Month: May 2011

Spain’s Tahrir Square

Angered by “free-market” policies that have created high unemployment and are now forcing government spending cuts, tens of thousands of Spaniards are occupying central squares in Madrid and other cities in a challenge to the country’s economic elites, as Pablo…

Halberstam’s ‘Best-Brightest’ Blunder

The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam shaped the American narrative of the Vietnam War, making it a cautionary tale about the folly of action-oriented intellectuals who surrounded President John F. Kennedy and whose hubris supposedly plunged the nation…

Leaving a Church of Free-Market Miracles

A significant part of the U.S. population is stuck in angry denial, unwilling to acknowledge scientific realities (like global warming), embracing fictions (like Barack Obama’s Kenyan birth), and refusing to acknowledge America’s diminished situation (like the crumbling infrastructure of roads…

A History of Demonizing the ‘Enemy’

A rule of thumb in journalism is that there are almost always two sides to a story, but that rule is often ignored by the U.S. news media in the heat of some conflict when the United States is involved.…

Rand Paul’s ‘Health Right=Slavery’ Rant

Sen. Rand Paul, a Tea Party favorite, likens the idea that every American should have a right to healthcare to the imposition of “slavery” on doctors like him and their staffs, a bizarre and extreme analogy that Lawrence Davidson dissects…

Mitch Daniels, Architect of US Debt Crisis

Exclusive: Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is the new Republican darling of the Washington establishment, which hails him as a “fiscal conservative” who would be “serious” about addressing the nation’s staggering debt problem. But his many admirers forget to mention what…

How Fox News Outfoxes Americans

To understand how so many average Americans can be duped into embracing right-wing positions that go against their own interests, you must look at  how Fox News (and right-wing media outlets) use faux populism and phony outrage as propaganda techniques,…

Jimmy Carter’s October Surprise Doubts

Special Report: Ex-President Jimmy Carter tells an interviewer that he isn’t sure what to believe about the longstanding suspicions that Republicans went behind his back in 1980 to stop him from freeing 52 American hostages in Iran, a failure that…

The New Look for Consortiumnews.com

Consortiumnews.com introduces a new look for the 15-year-old Web site. Over the past couple of years, some readers have urged us to update our Web design and incorporate more of the modern bells and whistles now available for Internet sites.…