Hornberger's Blog

Drug Warriors Just Don’t Get It

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 21, 2014

Portuguese U.S. Marine Corps General John F. Kelly, commanding general of the U.S. Southern Command, just doesn’t get it. Testifying before Congress, he lamented the movement toward legalizing drugs here in the United States. He suggested that Latin American officials, who have long been exhorted to fight the war on drugs, are losing faith in ...

Treating People Like Garbage

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 20, 2014

Portuguese As English colonists living in America understood, living under an empire is not a pleasant experience. Empire officials are inevitably arrogant, pretentious, pompous, haughty, big-headed, insufferable type of people. They believe that others should bow down them, pay them homage, and behave subserviently to them. American colonists, of course, haven’t been the only ones who have ...

Kennedy’s “Weakness” during the Cuban Missile Crisis Saved Our Lives

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 19, 2014

The Obama-Putin faceoff on Ukraine inevitably brings to mind the Kennedy-Khrushchev faceoff during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The confrontation between Kennedy and Khrushchev, of course, was much more dangerous given that it brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of all-out nuclear war. But the two confrontations are similar with respect to the pressure brought ...

The Government’s Inflation Scam

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 18, 2014

What is happening in Argentina provides a valuable lesson in why governments in every country on earth control the education of the nation’s children. Argentina is suffering the ravages of government debasement of the currency — i.e., inflation, the process by which government pays for its ever-increasing debts and bills by simply printing more paper currency. The expanded money supply ...

Disband NATO

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 17, 2014

In a recent New York Times op-ed, John McCain, the man who hoped to be president, said that Russia’s invasion of Crimea has nothing to do with NATO expansion into Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Oh? Well, now, let’s see how McCain would be responding if the shoe were on the other foot. Let’s assume that when the Cold War ...

Why No More Talk about the Debt Ceiling?

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 14, 2014

Have you noticed that there’s no more talk about the debt ceiling? That’s because those congressional big spenders recently raised the debt ceiling to permit the feds to continue adding onto the mountain of federal debt that they’re piling on the backs of the American people for decades. Once the debt ceiling is lifted, all the talk about it ...

America’s Cold War Socialism

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 13, 2014

During the Cold War, the U.S. national security state — i.e., the military and CIA — used the dire threat of communism and socialism as a justification for its assassination program and its pro-coup program in Latin America and other parts of the world. Two notable examples were Guatemala and Chile. In both countries, the U.S. national-security state helped ...

Don’t Reform the CIA. Abolish It.

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 12, 2014

Portuguese Anyone who reads the works of the late Chalmers Johnson will have an excellent understanding of the role that the U.S. national-security state, especially the vast military empire and military-industrial complex, plays in America’s foreign-policy woes. I particularly recommend his four books: Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, Nemesis, and Dismantling the Empire. For those who would ...

The National-Security State’s Cold War Scam on Latin America

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 11, 2014

Portuguese Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. national-security state was devoted to keeping communist-socialist regimes from coming to power in Latin America. The idea was that if communism was permitted to achieve a beachhead in the Western Hemisphere, it was a certainty that the U.S. government would end up falling to the communists. That’s of course what ...

Pledging American Lives in the Defense of NATO

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 10, 2014

Notwithstanding its recent decision to lift its debt ceiling once again to enable it to add to its ever-growing mountain of debt, the U.S. government has now issued a new pledge, this one being as a guarantor of a $1 billion loan to the new government of Ukraine. Unfortunately, that’s not all that U.S. officials have pledged in that ...

So What If the CIA Is Spying on Congress?

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 7, 2014

At the end of the Cold War, the American people had a grand opportunity, one that entailed the dismantling of the national-security state apparatus that had been grafted onto our governmental system after the end of World War II. It would have made sense, given that the justification for making the national-security state apparatus a permanent feature of American ...

Ukraine and the U.S. National Security State

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 6, 2014

At the end of the Cold War, the American people had a grand opportunity, one that entailed the dismantling of the national-security state apparatus that had been grafted onto our governmental system after the end of World War II. It would have made sense, given that the justification for making the national-security state apparatus a permanent feature of American ...