Norman Solomon

With Ariel Sharon out of the picture, Benjamin Netanyahu has a better chance to become prime minister of Israel.

Despite all the news accounts and punditry since the New York Times published its Dec. 16 bombshell about the National Security Agency's domestic spying, the media coverage has made virtually no mention of the fact that the Bush administration used the NSA to spy on U.N.

Iran's hardliners are benefitting greatly from another set of true believers: the Bush Administration's neocons.

How the major media outlets choose to handle the current explosive scandal in the months ahead will have enormous impacts on the trajectory of American politics.

When the Bush administration fires off a new round of speechifying about "the war on terror," the U.S. press rarely goes beyond the surface meanings of rhetoric provided by White House scriptwriters.

Often discussed by news media, the "Vietnam syndrome" usually has a negative connotation, implying knee-jerk opposition to military involvement. Yet public backing for a war has much to do with duration and justification.

"In fact," Didion contended, "it was in the reflexive repetition of the word 'hero' that we began to hear what would become in the year that followed an entrenched preference for ignoring the meaning of the event in favor of an impenetrably flattening celebration of its victims, and a troublingly be

Calls for firing Michael Brown are understandable. Aptly described as "the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA" by columnist Maureen Dowd a few days ago, he's an easy and appropriate target.

The men and women of the National Guard shouldn't be killing in Iraq. They should be helping in New Orleans and Biloxi.

Mid-August 2005 may be remembered as a moment in US history when the president could no longer get away with the media trick of solemnly patting death on its head.

On Tuesday, big alarm bells went off in the national media echo chamber, and major U.S. news outlets showed that they knew the drill. Iran's nuclear activities were pernicious, most of all, because people in high places in Washington said so.

The acclaimed New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has often voiced enthusiasm for violent destruction by the U.S. government. Hidden in plain sight, his glee about such carnage is worth pondering.

n front of TV cameras, Pentagon officials do their best to make war sound wise and noble. Most of all, they lie.

Washington keeps condemning Iran's government and making thinly veiled threats. But in Iran, many people are in the midst of challenging the country's rulers, in the streets and at the ballot box.

Iran's most repressive clerics and the USA's most militaristic neocons share a common interest: They're very eager to see the failure of Iranian activism for democracy and human rights.

On February 27, 1968, I sat in a small room on Capitol Hill. Around a long table, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was in session, taking testimony from an administration official. Most of all, I remember a man with a push-broom moustache and a voice like sandpaper, raspy and urgent.

If you think President Bush should be impeached, it's time to get serious. We're facing huge obstacles -- and they have nothing to do with legal standards for impeachment. This is all about media and politics.

The recent decision by General Motors to pull its advertising from the Los Angeles Times has not gone over very well.

Top officials in Washington are now promoting jitters about Iran's nuclear activities, while media outlets amplify the message. A confrontation with Tehran is on the second-term Bush agenda. So, we're encouraged to obliquely think about the unthinkable.

No, hope does not gallop in like Paul Revere. And it certainly doesn't arrive breathless from a corporate party convention.

Few Americans have heard of Katharine Gun, a former British intelligence employee facing charges that she violated the Official Secrets Act.

No doubt Lenny Bruce would have laughed with at least a tinge of bitterness if -- like millions of Americans -- he picked up a newspaper the day before Christmas 2003 and read that he'd been "pardoned" by the governor of New York for an obscenity conviction.

The P.U.-litzer Prizes were established more than a decade ago to give recognition to the stinkiest media performances of the year.

Media outlets are the lifeblood of the body politic.

It's impossible to adequately sum up any year, and 2002 is probably more difficult than most to grasp.

There's something pathetic -- and dangerous -- about the crush of liberal commentators now pinning their hopes on Colin Powell.

Some people are suspicious that President Bush will go for a "wag the dog" strategy -- boosting Republican prospects with a military assault on Iraq shortly before Election Day. But a modified approach now seems to be underway. Let's call it "wag the puppy."

As we weigh an attack on Iraq, we need someone like the Vietnam era's Wayne Morse.

Three and a half years ago, some key information about U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq briefly surfaced on the front pages of American newspapers -- and promptly vanished.

The tone of news coverage shifted toward alarm. Meanwhile, atomic history remained largely sanitized, by Norman Solomon (Nükleer Silahlar ve Medyadaki Sis).