The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler often deviates from his purported role as “fact checker” to advance a political agenda, which often requires him to distort the facts or to ignore contrary evidence as he did recently regarding Iran’s nuclear talks,…
Category: The Bush-43 Administration
An Ignored Pre-9/11 Warning on Spying
One year after NSA contractor Edward Snowden began exposing the U.S. government’s surveillance capabilities, Europe and other targets are still reeling from the revelations. But a little-noticed report in summer 2001 offered an early warning, says Dutch IT expert Arjen Kamphuis.
An Appeal for More Whistleblowers
As more and more secrecy envelopes the U.S. government with millions of hidden records concealing both past and present there is no practical alternative for democracy but to fight back with “unauthorized” disclosures, as Norman Solomon explains in an appeal for…
How Snowden Changed the World
Globe-rattling disclosures from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden began a year ago and have shaken how the world understands the capacity of the U.S. government and its allies to pry into almost every facet of the lives of almost anyone, as…
Hillary Clinton’s Hawkish Legacy
To the surprise of some, the U.S. State Department has emerged as the Obama administration’s most hawkish branch, out-toughing the Pentagon which has urged restraint at times as State pushes for war. This shift dates back to Hillary Clinton’s tenure as…
The Only Standards Are Double Standards
Exclusive: President Obama is still embracing Official Washington’s false narrative on Ukraine as he hypocritically blames the crisis entirely on Moscow and ignores the West’s role in toppling an elected president and provoking a nasty civil war, writes Robert Parry.
The Real Villains of the Bergdahl Tale
Exclusive: The right-wing media is denouncing Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl as a “deserter” who wasn’t worth ransoming from the Taliban, but the real villains are the architects of the disastrous Iraq and Afghan wars who frivolously put the many Bergdahls in harm’s way, writes…
Piketty’s Exploration of Modern Capital
Exclusive: Despite some predictable griping from the Right, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century has reinforced the case that Western societies and especially America are concentrating wealth at the very top and shortchanging almost everyone else, as Jim DiEugenio…
‘War on Terror’ and the Bergdahl Swap
After the 9/11 attacks, narrow “counterterrorism” operations gave way to the blunderbuss “war on terror,” opening the way to more traditional practices of war including prisoner exchanges, like the one for Sgt. Bergdahl, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar writes.
Finding an End to Endless Wars
For Official Washington’s neocons all wars should go on indefinitely and any timetable for leaving Iraq, Afghanistan or any other country subject to American military assault in recent years represents defeatism. But such open-ended commitments would likely mean endless occupations,…