On 2 November 2008, the New York Times Magazine headlined “Questions for James K. Galbraith: The Populist,” which was an “Interview by Deborah Solomon” of the prominent liberal economist and son of John Kenneth Galbraith. She asked him, “There are at least 15,000 professional economists in this country, and you’re saying only two or three of them foresaw the mortgage crisis” which had brought on the second Great Depression?

He answered: “Ten or twelve would be closer than two or three.”

She very appropriately followed up immediately with “What does this say about the field of economics, which claims to be a science?”

He didn’t answer by straight-out saying that economics isn’t any more of a science than physics was before Galileo, or than biology was before Darwin. He didn’t proceed to explain that the very idea of a Nobel Prize in Economics was based upon a lie which alleged that economics was the first field to become scientific within all of the “social sciences,” when, in fact, there weren’t yet any social sciences, none yet at all. But he came close to admitting these things, when he said: “It’s an enormous blot on the reputation of the profession. There are thousands of economists. Most of them teach. And most of them teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless.” His term “useless” was a euphemism for false. His term “blot” was a euphemism for “nullification.”

On 9 January 2009, economist Jeff Madrick headlined at The Daily Beast, “How the Entire Economics Profession Failed,” and he opened:

At the annual meeting of American Economists, most everyone refused to admit their failures to prepare or warn about the second worst crisis of the century.

I could find no shame in the halls of the San Francisco Hilton, the location at the annual meeting of American economists. Mainstream economists from major universities dominate the meetings, and some of them are the anointed cream of the crop, including former Clinton, Bush and even Reagan advisers.

There was no session on the schedule about how the vast majority of economists should deal with their failure to anticipate or even seriously warn about the possibility that the second worst economic crisis of the last hundred years was imminent.

I heard no calls to reform educational curricula because of a crisis so threatening and surprising that it undermines, at least if the academicians were honest, the key assumptions of the economic theory currently being taught. …

I found no one fundamentally changing his or her mind about the value of economics, economists, or their work.”

He observed a scandalous profession of quacks who are satisfied to remain quacks. The public possesses faith in them because it possesses faith in the “invisible hand” of God, and everyone is taught to believe in that from the crib. In no way is it science.

In a science, when facts prove that the theory is false, the theory gets replaced, it’s no longer taught. In a scholarly field, however, that’s not so — proven-false theory continues being taught. In economics, the proven-false theory continued being taught, and still continues today to be taught. This demonstrates that economics is still a religion or some other type of philosophy, not yet any sort of science.

Mankind is still coming out of the Dark Ages. The Bible is still being viewed as history, not as myth (which it is), not as some sort of religious or even political propaganda. It makes a difference — a huge difference: the difference between truth and falsehood.

The Dutch economist Dirk J. Bezemer, at Groningen University, posted on 16 June 2009 a soon-classic paper, “‘No One Saw This Coming’: Understanding Financial Crisis Through Accounting Models,” in which he surveyed the work of 12 economists who did see it (the economic collapse of 2008) coming; and he found there that they had all used accounting or “Flow of Funds” models, instead of the standard microeconomic theory. (In other words: they accounted for, instead of ignored, debts.) From 2005 through 2007, these accounting-based economists had published specific and accurate predictions of what would happen: Dean Baker, Wynne Godley, Fred Harrison, Michael Hudson, Eric Janszen, Stephen (“Steve”) Keen, Jakob B. Madsen, Jens K. Sorensen, Kurt Richebaecher, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, and Robert Shiller.

He should have added several others. Paul Krugman, wrote a NYT column on 12 August 2005 headlined “Safe as Houses” and he said “Houses aren’t safe at all” and that they would likely decline in price. On 25 August 2006, he bannered “Housing Gets Ugly” and concluded “It’s hard to see how we can avoid a serious slowdown.” Bezemer should also have included Merrill Lynch’s Chief North American Economist, David A. Rosenberg, whose The Market Economist article “Rosie’s Housing Call August 2004” on 6 August 2004 already concluded, “The housing sector has entered a ‘bubble’ phase,” and who presented a series of graphs showing it. Bezemer should also have included Satyajit Das, about whom TheStreet had headlined on 21 September 21 2007, “The Credit Crisis Could Be Just Beginning.” He should certainly have included Ann Pettifor, whose 2003 The Real World Economic Outlook, and her masterpiece the 2006 The Coming First World Debt Crisis, predicted exactly what happened and why. Her next book, the 2009 The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Bankers, was almost a masterpiece, but it failed to present any alternative to the existing microeconomic theory — as if microeconomic theory isn’t a necessary part of economic theory. Another great economist he should have mentioned was Charles Hugh Smith, who had been accurately predicting since at least 2005 the sequence of events that culminated in the 2008 collapse. And Bezemer should especially have listed the BIS’s chief economist, William White, regarding whom Germany’s Spiegel headlined on 8 July 2009, “Global Banking Economist Warned of Coming Crisis.” (It is about but doesn’t mention nor link to https://www.bis.org/publ/work147.pdf.) White had been at war against the policies of America’s Fed chief Alan Greenspan ever since 1998, and especially since 2003, but the world’s aristocrats muzzled White’s view and promoted Greenspan’s instead. (The economics profession have always been propagandists for the super-rich.) Bezemer should also have listed Charles R. Morris, who in 2007 told his publisher Peter Osnos that the crash would start in Summer 2008, which was basically correct. Moreover, James K. Galbraith had written for years saying that a demand-led depression would result, such as in his American Prospect “How the Economists Got It Wrong,” 30 November 2002; and “Bankers Versus Base,” 15 April 2004, and culminating finally in his 2008 The Predator State, which blamed the aristocracy in the strongest possible terms for the maelstrom to come. Bezemer should also have listed Barry Ritholtz, who, in his “Recession Predictor,” on 18 August 2005, noted the optimistic view of establishment economists and then said, “I disagree … due to Psychology of consumers.” He noted “consumer debt, not as a percentage of GDP, but relative to net asset wealth,” and also declining “median personal income,” as pointing toward a crash from this mounting debt-overload. Then, on 31 May 2006, he headlined “Recent Housing Data: Charts & Analysis,” and opened: “It has long been our view that Real Estate is the prime driver of this economy, and its eventual cooling will be a major crimp in GDP, durable goods, and consumer spending.” Bezemer should also have listed both Paul Kasriel and Asha Bangalore at Northern Trust. Kasriel headlined on 22 May 2007, “US Economy May Wake Up Without Consumers’ Prodding?” and said it wouldn’t happen – and consumers were too much in debt. Then on 8 August 2007, he bannered: “US Economic Growth in Domestic Final Demand,” and said that “the housing recession is … spreading to other parts of the economy.” On 25 May 2006, Bangalore headlined “Housing Market Is Cooling Down, No Doubts About It.” and that was one of two Asha Bangalore articles which were central to Ritholtz’s 31 May 2006 article showing that all of the main indicators pointed to a plunge in house-prices that had started in March 2005; so, by May 2006, it was already clear from the relevant data, that a huge economic crash was comning soon. Another whom Bezemer should have listed was L. Randall Wray, whose 2005 Levy Economics Institute article, “The Ownership Society: Social Security Is Only the Beginning” asserted that it was being published “at the peak of what appears to be a real estate bubble.” Bezemer should also have listed Paul B. Farrell, columnist at marketwatch.com, who saw practically all the correct signs, in his 26 June 2005 “Global Megabubble? You Decide. Real Estate Is Only Tip of Iceberg; or Is It?”; and his 17 July 2005 “Best Strategies to Beat the Megabubble: Real Estate Bubble Could Trigger Global Economic Meltdown”; and his 9 January 2006 “Meltdown in 2006? Cast Your Vote”; and 15 May 2006 “Party Time (Until Real Estate Collapses)”; and his 21 August 2006 “Tipping Point Pops Bubble, Triggers Bear: Ten Warnings the Economy, Markets Have Pushed into Danger Zone”; and his 30 July 2007 “You Pick: Which of 20 Tipping Points Ignites Long Bear Market?” Farrell’s commentaries also highlighted the same reform-recommendations that most of the others did, such as Baker, Keen, Pettifor, Galbraith, Ritholtz, and Wray; such as break up the mega-banks, and stiffen regulation of financial institutions. However, the vast majority of academically respected economists disagreed with all of this and were wildly wrong in their predictions, and in their analyses. The Nobel Committee should have withdrawn their previous awards in economics to still-practicing economists (except to Krugman who did win a Nobel) and re-assigned them to these 25 economists, who showed that they had really deserved it.

And there was another: economicpredictions.org tracked four economists who predicted correctly the 2008 crash: Dean Baker, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, and Med Jones, the latter of whom had actually the best overall record regarding the predictions that were tracked there.

And still others should also be on the list: for example, Joe Weisenthal at Business Insider headlined on 21 November 2012, “The Genius Who Invented Economics Blogging Reveals How He Got Everything Right And What’s Coming Next” and he interviewed Bill McBride, who had started his calculated riskblog in January 2005. So I looked in the archives there at December 2005, and noticed December 28th, “Looking Forward: 2006 Top Economic Stories.” He started there with four trends that he expected everyone to think of, and then listed another five that weren’t so easy, including “Housing Slowdown. In my opinion, the Housing Bubble was the top economic story of 2005, but I expect the slowdown to be a form of Chinese water torture. Sales for both existing and new homes will probably fall next year from the records set in 2005. And median prices will probably increase slightly, with declines in the more ‘heated markets.’” McBride also had predicted that the economic rebound would start in 2009, and he was now, in 2012, predicting a strong 2013. Probably Joe Weisenthal was right in calling McBride a “Genius.”

And also, Mike Whitney at InformationClearinghouse.info and other sites, headlined on 20 November 2006, “Housing Bubble Smack-Down,” and he nailed the credit-boom and Fed easy-money policy as the cause of the housing bubble and the source of an imminent crash.

Furthermore, Ian Welsh headlined on 28 November 2007, “Looking Forward At the Consequences of This Bubble Bursting,” and listed 10 features of the crash to come, of which 7 actually happened.

In addition, Gail Tverberg, an actuary, headlined on 9 January 2008 “Peak Oil and the Financial Markets: A Forecast for 2008,” and provided the most detailed of all the prescient descriptions of the collapse that would happen that year.

Furthermore, Gary Shilling’s January 2007 Insight newsletter listed “12 investment themes” which described perfectly what subsequently happened, starting with “The housing bubble has burst.”

And the individual investing blogger Jesse Colombo started noticing the housing bubble even as early as 6 September 2004, blogging at his stock-market-crash.net “The Housing Bubble” and documenting that it would happen (“Here is the evidence that we are in a massive housing bubble:”) and what the economic impact was going to be. Then on 7 February 2006 he headlined “The Coming Crash!” and said “Based on today’s overvalued housing prices, a 20 percent crash is certainly in the cards.”

Also: Stephanie Pomboy of MacroMavens issued an analysis and appropriate graphs on 7 December 2007, headlined “When Animals Attack” and predicting imminently a huge economic crash.

In alphabetical order, they are: Dean Baker, Asha Bangalore, Jesse Colombo, Satyajit Das, Paul B. Farrell, James K. Galbraith, Wynne Godley, Fred Harrison, Michael Hudson, Eric Janszen, Med Jones, Paul Kasriel, Steve Keen, Paul Krugman, Jakob B. Madsen, Bill McBride, Charles R. Morris, Ann Pettifor, Stehanie Pomboy, Kurt Richebaeker, Barry Ritholtz, David A. Rosenberg, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, Robert Shiller, Gary Shilling, Charles Hugh Smith, Jens K. Sorensen, Gail Tverberg, Ian Welsh, William White, Mike Whitney, L. Randall Wray.

Thus, at least 33 economists were contenders as having been worth their salt as economic professionals. One can say that only 33 economists predicted the 2008 collapse, or that only 33 economists predicted accurately or reasonably accurately the collapse. However, some of those 33 were’t actually professional economists. So, some of the world’s 33 best economists aren’t even professional economists, as accepted in that rotten profession.

So, the few honest and open-eyed economists (these 33, at least) tried to warn the world. Did the economics profession honor them for their having foretold the 2008 collapse? Did President Barack Obama hire them, and fire the incompetents he had previously hired for his Council of Economic Advisers? Did the Nobel Committee acknowledge that it had given Nobel Economics Prizes to the wrong people, including people such as the conservative Milton Friedman whose works were instrumental in causing the 2008 crash? Also complicit in causing the 2008 crash was the multiple-award-winning liberal economist Lawrence Summers, who largely agreed with Friedman but was nonetheless called a liberal. Evidently, the world was too corrupt for any of these 33 to reach such heights of power or of authority. Like Galbraith had said at the close of his 2002 “How the Economists Got It Wrong“: “Being right doesn’t count for much in this club.” If anything, being right means being excluded from such posts. In an authentically scientific field, the performance of one’s predictions (their accuracy) is the chief (if not SOLE) determinant of one’s reputation and honor amongst the profession, but that’s actually not the way things yet are in any of the social “sciences,” including economics; they’re all just witch-doctory, not yet real science. The fraudulence of these fields is just ghastly. In fact, as Steve Keen scandalously noted in Chapter 7 of his 2001 Debunking Economics: “As this book shows, economics [theory] is replete with logical inconsistencies.” In any science, illogic is the surest sign of non-science, but it is common and accepted in the social ‘sciences’, including economics. The economics profession itself is garbage, a bad joke, instead of any science at all.

These 33 were actually only candidates for being scientific economists, but I have found the predictions of some of them to have been very wrong on some subsequent matters of economic performance. For example, the best-known of the 33, Paul Krugman, is a “military Keynesian” — a liberal neoconservative (and military Keynesianism is empirically VERY discredited: false worldwide, and false even in the country that champions it, the U.S.) — and he is unfavorable toward the poor, and favorable toward the rich; so, he is acceptable to the Establishment.) Perhaps a few of these 33 economists (perhaps half of whom aren’t even members of the economics profession) ARE scientific (in their underlying economic beliefs — their operating economic theory) if a scientific economics means that it’s based upon a scientific theory of economics — a theory that is derived not from any opinions but only from the relevant empirical data. Although virtually all of the 33 are basically some sort of Keynesian, even that (Keynes’s theory) isn’t a full-fledged theory of economics (it has many vagaries, and it has no microeconomics). The economics profession is still a field of philosophy, instead of a field of science.

The last chapter of my America’s Empire of Evil presents what I believe to be the first-ever scientific theory of economics, a theory that replaces all of microeconomic theory (including a micro that’s integrated with its macro) and is consistent with Keynes in macroeconomic theory; and all of which theory is derived and documented from only the relevant empirical economic data — NOT from anyone’s opinions. The economics profession think that replacing existing economic theory isn’t necessary after the crash of 2008, but I think it clearly IS necessary (because — as that chapter of my book shows — all of the relevant empirical economic data CONTRADICT the existing economic theory, ESPECIALLY the existing microeconomic theory).

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.

Columns of refugees and routed troops packed the roads twisting out of the hills and rubber plantations toward the marshy flatlands around Saigon. Barefoot villagers, band of soldiers with their boots rotting off, lost children wailing for their parents, parents screaming for their children, wounded men caked with dried blood and filthy bandages, creeping trucks, buses, and herds of water buffalo, oxcarts lumbering along on wooden wheels, all paraded past the wreckage of burned-out tanks and scattered corpses rotting in the fields by the roadside, fleeing the advancing bombs and shellfire announcing Ho Chi Minh’s imminent victory.

