U.S. government hypocrisy toward the Ukraine crisis has been breathtaking, as has the U.S. press corps’ stubborn refusal to see the hypocrisy (i.e. the Iraq War and many other U.S. interventions). William Blum looks at the reasons behind the double standards.
Official Washington is in full meltdown mode as politicians and pundits frantically one-up each other in over-the-top rhetoric on the Ukraine crisis. But now the madness is shifting into legislative excesses to sanction Russia, notes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
Senior U.S. politicians, including Hillary Clinton and John McCain, are unleashing the “Hitler analogy” and siccing it on Russian President Putin in a reckless display of hyperbole, one with a troubling history of justifying unnecessary wars, writes Norman Solomon.
Exclusive: The only foreign policy show on the U.S. media dial this past week has been the bashing of Russian President Putin over the Ukraine crisis – with a slap or two at President Obama for having worked with Putin on Syria and Iran. Lost in this “group think” is the why behind this demonization, reports Robert Parry.
The U.S. government says it wants to spread “democracy,” a questionable claim considering the history. Think Iran-1953, Guatemala-1954, Chile-1973, Haiti-1991/2004, etc. Just this past year, the U.S. has embraced coups against elected presidents in Egypt and now Ukraine, as Lawrence Davidson observes.
When Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu visits Washington, he behaves like the master of all he surveys, his arrogance extending to his shape-shifting reality about Iran, with expectations of hearty applause for his claims and robust guffawing at his jokes, ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar notes.
Exclusive: Official Washington and its compliant mainstream news media operate with a convenient situational ethics when it comes to the principles of international law and non-intervention in sovereign states. The rules apply only when they’re convenient, explains Robert Parry.
Exclusive: Official Washington is in deep umbrage over Russia’s intervention in Ukraine after a U.S.-backed coup overthrew the democratically elected president. Some top neocons want a new Cold War, but they don’t want anyone to note their staggering hypocrisy, writes Robert Parry.
U.S. neocons are wasting little time in taking advantage of the Ukraine crisis that they helped to stoke, with former Reagan-Bush operative Elliott Abrams urging Congress to pass legislation that would impose new sanctions on Iran, notes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
Secretary of State Kerry, who voted for George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion in 2003 and wanted to bomb Syria last year, and President Obama, who’s crossed borders regularly to kill enemies, are outraged that Russia has intervened in Ukraine, a case of double-talk and double-think, says Norman Solomon.
Special Report: The Ukrainian crisis – partly fomented by U.S. neocons including holdovers at the State Department – has soured U.S-Russian relations and disrupted President Obama’s secretive cooperation with Russian President Putin to resolve crises in the Mideast, reports Robert Parry.
U.S. officials have put up roadblocks to stop the International Atomic Energy Agency from sharing documents with Iran regarding its alleged nuclear weaponization, creating an obstacle to negotiations, writes Gareth Porter for Inter Press Service.
Exclusive: Russia’s parliament has approved President Putin’s request for the use of force inside neighboring Ukraine, as the latest neocon-approved “regime change” spins out of control and threatens to inflict grave damage on international relations, ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern explains.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s plans to trim the size of the standing U.S. army may represent a welcome step toward reining in the huge military budget, but the lack of training and work for discharged soldiers could contribute to the social crisis facing America, writes JP Sottile.
Exclusive: A shadow foreign policy apparatus built by Ronald Reagan for the Cold War survives to this day as a slush fund that keeps American neocons well fed and still destabilizes target nations, now including Ukraine, creating a crisis that undercuts President Obama, reports Robert Parry.
Even as some college presidents – and athletic coaches – pull down salaries over $1 million, “adjunct professors,” who make up a majority of the teachers, often earn poverty-level pay, another example of America’s income inequality, writes Lawrence S. Wittner.
Exclusive: There’s been much celebration in U.S. political and media circles over the violent ouster of Ukraine’s democratically elected president. Nearly everyone is hailing this putsch and ignoring that it was spurred on by neo-Nazi militias, Robert Parry reports.
A federal judge meted out multi-year prison terms to three anti-nuclear activists from the Transform Now Plowshares group for a symbolic protest at a U.S. nuclear facility in Tennessee. The protesters had been inspired by the courageous White Rose movement in Nazi Germany, as Gary G. Kohls explains.
According to opinion polls, the American people lean toward Democratic positions on a wide variety of issues, from a higher minimum wage to gay marriage. But liberals still lack the clear-cut agenda and the organizational muscle that conservatives have demonstrated over the past several decades, as Michael Winship notes.
Americans like the idea of promoting “democracy,” but prominent U.S. commentators praised the ouster of democratically elected leaders in Egypt and Ukraine, siding with military coup makers in Egypt and right-wing rioters in the streets of Ukraine. That suggests “democracy” is a malleable concept for many in Official Washington, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar observes.
![U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Aug. 30, 2013, claims to have proof that the Syrian government was responsible for a chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21, but that evidence failed to materialize or was later discredited. [State Department photo]](http://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/kerry-syria-remarks-300x199.jpg)
The neocon agenda of “regime change” in disfavored countries continues unabated with new pressure for a U.S. military intervention in Syria, billed as “humanitarian” and coupled with ridicule for anyone who favors the frustrating course of diplomacy, as ex-FBI agent Coleen Rowley explains.
Hydrogen bomb explosions six decades ago gave the world a glimpse into the apocalypse and spread radioactive fallout around the globe – but the worst suffering was inflicted on natives of U.S. protectorates in the Pacific Ocean, writes Beverly Deepe Keever.
Many analysts expect Secretary of State Kerry’s Israeli-Palestinian peace talks to fail like all previous ones, but there is a chance that the isolated Palestinian Authority will acquiesce to Israeli demands. If so, what’s the future of the BDS movement, asks Lawrence Davidson.
Exclusive: American neocons helped destabilize Ukraine and engineer the overthrow of its elected government, a “regime change” on Russia’s western border. But the coup – and the neo-Nazi militias at the forefront – also reveal divisions within the Obama administration, reports Robert Parry.
Amid the flag-waving in Sochi, U.S. commentators instructed American TV viewers on the evils of modern Russia in what looks like a reprised cold war. Left out of these denunciations was any balance from looking in the mirror at a litany of U.S. misdeeds, writes Danny Schechter.
From Editor Robert Parry: A key element in our financing of Consortiumnews.com is the sale of my books, even at reduced prices. For instance, you can get the three-book set – Secrecy & Privilege, Neck Deep and America’s Stolen Narrative – at the discount price of $34 and still help sustain this site.
Some of our special stories in January focused on the NSA surveillance scandal, the back story of Robert Gates’s new memoir, the Right’s continued assault on democracy, and the collapse of accusations against Syria and Libya.
Under pressure from the Israel Lobby, U.S. negotiators are injecting Iran’s missile program into negotiations aimed at constraining Iran’s nuclear program, a move that further complicates — and could endanger — the complex talks, Gareth Porter reports for Inter Press Service.
From the Archive: Ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern has filed suit over an incident three years ago when he was roughly arrested for standing, back turned to Secretary of State Clinton as she gave a speech on the right to dissent. McGovern also was placed on a special watch list. He described his arrest in 2011.
Exclusive: As Tea Party and Evangelical right-wingers consolidate control over Republican “red states,” the GOP is dividing into something like two political parties, pitting the very conservative against the very, very conservative, as Richard L. Fricker observes in Oklahoma.
A fear about the U.S. ”surveillance state” has been that it might merge with private tech companies that already collect vast amounts of data on private citizens, a nightmarish scenario that has become more plausible with Amazon’s collaboration with the CIA, writes Norman Solomon.