Friday, June 26, 2009

Dissent as 'Low-Level Terrorism'

By Emily Spence
June 26, 2009

Recently, an American Civil Liberties Union report pointed out, "Anti-terrorism training materials currently being used by the Department of Defense (DoD) teach its personnel that free expression in the form of public protests should be regarded as ‘low level terrorism’.”

Read on.

Who to Trust on a Truth Commission?

By Robert Parry
June 26, 2009

While a truth commission to examine the crimes of the Bush administration has a certain appeal – especially if there’s not going to be a tough special prosecutor bringing criminal charges – there still would be the issue of who could fill the job of getting at the truth.

Read on.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

False Health-Scare Ad on CNN

By Robert Parry
June 25, 2009

A right-wing group called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights is airing a political attack ad against the idea of a public option for health insurance by turning upside down an analysis showing that 119 million Americans would jump from their private health insurer to a government plan if one existed.

Read on.

Treading Softly with the CIA's PanettaT

By Melvin A. Goodman
June 25, 2009

For the past several years, we have been indebted to tough-minded reporters such as Jane Mayer, whose articles in the New Yorker and her excellent book The Dark Side have provided us with the necessary details of the transgressions of the Bush administration and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Read on.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Divided Iran & the 'October Surprise'

By Robert Parry
June 24, 2009

Iran’s current political divisions can be traced back to a controversy nearly three decades ago when Iran faced war with Iraq and became entwined with U.S. and Israeli political maneuvers that set all three countries on a dangerous course that continues to this day.

Read on.

El Salvador: Ghosts at the Polls

By Don North
June 24, 2009

“If they kill me, I shall arise again in the Salvadoran people,” said Archbishop Oscar Romero 29 years ago, just two weeks before he was gunned down by a sniper while saying mass.

Read on.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Pushing Obama to Confront Iran

By Ivan Eland
June 22, 2009

When massive turmoil occurs in an important country, U.S. policymakers struggle to make heads or tails of it and arrive at an appropriate reaction. Kibitzers and pundits, however, have no trouble reaching immediate and sweeping conclusions and egging on the policymakers to further their own agendas.

Read on.

Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex

By Robert Parry
June 22, 2009

The usual knock on government programs is that they’re not as efficient as the private sector, which we’re told can provide the same product for less money and with higher quality. Thus, it should be no big deal when the public and private collide because the private sector should prevail.

Read on.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Obama Opposes Plame-gate Release

By Jason Leopold
June 20, 2009

In another case of protecting Bush administration secrets, Barack Obama’s Justice Department is opposing the release of a transcript of Vice President Dick Cheney explaining his role in blowing the cover of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson in 2003 while the White House was seeking to discredit her husband, a critic of the Iraq invasion.

Read on.

Should the Airbus Be Grounded?

By William John Cox
June 20, 2009

Since entering service in 1974 with many technological innovations, such as computerized fly-by-wire control systems, user-friendly cockpits and extended use of composite materials, 5,717 aircraft have been manufactured by Airbus, an European aerospace company. More than 5,100 Airbuses remain in service.

Read on.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Ray McGovern on Illness and Health

By Ray McGovern
June 18, 2009

At first I thought the BEFORE picture of the arteries around my heart may have been doctored. There it was big as life...or imminent death — the circumflex artery was 90 to 99 percent blocked.

Read on.

Taking Sides in Iran

By Robert Parry
June 18, 2009

There are lots of good reasons for wishing that the bombastic Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be toppled by the political struggle playing out on the streets of Tehran, but there is still that troubling question of whether he actually won the election.

Read on.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

CIA Secret File Tests Obama's Pledge

By Jason Leopold
June 18, 2009

President Barack Obama’s promise of a more open government faces a new test this week as his administration weighs whether to release details of a May 2004 internal CIA report about the agency’s use of torture, including how at least three detainees were killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Read on.

Flawed Elections: US and Iran

By Lisa Pease
June 17, 2009

The Right has been bashing President Obama for not calling the Iranian elections a fraud. Perhaps Obama understands that you can’t tell someone to fix a problem you haven’t first fixed in your own house.

Read on.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Rev. Moon, North Korea & the Bushes

By Robert Parry
June 16, 2009 (Originally posted Oct. 11, 2000)

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon's business empire, which includes the conservative Washington Times, paid millions of dollars to North Korea's communist leaders in the early 1990s when the hard-line government needed foreign currency to finance its weapons programs, according to U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency documents.

Read on.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Taking a Rational Look at Iran

By Ivan Eland
June 15, 2009

One election in Iran will not significantly change U.S.-Iran relations — only a change in U.S. thinking and policy will do so.

Read on.

What If Ahmadinejad Really Won?

By Robert Parry
June 15, 2009

It’s fast congealing into conventional wisdom that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole re-election through fraud and that the so-called “green revolution” of Mir-Hossein Mousavi – which was based in the country’s intelligentsia and middle class – got robbed.

Read on.

Extremism and Suffering Children

By William John Cox
June 15, 2009

What does a shootout at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., the confessions of a Khmer Rouge jailer and the murder of a Kansas medical doctor have in common? The answer is “children,” and how they suffer from being targeted and used by extremists to advance their own hateful agendas.

Read on.

Excusing Outrages of the Right

By Robert Parry
June 15, 2009

Part of America’s ongoing political crisis is that Official Washington remains cowed by the angry Right, even as it engages in subtle and not-so-subtle appeals to bigotry and invitations to violence. As the outrages mount, most of the national press corps prefers to look the other way, a pattern that now stretches back many years.

Read on.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

'Emergent Church' v. Fundamentalism

By the Rev. Howard Bess
June 13, 2009

Three weeks ago I wrote a column about the emergent churches in America. I wrote the column as a report, not as an opinion. I credited Professor Scott McKnight of North Park University in Chicago and cited his eight characteristics of the emergent church.

Read on.