It is now five years since Emmanuel Macron, in one of those blunt outbursts for which he is known, told The Economist, in a reference to the collective West, “What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO.� The French president thereupon shocked officials across the Continent. “That is not my point of... Read More

In the seventh episode of “Playing President,� Ray McGovern, 27-year CIA veteran and briefer of five presidents, continues to make sense of the world to “President� Scheer, who prepared for this role through his decades as a journalist, including in-depth interviews with five presidents from Nixon to Clinton. This week, McGovern briefs the president on... Read More

The 27-year CIA veteran who counseled seven presidents reenacts his role in the current Theatre of the Absurd. Ray McGovern once again joins host Robert Scheer for a “theatrical� episode of Scheer Intelligence. Scheer plays a stern and uncompromising president receiving an uncomfortable briefing from McGovern on the most pressing issues of the day, from... Read More

I just read a most remarkable piece in The Seattle Times—remarkable for its bluntly nihilistic candor. The headline atop Ron Judd’s August 2021 essay for The Times’s Pacific NW Magazine gives a good idea of the writer’s point: “The decline of American civilization.� And the subhead: “There’s more bad TV than ever; it’s available everywhere;... Read More

In May 2013 I resigned from PEN America over the appointment of former State Department official Suzanne Nossel. A decade later, PEN America has become a propaganda arm of the state. PEN America, once an important defender of rights for writers, editors and artists, has, under the direction of former State Department official Suzanne Nossel,... Read More

As I was saying to Diocletian over Prosecco just last week, it is hard to run an empire these days. You have to lie to people more or less incessantly to keep the troops minding the perimeter in supplies. No falsehood is too preposterous to gain the public’s acquiescence. At times you have to deceive... Read More

Did The New York Times publish its “The Spy War: How the CIA Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin� piece to reveal government secrets in the public’s interest? Or was it to convince Americans that “Now these intelligence networks are more important than ever?" The New York Times on February 25 published an explosive story of... Read More