Official Washington’s still-influential neocons are still hoping they can sabotage progress toward a U.S.-Iranian rapprochement and thus keep open the option of war but the reasonable tone of Iran’s new president Hassan Rouhani is making the neocons’ job trickier, as…
Constitution, Human Rights, Lost History, Obama Administration, Politics, Right Wing, The Bush-43 Administration
How Fake 2nd Amendment History Kills
Exclusive: Another mass shooting has stunned America, although the sentiment is now more numbness and hopelessness than outrage and resolve. The gun carnage will probably never end unless the Right’s bogus history of the Second Amendment is exploded and the…
Mystery of a Highway Safety Device
Though drivers hope they’ll never find out, those yellow-and-black devices on the end of guardrails are supposed to cushion the impact of a vehicle that veers off the road. But a legal dispute has erupted over whether a design change was properly evaluated,…
Summer Ends, So Does Fund Drive
From Editor Robert Parry: As the last days of summer officially wind down this week, we will be ending our fund drive. If you haven’t yet, please consider a donation. We are now less than $10,000 from our modest goal…
Israel Sides with Syrian Jihadists
Exclusive: Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, has confirmed suspicions that Israel has taken the side of Syrian rebels in their bloody civil war and wants President Assad to fall even if that turns Syria over to al-Qaeda-connected jihadists, a…
US-Iran Talks at a Crossroads
Iran continues to signal a readiness to negotiate seriously over its nuclear program in exchange for relief on sanctions but Israeli leaders and American neocons still are pushing the Obama administration toward a heightened confrontation and war, as ex-CIA analyst…
Murky Clues from UN’s Syria Report
Exclusive: The focus of the Syrian crisis has shifted to diplomatic moves for eliminating the government’s chemical weapons stockpile, but the whodunit over the Aug. 21 gas attack outside Damascus remains to be solved after a UN report offered a…
Forgetting the Threat from Nukes
In recent weeks, international attention has focused on the apparent use of chemical weapons in Syria. But nuclear weapons represent an even greater threat to human life, and the countries possessing these fearsome weapons continue to press ahead in modernizing them,…
NFL, ESPN and Big-Dollar Secrecy
Pro football is big business and America’s fascination with often violent sports has made Disney’s ESPN a lucrative franchise. So there is much money on the line over the issue of concussion-related disabilities, explaining the NFL’s desire to keep the…
Reminder About Comment Rules
From Editor Robert Parry: At Consortiumnews, we welcome substantive comments about our articles. But we don’t welcome insulting, racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic or other bigoted remarks. Violators can expect such comments to be removed and chronic violators will be put on a…
Sign-up Page Glitch Fixed
From Editor Robert Parry: We’ve just fixed a technical problem with our sign-up page which had kept some readers from getting e-mail updates when new stories are posted at Consortiumnews.com. So, if you want to sign-up for updates, look down the right side…
How Small Media Bested Big Media
From Editor Robert Parry: Over the last few weeks during the Syrian crisis, we have seen something remarkable how underfunded independent media outlets like Consortiumnews.com can successfully challenge Big Media when it slides into a dangerous “group think.”
Risks from Big-Power Bullying
Across Official Washington from liberal to neocon, from pol to pundit the conventional wisdom on Syria’s crisis is that threats of military force work. But that simplistic notion misses the disasters that can follow if the threat is ignored or how bullying might…
The Mysterious Death of a UN Hero
Exclusive: More than a half-century ago at a pivotal moment in the emergence of independent African states UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold was brokering peace in a divisive civil war in Congo when he died in a plane crash, leaving behind…
Do Syrian Rebels Have Sarin?
Exclusive: A U.S.-Russian agreement calls for the Syrian government to disclose and dispose of its chemical weapons, but that doesn’t resolve the mystery of who was behind the Aug. 21 attack outside Damascus or the question of whether Syrian rebels…
Human Rights, Intelligence, Media, Obama Administration, Right Wing, Secrecy, The Bush-43 Administration
How War on Syria Lost Its Way
Exclusive: What looked like another U.S. march to war in the Mideast has turned toward a peaceful accord that carries hope of getting Syria to relinquish its chemical weapons and achieving a cease-fire, maybe even an end to the civil war.…
The Cuban Five Case at 15 Years
The hypocrisy of the U.S. “war on terror” jumps out in how Cuban-exile terrorists are protected in Miami as U.S. officials hunt down Islamic terrorists across the globe. The U.S. even imprisoned five Cuban spies who sought to disrupt terror attacks being…
Rewarding ‘Group Think’ on Syria
Exclusive: “Group think” is alive and well in Official Washington, with virtually all the important pundits marching in lock-step with the Obama administration’s accusations against the Syrian government and everyone fuming over an Op-Ed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, observes…
Putin Touches an ‘Exceptional’ Nerve
Official Washington is in full outrage mode over a New York Times opinion article by Russian President Vladimir Putin who dared question the idea that the U.S. has a special indeed “exceptional” right to intervene militarily anywhere it wishes around…
Why Syrian Rebels May Block CW Plan
Exclusive: Ironically, the biggest threat to plans for destroying the Syrian government’s chemical weapons may come from Syrian rebels if they balk at a ceasefire and target UN inspectors removing poison gas canisters, a possibility that the rebels may hope would…