Norman Solomon

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The Blue Road to Trump Hell

War Made Invisible – How America Hides the Human Toll or Its Military Machine

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Institute for Public Accuracy

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Recent Articles:

  • Letter in The Press Democrat: “Anti-Union Tactics”

    EDITOR: It saddens me that the management of Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital continues its policy of trying to block the rights of workers to form a union.

    I’ve often visited a friend at the hospital. It’s an impressive institution, most of all because of its employees. All the people who work there deserve to be treated with respect — and that should include respect for labor rights.

    For several years, the hospital management did what it could to obstruct and delay a vote on unionization. Finally, in mid-December, an election happened, with more than 500 workers voting. The election was close, and when all the votes were counted, victory went to the National Union of Healthcare Workers.

    Now, the Memorial Hospital management is trying to get the National Labor Relations Board to nullify the election. That move is the latest in a long series of shameful anti-union tactics.

    NORMAN SOLOMON

    Point Reyes Station

    (This letter, headlined "Anti-Union Tactics," was printed in the January 23, 2010 edition of The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, California.)

  • Vast change is essential

    Read the full op-ed from the Marin Independent Journal

    Also see Green New Deal

  • Flares in the Political Dark

    The winter solstice of 2009 arrived as a grim metaphor for the current politics of healthcare, war and a lot more. “In a dark time,” wrote the poet Theodore Roethke, “the eye begins to see.”

    After a year of escalation in Afghanistan, solicitude toward Wall Street and the incredible shrinking healthcare reform, we ought to be able to see that the biggest problem among progressives has been undue deference to the Obama administration…

    Read the full column

  • Norman Solomon on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal: December 13, 2009

    More videos of Norman Solomon on C-SPAN

  • Mr. President, War Is Not Peace

    Eloquence in Oslo cannot change the realities of war.

    As President Obama neared the close of his Nobel address, he called for "the continued expansion of our moral imagination." Yet, his speech was tightly circumscribed by the policies that his oratory labored to justify.

    Lofty rationales easily tell us that warfare is striving for the noble goal of peace. But the rationales scarcely intersect with actual war. The oratory sugarcoats the poisons, helping to kill hope in the name of it.

    A few months ago, when I visited an Afghan office for women's empowerment, staffers took me to a pilot project in one of Kabul's poorest neighborhoods. There, women were learning small-scale business skills while also gaining personal strength and mutual support…

    Read the full column.

  • Afghanistan on Counterspin and KPFA

    Norman Solomon was interviewed on FAIR’s radio program Counterspin.

    Sunday Sedition – December 6, 2009 at 9:00am

    Click to listen (or download)

    A discussion of the Afghanistan war escalation with Aimee Allison on “The Morning Show” on KPFA Radio. The 20-minute conversation comes after nine minutes of news.

    The Morning Show – November 30, 2009 at 7:00am

    Click to listen (or download)

  • The Hollow Politics of Escalation

    An underlying conceit of the new spin about benchmarks and timetables for Afghanistan is the notion that pivotal events there can be choreographed from Washington. So, a day ahead of the president’s Tuesday night speech, The New York Times quoted an unnamed top administration official saying, "He wants to give a clear sense of both the time frame for action and how the war will eventually wind down."

    But "eventually" is a long way off. In the meantime, the result of Washington’s hollow politics is more carnage.

    The next days and weeks will bring an avalanche of hype about insisting on measurable progress and shifting burdens onto the Afghan army – while the US military expands the war…

    Read the full column

  • Afghanistan: Endless War

    Listen to the October 14, 2009 talk by Norman Solomon on his trip to Afghanistan which aired on Alternative Radio

  • One year later: Unrest within the Obama base

    On election night a year ago, celebrations across the North Bay included dancing in the streets. The voters had spoken — loudly — for Barack Obama, who won 74 percent of ballots in Sonoma County and 78 percent in Marin. Spirits were sky high, and so were expectations.

    That evening, as he spoke to the nation from Chicago’s Grant Park, Obama repeated his campaign mantra: “Yes we can.” But a year later, the words are less uplifting.

    “If this financial crisis taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers,” Obama declared in his election-night speech. Yet Wall Street is now doing quite a bit better than Main Street…

    Read the full op-ed in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat

  • Biggest State Party to Obama: Get Out of Afghanistan

    This week begins with a significant new straw in the political wind for President Obama to consider. The California Democratic Party has just sent him a formal and clear message: Stop making war in Afghanistan.

    Overwhelmingly approved on Sunday by the California Democratic Party's 300-member statewide executive board, the resolution is titled "End the US Occupation and Air War in Afghanistan."

    The resolution supports "a timetable for withdrawal of our military personnel" and calls for "an end to the use of mercenary contractors as well as an end to air strikes that cause heavy civilian casualties." Advocating multiparty talks inside Afghanistan, the resolution also urges Obama "to oversee a redirection of our funding and resources to include an increase in humanitarian and developmental aid."

    While Obama weighs Afghanistan policy options, the California Democratic Party's adoption of the resolution is the most tangible indicator yet that escalation of the US war effort can only fuel opposition within the president's own party – opposition that has already begun to erode his political base.

    Participating in a long-haul struggle for progressive principles inside the party, I co-authored the resolution with savvy longtime activists Karen Bernal of Sacramento and Marcy Winograd of Los Angeles…

    Read the full column

    The full text of the resolution (scroll down)