Defense Secretary Robert Gates is leaving government with accolades from all over Official Washington. Only a few dissenting voices note that the reality of Gates’s four-plus years at the Pentagon’s helm doesn’t match the image, as former CIA analyst Paul…
Deadly Mix: Hubris and Cowardice
Admitting failure in Iraq and Afghanistan is anathema to Official Washington, especially to the still-influential neocons whose status depends on maintaining the illusion of “victory” or at least limited success, even at the cost of more blood and treasure. But…
Help Us Pay Our Writers
At the end of each month, Consortiumnews.com pays as much as it can to writers who provide original content for this Web site. This is not just the right thing to do, but it enables these talented individuals to continue…
Netanyahu’s Pyrrhic Victory
Exclusive: In a whirlwind trip to Washington, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu behaved less like a visiting head of state and more like a pro-consul arriving in a conquered land to lecture its titular leader on the limits of his…
Health Reform, Media, Obama Administration, Politics, Religion, Right Wing, The Bush-43 Administration
Taking the Side of the Billionaires
Exclusive: America’s Right pitches itself as populist, taking the side of the common man against “big guv-mint” and “lib-rhul elites,” but its actual policies from the NFL lockout to Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget side with the billionaires in what amounts…
Cheering Netanyahu’s Intransigence
Exclusive: Republicans and Democrats in Congress leapt to their feet again and again to applaud Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even as he was challenging the policies of President Barack Obama. Yet, this pro-Israeli solidarity could have harmful consequences for…
The Gospel According to Dylan
Bob Dylan, the great poet/songwriter, turned 70 this week, prompting remembrances of how his words, music and anti-authoritarian vision helped shape generations of Americans, especially the one that came of age during the Vietnam War in the 1960s, as Gary…
Spanish Protests Lose Their Way
The popular protests across Spain gave voice to national indignation over the political/economic system, but the result of regional elections was only to shift power from the Socialists to the center-right Partido Popular. Spanish writer Pablo Ouziel says that outcome…
Split Cartons Great for Book Clubs
Some readers have told us that our 50/50 split cartons of Secrecy & Privilege and Neck Deep are great for book clubs, with 14 copies of each book costing only $59 for the entire box (postage included for U.S. orders),…
Wall Street Was ‘Too Big to Jail’
HBO’s new docudrama on the Wall Street crash of 2008 details the frantic government efforts to stabilize the banking system and stave off a global depression, but the program misses the systemic fraud and other crimes that were at the…
Obama Goes AIPAC-ing
Like many American politicians before him, President Barack Obama paid his respects on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), mostly telling the powerful lobby what it wanted to hear about the greatness of Israel and the evils of its…
Obama’s Covert Clash with Pakistan
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…