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 2008
What factors are causing the zooming price of crude oil, gasoline and heating products? What is going to be done about it?
Don’t rely on the White House—with Bush and Cheney marinated in oil—or the Congress—which has hearin...
"Who the heck is Ron Paul?” asked many Americans over the course of the past year. The 70 year old, Texas Congressman’s name and face adorned web pages, blogs, email spams, posters and pamphlets throughout the nation. Out of nowhere, the...
While the current occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq look to be part of an ambitious plan of US domination of the Muslim world, both are proving to be a much greater problem than their shadowy planners supposed. And whatever conspiracy jigsaw puzzle Afg...
Paedophilia is a motherhood issue, and the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudds’ personal opinion was that he found the work "revolting" and without "artistic merit". He told the Nine Network that "k...
As a 16th prisoner at Guantánamo, Noor Uthman Muhammed, is put forward for trial by Military Commission (the much-criticized system of trials for “terror suspects” invented in the wake of the 9/11 attacks), here’s a brief guide t...
Since 2005, the American Psychological Association (APA) has steadfastly asserted that psychologists participating in detainee interrogations protects detainees by helping to keep these interrogations "safe, legal, ethical, and effective." Last...
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Thirteen years ago, when I first started out on the lecture circuit, speaking about the issue of racism, it seemed as though everywhere I went, someone wanted to know my opinion of Louis Farrakh...
The good news is that after ten years in office and thousands of commencement addresses, United States Senator Charles “Chuck” Schumer, ostensibly a Democrat from New York, has changed his standard speech. Students were becoming afraid to go ...
is Cuba’s Vice President and President of its National Assembly.
...
This week, Senator Barak Obama traveled to Florida and spoke to Jewish and Cuban-American audiences. In those speeches, he embraced the right-wing policy positions of the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) and the hard-line program of the...
Hillary Clinton continues to spend a million a day, staying in the nomination race on the calculation that that Barack Obama might assassinated, a possibility she is methodically fostering by race-baiting him as a black man trying to hustle his way into ...
Hillary Rodham Clinton was not a liberal, but the news media seldom realized it when surrounded by campaign placards and press kits, as a throng of reporters in the Oval Office were on this bright, cold day in January 2009.
"Fiddle dee dee, ...
One can understand why some people might have sincerely thought that the Iraq war would be a "cakewalk". First, consider WW2 ; the US mercilessly bombed Germany and Japan, including their civilian populations, then occupied those cou...
I received an email message not long ago – it contained these statements:
“It is the VETERAN, not the preacher, who has given us freedom of religion. It is the VETERAN, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the...
New York Presbyterian Hospital is among the top handful of the most prestigious hospitals in the U.S. It is striving to become number one. It has already become number one in a way that is hardly commendable.
Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer...
U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti will rule any day now on a suit brought by Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth. The vets want the judge to order the Department of Veterans Affairs to upgrade its mental-health services. Some 500 vets are committin...
The Germans call it "die Flucht nach vorne" – escaping forwards. When the situation is desperate, attack! Instead of retreating, advance! When there is no way out, storm ahead!
This method was successful in 1948. At the end o...
Memorial Day is not actually a day to pray for U.S. troops who died in action but rather a day set aside by Congress to pray for peace. The 1950 Joint Resolution of Congress which created Memorial Day says: “Requesting the Preside...
I was watching my baby daughter sleep in her carseat outside of the Sacramento airport about ten hours ago when I noticed a missed call from Brendan Phillips. He’s in a band called Fast Rattler with several friends of mine, two of whom live in my new home...
“There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell.”
William Tecumseh Sherman, Michigan Military Academy, June 19, 1879
Monday May 26 is the fifth Memori...
Memorial Day is a double-whammy for me.
You see, my son Casey was born on Memorial Day 29 years ago. When he was growing up, we would gather dozens of our friends and relatives to celebrate his birthday.
Now a few of us gather at his grave in Vaca...
For weeks, pundits have speculated about why Hillary Clinton insists on remaining in the primary race when Barack Obama has all but clinched the Democratic presidential nomination. On Friday, Clinton answered that question. It appears she’s waiting...
This weekend’s fast-moving, long-overdue HBO docu-drama on the theft of the 2000 election stopped four years short. It did a riveting job of portraying how Team Bush, headed by James Baker, strong-armed its way into the presidency. But it̵...
Among the music left in my grandmother’s piano bench is a “war edition” from 1917 of a sentimental love-song entitled “K-K-K-Katy” composed by Army Song Leader Geoffrey O’Hara. On the back page of the single-fold half-folio&m...
My mother Doris Frances Cassidy was a “hot sketch,” full of laughter and quick on the uptake. Smart, sharp, resourceful, and the most loving mother anyone could ask for. She talked to everyone: doormen, neighbors, waiters, salesgirls, hac...