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 'Palestine'
Israel, Settlements and Democracy
ROBERT FANTINA
As Israel continues to defy international law, including countless United Nations resolutions, and builds more and more settlement on land stolen from the Palestinians, its reputation as a model democracy is taking a well-deserved beating. Last year, Israel took a ...
Uproar Over Upcoming BDS Conference at Penn
VIJAY PRASHAD
It is not easy in the United States to have a real, factual discussion about Israel. When Norman Finkelstein came to give a lecture at my college a few years ago, a small minority of the faculty and students were enraged. The faculty boycotted the lecture, but the student...
Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood
RAMZY BAROUD
There was an unmistakable hint of triumph in the comments made by Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of the elected Hamas government in Gaza, when he was hosted by Mohamed Badie, the supreme guide of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.Both leaders said what would be expected of...
Hope, Solidarity and Acupuncture
MARK T. HARRIS
Treating illness involves getting to the root of a health condition. Or, ideally at least, it should. In the real world much medical practice is geared toward ameliorating symptoms, without necessarily curing the underlying condition. Certainly the modern pharmaceutical i...
The Duke of Nablus
URI AVNERY
THE NAME of Munib al-Masri has recently come up as a possible candidate for Prime Minister of a Palestinian national unity government. Not being a member of either Fatah or Hamas, he is acceptable to both. Al-Masri himself denies any such ambition. He says that he ...
Gingrich, Israel and the Palestinians
URI AVNERY
What a bizarre lot these Republican aspirants for the US presidency are! What a sorry bunch of ignoramuses and downright crazies. Or, at best, what a bunch of cheats and cynics! (With the possible exception of the good doctor Ron Paul)”. Is this the best a...
Support the New Freedom Riders
JOSH RUEBNER
Fifty years ago, Freedom Riders braved beatings and arson by supremacists intent on maintaining apartheid in the Jim Crow South.  By challenging segregated transportation through nonviolent action, these African American and white activists set in motion a process that u...
The Double Standard
ROBERT FANTINA
The fact that there is a double-standard in effect for all aspects of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, favoring, of course, Israel, is no secret. The mainstream United States media, little more than a pawn for the government, ignores the countless, horrific abuses heaped...
The Seizure of the Gaza Boats
RAMZY BAROUD
Another mission accomplished, or so it seems. Israeli navy ships have managed to thwart yet another civil society ‘provocation’ (as described by a spokesman for the Israel Embassy in Dublin, Irish Times, November 4). Thus the 27 activists from nine countries ab...
Occupy Wall Street, Not Palestine
PHYLLIS BENNIS
This is an extraordinary time. The astonishing Occupy Wall Street movement emerged as the heart of our 99%, claimed the little scrap of earth in Zuccotti Park on behalf of all of us, and created a live-in soapbox from which to challenge inequality — how the 1% controls ...
After Palestine’s Statehood Bid
MICHAEL NEUMANN
It’s odd that the  Israel-Palestine conflict always calls up talk about solutions rather than resolutions,  as if some moral puzzle bedeviled the future of the Palestinians and Israel. Perhaps this is because  no state has come into existence amid su...
Freedom Waves Campaigners Abused and Imprisoned
BEN LORBER
West Bank. In the immediate aftermath of the illegal capture of the Freedom Waves flotillas, Israel’s public image has been tarnished, as reports of violence at sea surface to counteract its claims of a peaceful takeover, and as human rights cyber-resist...
Jailed for Sailing to Gaza
MEDEA BENJAMIN and ROBERT NAIMAN
Two boats full of courageous passengers were on their way to Gaza when they were intercepted on Friday, November 4, by the Israeli military in international waters. We call the passengers courageous because they sailed from Turkey on November 2 with the knowledge that at ...
Australia’s Vote Against Palestine
BRIAN McKINLAY
The possibility that the Palestinian issue could imperil an Australian Prime Minister’s hold on office would seem remote to many outsiders, but the UNESCO vote for Palestine has a resonance in Australia. There was widespread criticism in many circles in Austr...
The Price of Torching Mosques
JONATHAN COOK
Jewish far-right groups responsible for a series of arson attacks on West Bank mosques over the past year broke dangerous ground last week when they turned their attention for the first time to holy places inside Israel. A mosque was torched, followed days later by an att...
Musings of a Self-Hating Jew
SAUL LANDAU
63 years ago most Jews rejoiced over the birth of Israel. Some thought it would become the place where a new vision of socialism with justice and equality would arise. Clearly, not all Jews believed that – or in those values. Six plus decades later, the idea that...
The “Generous” Offer
EVE SPANGLER
Given recent Palestinian initiatives at the U.N., it was only a matter of time until the usual Israeli apologetics appeared. Charles Krauthammer’s recent Washington Post op. ed. perfectly exemplifies the product.  He repeats, yet again, the story of the “gen...
The Real Story of How Israel Was Created
ALISON WEIR
To better understand the Palestinian bid for membership in the United Nations, it is important to understand the original 1947 UN action on Israel-Palestine. The common representation of Israel’s birth is that the UN created Israel, that the world was in favor of...
Netanyahu’s Little Lie
JAMES ZOGBY
Back when I was in Catholic elementary school and in the Boy Scouts we would often be enlisted to participate in fund- raising drives that had us going door-to- door in our neighbourhoods, collecting money for various charities or causes (school or church related projects...
The US Position in the Middle is Disintegrating
MICHAEL BRENNER
The United States’ strategic position in the greater Middle East is disintegrating. The repercussions of the Arab Spring have undercut the tacit alliance among Washington, Cairo, Riyadh, Amman and Jerusalem with auxi...
America’s Dangerous Game at the UN
JOHN V. WHITBECK
The number of UN member states extending diplomatic recognition to the State of Palestine has now risen to 131, leaving only 62 UN member states on the wrong side of history and humanity. ...
In the Shadow of the Wall
MATS SVENSSON
Today’s wall is longer, higher and it does not stop terrorist activities inside the West Bank. Houses are demolished, land is destroyed and people are dying. It is night. He is dark and it is dark. The fear comes out of his eyes. He is being chased by dogs and be...
Does UN Bid Herald Death of Old Guard?
JONATHAN COOK
Amid the enthusiastic applause in New York and the celebrations in Ramallah, it was easy to believe — if only a for minute — that, after decades of obstruction by Israel and the United States, a Palestinian state might finally be pulled out of the United Nati...
Populist for a Day
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Did you catch Obama’s populist twitch? The moment when he tossed aside the stifling cloak of compromise, and like Joshua before the walls of Jericho issued the trumpet call to the disheartened Democratic base that henceforth it will be the battlements guarding the untax...
The Futile Undertaking of Palestinian Statehood
ESAM AL-AMIN
Today, September 23, Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas submits, to the UN the application for Palestinian statehood for the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967. What are the implications of this effort? Does it serve the Palestinian ...