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Hiroshima, August 6, 1945
"A bright light filled the plane," wrote Col. Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb. "We turned back to look at Hiroshima. The city was hidden by that awful cloud...boiling up, mushrooming." (Previously Published)
Aug 6, 2017, 12:00pm
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A Healing Tree: Remembering Hiroshima
Every August 6, the anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, I think of the people I met there fifteen years ago while doing research in Japan. ... “I had given up hope,” Numata-san confessed. “Then one day I was by the river and I saw this tree—I will take you to see it after lunch—and I noticed this tree had died in the bomb blast. It was still black and charred, but I noticed small branches beginning to grow. Somehow the tree had found a way to come back to life. And I thought, if this tree can do it, so can I. I came to visit the tree many times...
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Aug 5, 2017, 3:39pm
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10 Examples That Prove White Privilege Protects White People in Every Aspect Imaginable
Jon Greenberg: 1. I Have the Privilege of (Generally) Having a Positive Relationship with the Police ... 2. I Have the Privilege of Being Favored by School Authorities ... 3. I Have the Privilege of Attending Segregated Schools of Affluence ... 4. I Have the Privilege of Learning about My Race in School ... 5. I Have the Privilege of Finding Children’s Books that Overwhelmingly Represent My Race ... (Surely you can see where this is going!)
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Jul 28, 2017, 3:11pm
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Dr. Schweitzer’s Lost Message
César Chelala: Early on his career he became a staunch peace activist. His activities in favor of world peace gained him the admiration of figures like Albert Einstein and Presidents Kennedy and Eisenhower. One day, looking at a herd of hippos in the Ogowe River, he developed his idea of “reverence for life.” According to it, “The greatest evil is to destroy life, to injure life, to repress life which is capable of development.” In 1952 he was awarded the Nobel Peace prize. The money from the award went to fund the creation of a village for lepers close to his hospital called “Village of Light,” for the hope it still brings to those affected by the disease...
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Jul 21, 2017, 12:54pm
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Dismantling Power: The Zapatista Indigenous Presidential Candidate’s Vision to Transform Mexico from Below
Benjamin Dangl: María de Jesús Patricio, the 57-year-old traditional Nahua indigenous doctor and mother of three from western Mexico is the first indigenous woman to run for the presidency in Mexico. ... "No demand of our peoples, no determination and exercise of autonomy, no hope made into reality has ever corresponded to the electoral ways and times that the powerful call ‘democracy.’ Given that, we intend not only to wrest back from them our destiny which they have stolen and spoiled, but also to dismantle the rotten power that is killing our peoples and our mother earth...
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Jul 10, 2017, 10:44am
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The Founding Myth of the United States of America
Benjamin Naimark-Rowse: American Revolutionaries led not one, but three nonviolent resistance campaigns in the decade before the Revolutionary War. These campaigns were coordinated. They were primarily nonviolent. They helped politicize American society. And they allowed colonists to replace colonial political institutions with parallel institutions of self-government that help form the foundation of the democracy that we rely on today. ... The first nonviolent resistance campaign was in 1765 against the Stamp Act. Tens of thousands of our forbearers refused to pay the British king a tax simply to print legal documents and newspapers, by collectively deciding to halt consumption of British goods....
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Jul 3, 2017, 4:16pm
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Watergate and the Downing of Nixon, Part 3
Russ Baker: Many say JFK was killed, in part, because of his stand on the oil depletion allowance, a government program greatly benefiting oil companies. Oil issues certainly would cause massive problems for later presidents, including Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Here, we examine how oilmen who had initially backed Nixon decided he was not so great after all. Then we look at an early precursor to Watergate — what seems like another scheme to pin something nefarious on Nixon, this one unsuccessful. Finally, we provide new details on the groundwork for and execution of Watergate — by a determined bunch with intelligence connections...
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Jun 29, 2017, 3:16pm
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Deep History of America’s Deep State
Jada Thacker: The idea of an elitist Deep State – erasing a “mistake” by the people – pervades current efforts to remove buffoonish President Trump, but the concept has deep historical roots dating from the Founding ... (Deep State – loosely defined as an unelected elite that manipulates the elected government to serve its own interests.) ... 230 years ago, an unelected group of elite Americans held a secretive meeting with an undisclosed agenda. Their purpose was not merely to manipulate lawful government in their own interests, but to abolish it altogether. In its place, they would install a radically undemocratic government – a “more perfect” government, they said – better suited to their investment portfolios...
