You know you’ve lived well—well enough to rattle the establishment—when the New York Times smears you in the obituary it runs about you (FAIR.org, 6/20/13).

That distinction was achieved by William Blum, historian and critic of US foreign policy. Once a State Department computer programmer who aspired to “take part in the great anti-Communist crusade,” he quit government in 1967 out of disgust with the Vietnam War and became a founding editor of the Washington Free Press, one of the first alternative papers of the New Left. In books like The CIA: A Forgotten History (re-released as Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II) and Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, Blum documented the violent and anti-democratic record of the US empire; he was a reference that FAIR frequently turned to when noting what was missing from the corporate media’s version of history.

How did the New York Times (12/11/18) frame this remarkable life? With this remarkable headline:

William Blum, US Policy Critic Cited by bin Laden, Dies at 85

Training on a base in California, and later serving in Afghanistan, made me confront the reality of American empire, and the injustice that pervades society at home. 

MY FIRST AND ONLY WAR TOUR took place in Afghanistan in 2010. I was a marine lieutenant then, a signals intelligence officer tasked with leading a platoon-size element of eighty to ninety men, spread across an area of operations the size of my home state of Connecticut, in the interception and exploitation of enemy communications. That was the official job description, anyway. The yearlong reality consisted of a tangle of rearguard management and frontline supervision. Years before Helmand Province, Afghanistan, however, there was Twentynine Palms, California. From the summer of 2006 to the summer of 2007, I was trained as a lance corporal in my military occupational specialty of tactical data systems administration (a specialty I would later jettison after earning my officer commission in Quantico, Virginia, in 2008). My schoolhouse was the Marine Corps Communication-Electronics School, which was abbreviated as MCCES, pronounced “mick-sess.” For many, the wider location became “Twentynine Stumps” or “the Stumps.” But for me it just became “the Palms.”

Some tweet at Starbucks
against war, the madman at the helm
oppression, occupation of the land & mind
poverty, homelessness & decadence.

Some march and picket,
sing and chant against the awful
crimes
of our own government
where criminals come to give their speeches.

Continuing a process of active investigation - of leading, learning, and forging greater unity - Refuse Fascism is embarking on a National Organizing Tour to key cities this January:

Saturday January 6 RefuseFascism Statewide Student Conference  
12:00 pm - 6:00 pm 1590 Bryant Street, San Francisco

Sunday January 7 RefuseFascism Mass Organizing Meeting
3:00 pm 1590 Bryant Street, San Francisco

World Can't Wait members have a special opportunity this month to mobilize friends, family, neighbors, even perfect strangers, to resist the fascist policies we've been decrying for over a decade. Thanks to RefuseFascism.org, we have the vehicle to do just that: a subscription to what activists call "the only organization acting on and raising the alarm to get rid of this fascist regime." In its entirety; Trump, Pence and the whole enchilada.

1. How many Koreans, and how many American troops, were killed in the Korean War, 1950-1953?

e) About 60,000 U.S. troops, and over 3 million Koreans

2. True. U.S. warplanes dropped more bomb and napalm tonnage during the Korean War than they had during the entire Pacific campaign of World War 2. (source: “Thomas Walkom: North Korea’s unending war rages on”

3. If the number of Americans killed in the Korean War was proportional to the number of Koreans, how many Americans would have died?

d) 45,000,000

4. What percentage of buildings in North Korea, over one story high, were destroyed by U.S. bombing by the end of the war?

e) Over 99%

5. Which country used chemical and biological weapons on Koreans during the Korean War?

c) The United States [40+ tons of napalm]

6. After the surrender of Japan in World War 2, in response to overwhelming demands by nearly every political force in Korea for an independent and unified country, which of the following represented U.S. policy?

e) All of the above. (sources: The Korean War and Its Origins Research File)

7. True. In 1958, the United States installed hundreds of nuclear weapons, battlefield tactical weapons, and short-range warheads on missiles in South Korea, and kept them there until 1991 when they were replaced with missiles the Pentagon thought presented less threat of contaminating South Korea in the event of a war.

8. The Bodo League Massacre was the greatest massacre of civilians in the Korean War. Which of the following describes the nature of that massacre?

c) The U.S.-backed government in South Korea massacred between 100,000 and 200,000 civilians it suspected of being communists or communist sympathizers.

9. False. The United States has NOT pledged to never be the first country to launch a nuclear attack.

10. Any decision by President Trump to launch a nuclear attack on North Korea would require which of the following.

e) None of the above. The U.S. president requires no authorization to launch a nuclear attack.

