On the first day of March 2022, visitors to The New York Times homepage saw a headline across the top of their screens in huge capital letters: ROCKET BARRAGE KILLS CIVILIANS It was the kind of breaking-news banner headline that could have referred to countless US...
When Daniel Ellsberg died on Friday, the world lost a transcendent whistleblower with a powerful ethos of compassion and resolve. Ellsberg’s renown for openly challenging the mentalities of militarism began on June 23, 1971, when he appeared on CBS Evening News ten...
Twenty years ago, President George W. Bush landed in a twin-engine Navy jet on an aircraft carrier, strode across the deck in a bulky flight suit and proceeded to give a televised victory speech under a huge red-white-and-blue banner announcing "Mission...
In just a few words – "those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future" – George Orwell summed up why narratives about history can be crucial. And so, ever since the final helicopter liftoff from the U.S....
The announcement by Vladimir Putin over the weekend that Russia will deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus marked a further escalation of potentially cataclysmic tensions over the war in neighboring Ukraine. As the Associated Press reported, "Putin said the...
Vast quantities of lies from top US government officials led up to the Iraq invasion. Now, marking its 20th anniversary, the same media outlets that eagerly boosted those lies are offering retrospectives. Don’t expect them to shed light on the most difficult truths,...
This week, when the New York Times featured an opinion piece by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, it harmonized with a crescendo of other recent pleas from prominent American supporters of Israel. Bloomberg warned that Israel’s new governing coalition is trying to give...
Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago, media coverage of the war hasn’t included even the slightest mention of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Yet the war has boosted the chances that ICBMs will set off a global holocaust. Four hundred of them –...
This is an emergency. Right now, we’re closer to a cataclysmic nuclear war than at any other time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. One assessment after another has said the current situation is even more dangerous. Yet few members of Congress are advocating for...
The arrogance of power is especially ominous and despicable when a government leader risks huge numbers of lives in order to make a provocative move on the world’s geopolitical chessboard. Nancy Pelosi’s plan to visit Taiwan is in that category. Thanks to her, the...
