Zen wisdom tells us that the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. Yet it’s easy to fall into the illusion that when we see news about the Gaza war, we’re really seeing the war. We are not. What we do routinely see is reporting that’s as different from the...
What Daniel Ellsberg Knew About Doomsday
In my childhood, we at least acknowledged the ominous existence of nuclear weapons, no matter how weirdly. I’m thinking about those times we kids spent at school “ducking and covering” under our desks, practicing for… yes, the atomic annihilation of New York City by...
How the US Has Darkened the Nuclear Cloud Over Humanity
This article was originally published by The Nation. Forty years ago, across a dozen pages of The Nation magazine, I was in a debate with the English historian E. P. Thompson about the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race, the relative culpability of both governments, and...
For Media Elites, War Criminal Henry Kissinger Was a Great Man
For U.S. mass media, Henry Kissinger’s quip that “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac” rang true. Influential reporters and pundits often expressed their love for him. The media establishment kept swooning over one of the worst war criminals in modern history. After...
Israel’s Military Is Part of the US War Machine
The governments of Israel and the United States are now in disagreement over how many Palestinian civilians it’s okay to kill. Last week – as the death toll from massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza neared 10,000 people, including several thousand children – top U.S....
Biden Is a Genocide Denier and the ‘Enabler in Chief’ for Israel’s Ongoing War Crimes
For three weeks, President Biden has played a key role in backing Israel’s war crimes while touting himself as a compassionate advocate of restraint. That pretense is lethal nonsense as Israel persists with mass killing of civilians in Gaza. The same crucial standards...
Hamas Is a Terrorist Organization. So Is the Israeli Government.
Labels are central to the politics of media. And no label has been more powerful than “terrorist.” A single standard of language should accompany a consistent standard of human rights, which the world desperately needs. “If thought corrupts language,” George Orwell...
‘Israel’s 9/11’ Is a Slogan to Rationalize Open-Ended Killing of Palestinian Civilians
When Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations spoke outside the Security Council on Sunday, he said: “This is Israel’s 9/11. This is Israel’s 9/11.” Meanwhile, in a PBS NewsHour interview, Israel’s ambassador to the United States said: “This is, as someone said, our...
Biden Is the Latest President To Tout the Vietnam War as Proud History
When Joe Biden flew out of Hanoi last week, he was leaving a country where U.S. warfare caused roughly 3.8 million Vietnamese deaths. But, like every other president since the Vietnam War, he gave no sign of remorse. In fact, Biden led up to his visit by presiding...
How 9/11 Bred a ‘War on Terror’ From Hell
On September 11th, 22 years later, what are we to make of it all? Who even remembers that, as the Pentagon burned, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld picked up a scrap of hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 from the smoking ruins of that building. Soon after,...