By recently releasing a redacted version of top secret “talking points” that Secretary of State Alexander Haig used to brief President Ronald Reagan about Mideast developments in spring 1981, the U.S. government has inadvertently revealed what it still wants to hide from the public some 34 years later – because I found the full version in congressional files in late 1994 and first wrote about …
America’s God Complex – Rev. WILLIAM E. ALBERTS
American presidents reverently end their speeches with the audience-approving Benediction, “God bless America.” What they are really communicating is that God favors America. That, today, America is God’s chosen people. Even more! They are equating America with God. Which— in the magical twinkle of a rationalizing mind’s eye—means that America isGod—white America, that is. As political leaders like to assert: America is today’s embodiment of …
Darkness in the Morning: American Policy in the Middle East – JOSEPH GROSSO
In one way, since the end of the Second World War, when the U.S. assumed its role as the leading global hegemon, American policy towards the Middle East has resembled a damaged pinball machine gone tilt. There was the CIA led 1953 coup against Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, whose sin was nationalizing the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, …
The Kingpin Strategy – Andrew Cockburn
As the war on terror nears its 14th anniversary — a war we seem to be losing, given jihadist advances in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen — the U.S. sticks stolidly to its strategy of “high-value targeting,” our preferred euphemism for assassination. Secretary of State John Kerry has proudly cited the elimination of “fifty percent” of the Islamic State’s “top commanders” …
A Psychedelic History of the CIA – JEFFREY ST. CLAIR and ALEXANDER COCKBURN
On June 17, 1999 the state of Texas put to death by lethal injection John Stanley Faulder, a Canadian who had been convicted in 1977 of murdering Inez Phillips, an oil heiress. Faulder’s case received more press attention than most executions these days, mainly because the Canadian government tried to intervene on his behalf and urged Texas governor George W. …
American Politics: A House of Mirrors – Ulson Gunnar
A house of mirrors is an immersive, highly distorted and intentionally confusing version of reality. Those walking its corridors are sometimes amused and sometimes frightened by the disorienting experience, but luckily for them, it is only temporary. There is an exit, and they will walk through it, back to reality. But what if one existed their entire lives in such …
The Iran Nuclear Energy Agreement: Force Again Prevails Over Law
The Israel Lobby and its associated neocon war criminals will block if they can the nuclear energy agreement, worked out by Putin, Iran, and Obama, which has the promise of bringing to an end the US orchestrated crisis over Iran’s development of nuclear energy. As a signatory to the nuclear weapons non-proliferation treaty, which Israel is not, Iran has the …
America’s Safari to Nowhere
Every Soul is captive Of its own Deeds – Qur’an 74:38 From late 2007 through 2010, the United States and its Israeli partner ruled the roost in the Middle East. It was the best of all worlds – for them. With that construct now shattered, they are trying desperately to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. Sadly for them, their only tools …
Nuclear Threat Escalating Beyond Political Rhetoric
As a new cold war between the United States and Russia picks up steam, the nuclear threat is in danger of escalating – perhaps far beyond political rhetoric. Randy Riddel, a former senior political affairs officer with the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) told IPS he pities the general public. “They’re being fed two competing narratives about nukes,” he …
CNN Is Beating the Drums of War
President George W. Bush’s national security advisor, Condi Rice, warned Americans that Saddam Hussein’s (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction could result in a mushroom cloud going up over an American city. No such threat existed. But today a very real threat exists over all American cities, and the national security advisor does not notice. The threat issues from Washington and …