Gareth Porter

For weeks, the corporate media have been saying that the Trump-Kim summit could have only two possible results: Either Trump will walk away angrily or Kim Jong Un will trick him into a deal in which he extracts concessions from Trump but never commits to complete denuclearization. The idea that North Korea could not possibly … Continue reading “How Corporate Media Got the Trump-Kim Summit All Wrong”

In an interview with Fox News on April 29, Donald Trump’s new National Security Adviser John Bolton tossed a grenade into the process of planning for the Trump-Kim summit. “We have very much in mind the Libyan model from 2003-2004,” he said in regard to the problem of North Korean denuclearization. It was a very … Continue reading “How Corporate Media Are Undermining a US-North Korea Nuclear Weapons Deal”

Now that the Trump administration has derailed the Iran nuclear deal, the old issue of regime change in Iran is back again. National Security Adviser John Bolton is obviously the chief regime-change advocate in the administration, and there is every reason to believe he has begun to push that policy with Donald Trump in his … Continue reading “Back to the Future? Bolton, Trump, and Iranian Regime Change”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim in his theatrical 20-minute presentation of an Israeli physical seizure of Iran’s “atomic archive” in Tehran would certainly have been the “great intelligence achievement” he boasted if it had actually happened. But the claim does not hold up under careful scrutiny, and his assertion that Israel now possesses a … Continue reading “The Latest Act in Israel’s Iran Nuclear Disinformation Campaign”

The still-unscheduled Donald Trump-Kim Jong Un summit offers the opportunity for a denuclearization deal that would avoid a possible nuclear war, but that potential deal remains vulnerable to a hostile corporate media sector and political elites in the United States. At the center of this hostility is national security adviser John Bolton, who’s not just … Continue reading “Did John Bolton Leak Intelligence To Sabotage a Trump-Kim Deal?”

The British government shared what was supposedly a dossier containing sensitive intelligence to convince allies and EU member states to support its accusation of Russian culpability in the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, England on March 4. But like the infamous 2003 “dodgy dossier” prepared at the direction of Prime Minister Tony … Continue reading “Another Dodgy British Dossier: The Skripal Case”

For weeks, British Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson have insisted that there is “no alternative explanation” to Russian government responsibility for the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury last month. But in fact the British government is well aware that such an alternative explanation … Continue reading “An Alternative Explanation to the Skripal Mystery”

The Vietnam War: An Intimate History by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns (Knopf, 2017; 640 pages) The companion coffee-table book to the 10-part PBS series by Ken Burns, The Vietnam War, is so closely tied to the series that it’s left ambiguous whether Ken Burns himself is the co-author or not. Burns is shown … Continue reading “What Ken Burns Left Out of the Vietnam Story”

Fifty years ago this month, on March 16, 1968, two companies of US Army troops belonging to the Americal Division entered the My Lai and My Khe hamlets of Son My village, in Quang Ngai province, and killed 504 Vietnamese civilians – overwhelmingly women, children, and old men – in cold blood. The national press … Continue reading “The Untold Story of My Lai: How and Why the Official Investigation Covered Up General Westmoreland’s Responsibility”

Media coverage of and political reactions to Donald Trump’s announcement of a summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have been based on the assumption that it cannot succeed, because Kim will reject the idea of denuclearization. But the full report by South Korean president Moon Jae-in’s national security adviser on the meeting … Continue reading “South Korean Report on Summit Discredits US Elites’ Assumption”