The ginned-up fury over what Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said about the Benghazi attack on TV shows obscures a bigger question, whether the U.S.-backed overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi was smart policy. Libya remains a country in turmoil amid growing doubts about…
Vermont Nuke Case Cites Risks
Aging nuclear power plants present increasing risks to the U.S. environment, because of possible catastrophic events like the one that hit Fukushima, Japan, and storage problems with nuclear waste. A trespassing case in Vermont raised some of these questions, reports William Boardman.
WalMart’s Tears for a Tragedy
Exclusive: On Saturday, a fire swept through a garment factory near Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing some 120 workers trapped behind locked doors. WalMart, one of the factory’s clothes buyers, quickly distanced itself from the tragedy, but WalMart’s profiting from sweatshops is…
Hamas, UN and Palestinian Statehood
The United States and Israel continue to oppose the UN granting the Palestinians recognition as a “non-member state.” But the objections seem increasingly farfetched, as even Hamas has shown a more moderate side in endorsing this modest proposal, notes ex-CIA analyst…
The Humiliation of Bradley Manning
Exclusive: The pre-trial hearing on Pvt. Bradley Manning’s court martial for leaking classified documents about U.S. government wrongdoing has turned up evidence that even Manning’s Marine jailers were worried about the controversy over his degrading treatment in their custody, reports…
Origins of Israel’s Anti-Arab Racism
The anti-Arab racism that increasingly pervades modern Israel surfaces in the non-human images applied to Palestinians, such as the metaphor “mowing the grass” when targeting militants in Gaza. This tragic development traces back to the attitudes of old European imperialism, argues Lawrence…
Ignoring the Global Warming Reality
Even as the science and reality of global warming becomes painfully clear, some of the U.S. political/media class pretends it’s all a myth and that the important thing is to “drill, baby, drill.” But that rejection of empirical data is being challenged by…
Consortiumnews.com, Lost History, Obama Administration, October Surprise, Politics, Right Wing, The Bush-43 Administration
Get a Second Book for a Nickel!
From Journalist Robert Parry: You can get one of my earlier books, either Secrecy & Privilege or Neck Deep, for only a nickel when you buy my new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, through the Consortiumnews.com Web site. And shipping is…
In Case You Missed…
Some of our special stories from October, focusing on the last weeks of the U.S. presidential campaign, the controversy over the Benghazi deaths, and historical mysteries from the Cuban Missile Crisis and JFK’s assassination to the October Surprise cases of…
Ron Paul’s Appalling World View
Exclusive: There was buzz on the Internet after libertarian Ron Paul delivered what was billed as his final address in Congress. But his near-hour-long speech sounded more like the ramblings of a right-wing crank than the coherent thoughts of the…
Congo’s Troubled Future
A Congolese rebel group, M23, has won a series of victories against the disorganized troops of the central government, raising the prospect of more turmoil in that troubled African country. But more division of Congo and even partitioning may not…
Biblical Economics
An irony of modern politics is that many conservative Americans view themselves as devout believers in the Bible yet they ascribe to right-wing, dog-eat-dog economic theories that Jesus and other Biblical figures would condemn. The contradiction has pushed Biblical economics…
US Nuke Plants’ Flooding Risks
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…