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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 'Gaza'
Talking With Alice Walker on Palestine
DENNIS BERNSTEIN
Alice Walker is Pulitzer Prize winning poet, author and activist. She participated recently in the U.S. Boat to Gaza, which was a part of the Freedom Flotilla, to break the Israeli embargo on the Gaza Strip. Last year, a flotilla was attacked by Israeli commandos a...
The Disappearance of Palestine
SANDY TOLAN
It’s the show that time and the world forgot. It’s called the Occupation and it’s now in its 45th year. Playing on a landscape about the size of Delaware, it remains largely hidden from view, while Middle Eastern headlines from elsewhere seize the day.  Diploma...
President Obama’s Shameful Silence in the Face of Israel’s Murder of a Young American
DAVE LINDORFF
Among the many shameful and cowardly things that President Barack Obama has and has not done, few can rival his complete unwillingness to express outrage at the Israeli military’s murder of a young American teen executed at close range during the Israeli Defense (sic) F...
Why the Palmer Report Deserves No Deference
AUDREY BOMSE
Almost all the factual findings, as well as the legal analysis and conclusions of the recently leaked UN Secretary General’s Panel of Inquiry into the “Flotilla Incident” on May 31, 2010 (Palmer/Uribe Panel) directly contradict those of an earlier UN report of the H...
Israel, Turkey and the Palmer Report
GRAHAM USHER
On 2 September Turkey expelled its Israeli ambassador as a first response to Israel’s refusal to apologise for the killing last year of nine Turkish activists by Israeli commandos on a ship trying to breach its naval blockade on Gaza. The sanction followed th...
Moored Behind Razor Wire
HEDY EPSTEIN
A harbor near Athens, aboard the US Audacity of Hope. July 1, 2011. The sky is azure blue, not a cloud in sight, a gentle breeze caresses us, the 37 passengers, four crew and 10-12 journalists aboard, the waters of the Aegean sea gently roc...
Sinai Doldrums
SALAMA A SALAMA
Had we paid more attention to Sinai in the past 30 years, we wouldn’t be at our wits’ end now, trying to make head or tail of the current situation. How many years ago did Israel withdraw from Sinai? The answer is: more than we needed to develop the ent...
Israel’s Nice Little War
RAMZY BAROUD
Israeli writer Uri Avnery recently wrote an article entitled ‘How Godly Are Thy Tents?’, which began with the words, “First of all, a warning.” The reference was made to the tent cities that have sprung up across the country by middle class Israelis demanding chan...
Israeli Video Games in Gaza
ALISON WEIR
He looks at the camera with bright eyes and the beginning of a smile, wearing a miniature dark blue zipper sweatshirt, the cuffs folded up a bit to make it fit. I can imagine his mother dressing him that morning, making sure he would be warm enough. I wonder if she...
The Return of the Generals
URI AVNERY
SINCE THE beginning of the conflict, the extremists of both sides have always played into each other’s hands. The cooperation between them was always much more effective than the ties between the corresponding peace activists. “Can two walk together, except the...
Egypt’s Secret Minister
THOMAS C. MOUNTAIN
Just exactly what influence Omar “The Secret Minister” Suleiman retains over the military junta that rules Egypt is a question of utmost importance for those who live on the banks of the Nile River. With a resume including 20 years as head of Egyptian Intellig...
From Gaza to Somalia
RAMZY BAROUD
I remember how exhilarated I felt when I was told I was old enough to fast for the month of Ramadan. My feelings had little to do with abstention from food and drink between dawn and sunset each day. For a child, there is little joy in that. The meaning and implications ...
Gaza’s Tunnels
ALEXANDRA ROBINSON
Gaza. “Complimentary tour of the Rafah tunnels.” I received this offer a few weeks after arriving in Gaza. In a conversation I was having with my colleague, Joe Catron, it came up that a friend of ours from Gaza City had given an open invitatio...
Senator Calls for US Special Forces to Attack the Gaza Flotilla
MAX SUCHAN, KATHY KELLY And ROBERT NAIMAN
Senator Mark Kirk Washington, DC 524 Hart Senate Office Building Washington DC, 20510 June 29th, 2011 Dear Senator Kirk, We are Illinois residents writing to you from Athens...
Gaza and Thoughts of a Starving Ireland
RAY McGOVERN
Thinking further here in Athens about how it came to be that I joined the passengers on “The Audacity of Hope” and why I feel so strongly about the oppression in Gaza, it struck me that my Irish genes (as well as my theology) may be playing a ro...
Preparing to Sail to Gaza
KATHY KELLY
Last week, newly-arrived in Athens as part of the US Boat to Gaza project, our team of activists gathered for nonviolence training. We are here to sail to Gaza, in defiance of an Israeli naval blockade, in our ship, “The Audacity of Hope.” Our t...
Destination Gaza
MEDEA BENJAMIN
“I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him,” said Dr. Martin Luther King as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. These words will guide me ...
An American Jew Sails to Gaza
JANE HIRSCHMANN
People often ask me why I am part of a team to organize a U.S. Boat to Gaza that will be sailing this month with the next International Flotilla to break the siege of Gaza. They often make clear they are asking because I am an American Jew, whose family sur...
The Siege of Gaza Must End
KATHY KELLY
In late June 2011, I’m going to be a passenger on “The Audacity of Hope,” the USA boat in this summer’s international flotilla to break the illegal and deadly Israeli siege of Gaza. Organizers, supporters and passengers aim to nonvi...
Subversives
MARK CHMIEL
“Don’t give up, don’t give in, don’t give out.” –John Lewis, one of the 1961 Freedom Riders My friend Hedy Epstein joined the “Move over AIPAC” protests in Washingto...
Did Egypt Really Open Rafah Crossing?
RAMZY BAROUD
For most Palestinians, leaving Gaza through Egypt is as exasperating a process as entering it. Governed by political and cultural sensitivities, most Palestinian officials and public figures refrain from criticizing the way Palestinians are treated at the R...
A Realist’s Utopia
LANDON FRIM
This month marks the 44th anniversary of the Six-Day War between Israel and the bordering states of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.  It was this conflict in June of 1967 which has shaped Arab-Israeli relations ever since, primarily because of Israel’s continue...
Gaza’s New Youth Movement
JOE CATRON
On a warm, sunny afternoon, I met Eman Sourani and Rana Baker in an airy outdoor caf? several blocks from the port of Gaza. Both are members of the Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel (...
One Missile, One Playground
RAMZY BAROUD
Gaza. A “Hamas commander” drove a beat-up gray van in northern Gaza and theatrically spoke on his walkie-talkie as I sat in the passenger seat. The van was almost barren, save for the most basic equipment propelling it to m...
Walking to the Buffer Zone
JOHNNY BARBER
We marched to the buffer zone with about 20 others including members of the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative who have been organizing non-violent demonstrations for the past three years, as well as several members of GYBO (Gaza Youth Break Out). Carrying flags ...