Young American boys (including myself) have been running around with toy/imaginary weapons pretending to be soldiers for millenia, and have been watching TV shows and movies about the military for decades. Read more: Movie Reviews, US Military, Military, Navy Seals, Navy SEAL, Propaganda, Rethink Reviews, Violent Video Games, Jonathan Kim, Video Games, War Propaganda, Pentagon [...]

Is any of the dark, undeniable reality of life under Castro mentioned in a single caption of the thousands of photographs offered by the AP? Not once. Castro, they repeat, is a “revolutionary hero.” Read more: Mussolini, Barbara Demick, Che Guevara, Hitler, Fidel Castro, Associated Press, Mao, Pinochet, Cuba, Syria, Dictators, North Korea, Equatorial Guinea, [...]

Cunning bad guys are essential to most political dramas, and the real life battles between democrats and dictators are no exception. As the strategies of non-violent resistance to authoritarian regimes have developed, so too have the dirty tricks and counterattacks of the regimes themselves. In April a top-secret document, said to be from the Syrian [...]

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban denied a report in the Afghan press that the insurgent group’s leader had been killed in neighboring Pakistan, saying Monday that Mullah Mohammad Omar is alive and in Afghanistan. “This is absolutely wrong. It’s only propaganda and we completely deny these rumors,” Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press [...]

COPENHAGEN — Tonight, Yoani Sánchez — the world-renowned Cuban blogger and philologist — will be honored here with the inaugural Freedom Award, in the amount of $50,000, by the independent Danish think tank, CEPOS. Human rights defenders, members of the Danish parliament, prominent Cuban exiles, and members of the international media will be in attendance [...]

Mary Tillman, mother of Pat Tillman, the former professional football player turned Army Ranger who was tragically killed by friendly fire 7 years ago, is angered by McChrystal’s appointment, telling ABC News that he was part of the propaganda effort pushing the false tale that Tillman had been killed by the enemy, and keeping the [...]

Turns out, economics is a greater threat than nuclear war. The Los Angeles Times reports that MGM, producers of a remake of the 1984 kids vs. Soviet Union film “Red Dawn,” have changed the enemy of their movie from the Chinese to the North Koreans. The Times reports that MGM originally filmed their new movie [...]

The Korean War, a.k.a. the “Unknown War,” was, in fact, headline news at the time it was being fought(1950-53). Given the Cold War hatreds of the combatants, though, a great deal of the reportage was propaganda, and much of what should have been told was never told. News of the worst atrocities perpetrated against civilians [...]

Last night, Columbia University’s Task Force on Military Engagement released its findings. ROTC — the Reserve Officer’s Training Corps — is welcome back on campus. Harvard followed suit. Both pro and con voices at these Ivy League schools have legitimate feelings about a uniformed presence on campus. The recent difficult conversation was important. The next [...]

The Guardian ran a story two weeks ago, in which Iraqi chemical engineering dilettante, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi — codenamed “Curveball” by somebody in espionage with an obvious sense of humor — admitted that everything he told German interrogators about WMD in Iraq was a fabrication, a whopper, a stinking lie. The confabulist from Baghdad, [...]