John Poindexter, Walter Raymond Jr. and Ronald Reagan. (Photo credit: Reagan presidential library) By Robert Parry | Consortium News | March 25, 2017 Newly declassified documents from the Reagan presidential library help explain how the U.S. government developed its sophisticated psychological operations capabilities that – over the past three decades – have created an alternative […]
Special Report: The mainstream U.S. media obsesses over Russian “propaganda” yet the U.S. government created a “psyops” bureaucracy three decades ago to flood the world with dubious information, reports Robert Parry. By Robert Parry Newly declassified documents from the Reagan…Read more →
From the Archive: David Rockefeller’s death at age 101 brought effusive eulogies, but no recollection of his mysterious role in the Iran hostage crisis of 1980, which helped sink President Carter’s reelection, writes Robert Parry. By Robert Parry (Originally published April…Read more →
Facing the Democratic “#Resistance,” President Trump has jumped into the arms of congressional Republicans and is following the old GOP pattern of tax cuts, military hikes and ballooning deficits, as Ivan Eland explains. By Ivan Eland The White House is…Read more →
In a Constitutionally classless society like the United States, intellectual snobbery/elitism is often the default form of pervasive bigotry that is allowed to permeate society. Other forms of monetary and racial discrimination are more noticed and consequently more frequently criticised.
From the Archive: President Trump hosts Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu this week with the new U.S. administration expected to fall in line as so many “out-foxed” predecessors have, as Morgan Strong described in 2010. By Morgan Strong (Originally published May…Read more →
One of my favourite American dissidents has always been and remains Frank Zappa. Zappa defies categorisation in terms of group allegiance, but as an individual, his views were remarkably coherent.
Zappa started his professional musical career in 1950s California, but before one thinks of a kind of proto-Beach Boy, Zappa’s California was the barren Mojave Desert (pre shopping mall days). He eventually made it to Los Angeles where he became to the hippy movement what Voltaire was to the French Enlightenment.
It is always amusing to see ideology blind people to reality.
A recent example of this has been the reaction of the British Parliamentary establishment and the UK mainstream media to Prime Minister Theresa May’s visit to Washington D.C. to meet with President Trump.
It seems that the old hands in Whitehall and Fleet Street think they can do something that thus far the Democratic Party, much of the Republican Party, the CIA, the NSA, the Pentagon, and China, have been unable to do, which is pressure Donald Trump to change his mind.
For years, American television gave the world a surprisingly profound insight into the culture and sociological nature of the US. The television of the 1950s and much of the 1960s portrayed a contented nation at the zenith of its domestic wealth (for the time and in many ways beyond).
This mirrored the confidence of a country whose consumer product boom and geo-politically assured position, created a sense of invincibility among much of the population. Though exaggerated at the time, with hindsight, it is not difficult to see why such a cultural attitude developed.
