From Editor Robert Parry: A longtime donor has offered a $1,000 matching grant, meaning that your donations up to that amount will be doubled through the end of the year (with extra time for checks via snail mail). So, if…
What Would Jesus Do at Christmas?
America’s widening gap between rich and poor is especially noticeable at Christmastime when the rich shower themselves with extravagant gifts and assuage their self-images by donating a few turkeys and a toy or two to the poor, a tradition that…
Constitution, Human Rights, Intelligence, Media, Obama Administration, Secrecy, The Bush-43 Administration
Udall Urged to Disclose Full Torture Report
Sen. Mark Udall has called for the full release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on torture. However, as a still-sitting member of Congress, he has a constitutional protection to read most of the still-secret report on the Senate floor…
Constitution, Human Rights, Intelligence, Lost History, Media, Obama Administration, Right Wing, Secrecy, The Bush-43 Administration
The Victory of ‘Perception Management’
Special Report: In the 1980s, the Reagan administration pioneered “perception management” to get the American people to “kick the Vietnam Syndrome” and accept more U.S. interventionism, but that propaganda structure continues to this day getting the public to buy into endless…
The Future the US Budget Foretells
The key drafters of the U.S. Constitution may have had dreams of a government to “promote the general Welfare” but that goal has long since been lost to factionalism and special interests, a reality that is growing worse as money…
New Pressure to Stop Iran Nuke Accord
The economic pain, being inflicted on Iran and Russia by the Saudi-induced oil-price drop, has fueled a new surge in Official Washington’s “tough-guy-ism” and thus may hurt chances for successful negotiations, especially an agreement to constrain Iran’s nuclear program, as Gareth…
Neocons Link Cuba Opening to Iran Deal
Exclusive: Neocons are hoping that by raising the political cost of President Obama’s diplomatic opening to Cuba, they can scare him away from reaching a final agreement with Iran over its nuclear program and thus keep alive their Mideast “regime…
‘Terrorism’ Hysteria over Sony Hack
Some U.S. moviegoers say they are standing up to North Korean “cyber-terrorism” by going to see Sony’s “The Interview,” a comedy that makes light of assassinating real-life leader Kim Jong-un. But the furor over a retaliatory hack of Sony has the…
Selling ‘Peace Groups’ on US-Led Wars
Since the anti-war protests on Vietnam, the U.S. government has made “perception management” of the American people a high priority, feeding them a steady diet of propaganda about foreign crises, even getting “peace groups” to buy into “pro-democracy” wars, write…
The Christmas Truce’s Moment of Hope
A century ago, a remarkable moment for humanity occurred amid the killing fields of World War I as soldiers from both sides put down their guns and exchanged Christmas greetings, an unauthorized truce that was soon suppressed so the slaughter…
Anything Learned from ‘Christmas Truce’?
As the U.S. Congress votes for a military confrontation with Russia over Ukraine and even “liberal” commentators cheer the economic pain being inflicted by U.S. policies, it is worth recalling how big-power arrogance sparked the conflagration called World War I and…
Ayn Rand v. ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’
During the Red Scare of the late 1940s, novelist Ayn Rand and other right-wing zealots targeted Hollywood for supposedly subversive messages, like the criticism of bankers and the praise of community in Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” as Michael Winship recalls.
If You Want to Donate by Check…
Editor Robert Parry: Those who prefer to donate by check or who wish to use a credit card but not on the Internet, just print out the form below. Or mail a check without a form. That’s fine, too. As always,…
Will ‘New Obama’ Bring Hope for Change?
President Obama has finally shown glimmers of the leader that many Americans thought they saw in 2008, as he displays some boldness in ending U.S. hostility toward Cuba and acting on global warming. But it remains unclear if this “new…
US Democracy’s Failure at Racial Justice
The unprovoked murder of two New York policemen has prompted understandable outrage, but the larger context remains the U.S. failure to address legacies of slavery and segregation, compounded by recent police violence targeting young black men, as Dustin Axe explains.
Dividing the CIA in Two
When created in 1947, the CIA was meant to coordinate objective intelligence and thus avert some future Pearl Harbor attack, but its secondary role engaging in covert operations came to corrupt its independence, a problem that must now be addressed,…
NSA’s Binney Honored for Integrity
Retired National Security Agency official William Binney, who challenged decisions to ignore the Fourth Amendment in the government’s massive — and wasteful — collection of electronic data, faced career and legal repercussions. Because of his courage, he is being honored by…
Human Rights, Lost History, Media, Obama Administration, Politics, Right Wing, The Bush-43 Administration
The Liberal Idiocy on Russia/Ukraine
Exclusive: American pundits are often more interested in scoring points against their partisan rivals than in the pain that U.S. policies inflict on people in faraway lands, as columnists Paul Krugman and Thomas L. Friedman are showing regarding Russia and…
Reminder about Comment Rules
From Editor Robert Parry: At Consortiumnews, we welcome substantive comments about our articles, but comments should avoid abusive language toward other commenters or our writers, racial or religious slurs (including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia), and allegations that are unsupported by facts.
What Consortiumnews Tries to Do
From Editor Robert Parry: Since we started nearly two decades ago, the goal of Consortiumnews has been to give the people as unvarnished an account of important events as possible because we feel that honest journalism is essential to democracy, presenting…