U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded that American success in the Afghan War requires Pakistani help in rooting out Taliban safe havens along the border but that Pakistan is unwilling to turn against its longtime Taliban allies a conundrum that continues…
Obama’s Middle East Platitudes
President Barack Obama’s speech on a “new chapter” in U.S. policy toward the Middle East was filled with platitudes befitting a New Year’s resolution, but there is little expectation that he will follow through, especially on the hardest issues like…
Netanyahu Sets Limits for Obama
Special Report: President Barack Obama got an Oval Office lecture from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about how far Obama may deviate from Israel’s positions on Mideast peace. This public rebuke raises questions about whether Netanyahu will now try to…
Asking Obama to Protect Gaza Relief Ship
Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who has signed on to participate in a new attempt to bring relief supplies to Palestinians living in Gaza, asks President Barack Obama to intercede with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow the ship,…
Perp-Walking the Wrong Banker?
The sexual-assault arrest of International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn touched off a frenzy of media coverage in New York, including repeated showing of the French banker looking disheveled in handcuffs. But Danny Schechter pines for the day when the…
Halberstam’s ‘Best-Brightest’ Blunder-2
David Halberstam won acclaim and riches from his influential book, The Best and the Brightest, about the making of the Vietnam War, especially during the Kennedy and Johnson years. However, in retrospect, the book’s narrative asserting that John Kennedy and…
Spain’s Tahrir Square
Angered by “free-market” policies that have created high unemployment and are now forcing government spending cuts, tens of thousands of Spaniards are occupying central squares in Madrid and other cities in a challenge to the country’s economic elites, as Pablo…
Halberstam’s ‘Best-Brightest’ Blunder
The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam shaped the American narrative of the Vietnam War, making it a cautionary tale about the folly of action-oriented intellectuals who surrounded President John F. Kennedy and whose hubris supposedly plunged the nation…
Leaving a Church of Free-Market Miracles
A significant part of the U.S. population is stuck in angry denial, unwilling to acknowledge scientific realities (like global warming), embracing fictions (like Barack Obama’s Kenyan birth), and refusing to acknowledge America’s diminished situation (like the crumbling infrastructure of roads…
A History of Demonizing the ‘Enemy’
A rule of thumb in journalism is that there are almost always two sides to a story, but that rule is often ignored by the U.S. news media in the heat of some conflict when the United States is involved.…
Rand Paul’s ‘Health Right=Slavery’ Rant
Sen. Rand Paul, a Tea Party favorite, likens the idea that every American should have a right to healthcare to the imposition of “slavery” on doctors like him and their staffs, a bizarre and extreme analogy that Lawrence Davidson dissects…
Mitch Daniels, Architect of US Debt Crisis
Exclusive: Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is the new Republican darling of the Washington establishment, which hails him as a “fiscal conservative” who would be “serious” about addressing the nation’s staggering debt problem. But his many admirers forget to mention what…
How Fox News Outfoxes Americans
To understand how so many average Americans can be duped into embracing right-wing positions that go against their own interests, you must look at how Fox News (and right-wing media outlets) use faux populism and phony outrage as propaganda techniques,…
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Jimmy Carter’s October Surprise Doubts
Special Report: Ex-President Jimmy Carter tells an interviewer that he isn’t sure what to believe about the longstanding suspicions that Republicans went behind his back in 1980 to stop him from freeing 52 American hostages in Iran, a failure that…
The New Look for Consortiumnews.com
Consortiumnews.com introduces a new look for the 15-year-old Web site. Over the past couple of years, some readers have urged us to update our Web design and incorporate more of the modern bells and whistles now available for Internet sites.…
Turning a Blind Eye to Bahrain’s Abuse
The Sunni-ruled kingdom of Bahrain is adopting repressive tactics to ensure that the island’s Shiite majority doesn’t gain significant political power. But Official Washington has been fairly muted in its criticism of Bahrain’s king because the island is a strategic…
The War Against Taxing the Rich
The Republicans have dug in their heels against any proposal to raise taxes on the rich, even opposing efforts to close loopholes for the oil industry which has been chalking up stunning profits simply by riding the wave of rising…
Declaring Victory Over Osama
World War II concluded with “V-E Day” and “V-J Day,” marking the victories in Europe and Japan, respectively. The Bush administration said no such definitive success would finish the “war on terror,” which was defined as essentially an endless conflict.…
Attacks on Israeli Critics Escalate
Jewish playwright Tony Kushner is the latest critic of Israeli government treatment of the Palestinians to come under attack by pro-Israeli hardliners. They sought to strip him of an academic award, but Kushner and his supporters managed to fight back,…