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 October 2008
It’s been eight years – almost to the day – that Bush and Cheney lost the election but seized the White House anyway.
It’s been four years – almost to the day – that Bush and Cheney ...
Dear John McCain, Sarah Palin, the RNC, Charlie Black, the corrosive spirit of Lee Atwater, Rove-ian politics, Sean Hannity, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Elizabeth Hasselback, Joe the Plumber and other respected members of your respected ilk:
Please stop. Just sto...
At a time when we need Marx’s analytical abilities, Oliver Stone offers Freud. In his one-dimensional biopic, “W,” we do not gain insight into how a less than brilliant president circumvented carefully constructed procedures to safeguard the militar...
The application of CDO’s as financial poisons, bundled in CDS and delivered through ‘global’ financial channels – actually not this instance ‘Global’: Islamic Banking institutions for example protected by moral prohibitions g...
The parallels with 1932 are breathtaking: billions in bonds defaulting; dysfunctional global credit markets; commodity prices crumbling; stocks in free fall; home foreclosures; rising unemployment; banks teetering; an angry populace; a Republican administration cling...
Technically, the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits John McCain from becoming president of the United States.
Section III of the Amendment says, “No person shall … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States &hellip...
Sometimes a record will grab you by the throat and make you change the way you look at the world.
…And sometimes it won’t.
El Guincho, the producer/singer behind Alegranza! has made a great dance record. The kind of album that can make a wh...
A specter is haunting America. Or at least haunting the fevered brains of John McCain and his fellow Republicans.
It’s the specter of "socialism," in the form of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and his alleged determination to &quo...
Alaska Senator Ted Stevens is no fool. He asked for an early trial on his federal corruption changes to create a fall back position, if convicted, like the one he has in play right now. He has a better hand than most people realize.
The vote on his seat is nex...
The period we’re living in now is the Bush-Obama-McCain Administration. Bush obligingly initiated Obama’s bombing campaign on Pakistan. The three of them colluded on the recent wealth transfer (about $840 billion) from the American people to Wall St.
...
At a recent conference I was repeatedly asked about the prospects for a third Palestinian uprising, or Intifada. The question, although seemingly uncomplicated, is both loaded and important, and cannot be answered in a mere two minutes or less.
A ‘third...
The Bush doctrine continues to live a charmed life less than a week before the US Presidential elections. It has made sovereignty nigh redundant – attacks on the soil of Washington’s close ally Pakistan, and now, Syria. The Sunday attack on th...
A limbless victim of a forgotten war sat and watched me run by his wheelchair yesterday. While jogging past him at the Veterans’ Hospital two things crossed my mind. First I thought, despite aching calves and shortness of breath, I was lucky to be a Vietnam Vet...
Islamabad.
The United Nations Charter states, among other wise and widely forgotten strictures, that “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence o...
Max Payne isn’t a great movie. In fact, by most standards, it’s probably not a very good movie, but it gets the job done in being a diversion. As a vigilante narrative, mostly the movie exists as something for us to dump our anger and frustration in while...
Until November 2004, Israel lacked a partner for peace. President Arafat was locked up in a prison in Ramallah. He could admittedly receive international dignitaries from the whole world after Israeli approval. Israel often demanded that the dignitary first vis...
Paul Craig Roberts served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of ...
“The (economy’s) primary functions are agriculture, manufacture, and transportation. Community life is impossible without them. They hold the world together…The great delusion is that one may change the foundation. The foundations of soc...
When John McCain III was about two years old, he acquired a habit that worried his parents. He developed an “outsized temper” that he expressed in an unusual fashion. “At the smallest provocation, I would go off in a mad frenzy, and then, suddenly c...
The US presidential campaign has only addressed in generic terms the wreckage caused by Wall Street, the absence of financial regulation and the wages of greed, and not at all how that feeding tube connects locally: too many platted subdivisions in farmland and wetla...
RED STATE REBELS: Tales of Grassroots Resistance from the Heartland
...
Before election day puts an end to this interminable song and dance, there’s one last chance to listen to the music — the candidates’ music. It is in light of their musical tastes and talents that politicians’ character is most clearly t...
A major problem with the bailout scheme is that it misrepresents the ongoing credit crunch as a problem of illiquidity, or lack of cash. In reality, however, it is a lack of trust that has been created by the widespread insolvency in the financial market. In such an ...
It has long been known by alert sections of the public that growth has its limits and overuse of natural resources leads to collapse. The first evidence of this is provided by the world’s oldest written records. These come from the civilization of Sumer, which ...
I voted for Obama.
On Wednesday, I queued up at a supermarket near my house here in Austin so that I could vote early and avoid the lines on Election Day. (In March, the lines at my precinct during the primary were more than an hour long.) After a lot of thin...