On his way to confirmation as U.S. ambassador to Iraq, the current U.N. envoy John Negroponte was busily twisting language like a pretzel at a Senate hearing the other day. The new Baghdad regime, to be installed on June 30, will have sovereignty. Well, sort of....
Country Joe Band, 2004: ‘Uncle Sam Needs Your Help Again’
Taking the stage at a community center in the small Northern California town of Bolinas, a group of four musicians quickly showed themselves to be returning as a vibrant creative force centered very much in the present. Not that the music of Country Joe and the Fish...
How the “NewsHour” Changed History
When the anchor of public television's main news program goes out of his way to tell viewers that he's setting the record straight about a recent historic event, the people watching are apt to assume that they're getting accurate information. But with war intensifying...
The Quest for a Monopoly on Violence
With warfare escalating in Iraq, syndicated columnist George Will has just explained the logic of the occupation. "In the war against the militias," he wrote, "every door American troops crash through, every civilian bystander shot there will be...
The Media Politics of 9/11
For 30 months, 9/11 was a huge political blessing for George W. Bush. This week, the media halo fell off. Within the space of a few days, culminating with his testimony to the Sept. 11 commission Wednesday afternoon, former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke did...
Spinning the Past, Threatening the Future
Political aphorisms don't get any more cogent: "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." George Orwell's famous observation goes a long way toward explaining why a full year after the invasion of Iraq...
They Shoot Journalists, Don’t They?
To encourage restraint in war coverage, governments don't need to shoot journalists though sometimes that's helpful. Thirteen journalists were killed while covering the war and occupation in Iraq last year, says a new report by the Committee to Protect...
UN Spying and Evasions of American Journalism
Tony Blair and George W. Bush want the issue of spying at the United Nations to go away. That's one of the reasons the Blair government ended its prosecution of whistleblower Katharine Gun on Wednesday. But within 24 hours, the scandal of U.N. spying exploded further...
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
Ninety-five days before the invasion of Iraq began, I sat in the ornate Baghdad office of the deputy prime minister as he talked about the U.N. weapons inspectors in his country. "They are doing their jobs freely, without any interruption," Tariq Aziz said....
Linking the Occupation of Iraq With the ‘War on Terrorism’
Reuters is one of the more independent wire services. So, a recent news story from Reuters flatly describing American military activities in Iraq as part of "the broader U.S. war on terrorism" is a barometer of how powerfully the pressure...