At the U.S. Embassy, a desperate crowd of Vietnamese interpreters, army leaders, bartenders, colonial bureaucrats, and stool pigeons rushed the gates waving letters from American employers, stateside lovers, or distant American acquaintances who used to know someone in their extended family.

Saigon was no more.

To General Thieu and his henchmen, President Ford offered sanctuary in the United States. To the young Americans who had not been able to bring themselves to kill for such gangsters, he offered the choice of permanent exile from the U.S. or imprisonment. On the Vietnamese people, he imposed a trade embargo, a veto on their entry into the United Nations, and a refusal to negotiate the unresolved issues of the war.

The imperialist credo was thus fulfilled: those who have been arbitrarily punished are punished anew.

After two decades of Western terror, retributive deaths were near zero. The much-predicted Communist bloodbath did not materialize, and Hanoi created nothing worse than re-education camps for those who collaborated with the U.S. in killing millions of their fellow Vietnamese.

This remarkable display of restraint passed unnoticed in the U.S. media, which preferred to denounce Communist indoctrination methods. Those whom Washington employed to engage in wholesale torture and massacre of their countrymen were portrayed as innocent victims forced to endure the agony of political lectures.

The hundreds of thousands of orphans, junkies, prostitutes, and maimed survivors the U.S. left in its wake, whom the Vietnamese somehow had to rehabilitate as they struggled to overcome a shattered economy, devastated ecosystem, and demolished social order, were ignored and quickly forgotten.

As for the meaning of it all, the New York Times remained utterly clueless:

“There are those Americans who believe that the war to preserve a non-Communist, independent South Vietnam could have been waged differently. There are other Americans who believe that a viable, non-Communist South Vietnam was always a myth . . . A decade of fierce polemics has failed to resolve the quarrel.”

Of course, while the war raged, Americans surged into the streets in record numbers to protest that the U.S. had no business meddling in the internal politics of Vietnam, regardless of the prospects for “success.” This position, reiterated endlessly at rallies, protest marches, and teach-ins, was never heard in official circles, nor was it ever given a hearing on the editorial pages of the New York Times.

U.S. hands off other countries.

To the Times‘ editors, these words were incomprehensible.

U.S. military and government leaders were no more insightful. A U.S. Air Force general said that the important lesson of the war was that “We could have won the war if political factors had not entered in,” perhaps a reference to the failure to use nuclear weapons, which both the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations had considered doing. Secretary of State Dean Rusk blamed the “loss” of Vietnam on the “impatience” of the American people, adding that a future Vietnam-style war would require censorship. “You can’t fight a war on television,” he lamented. General Maxwell Taylor contended that success required the banning of dissent, counseling that any president would “be well advised to silence future critics by executive order.”

With millions killed and Indochina in ruins, President Ford urged Americans to forget. “The lessons of the past,” he implausibly advised, “have already been learned . . . and we should have our focus on the future.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Michael K. Smith.

Image by Nathan Dumlao.

Tyrant Donald Trump, mega-violator of federal laws Wrecking America, has targeted Harvard University. Trump illegally threatens to cancel $9 billion in committed grants and contracts. One would think that the mighty Harvard Law School – loaded with professors having litigation and federal government experience – would be the vanguard of resistance and counterattack against the critical extortions of Trump, the fascistic dictator.

WRONG! The Law School is under the control of the University’s Board of Overseers and the University Administration. This exalted edifice of higher education is quivering with fright and bending to the vicious Trumpsters instead of fighting back in the courts and enlisting their vast influential alumni. Such a Law School would have turned a deaf ear to Paul Revere’s Ride on the 18th of April in ’75.

I learned this firsthand as an alumnus of the Law School when I co-sponsored the first VIGOROUS PUBLIC INTEREST LAW DAY on April 1, 2025.

Here is the story in brief. Last December Interim Dean John Goldberg returned my call for a substantial conversation on the need to address the various forms of corporate power and corporate coercion over the rule of law. As a former Tort Professor (tort law deals with wrongful injuries) his awareness of corporate abuses was greater than his less learned predecessors.

I mentioned articles written by me for the Harvard Law Record in recent years that urged more attention by the Harvard Law School to the systemic lawlessness of these corporate supremacists along with more study of congressional surrender to the Executive Branch. He welcomed me sending materials on these topics and said he would read them over the Holidays and we would have another conversation.

That was the last time I ever heard from him. Since that conversation came the second inauguration of Donald Trump and his tactics of winning through criminal intimidation. Many emails, voicemails, and requests in January and February through the Dean’s polite secretary for us to speak went completely unanswered.

Come March, my calls and emails became focused on informing him about the Vigorous Public Interest Law Day events, with speakers of great distinction for their contributions to a more just society. I wanted to invite him to greet the assembly and urge students and faculty to be part of this rare event at the heavily corporatized law school. After all the rule of law was under wholesale destruction because of Trump’s illegal, enforced executive orders.

No answers from his Deanship. Instead, the feedback from students revealed evidence of their anxiety, dread, and fear. Especially by foreign students and supporters of Palestinian rights against U.S. funding and co-belligerent support of Netanyahu’s mass murder genocide in Gaza. As April 1st neared, I sensed that the two large reserved lecture rooms would be too large.

What I saw unfolding was a quiet boycott, almost all the contacted faculty went incommunicado and those that showed some enthusiasm ended up being strange no-shows. The Law School has numerous student associations and over thirty legal clinics run by full-time directors. Students and staff overwhelmingly failed to attend.

It’s not that our organizers, a full-time person and several stalwart students, didn’t publicize these sterling presentations – some in-person and some by Zoom. There were posters and handouts everywhere. Emails, telephone calls, meetings, and word-of-mouth efforts were substantive. Burritos were provided as a free lunch. Requests to Dean Goldberg to meet with the speakers (mostly Harvard law alumni) with hundreds of experience years of pursuing and achieving justice went unanswered. The speakers wanted to share their views with him and the assistant deans as to how best to have the curricula, extracurricular experience, and admission criteria better reflect the law school’s own declared mission: “to educate leaders who contribute to the advancement of justice and the well-being of society.”

Sadly, there was not even the courtesy of a response from his Deanship.

What explains this crude and rude rebuff, unlike how the Administration lays out the red carpet for rich corporate alumni from Wall Street and other plutocratic venues?

The Law School is controlled by the overall University policy to shy from challenging Trump and demonstrate flexibility. Harvard retained Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm with close ties to Trump. Astonishingly, the Harvard administration ignored antisemitism against the Palestinian slaughter, with U.S. tax dollars and military support in violation of the Leahy Law, instead adopting a definition of antisemitism closer to Netanyahu’s racist state coverup. Two leaders of Harvard’s Center for Middle East Studies were discharged. This led the New York Times to report that: “To some faculty members, the move was more evidence that Harvard was capitulating at a moment of creeping authoritarianism.”

The Law School is part of this capitulation, notwithstanding its historical knowledge that yielding to newly installed tyrants emboldens their tyranny to move against other universities and colleges.

So here is what poor, frightened Dean Goldberg of the once mightiest law school in the world could have seen by looking at our program:

The first speaker was Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen which has already filed eight suits against the Trump regime’s illegal orders, such as the shutting down of serious humanitarian support by the life-saving U.S. Agency for International Development.

He was followed by John Bonifaz, president of Free Speech for People, who is starting an “Impeach Trump Again” national drive against Trump with more than 250,000 signatures. Then came Mark Green, a primary co-author with me of two books on Trump – one presciently called “Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All.” Then James Henry, a strong advocate of justice for Palestinians, and so on. The Dean’s reaction was not to come within miles of this crowd.  He made like this program didn’t exist. Follow the white flag of calculated surrender to Trump, a convicted felon, the most impeachable president in American history (See, Is any Member of Congress ready to impeach Trump? If so, we’ve drafted 14 articles of Impeachment, in the February/March 2025 issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen). Avoid strongly calling out Trump for his masked, ICE plainclothesmen kidnapping students and disappearing them to a Louisiana prison. Look the other way at this fast-emerging dictatorship and police state electing Napoleon in lieu of James Madison. Gloat over succeeding in keeping the audience down to about 40 people by going dark as if it never existed. Bruce Fein pointed out that the 56 signatories to the Declaration of Independence signed their death warrants on July 4, 1776, and we should be inspired by their example to rescue their handiwork from Trump’s mutilations.

Some Law School Deans are speaking up. A leader is Erwin Chemerinsky at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, who is networking with other Deans in standing tall and resolute. He wrote in the Washington Post that “… despite the risks of speaking out, silence itself comes at enormous cost. Giving in to a bully only makes things worse.”

It is not hard to feel sorry for Interim Dean Goldberg. He wants to become the permanent Dean. Toward that quest, you learn how to get along by going along with the wobbly Harvard president Alan Garber and his rubber stamp Board of Overseers.

A Harvard graduate, John F. Kennedy, wrote a best-selling book titled “Profiles in Courage.” I recommend it to the Dean and all the Harvard law faculty who looked the other way.

Former federal judge and now law professor Nancy Gertner did show up, did urge resistance and challenge to what she forthrightly called, on Democracy Now! Trump’s burgeoning coup d’état.

Aristotle would have liked Nancy Gertner. He once wrote that “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.”

The entire Day’s proceedings were videotaped and will be streamed in due time for nationwide viewership. Watch it in a dark room, Dean.

The post When the Dean of Harvard Law School Went Dark appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ralph Nader.

Custer-Gallatin National Forest next to Yellowstone National Park – photo by Custer-Gallatin National Forest.

The Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act will designate approximately 23 million acres of inventoried roadless areas in the Northern Rockies as wilderness. NREPA (Ner-EEpa) will preserve a vital ecosystem and watersheds in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Eastern Washington, and Oregon. It will also preserve biological corridors that are essential for biodiversity of native species.

We are so proud of Senator Whitehouse and Congresswoman Dean for standing up for a climate solution that protects public land, water, and interconnected species ranging from tiny insects, birds, and fish to mammals, plants, bushes, and huge trees with massive root systems that store carbon.

These legislators know that removing the words ‘climate change’ from government studies and documents won’t make the world cooler in any sense of the word. They know that forests are the best carbon storage device in the world. And without NREPA’s protection, the photo below shows what’s been happening in our national forests.

Helena National Forest land owned by all Americans – photo by Vicki Anfinson

NREPA saves the federal government millions of dollars annually by reducing wasteful subsidies to the logging industry.  It also closes unintended legal loopholes that have left many of the areas protected by the Clinton Roadless Rule vulnerable to clearcutting and roadbuilding.

By introducing NREPA, Congresswoman Dean and Senator Whitehouse are saying NO to the timber industry executives and others who misinform the public while enriching themselves. And Senator Whitehouse and Congresswoman Dean are saying YES to preserving carbon storage and slowing climate change.

Simply by designating existing roadless areas as Wilderness, NREPA protects the environment, fights climate change, creates jobs, and saves taxpayers millions of dollars in logging subsidies.

It is time to start protecting ecosystems, which will keep species from going extinct.

The post Senator Whitehouse and Congresswoman Dean Introduce the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Carole King - Mike Garrity.

Janine Jackson interviewed CEPR’s Dean Baker about China trade policy for the January 10, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

New York Times (12/17/24)

Janine Jackson: New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s December 17 piece, headlined “How Elon Musk and Taylor Swift Can Resolve US/China Relations,” contained some choice Friedmanisms, like “more Americans might get a better feel for what is going on there if they simply went and ordered room service at their hotel”—later followed, quaintly, by “a lot of Chinese have grown out of touch with how China is perceived in the world.”

But the big idea is that China has taken a “great leap forward in high-tech manufacturing” because of Donald Trump, who, a source says, “woke them up to the fact that they needed an all-hands-on-deck effort.” And if the US doesn’t respond to China’s “Sputnik” moment the way we did to the Soviet Union, Friedman says, “we will be toast.”

The response has to do with using tariffs on China to “buy time to lift up more Elon Musks” (described as a “homegrown” manufacturer), and for China to “let in more Taylor Swifts,” i.e., chances for its youth to spend money on entertainment made abroad. Secretary of State Tony Blinken evidently “show[ed] China the way forward” last April, when he bought a Swift record on his way to the airport.

Okay, it’s very Thomas Friedman. But how different is it from US media coverage of China and trade policy generally?

Dean Baker is senior economist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, where Beat the Press, his commentary on economic reporting, appears. He’s the author of, among other titles, Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer. He joins us now by phone from Utah. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Dean Baker.

Dean Baker: Thanks for having me on, Janine.

JJ: We will talk about news media, of course, but first, there is Trump himself. It’s not our imagination that Trump’s trade ideas, his actions and his stated plans—about China, but overall—they just don’t make much consistent or coherent sense, do they?

Reuters (11/26/24)

DB: Obviously, consistency isn’t a strong point for him, but it does obviously matter to other people. So before he is even in office, he’s threatening both Mexico and Canada. It wasn’t even that clear, at least to me, maybe they got the message what he wants them to do, but if they don’t stop immigrants coming across the border with fentanyl, then he’s going to impose 25% tariffs—I’m going to come back to that word in a second—on both countries.

Now, we have a trade deal with both countries—which, as far as I know, and he certainly didn’t indicate otherwise, they’re following. And it was his trade deal. So what exactly is he threatening with? He’s going to abrogate the trade deal he signed four years ago, because of what, exactly?

And they actually have cooperated with the US in restricting immigrants from coming across the border. Could they do more? Yeah, well, maybe. Canada tries to police fentanyl. So it’s not clear what exactly he thought they would do. Now he’s just said he wants to annex Canada anyhow, so I guess it’s all moot.

But the idea of making these threats is kind of incredible. And, again, he’s threatening, coming back to the word tariff, because a lot of people, and I think including Donald Trump, don’t know what a tariff is. Tariffs are a tax on our imports, and I’ve been haranguing reporters, “Why don’t you just call it a tax on imports?” I can’t believe they can’t use the three words, one of them is very short, instead of tariff, because a lot of people really don’t understand what it is.

And the way Trump talks about it, he makes it sound like we’re charging Canada or Mexico or China, he’s imposing his tariff on, we’re charging them this money, when what we’re actually doing is, we’re charging ourselves the money.

And there’s an economics debate. If we have a 25% tariff on goods from Canada, how much of that will be borne by consumers in the US? How much might be absorbed by intermediaries, and how much might be the exporters in Canada? In all cases, it’s not zero, but almost all, and there’s a lot of work on it, finds that the vast majority is borne by consumers here.

Face the Nation (12/1/24)

So he’s going to punish Canada, going to punish Mexico by imposing a 25% tax on the goods we import from them, which I think to most people probably wouldn’t sound very good, but that is what he’s doing, and it’s kind of a strange policy.

