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
Now that the defeat of John McCain is almost a foregone conclusion, Sarah Palin has begun to distance herself from the 2008 Republican ticket, establishing a separate identity for her 2012 run for the presidency. Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher ...
When Henry Paulson and George W. Bush crafted their “bailout” legislation, it was hardly surprising that the plan consisted of giving the money to the Wall Street criminals who caused the economy to crash, without external review by anyone. By the t...
A specter is haunting America — the specter of socialism. (Well at least, it’s haunting the election campaigns of the two main candidates). All the powers of the Right have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: Radio Show hosts and evange...
Things are getting worse. Since September, $16 trillion has been erased from global stock market value. Losses in the US–where the financial turmoil originated–have been much smaller than other, more vulnerable markets. The Dow is down less than 40 percen...
Orthodox Jews and Latinos are clashing in Postville, IA. Somalis and Latinos are clashing in Shelbyville TN. Somalis, Latinos and Sudanese are clashing in Grand Island, NE. And you’d think it has nothing to do with slaughterhouses.
It’s about pray...
While books like Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine and ...
Now here’s a problem that anyone with half a brain could have seen coming. On Monday the second trial by Military Commission at Guantánamo — in other words, the second US “war crimes” trial since the Second World War, following the unde...
Like over 3000 other academics, I’ve signed the “Support Bill Ayers” statement defending Ayers from the desperate, opportunistic attacks of the McCain campaign. I think it important to combat the depiction of a distinguished scholar as a “terr...
I wish to declare the principle of political equivalence as grounds for the moral authority to govern through shared benefits and sacrifices between these in Washington, D.C. who rule and the citizens who are ruled.
Two simple, short bills in Congress will ill...
MIKE WHITNEY — I have a nephew who is finishing up at Quantico after graduating from the Naval Academy last June. He’s bright and talented and wants to serve in the Marines. Naturally, his parents and relatives are worried that he will be deployed to Ira...
We are a world of some 192 separate nations. Yet, increasingly the notion of independent nation is irrelevant. In this World United, where economic, political, and environmental crises fester and erupt in local and globalized ways, we all "feel the pain" &#...
There was absolutely nothing flawed in former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s ideology or his understanding of what drives the market. Each corporation operates in accordance with its self-interest in the competition to increase profits no matter what...
I hear often from livestock proponents that ranching is an economically sustainable use of western rangelands. Unfortunately many interested in conservation also believe this myth, and it has unfortunate public policy implications. As University of Montana economist ...
Okay, you’re gonna need to fasten your seatbelt for this one.
Hear’s a quiz for you: Who was the third most ‘socialist’ president in American history?
Hmmm… Hard to say, eh? I think we can all agree that F...
No presidential contender I have seen, with the possible exception of Bill Clinton, has run a better campaign than Barack Obama. If for nothing else, one must hand it to him for the magnificent improbability of the effort – a guy whose last name sounds like ...
Hardly a day goes by without some extraordinary news from the Military Commissions, the system of “terror trials” conceived in the Office of the Vice President in November 2001, and their days now seem to be as numbered as those of the Bush administration...
The Miami Herald Business Section reports, "Planning the cities of the future/ 2050", through an interview with the president of the Urban Land Institute, Richard M. Rosan. There is a backstory that today’s readers of The Herald are not privy to; that...
On Friday, October 24, the pound sterling dropped to just $1.58 (down from $1.73 earlier in the week, an enormous plunge by foreign-exchange standards), and the euro sunk to just $1.26, while Japan’s yen soared by 10 per cent. These shifts threatened to disrupt...
John McCain, who has harshly criticized the idea of sitting down with dictators without pre-conditions, appears to have done just that. In 1985, McCain traveled to Chile for a friendly meeting with Chile’s military ruler, General Augusto Pinochet, one of the wo...
John McCain has clearly learned from experience and anyone doubting it had only to watch the third debate. With all the thousands, if not millions, of things that have been written about Mr. Wurzelbacher, none has tumbled to the real reason John McCain introduced him...
I went to the John McCain a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina last week and I have the autograph to prove it. But like, John McCain, I had to fight for it. I hustled over there after finding out about it an hour before, hoping to penetrate the press gates. But. Had...
After months of street battles and political meetings, a new draft of the Bolivian constitution was ratified by Congress on October 21. A national referendum on whether or not to make the document official is scheduled for January 25, 2009.
"Now we have m...
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When CounterPunch last visited embattled members of the Puerto Rican teachers union in June, they were fighting their way through police lines to appeal to fellow workers from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), at the l...
Many years ago, after graduating from college and spending a year learning from a wonderful group of third graders at Biddeford’s Kennedy school, I took a position on the 3rd shift at a local electronic components factory. My brief career in public education wa...