In my four decades in national journalism – I started at the Associated Press in 1974 – I have grown increasingly concerned about how Americans respond to information, or put differently, how propagandists package their messaging to elicit the desired response. In an age of cynicism, the trick is to get the “big ha-ha!” – convincing you to laugh at …
Human Experimentation: a CIA Habit by DAVID SWANSON
The Guardian on Monday made public a CIA document allowing the agency’s director to “approve, modify, or disapprove all proposals pertaining to human subject research.” Human what? At Guantanamo, the CIA gave huge doses of the terror-inducing drug mefloquine to prisoners without their consent, as well as the supposed truth serum scopolamine. Former Guantanamo guardJoseph Hickman has documented the CIA’s torturing people, sometimes to death, and can find no explanation other …
Hillary Clinton: Profile of Rogue Leadership By Stephen Lendman
The possibility of another Clinton or Bush becoming president in 2017 should make everyone’s blood run cold. Both represent everything wrong with America – a gangster state run by monied interests for their benefit alone, waging endless wars for power, profit and unchallenged global dominance along with governing under a homeland police state apparatus. Hillary was Washington’s 67th Secretary of …
As Sec of State, did Hillary Steer Donations to the Clinton Foundation? – DAVID SIROTA
Among all the rivers of money that have flowed to the Clinton family, one seems to raise the biggest national security questions of all: the stream of cash that came from 20 foreign governments who relied on weapons export approvals from Hillary Clinton’s State Department. Federal law designates the secretary of state as “responsible for the continuous supervision and general …
Fast Track Down – Lori Wallach
The Fast Track trade authority package was rejected Friday because two years of effort by a vast corporate coalition, the White House and GOP leaders — and weeks of deals swapped for yes votes — could not assuage a majority in the House of Representatives facing constituents’ concerns that more of the same trade policy would kill more jobs, push …
Former US Attorney General Files Brief in Lawsuit Challenging Legality of Iraq War – By Dahr Jamail
Sundus Saleh, an Iraqi single mother, is suing members of the George W. Bush administration for their role in the war in Iraq. Saleh has assembled an international team of lawyers, who are requesting the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit hear her claim that the US-led Iraq war was illegal under laws formed from the Nuremberg trials …
Clinton Camp Refuses to Give Her Position on TPP, Four Times in Two Days By Zaid Jilani
On Friday, the House of Representatives issued a stunning rebuke [3] to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the 12-nation deal that expands corporate and investor commerce rights at the expense of workers and the environment. However, the fight over the TPP is not over, with the House set to vote once again on the trade adjustment package it rejected on either Monday or Tuesday. …
Why We Shouldn’t Look the Other Way on Bush’s Iraq War Crimes – Thom Hartmann
Donald Rumsfeld is this generation’s Robert McNamara. Over 12 years after overseeing and helping to design the 2003 invasion of Iraq – the former secretary of defense is now re-writing his own role in the invasion. In an interview with The Times of London, Rumsfeld called the Bush administration’s approach to Iraq “unrealistic.” He was referring specifically to the Bush …
Don’t Expect Clinton, GOP Candidates to Work for Social Justice by Gary Olson
My car’s bumper sticker reads “I’m ready for Oligarchy: the choice is clear. There is none.” It’s a truism that under our system, no one can be nominated or can win the presidency who isn’t a shill for the billionaire class. Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, will campaign as a populist in the primaries as Wall Street winks and …
The Executive Summary: Neuropsychological and Electronic No-Touch Torture Report – Robert Duncan
Torture is a horrific topic and most minds will turn away from it because it can’t be comprehended that humans can be motivated, or computer programs can be run to do this to other sentient beings. Just when we believed we were becoming more civilized as a culture, the technology for torture has advanced more than a hundred fold in recent …