Word: myths
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Dance with Iran In "Rethinking Iran," Samantha Power asserted that Washington "supported" Osama bin Laden during the 1980s [Jan. 28]. Power repeated a canard that has been pushed by numerous conspiracy theorists. As terrorism expert Peter Bergen has stated, this is a "folk myth" without a shred of evidence to support it. The 9/11 commission came to similar conclusions and noted that the CIA viewed bin Laden and his so-called Arab Afghans as "militarily insignificant" in the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It is unfortunate that a distinguished scholar like Power decided to repeat this urban legend...
...some point, though, caution stops and demonization begins. In 2006, when the Iranian nuclear myth was still gospel in Washington, Congress shuffled through the ‘Iran Freedom Support Act’ in response, legislation that permitted the exercise of sanctions by the White House “to support a transition to democracy in Iran.” The notion of these sanctions as in the service of freedom is not just an example of Ministry-of-Love levels of doublespeak, but plainly disingenuous: even under Iran’s potent religious leadership, democratic processes function there relatively...
...Kings The threat of a coup may be exaggerated, but it points to perhaps the single greatest achievement of the Maoist insurgency: the unraveling of a national myth. Nepal came into being through the 1768 military campaign of King Prithvi Narayan Shah and his army drawn from Gurkha tribes in the hills near Kathmandu. Ever since, Nepal's polity has remained largely unchanged: its borders an approximation of the land conquered, its political élites tied to old families close to both the monarchy and the army, and its princely rulers all descended from the same messianic line. Power...
...Dance with Iran In "Rethinking Iran," Samantha Power asserted that Washington "supported" Osama bin Laden during the 1980s [Jan. 28]. Power repeated a canard that has been pushed by numerous conspiracy theorists. As terrorism expert Peter Bergen has stated, this is a "folk myth" without a shred of evidence to support it. The 9/11 commission came to similar conclusions and noted that the CIA viewed bin Laden and his so-called Arab Afghans as "militarily insignificant" to the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It is unfortunate that a distinguished scholar like Power decided to repeat this legend. James...
...plays into the sick myth of the brilliant serial killer. The evil genius with a sadistic streak, who plays mind games with his victims and the police, has replaced the criminal mastermind of old dime novels. Instead of tying the heroine to the railroad tracks (these days, the train would never arrive), he straps them into Rube Goldberg contraptions that slowly rip their fingernails off and tear their dignity to shreds. We live in a cruel world, but this is one area of criminality where fiction has long outstripped fact. According to the folks at Wikipedia - and those obsessive list...