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 January 2008
Shiver me timbers, boys and girls, we is awash in a sea of pirates down here in the Southern Ocean and it’s time for a parley to do a little ‘splaining on the subject. This ocean now rivals the 17th century Caribbean for reported acts of piracy. The on...
It is difficult to know where Bush has accomplished the most destruction, the Iraqi economy or the US economy. In the current issue of Manufacturing & Technology News, Washington economist Charles McMillion observes that seven years of Bush has seen the...
"Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten" is a beautiful documentary directed by the Clash frontman’s friend and admirer Julien Temple. Temple, who made videos for The Clash in their late 70s-early 80s heyday and later directed the Sex Pistols doc &q...
The boss’s sacred right to fire a worker supercedes the worker’s legal right to fire up a medicinal herb in his own house on his own time, the California Supreme Court has ruled in the case of Ross v. RagingWire. The Court had to violate its own logic ...
According to a recent New York Times article about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, more than 120 people have been killed–in America, since 2001–by members of the United States Armed Forces. Bringing the war home after returning from serving their count...
It looked like the fall of the Berlin wall. And not only did it look like it. For a moment, the Rafah crossing was the Brandenburg Gate. It is impossible not to feel exhilaration when masses of oppressed and hungry people break down the wall that is shuttin...
A paper published January 17 in a prestigious medical journal demonstrated in the starkest of terms how pharmaceutical companies tend to publish research that’s favorable to their products and leave unfavorable results tucked away in their files. It’s ...
The recent uprisings and eventual electoral success of the Movimiento a Socialismo (MAS) in Bolivia is one of the most hopeful historical events to have occurred so far this century. From its beginnings in the struggles against the privatization of water in 2000 u...
On Saturday, January 26, the Democrats will hold their primary in South Carolina. Last weekend, a week before the primary, and the day of the Republican primary, I was in South Carolina. Because of the snowstorm in Atlanta I was encouraged to stay in the state for...
The Miami Herald prints a pro-nuke editorial by Jeb Bush in today’s Miami Herald. The newspaper editors should have appended to the editorial an advisement whether Bush is a consultant to or would profit from investments in the nuclear industry. This ...
Every year, the Heritage Foundation, in conjunction with the Wall Street Journal, dutifully churns out its annual Index of Economic Freedom, a ratings guide to countries’ relative corporate hospitality. The book-length report makes a quite modest glob...
After a January 24 debate in the Senate on amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Senate appears ready to capitulate once again to the Bush administration’s agenda of sacrificing liberty for questionable security. On the day before Co...
Columbia, South Carolina. Some black residents of Columbia, South Carolina, found a flier at their door yesterday morning with a banner quote: "The Democratic candidates — with the exception of John Edwards, who opened his ca...
The DEA and its predecessor federal drug law enforcement organizations have always been infiltrated and, to varying degrees, managed by America’s intelligence agencies. The reason is simple enough: the US Government has been protecting its drug smuggling all...
As workers from the Las Vegas casino strip filed into the Concorde Ballroom of the Paris Hotel, it was pretty clear what the split was. African-American workers in union t-shirts sat on one side of the aisle and mostly Latino workers filled the seats on the other ...
Baghdad. US military forces will not stay in Iraq for anything like as long as some American politicians are demanding, says the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari. He said crucial issues about "Who is in charge in Iraq–we or you?" would...
There’s nothing wrong with a group of people historically at odds sitting down to find common ground. Or is there? For decades, our public lands have been a battleground: Timber, wildlife, recreation, wilderness — which interests and uses shoul...
B’Tselem is the independent Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied (Palestinian) Territories (OPT) based in Jerusalem with a well-deserved reputation for accuracy and integrity. It was founded in 1989 to "document and educate the Is...
If polls are reliable, Hillary will win the Democratic nomination. The Democratic groups that prefer Obama are not sufficiently numerous to give him the nomination. Of course, anything can happen in a political campaign, but the latest Field Poll of likely ...
In their last debate in South Carolina Hillary Clinton questioned Barack Obama about his ties to a real estate developer As the Washington Post reports it earlier this week, In 1993, he [Obama] became an associate lawyer with a small Chicago fi...
"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without first having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for t...
The Palestinian people took their destiny in their own hands and smashed down the wall that divided Gaza from Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of people left their prison and walked into Egypt and bought up food, fuel and everything else in sight. It took great courag...
Among the panoply of reasons put forth against advocates of a one-state solution for Palestine-Israel, perhaps the most disingenuous is the injunction, repeated by well meaning commentators who believe they speak in the Palestinians’ best interests, that Pal...
It’s been difficult to generate a groundswell of public opinion for real change in our deeply flawed health care system because most of the people who have medical insurance believe having insurance is equivalent to having guaranteed access to quality health...
The cultivation of opium poppies whose product is turned into heroin is spreading rapidly across Iraq as farmers find they can no longer make a living through growing traditional crops. Afghan with experience in planting poppies have been helping farmers sw...