Category: Obama Administration

The Depressing ‘Zero Dark Thirty’

From the Archive: Director Kathryn Bigelow won an Oscar for “The Hurt Locker” and is in the running again with “Zero Dark Thirty,” but both movies have a troubling undercurrent of racism, heroic Americans operating in a world of apathetic…

An Incurious ‘Zero Dark Thirty’

From the Archive: “Zero Dark Thirty,” the big-screen chronicling of the manhunt for Osama bin Laden, won critical acclaim for its taut storytelling, but the Oscar-nominated film ignored the complex history between the CIA and its terrorist target, wrote Jim DiEugenio.

The Dark Side of ‘Zero Dark Thirty’

From the Archive: The hunt-for-bin-Laden film, “Zero Dark Thirty,” portrays torture as a key element in that search. But the filmmakers distorted the facts and ignored the reality that torture is illegal, immoral and dangerously ineffective, wrote Marjorie Cohn.

Hit Movies Miss Mideast Realities

From the Archive: Two Oscar favorites “Argo” and “Zero Dark Thirty” purport to tell real-life stories about America’s troubles in the Middle East, one an escape-from-Iran thriller and the other a get-bin-Laden film. But neither confronts some hard realities, wrote…

Waking Up to Iran’s Real History

From the Archive: An Oscar frontrunner for best picture is “Argo,” depicting a little-known chapter of the U.S-Iran hostage standoff in 1979-81. Yet, while focusing on this story of six hostages escaping, “Argo” missed bigger dramas, before and after, as…

Honoring a Heroic Slavery-Fighter

The movie “Lincoln” was a dramatic depiction of the political fight to end American slavery with the 13th Amendment and presented a rare sympathetic portrayal of anti-slavery Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, played by Tommy Lee Jones. This offered a belated chance to…

Brennan’s Loose Talk on Iran Nukes

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s hearing on John Brennan to head the CIA focused on lethal drones, but Brennan’s loose talk lumping Iran with North Korea as nuclear threats could be even more worrisome, recalling Iraq WMD exaggerations, as Veteran Intelligence…

Retrofitting War to Global Warming

The U.S. government spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year to fight or prepare to fight wars against supposed security threats around the world. But far less money is invested in what many experts believe will be the greatest…

The Geopolitics of Pistachios

The two top producers of pistachios are the United States and Iran, which have squared off over grievances for more than three decades. Now, there’s news that Israel has a preference for the Iranian variety and Prime Minister Netanyahu has…

Get Parry’s Bush Trilogy for Only $34

As the bright new Republican stars flame out the likes of Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul the presidential focus for 2016 will shift back to Jeb Bush as a choice broadly acceptable to the GOP, and you will…