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 from May 2006
After serving for five years as Interior Secretary in the Bush Cabinet, Gale Norton, protégé of James Watt, quietly stepped down from her post overseeing the ruination of the American West. Norton’s sudden exit was almost certainly hastened by ...
A May 24 article in the NY Times noted a provision in the recently passed Senate immigration reform bill that expands the number of foreign nurses who may work in the U.S. The article cited a national shortage of nurses for the removal of the current restriction o...
Do recent immigrants from Latin America diminish the economic advancement of other Americans, in particular black Americans? "The reaction to foreign immigrants, as also to internal migration, comes partly from the belief or, in any c...
Zoot suit, white jacket with side vents five inches long I’m out on the street again and I’m leaping along I’m dressed right for a beach fight but I just can’t explain Why that uncertain feeling is s...
A nation of immigrants: This is a convenient myth developed as a response to the 1960s movements against colonialism, neocolonialism, and white supremacy. The ruling class and its brain trust offered multiculturalism, diversity, and affirmative action in response ...
Labeling as ‘dangerous’ the violent escalation in the Gaza Strip between supporters of the Fatah and Hamas movements is an understatement, to say the least. The situation in the Occupied Territories is more perilous than any media account, however dece...
In one third of Gosavi Pawar’s house there was mourning. In another third, celebration. In the last part of his home there was preparation for both mourning and celebration. This Banjara household in Yavatmal , [a town in the Vidharbha district in the north-...
As the Little League season gets into full swing for millions of young baseball and softball players across the country, their health and safety on the playing field will significantly benefit from an addition in the Little League rules this year — a require...
Do national and congressional Democrats have a death wish? In the course of discussing Barbara Olshansky’s and my new book, "The Case for Impeachment," I’m coming to the conclusion that they must. And that’s even before they do s...
Al Gore has returned to the political spotlight in exalted fashion, propping himself up for a potential presidential bid in 2008. Front and center in Gore’s new rhetorical entourage is the state of nature, and in particular, global warming. And while Gore ma...
The most important words anyone said to me in the weeks immediately after September 11, 2001, came from my friend James Koplin. While acknowledging the significance of that day, he said, simply: "I was in a profound state of grief about the world before 9/11,...
According to a recent survey, more Americans can name the characters from The Simpsons, than can recall the rights protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In fact, while roughly one in five Americans could name the Simpsons characters, only one-...
"If I had a bell, I’d ring it in the morning, I’d ring it in the evening, All over this land. I’d ring out danger; I’d ring out warning…" So go the words of the old protest so...
Last week the newly elected Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, visited Washington to meet with George Bush in order to endorse America’s plan to attack Iran in his address to Congress. In his strident appeal to Congress, Olmert sought nothing less than t...
Rock the Vote is in shambles. According to a February 7 LA Times article by Charles Duhigg, the organization is $700,000 in debt and has cut its staff from twenty people in 2004 to two today. Rock the Vote hasn’t had a chief operating officer since the last ...
There were some remarkable admissions in a piece by the distinguished Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling in the immediate wake of the British teaching union NATFHE’s vote yesterday to offer members moral backing if they boycott Israeli universities. Briti...
"Our film is a little step in the British confronting their imperialist history. Maybe if we tell the truth about the past we can tell the truth about the present." The leftist British director Ken Loach has been nominate...
According to Laura Rozen of the Los Angeles Times, t...
We are currently being "treated" to more of the moral rot that infests both political parties and, consequently, to yet another example of why a third party is desperately needed. I speak, of course, of the spectacle of the bitter outrage expressed by Co...
"For the cause of all wars and revolutions–in a word, of all violence–is always the same: the negation of hierarchy." Meditations on the Tarot (Anonymous) History, it has been said, is w...
A group of left intellectuals have recently issued The Euston Manifesto. The signers are mostly British, and the American sig...
It’s time to dust off your "No Nukes!" button — or grab that old one out of your Mom’s top bureau drawer. You may need it soon. The "powers that be" have begun a new campaign to convince us that we must have dozens or h...
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) supposedly helps protect the environment, especially from toxins that endanger human health. But maybe not. Lead activists from across the country charge that the federal agency is missing the chance to reduce exposur...
I”m not in a big hurry to see The Da Vinci Code: The Movie. I trust the critics who say it’s boring beyond belief (pun intended). After all, I wasn’t wild about the book. But I’m glad to hear that the film’s opening weekend did...
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm signed into law "what’s called one of the nation’s strictest public school curriculums" on April 20, 2006, claiming it would "help Michigan’s economic revival". While it should obviously be ...