Now, getting to China, I’m not sure what his latest grievance is with China. I’m sure he’s got a list. But he’s talking about a 100% tax on imports from China, and following on the Friedman article, China is at this point, I’m not going to say a rich country, in the sense that, if you look at the average income, it is still considerably lower than the US, and you have a lot poor people in rural areas in China. But in terms of its industrial capacities, it’s huge, and it actually is considerably larger than the United States. So the idea that somehow he’s going to be bringing China to its knees, which seems to be what he thinks—I’m not going to try and get in his head, but just based on what he says, that seems to be what he thinks—that’s a pretty crazy thought.

JJ: And, certainly, we have learned that tariffs are a misunderstood concept by many in the public, and some in the media, as well as some in political office. But that whole picture of Trump threatening to pull out of a deal, in terms of Canada and Mexico, that he made himself, all of that sort of stuff gets us to what you call your “best bet for 2025,” which is improved and increased trade relations between Europe and China. Let’s not be surprised if that happens, for the very reasons that you’re laying out about Trump’s inconsistencies.

Dean Baker: “Trump is saying he doesn’t care about whatever agreements we have, including the ones he signed.” (image: BillMoyers.com)

DB: Basically, Trump is saying he doesn’t care about whatever agreements we have, including the ones he signed. And this has been the way he’s done business throughout his life: He signs a contract, and he doesn’t make good on it. So he has contractors that do things for him, build a building or put in a heating system, whatever it might be. He just says, “no, I’m not going to pay you, sue me.” And maybe he pays half, maybe he pays nothing. He’s prepared to go to court, and spend a lot of money on lawyers. It’s come to be the pattern that most people, including lawyers, insist on getting paid in advance, because they know if they do their work and then come to collect from Trump, they’re not going to get it.

And that’s his approach to international relations as well. So treaties don’t mean anything to him.

And we could have lots of grounds for being unhappy with China. They have a bad human rights record. I’m not going to try to defend it. I don’t think anyone would try to defend it. There are other things you could point to that are not very pretty about China, but just from the standpoint of doing business, they largely follow through on their commitments. Trump doesn’t.

So from the standpoint of Europe, if you want to have trading partners that are reasonably reliable, and won’t pull things out of the air and say, “I want you to do this, I want you to do that,” China looks a hell of a lot better than the United States.

JJ: And so we shouldn’t be surprised, or immediately begin assigning nefarious intentions to European countries who would rather make a deal with China, at this point, than with the US under Trump. It doesn’t make them sketchy or anti-US, necessarily.

Reuters (1/8/25)

DB: That’s right. I mean, I don’t really think they have an alternative, in the sense he takes pride in it. He seems to, at least he says, “I like to be unpredictable.” Well, that’s fine, but if you’re a company in Germany and France, you’re trying to plan for the next five years, ten years: Where’s your market? Where should you build a factory? Where should you look to expand your business? You don’t want to deal with someone who changes everything every day of the week. So China just looks much better from that point.

And also, again, we’re talking about respect for international law. We just saw Donald Trump yesterday saying he doesn’t care about NATO. He’s threatening military force against Greenland and Denmark, implicitly also Canada and Panama, kind of incredible.

So, in that sense, this is not a guy who respects commitments. So I think it’s just kind of common sense from the standpoint, if I were operating a major business in Europe, I would certainly be looking much more to China than the United States right now.

JJ: I did want to say I was hipped to that Friedman piece by CODEPINK’s Megan Russell, who wrote about it, and she had trouble with the idea, among others, that China’s investment in its manufacturing was a recent development that was solely in response to Trump toughness. And that’s what led to what he’s calling their “Sputnik moment.” What do you make of that claim?

FAIR.org (9/29/17)

DB: Well, first off, the investment in manufacturing is longstanding. Because, I saw the Friedman piece, I assumed he was referring to their move into high tech. I think he’s, again, I don’t have access to the inner workings of China’s leadership, I think he is almost certainly exaggerating the extent to which its move was a response to Trump, but they did certainly recognize that they were dealing with a different world with Donald Trump in the White House than Obama, previously.

But the hostilities to China, I mean… Obama, the last couple years of his administration, at least, he was selling the Trans Pacific Partnership, the trade deal that we ended up not completing, as a way to isolate China. I don’t recall if he used that term. “Marginalize” China, I think that was the term they had used.

So the fact that the United States was becoming increasingly anti-China, or hostile to China, that began under Obama. Trump clearly accelerated that. I’m quite sure China would have moved in a big way into high tech in any case, but I suspect this was an accelerant there, that they could say, “Here’s more reason to do it.”

But they’ve been increasing the sophistication of their manufacturing and their technical skills for a long time. They have many, many more computer scientists, engineers, go down the list, than we do. So the idea that it wouldn’t have occurred to them that it’d be good to develop high-tech industries—no, that wasn’t Trump.

JJ: Let me ask you to just unpack, to the extent you feel like it, the big idea that we get from the US press, which is that, No. 1, China is worrisome. Their economy’s growth is inherently troubling and dangerous to the US. And, No. 2, we should consequently insist on, among other things, trade policy that is “tough” on China, somehow, and that will be good for “us.” I mean, there can be nuance, of course, but that seems like the frame a lot of outlets place their China trade coverage within: China is inherently frightening and dangerous to the US, and so we have to somehow use trade policy to beat them back. How useful is that framing?

AP (5/13/24)

DB: I think it’s very wrong-headed in just about every possible way. Obviously, the US has been the leading economy in the world for a long time, so we would always say, well, other countries should recognize that we grow together, so that by having access to cheaper products, better technology, they benefit, trade benefits everyone. That’s the classic story, and economists have been pushing that for centuries. And there’s more than a little bit of truth to that. And that continues to hold true when we talk about China.

So the idea that somehow China growing wealthier is a threat to us is, to my view, kind of wacky. Now, you could raise military issues, and there can be issues, but as far as the economics of it, we benefit by having China be a wealthier country. And we could—I just was tweeting on this—China is now selling electric cars, which are as good as most of the cars you’d get here, for $15,000, $16,000. I think it’d be fantastic if we can get those.

I’m sympathetic to the auto industry, particularly the people in the UAW. I mean, those are still some good-paying jobs. But, damn, you’re looking at Elon Musk, who is charging $40,000 for his cars. I don’t drive an electric car, but I’ve heard people say that the Chinese cars are every bit as good as his cars, and they’re less than half the price. We can’t buy them, though; we have a 100% tariff on them.

So this idea that we’re going to compete—why don’t we talk about cooperating? Why don’t we look for areas where we can cooperate?

And there are clearly some big ones. The two obvious, to my mind, are healthcare and climate. If we had more sharing of technology, think of how much more rapidly we could develop our clean technology, clean industries, electric vehicles, batteries, if we had shared technology more freely.

And in terms of healthcare, again, the pandemic’s not ancient history. If we had shared all of our technology, first and foremost vaccines, but also the treatments, the tests, we could have been far more effective containing the pandemic earlier, and probably saved millions of lives.

And that would apply more generally, obviously, going forward. Hopefully we won’t have another pandemic like that, but we obviously have a lot of diseases we have to deal with, and sharing technology and healthcare would be a fantastic way to do it. But that doesn’t seem to be on the agenda right now. Almost no one is talking about that, from anywhere in the political spectrum, and I just think that’s incredibly unfortunate.

DC Report (1/2/24)

I’ll also add—obviously, I have material interest here—that if you talked about sharing technology, our drug companies might not get patents, and might not make as much money, and they’re not happy to see that. But if the point is to advance public health—and also, for that matter, of the economics; we waste a lot of money on drugs with the current structure—sharing technology would really be a great thing to do.

And I’ll also throw in one more point. This is obviously speculative, but if we want to talk about promoting liberal democracy, seems to me having more contact with people in China, having our technicians or scientists working side by side with them, developing better technology, better ways to deal with disease, better ways to advance clean energy—that’s a really good way to try and influence views in China, because the odds are that a lot of scientists, the technicians who are going to be working side by side with people in the United States are going to be brothers and sisters and children and parents of people who were in the Communist Party, people who were actually calling the shots there.

So when we first opened up to China, allowed them into the WTO in 2000, there was a line that was pushed by proponents of that, saying, “Oh, this is the way to promote democracy.” And I and others said, “I don’t quite see that. We’re going to promote democracy by having people work in shoe factories for two bucks an hour? I don’t quite see that.” And that doesn’t seem to have been the case.

But I think it’s a very different story if we say, “We’re going to have your best scientists working side by side with our scientists, and if you believe in liberal democracy, if you really think that’s a good thing, I think there’s a good chance that will rub off.” So that’s speculative, but I’d like to see us try.

JJ: And I think that’s where a lot of people’s heads are at. A lot of people have family in other countries. They just see things in a global way. It’s weird to be talking, in 2025, it lands weird to talk about “foreign adversary nations,” and how we have to have “trade wars,” in part because of what you’re saying, the positive aspect of working together, in particular by sharing technology, but also it lands weird because Boeing isn’t at war with China. There are conflicts, in other words, but as you’re explaining, the lines aren’t drawn where media suggest they are, at national borders. So that misrepresentation of who the fight is between is part of what obscures these more positive visions.

DB: Yeah, exactly. And Boeing’s at war with Airbus, too. No one’s suggesting—well, I shouldn’t say that; Trump might be suggesting—but most people wouldn’t say that France and Germany are our enemies because Airbus is competing with Boeing. That’s a given. They’re going to compete.

And, again, I’m enough of an economist, I’ll say we benefit from that. So if Airbus produces a better plane, I think that’s great that we’re going to fly on it. If it’s a more fuel-efficient, safer plane than what Boeing has, that’s fantastic. Hopefully Boeing will turn around and build a better one next year.

But it’s supposed to be, we like a market economy. At the end of the day, I do think a market economy is a good thing, so we should think of it the same way with China.

And, again, there are conflicts. Europe subsidizes the Airbus. No one disputes that. China has subsidies for its electric cars. And those are things to discuss, to work out in treaties, but it doesn’t make them an enemy.

JJ: And it doesn’t improve our understanding of our own interest, as individuals, in what’s going on, to have there be this kind of “us and them,” when media are not breaking down exactly who the “us” are. And if we had, in this country, a policy where we wanted to protect workers, or we wanted to ensure wages, well, nothing’s stopping us from doing that on its own.

I think we can expect all of this to amp up, as Trump finds utility in identifying enemies, everywhere and anywhere, that call for conquering, in such ways that enrich his friends. But to the extent that that bellicosity is going to show itself in economic policy, are there things you think we should be looking out for in coverage, being wary of, things to seek out as antidote to maybe the big story that we’re going to be hearing about the US and China?

DB: First and foremost, I am declaring war on the word “tariff.” Given the confusion that word creates, I don’t understand how any reporter could in good faith use the term, at least without adding in parentheses, “taxes on imports,” because it’s not a difficult concept.

And, again, I’m an economist. I’ve known what a tariff is. Obviously many people do know what a tariff is, but the point is a lot of people don’t. So taxes on imports, taxes on imports, taxes on imports. When Donald Trump says he wants to tariff someone, he’s saying he wants to put a tax on the goods we import from them; that’s what he’s doing. And that’s not an arguable point. That’s simply definitional. So that’s one thing, front and center.

CEPR (5/25/24)

The second thing, I really wish people would understand what’s at stake. And the reporting, I think, does not do a good job of it. And when we talk about putting taxes on the imports, particularly with China, that we’re making items that would otherwise be available to us at relatively low cost, at ridiculously high cost.

So cars first and foremost, but we’re doing with the batteries from China, a lot of other things. If we’re concerned about global warming, we should want to see this technology spread as quickly as possible.

I wrote a piece on this a while back. So let’s say that the US had a plan to subsidize the adoption of clean technologies around the world. We’d all applaud that, wouldn’t we, say that was a great thing. Well, China’s doing that, and we’re treating them like it’s an act of war.

So, again, I’m sympathetic to auto workers. I have a lot of friends over the years who were auto workers, and I respect enormously the United Auto Workers union, but it’s not an act of war for them to make low-cost cars available to us.

And just the third thing, when we talk about protectionism, I’ve made this point many, many times over the years. The most extreme protectionism we have are patent and copyright protections. These are government-granted monopolies.

Now, I understand they’re policies for a specific purpose. They promote innovation, they promote creative work, understood. But they’re policies, they’re protectionism, they’re not the market.

And that’s something we should always be aware of, in trade and other areas, even domestically; we’re raising the price of items that are protected enormously, and treating this as just the market. So drugs that cost thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars, almost invariably cost $10, $20, $30 in the absence of patent protection.

And people should understand that this is a really big deal. It’s a big intervention in the market, and also a huge source of inequality. I like to make the joke, Bill Gates would still be working for a living—he’d probably be getting Social Security now, he’s an old guy—but he’d probably still be working for a living if the government didn’t threaten to arrest anyone who copies Microsoft software without his permission. And it really does make a big difference, and it’s literally never discussed.

So those are some items. I can give you a longer list, but those would be my starting point.

JJ: All right, then; we’ll pause at your starting point, but just for now.

We’ve been speaking with Dean Baker, co-founder and senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. You can find their work, and Dean’s Beat the Press commentary, at CEPR.net. Dean Baker, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

DB: Thanks for having me on.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

Remember when the exuberant yelling of Gov. Howard  Dean was enough for corporate media to declare him unfit for the presidency (Extra!, 3–4/04)?

Remember January 2004, when Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean yelled in a pep talk to supporters after the Iowa caucus, and elite media declared that his “growling and defiant” “emotional outburst” was patent evidence of unacceptability? Having  already declared Dean too excitable—“Yelling and hollering is not an endearing quality in the leader of the free world,” said the Washington Post (8/2/03)—media found verification in the “Dean scream,” which was played on TV news some 700 times, enough to finish off his candidacy (Extra!, 3–4/04). As Pat Buchanan on the McLaughlin Group (1/23/04) scoffed: “Is this the guy who ought to be in control of our nuclear arsenal?”

Fast forward to the present day, when Donald Trump states, “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”

And today’s journalistic response looks like a CBS News explainer (1/8/25), headed “Why Would Trump Want Greenland and the Panama Canal? Here’s What’s Behind US interest.”  It’s simple, you see, and not at all weird. “Greenland has oil, natural gas and highly sought after mineral resources.” And you know what? “Western powers have already voiced concern about Russia and China using it to boost their presence in the North Atlantic.”

In an effort to make Trump’s proposal seem rational, CBS (1/8/25) offered a map that made Greenland look like a chokepoint on the all-important Dalian/Rotterdam sea route. In fact, Greenland is more than 1,500 miles from Eurasia—greater than the distance between Boston and New Orleans.

CBS tells us Trump is “falsely alleging” that the Panama Canal is being “operated by China,” but then adds in their own, awkward, words, “China has also denied trying to claim any control over the canal.” Takeaway: who knows, really? Believe what you want. PS—you’re Americun, right?

The New York Times (1/2/25) assured us that,” Trump’s Falsehoods Aside, China’s Influence Over Global Ports Raises Concerns.” The story made it obvious that Chinese companies in charge of shipping ports is inherently scary—what might they do?—in a way that the US having 750 military bases around the world never is.

The message isn’t that no one country should have that much power; it’s that no country except the US should have that much power. That assumption suffuses corporate news reporting; and China threatens it. So whatever China does or doesn’t do, look for that lens to color any news you get.

Featured image: MSNBC (12/23/24)

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).

