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 March 2008
Admiral Fallon’ s (forced?) resignation was the last warning we are likely to get of an attack on Iran. It does not mean an attack is certain, but the U.S. could not attack Iran so long as he was the CENTCOM commander. That obstacle is now gone. ...
"Fear not! This crimson flag rippling in these dawns will never fade," The rather off-key bawling of the Turkish national anthem by the assembled children in the playground of the school next door woke me suddenly. ...
What would it take to convince you that your town should play host to the world’s most feared human and animal pathogens? Believe it or not, five states are locked in fierce competition over a proposed bioterror lab that would have them doing just that. ...
Last week the Federal Reserve ratcheted up its ongoing efforts to halt the burgeoning financial crisis. The Fed first engineered an injection of money into failing investment bank Bear Stearns, an 86-year-old Wall Street giant, and soon after facilitated a bu...
So Hillary Clinton, her campaign sagging as it becomes clearer and clearer that she’s not going to get the Democratic nomination unless she can destroy her opponent, insists she would have quit Barack Obama’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago ...
WThe Internet is rapidly proving itself the best friend of those who seek to be truly informed-not limited by the sorts of things reported in the Wall Street Journal or The New York Times.
Two of the front-page stories on the WSJ on December 6 dealt with the ...
Jeff Cohen — full disclosure: he used to be my boss and is a friend — makes some very valid and important points in "Iraq Winter Soldier Hearings: Victory for Independent Media." But there is another way of looking at this. ...
On March 19, JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon joined Bear Stearns chief executive Alan Schwartz to face a group of 400 stunned Bear executives. Five days earlier, Bear Stearns, one of Wall Street’s five largest investment banks, had lost $17 billio...
"Every American deserves an opportunity to achieve the American dream; New Orleans public housing residents deserve no less." U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Alphonso Jackson made th...
Enough already. I can hardly stand to read the relentless insipid back and forth about Barak Obama’s recent speech on race. Somebody writes a clever bit of cliched rhetoric for him and the Right can’t quit hosing it while at the same time the Left...
Former CIA Analyst Frontline’s "Bush’s War" on PBS Monday and Tuesday evening was a nicely put-together rehash of the top players’ trickery that led to the attack on Iraq, together with the power-grabbing, back-stabbing, and limitle...
Will there be no end to this tiresome "national conversation" as to whether a black man trumps a white woman, or vice versa, on our nation’s list of the wronged? One possible end might arrive, of course, when another white man is elected in No...
America’s banks are broken, and the U.S. economy cannot be pulled out of recession until they are fixed. Thirty years ago, mortgages were straightforward. Homebuyers went to banks, which checked incomes, purchased independent appraisals and loaned bu...
China’s crackdown against Tibetan protesters ahead of the Summer Olympics in Beijing carries with it a brutal echo from the past. Scores of people, including school children are reported dead and more repression has been promised. The People’s Daily, ...
Last weekend I sang at an antiwar protest in downtown Portland, Oregon, on the fifth anniversary of the ongoing slaughter in Iraq. In both its good and bad aspects, the event downtown was not unusual. Hard-working, unpaid activists from various organizations ...
The left far too often dwells on gloom and doom. We postulate about the failures of past movements, the crashing of the economy, the bloodshed in the Middle East, and the wholesale destruction of the environment. Not to say all this is not occurring. It most ...
"Stigmatizing the uncounted as backward, dangerous, etc., then, is the best way to ward off a more profound evil’: the emergence of a popular subjective force that would be capable of opposing the sterility of comfortable self...
Hillary Clinton can not win the Democratic nomination for president. The numbers tell the story. Even with robust victories in Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia and Kentucky, Hillary will trail Obama in popular votes and pledged delegates as they enter the conv...
Keith Ellison, member of the U.S. House of Representatives, is the first African American ever elected to the House from Minnesota. Oh, he’s also the first Muslim Congressman in history [The second Muslim American, Andre Carson, was recently elected to Congr...
Sami Al-Arian is a political prisoner in Police State America. This article reviews his case briefly and updates it to the present. Because of his faith, ethnicity and political activism, the Bush administration targeted Al-Arian for supporting "terror...
The election season in the United States has seen the presidential candidates winding their way around a collapsing economy and an endless occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes have just published a new book...
Well, the toll of wasted American lives in Iraq has hit 4000. But hey, who’s counting? Certainly not the folks in the White House and the Pentagon, and certainly not John McCain, the prospective Republican nominee for president, who thinks the war is ...
The tragic marker of the 4000th U.S. Soldier to fall in Iraq is now before the American people–with no end in sight. During the vigils, marches and Winter Soldiers’ heartfelt testimonies on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the invasion-occupat...
"War is much too serious a thing to be left to military men," in Talleyrand’s memorable words. In the same spirit, one could say: The American presidential elections are much too serious to be left to the Americans. The US is now the only su...
At this critical moment, the Dalai Lama and Tibet need us. I ask you to join in adding your voice to those supporting the Dalai Lama, the cause of Tibetan autonomy, and an end to the violence in Tibet. Following the violence in Tibet and China this month...