Portside

Astounding increases in the danger of nuclear weapons have paralleled provocative foreign policy decisions that needlessly incite tensions between Washington and Moscow. It's been 71 years since atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and humanity's memory of those events has dimmed. The bombs that obliterated those cities were tiny by today's standards.

In this exclusive interview, Prof Peter Kuznick speaks of: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagazaki; US crimes and lies behind the Vietnam war, and what was really behind that inhumane invasion; why the US engaged a Cold War with the Soviet Union, and how that war and the mainstream media influences the world today; the interests behind the assassinations of President Kennedy; US imperialism towards Latin America. . .the War on Terror and War on Drugs.

By Bordne's account, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Air Force crews on Okinawa were ordered to launch 32 missiles, each carrying a large nuclear warhead. Only caution and the common sense and decisive action of the line personnel receiving those orders prevented the launches—and averted the nuclear war that most likely would have ensued.

Reader Comments: Remembering-Honoring Julian Bond; Immigrant Dreams Deferred; Bernie Sanders and #BlackLivesMatter; The Bomb, Hiroshima, Nagasaki; Black Activists and Palestine; Exonerate Ethel Rosenberg; An Urgent Request from May First/People Link

On a 70th anniversary in which the madness shows no sign of ending, it’s good to turn to Susan Southard’s monumental new book, Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War, which offers a riveting, if chilling plunge into nuclear realities. Nuclear destruction of an almost unimaginable sort was the initial reality of the atomic age, with such weaponry actually used on two utterly defenseless cities. -- Tom Engelhardt

Many Israeili security insiders say the deal signed in Vienna isn't as bad as Netanyahu claims. Some call it good for Israel. They include former chief of military intelligence, Amos Yadlin; former chief of arms technology, Yitzhak Ben-Yisrael, who now chairs The Israel Space Agency; former chief of military operations, Israel Ziv; the architect of Israeli military intelligence, Dov Tamari; former director of Shin Bet domestic security service, Ami Ayalon; and others.

Reader Comments: Kalief Browder and Criminality of Prisons; Fight for $15; Edward Snowden - Hero; Ronnie Gilbert; Walmart Anti-Labor Activity; Suicide in Young Women; The Audacity to Win - Left Strategy Needed; Recommended Books - By non-white authors; Announcements: 62nd Memorial of the Execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg; Brooklyn Peace Fair

Thousands of peace, social justice and environmental activists from around the world will gather in New York City from April 24-26 for the Peace and Planet Mobilization for a Nuclear-Free, Peaceful, Just and Sustainable World - challenges articulated by Dr. Martin Luther King. Peace and Planet convenes prior to the April 27 - May 22 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference at the United Nations, bringing the voice of civil society to the governmental confab.

Why is Netanyahu hysterical? Why is he rallying the GOP and a majority of Congressional Democrats against Obama's "bad deal"? What makes him desperate is the threat that serious diplomacy poses to the policies and ambitions of Israel's extremist right wing government. The Iran negotiations reveal a fissure between strategic interests of the United States and those of Israel's occupiers and expansionists.

The first casualty of every war is the truth—and the Cold War was no exception to that dictum. Half a century after Kubrick’s mad general, Jack D. Ripper, launched a nuclear strike on the Soviets to defend the purity of “our precious bodily fluids” from Communist subversion, we now know that American officers did indeed have the ability to start a Third World War on their own.