire. Her website is: www.cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com

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What’s to celebrate?: US is a Classic Empire and Is Becoming a Repressive Police State at Home

By Dave Lindorff

            As I set out to fly home from the UK on Monday following a short film project in Cambridge, I found my boarding pass, which I had been blocked from obtaining online the night before, carrying a bold-faced  stamp in the lower right corner. Asking about it I was told by the British employee at the United check-in counter, “That is because you are on a US Department of Homeland Security list, sir.”

            read more

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Trump says accept you’re a loser and we can be friends: ‘Genius’ President Plays with Fire

By John Grant

 President Donald Trump go soft at the last minute and decide the 150 Iranian souls expected to die in an attack that was “10 minutes away” should live? We’re told the planes were in the air when he had his magnanimous, humanitarian moment. It reminds me of the story told by Fyodor Dostoevsky about being in front of a firing squad as a young man, ready to die — when at the very last moment, a messenger arrives: “The Czar has read more

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Speaking Truth to Empire

On “Speaking Truth to Empire” on KFCF 88.1 FM independently owned and locally operated in Fresno since 1975, Dan Yaseen interviews Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, author, columnist and a former president of the National Lawyers Guild. She lectures throughout the world on international human rights and U.S. foreign policy. Topics of discussion include Trump administration’s belligerence against Iran and moving the world toward Doomsday. Her website is, www.marjoriecohn.com