Though the Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court often splits 5-4 on partisan and ideological issues, a consensus is emerging against the government’s electronic intrusion on personal privacy, which could portend trouble for NSA spying, says Marjorie Cohn.
Obama’s Half-Billion to Syria’s ‘Moderates’
President Obama’s plan to spend another half-billion dollars on Syria’s “moderate” rebels will add more fuel to the destructive violence just as the killing was finally dying down. It’s also hard to see how this investment will promote serious negotiations, notes ex-CIA analyst Paul R.…
Understanding Islamic Fundamentalism
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
Millions of Kurds live in Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria but the British-French imperial division of the region left them without a state of their own, adding to the region’s tensions. But some Kurds see the current chaos in Iraq…
Who Violated Ukraine’s Sovereignty?
Exclusive: The West has accused Russia of violating a 1994 pledge to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty in exchange for its surrender of Soviet-era nuclear weapons. But the West’s political and economic interference might also represent a violation, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
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
Exclusive: The persistent European recession has undermined public support for the pillars of the establishment and opened a pathway for a generational change that could reshape the face of the Continent, writes Andrés Cala.
Obama’s New ‘Bias for Action’
President Obama seems so shell-shocked from all the political and media criticism about his “weakness” that he is “doing something” by intervening in both the Syrian and Iraqi civil conflicts, a risky “bias for action” that can do more harm…
NYT Revamps Its False Ukraine Narrative
Exclusive: Official Washington’s Ukraine narrative has been that it was all Vladimir Putin’s fault, that the Russian president staged the crisis to restore the Russian empire, a storyline that never made sense and is now being rearranged to explain why Putin is seeking peace, writes…
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
Over the past two dozen years, the massive damage that the U.S. has inflicted on Iraq’s population, infrastructure and environment includes the residue from American “deplete uranium” weapons that can cause cancer and other illnesses, writes John LaForge.
Human Rights, Lost History, Media, Obama Administration, Politics, Right Wing, The Bush-43 Administration
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.…
Human Rights, Lost History, Media, Obama Administration, Politics, Right Wing, Secrecy, The Bush-43 Administration
Obama’s True Foreign-Policy ‘Weakness’
Special Report: President Obama has shied away from confronting Washington’s neocons who continue to exercise undue influence at think tanks, on op-ed pages and even inside Obama’s administration. With the new Iraq crisis, Obama’s timidity is coming back to haunt him, writes Robert Parry.
Avoiding the Iraq-Syria Abyss
The urge to expand wars in the Middle East, rather than find pragmatic ways to tamp them down, is even more absurd when set against the potential for peaceful cooperation in the region and the desperate need for the world to address existential…
Human Rights, Lost History, Media, Obama Administration, Politics, Right Wing, The Bush-43 Administration
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…