Exclusively in the new print issue of CounterPunch
HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER: David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.
Archives by Tag 'Cuba'
Responding in longer form to erroneous reports of his death, Mark Twain was quoted saying, “Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated.”
The same holds for Fidel Castro. Earlier reports pronounced him dead or dying. Each one was false. Given their sou...
Can the United States export democracy to another country, the way it exports Coca Cola? Apparently the government,particularly, USAID, and the mass media – think so. But, some tricky issues emerge because we – the USA – the ‘city on the hill”...
Albert Einstein, the full measure of whose prophetic stature still has not been taken, wrote in a telegram to President Roosevelt in 1946: “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrop...
Five Cubans fighting terrorism in south Florida have served 14 years of prison, more than enough time for the US public to learn from its media about the horrific injustice done by the US government to these Cuban men. But the media has barely touched the grotesque frame ...
Havana.
On May 25, 2001, when the trial of Gerardo Hernandez in Miami was nearing its end, the prosecution filed an Emergency Petition for Writ of Prohibition with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. The first surprise was the speed – no more t...
Charge No 3, added in May 1999, against Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, almost eight months after his incarceration is based on a false –more than false, absurd’- premise: the made-up existence of a Cuban Government plan to attack US planes in international airspace. This...
On February 24, 1996, a lamentable event took place in front of the Malecón in Havana. Two small planes belonging to a terrorist group in Miami were shot down by anti-aircraft defenses when they violated Cuban national territory. Dozens of similar violations had taken pl...
The great irony in the case of the Cuban Five seems to be its relationship with the media.
In Miami, the case had out-of-proportion coverage, and the “journalists” and local media were instrumental in the creation of an environment of irrational hatred that wou...
Havana.
The US Government seriously violated the Constitution and the Law to guarantee the unfair sentences of the Five Cuban patriots who will soon arrive at 14 years of arbitrary and illegal punishment. This was not an isolated event, but rather a system...
The Democrats just put out their platform on Latin America, and it demonstrates only the loosest connection to reality. Thus, while praising the “vibrant democracies in countries from Mexico to Brazil and Costa Rica to Chile,” as well as “historic peaceful trans...
Until recently, Americans could travel to Cuba as part of academic, religious or research groups. But according to travel writers for USA Today and other major newspapers, government approval for such trips has come to a halt. This is despite a program authorize...
People stop in Victorville California 85 miles northeast of Los Angeles because they have to see someone at one of its several prisons (federal, state, county and city) or have prison-related business, or because they’re hot and tired coming back from Las Vegas to Los A...
Mitt Romney ventured into Miami this week and at a campaign stop at Palacios de los Jugos, only a day after introducing his running mate Congressman Paul Ryan.
Romney, without Ryan, did not mention “Cuba”, once. It was a check-the-box visit to a key con...
We hear a lot these days about Islam’s misogyny and cultural authoritarianism.. A good example is that idiot lawyer fighting construction of a mosque in Chattanooga, enthralling public hearings with juicy quotes he’s mined from the Quran.
Apparently he&...
In 2005 I interviewed Gore Vidal for my weekly TV-radio show Hot Talk. We had first met years before at a dinner party at Marc Raskin’s house in Washington DC where I had watched him monopolize the conversation by verbally destroying the head of a major museum. “He’...
The Foro de Sao Paulo (FSP), a forum that brings together most of the Latin American left, had its 18th meeting in the Venezuelan city of Caracas on July 4-6. In attendance were representatives of practically all of the Foro’s member organizations, includ...
What did Cuba do to the United States to merit 53 years of castigation?
In 1960, those dirty Caribbean Commies joined the “evil” side in the Cold War – the Soviets, one recalls, offered substantial aid, not threats. But in 1991 the USSR disappeared.
So...
US agricultural exports are usually the last thing the casual observer of the US-Cuba conundrum thinks about. It’s not a sexy topic like the Cuban 5. It’s not politically charged like Alan Gross’ situation. It doesn’t engender the emotional respons...
In Cuba change is in the air. But such change should not be read as an end to the revolution.
“The United States and the exile community are dead wrong if they think that regime change will take place at any time in the near future,” said Julio Diaz Vazquez, a ...
Recently a number of journalists and commentators have wandered whether Fidel Castro has lost his marbles [or as it is said in Cuba, “perdió la chaveta"]. Thus, Paul Haven of the Associated Press in Havana on June 19th“ wrote, “So acolytes and detracto...
For the past two months there scarcely has passed more than a day that Cuba hasn’t been in the news. The highly covered visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the island the last week of March drew more attention than any papal visits in the recent past. The VI Summit of...
We visited Gerardo Hernandez for the fifth time and, as usual, his spirits seemed higher than ours despite the fact that he resides in a maximum-security federal prison.
Gerardo and three other Cuban intelligence agents approach their 14th year of incarc...
“This discussion has changed my mind about homosexuality. Now I understand what my lesbian friend went through. When she graduated from medical school in Cuba, she cried. She told me that she could live her life the way she wanted to when she was in Cuba. But no...
Less than 3 years ago, Cuban authorities arrested Alan Gross, who had an almost $600,000 contract with DIA.Inc., to carry out a USAID program in Cuba.
At his Havana trial, Gross heard Cuban authorities present his trip reports in which he revealed how he supplied a...