Norman Solomon

Everything is at stake. Everything is at stake with nuclear weapons. While working as a nuclear war planner for the Kennedy administration, Daniel Ellsberg was shown a document calculating that a U.S. nuclear attack on communist countries would result in 600 million dead. As he put it later: “A hundred Holocausts.” That was in 1961. … Continue reading “‘Escalation Dominance’ and the Prospect of More Than 1,000 Holocausts”

Kamala Harris won the debate. People being bombed in Gaza did not. The banner headline across the top of the New York Times home page – “Harris Puts Trump on Defensive in Fierce Debate” – was accurate enough. But despite the good news for people understandably eager for Trump to be defeated, the Harris debate … Continue reading “Undebatable: What Harris and Trump Could Not Say About Israel and Gaza”

One evening in early September 1964, a frightening commercial jolted 50 million Americans who were partway through watching “Monday Night at the Movies” on NBC. The ad began with an adorable three-year-old girl counting petals as she pulled them from a daisy. Then came a man’s somber voiceover, counting down from ten to zero. Then … Continue reading “60 Years After Lyndon Johnson’s ‘Daisy Ad,’ the Silence on Nuclear War Is Dangerous”

With nearly 18 million students on U.S. college campuses this fall, defenders of the war on Gaza don’t want to hear any backtalk. Silence is complicity, and that’s the way Israel’s allies like it. For them, the new academic term restarts a threat to the status quo. But for supporters of human rights, it’s a … Continue reading “Knowledge Is Power. Gaza War Supporters Don’t Want Students To Have Both”

An observation from George Orwell – “those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future” – is acutely relevant to how President Biden talked about Gaza during his speech at the Democratic convention Monday night. His words fit into a messaging template now in its eleventh month, … Continue reading “Biden’s Convention Speech Made Absurd Claims About His Gaza Policy”

“When someone shows you who they are,” Maya Angelou said, “believe them the first time.” That should apply to foreign-policy elites who show you who they are, time after time. Officials running the Pentagon and State Department have been in overdrive for more than 250 days in support of Israel’s ongoing slaughter of Palestinian civilians … Continue reading “When US Officials Show You Who They Are, Believe Them”

Strange to think that, without Daniel Ellsberg, Watergate might never have happened, Richard Nixon might have remained president, and the war in Vietnam might have taken even longer to end. So many decades later, it’s easy to forget how, in June 1971, when Ellsberg released those secret government documents that came to be known as … Continue reading “How Daniel Ellsberg’s Moral Power Remains Alive”

Originally appeared at TomDispatch. Persisting in his support for an unpopular war, the Democrat in the White House has helped spark a rebellion close to home. Young people — least inclined to deference, most inclined to moral outrage — are leading public opposition to the ongoing slaughter in Gaza. The campus upheaval is a clash … Continue reading “War Culture Hates the Ethical Passion of the Young”

When the Washington Post revealed Friday afternoon that “the Biden administration in recent days quietly authorized the transfer of billions of dollars in bombs and fighter jets to Israel,” a lot of people cared. Readers of the story posted more than 10,000 comments on its webpage. A leading progressive site for breaking news, Common Dreams, … Continue reading “Latest Huge Transfer of 2,000-Pound Bombs From US to Israel Not Newsworthy to the New York Times“

Last week, Variety reported that “more than 1,000 Jewish creatives, executives and Hollywood professionals have signed an open letter denouncing Jonathan Glazer’s ‘The Zone of Interest’ Oscar speech.” The angry letter is a tight script for a real-life drama of defending Israel as it continues to methodically kill civilians no less precious than the signers’ … Continue reading “Close-up of Death Culture: 1,000 in Entertainment Biz Proclaim Support for Gaza Slaughter”