New York Times (12/17/24)

This week on CounterSpin: New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s December 17 piece, headlined “How Elon Musk and Taylor Swift Can Resolve US-China Relations,” contained some choice Friedmanisms, like:  “More Americans might get a better feel for what is going on there if they simply went and ordered room service at their hotel.” (Later followed quaintly by: “A lot of Chinese have grown out of touch with how China is perceived in the world.”)

But the big idea is that China has taken a “great leap forward in high-tech manufacturing” because of Donald Trump, who a source says “woke them up to the fact that they needed an all-hands-on-deck effort.” And if the US doesn’t respond to China’s “Sputnik” moment the way we did to the Soviet Union, “we will be toast.”

The response has to do with using tariffs on China to “buy time to lift up more Elon Musks” (described as a “homegrown” manufacturer), and for China to “let in more Taylor Swifts”—i.e., chances for its youth to spend money on entertainment made abroad. Secretary of State Tony Blinken evidently “show[ed] China the way forward” last April, when he bought a Swift record on his way to the airport.

OK, it’s Thomas Friedman, but how different is it from US media coverage of China and trade policy generally? We’ll talk about China trade policy with Dean Baker, co-founder and senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at press coverage of Luigi Mangione.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

Except for a brief interlude during the Eisenhower administration, United States’ support for Israel, in its genocide of the Palestinian people, has been an ongoing process since the Truman administration recognized the state. Contemporary events prompt a review of the post-World War II history that resulted in the formation of a nation that had no visible name until David Ben Gurion proclaimed, on May 14, 1948, the state as Israel.

Books, articles, documents, memoirs and letters from past generations detail how a small group of insiders prevailed over recommendations from an experienced and famous U.S. State Department of “wise men.” It is the story of the Zionist mission. It is the story of apartheid Israel.

The impact, legacy and relevance of the 1946-1948 events to today’s occurrences have not been sufficiently explored. Under the surface are the hidden messages and obscure drives that shaped the past and extended into the future. A more complete analysis of the legacy from Truman’s rapid recognition of the state of Israel explains the past and clarifies the present.

In the initiation of a trend, supporters of those who derailed State Department Near East policy were able to integrate themselves into Middle East policy and subsequently shape global policies. Turmoil from initial events provoked a continuous turmoil in the Middle East. Almost all administrations framed Middle East polices to favor the Zionist cause.

The Truman State Department consisted of leading luminaries of U.S. State Department history. George C. Marshall, United States military chief of staff during World War II, first military leader to become Secretary of State and later a Nobel Prize recipient, had Loy Henderson, Robert A. Lovett, Dean Rusk, Warren Austin and other known figures in his department. Many of them were not entirely supportive of the UN partition plan; their State Department followed Truman’s directives until sensing the partition plan would be counterproductive and cause more violence than it intended to resolve. The record indicates the State Department attempted to modify Truman’s policy that favored partition. They sought a temporary UN  trusteeship.

President Truman postured himself as motivated by a conviction — the displaced Jews who had survived the World War II Holocaust needed and deserved an immediate home. The U.S. president vacillated in his arguments and contradicted himself in statements. He railed vehemently against the steady stream of advocates for a Jewish state and retained several presidential advisors who pursed one purpose; promoting a new Jewish state. A suspicion remains that his humanitarian motives had a political content; the Democratic Party craved the financial and voting support of Zionist organizations and their allies.

Clark Clifford, Truman’s chief consul and ardent promoter for a Jewish state, quickly became one of the president’s closest assistants. He was not Truman’s principal assistant, a post held by John Roy Steelman, and behaved as if he were titular chief of staff by acting unilaterally and somewhat dubious in actions that proved decisive. The evidence points to Clifford favoring election expediencies in developing policies that led to the creation of the state of Israel.

The story begins at the closing shots of World War II and with the refugees in displaced persons camps.

The plight of the displaced persons could not be easily resolved. The United States was involved in returning millions of its armed forces to their homes, in the repatriation of captured enemy soldiers, and in preventing mass starvation in Europe. A possibility of a post-war depression and mass unemployment guided America’s political thinkers. In addition, the U.S. immigration laws did not permit the immediate admittance of the displaced persons, nor could it show favoritism. Unable to find a legal mechanism that would  bring them to America, Truman petitioned Great Britain to allow them to immigrate to Palestine. British Prime Minister Clement Attlee cited the 1939 White Paper, which specified a definite number of applicants, as a limiting factor. He also suspected new immigrants would burden Britain’s over-stressed mandate and add troubles to the existing emergency.

Truman could not prevail over Attlee. What to do? After presentations by an Anglo-American inquiry commission and a joint cabinet committee (Morrison-Grady) failed to achieve welcoming peace proposals, a tired and irked British government requested the UN General Assembly to consider the Palestine problem. On May 15, 1947, the UN created the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). The committee outlined a partition plan with the city of Jerusalem under a UN trusteeship. Truman instructed the State Department to support the partition plan. UN Ambassador Warren Austin and the state department’s Near East Division, led by Loy Henderson, doubted that partition could resolve the situation.

During the months of UNSCOP’s efforts, Truman complained of pressure by pro-Zionist groups. In Volume II of his Memoirs, p.158, the former president relates:

The facts were that not only were there pressure movements around the United Nations unlike anything that had been there before but that the White house too, was subjected to a constant barrage. I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders — actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats — disturbed and annoyed. Some were even suggesting that we pressure sovereign nations into favorable votes in the General Assembly.

This harsh rhetoric was mild compared to other Truman’s statements concerning the Zionists and its American leaders, especially Cleveland’s Rabbi Silver. In a memorandum to advisor David K. Niles, the president wrote, “We could have settled this whole Palestine thing if U.S. politics had been kept out of it. Terror and Silver are the contributing cause of some, if not all of our troubles.”

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly approved the UNSCOP Partition plan. Approval only meant agreement in principle. No effective means for transferring the principle into an operational result had been determined. The lack of enforcement provoked more conflict in Palestine. Each side strived to gain territory and advantage. The uncontrolled mayhem steered the U.S. State Department to adopt the concept of a temporary trusteeship for the area. Believing it had President Truman’s approval, the State Department instructed the U.S. delegation to the United States to petition for a special session of the General Assembly and reconsider the Palestinian issue. In his presentation, UN Ambassador Warren Austin proposed the establishment of a temporary trusteeship for Palestine.

Truman denied giving a green light for the presentation and wrote in his diary, which has been quoted in “The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman, P.127. “This morning I find that the State dept. has reversed my Palestine policy. The first I knew about it is what I see in the papers. Isn’t that hell!” His infuriation arose from embarrassment of having assured Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, whom he highly regarded, that the U.S. would not depart from the Partition Plan and would not entertain a temporary trusteeship. George McKee Elsey, in his memoir, An Unplanned Life, p.161, supplied evidence of Truman’s awareness and permission for the speech. White House staff member Elsey writes:

In fact, as I quickly learned in delving into the record and querying White House and State Staff, Truman had personally read and approved some days earlier the Austin speech, which outlined a plan for U.N. trusteeship of Palestine when the British Mandate ended in May in lieu of partitioning the area into separate Jewish and Arab territories.

The May 15 date for the British exit neared, and the Zionists prepared to declare their state and present their credentials for recognition. Contradictions in U.S. Near East policy led to policies that became completely confusing.

In a speech to the UN General Assembly, March 25, 1948, President Truman clarified his nation’s temporary endorsement of a UN Trusteeship for Palestine that did not prejudice partition. The pleased State Department instructed Ambassador Austin to proceed with deliberations of the Trusteeship proposal. As if not cognizant of the UN trusteeship discussion, Truman prepared to recognize the soon to be formed state. On May 12, two days before an expected announcement by the Jewish Agency in Palestine, an angered George C. Marshall and his assistant Robert Lovett confronted Truman and demanded reasons for the haste in wanting to grant recognition. The president selected his counsel Clark Clifford, who was not involved in foreign policy, to clarify the reasons for the intended recognition.

Clifford’s principal reasons for instant recognition: The UN Security Council could not obtain a truce in hostilities; partition would happen in fact; the U.S. would eventually have to recognize a new state, and it was preferable to get the jump on the Soviet Union.

Clifford’s arguments are easily rebutted. (1) More significant than whether or not the Security Council could obtain a truce was that the UN council was engaged in discussions hoping to achieve a truce. Recognition would close the discussions and prevent the truce. (2) If the Trusteeship was approved and implemented, an entity unilaterally invoking a partition scheme would violate the UN dictates. (3) Clifford’s simple explanation that the U.S. must recognize the new state quickly because the U.S. must recognize the new state was a statement and not a clarification. (4) As for the Soviet Union, Clifford echoed the alarm of Phillip C. Jessup, a member of the U.S. delegation to the UN, who, according to Robert J. Donovan in his book Conflict and Crisis, The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, p.380, cabled UN affairs officer Dean Rusk that the Soviet Union wanted recognition to use Article 51 of the UN charter to protect the new state and thus gain a foothold in the Middle East. This view is specious — Article 51 pertains to defense of member states and the new nation did not become a UN member until one year later. Besides, wasn’t it advantageous for the U.S. to have the Soviet Union recognize the new state before it did? The State Department could then claim it had no choice and would lose less favor with the Arab states.

Marshall questioned why a domestic affairs advisor was determining foreign policy. Truman replied that he had invited Clifford to make a presentation. Obviously, Truman did not want history to record his words and asked his campaign manager to speak for him. Sensing that politics and the forthcoming presidential election had become overriding factors in a significant foreign policy decision, the dedicated George C. Marshall uttered one of the most insulting words ever directed by a cabinet official to a president, “If you follow Clifford’s advice, and if I were to vote in the next election, I would vote against you.” Clark Clifford’s Memoir, Council to the President, P.13, mentions that the Secretary also insisted that these personal remarks be included in the official state department record of the meeting. Whew! (Vice President Harris take note.)

Fearing that the transfer of advice on Near East affairs from the state and defense departments to inexperienced advisors and non-professional lobbyists would continue, Assistant Secretary of State Robert Lovett determined to change Truman’s intentions. For some unknown reason, rather than calling the president directly, he channeled his inquiries through Counselor Clark Clifford. The president’s counselor didn’t speak to the president about Lovett’s urgencies, but assumed a new role ─ he spoke for the president. In response to Lovett’s request to ask Truman to delay recognition, Clifford confesses in his memoir, P.22,

Saying (to Lovett) I would check with the President, I waited about three minutes and called Lovett back to say that delay was out of the question. It was about 5:40 and the State Department has run out of time and ideas.

Within a few minutes, one of the most bizarre sequence of events that had ever occurred in U.S. diplomacy unfolded.

Clifford states he called Dean Rusk and asked the UN affairs officer to inform Warren Austin, chief of the U.S. delegation to the UN, that the president intended to recognize the new Near East state within fifteen minutes. His called bypassed protocol; usually the assistant secretary of state should be informed and that person has the obligation to inform other staff members of decisions. Clifford quotes a surprised Rusk as retaliating with the remark, “This cuts directly across what our delegation had been trying to accomplish in the General Assembly, and we have a large majority for it.” Rusk supposedly called Warren Austin who went home without bothering to inform the U.S. delegation of the news.

Truman’s rapid signing (within 11 minutes) of the document that gave de facto recognition to the ‘new state of Israel’ angered members at a United Nations meeting on the Trusteeship. After learning the new state would be called Israel, the words ‘Jewish state’ were crossed out and the words ‘state of Israel’ were inserted.

May 14 was an enviable day for the new state of Israel, but an unpleasant day for the 160 year old American republic. The diplomatic solution to the Near East crisis had been settled, but the conflict has not been resolved.

What does history show?

History supports the conviction that the Partition Plan would not resolve the hostilities. The State Department concern for rapidly recognizing a new state, without knowledge of its constitution or composition, was diplomatically correct and prescient. The quick recognition of a state for the Jewish population prevented the UN from finishing a discussion of providing mechanisms to prevent more bloodshed and providing proper protection for the state’s large Palestinian population. George Marshall’s State Department acted honestly, with knowledge, and with the conviction it served the interests of the United States

President Harry S. Truman correctly perceived the tenacity of the Zionists. He erred in his judgment that the Partition Plan would resolve the conflict. The unusual rapid response for recognition of the new state, without awareness of its composition, signified a pardon of the excesses committed by Irgun and Haganah against civilian populations and certified the exclusion of any Palestinian voice in the new government. Truman never asked what would happen to the 400,000 Palestinians who had no representation in the new state. Evidently, he didn’t consider that the placing of 100,000 displaced Jews into Palestine would also mean the placing of weapons in the hands of many of these persons and, together with instant recognition, would reinforce the eventual displacement of 900,000 Palestinians. The European DP camps were temporary shelter for those who would undoubtedly find permanent homes and citizenship; the UNWRA refugee camps became permanent homes for several million Palestinian displaced persons who languish with stateless identification.

The post-election provided Truman with an opportunity to show he was not captive to the Zionist enterprise. What did he do? He only half-heartedly pressured Israel in 1949 to resettle displaced Palestinians. This token maneuver is verified by Joshua Landis. In a paper published in The Palestinian Refugees: Old Problems – New Solutions, University of Oklahoma Press: Norman, OK, 2001, p. 77-87, Landis writes,

McGee threatened the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. that if Israel did not accept 200,000 refugees, the US would withhold $49 million worth of Export-Import Bank loans to Israel. The Israeli Ambassador was unimpressed with McGhee’s threat and responded that McGhee “wouldn’t get by with this move.” The Israeli Ambassador boasted that “he would stop it.”

True to his word, the Ambassador was able to nip McGhee’s threat in the bud. That same afternoon, the White house phoned McGhee to say that the President would have nothing to do with withholding loans to Israel. Never again would a State Department official under President Truman attempt to intimidate Israel on the issue of refugees.

Landis claims the U.S. President tried to resolve the Palestinian DP problem by offering the Syrian government $400,000,000 dollars in exchange for settling up to 500,000 Palestinians in the fertile plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. A president of a nation was willing to burden his own nation in order to relieve Israel of its obligation to the Palestinian refugees. In retrospect, he behaved circumspect and his compassion for victims depended on their value to the Democratic Party.

A humanitarian light brightened the parade of lobbyists for partition and this light managed to convince many of the validity of their cause. Later U.S. government Middle East policies repeated the intense lobbying that guided Truman’s 1948 decisions and subdued the power and recommendations of government agencies.

The darkened perspective, due to Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, has not deterred the forces who continue to obtain a U.S. foreign policy that favors their direction. The memory of Truman’s electoral victory, which defied all predictions, continues to make prospective candidates for national office sense that winning elections depends upon support from those who also support Israel.

The legacy of the 1946-1948 events is well described. Control of discussions pushed a previous U.S. administration to provide a legal frame for creation of the state of Israel. Control of discussions continued and impelled contemporary administrations to provide the support for that frame. Without U.S. support, Israel’s authentic moral, political, economic and military character would have been exposed and its structure weakened. The Israeli state might have collapsed.

