Dennis J Bernstein

Dennis J. Bernstein is a host of “Flashpoints” on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom. You can access the audio archives at www.flashpoints.net.

John Pilger On Ken Burns’ “Glossing Over Neocolonialism” In The Vietnam War

This glossing over of U.S. neocolonialism and its deadly consequences angered John Pilger, who cut his journalistic teeth covering the Vietnam War for a decade.

Dennis J Bernstein
By Dennis J Bernstein
FILE - In this Sunday, April 27, 1975 file photo, a cross from a church in Saigon stands against the dawn sky after a rocket attack and ensuing fire. (AP Photo/Matt Franjola, File)

Ken Burns’s 18-hour documentary on the Vietnam War, which aired on PBS and BBC, presented extraordinary footage of the war’s grotesque brutality but also soft-pedaled the motivations of U.S. policymakers as well-meaning albeit misguided, or as the prologue put it, a conflict begun in “good faith by decent people out of fateful

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In Mexico City, Civil Society Rises To Confront Disaster

As the Mexican earthquake becomes the latest natural disaster to hit the Western Hemisphere, the role of civil society — especially the first responders — has demonstrated the best of human nature.

Dennis J Bernstein
By Dennis J Bernstein
Search and rescue team members hold up closed fists motioning for silence during rescue efforts at a collapsed building in La Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017. Thousands of professionals and volunteers are working frantically at dozens of wrecked buildings across the capital and nearby states looking for survivors of the powerful quake that hit Tuesday. (AP/Marco Ugarte)

On Thursday, rescuers in Mexico City continued to dig through the rubble of many downed buildings, attempting to pull survivors out of the wreckage from the deadly 7.1 magnitude earthquake that rocked the city on two days earlier. First responders and volunteers dug through the rubble of a collapsed school in the southern part of the city for

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Immigrant Communities Fear Harvey Relief Efforts Could Target Undocumented Immigrants

Amid crackdowns on illegal immigrants, some Latinos feared that Hurricane Harvey relief efforts could serve as an excuse to target undocumented immigrants.

Dennis J Bernstein
By Dennis J Bernstein
Hurricane Florence

Federal and state initiatives targeting undocumented immigrants have spread alarm through Latino communities as people face ethnic profiling,  and some in Houston even feared seeking refuge from Hurricane Harvey because of the possibility they would run afoul of law enforcement. “Texas is ground zero for the fight against Trump-inspired, white

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In Victory Over Arizona’s ‘State-Sponsored Racism’, Ethnic Studies Program Restored

The restoration of a Mexican-American studies program in Tucson, Arizona public schools is being hailed as an important step in telling the more complex history of the American West.

Dennis J Bernstein
By Dennis J Bernstein
Protesters gather to support the Tucson Unified School District as Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal announces that the Tucson Unified School District violates state law by teaching it's Mexican American Studies Department's ethic studies program at a news conference at the Arizona Department of Education in Phoenix, Ariz. (AP/Ross D. Franklin)

Advocates of Mexican-American studies are celebrating a federal court ruling restoring one of the most successful programs in Arizona public schools as a victory against “state-sponsored racism.” Nolan Cabrera, an associate professor at the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona, has been involved from the

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The Price Of Criticizing The State Of Israel

Israel is well-known for having a potent U.S. lobby that not only influences Congress and the mainstream media but intimidates Americans who dare criticize its policies toward the Palestinians.

Dennis J Bernstein
By Dennis J Bernstein
Protesters demonstrate against a state-sanctioned backlash against the movement for Palestinian human rights after Gov. Cuomo signed a McCarthyite executive order requiring state agencies to divest from organizations that support the Palestinian call to boycott companies profiting from, or cultural or academic institutions complicit in, Israel's oppression of the Palestinian people. (Photo: Erik McGregor/Pacific Press/ Sipa via AP)

There are very few journalist in the U.S. or Europe who have the courage to report fairly on Israel’s seemingly endless illegal occupation of Palestinian lands. Personally, as a Jewish-American, and the grandson of a revered Rabbi, I have been roundly denounced by pro-Israeli representatives and their Zionist lobbyists in the U.S. I’ve stopped

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Extracting Aleppo From The Propaganda

The mainstream U.S. news has supplied a consistent narrative regarding Syria that treats the “rebels” as the good guys and the “regime forces” as the bad guys, but it has never been that clear-cut, as Dennis J Bernstein reports.

Dennis J Bernstein
By Dennis J Bernstein
ASyrian soldier carries a wounded woman in eastern Aleppo, Syria, Monday, Dec. 12, 2016. Syria's military said Monday it has regained control of 98 percent of eastern Aleppo, as government forces close in the last remaining sliver of a rebel enclave packed with fighters as well as tens of thousands of civilians. (SANA via AP)

It’s rare for Americans to hear any version of the Syrian conflict other than the simplistic accounts favored by the U.S. government and the mainstream news media that rely heavily on rebel sources and their international supporters who often traffic in propaganda. One of the few independent Western journalists covering the horrific conflict is

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