Islamic Fundamentalism frightens the West and that fear has motivated a fierce retaliation deploying more weapons and inflicting more slaughter. But in not understanding what drives the jihadists the military strategies may be making matters worse, observes ex-U.S. diplomat William R. Polk.
Iraqi Chaos May Give Kurds a State
Who Violated Ukraine’s Sovereignty?
Selective Sympathy in Israel/Palestine
The mainstream U.S. media often reveals its bias by selecting some personal tragedies for saturation coverage while downplaying or ignoring similar horrors to “others,” such as the massive attention given to the search for three kidnapped Israeli teens, as Lawrence Davidson observes.
Learning Little from World War I
Looking back on the century of war and slaughter that has followed the start of World War I, one is reminded of Pete Seeger’s classic lyrics: “When will they ever learn?” Today, major world leaders behave with much the same…
The Wisdom of Lawrence of Arabia
A century ago, during World War I, a British intelligence officer known as “Lawrence of Arabia” deeply understood the Mideast and saw hope for rational politics, but Western imperial ambitions intervened to ensure regional instability, as Bill Moyers and Michael…
Europe’s Generational Change
Obama’s New ‘Bias for Action’
NYT Revamps Its False Ukraine Narrative
Reaping the Seeds of Iraqi Hatred
The uproar in the mainstream U.S. news media over the barbarity of Islamic militants in Iraq downplays or ignores the brutality of the U.S. invasion and occupation that unleashed the ethnic and sectarian hatreds in the first place, as Danny…
Continuing Parry’s 3-Book Offer
From Editor Robert Parry: Summer reading often called “beach reading” is usually light fare, from romance novels to some classy fiction. But we’re offering something a little different, a rewrite of recent American history.
In Case You Missed…
Some of our special stories in May focused on the Ukraine crisis, the continuing fallout from neocon war strategies, and some inconvenient truths about Jesus.
Iraq’s Depleted Uranium Threat
America’s Blunderbuss Wars
U.S. policymakers and pundits proclaim that America’s role in the world is all for the good. But more objective observers see a pattern of clumsy and brutal interference that can touch off cascades of chaos and death, as ex-State Department official William…
The Folly of Making Iran an Enemy
Even when Iran is eager to cooperate with the U.S. on matters of mutual concern, Israeli leaders and American neocons insist on making Iran an implacable enemy, a rigid approach that does not serve U.S. interests, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R.…
Obama’s True Foreign-Policy ‘Weakness’
Avoiding the Iraq-Syria Abyss
Iraqis Are Not ‘Abstractions’
Exclusive: U.S. policymakers have long behaved like spoiled, destructive children treating Iraq as if it were some meaningless plaything. The game has been about who “wins” or “loses” in Washington, not who lives or dies in Iraq, a moral failure that ex-CIA…
A Half-Century Battle for Voting Rights
A half century ago, in summer 1964, brave Americans challenged the entrenched racism of white-ruled Mississippi and overcame bars against black voting. Now, those gains are under attack from right-wing efforts to restrict voting and reverse the legacy of Freedom Summer, writes Brian…
Iran Answers Questions on Explosives
To get elected chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2009, Yukiya Amano agreed to carry water for the U.S. on the Iranian nuclear issue, a chore that he is continuing in a dispute over Iran’s work on detonators,…