Click here to read the orginal post on revcom.us

1. How many Koreans, and how many American troops, were killed in the Korean War, 1950-1953?
   1. About 100,000 U.S. troops, and about 1 million Koreans
   2. About 1 million U.S. troops and about 1 million Koreans
   3. About 450,000 U.S. troops and about 1 million Koreans
   4. About 650,000 U.S. troops and about 2 million Koreans
   5. About 60,000 U.S. troops, and over 3 million Koreans
2. True or false: U.S. warplanes dropped more bomb and napalm tonnage during the Korean War than they had during the entire Pacific campaign of World War 2.
3. If the number of Americans killed in the Korean War was proportional to the number of Koreans, how many Americans would have died?
   1. 1,000,000
   2. 5,000,000
   3. 25,000,000
   4. 45,000,000
4. What percentage of buildings in North Korea, over one story high, were destroyed by U.S. bombing by the end of the war?
   1. 20%
   2. 40%
   3. 60%
   4. 80%
   5. 99%
5. Which country used chemical and biological weapons on Koreans during the Korean War?
   1. North Korea
   2. South Korea
   3. The United States
   4. China
   5. The Soviet Union
6. After the surrender of Japan in World War 2, in response to overwhelming demands by nearly every political force in Korea for an independent and unified country, which of the following represented U.S. policy?
   1. President Truman admonished U.S. military commanders to stop sending him “messages from representatives of self-styled governments which are not recognized by the Government of the United States” who were appealing for U.S. support for Korean independence and reunification.
   2. The U.S. National Security Agency assessed that Koreans were not ready to choose their own government due to the “political immaturity of the Korean people.”
   3. U.S. intelligence documents reported that if open elections were held, “Almost all Koreans are leftists by current US standards, and not even the conservative parties can be considered defenders of traditional capitalism… Soviet policies might therefore be expected to have great popular appeal in Korea.”
   4. The 1948 elections in South Korea staged by the U.S. should be branded as having “strong popular support” even though, according to U.S. intelligence agencies, “they were boycotted by almost all organized parties except two of the large extreme rightist groups,” and the fact that “moderate factions ... joined with the Communists in boycotting the election on the ostensible grounds that the election would tend to perpetuate the artificial division of Korea....”
   5. All of the above.
7. True or false: In 1958, the United States installed hundreds of nuclear weapons, battlefield tactical weapons, and short-range warheads on missiles in South Korea, and kept them there until 1991 when they were replaced with missiles the Pentagon thought presented less threat of contaminating South Korea in the event of a war.
8. The Bodo League Massacre was the greatest massacre of civilians in the Korean War. Which of the following describes the nature of that massacre?
   1. The Chinese brutally murdered between 100,000 and 200,000 captured U.S. and South Korean POWs.
   2. The North Koreans rounded up and killed between 100,000 and 200,000 pro-Democracy dissidents.
   3. The U.S.-backed government in South Korea massacred between 100,000 and 200,000 civilians it suspected of being communists or communist sympathizers.
   4. Between 100,000 and 200,000 ethnic minorities were forced march to their death in the Soviet Union because their loyalty to the North Korean regime was suspect.
9. True or false: The United States has pledged to never be the first country to launch a nuclear attack.
10. Any decision by President Trump to launch a nuclear attack on North Korea would require which of the following:
    1. Authorization by Congress
    2. The agreement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
    3. A review by the Defense Intelligence Agency
    4. All of the above
    5. None of the above

Click to here take the online quiz at refusefascism.org and check your answers.

Turn in this test to the person who gave it to you, or send your score and your school to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , and we will tabulate and report back on how well American students have been educated as to the actual reality.

Click here to read the orginal post on revcom.us

We were saddened to hear of the death of M. Cherif Bassiouni on Sept. 25. He was everything the obituaries in newspapers across the country said he was: war crimes jurist, the “godfather of international human rights law,” human rights champion. What U.S. media failed to mention was that Cherif was a tireless and eloquent opponent of the whole legal premise of the “war on terrorism” and its use as a justification of U.S. aggression and crimes of cruel and degrading treatment, torture and indefinite detention without trial. He raised his powerful voice to demand an end to those crimes on the part of the U.S. government, whether under Bush or Obama. Cherif was an advisor to World Can’t Wait whose counsel and support we valued deeply.

The late Sharon Pavlovich, Richie Marini, Fran Korotzer, Antonia Cedrone; unknown NYPD. (But Antonia definitely had his badge number.)

Our friend and colleague Antonia Cedrone died last month after an illness.  Our favorite photo of her is this one, doing what she did countless times on the streets of NYC as a legal observer with the National Lawyers Guild.  She would approach everyone in the NYPD in the same way: "I need your badge number."

We in the World Can’t Wait movement join with millions of people in mourning for Lynne Stewart, the renowned radical attorney, a woman with the whole world in her heart, and a dear friend. After years of battling breast cancer, and then recent strokes, Lynne died March 7, 2017, on the evening before International Women’s Day at her home in Brooklyn. She was 77 years old.

Today, March 16, 2017, is the 49th anniversary of the My Lai Massacre, located in Quang Ngai Province, Vietnam. It was Saturday morning, March 16, 1968, when approximately 115 U.S. Army soldiers of the Americal Division's Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, landed in helicopters just outside the village of My Lai 4. Over the course of the next four hours, these American soldiers, and their Military High Command, who were flying overhead in helicopters observing the massacre, took part in a horror show far beyond the human imagination. They took the term, " War Crimes," and added a butcher shop to the equation of morbid extermination. In essence, they became a U.S. version of the final solution. They committed an act of barbarity that would redefine the war in Vietnam. It would take years to decipher what happened that day, as denial is the elixir that protects us from experiencing national shame. It is these two words, " National Shame," that continues to hide the truth of what really happened in Southeast Asia.