Trump Praises and Adopts Prior Administration’s Methods for Crushing Dissent, Turns Them on Police Protesters

(This article appeared initially as an opinion piece on RT.com) US President Trump has called Obama’s model for crushing the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement “beautiful” and is using it to label even peaceful BLM protesters as domestic terrorists. It’s police state stuff. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The US Constitution’s Bill of Rights makes it crystal clear in …

The 1967 Mobilization Against the War in Vietnam: Confrontation at the Pentagon

hundreds of thousands of protesters confront the US War Machine on Oct. 21, 1967 as Generals and DOD leaders watch from the Pentagon the roofhundreds of thousands of protesters confront the US War Machine on Oct. 21, 1967 as Generals and DOD leaders watch from the Pentagon the roof

Note 50 years after the March on the Pentagon:

This month marks the 50th anniversary of a historic event: the 1967 MOBE rally and march on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War. Hundreds of thousands of students, committed leftists and anti-war activists as well as veterans of the Civil Rights movement from all over the nation descended on Washington and put their bodies on the line at the center of the US War Machine. Over 700 were arrested and jailed, among them the author.

In this report — this journalist’s first piece of newswriting, done at the age of 18 — I think readers, and especially younger ones who missed the ‘60s, may get a glimpse of the kind of thinking that was going on among those of us who found ourselves coming unexpectedly face to face with the reality of our government as an oppressive global empire, and with the idea that our own government lies.

There is a naivety here that I hope people will understand and see for what it is: evidence of how middle-class people raised in the post-war era as I was had been lured into a sense of comforting illusion even as our nation was overthrowing governments, propping up brutal dictators, slaughtering Third World people on a scale that can only be called genocide, and promoting a Cold War with the USSR which threatened to trigger a thermonuclear war (sound familiar?).

What I missed in my instant, and rather pessimistic snap analysis of the significance of the MOBE at the time was that it actually led to the peace campaigns of both Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson’s decision not to seek another term as President. It also signaled the beginning of a more militant anti-war movement – one which no longer saw the war as just a mistake or a pointless effort, but as part of a vast imperial scheme of global dominance. In my observation about the relatively small number of genuine radicals at the march, I missed the reality that those hard-core radicals were the ones who had been protesting the war early, and who had done much of the organizing to make it happen. I also failed to even imagine that the violence I saw aimed at MPs guarding the Pentagon was almost certainly the work of agents provocateur — something we learned more about a few years later later when COINTELPRO was exposed.

Despite the shortcomings of my 18-year-old report here, hopefully we can all learn something useful for today by looking back at that crucial event through the eyes of someone whose worldview was profoundly shaped by his participation in it.
 

Confrontation at the Pentagon

Washington, DC (Oct. 26, 1967) — As I sat on the bus with the other students, all riding down to Washington for the confrontation, there was a whispering question which sat like a knot in my head. I was going down there to commit civil disobedience and probably to get arrested and sentenced to a short stint in jail. Why was I doing this?

I think that there were several reasons I would have give if asked, but none of them really satisfied me. I am opposed to the war in Vietnam. Still, I love this country and a by no means a subversive…I’m a patriot. These two sentences are not mutually exclusive. I’m opposed to the war not because I think we are losing or because we cannot win, but for another reason which I have not completely resolved. It seems to me that the whole of recorded history has been of wars and killing. Right now we are by no means in some millennium, while we humanity, actually contemplate the very real possibility of total self-annihilation and are finally capable of it.

Ted Hall Deserves a Nobel Peace Prize For Helping to Prevent a Nuclear Holocaust in the 1950s

    [Source: goodreads.com] Ted Hall Helped the Soviet Union to Counterbalance the U.S. Monopoly on Atomic Weaponry After World War II, Which Acted as a Deterrent Against Aggressive U.S. War Plans Dave Lindorff initiated the documentary film A Compassionate Spy, following a correspondence with Ted Hall’s 87-year-old widow, Joan Hall. Lindorff had written an article in …

Author Norman Solomon Explains Why Americans Don’t Know Their Country’s at War

Review by Dave Lindorff Usually when I read a interesting book I’m reviewing and being a journalist, I often find myself inspired to write an article that delves further into some aspect that the book brushed on. But in the case of Norman Solomon’s infuriating, well-documented and much needed book War Made Invisible: How America …

Time to Trash the Terrorist Watch List, a Police-State Frankenstein Gone Off the Rails

  I have something in common with some of the brownshirt thugs who assaulted the Capitol, some reportedly intent on kidnapping and/or killing congressional leaders and members like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader and  presumptive Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vice President Mike Pence.  No, I’m not a brownshirt fascist. I’m …

Has Trump Already been Removed as Commander in Chief?

  Little noticed during yesterday’s bizarre storming of the Capitol building by armed and violent Trump-incited American “brownshirts,” was the fact that National Guard troops, called for by Washington’s mayor, but not authorized by President Trump, were finally authorized by Vice President Pence.  The significance of this chain of authority cannot be understated, as the Trump presidency begins …

Military Equipment Provided Free to Local Police Departments Bring US Wars Home to American Cities and Communities

Transcript of RT-TV interview of Dave Lindorff by RT’s Caleb Maupin: Maupin:  Why does the Department of Defense have so much excess gear that it needs to unload, anyway? Lindorff:  The US has been involved in so many wars, they become occupations, and the military has developed techniques for operating as an occupying army, and …

Thoughts on the Liberation of Saigon and the end to America’s Genocidal War Against the Vietnamese People

  The following are recollections from several members of the ThisCantBeHappening! Collective about our various anti-war movement struggles and of the day of final triumph in Vietnam 45 years ago today.   Dave Lindorff:  A Day in the Park Like No Other When the US war on Vietnam ended on April 30, 1975 with Vietnamese …

Sanctimonious US Senators Condemn Hong Kong Police Ignoring Far More Brutal US Cops

The Senate, by a voice vote with no opposition yesterday passed a bill condemning the Hong Kong government and Hong Kong police for their brutal treatment of students in the supposedly autonomous Chinese city protesting threats to Hong Kong’s freedoms and it’s promise from China of self rule until 2047. The bill, if signed into …