Month: October 2013

Jesus’s Idea of God’s Kingdom ‘on Earth’

From the gospel accounts, Jesus was a fierce critic of the economic injustices of his day, demanding within his Jewish tradition a radical redistribution of wealth and a recommitment to Israelite teachings about caring for one another. That was his point…

Sabotaging Iran Nuclear Talks

Fresh for the debacle over the government shutdown and near credit default, Congress is now acting to sabotage promising negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, with some right-wing Republicans even raising the specter of war, as ex-CIA analyst Paul…

The Abject Failure of Reaganomics

Exclusive: House Republicans got next to nothing from their extortion strategy of taking the government and the economy hostage, but they are sure to continue obstructing programs that could create jobs and start rebuilding the middle class. What they won’t recognize…

How US Pressure Bends UN Agencies

Exclusive: Lost in the celebration over the Nobel Peace Prize to the UN agency eliminating the Syrian government’s chemical weapons is the question of who was really behind the Aug. 21 poison-gas attack near Damascus. Relevant to that mystery is the recent U.S.…

What Nixon/Kissinger Got Right

Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger operated in an amoral world where they traded lives and principles for power. But their cold “realism” enabled them to function more effectively in foreign policy than many of their successors who let passions and…

Oliver Stone’s Hard Look at US History

Many American historians, like their counterparts in journalism,  fail the democratic process that they are supposed to serve. Both groups tend to put a positive spin on even the nastiest actions of the U.S. government, a process that Oliver Stone challenges…

Edward Snowden’s Brave Integrity

Exclusive: President Obama says he welcomes the debate on post-9/11 surveillance of Americans and the world, but that debate was only made meaningful by the disclosures of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who was then indicted and sought asylum in Russia, where he just met with…

Shimmers of Mideast Hope

In the face of sustained injustice, there is an understandable desire to detect hopeful signs of change, small victories that boost the spirits of those fighting to make things better. But those shimmers of hope can often prove to be…

The Anarchy of the Tea Party

As a catastrophic U.S. debt default looms, Republicans keep demanding they “get something” in exchange for reopening the government and removing a gun from the head of the economy. The new talking point is that “Democrats won’t negotiate!” But ex-CIA…

Israeli-Saudi Alliance Slips into View

Exclusive: The Israeli-Saudi détente is slowly emerging from the shadows, with a media report on a secret Jerusalem meeting and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s oblique reference in his UN speech. But this powerhouse collaboration could mean trouble for U.S. diplomacy in…