From Journalist Robert Parry: The year 2013 could be a turning point in American history. And with your help Consortiumnews.com can continue its work toward getting the nation on the right path. We can keep on challenging the false narratives that the Right has deployed in its long assault on the U.S. democratic process.
Obviously there remain many difficulties ahead, but for one of the few times in my 35 years in Washington journalism including at the Associated Press, Newsweek and PBS Frontline I am optimistic that honesty is finally beginning to win out. [To help us meet our financial needs, click here.]
I know many progressives were disappointed in Barack Obama’s first term, but his reelection represented a stunning failure of the Right’s usual tactic of amplifying endless lies through its gigantic media megaphone and manipulating American voters. Obama’s clear-cut victory shows that the Right’s old methods may finally be losing their clout.
Journalist Robert Parry.
We have seen something similar in the failure of Washington’s neocons to intimidate Obama into backing off his nomination of former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel to be Defense Secretary. We have seen it, too, in the determination of many Americans to demand commonsense gun laws and not be scared off by the powerful gun lobby.
As I have believed since we launched Consortiumnews.com more than 17 years ago, careful presentation of fact can eventually overcome lies and propaganda. Indeed, many of the storylines that we have worked so hard to correct are finally breaking down the barriers of misinformation that the Right has devoted so much money to erecting.
For instance, it is now much more accepted that the Republican Party engaged in near treasonous acts to secure power in 1968 with Richard Nixon’s sabotage of Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam peace talks and in 1980 with Ronald Reagan’s secret dealing with Iranian radicals holding 52 Americans hostage and dooming Jimmy Carter’s presidency.
I compiled the now-overwhelming evidence of both cases in my new book, America’s Stolen Narrative. And serious people, including many historians, are paying attention.
At Consortiumnews.com, we also stood up against the mainstream media’s rejection of investigative reporting that revealed how the Reagan-Bush administrations tolerated and protected cocaine trafficking by the Nicaraguan Contras.
For a while, I was one of the few Washington journalists defending reporter Gary Webb who revived that important story in 1996, but persistence and the clear evidence of this serious crime of state eventually turned the tide. Now, eight years after Webb’s tragic death, the Contra-Cocaine story is widely recognized as true.
We also have made great headway in alerting the public to the right-wing propaganda machine that has promoted many of America’s most misguided policies. From Consortiumnews.com’s earliest days as the Internet’s first investigative magazine, we showed how wealthy right-wingers invested billions of dollars in constructing a media apparatus to confuse and mislead the American people.
Over the past year, I’ve focused, too, on how the Right has distorted the actual intent of the Framers of the U.S. Constitution, making them out to be free-market ideologues who loved states’ rights and despised the idea of a strong central government when the reality was almost the opposite.
In particular, George Washington and James Madison hated the Articles of Confederation, which made the individual states “sovereign” and kept the central government weak. That’s why they threw out the Articles and replaced them with the Constitution. But the Right has deployed its false history to recruit many gullible Tea Party types who think they’re channeling the Framers’ “original intent.”
Some of our reporting on the Reagan-Bush era is reflected in the new “Showtime” series produced by Oliver Stone, entitled “The Untold History of the United States.” The multi-part series is itself a remarkable commitment by a mainstream U.S. media outlet like “Showtime,” one that reflects how the steady accumulation of honest reporting has opened the way for more truth-telling to a wider audience.
Another positive trend is that we have become the home for insightful writing by a number of ex-CIA analysts, the likes of Ray McGovern, Melvin A. Goodman, Elizabeth Murray and Paul R. Pillar, some of whom suffered under the politicization of the CIA’s intelligence product over the past few decades.
So, I think we are making real progress as we enter our 18th year at Consortiumnews.com. But none of it would have been possible without the support of our readers.
Though our budget is still very modest, barely $10,000 a month, it has enabled us to undertake a variety of investigative projects and to pay our writers for their original journalism. My hope is that we can take on many more vital investigative projects in this crucial year ahead.
I’m asking for your support in that effort. We are a tax-exempt 501-c-3 organization, so your donation can be tax-deductible. Also, if you would like a signed gift copy of my new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, as a token of our appreciation, just ask.
Donations can be made by credit card at the Consortiumnews.com Web site or by check to: Consortium for Independent Journalism (CIJ); 2200 Wilson Blvd., Suite 102-231; Arlington VA 22201. To use PayPal, our account is named after our e-mail address: “consortnew @ aol.com”
Thank you for your support.
Robert Parry
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. He founded Consortiumnews.com in 1995 as the Internet’s first investigative magazine. He saw it as a way to combine modern technology and old-fashioned journalism to counter the increasing triviality of the mainstream U.S. news media.
