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'
Menu for Today’s Tricky Planet: Use Your Head
GABRIEL KOLKO
We live in an enigmatic age, far more complex as the years go by and certainly since the disappearance of the Soviet Union in 1991.  With the failure of so many reformers avoidance of  cynicism about all causes is now an overwhelming challenge.  In a sense, it is the r...
Choke Point Bab el-Mandeb
THOMAS C. MOUNTAIN
The Horn of Africa is one of the most strategically critical  regions in the world with the narrow passage where the Red Sea joins the Indian Ocean, the Bab el-Mandeb, being a potential choke point for much of the worlds commerce. Almost all of the trade between t...
Terror and Revenge Engulf NATO’s Libya
FRANKLIN LAMB
CounterPunch Exclusive Benghazi  The “new Libya” has entered its own “Terror” which is spreading inexorably, aided by NATO member states including American, French and British SAS units known loc...
One Death in Sirte
PATRICK COCKBURN
I first met Ahmed Abdullah al-Ghadamsi in Tripoli last August about seven weeks before he was killed in one of the last battles of the Libyan war. I was staying in the Radisson Blu, a large hotel that overlooks the harbor and overfilled with journalists who had pou...
Libya’s Liberation Front Organizing in the Sahel
FRANKLIN LAMB
On the edge of the Sahel, Niger “Sahel” in Arabic means “coast” or “shoreline”.  Unless one was present 5000 years ago when, according to anthropologists, our planets first cultivation of crops began in this then lush, but now semiarid region ...
It Doesn’t Matter to Them If It’s Untrue. It’s a Higher Truth.
WILLIAM BLUM
“We came, we saw, he died.” — US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton,
giggling, as she spoke of the depraved murder of Moammar Gaddafi Imagine Osama bin Laden or some other Islamic leader speaking of 9-11: &#...
Invaded Under False Pretexts
FIDEL CASTRO
On February 23rd, under the title of “The Cynical Danse Macabre”, I set out: “The policy of plundering imposed by the United States and their NATO allies in the Middle East has gone into a crisis. ” “Thanks to the treason committed by Sadat at Camp...
When the Mob Rules
STEPHEN MARTIN
To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war. Winston Churchill, remarks at a White House luncheon, June 26, 1954 Where was the dead body found? Who found the dead body? Was the dead body dead when found? How was the...
Gaddafi and the Bacchae
PETER LEE
I suppose the Western media caravan has moved on, and there isn’t going to be a lot of interest in the latest ...
NATO: the Brutal Alliance
FIDEL CASTRO
NATO’s brutal military alliance has become the most perfidious instrument of repression known in the history of humankind. NATO took on that global repressive role as soon as the USSR, which had served the United States as an excuse for its creation, ceased to ex...
Sword of Peterloo
CLANCY SIGAL
“Wow!” exclaimed secretary of state Hillary Clinton when an aide showed her a Blackberry with Gaddafi’s capture as she was visiting Pakistan to twist a few arms.  Her ‘wow’ may be ambiguous – an expression of real surprise, but I fear not.   I...
Revulsion and Fury, as Students Remember Man Who Shot Qaddafi
FRANKLIN LAMB
Tripoli University The people I had hoped most to be able to find on returning to Libya were eight students from Fatah University (now renamed Tripoli University) who became my friends during three months in Libya this summer.  They had all been strongly ...
The Arab Spring and the Coward’s War on Libya
TED HONDERICH
The thoughts in this essay are those touched on in a public conversation with Tariq Ali in The Gower Street Lecture Series, arranged by Waterstones Bookshops and held in University College London. Tariq’s knowledge of the societies of the Arab Spring is won...
Lynching Black Africans in Libya
THOMAS C. MOUNTAIN
Black Libyans by the racist para-militaries who now rule Libya. Bodies of black men hanging from highways. Bound and tortured bodies of Africans dumped along the roadsides. Am I talking about Libya or Louisiana? And all under the approving eye of the first B...
Hillary and Qaddafi
KATHLEEN PEINE
Another Halloween season is upon us, with the scary bloodless dead guy masks, the wild mobs clamoring for goodies, and well heck, that’s just Libya. I have to say that I’m against the death penalty on principle except when I’m not, but I only consider a selec...
Killing Gaddafi
DEEPAK TRIPATHI
Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. This verse from the Bible speaks aloud of the manner of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, as well as his brutal killing. It is also a lesson for those who fought Gaddafi. The end of him has left a...
What the Establishment Isn’t Telling You About Libya
ANTHONY DiMAGGIO
Washington is erupting in euphoria and self-congratulation over Muammar Gaddafi’s death.  That celebration was predictably followed by further adulation in our sycophantic press system, which never saw a foreign intervention it didn’t like.  The usual propaganda abo...
Muammar Gaddafi: In Memoriam
FAWZIA AFZAL-KHAN
Was he a “mad dog” as Ronald Reagan dubbed him, or  “the King of Kings” as some leaders of African nations  crowned him, or “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,” as he ...
Qaddafi, From Beginning to End
VIJAY PRASHAD
On the dusty reaches out of Sirte, a convoy flees a battlefield. A NATO aircraft fires and strikes the cars. The wounded struggle to escape. Armed trucks, with armed fighters, rush to the scene. They find the injured, and among them is the most significant prize: a bloodi...
America’s New African Empire
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Now that the CIA’s proxy army has murdered Gadhafi, what next for Libya? If Washington’s plans succeed, Libya will become another American puppet state. Most of the cities, towns, and infrastructure have been destroyed by air strikes by the air forces of the US...
Will Seif Gaddafi Survive to Have His Day in Court?
FRANKLIN LAMB
During the late evening of 10/20/11 the White House, the Office of the Secretary of State, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Libyan Embassy in Washington, DC received a  faxed communication from an American organized  international legal team currently p...
The End of Muammar Gaddafi
BINOY KAMPMARK
The words of the human rights lawyer and spokesman for the National Transitional Council, Abdul Hafiz Ghoga, were stated with chilling effect and certainty.  ‘Our revolutionaries managed to get the head of the tyrant, who has met his fate and destiny like all dictators...
The Wrong Occupation
KATHY KELLY
In Kabul, Afghanistan’s beleaguered capitol city, a young woman befriended me during December of 2010.  She was eager to talk about her views, help us better understand the history of her country, and form lasting relationships.  Now, she is too frightened to return a...
Bloody Spring
DAN GLAZEBROOK
Fulvio Grimaldi is the legendary Italian (and former BBC) journalist and filmmaker who shot and smuggled out video footage of the Bloody Sunday massacre from under the noses of the British army almost forty years ago. He champions a style of journalism that is passionate,...
Libya: Whither International Law?
COURTENAY BARNETT
For those who think that anything good is going to come out of this NATO led war in Libya, and feel that it is a mainly a question of some wrongly supporting Gadaffi, I beg to differ. The choices really are- 1.  A government in power under Gadaffi; or...