Articles

BY RAMZY BAROUD Photo by Nijwam Swargiary The phrase ‘fake news’ continues to be deployed routinely in US politics. In a polarized political atmosphere, both Republicans and Democrats distrust media organizations affiliated with opposing parties. This means that most of what is uttered or written by CNN is ‘fake news’ for Republicans, and much of what appears in Republicans-affiliated media is ‘fake news’ for Democrats. The phrase is now so prevalent and has multiple meanings to the point that it is impossible to agree on a common definition. Even ‘fact checking’ organizations or news desks contribute to the troubling phenomenon of ‘fake news’ by selectively fact-checking news and information affiliated with one side of the political aisle, while ignoring the other. S...

BY ASHLEY SMITH Image by BP Miller. On Tuesday, the U.S. right suffered three major defeats. Trump was indicted on 34 felony counts in Manhattan. Union-backed liberal Brandon Johnson came seemingly out of nowhere to narrowly win over Republican-in-Democratic-Party-Robes Paul Vallas (51% to 49%) in Chicago’s mayoral election. And liberal judge Janet Protasiewicz trounced Daniel Kelly by 11 percentage points ensuring a Democrat majority on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. The results are, of course, welcome news. But no one should be naive about their impact. First, Trump’s indictment and the far more serious charges expected in Georgia will not stop the rise of the right in this country. Its roots are far deeper than Trump; they are in the pro...

BY LINDA PENTZ GUNTER Photograph Source: The U.S. Government – Public Domain Arguments around nuclear deterrence can become quickly convoluted. But the basic premise, according to those who advocate it, is that we are safer with nuclear weapons than without them. The possession of nuclear weapons by the world’s major powers, they say, has kept the peace. The lethality of nuclear weapons is such that they will inevitably never be used, thus preventing nuclear war, the argument goes. To the rational ear this sounds breathtakingly illogical. But try tangling with the deterrence crowd and both sides will quickly find themselves tied up in a semantic knot of double and triple negatives. However, it’s all really quite simple, or it seems so when listening to Austrian diplomat Al...

BY ANTHONY DIMAGGIO Photograph Source: Robert F. W. Whitlock – CC BY 2.0 It borders on cliché the number of times historians lament how “fascism” is an over-used term. But Sinclair Lewis, writing about the specter of fascism a century ago, understood something most historians don’t – that U.S. intellectual culture is loathe to acknowledge fascist undercurrents in this country. I attribute this hostility to intellectuals’ belief that their nation is an exceptionalist democracy – hence fascism “can’t happen here.” Historian Bruce Kuklick’s Fascism Comes to America is a great example of an academic bemoaning the abuse of “fascism” in U.S. discourse, despite the book refusing to engage with evidence that suggests the opposite. One should read this review, not so mu...

BY RON JACOBS FacebookTwitterRedditEmail It wasn’t on quite the same level as the joy I experienced when Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency in 1974, but I do admit a gleeful grin broke out on my face when I heard Donald Trump had finally been indicted for something and would be arraigned in the coming week. How could anyone but the man’s disciples do anything else but be just a little bit happy? It’s not like I think he’ll face a day in prison. Hell, he might even be able to beat the charges. If not, I figure that his lawyers will work out a deal where he walks away, his bank accounts still intact and his ego still overblown. The courts are, after all, designed to let criminals with Trump’s clout walk free. Still, it was fucking gratifying to see the headline in the...

BY ROGER MCKENZIE Photo by Joel Rivera-Camacho Imagine the uproar if China or Russia—or any other country for that matter—said it aimed to exercise military control over land, sea, air, and space to protect its interests and investments. This amazingly has been the stated United States policy since 1997. Full spectrum dominance, as the doctrine is known, is the reason the United States behaves the way that it does on the international stage. The United States demands that the world bow down to its leadership. A failure to do so is met with the full force of the international military-industrial complex controlled by the Americans. Enforcement has included everything from the funding of opposition forces in sovereign nations, the removal or even assassination of ...

BY MELVIN GOODMAN Photograph Source: Michael Fleischhacker – Public Domain Throughout the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union used covert methods of political intervention and conflict, and pursued proxy wars, election interference, and disinformation campaigns to advance their interests.  Both powers relied on disinformation as a core tactic throughout the Cold War and the subsequent decades, competing in an arms race of fictions to cultivate ideological support internationally and domestically. Last week, an unusually long editorial in the Washington Post documented Soviet efforts to use disinformation against the United States without ever mentioning the activities of the United States and the Central Intelligence Agency to blacken the image of ...