Monthly Archives: May 2017

I’ve been thinking about an encounter I had at the gym on Thursday. In the sauna a young man in his mid-20s or so politely asked me as well as the middle-aged man next to me what we did for … Continue reading →

Russ Feingold’s Op-ed in the Guardian: Tuesday’s events stem directly from our own illegitimate electoral system, which produced Trump the president. They are the result of voter suppression, dark money in politics, and the esoteric electoral college – all of … Continue reading →

A consortium of four U.S. construction firms—including Brown & Root, later a part of Halliburton and now KBR—eventually received a contract from the U.S. Navy, paid for through the U.S. Food for Peace Program, to build new cells for Con Son. … Continue reading →

Lengthy conversations with several Vietnam vets and an ex-drone sensor operator’s mention of the Winter Soldier Investigation last week prompted me to pick up Nick Turse’s Kill Anything That Moves today. It’s been decades since I’ve read much on Vietnam, but … Continue reading →

I’m reading Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. I’ve known of Katyn for decades, but only now learned it was just one of a number of sites. Snyder lists Kurapaty, near Minsk, Bykivnia, near Kiev, and Kharkiv in … Continue reading →

Truth, it is said, is war’s first casualty. Memory is its second. Tom Hayden, Hell No: The Forgotten Power of the Vietnam Peace Movement, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 17.