A half century ago, in summer 1964, brave Americans challenged the entrenched racism of white-ruled Mississippi and overcame bars against black voting. Now, those gains are under attack from right-wing efforts to restrict voting and reverse the legacy of Freedom Summer, writes Brian…
Category: Human Rights
Reviving the ‘Successful Surge’ Myth
Exclusive: The military offensive by Sunni extremists driving into the heart of Iraq has brought the neocons out of the shadows to blame President Obama, by arguing that they had “won” the war before Obama “lost” it, a deeply engrained false…
Forgetting Who Messed Up Iraq
Key U.S. political and media figures who were deeply implicated in the illegal invasion of Iraq are playing an audacious “blame game” over the current Iraqi security crisis, pointing at President Obama when they were the principal culprits, as Lawrence Davidson recalls.
Obama at a Crossroad of War or Peace
Exclusive: The dramatic spread of Sunni extremism into the heart of Iraq may force President Obama to finally make a choice between simply extending a slightly less violent Bush Doctrine and charting his own innovative course in the name of peace,…
Treating Snowden as a ‘Personality’
The mainstream U.S. media prefers personalities over substance, so it was perhaps not a surprise that its focus at the first anniversary of Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks was on his alleged peculiarities, not the frightening prospect of a Big Brother state,…
Learning No Lessons About War
Americans like to think of themselves as a peace-loving people but their record has been one of war-making with the pace of interventions picking up in recent decades as the U.S. military and intelligence services are dispatched around the world, notes…
America’s Dangerous Mideast Illusions
America’s neocon-driven interventions in the Middle East have combined to create what is shaping up as a geopolitical disaster, with U.S.-backed “regime changes” contributing to victories by Saudi-funded Sunni extremists, as Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett explain.
Why Take the Neocons Seriously?
Exclusive: The Sunni extremist offensive into central Iraq appears to have stalled, but the political battle rages in Washington where neocons see an opening to pressure President Obama into recommitting the U.S. military in support of neocon goals in the Middle…
Overreacting to the Iraq Crisis
The new hysteria gripping Official Washington is over the collapse of the Iraqi army in the face of an offensive by Islamic militants. But the threat is not as extreme as some opinion leaders are describing, writes ex-CIA analyst Paul…
How NSA Can Secretly Aid Criminal Cases
Though the NSA says its mass surveillance of Americans targets only “terrorists,” the spying may turn up evidence of other illegal acts that can get passed on to law enforcement which hides the secret source through a ruse called “parallel construction,” writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.