History They Don’t Want You To Know

  (Editor’s Note: In light of continued free passes handed out to white police officers killing young black men across the country, it is appropriate to remember the infamous triple murder of civil rights workers in 1964. Most Americans have a whitewashed memory of that obscenity and the active role law enforcement played in both the crime and cover-up from the movie Mississippi Burning. To understand the current grief and anger of our black neighbors over the never ending murders of young blacks by law enforcement in this country, take a few minutes to read these two great articles. They…

“Spirit of the Immigrant” Columbus statue at Plazza Cosenza in Kenosha, WI. (Photo by Mark L. Taylor) By Katie Halper The Raw Story (10/7/17) Happy Columbus Day! I hope you’re celebrating the holiday appropriately, by breaking into someone’s home and claiming that you discovered and now own it! Or you could just, you know, mourn the genocide of indigenous people by shopping. Because we all grieve in different ways. You’ve probably heard lots of great things about Christopher Columbus and tons of inspiring quotes from him about hard work, god, the sea etc. But those don’t really capture what Columbus and the colonial…

‘   The Thread Minnesota Public Radio (4/25/17) David Grann, bestselling author of “The Lost City of Z,” returns with the story of a little-remembered crime that modernized investigative procedure in the United States. In “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI,” Grann tells a gripping tale of greed, prejudice and callousness. This is for fans of American history, true crime and rip-roaring storytelling. David Grann is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. MPR’s Stephen Smith hosted the event for the Thread…

  I just have to wonder how the title “war hero” applies to someone whose mission it was to bomb innocent people. [Sen. John McCain Gives A Classy Interview On 60 Minutes ,9/28.] Sorry. I think too many people who know they should know better are being lulled into some false happy dream about Vietnam by the cradle song of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. There have been some great “WAKE UP!” shakes, many on counterpunch.org  suppose his refusal to be released early was a heroic thing, but let’s not say war hero. I won’t. Cathy Van Maren La Crosse, WI Link to…

  By Chris Hedges TruthDig (9/24/17) Historians, like journalists, are in the business of manipulating facts. Some use facts to tell truths, however unpleasant. But many more omit, highlight and at times distort them in ways that sustain national myths and buttress dominant narratives. The failure by most of the United States’ popular historians and the press to tell stories of oppression and the struggles against it, especially by women, people of color, the working class and the poor, has contributed to the sickening triumphalism and chauvinism that are poisoning our society. The historian James W. Loewen, in his book Lies…

  “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” – George Santayana By Tom Crofton The Commoner Call (9/25/17) The current PBS series “The Vietnam War” by Ken Burns has been made in an effort to present a wide range of historical fact and opinion in an intentionally neutral voice. It’s visual elements are quite stunning, as we have come to expect from Ken Burns, and the statements of its participants provide a chance for viewers to see many sides of the conflict. Unfortunately, the use of a neutral voice leaves open the possibility that the obvious mistakes…

The Declaration of Independence states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”   In my role as a professor at both liberal arts and engineering universities I have held a policy of asking my students the question, ‘’How do you define freedom?” The answer I have received every time, yes every time, is ‘Freedom is about happiness. And that I can do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it. THAT…

  Democracy Now! (8/21/17) In a special broadcast today, we remember legendary comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory, who passed away on Saturday in Washington, D.C. at the age of 84. Gregory became one of the most popular comedians in the country, paving the way for generations of African-American comedians. On Sunday Chris Rock wrote on Instagram, “We lost a king. They’ll never be another. Read his books. Look him up you won’t be disappointed. Unfortunately the America that produced Dick Gregory still exists.” Dick Gregory was the first African-American comedian to sit on the couch of The Tonight…

  By John Broich The Conversation (7/4/17) Very recently, Germany’s Cabinet approved a bill that will expunge the convictions of tens of thousands of German men for “homosexual acts” under that country’s anti-gay law known as “Paragraph 175.” That law dates back to 1871, when modern Germany’s first legal code was created. It was repealed in 1994. But there was a serious movement to repeal the law in 1929 as part of a wider LGBTQ rights movement. That was just before the Nazis came to power, magnified the anti-gay law, then sought to annihilate gay and transgender Europeans. The story of how…

“If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth–certainly the machine will wear out… but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849. ***** 200 Years After His Birth,…

  By Edward Rhymes teleSur (6/15/17) It is altogether fitting to begin any analysis of Operation Condor with its birthplace: Chile. Thousands of people were imprisoned and killed after Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 military coup against democratically-elected socialist President Salvador Allende. The Nixon administration had helped undermine Allende and then supported Pinochet as he dissolved parliament and began a brutal campaign against Chile’s left that lasted 17 years. His regime conducted raids, executions, abductions, arrests and torture of thousands of Chilean citizens. More people were killed in the four months following the coup (through December 1973) than in any other year…