Some white Americans still try to dismiss the evils of slavery, pretending that many slaves were happy serving their white masters. But the morning of Jan. 1, 1863, showed a different reality when President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and…
Campaign 2016, Environment, Foreign Policy, Human Rights, Media, Obama Administration, Politics, Right Wing
Probing Bernie Sanders’s Identity
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders may be a strong voice on income inequality but his positions on military spending and foreign policy are muddled and his criticism of ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s neocon-oriented world view is muted, as anti-war activist David…
Mideast’s Expected and Unexpected
At year’s end, it’s often worthy to think back on how you thought the year would go and compare it to what actually happened. For writers who have made predictions, it represents a more public challenge, as ex-CIA official Graham…
Dangerous Punditry on Syria
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen has built a long record of getting nearly every major issue wrong over many decades but still eagerly dispenses the latest conventional wisdom emerging from Official Washington’s misguided “group thinks,” as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar…
Is WP’s Cohen Dumbest Columnist?
From the Archive: Official Washington operates with a reverse “meritocracy,” the more clueless the pundits are the more esteem they seem to get as long as they conform to the latest “group think.” Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen is a prime example, Robert Parry noted…
Campaign 2016, Environment, Foreign Policy, Human Rights, Obama Administration, Politics, Right Wing
One County’s Global Warming Failure
Exclusive: Even communities where many citizens agree that global warming is a threat to humankind and have the money to take action find that the politics of doing something can be complicated and seemingly insurmountable, like the case of Arlington,…
A Shaky Promise on Global Warming
The Paris climate conference produced an international agreement for curtailing global warming, but resistance from some leaders, particularly Republicans in the U.S., makes the prospect for its implementation doubtful and thus dangerous, writes Lawrence Davidson.
Campaign 2016, Constitution, Environment, Foreign Policy, Health Reform, Human Rights, Intelligence, Lost History, Media, Obama Administration, Politics, Right Wing, Secrecy, The Bush-43 Administration
The Misinformation Mess
Exclusive: As Americans approach Election Year 2016, the crisis of misinformation is growing more and more dangerous. On issues from foreign policy to the economy, almost none of the candidates in the race appears to be addressing the real world, writes…
The Obsessive Putin-Bashing
Official Washington says it welcomes freedom of thought, but there is a startling absence of diverse opinions especially on key foreign-policy topics, such as Russia’s President Putin. In those cases, shallow “group think” prevails and belligerent “information warfare” rules, as Gilbert…
Congress’ Off-Point Iran-Bashing
The U.S. Congress, still in thrall to Israeli leaders and the neocons, cited Islamic State terrorism as an excuse to clamp down on travel to Iran even though Iran has nothing to with ISIS or other Sunni jihadists, unlike Saudi Arabia…
The Grimmer Story Behind ‘Trumbo’
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,…
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…
Campaign 2016, Foreign Policy, Media, Obama Administration, Politics, Right Wing, Secrecy, The Bush-43 Administration
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…
Campaign 2016, Foreign Policy, Media, Obama Administration, Politics, Right Wing, The Bush-43 Administration
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.…
Foreign Policy, Human Rights, Intelligence, Lost History, Media, Obama Administration, Secrecy, The Bush-43 Administration
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…
Campaign 2016, Foreign Policy, Human Rights, Lost History, Media, Obama Administration, Politics, Right Wing, The Bush-43 Administration
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…
The Murder of Yitzhak Rabin
Israel’s decisive turn to the dark side of Jewish terrorism and religious-based repression of the Palestinians can be marked by the murder of Prime Minister Rabin by a right-wing Jewish extremist in 1995, a moment that also inflicted a fatal…
Campaign 2016, Foreign Policy, Human Rights, Lost History, Obama Administration, Politics, Right Wing
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.…