The end of the year brings reflection on what happened in the past 12 months and what lies ahead. But these retrospectives usually offer no more context and often less than the thin gruel of news as the events played out,…
Category: Media
Kicking the Vietnam Syndrome
From the Archive: With Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf’s death on Thursday and the declining health of ex-President George H.W. Bush an era of war and intrigue is coming to an end, a time of resurgent U.S. imperialism that saw this warrior seeking peace and the…
Hagel and the New McCarthyism
Since Chuck Hagel’s name was floated as possible Secretary of Defense, the former Republican senator has been subjected to vilification to blacklist him from public service, a new form of McCarthyism that replaces suspected leftist sympathies with insufficient support for…
NRA Suggests a Police State
Exclusive: The irony of the NRA’s crackpot idea for protecting America’s children by dramatically expanding the use of armed guards is that the proposal would push the U.S. further down the path toward a police state, threatening the “liberties” that…
An Incurious ‘Zero Dark Thirty’
Exclusive: Zero Dark Thirty, the big-screen chronicling of the manhunt for Osama bin Laden, has been hailed by some critics for its taut storytelling, but it fails to confront the larger questions about 9/11, including the complex history between the…
Hagel: The Neocons’ Last Stand?
Exclusive: The neocons — stung by their loss of Washington influence are trying to reestablish their clout by disqualifying former Sen. Chuck Hagel to be the new Defense Secretary. But their haste in charging off after Hagel’s scalp may lead…
The Smearing of Chuck Hagel
Former Sen. Chuck Hagel and his possible nomination to be Secretary of Defense are under fierce attack from Washington’s neocons and the Israel Lobby. But the tawdriness of the smears creates a chance for President Obama to stand up to this public…
Slaughter of the Innocents
Americans are grieving over the 20 schoolchildren and six teachers mowed down in Newtown, Connecticut, by a deranged gunman with a semi-automatic assault rifle. But national grief may not be enough to overcome the cold calculations of profit and politics, says Danny Schechter.
Dim Tidings of Political Disconnect
The insertion of false narratives is a powerful way to control populations, a technique that today’s American Right has perfected in persuading much of the population that global warming is a hoax and “the market’s invisible hand” is real, a dilemma of the…
Reflections on the Unimaginable
After each mass slaughter usually inflicted by some high-powered assault rifle in the hands of a mentally unstable individual Americans search for some explanation, some way to make sense of the madness. That was especially true of the latest massacre…