From the Archive: Though largely forgotten, the brief U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 established key precedents that would reappear in later conflicts from the Persian Gulf and Kosovo to Afghanistan and Iraq policies shaped, in part, by Gen. Colin Powell,…
From the Archive: On Dec. 20, 1989, President George H.W. Bush ordered the invasion of Panama to arrest Gen. Manuel Noriega on drug charges. The U.S. news media viewed the assault as a case of Bush seeking justice, but there…
Technology moguls many involved with high-tech U.S. intelligence projects are deploying their fortunes to buy up or start up media entities that give them control of the tone and content of journalism, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and his Washington Post,…
Americans are taught the myth that their democracy is safeguarded by an independent press. But the government and other powerful entities have long mastered the art of manipulating the major media, even to the point of bluntly telling reporters the…
U.S. foreign policy remains captive to unipolar hubris, enforced by neocon pundits who demand military interventions to solve the world’s problems. But this kneejerk response is particularly crazy when applied to Asian disputes over rocks far at sea, says Independent Institute’s…
From Editor Robert Parry: We’re in danger of falling short on our $10,000 “challenge grant” which we hoped would go a long way toward meeting our end-of-year fundraising goal. So, if you can help with a tax-deductible donation to Consortiumnews.com…
Exclusive: Civil libertarians are cheering federal judge Richard Leon for his ruling against the NSA’s massive surveillance program and that’s all to the good but Leon’s route to the bench followed a twisted course of partisan investigations and one historic…
Pro-gun extremists routinely edit out of the Second Amendment its stated purpose of having “a well-regulated militia” maintain state “security.” The tampering lets them pretend the Founders would be okay with slaughters like the Newtown massacre, as Bill Moyers and Michael Winship…
An odd aspect of modern American life is that even with 24-hour news and its roster of blathering pundits, many creative thinkers with valuable insights are blacklisted from mainstream media, perhaps most notably Noam Chomsky who turned 85 on Dec. 7,…
Exclusive: While the U.S. and Spain have wallowed in the Great Recession swamp, Latin America has begun breaking free of the old order that bogged down progress. Now, the region is restructuring relations with its old international masters, as Andrés Cala explains.
The neocons are still beating the drums for U.S. military intervention in Syria, now supposedly for humanitarian reasons. But as horrific as the Syrian violence is it’s clear that President Obama’s restraint last summer averted making the mess even worse, says…
While an inspiring tale of resilience and reconciliation, Nelson Mandela’s saga also marked a failure of black South Africans to transform their hard-won political power into economic equality, as domestic and foreign whites retained the reins of money, as Danny…
Most people on Earth everyone born after World War II have lived their entire lives under the threat of nuclear annihilation. But just because an existential threat has always been there doesn’t mean it won’t be activated, as Ira Helfand and…
President Obama has promised to end America’s combat role in Afghanistan by the end of 2014 but is haggling with Afghan President Karzai over how to keep soldiers there for another decade, a dispute that Independent Institute’s Ivan Eland says is a…
From the Archive: The comedy team Key and Peele cut through the Right’s Second Amendment madness best in a bit in which Peele travels back in time with Uzis to confront its authors over their careless wording. But there is…
From the Archive: One year ago, 20 first-graders went off to school in Newtown, Connecticut, some surely thinking about the upcoming Christmas holidays. But they never came home, becoming along with six of their educators collateral damage in the NRA’s…
Israel’s Right suddenly finds itself in a strange new world where it can’t do whatever it wants to Arabs under its control without encountering international resistance, like the recent plan to forcibly relocate Bedouins in the Negev, as ex-CIA analyst…
Exclusive: A new analysis, buried in a UN report, reveals that one of the two missiles at the center of the Syrian chemical weapons crisis, which nearly led to a U.S. military attack, showed no evidence of Sarin, further undermining…
Exclusive: The Islamic Front’s capture of a U.S.-stocked supply depot in northern Syria prompted a suspension of those shipments to “moderate” Syrian rebels. The incident also drove home how Islamists are gaining ground — and why President Obama may shift U.S. strategy, writes Robert…
Some of our special stories in November focused on the war in Syria, the nuclear talks with Iran and the latest understanding of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
