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
The 21 Dec 2008 editorial in the New York Times, “How To Pay For A 21st-Century Military” purports to advocate tough-minded pragmatism to reform a Pentagon that is clearly out of control. Yet its logic is really another example of the kind of hackne...
“There can and there must be a ‘political hegemony’ even before assuming government power, and in order to exercise political leadership or hegemony one must not count solely on the power and material force that is given by government.&r...
The forces of the universe sent us a corruption triple play the week of December 8th. Just in case there were any slumbering souls still doubting the multi headed monster we need to slay to avoid becoming Rome, those benevolent forces assaulted our senses with ...
Where to dump the Guantanamo mess? Thanks to Larry Summers, President Obama’s soon-to-be senior White House economic guru, I have an answer. Bring it to Point Roberts, Washington, our own Canadian Guantanamo.
Summers has been famous for years in Progress...
Wages, wages, wages. It all gets down to wages.
A strong, resilient economy, that can withstand the periodic buffeting of cyclical downturns, must be built on a rock-solid foundation of wages that keep pace with production. If wages stagnate, as they have ...
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been celebrating its 50th anniversary by doing what it does best: public relations puffery.
In recent weeks, the agency issued a slick 215-page publication attributing success after success “benefitin...
With surprising haste and insensitivity, Barack Obama’s alienating the most serious, activist component of his political base. The blogosphere’s been seething in indignation for weeks. Chris Bowers, of the OpenLeft.com blog, calls Obama’s cabinet &l...
A MAN was asked about his sons. “I have three,” he said, “but one of them is a complete idiot.”
“Which one?” they asked.
“Take your pick,” he replied.
In a 50 days, we shall vote for a new Knesset a...
Conor Cruise O’Brien has died aged 91.
He had a long career: in the Irish Civil Service in the 1940s; in the 1950s in the UN; in the Congo, the University of Ghana and New York University in the 1960s, He was elected an Irish opposition Labour TD in 196...
The wonderful thing about big lies is their kettle logic. The term, of course, derives from the story of the man who offered several mutually incompatible excuses for returning his friend’s kettle in damaged condition: "It broke too easil...
Illinois (Where Our Governors Make Our License Plates)
Revelations of Wyeth’s pay-to-play, ghost-written articles in medical journals made public by Sen. Charles Grassley’s (R- Iowa) this week could not come at a worse time for the company.
...
As they sink beneath the waves even faster than the rest of the economy, the nation’s print media are clinging to their remaining advertisers for dear life. In the past month, I’ve seen firsthand the fear that newspapers have of losing advertising i...
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It was inevitable that the shock and awe we glimpsed for the past twenty years in the fast growing regions of the United States through an unsustainable boom in housing and construction would come to grief. It was born of hubris, and it continues through this day....
The Christmas season is a time to remember the unfortunate, among whom are those who have been wrongly convicted.
In the United States, the country with the largest prison population in the world, the number of wrongly convicted is very large. Hard...
The importance of any given artist is dependent on only one thing. You can chart their lasting effects, the people they influenced or the new techniques they pioneered, but when you get down to it all that matters is how much they care. Great artists give everything ...
Bach helped future marketers of his music immeasurably by choosing an auspicious year to die in. Long before the mammoth commemorations of cultural figures became standard practice, Bach expired in the summer of 1750, concerned about his own salvation and oblivious t...
A growing mass of people in California, where the housing bubble soared seemingly to the sky and then plunged rapidly to earth, are out of work and seeking employment due to the deepening downturn. According to the state Employment Development Department, there were ...
The transition to a new administration held promise of a change in leadership and direction for our foundering economy and deeply stupefied and polarized population. Running on a platform of hope and change, Barack Obama promised a new direction for America. Now, six...
Thank you, George Bush. The federal government is finally acting to protect the auto industry from failure.
The $17.4 billion in loans for GM and Chrysler is not going to be enough to rescue the industry — but it will keep these companies going until the...
In a recent Los Angeles Times Op-Ed piece about San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, Josh Getlin perpetuated a myth when he wrote that Dan White “shot the mayor four times, twice in the head as he lay on the floor of his private back office. Standing astri...
Put in a positive light, so as not to cast a pall over the joys of the Christmas season, Bernard L. Madoff should be viewed as someone who has expanded the consequences of one of the great new traditions of the holiday season to a group that never expected to share i...
Several of the environmental movement’s deep problems were displayed during the December 18th edition of Democracy Now. During the broadcast Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales conducted interview/debates on two Obama appointments which are critical to the envi...
Call any Jewish friend across the few days and the degrees of separation from someone financially devastated by Bernie Madoff are often only one or two. One rich Jewish friend in New York volunteers that because of some intricate family dispute his own money hadn&rsq...
“…a person who hears the voice of a man who calls the Muslims to his help but he does not respond to him, is not a Muslim.”
- Prophet Muhammad
Gaza is an island.
Although located in the middle of the A...