-
1 week ago | 
counterpunch.org | Melvin A. Goodman
“The whole world has decided that the U.S. government has no idea what it’s doing.”– Mark Blyth, “Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers,” (New York Times, April 14, 2025.)Professor Mark Blyth’s remarks were aimed at the Trump administration’s creation of turmoil in the world’s financial markets due to its completely inept handling of the bond markets and the start of a trade war with China.
-
2 weeks ago | 
counterpunch.org | Melvin A. Goodman
For the past 80 years, the United States and Israeli air power have owned the global and Middle Eastern skies, respectively, but wars are typically won with ground power, not air power. World War II was won against Germany with ground power, particularly Soviet ground power, and the United States hasn’t been on a winning side since, with the exception of the war with Iraq in 1991 (Desert Storm).
-
2 weeks ago | 
counterpunch.org | Melvin A. Goodman
Massachuset’s Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira and Secretary of Defense PeteHegsmeth have little in common. Teixeira is serving a 15-year sentence for leaking Pentagon documents on an unclassified web site called 4chan and on Twitter and Telegram.
-
3 weeks ago | 
counterpunch.org | Melvin A. Goodman
For the past 20 years, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius has been the mainstream media’s leading apologist for the Central Intelligence Agency, and his latest editorial essay (“Intelligence analysts are still doing their job”) indicates he is loathe to yield his title.
-
3 weeks ago | 
johnmenadue.com | Melvin A. Goodman
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana, 1905. In the summer of 1968, I was assigned to the Central Intelligence Agencys task force on the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The task force met around the clock in the CIA operations center, which was outfitted with myriad television screens. Most of these screens were showing the Soviet invasion.
-
4 weeks ago | 
counterpunch.org | Melvin A. Goodman
We know that Donald Trump is not fit to be sitting in the White House. He is a dangerously disordered president, and we have observed enough aberrant behavior to fill a psychiatric text book. We know from his exchanges with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that he has been quick to brandish his “bigger (nuclear) button” that has the unilateral power to kill us all.
-
1 month ago | 
counterpunch.org | Melvin A. Goodman
Last week, the Washington Post audaciously posted a lead editorial that warned about “A threat to First Amendment Rights.” For the past six months, the Post has been conducting its own assault on the First Amendment, despite a daily masthead that proclaims “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Jeff Bezos, the Post’s owner has censored editorials and even an editorial cartoon. As a result, the cartoonist and several prominent editorial writers have resigned from the paper.
-
1 month ago | 
counterpunch.org | Melvin A. Goodman
“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”—Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher. “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost. There are rights which it is useless to surrender to the government, and which yet, governments have always been fond to invade.
-
1 month ago | 
counterpunch.org | Melvin A. Goodman
On March 3, only three days after the mugging of Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, two foreign policy specialists blamed Zelensky for the confrontation and praised Trump for “restoring” diplomacy. The two specialists are very different individuals in terms of politics and ideology. One was Washington Post editorial writer Marc Thiessen, a right-wing ideologue, who is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a Fox News contributor.
-
1 month ago | 
counterpunch.org | Melvin A. Goodman
“It was a sickening spectacle: the man who tried to upend democracy bullying the man who is fighting for democracy. – Maureen Dowd, “Trump is Rootin’ for Putin,” The New York Times, March 2, 2025.)“Trump barked at Zelensky: You’ve got to be more thankful because…you don’t have the cards. With us, you have the cards, but without us, you don’t have any cards. Pretty rich for a draft dodger to lecture a man whose name has become synonymous with wartime bravery.”–Dowd, March 2, 2025.
