Consortium News is a priceless resource for honing in on the truth in the tradition of its founder Robert Parry, says Gareth Porter.
From the desk of Gareth Porter
We’ve all seen how the recent period of vertiginous political change has resulted in rapidly growing pressure on independent media to conform to partisan and/or ideologically rigid positions on the most crucial issues of international and national politics. The result has been a further narrowing of the already very limited range of sources of news and analysis that are able to deliver truly independent and critical reporting.
That is why I have become increasingly convinced that Consortium News is a priceless resource for honing in on the truth in the tradition of its founder Robert Parry. His vision was to nurture an online source of investigative reporting and analysis that would never bow to pressure from powerful political interests, ignore pivotal stories or embrace official narratives based on falsehoods. Parry’s untimely death last January posed an enormous challenge to his successor to carry on this fearless endeavor. But Joe Lauria, whom I have known for the last few years, is fully capable of steering the ship safely through the threats to the unique role of Consortium News. He is working hard to produce a news site that can continue to grow in stature and in readership.
And that is why I write for Consortium News.
Now is the time for all those who share Robert Parry’s determination to defy pressures to conform to powerful interests and support this resource of inestimable value.
So please make a donation today during Consortium‘s Fall Fund Drive so it can continue to deliver for you.
Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and historian writing on US national security policy. His latest book, Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, was published in February of 2014. Follow him on Twitter: @GarethPorter.
Thank you, Mr. Porter. I look forward to reading what you have to say. Without being dismissive in any way, your writings are a little like Sherlock Holmes investigation, unveiling the truth.
I have great trust in Consortium News and it’s reporters but the bias and loaded phrasing still sometimes gets through.
We can still do better.
I was introduced to your reporting / writing, maybe 10 years ago thru Ms. Amy Goodman’s DemocracyNow broadcasts. I’ve followed you on Tom Dispatch and hold your reporting in high esteem, you and Aaron Glantz are, and were great favorites of mine. ( I must opine here; if there’d be a ‘sainthood’ for news reporters, Amy Goodman would surely be a saint , in that colleague of truth-seekers. …
I say all-of-that in lead-up to an honest inquiry into the most recently stated impropriety of the Trump Presidency, vis-a-vis his below statement/remark:
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: — “I don’t like stopping massive amounts of money that’s being poured into our country on—I—I—I know they’re talking about different kinds of sanctions, but they’re spending $110 billion on military equipment and on things that create jobs, like jobs and others for this country. I don’t like the concept of stopping an investment of $110 billion into the United States, because you know what they’re going to do? They’re going to take that money and spend it in Russia or China or someplace else.”
(Even before Jamal Khashoggi’s suspected death, the Trump administration had been under pressure to halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia over its catastrophic war on Yemen, which has killed thousands of people, pushed millions of Yemenis to the brink of famine and sparked the world’s worst cholera outbreak, with as many as 10,000 new cases of cholera appearing every week.)
IMO – That statement, on it’s face, nothing added or subtracted is a blatant / bald-faced admission, by the POTUS, in simplistic words, that money, wealth, Capital, means more to him / has more essential value, to him, than does Human Life.
THAT singular remark/statement out of the mouth of the POTUS is an admission-of- priorities- of -values / a-priority- of banality and/or fatuousness that emanates from a self-centered, dictatorial humanist. To Which i Quote:
“But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and Perdition. — For, the love of money is the root of All evil: which some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. (1st Timothy 6: 9-10).
———————
My bottom line question to you, Gareth Porter, can only be this. —
With the accumulation of WMD’s –
in accord with accumulations of Massive Wealth
In the hands of a Curiously Demising Few,
w/ Weapons of Genetic Technologies looming
and Wealth is the Dooming weapon of War
And the imminent Threat to all Humanity,
in the Undistinguished Controlling Authority
of the right-wing-Clown-ish Confederate
Money-laundering carnival Barker, Trump.