The genocide started in 1947, from an improbable ‘there’ and has continued until the impossible ‘here.’ By supporting Israel, the democratic and freedom loving United States has made the improbable a sickening and frightful reality.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This persistence of this condition is well understood in Korea, China and Japan, even if the public statements diverge among the governments of these three. In the United States one can say that the vast majority of the population has little or no idea about the campaign beyond the few lines in school history books, occasional sentimental films and the ignorant as well as outright dishonest statements by the US government. Since Barack Obama announced the regime’s “pivot to Asia”, there have been occasional eruptions of sensitivity to events and developments on the Korean peninsula. These remain largely incoherent. As I have argued elsewhere this incoherence and general ignorance can be explained by the fact that although every US school pupil has heard the term “manifest destiny” very few have ever understood it. In contrast, one can hear almost anyone preach with authoritative tones about the Monroe Doctrine as if this were an institution of international law and not an arrogant gesture, mainly addressed to the British Empire in the 19th century (when it was barely capable of defending its own merchantmen).

Without a clear understanding of manifest destiny: the US absorption of the Philippines and denial of its hard fought independence after Spain had ceded it in the Treaty of Paris (1898), the promotion of Japanese expansion into the Asian mainland including colonization, the transfer of Germany’s China assets to Japan after the Great War, and the covert operations against Japan that led to the provoked (and staged) Pearl Harbor “surprise”, as well as the “loss of China” in 1949, it is impossible to explain the comprehensiveness of US imperial engagement in Asia and the importance of Korea in this constellation (or Vietnam for that matter). The “pivot” announced under Barack Obama was not a new policy. It was a relabelling of a policy that emerged from manifest destiny long before the US was capable of projecting the naval, military and economic power to actively pursue it.

At the end of the campaign against Japan in 1945, the immediate consequence of Japan’s defeat at the hands of the Soviet Union was surrender and withdrawal from its Korean colony. Prosaically, the almost hereditary military governor of the Philippines, Douglas MacArthur (father had been military governor while son had commanded the Philippine armed forces until the Japanese invasion), played a significant role in executing in Korea the same manoeuver perpetrated by Admiral Dewey in Manila Bay. Just as the Spanish had been forced to cede the Philippines to the US, the Japanese were to surrender their Korean possession to the United States. However, after waging four years of bloody war again for democracy, the high representatives of the Allies had declared in Cairo that Korean independence was to be restored. Thus, the US designs had to be cloaked in other garb.

This is the most reasonable perspective from which to see the beginnings of the war in Korea as far as the United States is concerned. It is the simplest and most consistent explanation not only for Dean Acheson’s action in 1951 but also for the policies pursued today by the permanent state that directs the foreign policy a reigning POTUS is permitted to pronounce.

Of course, there are many complexities involving conflicts among the interested parties which make it impossible to reduce all the events and phenomena of the war to just one cause or effect. Several political conflicts arose among the US Establishment because of the Korean campaign. The impact on occupied Germany and relations with the temporary “ally”, the Soviet Union, as well as emerging independent states like India, was substantial. Therefore, to argue for a controlling cultural historical perspective is not to claim a linear or analogue explanation for everything that happened between 1951 and 1953.

This is the fundamental strength of the numerous books Bruce Cumings has written about the Korean War, including his participation in a highly controversial Thames TV documentary called Korea: The Unknown War. The importance of the latter lies in its unparalleled compilation of eyewitness interviews and archival film material about a war that predated “TV war fetishism”. The interpretative work was so controversial in the production that Professor Cumings later wrote a critical analysis and partially distanced himself from the end product. Nonetheless, as “diluted” as some evidence and critique in the film was, two versions had to be distributed. US television broadcasters found the original British documentary to negative for American audiences.

In 2010, The Korean War: A History was published in the Modern Library, an established series characterized by titles that widely recognized as “classics”. Perhaps that is why David Martin assumed for the purpose of his review that Bruce Cumings account and interpretations of this period in US and Korean (as well as Chinese) history are now Establishment or mainstream. He supports this assumption by reminding the reader of Professor Cumings’ pedigree, a distinguished professor emeritus from a top-tier American university and former chair of that institution’s history department. Dr Martin then concludes that The Korean War, as narrated by Professor Cumings, is best assigned to that bin of radical Leftist revisionism he imagines—like many conservatives—dominates the apex of US power. Alas Dr Martin is gravely mistaken. Ever since Bruce Cumings published his Origins of the Korean War, the Establishment has done its best to ignore, if not discredit, the conclusions he drew—as they were unable to refute the copious historical record with which the book is supported. If appearances in the think tank/ talkshow circuit are any measure of ideological acceptance, Bruce Cumings is probably one of the rarest figures to be found in public debate about Korea or US Asia policy. His standing in the academy entitles him to more respect among colleagues but that hardly constitutes political influence in high places. As far as I know it has not earned him a place in that cesspool of the Anglo-American Establishment, the Council on Foreign Relations—usually the first sign of elevation to the rank of official sage.

Dr Martin opens his salvo against The Korean War by reporting that he was in Korea as an ROTC candidate at about the same time that Bruce Cumings was in Korea serving in the Peace Corps. The invidious distinction between these two assignments is almost amusingly nostalgic, reminiscent of the sneers of newly-minted patriotic butter bars leaving for Saigon amidst protesting college students. Accusing Professor Cumings of a lack of martial spirit and patriotism may reflect the naive feelings of a fresh officer candidate fifty years ago, it is certainly not a serious way to approach the published research of a senior scholar, regardless of political coloration. However, the publication of this digest of Professor Cumings decades-long research in the Modern Library does at least suggest that the content has been prepared for a mass market, lay audience. In that sense The Korean War, while by no means Establishment orthodoxy, has crept a few rungs to be admitted to educated debate beyond the university. That is something Dr Martin should greet. Since before one can adequately argue with an analysis or judgement it is necessary to understand it. That is certainly the aim of the publishers—not to approve the views but to render them susceptible to broader understanding and thus foster intelligent debate about a continuing conflict in US foreign policy.

Yet, David Martin, a retired economist, employed mainly in government service, reviews Bruce Cumings’ book as if it were the established, standard history of the war. Of course it never was and still isn’t. Dr Martin also disparages I.F. Stone’s Hidden History of the Korean War, one of the few contemporary critical analyses of the Korean campaign, based entirely on public sources available at the time. All this is based on the conviction that these are Left-wing views of the matter and therefore inherently incorrect.

The review does not confine itself to ad hominem. Dr Martin asserts that aside from an anti-American bias, Professor Cumings makes statements that also lead to substantive questions that he does not answer. To the extent this is accurate, it is beside the point. The Korean War makes no claims to comprehensiveness. On the contrary it is a compact digest. Professor Cumings explains in the introduction that every effort was made to keep the evidentiary apparatus to a minimum in the interest of broader readership. In the two-volume Origins of the Korean War lie the answers to numerous questions Dr Martin sees as unresolved. On the narrative as a whole he is more than candid:

I wish I could write with the serene confidence that other historians do in similarly short books, offering their settled interpretations unencumbered by footnotes and sources. So many things about this war are still so controversial, however, vehemently debated and hotly affirmed or denied (or simply unknown)…

Having read both volumes of the Origins, his other books on the subject, viewed Korea: The Unknown War, several times as well as corresponding directly with him, I can only attest to the caution with which Professor Cumings drew any conclusions from his research. Rather than trying to prove who may have started the armed hostilities that became a major military conflict for three years, his work has focussed on the context in which this war began, the various aims, interests and objectives pursued by those persons involved and those of the institutions through which they acted. The limitations on historical documentation are never overlooked. Interpretation is always an act in the present. However it always is an interpretation of what we call the past. Hence new documents may lead to reassessment of previously known documents. The Korean War is “a history”—not “the history” as would be implied by a genuinely Establishment narrative.

At one point Dr Martin writes:

To be sure there would have been social unrest such as occurred on Jeju Island and in South Jeolla Province, but it’s hard to see how it could have developed into an all-out war. Backing someone like Kim Ku, who seems to have had wider public support, instead of Syngman Rhee might have been a wiser course for the United States.

Dr Martin is primarily concerned with the US interest in Korea—“a wiser course for the United States” (or for that matter all of Asia-Pacific) and not with what Koreans wanted or may still want.

In fact, the massacre on Jeju island was not “social unrest.” It was the first in the extermination campaigns of the communists (or those opponents the US and Rhee regime declared to be communists) in all of Korea. These actions began with the overt and covert support of the USMGIK which gladly deployed Japanese and Korean collaborators peninsula-wide. Backing Kim Ku might have led to a peaceful Korea, but that is not what the US wanted at all. The US wanted a dictatorship and wanted to turn all of Korea into a war platform against China. It also wanted to Christianize all of Korea.

Unfortunately, even attempts to popularize his Korea research have largely failed, if one considers that US Korean policy and the ignorance of the US population about Korea have scarcely changed since Theodore Roosevelt got his Nobel prize for helping Japan colonize it.

David Martin’s review is also an example of the importance of the overall perspective. The perspective with which one examines the facts is a crucial distinction. Since Martin reads Korean history only as relevant for US history he cannot entertain the idea that Koreans did not want their country divided and occupied. Unlike Germany, Korea was not a party to the war. It was a conquered colony of Japan. Dean Rusk, who claimed to have chosen the 38th parallel as the dividing line, long before he became a cabinet secretary, explained how arbitrary the choice was. In other words, division of the peninsula was decided based on factors that had little or nothing to do with the interests or needs of Koreans, a people with a settled nationality in the peninsula spanning more than a millennium. That such a decision could be taken by people from a country with barely 150 years of history is insulting on its face. It would have been decent if Martin could have overcome his anti-communism sufficiently to examine the copious evidence Cumings produced to show what the real US role in Korea was and how it has done everything possible to maintain the ROK as a launch pad against China, as it remains today.

In an environment of such enhanced belligerence, guided by military doctrines of perpetual war, an organizer of Veterans for Peace (as stated in Dr Martin’s biography) might contribute by dispelling some of the illusions that still nurture manifest destiny in the hearts and minds of those who rule the US.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by T.P. Wilkinson.

At one point early in this war, the US Army feared that guerrilla fighters were disguising themselves as civilian peasants, and opened fire on them. “Fire on everything, kill ’em all”, one US Army veteran says they were told. “Over the course of a three-day barrage of gunfire and air strafing, hundreds of… civilians were killed,” one account reads. “Survivors recall a stream under the bridge running red with blood and 7th Cavalry veterans recall the near constant screams of women and children.” The US Army stonewalled, and journalists were pressured not to report the full story if at all.

The two paragraphs above are apt descriptions of the Vietnam War and the 1968 My Lai Massacre respectively. Except they are neither descriptions of the Vietnam War nor of My Lai, but instead of the Korean War and the No Gun Ri Massacre carried out by American troops in South Korea in late July 1950.

As a history educator, I’m always surprised at how my students–juniors and seniors in the Los Angeles Unified School District–know almost nothing about the Korean War. A few boys recognize it from their Call of Duty video games, a few others might have heard of the North Korean dictatorship’s bombastic threats, but of the Korean War itself, which ended 71 years ago this week, they know next to nothing.

Part of the problem is the textbooks we are given to use. Neither our US History book, the AP US History book, nor the World History book provide any substantive background to the war. We’re only told, as the regular US History textbook tells us, that “North Korean forces swept across the 38th parallel in a surprise attack on South Korea.” This is distortion by omission.

During WWII, the US and the Soviet Union agreed that, upon Japan’s surrender, Korea, which had been a Japanese colony since 1910, would be divided at the 38th parallel into a Northern, pro-Soviet sector and a Southern, pro-American sector.

The US installed Korean exile Syngman Rhee, who had lived in the US from 1912 to 1945, as the leader of South Korea. Rhee’s government and police force, and almost all leaders of South Korea’s Army, had served the colonial Japanese regime.

The Soviets installed the Korean communists into power, led by Kim Il Sung, who fought a guerrilla war against fascist Japan’s colonial occupation of Korea. The communists had credibility and support because of their long struggle to win Korea’s independence from Japan.

The US History textbook tells us that two Koreas then developed—“one communist and one democratic.” Actually, the “democratic” Rhee regime was brutal, authoritarian, corrupt, unpopular, and widely seen as an artificial creation of the US.

Rhee perpetrated horrific massacres of pro-Communist South Koreans, including the Jeju Massacre (1948-1949), in which up to 30,000 Koreans were killed, and the murder of 100,000 to 200,000 suspected Korean communists in the Bodo League massacre. For years, South Korea falsely claimed this crime was committed by North Korea.

Cumings, author of The Korean War: a History, refers to the US-backed regime’s “atrocious massacres…our ostensibly democratic ally was the worst offender, contrary to the American image of the North Koreans as fiendish terrorists.”

The megalomaniacal Rhee on numerous occasions proclaimed his determination to conquer the communist North. Ignoring American warnings not to provoke a war, Rhee foolishly launched military raids across the border, leading to the deaths of 8,000 South Korean soldiers and thousands of North Korean fighters. At the same time, North Korean-backed communist guerrillas launched guerrilla attacks in South Korea.

With both sides threatening to unify the country by force, the North invaded on June 25, 1950.

Even though the US-Soviet division of Korea gave the South twice the population of the North, the North quickly overran the South. As historian James Stokesbury explains, the masses of conscript South Korean soldiers had little loyalty to the Rhee regime, and soon retreated or defected en masse to the North.

Two days after the invasion, Rhee’s regime abandoned the capital, Seoul, detonating the Hangang Bridge over the Han River in an effort to slow down the North Korean advance. Thousands of refugees were crossing the bridge at the time, leading to hundreds of deaths.

After General Douglas MacArthur’s brilliant landing at Inchon, United Nations forces–90% of whom were American–pushed north towards the Chinese border, spurring China to enter the war. After major Chinese advances, the war ended in a stalemate.

Ignored in our textbooks are the horrific results of the US air war. Air Force General Curtis LeMay, head of the US Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, explained, “[W]e killed off…20 percent of the population…We…burned down every town in North Korea.”

Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk recalled “we were bombing every brick that was standing on top of another, everything that moved.”

In August 1951, war correspondent Tibor Meráy saw “complete devastation between the Yalu River and the capital…[there were] no more cities in North Korea.”

According to the Asia-Pacific Journal:

By the fall of 1952, there were no effective targets left for US planes to hit. Every significant town, city and industrial area in North Korea had already been bombed. In the spring of 1953, the Air Force targeted irrigation dams on the Yalu River, both to destroy the North Korean rice crop and to pressure the Chinese, who would have to supply more food aid to the North. Five reservoirs were hit, flooding thousands of acres of farmland, inundating whole towns and laying waste to the essential food source for millions of North Koreans.

U.S. planes dropped more bombs on the Korean peninsula— 635,000 tons — and more napalm — 32,557 tons — than against Japan during World War II. Yet, incredibly, the word “bomb” does not appear once in the US History textbook’s section on the Korean War.

Cumings says the US “carpet-bombed the north for three years with next to no concern for civilian casualties.”

Nor is there any mention of napalm in our texts. Then-British Prime Minister Winston Churchill condemned the US’ widespread use of napalm as being “very cruel,” saying the US was “tortur[ing] great masses of people” by “splashing it all over the civilian population.” He explained, “Napalm ought not to be used in the way it is being done by the American Forces.”

