Month: October 2011

A $20,000 ‘Challenge Grant’

From Editor Robert Parry: A while back, we approached a foundation with a request for a “matching grant,” a donation that would equal what we could raise from our readers. Last week, the foundation sent us a check for $20,000…

Missing Hope in Palestinian Statehood

The New York Times’ lack of objectivity on the Middle East is one of the core violations of U.S. journalistic ethics, obvious yet rarely acknowledged. Ethics professor Daniel C. Maguire thought it worth noting in a letter to Times columnist…

Did FBI Go ‘Rogue’ on Iran?

Official Washington’s clamor for retaliation against Iran for its alleged role in a bizarre plot to murder the Saudi ambassador has put the U.S. and Iran on a collision course again. But Lawrence Davidson wonders whether it’s U.S. counter-terror agencies…

US Uses Leaks to Hype Iran ‘Plot’

The U.S. government is using leaks to the news media to press its case regarding a purported Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, but the supposed links between a cooperating FBI witness and Iranian intelligence remain tenuous…

Temptations of Greed and Empire

With the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial, a question before Americans is how the late civil rights leader would have responded to the nation’s recent decades of greed, war and decline. Rev. Howard Bess poses the same question as to how ancient Israelites…

Is Mitt Romney a Neocon Purist?

Exclusive: Anyone still doubting that the Washington Post is the media flagship for neoconservatism should reflect on Saturday’s editorial in which the Post criticizes Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney for saying U.S. troops should be pulled out of Afghanistan “as soon as we…

The Tale of Two Assassination Plots

Exclusive: President Barack Obama vows to punish Iran for a dubious assassination plot against the Saudi ambassador, but an actual murder of a diplomat in Washington in 1976 carried out by right-wing allies in Chile was followed by three decades of obstruction, Robert…

Petraeus’s CIA Fuels Iran Murder Plot

Exclusive: The U.S. media and public are being riled up again with a new set of allegations against Iran, this time for a bizarre assassination plot aimed at the Saudi ambassador in Washington. But former CIA analyst Ray McGovern wonders…

Common Cause Against Wall Street

During the Vietnam War, “hard-hat” construction workers would sometimes spit on or beat up young anti-war protesters. But the U.S. political/economic situation is now so dire that the “hard-hats” are finding common cause with the scruffy Wall Street protesters, notes…

Wary of ‘The Ides of March’

Politics in America is a balancing act between idealism and cynicism, with the latter usually triumphing over the former at least in the near term, until a new surge of idealism arrives. As Lisa Pease writes, this ebb and flow…