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 December 2008
As I write this, Israeli jets are bombing the areas of Zeitoun and Rimal in central Gaza City. The family I am staying with has moved into the internal corridor of their home to shelter from the bombing. The windows nearly blew out just five minutes ago as a massive ...
What a year for corporate criminality and malfeasance!
As we compiled the Multinational Monitor list of the 10 Worst Corporations of 2008, it would have been easy to restrict the awardees to Wall Street firms.
But the rest of the corporate sector was no...
The war against the Palestinians arises from the merging of the Zionist view of Jewish exceptionalism with the view in the United States of American exceptionalism, which have focused their common root ambitions for domination and possession as a hostility to Islam, ...
The intensity of the bombings on Saturday, which left over 230 people dead and 800 wounded, many seriously, was what struck one witness, R., who claimed never to have heard so many explosions so close together and for such an uninterrupted period of time inside the G...
Two days before Christmas, officials from the U.S. Office of Surface Mining (OSM) have granted a permit to Peabody Coal Company to expand their mining operations on Navajo and Hopi lands, despite opposition from local communities and problems with the permitting proc...
I was surprised to learn on Saturday afternoon that Israel’s latest assault on Gaza, though not even half a day old, already boasted a Wikipedia entry. I was even more surprised to learn the origins of the assault’s codename.
At first glance, Oper...
The country’s financial markets have collapsed, as they tend to do when left without adult supervision, and they’re taking our economy with them. With the large banks refusing to make loans after losing billions on worthless subprime derivatives, the gove...
How the Press Led the US into War
Buy End Times Now! New...
The body of UN Security Council Resolution 1850 avoids any meaningful mention of a two-state solution or the creation of a Palestinian state with the exception of a feeble reference late in the text — added almost as an afterthought — to "preparation...
The plot, so unexpectedly, thickened in Iraq on a Sunday like no other. The two main actors – US President George W. Bush, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki – took to the stage to perform another well-rehearsed press conference. The scripts were eve...
Alaskans have enjoyed constitutional protection to possess marijuana since 1975. I have one question for NORML what happened to the rest of us?
Millions of Americans have been arrested and their property has been seized for violating the marijuan...
The bombing went on for about 10 minutes. It was like an earthquake on top of your head. The windows were shaking and squeaking. My 10-year-old was terrified, he was jumping from one place to another trying to hide. I held him tight to my chest and tried to give him ...
The presumed appointment by President-elect Barack Obama of retired Admiral Dennis C. Blair as his new Director of National Intelligence is being greeted with cheers by the national media, who hail his experience, bureaucratic infighting skills and comparatively mode...
Those who declare that the Great Crash of Late 2008 heralds the end of free market economic philosophy – "neoliberalism" for short – are not paying close enough attention.
This includes the Swedish Bank’s Economic Nobel Prize laurea...
I awoke at 7:30am in order to watch the Democracy Now coverage of the ash pond spill at 8am. After viewing the news coverage we headed out to the front lines. The day began around 10am as we were trying to define the perimeter of the ash pond spill. We b...
The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) is still without a contract, which, even in the best of times and for the most opportunistic of unions, is a tricky and precarious situation. But according to what’s being reported in mainstream and trade media, SAG—led...
Dear President-elect Obama:
For much of the 1970’s I was engaged with the U.S. auto industry, countering their endless claims that they could not meet federal vehicle emissions standards. I went to work for Mayor John Lindsay in 1969 as an engineer...
It is my obligation as the publisher of a national gay newspaper to weigh in on the President-Elect’s ...
As Israel nails shut the coffin that is Gaza under a siege that has lasted nearly three years, steadily intensifying so that malnutrition rates rival those of sub-Saharan Africa, sewage runs raw in the streets and pollutes the ocean, homes are still being bulldozed t...
In 1958 I wrote the following:
‘There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.’
...
I recently stopped in at a Cambodian restaurant that I have been going to for many years. Although eating the food for which a particular group is known is perhaps the most superficial of ways to communicate with people, I found myself involved in ...
First Prediction, Bernie Madoff will not, I repeat, will not be named Treasury Secretary by President Elect Barack Obama. He already was an insider sufficient to avoid SEC scrutiny during the Bush and Clinton years, as well as by his New Yorker heavyweig...
On December 12, 2008, the Wall Street Journal headlined: "Top Broker Accused of $50 Billion Fraud. Bernard L. Madoff….was arrested by federal agents (the previous day) after his sons turned him in for running what they said their father called a giant Ponz...
Joint Chief of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen is reportedly recommending to President-Elect Obama that the U.S. increase by 30,000 its current force of 32,000 in Afghanistan. That, as Robert Dreyfuss points out in a recent column, is about 20,000 more troops...
“By creating an image of vast, decentralized, kindhearted effort, an image that is fueled by every fund-raising letter or event, every canned goods drive, every hunger walk, run, bike, swim, or golf-a-thon, every concert or screening or play where a...