Exclusive: After World War II, the Red Scare built the careers of redbaiters like Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon while undermining the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and stifling prospects for progressive politics in America, a tale touched on by the movie,…
Category: Obama Administration
A Christmas Message of Peace
Despite the commercialism of Christmas, some positive messages break through, often in movie classics, such as Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” and Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.” But another entry should be “Joyeux Noel,” a movie about the soldiers’…
A Brief Moment of Christmas Peace
The impromptu Christmas truce of 1914 was a rare moment when human solidarity overrode the demands of hatred and war, when the guns fell silent over the Western Front of World War I and enemies became briefly friends, as Michael…
America’s Dying Democracy
Democracy, as a noble principle of self-governance, is fading away in big ways and small, with special interests seizing control of both media and politicians and with the people increasingly manipulated and misinformed. In this impassioned appeal, Bill Moyers calls…
The Coming Saudi Crack-up?
Exclusive: President Obama, like generations of Western leaders, has coddled the oil-rich Saudi monarchy by tolerating its reactionary politics, its financing of radical Islam and its military support for Sunni jihadist terrorism. But the spoiled Saudi leaders may finally be going too…
The Myth of ‘Taking Out’ ISIS
“Tough-guy-gal-ism” remains the dominant rhetoric of Official Washington as politicians and pundits compete to outdo each other in advocating bloody remedies for “taking out” the Islamic State. But the armchair warriors misunderstand the problem and offer no solution, writes ex-CIA analyst Paul R.…
A Call for Proof on Syria-Sarin Attack
One reason why Official Washington continues to insist that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “must go” is that he supposedly “gassed his own people” with sarin on Aug. 21, 2013, but the truth of that allegation has never been established and is in growing…
Trump Schools ABC-TV Host on Reality
Exclusive: The spectacle of clueless U.S. media personalities, like George Stephanopoulos, chastising Donald Trump for getting facts wrong would be funny if it weren’t indicative of a political-media system failing the American people and what’s left of the democratic Republic, writes…
Seeing ‘Evil’ Everywhere
Today’s American politics sees demons everywhere from “evil” foreign leaders to excessive fears about “terrorism” while more mundane threats like crumbling roads, loss of good-paying jobs and inadequate health care get short-shrift, misplaced priorities addressed by ex-CIA official Graham E.…
Neocons Object to Syrian Democracy
Exclusive: President Obama has infuriated Official Washington’s neocons by accepting the Russian stance that the Syrian people should select their own future leaders through free elections, rather than the neocon insistence on a foreign-imposed “regime change,” reports Robert Parry.