The ouster of Brazil’s left-of-center president was the latest right-wing victory in Latin America, but was this “quiet coup” driven by local politics or part of a broader U.S. strategy to reclaim dominance over its “backyard,” asks Ted Snider.
Distraught over the likely choice of Trump or Clinton, many Americans are thinking about third parties or write-ins, but the process is harder than one might expect, like much else about the U.S. electoral system, notes William John Cox.
Official Washington’s neocon-dominated establishment is apoplectic about Donald Trump’s “isolationist” foreign policy views including his disdain of NATO, but some of his ideas actually make sense for U.S. national interests, writes Ivan Eland.
By accepting the NRA’s presidential endorsement, Donald Trump bought into the gun lobby’s paranoid view of government and its distorted interpretation of the Second Amendment, writes Lawrence Davidson.
A risk to democracy is that wily politicians can exploit moments of anger or fear to implement plans that the public wouldn’t otherwise accept, a danger that requires popular vigilance to avert, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.
With California and other late primaries in view, Democrats face a fateful choice, whether to plunge ahead with status-quo Hillary Clinton or turn away at the last minute and go with hope-inspiring Bernie Sanders, as Lisa Pease urges in this open letter.
The mainstream U.S. media rightly criticizes Donald Trump for his bigoted remarks about Mexicans and Muslims – and his know-nothing-ism on global warming – but wrongly ignores Hillary Clinton’s role in futile and bloody wars, Gilbert Doctorow notes.
In the U.S. political culture, Memorial Day has become one more chance to glorify American wars and to exploit U.S. soldiers’ deaths to generate sentiment for more wars, a troubling tactic addressed by Gary G. Kohls and S. Brian Willson.
Exclusive: Memorial Day is exploited by politicians glorifying war and armed services recruiting new soldiers, but it should be a time to reflect on the ugly reality of warfare and the tragic valor of the combatants, says war correspondent Don North.
Mythology about the rightness of dropping two atomic bombs on Japan is relevant to today’s “modernization” of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and the revving up of a new Cold War with Russia, says ex-Pentagon military analyst Chuck Spinney.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump went before AIPAC this year and pandered to those who blindly support Israel’s hard-line policies, but Bernie Sanders’s more evenhanded approach is better for Israel, says Rabbi Michael Lerner.
Exclusive: President Obama embraced Japanese survivors of the Hiroshima bomb, but his policies, such as heightening tensions with Russia, have raised the potential for a far worse nuclear catastrophe, explains Jonathan Marshall.
As the U.S. government plunges toward war with nuclear-armed Russia and/or China, there is an unsettling silence — or unnerving consensus — regarding the potential extinction of human existence, as John Pilger observes.
The U.S. government seeks to impose neo-liberal economics on the world even though those “free-market” policies funnel global wealth to a tiny fraction at the top, cause widespread despair and spark political turmoil, Michael Brenner explains.
Donald Trump claims to fight for the little guy against a rigged system, but the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has turned to political operatives who have scammed money for the rich and powerful, says Michael Winship.
Well-meaning legislation would permit 9/11 families to sue Saudi Arabia for its alleged role in the terror attacks but the principle of individuals suing foreign governments is fraught with problems, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
Exclusive: The State Department’s Inspector General issued a blunt report criticizing Hillary Clinton’s imperious refusal to follow email rules as Secretary of State, adding to Clinton’s credibility problem, notes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 blasted apart the country’s political structure and left behind widespread chaos, but Iraqis may be slowly digging out of the wreckage, says ex-CIA official Graham E. Fuller.
Exclusive: As a powerful corporation and cultural icon, the NFL expects to always get its way whether muscling aside concussion scientists or ignoring science in a witch hunt against one of its best quarterbacks and teams, writes Robert Parry.
The latest lament of the neocon establishment is that America is suffering from too much democracy – leading to Donald Trump – but the opposite is more to the point, how elite manipulation set this stage, explains Mike Lofgren.