Nor do our texts mention No Gun Ri or other massacres perpetrated by the American forces. Former Associated Press international correspondent Charles Hanley, author of The Bridge at No Gun Ri: A Hidden Nightmare from the Korean War, explains:

[T]he story of No Gun Ri was shocking when it emerged in 1999, but within the following decade it became clear that events like this were quite commonplace during the Korean War, and it is in some ways what war is all about.

The Associated Press explains that revelations about No Gun Ri “led to an outpouring of other accounts of alleged mass killings of southern civilians by the U.S. military in 1950-51, particularly air attacks. A South Korean investigative commission counted more than 200 cases on its docket by 2008, but the commission was disbanded by a new conservative government in 2010 before it could confirm more than a handful.”

The US History textbook spends 458 words on the conflict between President Truman and General MacArthur and tells us the war cost the US $67 billion and 54,000 killed (actually 36,574). Students are then asked to consider “whether fighting the Korean War was worthwhile” in light of “the loss of American lives” and “fear of communism.” Not once is there mention of the three million Koreans killed, mostly civilians, nor of the 600,000 Chinese killed.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Glenn Sacks.

At one point early in this war, the US Army feared that guerrilla fighters were disguising themselves as civilian peasants, and opened fire on them. “Fire on everything, kill ’em all”, one US Army veteran says they were told. “Over the course of a three-day barrage of gunfire and air strafing, hundreds of… civilians were killed,” one account reads. “Survivors recall a stream under the bridge running red with blood and 7th Cavalry veterans recall the near constant screams of women and children.” The US Army stonewalled, and journalists were pressured not to report the full story if at all.

The two paragraphs above are apt descriptions of the Vietnam War and the 1968 My Lai Massacre respectively. Except they are neither descriptions of the Vietnam War nor of My Lai, but instead of the Korean War and the No Gun Ri Massacre carried out by American troops in South Korea in late July 1950.

As a history educator, I’m always surprised at how my students–juniors and seniors in the Los Angeles Unified School District–know almost nothing about the Korean War. A few boys recognize it from their Call of Duty video games, a few others might have heard of the North Korean dictatorship’s bombastic threats, but of the Korean War itself, which ended 71 years ago this week, they know next to nothing.

Part of the problem is the textbooks we are given to use. Neither our US History book, the AP US History book, nor the World History book provide any substantive background to the war. We’re only told, as the regular US History textbook tells us, that “North Korean forces swept across the 38th parallel in a surprise attack on South Korea.” This is distortion by omission.

During WWII, the US and the Soviet Union agreed that, upon Japan’s surrender, Korea, which had been a Japanese colony since 1910, would be divided at the 38th parallel into a Northern, pro-Soviet sector and a Southern, pro-American sector.

The US installed Korean exile Syngman Rhee, who had lived in the US from 1912 to 1945, as the leader of South Korea. Rhee’s government and police force, and almost all leaders of South Korea’s Army, had served the colonial Japanese regime.

The Soviets installed the Korean communists into power, led by Kim Il Sung, who fought a guerrilla war against fascist Japan’s colonial occupation of Korea. The communists had credibility and support because of their long struggle to win Korea’s independence from Japan.

The US History textbook tells us that two Koreas then developed—“one communist and one democratic.” Actually, the “democratic” Rhee regime was brutal, authoritarian, corrupt, unpopular, and widely seen as an artificial creation of the US.

Rhee perpetrated horrific massacres of pro-Communist South Koreans, including the Jeju Massacre (1948-1949), in which up to 30,000 Koreans were killed, and the murder of 100,000 to 200,000 suspected Korean communists in the Bodo League massacre. For years, South Korea falsely claimed this crime was committed by North Korea.

Cumings, author of The Korean War: a History, refers to the US-backed regime’s “atrocious massacres…our ostensibly democratic ally was the worst offender, contrary to the American image of the North Koreans as fiendish terrorists.”

The megalomaniacal Rhee on numerous occasions proclaimed his determination to conquer the communist North. Ignoring American warnings not to provoke a war, Rhee foolishly launched military raids across the border, leading to the deaths of 8,000 South Korean soldiers and thousands of North Korean fighters. At the same time, North Korean-backed communist guerrillas launched guerrilla attacks in South Korea.

With both sides threatening to unify the country by force, the North invaded on June 25, 1950.

Even though the US-Soviet division of Korea gave the South twice the population of the North, the North quickly overran the South. As historian James Stokesbury explains, the masses of conscript South Korean soldiers had little loyalty to the Rhee regime, and soon retreated or defected en masse to the North.

Two days after the invasion, Rhee’s regime abandoned the capital, Seoul, detonating the Hangang Bridge over the Han River in an effort to slow down the North Korean advance. Thousands of refugees were crossing the bridge at the time, leading to hundreds of deaths.

After General Douglas MacArthur’s brilliant landing at Inchon, United Nations forces–90% of whom were American–pushed north towards the Chinese border, spurring China to enter the war. After major Chinese advances, the war ended in a stalemate.

Ignored in our textbooks are the horrific results of the US air war. Air Force General Curtis LeMay, head of the US Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, explained, “[W]e killed off…20 percent of the population…We…burned down every town in North Korea.”

Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk recalled “we were bombing every brick that was standing on top of another, everything that moved.”

In August 1951, war correspondent Tibor Meráy saw “complete devastation between the Yalu River and the capital…[there were] no more cities in North Korea.”

According to the Asia-Pacific Journal:

By the fall of 1952, there were no effective targets left for US planes to hit. Every significant town, city and industrial area in North Korea had already been bombed. In the spring of 1953, the Air Force targeted irrigation dams on the Yalu River, both to destroy the North Korean rice crop and to pressure the Chinese, who would have to supply more food aid to the North. Five reservoirs were hit, flooding thousands of acres of farmland, inundating whole towns and laying waste to the essential food source for millions of North Koreans.

U.S. planes dropped more bombs on the Korean peninsula— 635,000 tons — and more napalm — 32,557 tons — than against Japan during World War II. Yet, incredibly, the word “bomb” does not appear once in the US History textbook’s section on the Korean War.

Cumings says the US “carpet-bombed the north for three years with next to no concern for civilian casualties.”

Nor is there any mention of napalm in our texts. Then-British Prime Minister Winston Churchill condemned the US’ widespread use of napalm as being “very cruel,” saying the US was “tortur[ing] great masses of people” by “splashing it all over the civilian population.” He explained, “Napalm ought not to be used in the way it is being done by the American Forces.”

Nor do our texts mention No Gun Ri or other massacres perpetrated by the American forces. Former Associated Press international correspondent Charles Hanley, author of The Bridge at No Gun Ri: A Hidden Nightmare from the Korean War, explains:

[T]he story of No Gun Ri was shocking when it emerged in 1999, but within the following decade it became clear that events like this were quite commonplace during the Korean War, and it is in some ways what war is all about.

The Associated Press explains that revelations about No Gun Ri “led to an outpouring of other accounts of alleged mass killings of southern civilians by the U.S. military in 1950-51, particularly air attacks. A South Korean investigative commission counted more than 200 cases on its docket by 2008, but the commission was disbanded by a new conservative government in 2010 before it could confirm more than a handful.”

The US History textbook spends 458 words on the conflict between President Truman and General MacArthur and tells us the war cost the US $67 billion and 54,000 killed (actually 36,574). Students are then asked to consider “whether fighting the Korean War was worthwhile” in light of “the loss of American lives” and “fear of communism.” Not once is there mention of the three million Koreans killed, mostly civilians, nor of the 600,000 Chinese killed.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Glenn Sacks.

We speak with two leading economists about Thursday’s CNN debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, where the candidates sparred over tariffs, taxes, inflation and more. Trump repeatedly claimed that immigrants coming to the United States are stealing “Black jobs,” which is a “fascist notion,” says Darrick Hamilton, founding director of the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School. Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, says Biden has much to boast about, including strong job growth and falling inflation, but that Biden’s delivery was “very muddled.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

1. The Fight for National Independence
   

Korea was unified as a nation by the 10th century.  During the last half of the 19th century, multiple invasions by foreign powers (US, France, Britain, and Japan) forced the country to allow foreign capital to enter and operate in Korea. ^[1]

In 1905, imperial Japan subjugated Korea as its Protectorate.  In 1910, Japan proceeded to annex Korea, which it then ruled until 1945.  While Japanese capital exploited the labor and natural resources of the country, the Japanese state banned use of the Korean language and customs in an attempt at forced assimilation. ^[1]

In 1919, the Korean independence movement organized mass rallies involving some 2 million protestors demanding independence from Japan.  Japanese police and military forces crushed these protests with repressive violence causing some 7,000 fatalities. Independence leaders in exile then established the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea [PGRK] which then obtained some limited international recognition and served until 1945 as an advocacy center for the independence movement. ^[1,2]

Between 1935 and 1940, the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army [NAJUA], led by the Communist Party of China [CPC], conducted guerrilla operations against Japanese forces in Manchuria and Korea.  Kim Il Sung, then a member of the CPC, obtained some distinction as an effective and popular division commander in the NAJUA.  Japanese countermeasures forced Kim’s division, by the end of 1940, to escape into Soviet territory where they were retrained by the Soviet army.  Kim then became an officer in the Soviet Red Army and was serving therein when the USSR joined the War against Japan (1945 August).  During the interim, he was not present in Korea or China.  Kim returned to Korea with Soviet forces in 1945 August. ^[3]

2. Forced Prostitution
   

During the Asia-Pacific War (1941-45), Japan forced up to 200,000 Korean women (along with many more from other occupied countries) into sexual slavery to serve Japanese soldiers. During the Korean War (1950-53), the South Korean government re-established this system of forced sexual prostitution to serve South Korean and allied soldiers, the victims being conscripted almost exclusively from the ranks of the disempowered (worker and poor peasant) classes. This system persisted into the 21st century as a for-profit industry with sexual prostitution in “camp towns” (organized and regulated by the US and South Korean military authorities) around military bases. ^[4]

3. How Korea Came to be Divided

As the Soviet Army was about to liberate Korea from 40 years of oppressive Japanese colonial rule, the US, wanting to prevent that country from falling under predominant Soviet influence, asked (1945 August 10) that Soviet forces stop at the 38th parallel so that the US would be able to occupy the southern half of the country. Hoping for a good postwar relationship, the USSR promptly agreed, with the expectation that this would be a temporary arrangement until the removal of Japanese forces and the establishment of an independent government for the whole country.  Actual liberation began on August 14 with Soviet Red Army amphibious landings in the northeast of the country.  US forces did not enter southern Korea until September 08, by which time Soviet forces would otherwise likely have occupied the entire country and disarmed all occupying Japanese forces. ^[5]

In August, popular People’s Committees affiliated with the Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence [CPKI] arose throughout Korea.  This organization was led by activists in country including: Lyuh Woon-hyung, and veteran Christian nationalist Cho Man-sik.  On September 12, activists from the People’s Committees, meeting in Seoul (in US occupation zone), established the People’s Republic of Korea [PRK] to govern the country. The PRK program included:

• confiscation of lands held by Japanese and their Korean collaborators;
• distribution of that land to peasants;
• rent limits on all leased land;
• nationalization of major industries;
• guarantees for basic human rights and freedoms (speech, press, assembly, faith);
• universal adult suffrage;
• equality for women;
• labor law reforms (eight-hour day, minimum wage, prohibition of child labor, et cetera);
• good relations with US, USSR, China, and Britain; and
• opposition to foreign interference in affairs of state. ^[6]

Soviet authorities recognized the People’s Committees and PRK which then instituted progressive social reforms in the North ^[7].  Meanwhile, the US Army Military Government [USAMGIK] in the South: regarded said PRK and People’s Committees as unacceptably leftist, and suppressed them by military decree and armed force.  USAMGIK also: put rightwing former Japanese collaborators in key power positions ^[6], and persisted in repressing reform advocates ^{[7, 8]}.  Popular protests and localized rebellions followed ^[9].  By 1948 state repression in the South under USAMGIK had subjected dissidents to arbitrary detention, torture, and murder with thousands of victims ^{[7, 9]}.  The US also chose rightwing anti-Communist, Syngman Rhee, as their man to govern the country ^{[7, 10]}.

With the US and USSR deadlocked in disagreement over the content of a government for a united Korea, the US orchestrated the establishment (1948 August 15) of the Republic of Korea [ROK] with Syngman Rhee as President.  Authorities in the North responded by establishing the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [DPRK] on September 09 with Kim Il-sung as Premier.  ^{[5, 11, 12]}

4. What Happened to Democracy?

In the South, Rhee’s autocratic regime brutally persecuted Communists and other dissidents with detention, torture, assassination, and mass murder.  Victims numbered in the tens of thousands.  Repressive autocratic rule persisted in the South (with one brief reprieve) until 1987 when replaced by a liberal “democratic” regime with some semblance of civil liberties.  However, government under this regime remains dominated by political parties which represent factions of a ruling capitalist class.  Consequently, its “democracy” is illusory.  ^{[13, 14]}

In the North, the People’s Committees constituted popular democratic institutions, which were already active when Soviet forces arrived.  With Soviet backing, said Committees, with widespread popular support, constituted the governing authority.  By 1946, the Soviet-backed (Communist) Workers’ Party had begun to dominate the Committees and the governing administration.  Following the Korean War, Workers’ Party leader Kim Il Sung: purged other leading Communists (1952-62), replaced proletarian internationalism with Korean nationalism in Party doctrine, promoted a personality cult around himself, and created a hereditary dynastic autocracy, practices incompatible with Marxism and socialist participatory democracy. Thusly, the DPRK devolved into a dynastic bureaucratic welfare state, not capitalist, but also not actually socialist. ^{[5, 11, 15]}

5. The War on Korea

Both Korean governments claimed the right to govern the entire country and had made preparations to enforce said claim thru military force.  From 1949, there were border skirmishes, nearly all which began as incursions and/or artillery bombardments from the South into the North.  In 1950 June, following a 2-day ROK cross-border bombardment and seizure of northern territory (including the city of Haeju) in the Ongjin area, the DPRK responded with a full-scale invasion of the South.  The unpopular ROK regime collapsed, and DPRK forces quickly gained control of most of the South. ^{[16, 10]}

During its brief control in the South, the DPRK instituted progressive reforms (nationalization of industry, land reform, and restoration of the People’s Committees). According to US General William F Dean, “the civilian attitude seemed to vary between enthusiasm and passive acceptance”. ^[17]

The US, its allies, and their major news media, falsely characterized: the event as an unprovoked Communist aggression, the repressive ROK as a popular democracy, and the conflict as an international crisis (belying its reality as a civil war). The US, taking advantage of USSR boycott of United Nations [UN] meetings, induced said UN to authorize a US-led military intervention to save the ROK.  Thusly, the US transformed the hitherto relatively-bloodless Korean civil conflict into the horrendous Korean War. Moreover, the US, by threatening to invade China and by bombing China’s territory and threatening hydropower stations serving its proximate industries, provoked China to enter the conflict on the side of the DPRK. ^[10]

Toll. The War took the lives of an estimated 3 million people, including some 1.6 million civilians, many of them as a consequence of indiscriminate US aerial bombing and war crimes perpetrated by US and allied forces.  Said crimes included:

• massive US use of chemical weapons (especially napalm) in violation of the 1925 Geneva Convention;
• massive US use of bombing attacks upon civilian targets (cities and villages);
• deliberate destruction of crops and of food production infrastructure;
• massacres of many thousands of unarmed civilians by US armed forces under orders from high-ranking commanders at No Gun Ri and at many other locations (where US Army soldiers gunned down large crowds of civilians, or US airpower strafed and/or bombed them); and
• massacres of at least 100,000 Koreans by ROK police and army (as at Sancheong and Hamyang where ROK forces slaughtered 705 mostly women and children), at Koch’ang (where 719 persons of both sexes and all ages were mowed down by machine gun), and thru mass executions of rounded-up prisoners on mere suspicion that they might be unsympathetic to the repressive ROK regime.

