After “six years” of being “the darling of the United States”, the “luster” of Afghan President Hamid Karzai “may be fading”, reports the New York Times, because of a “growing concern” that he “is not up to addressing Afghanistan’s many troubles.” “According to American and European diplomats, recent tension has…
When the International Atomic Energy Agency sent its follow-up report on the implementation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Safeguards Agreement in Iran to the United Nations Security Council on May 26, the response from the U.S. media was pretty much along predictable lines. The next day, The New York…
World leaders met at the U.N. this week to discuss the growing food crisis in which the cost of food around the globe continues to increase. Conclusions reached included that more food aid should be delivered to the hungry, small farmers should be provided with seeds and fertilizer, restrictions on…
Israel has yet again announced further plans to continue construction of settlements in the occupied territories, declaring its intentions to build 900 new homes in or near East Jerusalem. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas protested the announcement and continued illegal settlement activity, saying, “If Israel does not halt these activities, it…
The IAEA delivered a report to the UN earlier this week outlining remaining areas of concern with Iran’s nuclear program. The Western media has characterized this report as a damning criticism of Iran’s lack of cooperation and as presenting information supporting the US intelligence community’s assessment that Iran had an…
Pakistan is one of the most dangerous states in the world today, many observers have postulated, with the spread of militant Islamic radicalism threatening total destabilization in a nation armed with nuclear weapons. The US government has taken the position that it is better to support the dictatorship of Pervez…
There still remains some controversy over the real reasons the U.S. went to war in Iraq. The official reasons for the war, that Iraq had WMD and threatened to supply them to terrorist organizations, namely al-Qaeda, intent upon using them against the U.S., have long since proven to be false…
This month saw yet another escalation of the U.S. policy of isolating and pressuring Iran as the White House announced its intention to add Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. There is something to be learned from this about the nature of U.S. foreign policy…
There is a very narrow and rigidly defined framework within which discussion of U.S. policy towards Iran is confined in political discourse and mainstream media. This framework effectively precludes the possibility that there could be a change of foreign policy which would produce more positive results than the present status…
A recent op-ed in the Washington Post offers an instructive example of elite opinion towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the kind of logic, or lack thereof, which guides U.S. policy. Richard Cohen, in an article entitled, “They Honor Us With Their Hate”, begins by reminding his readers of news that…
Prior to the military invasion of Iraq in 2003, the government and media, for whatever various motives, had engaged in a propaganda campaign that effectively deceived the American people on a massive scale. The propaganda continues to this day, such as the implausible denial that there ever was such a…
It wasn’t too long ago, and one might still remember the propaganda campaign the U.S. government and media engaged in prior to the invasion of Iraq, in which misinformation bolstering administration claims was propagated while the facts, presenting a serious challenge to the official position, were systematically self-censored from the…
The US government has stepped up its rhetoric against Iran this week with a presentation held in Baghdad designed to support the claim that, as worded by President Bush last month, “Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops.”[1] US officials said that weapons were being smuggled into…
[Correction: I stated in the following article that "Uranium, of course, cannot be 'transformed' into plutonium." In fact, radioactive isotopes can decay into other elements, which is what occurs when uranium isotopes become plutonium. I regret the error.] Iran, an op-ed in the The New York Times reported yesterday, began…
The debate over what to do about the crisis in Iraq has, on one hand, those who argue for immediate withdrawal and, on the other, those who argue, justification (or lack thereof) of the initial invasion aside, that the US must remain lest the country descend further into chaos. Among…
There is no great lack of ignorance about the religion of Islam in the United States. In a recent New York Times editorial, entitled “Can You Tell a Sunni From a Shiite”, Jeff Stein relates having asked intelligence and law enforcement officials, as well as members of Congress, what the…
When asked what the U.S. response would be the news that North Korea has detonated a nuclear device, President George W. Bush said that he would not use force because “diplomacy hasn’t run its course,” thus implying that he believes that the use of force should be a last resort.…
Thirty years ago today, a bomb exploded on a Cubana Airlines plane over the Caribbean Sea, resulting in the death of all 73 passengers on board. The anniversary of this terrorist attack “coincides with a critical juncture in the case of Luis Posada Carriles,” the Washington Post explains. Posada is wanted…
In The Washington Post’s October 2 article, “Iraq War Naysayers May Have Hindsight Bias,” author Shankar Vedantum asserts that “it isn’t quite true” that “we saw the disaster coming” in Iraq, with the “disaster” being a reference to the National Intelligence Estimate conclusion “that the war in Iraq was creating…
U.S. intelligence analysts, in a recent National Intelligence Estimate, have once again reiterated that “The war in Iraq has become a primary recruitment vehicle for violent Islamic extremists, motivating a new generation of potential terrorists around the world whose numbers may be increasing faster than the United States and its…
Jeremy R. Hammond is an independent political analyst and a recipient of the Project Censored Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism. He is the founding editor of Foreign Policy Journal (www.foreignpolicyjournal.com) and can also be found on the web at JeremyRHammond.com. His new book, "Ron Paul vs. Paul Krugman: Austrian vs. Keynesian economics in the financial crisis", is now available at Amazon.com.
Recent Comments