Month: January 2015

NYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine

Exclusive: The New York Times keeps insisting that last year’s Ukrainian coup wasn’t a coup and anyone who thinks so lives inside “the Russian propaganda bubble.” But a slanted Times “investigation” shows that the newspaper remains lost inside the U.S. government’s…

Risen Deflects Queries in Leak-Case Testimony

After years of pressuring New York Times national security correspondent James Risen to testify in the leak or “Espionage Act” case against ex-CIA official Jeffrey Sterling, the prosecutors never directly asked Risen to name Sterling as his source, as Sam…

The Upside-Down Policy on Israel

Despite the collapse of Israeli-Palestinian peace prospects, the Obama administration continues the fiction that any Palestinian appeal to the UN somehow threatens those non-existent talks, while Republicans vow to sync U.S. policies even more in line with Israeli demands, as…

In Defense of a CIA Whistleblower

The mainstream U.S. news media sometimes rallies to the defense of a reporter who is pressured to reveal a source but not so much for the brave whistleblower who is the target of government retaliation. Such is the case for…

Almost to End-of-Year Goal

From Editor Robert Parry: Thanks to the generosity of our readers we have almost reached our end-of-year fundraising goal. We’re less than $4,000 short of the $50,000 target. If you want to help us fill this budget hole

The Political Imperative to Be Reckless

The overarching “strategic” ideology in Official Washington is “tough-guy-ism,” with politicians fearful of being called “weak,” a public-relations threat that drives even cautious leaders into reckless military actions, as occurred with President Obama in the war on the Islamic State, as…

Rebuilding the Obama-Putin Trust

Exclusive: Heading into the last quarter of his presidency, Barack Obama must decide whether he will let the neocons keep pulling his strings or finally break loose and pursue a realistic foreign policy seeking practical solutions to world problems, including the crisis with Russia over…

Israeli Founder Contests Founding Myths

The Torah (or Old Testament) is a master work of literature and faith, but it tells many mythological tales that have little or no basis in real history, as Uri Avnery, one of Israel’s founders, has had the courage to…

Israeli Scholar Disputes Founding Myth

From the Archive: Twin myths undergird the claim by Israeli hardliners that they own the land of Palestine: the Biblical stories about the Exodus and the ancient kings of Israel and the claim that the Romans forced the Diaspora of Jews…

Bush’s Enduring Theories of Martial Law

The failure to hold anyone accountable for torture derives from extraordinary post-9/11 legal theories that made the President all-powerful during “wartime” and established what amounted to martial law in the United States, a condition that continues to this day, writes…