People of Conscience: The First Major War Against Fascism

[Ed. note: I posted this elsewhere but I find this just too important to go unnoticed. Those who went from America to fight did so, in part, because they understood that something was happening that would begin World War II. Because of U.S. and much of Europe's refusal to get involved in what often became called "the good fight", World War II DID happen.]

If you get a chance, check out the Webcast from Democracy Now! for today (Monday, April 30) about the Spanish Civil War 70 years ago, the first major war against fascism, pitting the proletariat against the upper classes. More than 3,000 Americans of conscience - including 80 women - went to fight and those who survived (too few) returned to be branded as “bad” by the U.S. government.

If you know Picasso’s painting Guernica, this was iconic of that war (despite endless lies that Guernica was never massacred). It was this painting, which hangs in the United Nations, that the United States ordered “covered” the day then Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the U.N. Security Council to lie about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that never existed.