By Kim Bullimore

Israel announced on June 17 that it would “liberalise” its three-year siege of Gaza, allowing more categories of goods to enter the blockaded territory. Non-essential items such as tomato sauce, snacks, mayonnaise and cosmetics will now be allowed in. However, building materials such as cement, pipes and iron — essential for the reconstruction of housing, much of which was destroyed by Israel’s 22-day bombing campaign in 2008-09 — will remain prohibited. Read more...

By Marce Cameron

As all Cuban schoolchildren know, July 26 is the anniversary of the 1953 attack on the Moncada military garrison in Santiago de Cuba that launched the Cuban Revolution. The young rebels, led Fidel Castro, had hoped to seize the garrison, liberate its weapons and call upon the Cuban people to rise up against the US-backed Batista dictatorship. While it failed to achieve its military objective, it succeeded in rousing the revolutionary spirit of the Cuban people. The youth who sacrificed themselves, and those who survived the dictatorship’s murderous retribution, became heroes from one end of the Caribbean island to the other. The survivors of the Moncada assault went on to lead the popular revolution that toppled the Batista dictatorship on New Year’s Day, 1959. At first, Washington’s corporate rulers were not overly worried that their thug had been overthrown. They thought the Cuba’s new leaders could be bribed and bullied into becoming a loyal servants of US imperialism. They were wrong, and by the time they realised their mistake, it was too late. Read more...

By John Pilger, in London

How do wars begin? With a “master illusion”, according to Ralph McGehee, one of the CIA’s pioneers in “black propaganda”, known today as “news management”. In 1983, he described to me how the CIA had faked an “incident” that became the “conclusive proof of North Vietnam’s aggression”. This followed a claim, also fake, that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked an American warship in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964. Read more...