Thirty-four U.S. nuclear plants sit downriver from dams whose collapse could cause a nuclear accident along the lines of the Fukushima disaster in Japan. But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has withheld evidence of the threat, writes William Boardman.
US-Israel Ties at a Crossroads
Cracks are forming in the old U.S. political paradigm of support for Israel whatever it does. Israeli leaders may compare mowing down each new generation of Palestinian militants to a chore like trimming the grass, but the moral depravity and…
Obama’s Challenge at Treasury
With Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner planning to step down, President Obama is faced with an important appointment. Much of Official Washington wants a “deficit hawk,” but Obama and the country would be better served by someone who cares more about…
Thanksgiving or Day of Mourning?
For many Americans, Thanksgiving is a time of family get-togethers around a traditional turkey dinner, with vague recollections of Pilgrims sharing a meal with Native Americans in eastern Massachusetts nearly four centuries ago. But for the remnants of those indigenous…
Playing Games with Narratives
In an age of spin and propaganda, one trick is to falsify the chronological order of events to turn reactions into instigations and vice versa, like when George W. Bush says he went to war in Iraq in response to…
Muzzling an Anti-Nuke Trial Defense
Federal prosecutors, who are seeking long prison terms for three anti-nuclear-bomb activists as punishment for entering the government’s Oak Ridge bomb-making complex, want all moral and legal questions about nuclear weapons excluded from the trial, reports John LaForge.
Hyping Iran’s Nuke Capabilities
As Iran and the Obama administration maneuver toward a deal on Iran’s nuclear program, the Western news media continues to stoke the crisis by hyping Iran’s capabilities, including misreporting the significance of a new report on Iran’s supply of 20-percent…
FBI Snooping on the CIA’s Petraeus
The U.S. news media pretends to shy away from sex scandals but actually looks for any excuse to cover them. A case in point has been the ouster of CIA Director David Petraeus, but the press may have missed the…
Standards for Comments
From Editor Robert Parry: At Consortiumnews.com, we welcome a lively debate about the stories that we post, but we won’t tolerate abusive, bigoted or threatening language. We will delete such comments when they are brought to our attention and may…
Corrupting US Democracy
The United States tends to view itself as the gold standard for democracy and bristles at international criticism of its electoral flaws. But recent corrosion of democratic principles, caused mostly by Republicans, has lowered the quality of U.S. democracy, writes ex-CIA…
Free Shipping on Parry’s Books
From Journalist Robert Parry: We are offering free shipping if you buy my new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, or any of my earlier books through the Consortiumnews.com Web site during the holiday season.
Human Rights, Intelligence, Lost History, Obama Administration, October Surprise, Politics, Right Wing, Secrecy, The Bush-43 Administration
How Israel Out-Foxed US Presidents
From the Archive: Just days after President Obama’s reelection, Israel launched a punishing bombing campaign against Palestinians in Gaza much as Israel did shortly after his election in 2008. Obama again is put in a tight spot, but other U.S.…
Israeli Scholar Disputes Founding Myth
From the Archive: As Israel again “mows the grass” in Gaza taking revenge on Palestinians for firing crude missiles into Israeli territory the myth upon which the Jewish government stakes its claim to the land is front and center. But the myth…
Challenging Israel’s Myths
A carefully cultivated mythology sustains Israel’s territorial claims to Palestine and rationalizes Israel’s ethnic cleansing of millions of Palestinians from the land. Challenges to those myths are typically met with fierce counterattacks, as Lawrence Davidson discovered.
Undercutting Iran Nuke Talks
Having won reelection, President Obama appears interested in a deal on Iran’s nuclear program. But key U.S. commentators continue to embrace baseless fraud charges about Iran’s 2009 election while pressing unrealistic negotiation demands, a recipe for failure, say Flynt and…
The Death Toll of Watergate
Exclusive: Major gaps in the history of Watergate and Iran-Contra have let Republicans minimize those scandals by comparing them to the fabricated “scandal” over the Benghazi attacks. A fuller understanding of Watergate would reveal its links to Richard Nixon’s prolonging the Vietnam War, writes…
France Plunges into Syrian Quagmire
France, which governed what is now Syria after World War I, has stepped forward as the first Western power to recognize the opposition as the legitimate government. But the future course of the Syrian civil war remains dangerous and complicated,…
Likening Palestinians to Blades of Grass
Exclusive: Israeli hardliners joke about the periodic need to decimate each new generation of Palestinian militants as “mowing the grass,” a process underway again in new bombardments of Gaza. This ugly metaphor has also penetrated the think-tank world of Official Washington, as ex-CIA analyst…
Death Knell for a Failing Paradigm
The death and destruction from Super Storm Sandy this time inflicted near the U.S. power center of New York City are warnings of what’s in store if the global-warming deniers continue to obstruct action. Future devastation will shatter the creaky…
A Closer Look at New Gaza Conflict
The new round of violence between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza is receiving the typical U.S. media treatment, blaming Hamas and absolving Israel. But the origins of the latest clashes are much more complex than that simplistic and one-sided version,…