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 'Iran'
Amazing stuff, India ink. A few drops spread vigorously with a roller for several minutes on an iron plate are enough for eight sets of fingerprints and two sets of handprints on four ancient double-sided and folded Indian police fingerprint forms. By contrast, the mu...
Washington’s quest to bring Tehran to its knees continues to accelerate. And in turn, ordinary Iranians increasingly find themselves caught in the crosshairs.
As the Washington Post ...
Last year I had the providence to meet Mostafa, a nineteen year old Afghani who suffers from a rupture in the state/citizen relationship. This breakdown, a consequence inherent in the Westphalia modal, problematizes rather than supports refugees like him.
Born in I...
Reading the text of a bill that was recently signed into law by US President Barack Obama would instill fear in the hearts of ordinary Americans. Apparently, barbarians coming from distant lands are at work. They are gathering at the US-Mexico border, cutting fences...
USA Today cautioned recently that “War with Iran won’t be a quick affair.” A Pittsburgh newspaper plaintively wonders whether “War with Iran” is a “Necessity or Folly.” Talk of war is in the air. What many in this country don’t realize is that ...
The trite old phrase ‘What’s Sauce for the Goose is also Sauce for the Gander’ means quite simply that if a person does something that is approved by society, then another person should not be criticized or penalized for doing exactly the same thing. That seems f...
News stories on the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report suggested new reasons to fear that Iran is closer to a “breakout” capability than ever before, citing a nearly 50-percent increase in its stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium and the insta...
BINYAMIN NETANYAHU and his patron, Sheldon Adelson, betted on Mitt Romney, with the State of Israel as their chip.
They lost.
For Adelson, the betting tycoon, that doesn’t amount to much. Some you win, some you lose.
For Netanyahu, it’s a differen...
A new twist was added to the longrunning media theme of a threat by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to go to war with Iran when news stories seemed to suggest Monday that Netanyahu had ordered the Israeli military to prepare for an imminent attack on Iranian nuc...
Fifty years ago millions of people around the world expressed their fear – well merited — that nuclear war would erupt between the US and USSR over Soviet missiles placed in Cuba. Many Americans have the idea that a crazy Fidel Castro wanted to launch them at US t...
The West’s attempts to destroy the Iranian economy through heightened sanctions—including most imports, oil exports and use of banks for trade operations—is having its affect. According to Johns Hopkins University Professor Steve Hanke, Iran is facing hyperinfla...
In 1998, the Defence Department vetoed a delegation of prominent U.S. nuclear specialists to go to Iran to investigate its nuclear programme at the invitation of the government of newly-elected Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, according to the nuclear scientist who was...
Everybody in Israel knows this story. When Levy Eshkol was Prime Minister, his assistants rushed up to him in panic: “Levy, there is a drought!”
“In Texas?” Eshkol asked anxiously.
“No, in Israel!” they said.
“Then it doesn’t matter,...
Paris.
A friend, with good sources in the Israeli government, claims that the head of Israel’s Mossad has made several trips to deal with his counterparts in Saudi Arabia—one of the results: an agreement that the Saudis would bankroll the series of ass...
Mitt Romney’s three debate performances in October 2012 have exposed his political cynicism, with the Republican candidate abandoning long-term positions in order to adopt more moderate ideas for the run-up to next month’s election. Prior to the debates, Rom...
Paris.
Several questions asked in the third presidential debate were never clearly answered. One of the most vital concerns Israel: What exactly is the U.S. commitment to that country? It’s a question that an American president may suddenly be ...
What did we learn from the Presidential foreign policy debate? Not much specific or of substance. China did not make an appearance in the first hour. This is not surprising – for three reasons. These debates are more about self- presentation than candid statements of ...
US elections are manifestly linked to the Middle East, at least rhetorically. In practical terms, however, US foreign policies in the region are compelled by the Middle East’s own dynamics and the US’ own political climate, economic woes, or ambitions. There is little...
Berlin.
The European Union agreed to new sanctions against Iran on Monday, October 15 to force Tehran to comply with international demands that it scale back its nuclear program. At the same time, violence and protest in Iran as currency drops in value was...
With signs of a global economic downturn mounting, US aggression across the Middle East and North Africa ratchets up. And once again, US imperialism stands poised to swing open the gates of Hell.
The choice presently confronting humanity, then, is one between imp...
In the Middle Eastern corrida, the moment of truth is approaching fast. Assad’s Syria is running around the arena like a wounded bull, fraught and worn down by a year of cruel strife. Banderillas of mujaheeds stick out of his broken hide. The public, the Europeans, the ...
In September and early October of 2012 the Iranian currency, rial, was in a state of free fall relative to the value of major world currencies and gold. The government of Iran, as well as the Central of Bank of Iran (Bank Markazi), appeared to be helpless in stopping th...
President Barack Obama, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have at least one thing in common when it comes to Iran. All are guilty of flagrant self-contradiction.
Each says that a nuclear-armed Iran could no...
“…it reads like the pages of a Hollywood script.”
– FBI director Robert S. Mueller III
You’ve probably forgotten the plot: Mansour Arbabsiar, an Iranian-American used car salesman living in Texas, is arrested and char...
Two recent events reveal the lack of rigor that has come to pervade our public sphere: the failure of the UN (or anybody else) to question seriously the case for war against Iran, and the first presidential “debate.”
At its annual meeting, the UN General Assemb...