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In the discussions about Iran among the leaders in the "international community," their expressed dire fears about Iran and its nuclear program never cause them to raise any questions about Israel’s nuclear program, even though it is well known that Israel not only has a "program" but has several hundred nuclear weapons, built in Read more…
It was interesting to see the New York Times editorialize against the growing role of money in elections, pointing to “the sheer volume of money it [the current election campaign] is generating,” and the “ludicrously premature handicapping of the race based on the ability to raise cash” (ed., “Running for Dollars,” April 5, 2007). The Read more…
Imagine that when Hitler was threatening to invade Poland, after having swallowed Czechoslovakia-with the help of the Western European powers’ appeasement of Hitler at Munich in September 1938-the League of Nations imposed an arms embargo on Poland, making it more difficult for the imminent victim to defend itself, and at the same time suggested Read more…
It was claimed early in 2005 that the United States was considering resort to what has been called the “Salvadoran Option” in Iraq, in which, as had been done in El Salvador in the 1980s, U.S. Special Forces would train paramilitary squads to hunt down and assassinate rebel leaders and their supporters. [1] A year Read more…
Bruce Ackerman and Todd Gitlin (A-G) have replied to Tony Judt’s “Bush’s Useful Idiots…The Strange Death of Liberal America” (London Review of Books, September 21, 2006) (1), in a piece entitled “We Answer to the Name of Liberals” (American Prospect, Web Exclusive, October 18, 2006) (2). Many liberal signatories have added their names to this Read more…
What in particular elicited this reply was Judt’s statement that liberals have “acquiesced in President Bush’s catastrophic foreign policy,” which A-G say is as nonsensical as the rightwing claim that liberals are “stooges for Osama bin Laden.” Contrary to Judt, claim A-G, “most” liberals have “stayed the course…[and] consistently and publicly repudiated the ruinous policies Read more…
What in particular elicited this reply was Judt’s statement that liberals have "acquiesced in President Bush’s catastrophic foreign policy," which A-G say is as nonsensical as the rightwing claim that liberals are "stooges for Osama bin Laden." Contrary to Judt, claim A-G, "most" liberals have "stayed the course…[and] consistently and publicly repudiated the ruinous policies Read more…
Bruce Ackerman and Todd Gitlin (A-G) have replied to Tony Judt’s “Bush’s Useful Idiots…The Strange Death of Liberal America” (London Review of Books, September 21, 2006) (1), in a piece entitled “We Answer to the Name of Liberals” (American Prospect, Web Exclusive, October 18, 2006) (2). Many liberal signatories have added their names to this Read more…
The mainstream media have long had a high gullibility quotient when it comes to dealing with demonized external threats, which makes it easy to manage them and guide them into propaganda service. In the case of the ludicrous Guatemalan security threat of 1953-54, the publisher of the New York Times was persuaded by a United Read more…
The Bush rationale for the invasion-occupation of Iraq was the threat to U.S. national security posed by Saddam Hussein’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda. Saddam’s brutal rule was sometimes mentioned in the course of pre-invasion demonization, but liberation and democratization were barely detectable as second or third order Read more…