Category: Human Rights

Forgetting Reagan’s Worst Scandal

The mainstream U.S. media shies from direct criticism of conservative icon Ronald Reagan, so the history of the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages deal often gets forgotten even amid discussions about the U.S. policy against negotiating with terrorists, as Sam Husseini notes.

Turkey’s Troubling War on Syria

In Syria, the war to overthrow the secular government in Damascus has attracted Islamic militants from around the world, but they have relied on funding and support from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and perhaps most importantly Turkey, where an election reflected…

War on Whistleblowers, After Obama

The war on whistleblowers has injected fear of prosecution into all honest communications between national security officials and reporters, meaning that the public instead gets a steady diet of U.S. government lies, propaganda and self-serving rhetoric, a problem addressed by…

Was Race a Factor in Sterling Case?

President Obama’s war on whistleblowers grinds on with ex-CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling dispatched to a federal prison in Colorado, far from his home and family. In Sterling’s case, there’s also the disturbing issue of race, as Norman Solomon explains.

The Nitwits Are in Charge

Exclusive: Pundit Thomas Friedman laments that the new Cold War isn’t funny enough for him, but there really isn’t anything funny about the U.S. plunging into an unnecessary nuclear showdown with Russia over Ukraine while Friedman and his fellow VIPs misreport what’s happening, writes…

Why Turkey’s Erdogan Stumbled

In his rise to power, Turkish President Erdogan won popular support by showing independence in foreign affairs but then got caught up in his own grand ambitions, including support for violent “regime change” in Syria, setting the stage for an electoral…

NYT’s Orwellian View of Ukraine

Exclusive: In the up-is-down Orwellian world that is now The New York Times’ editorial page, there was no coup in Ukraine in 2014, no U.S.-driven “regime change,” no provocation on Russia’s border, just Moscow’s aggression — a sign of how propaganda…

The Dangers of Religious Primitivism

By stirring up the Middle East from Western exploitation of oil to Zionist expulsion of Palestinians Christians and Jews set in motion today’s “clash of civilizations” with Islam and launched all three religions on a path toward dangerous primitivism, a threat…

Facing America’s Great Evils

Exclusive: A 21-year-old white supremacist is charged with entering a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and murdering nine black parishioners, merging two of America’s great evils gun violence and racial injustice. But what can be done, asks Robert…

The Pentagon’s War Reluctance

Despite Republican pressure and State Department hawkishness, the Pentagon and the White House remain reluctant to dive deeper into the fight against the Islamic State, wishing to avoid U.S. combat casualties, writes Gareth Porter for Middle East Eye.