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Jun 23, 2017, 12:51pm
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Watergate and the Downing of Nixon, Part 2
Russ Baker: Nixon’s presence in Dallas on November 22, 1963, along with LBJ’s — and Poppy Bush’s quieter presence on the periphery — created a rather remarkable situation. Three future presidents of the United States were all present in a single American city on the day when their predecessor was assassinated there. Within days, a fourth — Gerald Ford — would be asked by LBJ to join the Warren Commission investigating the event. ... (Nixon was in Dallas for the Pepsi bottlers convention - its early reservation of one large venue helped determine Kennedy’s ultimate destination and thus the motorcade route.)...
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Jun 22, 2017, 4:34pm
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Watergate and the Downing of Nixon, Part 1
Russ Baker: With President Donald Trump and his administration facing investigation by a special counsel, we increasingly see parallels being drawn with Watergate, and the investigation and removal of Richard Nixon. ... This brings to mind claims that “deep state” elements are seeking to undo Donald Trump. Given Trump’s own track record, it’s hard to see how it would require the machinations of enemies to seal his doom. Nonetheless, the question of how elements of the dominant establishment — including allies in intelligence agencies, the military, and high finance, might move against a president...
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Jun 17, 2017, 3:38pm
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Wikileaks Unveils ‘Cherry Blossom’ — Wireless Hacking System Used By CIA
Swati Khandelwal: WikiLeaks has published a new batch of the ongoing Vault 7 leak, this time detailing a framework – which is being used by the CIA for monitoring the Internet activity of the targeted systems by exploiting vulnerabilities in Wi-Fi devices. ... Dubbed "Cherry Blossom," the framework was allegedly designed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with the help of Stanford Research Institute (SRI International), an American nonprofit research institute, as part of its ‘Cherry Bomb’ project. ... Cherry Blossom is basically a remotely controllable firmware-based implant for wireless networking devices...
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Jun 16, 2017, 3:42pm
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Standing Rock Documents Expose Inner Workings of “Surveillance-Industrial Complex”
The Intercept-TigerSwan Tactics Part 2: Leaked documents and public records reveal a troubling fusion of private security, public law enforcement, and corporate money in the fight over the Dakota Access Pipeline. ... Overall, TigerSwan depicted the situation on the ground as volatile, at times painting the anti-pipeline camps as rife with drug use and “sexual deviance,” its inhabitants likely to stir violence. The security company found ways to interpret even the most benign social gatherings as potentially dangerous....
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Jun 3, 2017, 11:39am
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The Untold Story of Memorial Day: How Former Slaves Honored the Civil War Dead
Sarah Lazare: During the spring of 1865, African-Americans in Charleston, South Carolina—most of them former slaves—held a series of memorials and rituals to honor unnamed fallen Union soldiers and boldly celebrate the struggle against slavery. One of the largest such events took place on May first of that year but had been largely forgotten until David Blight, a history professor at Yale University, found records at a Harvard archive. ... The procession was led by 3,000 black schoolchildren carrying armloads of roses and singing the Union marching song “John Brown’s Body.” Several hundred black women followed with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses. Then came black men marching in cadence, followed by contingents of Union infantrymen...
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May 29, 2017, 2:24pm
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Why the Right is Morally Wrong
Ken Levy: Underlying all of this bitter polarization and emotional partisanship are two profoundly opposing views about government’s moral obligations to the most vulnerable and historically oppressed members of society. While the left regards government as a force for good, a powerful institution that should be used primarily to help improve such people’s lives and thereby expand their liberty, the right regards government as a necessary evil, an inherently despotic, liberty-diminishing institution that should be used only for the more minimal purposes of maintaining order and security...
May 6, 2017, 2:25pm
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PA Dept. of Corrections Tells Court It Will Finally Treat Mumia Hep-C infection, But Only Because DOC Neglect has Caused Cirrhosis
Dave Lindorff: After two years of being denied appropriate treatment for his active Hepatitis-C infection, Mumia Abu-Jamal, a black journalist and activist who has been in a Pennsylvania jail for 35 years, 29 of them on death row, will finally receive the latest medicine to treat the deadly disease ... Abu-Jamal’s supporters around the world believe that Pennsylvania, under pressure from the powerful police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, which was long calling for the state to “fry Mumia!”, has been trying to “execute” him by medical neglect...
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Apr 1, 2017, 3:36pm
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