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  • Civilian Killings Went Unpunished. Declassified papers show U.S. atrocities went far beyond My Lai
    9 August 2006 par (Open-Publishing)
    6 comments

    By Nick Turse and Deborah Nelson, Special to The Times
    The men of B Company were in a dangerous state of mind. They had lost five men in a firefight the day before. The morning of Feb. 8, 1968, brought unwelcome orders to resume their sweep of the countryside, a green patchwork of rice paddies along Vietnam’s central coast.
    They met no resistance as they entered a nondescript settlement in Quang Nam province. So Jamie Henry, a 20-year-old medic, set his rifle down in a hut, unfastened (…)

  • Civilian Killings Went Unpunished
    8 August 2006 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    By Nick Turse and Deborah Nelson, Special to The Times
    The men of B Company were in a dangerous state of mind. They had lost five men in a firefight the day before. The morning of Feb. 8, 1968, brought unwelcome orders to resume their sweep of the countryside, a green patchwork of rice paddies along Vietnam’s central coast.
    They met no resistance as they entered a nondescript settlement in Quang Nam province. So Jamie Henry, a 20-year-old medic, set his rifle down in a hut, unfastened (…)

  • Message to the Tricontinental
    2 August 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    "Now is the time of the furnaces, and only light should be seen." Jose Marti
    Twenty-one years have already elapsed since the end of the last world conflagration; numerous publications, in every possible language, celebrate this event, symbolized by the defeat of Japan. There is a climate of apparent optimism in many areas of the different camps into which the world is divided.
    Twenty-one years without a world war, in these times of maximum confrontations, of violent clashes and sudden (…)

  • Florida’s Fear of History: New Law Undermines Critical Thinking
    24 July 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    by Robert Jensen
    One way to measure the fears of people in power is by the intensity of their quest for certainty and control over knowledge.
    By that standard, the members of the Florida Legislature marked themselves as the folks most terrified of history in the United States when last month they took bold action to become the first state to outlaw historical interpretation in public schools. In other words, Florida has officially replaced the study of history with the imposition of (…)

  • The Little Tramp’s Classic Labor Lesson
    15 July 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    Venezuela’s socialist government is using a 1936 Chaplin film to educate workers about their rights. Employers are not applauding.
    By Chris Kraul, Times Staff Writer
    LOS TEQUES, Venezuela - In his classic 1936 film, "Modern Times," Charlie Chaplin has to work so fast tightening bolts in a steel factory that he finally goes crazy. In a memorable scene that has become a metaphor for labor exploitation, the Little Tramp is run through the factory’s enormous gears.
    For President Hugo (…)

  • WE THE PEOPLE ARE THE SIX-HUNDRED
    10 July 2006 par (Open-Publishing)

    The Charge Of The Light Brigade
    by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
    Memorializing Events in the Battle of Balaclava, October 25, 1854 Written 1854
    Half a league half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred: ’Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns’ he said: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.
    ’Forward, the Light Brigade!’ Was there a man dismay’d ? Not tho’ the soldier knew Some one had blunder’d: Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to (…)

  • Is This Really War?
    22 June 2006 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    Is This Really War? By Sheldon Richman June 16, 2006 In 1985, Wilson Goode became the first U.S. mayor to bomb his own city. In an effort to rid a West Philadelphia neighborhood of a ragtag, violent, back-to-nature organization called Move, which had engaged in a shootout with police, Goode ordered explosives dropped on the Move house from a helicopter. The whole block of row houses burned, 61 homes in all. Eleven people were killed, five of them children. Some 250 people lost their homes. (…)

  • Don’t forget those other 27,000 nukes
    9 June 2006 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    by Hans Blix
    STOCKHOLM During the Cold War, it proved possible to reach many significant agreements on disarmament. Why does it seem so impossible now, when the great powers no longer feel threatened by one another? Almost all the talk these days is about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to states like Iran and North Korea, or to terrorists. Foreign ministers meet again and again, concerned that Iran has enriched a few milligrams of uranium to a 4 percent level. Some (…)

  • Abusing And Killing Prisoners And Civilians, And The Conscience Of A Nation
    8 June 2006 par (Open-Publishing)
    2 comments

    by Jim Bush
    Growing up in a military family, I was exposed to all that is military, including the history of America’s wars. One of the things I was led to believe was that American soldiers didn’t kill prisoners of war or civilians. The Japanese and Germans killed prisoners and civilians, but not Americans. The Communists killed prisoners and civilians, but not Americans.
    Later, the Vietnam War disabused me of the misconception that Americans did not kill prisoners or civilians. But the (…)

  • Why Israel’s capture of Eichmann caused panic at the CIA
    8 June 2006 par (Open-Publishing)
    1 comment

    Information that could have led to Nazi war criminal was kept under wraps
    by Julian Borger in Washington
    On May 23 1960, when Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion announced to the Knesset that "Adolf Eichmann, one of the greatest Nazi war criminals, is in Israeli custody", US and West German intelligence services reacted to the stunning news not with joy but alarm.
    Newly declassified CIA documents show the Americans and the German BND knew Eichmann was hiding in Argentina at least (…)