Friday, November 16, 2007

U.S. Helped Push Pakistan to the Brink

By Ivan Eland
November 17, 2007

To prevent the Pakistani Supreme Court from declaring him ineligible to serve another term as president, a role he won last month in dubious elections, the autocratic Musharraf has declared martial law and ousted the Supreme Court’s chief justice.

Read on.

Bush's Clever Cognitive Dissonance

By Robert Parry
November 16, 2007

So, George W. Bush sees himself as the great defender of the U.S. Constitution.

In a Nov. 15 speech to the right-wing Federalist Society, the President embraced the Constitution’s checks and balances as a vital protection against tyranny. And he demanded that federal judges act as fair referees, not political or ideological partisans.

Read on.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

The Man Who Bombed Hiroshima

By Anthony Gregory
November 15, 2007

Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr. did not die from war wounds or violently at the hands of other people, years before his time. He died in hospice care, in a bed, from heart problems and strokes.

Read on.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

How False Narrative Works

By Robert, Sam and Nat Parry
November 14, 2007

During Campaign 2000, conservative groups were given wide leeway in smearing Democratic candidate Al Gore without being called to account, even when the Vice President was falsely portrayed as a traitor.

For instance, in the weeks before Election 2000, Aretino Industries, a pro-Republican group from Texas, ran an emotional ad modeled after Lyndon Johnson’s infamous 1964 commercial that showed a girl picking a daisy before the screen dissolved into a nuclear explosion.

Read on.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

A Cold Rain: Excerpt from 'Neck Deep'

By Robert, Sam and Nat Parry
November 13, 2007

The rain pelted down in icy-cold droplets, chilling both the protesters in soaked parkas and the well-dressed celebrants bent behind umbrellas to shield their furs and cashmere overcoats.

Drawn to this historic moment – a time of triumph for some and fury for others – the two opposing groups jostled and pushed their way through security checkpoints, joining the tens of thousands pressing against rows of riot police lining Pennsylvania Avenue.

Read on.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Robert Parry: Why We Write

By Robert Parry
November 13, 2007

After three decades as a Washington journalist, one lesson stands out almost above all others: false narratives get good people killed and, perhaps even worse, could sound the death knell for the great experiment known as the American Republic.

In trying to understand what’s gone wrong with the U.S. political system over those three decades, I have come to view the core problem as the use of mass media to inject Americans with a synthetic reality that misrepresents recent history, exaggerates external dangers and ridicules the few citizens who object.

Read on.

Six Years After 'Gore's Victory'

By Robert Parry
November 12, 2007

Editor’s Note: Six years ago on another Veterans Day holiday, eight news organizations published the findings of their unofficial recount of Florida’s disputed ballots. The recount had discovered that Al Gore would have won the decisive Florida election if all legally cast votes were counted.

However, just two months after the 9/11 attacks, the news organizations chose to conceal the obvious “Gore Won” lead, apparently putting their sense of “patriotism” over journalistic professionalism.

Read on.