Nearly all of the North and much of the South were reduced to rubble.  ^{[18, 10, 19]}

Armistice signed in 1953 July left a hostile and uneasy truce with little net change in the control of territory, but no peace agreement.  This condition persists to the present time.  Moreover, foreign troops have not been stationed in the North since 1958, but US armed forces (in the tens of thousands) have never yet left the South.  ^[20]

6. Who First Introduced Nuclear Weapons?

The US deployed nuclear weapons in south Korea (in violation of the Armistice Agreement) from 1958 until 1991 (when it apparently decided that its interests would be better served with a prohibition of nuclear weapons in Korea).  Moreover, US warships carrying nuclear weapons operate routinely in waters around Korea.  ^[21]

With the (1991) collapse of its protective USSR ally and with continued hostility from the US and ROK, the DPRK (in 1993) announced its intent to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and stepped up its efforts to develop a nuclear weapons capability as a deterrent.  The DPRK suspended that withdrawal under the 1994 Agreed Framework whereby it agreed to remain in the NPT and to be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] in return for:

• light water nuclear power reactors to replace existing graphite nuclear power reactors (which were capable of easily producing weapons-grade plutonium),
• fuel oil deliveries to replace the power from shut down of the graphite reactors (until the light water reactors came on line),
• relief from sanctions,
• an end to threatening US-ROK military exercises, and
• movement toward normal diplomatic and economic relations.

It is now widely suspected that the US embraced the Agreed Framework on the assumption that the DPRK regime was on the verge of collapse which would mean no need for the US to fulfill its commitments.  ^{[22, 23]}

The US did default on the agreement thru long delays in construction of the light water reactors which was years behind the targeted 2003 completion date.  Then in 2002 the US further defaulted by ending delivery of promised fuel oil shipments.  Further, the US falsely accused the DPRK of having confessed violation of the Agreed Framework by misinterpreting the DPRK’s assertion of having an inherent right to possess nuclear weapons as an admission of actual possession of such weapons.  Finally, US President Bush: branded North Korea together with Iran and Iraq as an “axis of evil”; and then invaded Iraq where the US imposed regime change (followed by show trials and executions of deposed Iraqi leaders).  The DPRK responded (in 2003) to the US default and intensified hostility by reactivating its nuclear reactors and by quitting the NPT.  However, it offered to end its nuclear weapons program in return for security guarantees, but the US was unwilling to provide.  ^{[22, 23]}

Repeated talks (2003-07) between the two sides failed to produce any lasting agreement.  The Obama administration ratcheted up the threatening military exercises and ignored DPRK calls for talks to make peace.  The DPRK has made six nuclear bomb tests (in 2006, 2009, 2013, 2016 January, 2016 September, 2017); and it has also developed an intercontinental ballistic missile [ICBM] capability.  ^{[20, 24]}

The US, in 2017, deployed its THAAD anti-missile system in south Korea thereby further destabilizing the confrontation and also provoking alarm in China ^[25].

7. The Current Danger
   

In 2011, the US and its allies used military force to oust the Gaddafi regime in Libya (after having used military force to effect regime change in Iraq in 2003).  Both Iraq and Libya had given up their nuclear-weapons and other WMD programs.  The DPRK drew the inevitable conclusion that it needed a nuclear weapons deterrent to protect itself against a similar event.

The US (with its imperial interventionist bi-partisan foreign policy consensus, arrogating to the US the “right” to use subversion, economic siege, military force, and any other available instrument in order to enforce its dictates against any country which insists upon following an insubordinate course) continues its hostility toward the DPRK.  Under Biden, it persists in its aggressions against said DPRK: vilification, economic siege, annually conducting threatening US-ROK joint military exercises in the South (to which the DPRK responds by test-firing its missiles).  The US refuses to discuss making a peace treaty or normalization of relations; it persists in its unwavering goal of regime change.  In fact, the US has used its economic power to intensify international sanctions (economic siege) against the DPRK.  Meanwhile, the obsequious (and/or negligently ignorant) mainstream news media misleads the public as to the realities of the confrontation; while the liberal left, if it responds at all, ignores US provocations and, tacitly or explicitly, accepts the mischaracterization of the DPRK as an aggressive “rogue” state.

Astute experts, including former US President Carter, have recognized that the current US policy, of attempting to coerce the DPRK to give up its nuclear deterrent while refusing to provide security guarantees, cannot succeed ^[4].  As long as the threat remains, the DPRK, regardless of who leads its government, will certainly not agree to give up the nuclear weapons deterrent which is its best insurance against military attack by an imperial US superpower bent upon regime-change.  The way to ensure peace in the Korean peninsula is to remove the sanctions and other hostile measures against the DPRK including the provocative joint military exercises with the ROK.

The DPRK does not want war.  It wants a peace treaty to finally end the Korean War.  Its officials have asserted that it also wants Korea reunified under a federal system wherein the central government’s functions would be limited to national defense and foreign relations.  Finally, the DPRK wants normal relations with the US and its neighbors; and, with that, it would, as it has repeatedly asserted, envision and welcome an end to hostile actions on both sides.  ^{[20, 22]}

US government policy has never prioritized the welfare of the Korean people, North or South.  Imperial hostility and pressure for regime change from outside forces, namely the US and its allies, has driven the DPRK regime to react with intensified repression of dissent.  That then has operated to reinforce the bureaucratic rule and dynastic autocracy, which (along with economic siege and need to heavily invest limited resources in military deterrent) are contrary to the best interests of the people of the DPRK.  Moreover, this US policy seriously threatens a catastrophic war which would devastate Korea and cause massive loss of life, South as well as North.  The principal beneficiaries of this policy are: the munitions vendors; their supportive imperial-minded US politicians of both major parties (whose election campaigns are significantly funded by said munitions vendors); government officials (who will subsequently become corporate executives or lobbyists for the merchants of death) ^[26]; and the “experts” in policy institutes and academia (who make their careers as apologists for Western imperialism).

ENDNOTES

[1] Wikipedia: History of Korea (2023 Oct 17) ~ §§ Later Three Kingdoms, Foreign relationships, Korean Empire (1898-1910), Japanese rule (1910-1945).

[2] Wikipedia: Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea (2023 Oct 26) ~ §§ introduction, Foreign relations.

[3] Wikipedia: Kim Il Sung (2023 Nov 02) ~ §§ Communist and guerrilla activities, Return to Korea.

[4] Hynesᵒ H Patricia: The Korean War: Forgotten, Unknown and Unfinished (Truthout, 2013 Jul 12) @ https://truthout.org/articles/the-korean-war-forgotten-unknown-and-unfinished/ .

[5] Wikipedia: History of North Korea (2023 Sep 05) ~ § Division of Korea (1945—1950).

[6] Wikipedia: People’s Republic of Korea (2023 Oct 30).

[7] Cummingsᵒ Bruce: Korea’s Place in the Sun (© 2005, W. W. Norton & Company, New York & London) ~ pp 185—209 ISBN 0-393-31681-5.

[8] Wikipedia: United States Army Military Government in Korea (2023 Oct 20).

[9] Wikipedia: Autumn Uprising of 1946 (2023 Oct 18).

[10] Blum⸰ William: Killing Hope – U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (© 2004, Common Courage Press) ~ chapter 5 ISBN 1-56751-252-6.  Note: 1st half, thru chapter 34, of 2003 edition is online @ http://aaargh.vho.org/fran/livres8/BLUMkillinghope.pdf .

[11] Wikipedia: History of North Korea (2023 Sep 05) ~ § Establishment of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

[12] Cummingsᵒ: ~ pp 209—17.

[13] Cummingsᵒ: ~ pp 217—24.

[14] Wikipedia: History of South Korea (2023 Nov 02) ~ §§ First Republic (1948—1960) thru Fifth Republic (1979—1987).

[15] Wikipedia: Workers’ Party of Korea (2023 Oct 27) ~ § History.

[16] Cummingsᵒ: ~ pp 247—264.

[17] Wikipedia: History of North Korea (2023 Sep 05) ~ § Korean War (1950—1953).

[18] Wikipedia: Korean War (2023 Nov 09) ~ § Casualties.

[19] Wikipedia: Geochang massacre (2023 Sep 07); Sancheong-Hamyang massacre (2023 Jun 04); No Gun Ri massacre (2023 Sep 22).

[20] Wikipedia: Korean Armistice Agreement (2023 Jul 27).

[21] Wikipedia: South Korea and weapons of mass destruction (2023 Oct 25) ~ § American nuclear weapons in South Korea.

[22] Sigalᵒ Leon V: Bad History (38North, 2017 Aug 22) @ http://www.38north.org/2017/08/lsigal082217/ .

[23] Wikipedia: “Agreed Framework,” 21 May 2023.

[24] BBC: North Korea: What missiles does it have? (2023 Sep 03) @ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41174689 .

[25] Borowiecᵒ Steven: THAAD missile system agitates South Korea-China ties (Nikkei Asia, 2023 Jun 22) @ https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/THAAD-missile-system-agitates-South-Korea-China-ties .

[26] Kuzmarov, Jeremy, “Senate Report: Nearly 700 Former High-Ranking Pentagon and Other Government Officials Now Work at the Top 20 Defense Contractors,” Covert Action Magazine, 2023 May 12 .

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Charles Pierce.

The article informs us that Greece was hit by an economic crisis a decade ago. It had, then, a load of debt – (doesn’t it now?) – which it could not repay and almost left the eurozone. So far so good.

The newspaper informs that today it is one of the fastest growing economies in Europe. Again, so far so good. And clearly, the famous credit rating agencies are upgrading Greece’s debt rating and thus, opening the way for large investors and the economy is growing at twice the rate of the eurozone average. That’s right. CEPR economist Dean Baker, commenting on the article after its publication, wrote with emphasis: “Since the eurozone growth rate for 2023 is projected to be 0.8 percent, growing twice as fast is a rather low bar.”

The journalist mentions that unemployment is at 11 percent, which one would say, with a dose of humor,  is “Greek statistics” because the probability is that unemployment is much higher. (Greece’s past government falsified fiscal data in order to enter eurozone.) Dean Baker will point out though, “The 11 percent unemployment rate is far higher than the rest of the European Union, which has a 5.9 percent unemployment rate.” Everywhere in Greece there is poverty, and mine conditions in society.

I am one of the Greeks living in New York, and I have received many messages and phone calls from Greek people who want to immigrate to America because they cannot make ends meet. Friends and family members ask me the same. They are forced to do two-three jobs to survive. The minimum wage is 780 euros (650 net). So, how is it that the article describes “a miracle”? One would say that even the examples of the people mentioned in the article are not typical.

And the tourists who have returned en masse, as the article states, has not helped to improve incomes. On the popular islands – that the average Greek cannot visit – usually, there are galley conditions for the workers.

Unfortunately, in Greek society, a small percentage of 5%-10% live well – “the oligarchs eat with golden spoons” – and the rest suffer. Children of the poor go to school hungry. The country has some of the most expensive fuel in Europe, expensive food, high VAT, and very expensive electricity. Many do not have money for dental care, to change tires on the car, or, to start a new family. The journalist writes “misery of austerity is still fresh”, no, it is not fresh; it is still present in the social conditions. Nowhere is mentioned that the government gave, until recently, “Soviet-style” Food Pass and Fuel Pass coupons, which helped the re-election by a landslide of the conservative leader Mr. Mitsotakis. This image is not beautified by the fact that the companies Microsoft and Pfizer are investing in Greece.

For reasons that are understandable, rating agencies like DBRS Morningstar and Moody’s do their job. Very likely for them, a strong economy means neoliberalism, purchasing power that is getting worse every year, and cheap labor. And Greece is a country that lacks personalities like AOC and Bernie. But the NYTimes should not present these assessments while ignoring the poverty that still exists in the country that gave birth to Democracy. The NYTimes has accustomed us to a more critical look at the suffering of ordinary people.

In conclusion, “can a dead man dance?” No! So, the information given by the NYTimes should create “a complete picture” and not the opposite. Perhaps, we can accept that somehow, the good American newspaper wants to help improve the desperate economic situation that continues to impoverish the Greeks and stop the transfer of wealth to the few. Good psychology is everything, even in economy. Until then, the country will continue to live its own difficult fate, its own 1929, similar to the conditions America experienced at the start of the Great Depression era.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dimitris Eleas.

More unsettling are the justifications for Israeli racism from those in power. Last month a House Resolution proclaiming that Israel isn’t a ‘racist or apartheid state’ passed with a whopping 412-9-1  vote. Only nine Democrats dissented and Rep. Dean Phillips (D) of Minnesota’s Third District weighed in with this: “To call an entire country racist is beyond the pale.” Yet, he mentioned nothing about the ongoing plight of Palestinians who are essentially marooned on segregated land and subjected to laws that favor Jews over non-Jews.

Then again, neither did a local Minneapolis rabbi a while back when I commented on his FB page while he was discussing the ongoing mistreatment of U.S migrants. It was a coincidence that I was also looking for Jewish opinions on how Palestinians are mistreated and didn’t see anything about this on his page so, I raised the question. His partial response from a long quote: “Mr. Wood, I don’t believe we’ve met, but I am quite taken aback by your post  It is out of line, unfair, and wrong. This is precisely how “casual” antisemitism works: An American Jew (me) posts about the US President’s policies and inhumane treatment towards immigrants on our US border. Someone I don’t believe I know interjects himself on my feed, attempts to detract from the conversation at hand, and turn it into one about Israeli politics and the American Jewish community.”

Others I’ve been in contact have been open to an interchange of ideas. One was with Mordecai Specktor during a phone conversation just before Passover this year. The Publisher and Editor of The American Jewish World was not shy about expressing sympathy for Palestinians or his disappointment with Jewish political leaders in Minnesota that he said were quick to side with Israelis during incursions. Although he didn’t believe that sanctions on Israel would remedy the situation, he was aware of wretched conditions that Palestinians deal with on a regular basis.

Wyatt Miller of the Anti-War Committee in Minneapolis believes that sanctions from the outside are the only realistic hope non-Jews have to achieve parity with Israeli Jews. He also pointed out some of the ways imperialistic sponsors (primarily the U.S.) perpetuate corruption and racism through regular funding and below the radar business deals.

Economic pressure from the outside seems to be the best option available now for Palestinian sympathizers. Especially if one considers how long Palestinians have been discriminated against and the huge fraction of Congress who still remain silent about Palestinian mistreatment along with pro-Israel Jews who make up about a third of President Biden’s cabinet. Not one of those high-level leaders have suggested cutting off Israel’s almost four-billion dollar annual allowance. Don’t count on Biden — he’s still a devout Zionist who once bragged to a Yeshiva Beth Yehuda dinner group in Detroit “I’ve raised more money for AIPAC than some of you have.”

