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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 'Palestine'
Why Arabs Must Worry
RAMZY BAROUD
My friend Hanna is Syrian and also happens to be Christian. The latter fact was rarely of consequence, except whenever he wished to boast about the contributions of Arab Christians to Middle Eastern cultures. Of course, he is right. The modern Arab identity has been formu...
Get Israeli Peace Leaders Before Congress
RALPH NADER
The new Secretary of State John Kerry taking four trips to the Israeli/Palestinian region in the past two months means yet another U.S. effort for a negotiated peace process between the Palestinians (under ruthless occupation) and the very dominant Israelis. Why should th...
Gaza Held Hostage to Egypt’s Turmoil
RAMZY BAROUD
Air of uncertainty is engulfing most matters related to Egypt. Since the Egyptian revolt started over two years ago, the country remains hostage to a barefaced power struggle with many destructive implications that have polarized society in unprecedented ways, perhaps in ...
John Kerry’s Political Posturing on Palestine
ROBERT FANTINA
As U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry attempts to put his particular spin on resolving the generations-old crisis of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, he has travelled to the World Economic Forum. There he waved the possibility of $4 billion investments in the Pales...
Why Palestine is Different
SAM BAHOUR
Secretary of State John Kerry is making an all-out effort to restart peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine. Many well-intentioned, highly intelligent people from around the world have engaged in some way, shape, or form in the Palestinian-Israeli issue and many ...
US Political Impotence in the Middle East
RAMZY BAROUD
In an article published May 15, 2013, American historical social scientist Immanuel Wallerstein wrote, “Nothing illustrates more the limitations of Western power than the internal controversy its elites are having in public about what the United States in particular and...
Israel, Hawking and the Pressing Question of the Boycott
RAMZY BAROUD
It is an event “of cosmic proportions”, said one Palestinian academic, a befitting description regarding Stephen Hawking’s decision to boycott an Israeli academic conference slated for next June. It was also a decisive moral call which was communicated on May 8 by C...
Alan Hart and What It Takes to Struggle On
LAWRENCE DAVIDSON
Alan Hart is an author and a journalist. He is the former Middle East Chief Correspondent for Britain’s Independent Television News and a former BBC Panorama presenter whose beat was the Middle East. He has written a number of books, including Arafat: Terrorist or P...
Israel’s Samson Complex
JONATHAN COOK
Washington’s reputation as an “honest broker” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in tatters after four years of indulging Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intransigence. The Obama administration desperately needs to resurrect a credi...
The Donkey of the Messiah
URI AVNERY
“THE TWO-STATE solution is dead!” This mantra has been repeated so often lately, by so many authoritative commentators, that it must be true. Well, it ain‘t. It reminds one of Mark Twain’s oft quoted words: “The report of my death was an exaggerati...
The Arab Peace Initiative
URI AVNERY
An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of his country, a British statesman famously wrote some 400 years ago. That is true, of course, for all diplomats. The question is whether the diplomat lies only to others, or also to himself. I ...
Boston, Brazil and Islam
RAMZY BAROUD
During his talk sponsored by the New American Foundation in March 2008, author Parag Khanna addressed the rising challenges facing the US’s global hegemony. According to Khanna, China and the European Union are the new contenders with the battlefield being a global ...
The Lands of the Jewish National Fund
YVES ENGLER
In 2010 the Auditor General apparently called on the Canada Revenue Agency to “investigate or revoke” the Jewish National Fund’s charitable status. But this request seems to have been ignored in deference to a “charity” that has long particip...
The Demonization of Richard Falk
JEREMY R. HAMMOND
The Zionist organization UN Watch has cited a commentary by Professor Richard Falk on the Boston bombings in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon demanding that that Prof. Falk be reprimanded for it. Prof. Falk, who serves as the United Nations Special Rapporteu...
Diaspora Jews Must Speak Out
SAM BAHOUR
You are born in a country, say the United States. As such, you become a citizen of that country. You are issued a passport from your country of citizenship which allows you to travel to other countries, as a tourist, a foreigner. Of course, you can apply for residency or ...
Zionism and the United States Congress
WILLIAM JAMES MARTIN
The ideology, or political project, of Zionism which underlies the creation of the State of Israel had, in fact, a Christian origin rather than a Jewish one, as writings can be found dating from the 1500’s, written by Christian clergymen in England advocating the migrat...
A Hundred Deir Yassins and Counting
RAMZY BAROUD
Few with any sense of intellectual or historical integrity would still question the bloody massacre that took place in the village of Deir Yassin 65 years ago, claiming the lives of over 100 innocent Palestinians. Attempts at covering up the massacre have been dwarfed by ...
Kerry and the Fake Peace Process
JOHN V. WHITBECK
For almost two decades, the seemingly perpetual Middle East “peace process” has been like a hamster-wheel for Palestinians and a merry-go-round for Israelis All the movement has been a form of running or turning in place. Nothing ever really changes. As S...
Sectarianism and the New Egypt
RANNIE AMIRI
It was former Egyptian President Husni Mubarak who famously said during a 2006 ...
Gaza’s Siege Intensifies
RAMZY BAROUD
On Sep. 17, 2012, Ismail Haniyeh, Prime Minister of the Hamas government in Gaza, made another appeal to his Egyptian counterpart Hisham Kandil to consider setting up a free trade area between Gaza and Egypt. The reasonable idea would allow Egypt to support Gaza’...
Controlled Opposition
GILAD ATZMON
In his new book, “The Invention of the Land of Israel”, Israeli academic Shlomo Sand, manages t...
Suicide Note from Palestine
LEONA VICARIO
It is the year 2090. A violent Israeli shelling of the Gaza strip is projected on a folding screen. Amal, a student shows up in the middle of the stage lying down in a hospital bed. Her heartbeat has already stopped and she is being resurrected in a medical care center by...
Israeli Property Theft is Nothing New
Dr. PAUL LARUDEE
cus·to·di·an (kəs-ˈtō-dē-ən) n.  1.  One who has charge of something: caretaker – The Heritage Illustrated Dictionary of the English Language, International Edition, 1973 The office of Ronen Baruch, the curren...
When the Yarmouk Palestinian Camp Fled
FRANKLIN LAMB
Yarmouk Palestinian Camp, Damascus History is nothing if not interesting, and that it most definitely is. Today, Palestinian refugees are being severely punished in Lebanon and deprived of their most elementary civil right to work or to even own a h...
Deir Yassin Massacre Remembered
RAOUF J. HALABY
Even though April 9, 1948, is a day of infamy for Palestinians, few commemorative ceremonies will be held. Sixty-Five years ago today organized Jewish terrorist groups, including the Irgun and Stern gangs, attacked the Village of Deir Yassin, a village whose popula...