Saturday, October 30, 2010

Iranian Students Ask About 1980

By Robert Parry
October 30, 2010

Eight days ago, a group of Iranian student activists asked me to respond to some questions about the October Surprise case, allegations that Ronald Reagan’s campaign in 1980 sabotaged President Jimmy Carter’s attempts to free 52 Americans then held hostage in Iran.

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Friday, October 29, 2010

Does Sanity Matter?

By Robert Parry
October 29, 2010

As satire has done through the ages, Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” has found a comedic way to focus national attention on a serious issue: Will the United States begin acting like a responsible force in the world or will it continue to wander off into its own ghastly dreamscape?

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Thursday, October 28, 2010

Did Rove's Protege Puff-up Resume?

By Richard L. Fricker
October 28, 2010 (Originally posted April 3, 2007)

Little Rock’s interim U.S. Attorney J. Timothy Griffin – already at the center of a firestorm over whether the White House has put politics ahead of prosecutorial integrity – made claims about his experience as an Army lawyer that have been put in doubt by military records.

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WPost's Blinders on Afghan War

By Robert Parry
October 28, 2010

Sometimes when perusing the Washington Post’s editorials, you have to wonder if the editors read their own newspaper’s reporting or perhaps they just look at what reinforces their preconceived opinions – as just occurred regarding Afghan War progress.

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Explaining US Military's Cultural Divide

By Paul R. Pillar
October 28, 2010

An op-ed by Diane Mazur, a law professor at the University of Florida, addresses an infrequently discussed aspect of civil-military relations in the United States: the status of Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) programs, which are missing from a good many elite colleges and universities in the Northeast, and specifically in the Ivy League.

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How Wall Street Plans to Party On

By Michael Winship
October 27, 2010

I attended a screening this week of Alex Gibney’s new documentary, Client 9. It’s the story of the rise and fall of New York State Gov. Eliot Spitzer, brought down by imperial hubris and a reckless penchant for ladies of the evening.

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Tuesday, October 26, 2010

WPost Downplays Iraq War Crimes

By Robert Parry
October 26, 2010

The judges at Nuremberg after World War II had a much deeper understanding of the horrors of war than the neocon editors at the Washington Post do. Assessing the barbarity unleashed by the Nazis, the Nuremberg Tribunal identified “war of aggression” as “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

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Creating a Lawless Executive Branch

By Lawrence Davidson
October 26, 2010

One of the cases the U.S. Supreme Court will take up in its 2011 session is Ashcroft vs. al-Kidd, in which President George W. Bush’s first Attorney General, John Ashcroft, insists that he should have legal immunity for his acts while in office, including the use of material witness warrants to detain Muslims during Bush’s “war on terror.”

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The US Empire's Halloween Frights

By Phil Rockstroh
October 26, 2010

Because, at this time of the year, we take pleasure in being frightened, let's shuffle through the U.S. Empire's House of Horrors.

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Monday, October 25, 2010

ADL Sidles Up to Anti-Muslim Bigots

By Morgan Strong
October 25, 2010

For decades, the Anti-Defamation League was a respected voice against anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry. However, over the past several decades, especially under the leadership of Abraham Foxman, the ADL has transformed itself into an advocacy group on behalf of Israeli government policies, even feeding anti-Islamic prejudices.

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Undercounting the Iraq War Dead

By Nicolas J S Davies
October 25, 2010

The documents on the U.S. War in Iraq published by WikiLeaks contained data on 15,000 Iraqis killed in incidents that were previously unreported in the Western media or by the Iraqi Health Ministry, and therefore not counted in compilations of reported Iraqi war deaths by Iraqbodycount.org.

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Sunday, October 24, 2010

Records Cast Doubt on Iraq 'Surge'

By Robert Parry
October 24, 2010

Besides offering new details about the horrors that George W. Bush’s invasion unleashed on Iraq – where a severed head could be casually tossed into a busy intersection – the nearly 400,000 pages of secret U.S. military records released by WikiLeaks show that a variety of factors beyond Bush’s much-touted “surge” in 2007 contributed to the gradual drop in violence.

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WikiLeaks and Assange Honored

From Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence
October 24, 2010

It seems altogether fitting and proper that this year’s award be presented in London, where Edmund Burke coined the expression “Fourth Estate.” Comparing the function of the press to that of the three Houses then in Parliament, Burke said:

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