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 'NATO'
After the end of World War II, a group of nations in the north Atlantic established NATO to impede Russian influence over the reconstruction of Europe. The result was that it facilitated the United States’ influence: according to a 2009 article by Georgetown professor D...
Ten days into the uprising in Benghazi, Libya, the United Nations’ Human Rights Council established the International Commission of Inquiry on Libya. The purpose of the Commission was to “investigate all alleged violations of international human rights law in Libya....
Nowhere in NATOland is public opposition to “humanitarian wars” more muted than in France. Only a few prominent voices were raised against last year’s assault on Libya. Today, the few who attempt to arouse opposition to Western military intervention ...
I remember during the “Libyan Revolution”; the tally of casualties resulting from Gaddafi’s crack down on protesters was being reported by the mainstream media with such a “dramatic” fervor that it hardly left the public with a moment to at least second-guess th...
Recent weeks have brought yet another sad chance to watch badly laid plans in Afghanistan go haywire. In three separate incidents, allies, most from the Afghan National Army (ANA), allegedly murdered ...
A sizeable minority has opposed the “government” – actually representatives of a crony corrupt elite – for decades, now. Members of that minority have been imprisoned in per capita numbers higher than Stalin’s Soviet Union or Mao’s China. The government sancti...
The United States government and its NATO puppets have been killing Muslim men, women and children for a decade in the name of bringing them democracy. But is the West itself a bastion of democracy?
Skeptics point out that President George W. Bush was put in of...
If you want a sense of what could well lie in store for Syria, go no further than Anthony Shadid’s report from Libya in the New York Times for February 9. Shadid, a good reporter, describes a dismembered country, rent by banditry:
“The militias are ...
On January 25, the host committee for the G8/NATO summit in Chicago in May unveiled a new slogan for the event, “The Global Crossroads.” The mood of the organizers is upbeat and positive. This is a grand opportunity to market Chicago with an eye for the tourist dol...
Tripoli
This observer was stunned late last week when during a meeting in a Maghreb country with three high ranking former Libyan officials, among hundreds currently in hiding, and some organizing, in countries bordering Libya, one of them, in all earnest,...
Tripoli
It appears, from interviews and discussions with a wide range of Libyans including students, lawyers, judges at the Ministry of Justice, shopkeepers and casual acquaintances that the Muslim Brotherhood currently has very little popular support amon...
Tripoli
The weather in Tripoli this New Year’s weekend is unseasonably bone chilling with heavy rains flooding the streets reminding this observer more of dreary London this time of year than the southern Maghreb coast of the Mediterranean. My modest fam...
So, how is that violent liberation working out for ‘ya?
How much did the US spend trying to topple dictators Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt? Oh, that’s right, like Filipino strongman Ferdinand Marcos, those brutal, corrupt, murdering lea...
Sorman, Libya
It was a warm early Monday morning along the Libyan coast on June 20, 2011.
At approximately 0200 GMT the next day in NATO Headquarters in Brussels and 30 minutes later in its media center in Naples, staffers finished tabulati...
Last month, the main concern in Tripoli was getting your hands on a sheep to slaughter, as tradition requires on Eid al-Adha (feast of the sacrifice). Libyan sheep were 25 dinars a kilo (around $27), about twice the price before the revolution, and many families were only...
In late November, NATO (heavily U.S.) forces whacked 24 Pakistani soldiers on the Afghan border. As of November 30, Pentagon and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton had not yet accepted blame; but they were “investigating” and “regretting.”
However, the next ...
These days the humanitarian warriors are riding high, thanks to their proclaimed victory in Libya. The world’s only superpower, with moral, military and mercenary support from the democracy-loving emirate of Qatar and the historic imperialist powers, Britain and Franc...
The Nato assault on a Pakistani checkpoint close to the Afghan border which killed 24 soldiers on Saturday must have been deliberate. Nato commanders have long been supplied with maps marking these checkpoints by the Pakistani military. They knew that the target was a mil...
The last time we met Michael Bérubé on this site was back in 2007, and he was up to his neck in a rubbish dump, where I’d placed him, in the company of other promoters of the 2003 war on Iraq: where, I asked, are those parlor warriors now? Had any of them reconsidered...
Even as NATO celebrates its victory over the Gaddafi dictatorship, there is growing unease about the operation. The Libyan intervention was supposed to be a model of legality, but ended up exceeding the terms set forth in Security Council Resolution 1973, which authorized...
When Recep Tayyip Erdogan became Turkey’s prime minister in 2003, he seemed to be certain of the new direction his country would take. It would maintain cordial ties with Turkey’s old friends, Israel included, but also reach out to its Arab and Muslim neighbors, Syria...
The other day, I was listening to the voice of “liberal” radio, NPR, and was surprised to hear its bizarre, and yet quite candid, report on what it apparently views to be one of the more hideous aspects of the Gadhafi years – a modern welfare state which looked afte...
CounterPunch Exclusive Report
Sirte, Libya
This observer, with his sandaled feet comfortably dug into the sand of a chilly Mediterranean beach and huddled next to a camp fire with a congenial and bright g...
In the early Spring 1982, I accompanied former US Senator Jim Abourezk (D-SD) to Libya. National Geographic had asked him to get Libyan permission to film several sites of Roman ruins.
He met with officials I walked Tripoli’s streets. At a coffee shop near the ho...