{ search for and find the incoherent / time-ly coherent ramblings one DAVE EMORY }
[ it only takes a Spark (of light) to ignite a revolution ]
question is, what do you see of the world and it’s
future as relates to Imperial Dynasties of the past
in unique regard to a new modernity of WMD’s
w/ New Numbers of Mass Death in such things
as non-war tsunamis/tidal waves, volcanoes,
mudslides or rightwing military coups/assassinations
extraordinary renditions/blindfold tortores beatings
This is America (FBI entrapments of innocent targets)
and the accepted massacre of human beings
in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Africa, Columbia/Brazil
by corporate takeover / expropriation of wealth
mineral theft / treachery /extortion/disfigurements
of persons and facts / juxtapositions of truths
within ledgers and presumed agreements
which are altogether duplicitous swindles
devised through deceptive/cunning craftiness
(they lie-in-wait to deceive), as embezzlers,
charlatans, cheats,crooked fast-talking fakes
which come to Steal Your Goods and giggle
among themselves as you struggle through
the head above water existence in an every day
fearful, and/or oscillating compromised caste
Overseen by The Governmental Authority of
Police State Law ENFORCEMENT Dictates
designed to enforce my “corralment”/containment
within/inside systematic areas of city regulation
(confinement into jails and/or prisons is, for me,the
targeted expectation after they close all the schools)
This is the apartheid America
where u’re x’spected 2 salute
u gad’a be mentally ill or
forensically brainwashed
fo u 2 believe n sum
land of free/home of brave
unless you a pistol pack’n
badge wear’n member of
da POlice dept in any city
jus ask Sandra Bland, or
Anton Sterling, or MLK. …
“IMO – That statement, on it’s face, nothing added or subtracted is a blatant / bald-faced admission, by the POTUS, in simplistic words, that money, wealth, Capital, means more to him / has more essential value, to him, than does Human Life.”
I remember our POTUS visiting Vietnam for the first time a President did so and came away with a one forty million arms deal. His name was Obama. Trump gets dumped for just about anything and he deserves some of it. But please don’t suggest that he is any more cold hearted than his predecessors, just being honest. Business is business and selling death is what we do.
I don’t know if he holds assassination sessions to decide who to murder next but I suspect he does.
Obama’s sale of weapons to Viet Nam did not take place in, nor within a Hot War Zone. Neither did it occur with a nation, like Saudi Arabia, that Teaches and Preaches JIHAD, as well as Arms and trains Jihadists – whom are among the most vile Murderers, Rapists and Evil-Doer’s in modern history.
The alacrity with which Trump alines himself (and “American Values”) with this decrepit Saudi Monarchy presents itself as EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT / judgement of TRUMP’s Ulterior Motives – vis-a-vis his well established LOVE OF MONEY and/or Self- Aggrandizement. — The man is a Bone-Fide, narcissistic creep birthed from The Dark Side. Period ! ! !
President Donald Trump: > > “Well, there are many other things we could do. But when we take away $110 billion of purchases from our country, that hurts our workers, that hurts our factories, that hurts all of our companies. You know, you’re talking about 500,000 jobs. So, we do that, we’re really hurting our country, a lot more than we’re hurting Saudi Arabia.”
(Over the weekend, Dick Durbin, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, called on Trump to cancel the U.S. arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Some Republicans appear open to the idea.)
(saving human life and caring for humanity is of far greater value than Billions-of-Dollars of ARM SALES ! ! !)
a reply (mine) to Herman, is missing here , and dark spaces tend to be inhospitable?
Herman, FYI:
search for and find the incoherent / time-ly coherent ramblings one DAVE EMORY
http://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-1025-the-so-called-arab-spring-revisited-part-1/
So good to see my most trusted journalists congregating herein.
Hate to be pedantic but “honing” is a process of polishing or shaping by abrasion. The term that you are looking for is “homing in”.
Actually you are both correct & incorrect. “Hone in on” has become over the years a phrasal equivalent to “home in on”. Look it up.
I suppose this is why Americans say “could care less ” when they mean “couldn’t care less”, and use likely as an adverb and absent instead of without. Keep using it-it becomes correct;
Yes. A mistake remains a mistake no matter the amount of usage. “Could care less ” does not make sense just as “Hone in on” is nonsensical despite the approximate 25% incidence of its usage by (almost exclusively) Americans.
For those of us schooled in classical English both expressions inspire a reaction akin to fingernails dragged down a blackboard.
The below link is a worthy portrait of an Arrogant “Honing In”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/15/president-trump-new-painting-white-house-republican#img-1
Now you know why I generously supported ConsortiumNews not once but twice this year.