President Obama declares his love of “transparency,” but has an odd way of showing it, meting out harsh punishments to people who give the public a glimpse into the vast darkness of U.S. secrets, including revoking Edward Snowden’s passport to stop…
Category: Human Rights
Treating Anti-Syria Charges as Flat-Fact
Exclusive: More than two months after the chemical weapons attack near Damascus, President Obama has still not released any proof to support his allegations blaming the Syrian government. But the New York Times has embraced the accusations as flat fact,…
Dick Cheney’s Heartless Hypocrisy
Exclusive: Dick Cheney’s new book about his life-saving heart transplant has drawn much fawning coverage. But little attention has gone to the hypocrisy of the ex-vice president accepting expensive government-funded surgeries while endorsing the Tea Party’s campaign to deny health coverage…
Right-Wing Ideology Run Wild
The Radical Right reflecting the overlapping ideologies of Ayn Rand capitalists, Christian fundamentalists and neo-Confederate white supremacists is set on crippling the federal government and humiliating the first African-American president. But the extremism could shatter the Republican Party, writes Lawrence Davidson.
A Fascist Revival Stirs in Spain
Exclusive: The economic pain from the Wall Street crash of 2008 and the ensuing Great Recession has fueled the right-wing Tea Party movement in the United States and a revival of fascism in parts of Europe, including hard-hit Spain where…
Jesus’s Idea of God’s Kingdom ‘on Earth’
From the gospel accounts, Jesus was a fierce critic of the economic injustices of his day, demanding within his Jewish tradition a radical redistribution of wealth and a recommitment to Israelite teachings about caring for one another. That was his point…
How US Pressure Bends UN Agencies
Exclusive: Lost in the celebration over the Nobel Peace Prize to the UN agency eliminating the Syrian government’s chemical weapons is the question of who was really behind the Aug. 21 poison-gas attack near Damascus. Relevant to that mystery is the recent U.S.…
What Nixon/Kissinger Got Right
Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger operated in an amoral world where they traded lives and principles for power. But their cold “realism” enabled them to function more effectively in foreign policy than many of their successors who let passions and…
Oliver Stone’s Hard Look at US History
Many American historians, like their counterparts in journalism, fail the democratic process that they are supposed to serve. Both groups tend to put a positive spin on even the nastiest actions of the U.S. government, a process that Oliver Stone challenges…
Edward Snowden’s Brave Integrity
Exclusive: President Obama says he welcomes the debate on post-9/11 surveillance of Americans and the world, but that debate was only made meaningful by the disclosures of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who was then indicted and sought asylum in Russia, where he just met with…