The U.S. government often plays the game of blaming “enemies” and excusing “friends,” a particularly ugly reality in the push to blame Iran and absolve Saudi Arabia for the 9/11 attacks, says 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser.
Exclusive: The New York Times, which once postured as the champion of a free press, now is seeking crackdowns on news that the public gets from the Internet under the guise of combatting “Russian propaganda,” explains Daniel Lazare.
A political miscalculation by Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani – staging an independence referendum that prompted fierce retaliation by Baghdad – has set back hopes for a Kurdish state by decades, writes Joe Lauria.
Exclusive: With the disclosure that Hillary Clinton’s campaign helped pay for the original Russia-gate allegations against Donald Trump, a new question arises: what did Clinton know and when did she know it, reports Robert Parry.
Like a caged hamster on a running wheel, the American people are trapped in perpetual wars that the foreign policy elites offer no way to end, only excuses to continue, observes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
Exclusive: Neocons have deftly used the Left’s hatred of President Trump and the demonizing of Russia to lure liberals and progressives into an interventionist mindset to defend “American exceptionalism,” observes James W. Carden.
Exclusive: President Trump may see his tough-guy rhetoric as just part of the reality TV show that he’s putting on, but violent talk often goes hand-in-hand with real-life violence as in the Philippines, notes Jonathan Marshall.
Venezuela’s socialist experiment, which seeks to reduce the country’s extreme income equality and alleviate widespread poverty, has upset U.S. policymakers who now have new hopes for regime change, as Dennis J Bernstein explains.
The West’s persistent demonization of Russia over the past decade has pushed Moscow into a de facto alliance with China, changing the geopolitical landscape in ways that U.S. pundits still won’t admit, writes Gilbert Doctorow.
A big part of the Russia-gate hysteria is to accuse Russia of spreading U.S. dissension via Internet “trolling,” but that’s just one more wild exaggeration among many, as William Blum describes at Anti-Empire Report.