It’s nothing short of hypocritical that the U.S. Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has officially sanctioned twenty-five countries and Israel isn’t on the list. Jewish exceptionalism (the unwritten rule of U.S. foreign policy) continues to exempt Israelis from war crimes, violations of international humanitarian laws and other atrocities that would put another country on notice. This, of course, gives carte blanche to power splinter-groups like the Israeli settlers who train-wrecked the town of Huwara that one Israeli military commander called a pogrom.

It was not surprising to those who follow Israeli politics that the U.S. State Department and Israeli government made some noise about the incident, but didn’t do much. Perhaps this is what’s to be expected because it’s been my experience (along with others) that calling out Jews for almost anything will usually get you ignored or chastised. For example, while it remains open season on Christians who conflate patriotism with the teachings of Jesus or Muslims who treat women like second-class citizens — those who criticize Jews run the risk of being called anti-Semitic.

Asking a question about why U.S. taxpayers are expected to keep giving billions every year to a Jewish nation-state that has the second most billionaires per capita in the world, can get you tagged as a Jew-hater for linking Jews and money. Mention that pro-Israel Jews have an enormous presence in media, be prepared to be smeared as an anti-Semite for connecting Jews with a power that can shape public opinion in western countries.

And it doesn’t matter if what you said is true. What matters, unfortunately, is that someone can retro-fit your words into an old trope (which is essentially a figure of speech according to Merriam-Webster) and get away with calling you anti-Semitic for telling the truth.

So the question remains —  do we confront this reality or avoid it?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Craig Wood.

After two fellow Democratic lawmakers urged her to resign, Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Wednesday that she has asked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to move to temporarily replace her on the chamber's judiciary committee, alluding to the impact her absence has had on the panel's ability to advance President Joe Biden's judicial nominees.

"When I was first diagnosed with shingles, I expected to return by the end of the March work period. Unfortunately, my return to Washington has been delayed due to continued complications related to my diagnosis," Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in a statement, without offering a specific timeline for her return.

But Feinstein, who is 89, signaled that she has no intention of giving up her Senate seat entirely, saying she intends to "return as soon as possible once my medical team advises that it's safe for me to travel."

Feinstein announced earlier this year that she is not running for reelection in 2024. She's set to leave office in January 2025.

"In the meantime, I remain committed to the job and will continue to work from home in San Francisco," the senator said Wednesday. "I understand that my absence could delay the important work of the Judiciary Committee, so I've asked Leader Schumer to ask the Senate to allow another Democratic senator to temporarily serve until I'm able to resume my committee work."

"The ruling by an extremist judge in Texas has made it clear that Democrats must act with speed and urgency to confirm judicial nominees who will protect the right to an abortion."

Any effort to replace Feinstein on the judiciary panel, which is currently split 10-10 between Democrats and Republicans, could be run into issues if the GOP—which has worked to obstruct Biden's judicial nominations—refuses to grant unanimous consent.

If Senate Republicans object to a unanimous consent request, 60 votes will be needed to replace Feinstein on the committee.

A spokesperson for Schumer said late Wednesday that he "will ask the Senate next week to allow another Democratic senator to temporarily serve on the Judiciary Committee."

Feinstein's statement came after a pair of Democratic lawmakers—Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Dean Phillips (D-Minn.)—said the California senator should resign, with Phillips calling it "a dereliction of duty" for her to remain in the Senate.

In a statement to The San Francisco Standard, Khanna said that "the ruling by an extremist judge in Texas has made it clear that Democrats must act with speed and urgency to confirm judicial nominees who will protect the right to an abortion."

"Senator Feinstein is unable to fulfill her duties," said Khanna, "and for the good of the people, she should resign."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

A pair of Democratic U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday became the first members of their party in Congress to urge Sen. Dianne Feinstein to resign, as a deadlocked Senate Judiciary Committee remains unable to confirm President Joe Biden's judicial nominees during her prolonged absence.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) was the first to call on 89-year-old Feinstein—who has missed 60 of the Senate's 82 votes so far this year—to step down.

"It's time for Sen. Feinstein to resign. We need to put the country ahead of personal loyalty," Khanna tweeted. "While she has had a lifetime of public service, it is obvious she can no longer fulfill her duties. Not speaking out undermines our credibility as elected representatives of the people."

Less than an hour later, Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) tweeted his agreement with Khanna, arguing that "it's now a dereliction of duty to remain in the Senate and a dereliction of duty for those who agree to remain quiet."

Calls for the resignation of Feinstein, who was first elected to the Senate in a 1992 special election, have been growing lately as her absence from the judiciary committee—which is deadlocked 10-10—is impeding her party's ability to confirm judges.

According to the American Constitution Society, 12 of Biden's judicial nominees are currently awaiting judiciary committee votes, while six others have not yet had hearings.

Feinstein says she'll leave office in January 2025. California Democratic Reps. Barbara Lee, Katie Porter, and Adam Schiff are leading contenders for her seat.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

President Joe Biden delivered his second State of the Union address Tuesday, touting his administration’s achievements and laying out his plans for the next two years under a divided Congress, including on immigration, the economy, the climate crisis and more. We speak with Democratic Congressmember Delia Ramirez, who delivered a response to Tuesday’s speech on behalf of the Working Families Party, and economist Dean Baker, who both applaud Biden’s focus on income inequality and making the rich pay more in taxes. “He’s clearly moved to the left,” says Baker.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The basis for this conclusion is the post-World War II nuclear arms race and, especially, the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. At the height of the crisis, top officials from the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union narrowly avoided annihilating a substantial portion of the human race by what former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, an important participant in the events, called “plain dumb luck.”

The author of this cautionary account, Martin Sherwin, who died shortly after its publication, was certainly well-qualified to tell this chilling story. A professor of history at George Mason University, Sherwin was the author of the influential A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies and the co-author, with Kai Bird, of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which, in 2006, won the Pulitzer Prize for biography. Perhaps the key factor in generating these three scholarly works was Sherwin’s service as a U.S. Navy junior intelligence officer who was ordered to present top secret war plans to his commander during the Cuban missile crisis.

In Gambling with Armageddon, Sherwin shows deftly how nuclear weapons gradually became a key part of international relations. Although Harry Truman favored some limitations on the integration of these weapons into U.S. national security strategy, his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, significantly expanded their role. According to the Eisenhower administration’s NSC 162/2, the U.S. government would henceforth “consider nuclear weapons as available for use as other munitions.” At Eisenhower’s direction, Sherwin notes, “nuclear weapons were no longer an element of American military power; they were its primary instrument.”

Sherwin adds that, although the major purpose of the new U.S. “massive retaliation” strategy “was to frighten Soviet leaders and stymie their ambitions,” its “principal result … was to establish a blueprint for Nikita Khrushchev to create his own ‘nuclear brinkmanship.’” John F. Kennedy’s early approach to U.S. national security policy―supplementing U.S. nuclear superiority with additional conventional military forces and sponsoring a CIA-directed invasion of Cuba―merely bolstered Khrushchev’s determination to contest U.S. power in world affairs. Consequently, resumption of Soviet nuclear weapons testing and a Soviet-American crisis over Berlin followed.

Indeed, dismayed by U.S. nuclear superiority and feeling disrespected by the U.S. government, Khrushchev decided to secretly deploy medium- and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles in Cuba. As Sherwin observes, the Soviet leader sought thereby “to protect Cuba, to even the balance of nuclear weapons and nuclear fear, and to reinforce his leverage to resolve the West Berlin problem.” Assuming that the missiles would not be noticed until their deployment was completed, Khrushchev thought that the Kennedy administration, faced with a fait accompli, would have no choice but to accept them. Khrushchev was certainly not expecting a nuclear war.

But that is what nearly occurred. In the aftermath of the U.S. government’s discovery of the missile deployment in Cuba, the Joint Chiefs of Staff demanded the bombing and invasion of the island and were supported by most members of ExComm, an ad hoc group of Kennedy’s top advisors during the crisis. At the time, they did not realize that the Soviet government had already succeeded in delivering 164 nuclear warheads to Cuba and, therefore, that a substantial number of the ballistic missiles on the island were already operational. Also, the 42,000 Soviet troops in Cuba were armed with tactical nuclear weapons and had been given authorization to use them to repel an invasion. As Fidel Castro later remarked: “It goes without saying that in the event of an invasion, we would have had nuclear war.”

Initially, among all of Kennedy’s advisors, only Adlai Stevenson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, suggested employing a political means―rather than a military one―to secure the removal of the missiles. Although Kennedy personally disliked Stevenson, he recognized the wisdom of his UN ambassador’s approach and gradually began to adopt his ideas. “The question really is,” the president told his hawkish advisors, “what action we take which lessens the chance of a nuclear exchange, which obviously is the final failure.” Therefore, Kennedy tempered his initial impulse to order rapid military action and, instead, adopted a plan for a naval blockade (“quarantine”) of Cuba, thereby halting the arrival of additional Soviet missiles and creating time for negotiations with Khrushchev for removal of the missiles already deployed.

U.S. military leaders, among other ostensible “wise men,” were appalled by what they considered the weakness of the blockade plan, though partially appeased by Kennedy’s assurances that, if it failed to secure the desired results within a seven-day period, a massive U.S. military attack on the island would follow. Indeed, as Sherwin reveals, at the beginning of October, before the discovery of the missiles, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff were already planning for an invasion of Cuba and looking for an excuse to justify it.

Even though Khrushchev, like Kennedy, regarded the blockade as a useful opportunity to negotiate key issues, they quickly lost control of the volatile situation.

For example, U.S. military officers took the U.S.-Soviet confrontation to new heights. Acting on his own initiative, General Thomas Power, the head of the U.S. Strategic Air Command, advanced its nuclear forces to DEFCON 2, just one step short of nuclear war―the only occasion when that level of nuclear alert was ever instituted. He also broadcast the U.S. alert level “in the clear,” ensuring that the Russians would intercept it. They did, and promptly raised their nuclear alert level to the same status.

In addition, few participants in the crisis seemed to know exactly what should be done if a Soviet ship did not respect the U.S. blockade of Cuba. Should the U.S. Navy demand to board it? Fire upon it? Furthermore, at Castro’s orders, a Soviet surface-to-air battery in Cuba shot down an American U-2 surveillance flight, killing the pilot. Khrushchev was apoplectic at the provocative action, while the Kennedy administration faced the quandary of how to respond to it.

A particularly dangerous incident occurred in the Sargasso Sea, near Cuba. To bolster the Soviet defense of Cuba, four Soviet submarines, each armed with a torpedo housing a 15-kiloton nuclear warhead, had been dispatched to the island. After a long, harrowing trip through unusually stormy seas, these vessels were badly battered when they arrived off Cuba. Cut off from communication with Moscow, their crews had no idea whether the United States and the Soviet Union were already at war.

All they did know was that a fleet of U.S. naval warships and warplanes was apparently attacking one of the stricken Soviet submarines, using the unorthodox (and unauthorized) tactic of forcing it to surface by flinging hand grenades into its vicinity. One of the Soviet crew members recalled that “it felt like you were sitting in a metal barrel while somebody is constantly blasting with a sledgehammer.” Given the depletion of the submarine’s batteries and the tropical waters, temperatures ranged in the submarine between 113 and 149 degrees Fahrenheit. The air was foul, fresh water was in short supply, and crew members were reportedly “dropping like dominoes.” Unhinged by the insufferable conditions below deck and convinced that his submarine was under attack, the vessel’s captain ordered his weapons officer to assemble the nuclear torpedo for action. “We’re gonna blast them now!” he screamed. We will die, but we will sink them all―we will not become the shame of the fleet.”

At this point, though, Captain Vasily Arkhipov, a young Soviet brigade chief of staff who had been randomly assigned to the submarine, intervened. Calming the distraught captain, he eventually convinced him that the apparent military attack, plus subsequent machine gun fire from U.S. Navy aircraft, probably constituted no more than a demand to surface. And so they did. Arkhipov’s action, Sherwin notes, saved not only the lives of the submarine crew, “but also the lives of thousands of U.S. sailors and millions of innocent civilians who would have been killed in the nuclear exchanges that certainly would have followed from the destruction” that the “nuclear torpedo would have wreaked upon those U.S. Navy vessels.”

Meanwhile, recognizing that the situation was fast slipping out of their hands, Kennedy and Khrushchev did some tense but serious bargaining. Ultimately, they agreed that Khrushchev would remove the missiles, while Kennedy would issue a public pledge not to invade Cuba. Moreover, Kennedy would remove U.S. nuclear missiles from Turkey―reciprocal action that made sense to both men, although, for political reasons, Kennedy insisted on keeping the missile swap a secret. Thus, the missile crisis ended with a diplomatic solution.

Ironically, continued secrecy about the Cuba-Turkey missile swap, combined with illusions of smooth Kennedy administration calibrations of power spun by ExComm participants and the mass communications media, led to a long-term, comforting, and triumphalist picture of the missile crisis. Consequently, most Americans ended up with the impression that Kennedy stood firm in his demands, while Khrushchev “blinked.” It was a hawkish “lesson”―and a false one. As Sherwin points out, “the real lesson of the Cuban missile crisis … is that nuclear armaments create the perils they are deployed to prevent, but are of little use in resolving them.”

Although numerous books have been written about the Cuban missile crisis, Gambling with Armageddon ranks as the best of them. Factually detailed, clearly and dramatically written, and grounded in massive research, it is a work of enormous power and erudition. As such, it represents an outstanding achievement by one of the pre-eminent U.S. historians.

Like Sherwin’s other works, Gambling with Armageddon also grapples with one of the world’s major problems: the prospect of nuclear annihilation. At the least, it reveals that, while nuclear weapons exist, the world remains in peril. On a deeper level, it suggests the need to move beyond considerations of national security to international security, including the abolition of nuclear weapons and the peaceful resolution of conflict among nations.

Securing these goals might necessitate a long journey, but Sherwin’s writings remind us that, to safeguard human survival, there’s really no alternative to pressing forward with it.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Lawrence Wittner.

This week on CounterSpin: News media coverage of taxes falls broadly into two camps: There are, especially in April, lots of “news you can use”–type stories—like NBC‘s Today show on April 14 warning viewers to be mindful of typos and not be lazy about filing for extensions, or NBC Nightly News on April 18, noting that if you filed by mail, you might wait five to eight months for your return, due to backlogs at the IRS. Taxes as an “oh well, what are you gonna do” thing that all of us have to deal with.

Then there are other stories, disconnected stories, about tax policy: Who pays, how much, and why? We’ve talked about that a fair amount on this show, and we’re going to revisit two of those conversations today.

Last April, we spoke with Emory University law professor and author Dorothy A. Brown about how, though you can scour tax policy and find no mention of race, our tax system still affects Black people very differently, in ways most conversation obscures.

And in February 2019, we spoke with economist Dean Baker about why the idea of raising taxes on the superwealthy makes sense to many mainstream economists and to the general public, but still faces a perennial headwind in corporate media.

Two revelatory conversations about tax policy, this week on CounterSpin.

The post Dorothy A. Brown and Dean Baker on Tax Policy appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by CounterSpin.

This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.