The United States touts its commitment to free speech but American discourse has degenerated into self-absorbed info-tainment and trivia, ignoring many of the most pressing issues of the day, writes Michael Brenner.
For a half century, Republicans pandered to Americans angry about racial integration and other social change – even as GOP elites got rich off the “base” – leading to Donald Trump, the party’s date from hell, says Michael Winship.
The Islamic State “spared” some ancient ruins at Palmyra as part of a trap to blow up the antiquities after their liberation, scheming to kill hundreds of Syrian army troops and “erase” the treasures for all time, reports Franklin Lamb.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-3 decision overturning Texas’ onerous rules for abortion clinics blocked one line of attack used by anti-abortion activists to restrict women’s access to the procedure, reports Dennis J Bernstein.
Exclusive: A referendum like Brexit can be a satisfying moment for an angry populace to vent its frustrations but “yes or no” answers to complex questions can be dangerous for democracy, explains Daniel Lazare.
As the European Union displays more disunion with Brexit and threats of other exits, a renewed E.U. push for an Israel-Palestine peace accord could give Europe a needed sense of mission, suggests ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
The major U.S. media touts a State Department “dissent cable” urging military strikes on the Syrian military as a brave act by 51 diplomats, but it actually matches the views of Secretary Kerry and other top officials, notes Gareth Porter.
Resistance to Mexican President Peña Nieto’s neoliberal “reforms” to health, education and energy policies has spread across much of the country after violent clashes left some eight people dead in Oaxaca, reports Dennis J Bernstein.
Exclusive: Neocons want a new Cold War – all the better to pick the U.S. taxpayers’ pockets – but this reckless talk and war profiteering could spark a nuclear war and leave the world to the cockroaches, writes Robert Parry.
Some American voters see Donald Trump as the only hope to break the neocon grip on U.S. foreign policy and to put U.S. interests ahead of the Israel Lobby, but that may not be so, says Chuck Spinney.
In the mainstream media frame, Donald Trump and Paul Ryan represent opposite poles of the Republican Party. Trump is reckless and Ryan responsible, but that is a false dichotomy, says Lawrence Davidson.
Besides the Brexit rejection of U.S.-style neoliberal economics, some European voices are protesting, finally, the U.S.-led, anti-Russian propaganda campaign that has justified an expensive new Cold War, notes Joe Lauria.
The Brexit vote, like Donald Trump’s campaign, is less a populist uprising against the elites than a contest of one elite over another in manipulating popular sentiments, argues ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
With the Brexit repudiation of the E.U. — in defiance of Establishment scare tactics — British voters stood up for common people who face marginalization in the neoliberal scheme of global economics, explains John Pilger.
The Brexit vote delivered a sharp rebuke to the cumbersome E.U. bureaucracy and the Establishment in general, but it won’t solve the problems facing the U.K., Europe and the planet, writes ex-CIA official Graham E. Fuller.
A group of U.S. intelligence veterans urges President Obama to resist the “reckless” call for a wider Syrian war from 51 State Department officials in a recent “dissent memo.”
Exclusive: The European Union’s haughty and hasty expansion into low-wage Eastern Europe may be its undoing, as the Brexit vote shows popular resistance to the westward migration of workers that followed, writes Jonathan Marshall.
A curious twist in the renewed U.S.-Cuban relations is the claim by Mafia financier Meyer Lansky’s heirs for damages from the loss of Lansky’s Havana casinos, which Fidel Castro nationalized after the revolution in 1959, writes Jack Colhoun.
Exclusive: British voters turned a deaf ear to scary warnings about leaving the E.U. and struck a blow against an out-of-touch, self-interested and incompetent Western Establishment, a message to the U.S., too, writes Robert Parry.
Exclusive: The U.K.’s “Brexit” vote underscores the power of this year’s anti-establishment politics, a warning to Democrats as they nominate status-quo candidate Hillary Clinton, a “safe” choice who may prove very risky, says Daniel Lazare.