Howard Zinn, historian who challenged status quo, dies at 87

By Mark Feeney, Globe Staff

Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and a leading faculty critic of BU president John Silber, died of a heart attack today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling, his family said. He was 87.

“His writings have changed the consciousness of a generation, and helped open new paths to understanding and its crucial meaning for our lives,” Noam Chomsky, the left-wing activist and MIT professor, once wrote of Dr. Zinn. “When action has been called for, one could always be confident that he would be on the front lines, an example and trustworthy guide.”

[read the rest, here]

John Kiriakou Unwittingly Exposes Brian Ross as an ABC News “Mockingbird”

by Scott Creighton

The other day I posted an article about why I think Brian Ross should be fired from ABC News.

Time and time again Brian Ross has not only ended up on the wrong side of every single important issue since 9/11, but he also has a disturbing tendency to rely almost exclusively on unnamed sources to support his arguments (arguments that are almost always on the side of the CIA backed imperialist agenda). 1. The Iraq connection with the anthrax attacks (wrong, Mr. Ross), 2.  illegal use of torture as a justifiable and “useful” practice (wrong again, Mr. Ross), 3.  Iran having enough material to make a nuclear weapon by 2009 (so, so wrong, Mr. Ross), and finally what I pointed out as his latest forray into his imperialist collaborations… 4. the president  and possibly the CIA has the right to kill U.S. citizens at will (apparently this is a “law” that George W. Bush just made up after 9/11… but Mr. Ross fails to point out the root of this assumed presidential authority in his recent article).

You might start to think that Brian Ross is nothing more than the CIA’s man at ABC with all these pro-imperialist agenda positions Mr. Ross has been taking over the years. You think that might be possible? Is Brian Ross nothing more than a well-dressed over-paid Mockingbird? Inquiring minds want to know.