Ivan Eland – The Never-ending ‘War on Terror’

The Obama administration has decided to stretch the 15-year-old congressional authorization for war against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, or those harboring them, to include an illegal war against a group in Somalia — al-Shabab — that wasn’t even in existence at the time of the attacks in 2001. In fact, as with many of its Islamist terrorist opponents …

MIKE WHITNEY – The Democrats “Russia Hacking” Campaign is Political Suicide

The Democratic Party is doing incalculable damage to itself by shapeshifting into the party of baseless conspiracy theories, groundless accusations, and sour grapes. Hillary Clinton was already the most distrusted presidential candidate in party history. Now she’s become the de facto flag-bearer for the nutso-clique of aspiring propagandists at the CIA, the New York Times and Bezo’s Military Digest. How is that going …

Why the Nazis studied American race laws for inspirationc

On 5 June 1934, about a year and half after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of the Reich, the leading lawyers of Nazi Germany gathered at a meeting to plan what would become the Nuremberg Laws, the centrepiece anti-Jewish legislation of the Nazi race regime. The meeting was an important one, and a stenographer was present to take down a verbatim …

Normalizing fascists

How to report on a fascist? How to cover the rise of a political leader who’s left a paper trail of anti-constitutionalism, racism and the encouragement of violence? Does the press take the position that its subject acts outside the norms of society? Or does it take the position that someone who wins a fair election is by definition “normal,” …

PATRICIA MILLER – MEET THE NEW CHRISTIAN RIGHT, SAME AS THE OLD CHRISTIAN RIGHT

Much has been made of Donald Trump as “post-ideological,” with claims that his incoherent, and often incompatible, mix of domestic and international policies and priorities somehow transcends ideology and points to a new way of governing that is neither left or right. Much has also been made of growing fault lines within the evangelical community, with suggestions that the evangelicalism of …

Reynard Loki – Has Europe Been Right All Along to Renounce GE Crops?

In 1994, a tomato known as Flavr Savr became the first commercially grown genetically engineered food to be granted a license for human consumption. Scientists at the California-based company Calgene (which was scooped up by Monsanto a few years later) added a specific gene to a conventional tomato that interfered with the plant’s production of a particular enzyme, making it …

Glenn Greenwald – Anonymous Leaks to the WashPost About the CIA’s Russia Beliefs Are No Substitute for Evidence

THE WASHINGTON POST late Friday night published an explosive story that, in many ways, is classic American journalism of the worst sort: The key claims are based exclusively on the unverified assertions of anonymous officials, who in turn are disseminating their own claims about what the CIA purportedly believes, all based on evidence that remains completely secret. These unnamed sources told the Post that …

George Monbiot – The Golden Arches Theory of Decline

A wave of revulsion rolls around the world. Approval ratings for incumbent leaders are everywhere collapsing. Symbols, slogans and sensation trump facts and nuanced argument. One in six Americans now believes that military rule would be a good idea. From all this I draw the following, peculiar conclusion: no country with a McDonald’s can remain a democracy. Twenty years ago, …

Phillip Knightley obituary

Phillip Knightley, who has died aged 87, was one of the most accomplished reporters of his generation: his craftsmanship underpinned some of the 20th-century’s most memorable newspaper scoops and campaigns. He made a crucial contribution to the Sunday Times’s thalidomide exposé; revealed how the world’s biggest meat retailers, the Vestey family, had avoided taxation for six decades; and shed new …

Lorraine Chow – Trump Picks ‘Puppet of the Fossil Fuel Industry’ to Head EPA

Donald Trump has appointed Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The conservative Republican has close ties to the fossil fuel industry and has waged numerous legal wars against the EPA and President Obama’s environmental regulations, including the president’s signature Clean Power Plan. Pruitt, who was elected as Oklahoma’s top legal officer in November …