Is it just me or are “journalists” as well as statesmen delusional? So…..in light of the latest “gift” from the blow-flies in D.C. Do we all still feel safe and warm knowing the Fed is watching over us? Like they were watching over us on 9/11? As they were watching over us when they ended Posse Comitatus? Habeas Corpus? Food Safety act? FED RES, while they printed out trillions of our currency and shipped who knows how much to their sister Central Banks in foreign countries? I don’t know, for some reason I feel less safe than before the false-flag of 9/11. And you?
http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/government-corruption-1/obama-signs-ndaaagain.html
With their spiffy electronic ballot machines, I doubt VERY seriously if voting is going to remove the traitors in the Federal Government, federal Military, federal LEO’s, Federal Supreme Court from power. Once a blood-sucker sets it’s feeding tube it takes much more than corrupted votes counted by a corrupted voting machine watched over by corrupted officials representing a corrupted government to remove them….
Still think secession isn’t a viable option?
I’m tired of reading the rantings of the old “New Left” after years of participating in their deadening charades and parades against U. S. imperialism.
I liked Parry’s “Reasons for Optimism” and writing from Kansas agree with him, the reactionary hard right that has ran this country for over 50 years is splintering and slowly their people are either dying off, or conceding to their past brutalities and drifting off.
It’s happening out here, even to many die hard “centrist” Kansas Democrats.
Thanks for the encouraging words, Mr. Parry.
Open letter to Mr.Parry and Consortium News.
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Mr. Parry,
Quite a number of my posts have been rejected outright and some of mine and other posters comments published and then deleted.
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Your “Comments About Comments” ….December 23, 2012 received 20 replies ( published ) and ended with with a frightening
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“Not surprisingly, some commentators are now complaining about “censorship.â€
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But the problem could be resolved if all commentators took seriously a commitment to civil discourse and refrained from hurling insults at either each other or the people who write for this publication.”
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I wonder if my remark that “Mr Parry in one of his pieces used as his “evidence†a “typed statement attributed to bin Ladenâ€? Surely a typed statement is not acceptable evidence.” was considered “hurling insults at the people who write for this publication.” and so caused the removal of that particular post.
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Why Robert Parry is Right About 9/11 Truth or the comment therein
“The combination of emotionally-charged, evidence-allergic “journalism†from people like Robert Parry
http://911truthnews.com/why-robert-parry-is-right-about-911-truth/
My previous post contains typos…but I think you get my point. I am very discouraged about the situation in the Middle East and North Africa. The so-called “democracy-seeking” rebels supported by Obama in Libya have now declared Sharia Law. Syria seems to be targeted as the next on the list. When you think about your support of Obama..I hope you will also remember this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqqz_KLU4Ys
Are you happy about the reelection of a man you makes jokes about using predatory drones?
How can you be optimistic and support a man who has increased the use of predatory drones by the hundreds, thereby murdering thousands of innocent civilians including woman and children? Why are you optimistic about a President who has his personal “Kill List”? Why are you supporting a man who is complicit in the deaths of more Africans than any U. S. President in recent history?
I am totally disgusted that the MSM and so-called “progressive” websites like Consortiunnews.com continue to ignore the terrible pain and suffering of the people in Libya as a result of Obama’s support with taxpayer’s $$$$ of NATO’s illegal invasion of that country. The partial article below written by Glen Ford is from a liberal black website reports the targeting of Black Libyans and other Africans in Libya for extermination. They call it “ethnic cleansing”. Are you not aware of this..or is it that you just don’t care? A few persons finally asked the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton and the Congressional Black Caucus members about the murder of Black Libyans and their answer was “NO COMMENT”. Only Jesse Jackson, Jr. expressed his horror a From BlackAgendaReports.com:
“Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton appeared like ghoulish despots at a Roman Coliseum, reveling in their Libyan gladiators’ butchery.â€
Last week the whole world saw, and every decent soul recoiled, at the true face of NATO’s answer to the Arab Spring. An elderly, helpless prisoner struggled to maintain his dignity in a screaming swirl of savages, one of whom thrusts a knife [4] up his rectum. These are Europe and America’s jihadis in the flesh. In a few minutes of joyously recorded bestiality, the rabid pack undid every carefully packaged image of NATO’s “humanitarian†project in North Africa – a horror and revelation indelibly imprinted on the global consciousness by the brutes’ own cell phones.
Nearly eight months of incessant bombing by the air forces of nations that account for 70 percent of the world’s weapons spending, all culminating in the gang-bang slaughter of Moammar Gaddafi, his son Mutassim and his military chief of staff, outside Sirte. The NATO-armed bands then displayed the battered corpses for days in Misurata – the city that had earlier made good on its vow to “purge Black skin†through the massacre and dispersal of 30,000 darker residents of nearby Tawurgha – before disposing of the bodies in an unknown location.