A recent video portrays real-life clashes between demonstrators and counter-demonstrators at events in California. As demonstrators yelled, damaged and stole signs and banners, and chased one another, it all seemed somewhat absurd. But it also showed the sincerity of people, willing to stand outside in the extremely hot weather in...
Whether One Agrees or Disagrees With Aspects of His Outlook, the Media is Clearly Slanted Against Him In January 1967, the CIA sent a memo (marked “SECRET,” “RESTRICTED,” and “DESTROY WHEN NO LONGER NEEDED”) to its army of media “assets” secretly embedded in virtually every area of U.S. communications. This...

Hope and Resolve

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In chaotic times like ours, it behooves us to practice proactive optimism, which is far more than infantile hope or pious faith. Conscious, vigorous optimism is visionary and builds on our awareness of our human identity and dignity. It expresses our faith in humanity, our resolve to be morally and...
Even when the U.S. and Israel fired missiles and dropped bombs on the home of Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his wife and other members of his family, killing more than 40 members of the leadership of Iran, senior Iranian officials had maintained that Iran would never develop...
The mandate to end war in Ukraine is written clearly and decisively in our founding document, the Constitution of the United States. Article IV, Section 4 requires that “The United States…shall protect each of them against invasion.” Fomenting war in Ukraine runs counter to that mandated obligation. In fact,...
On January 29th, The Washington Post published an op-ed by the well-known Yale historian Timothy Snyder, titled “Putin’s case for invading Ukraine rests on phony grievances and ancient myths.” In a key passage, the article reads: Last July, Vladimir Putin supplied the mythical basis for Russian war propaganda in an essay titled “On the Historical Unity...
History as usual provides a cautionary lesson On August 8, 1974, Richard M. Nixon resigned from the presidency in disgrace with impeachment proceedings underway against him for the Watergate affair in which five men from his presidential election reelection committee were caught trying to break into and undertake illegal wiretapping...
I’ve been doing a lot of research lately for a new book I’m writing that has nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence or the CIA, and I stumbled upon the biography of Frank Mankiewicz, the former Robert F. Kennedy speechwriter, who apparently had been a “secret backchannel” between President...
Yellow Journalism of the Hearst Era Is Alive and Well in the 21st Century There is a wise old maxim that says, “The first step on the road to wisdom is to call things by their right names.” So, let’s do that. "Fake News" has been around a long while: The...
On December 8th the Green’s nine-member Steering Committee, its administrative arm, released a press statement in support of mandatory Covid-19 jabs. In one fell swoop, it rebranded and denigrated the Greens to just another captive corporate political party that echoes the pharmaceutical industry’s narrative “your body, my choice”. However, there...