Search Results for: Cuba

Identity Berned

Every time I write about a book about Bernie Sanders, somebody sends me a better one. If this keeps up, by the time his campaign is over I should be reading the best book ever written and be completely out of touch with reality. The latest is The Bern Identity by Will Bunch.

These books don’t make me like Bernie Sanders any more or less, or for that matter take seriously any more or less the idea that a likable personality is particularly relevant. But they do inform me about Sanders and read more

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Quiz Answers

1. Should German schools teach how many people Germany killed in World War II?
Yes, of course, they should. This is the one question that pretty much everyone should get right.

2. How many was it?
World War II, including war-related diseases and famines, killed some 80 million people. Excluding some 30 million killed in Asia brings the total down to 50 million. Excluding some 6 million Germans and Austrians and a half million Italians as having been killed by the Allies (though of read more

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A Quiz to See if U.S. Schools Taught You State Propaganda

U.S. schools provide a great deal of useful information, but also leave out a great deal. Please see whether you can answer the following questions before scrolling down and clicking a link at the bottom for the answers. How many can your kids answer? Can your kids’ teachers answer them? Can your parents answer them? Can your uncle who tells you whom to vote for and what to think answer them?

These questions are not intended to comprise an ideal comprehensive course in U.S. read more

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Do War Makers Believe Their Own Propaganda?

Back in 2010 I wrote a book called War Is A Lie. Five years later, after having just prepared the second edition of that book to come out next spring, I came across another book published on a very similar theme in 2010 called Reasons to Kill: Why Americans Choose War, by Richard E. Rubenstein.

Rubenstein, as you can tell already, is much more polite than I. His book is very well done and I’d recommend it to anyone, but perhaps especially to the crowd that finds sarcasm more offensive than read more

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Why Allen Dulles Killed the Kennedys

By now there’s not nearly as much disagreement regarding what happened to John and Robert Kennedy as major communications corporations would have you believe. While every researcher and author highlights different details, there isn’t any serious disagreement among, say, Jim Douglass’ JFK and the Unspeakable, Howard Hunt’s deathbed confession, and David Talbot’s new The Devil’s Chessboard.

Jon Schwarz says read more

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The Incomprehensible Idea: What Opposing All Wars Means

The world’s two big nuclear militaries are in the same war now in Syria and, if not on opposite sides exactly, certainly not on the same side. A primary, if not the primary, goal of the United States in Syria is overthrowing the Syrian government. A primary, if not the primary, goal of Russia is maintaining the Syrian government. Hostilities are building in each nation toward the other. Republican candidates for president are trying to outdo a certain Democratic candidate for president in bellicosity read more

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U.S. Drops Fleas With Bubonic Plague on North Korea

This happened some 63 years ago, but as the U.S. government has never stopped lying about it, and it’s generally known only outside the United States, I’m going to treat it as news.

Here in our little U.S. bubble we’ve heard of a couple versions of a film called The Manchurian Candidate. We’ve heard of the general concept of “brainwashing” and may even associate it with something evil that the Chinese supposedly did to U.S. prisoners during the Korean read more

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What Are Foreign Military Bases For?

If you’re like most people in the United States, you have a vague awareness that the U.S. military keeps lots of troops permanently stationed on foreign bases around the world. But have you ever wondered and really investigated to find out how many, and where exactly, and at what cost, and to what purpose, and in terms of what relationship with the host nations?

A wonderfully researched new book, six years in the works, answers these questions in a manner you’ll find engaging whether read more

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The Coup

The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations deals with such an engaging topic that even this new book can’t really make it boring, hard as it seems to try. When asked what historical figure I would most like to bring back to life and have a talk with I tend to think of Mossadeq, the complex, Gandhian, elected leader, denounced as both Hitler and a communist (as would become part of the standard procedure) and overthrown in an early CIA coup (1953) — read more

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