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 February 2009
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano shows few signs of reining in the immigrant crackdown launched by her predecessor Michael Chertoff. She recently called for "more boots on the ground" along the border and touted her determination to promote the ...
"The Obama regime has shown itself incapable of taking the necessary bold steps to end the economic catastrophe that began with Clinton-era liberal malfeasance. We’re beyond bailouts and other rearguard efforts. This is not the Great Depression. It is the ...
President Obama is likely to announce in the coming days that he will withdraw all US combat troops from Iraq by August 2010. Many of these soldiers will end up in Afghanistan where the Taliban is getting stronger and the US-backed government weaker by the day. How m...
Barack Obama’s first address to Congress provided Americans with yet another example of competent speechmaking, and I suppose, given that we’ve just endured eight painful years of oratorical farce, being able to listen to your president without wincing is...
Timothy Geithner is putting the finishing touches on a plan that will dump $1 trillion of toxic assets onto the US taxpayer. The plan, which goes by the opaque moniker the "Public-Private Investment Fund" (PPIF), is designed to provide lavish incentiv...
The most eye-catching placard on a 120,000-strong march in Dublin last Saturday against the Irish government’s austerity response to the tottering of the capitalist system was held aloft by a scrawny teenager with the look of a music-lover about him, reading &l...
Nazareth.
It is not entirely surprising that Amos Gilad, an Israeli general who once sued his own government for “irreversible mental damage” caused by his role in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, has publicly courted controversy again.
On Mon...
Within days of receiving $25 billion in federal bailout money–paid for with your tax dollars–Bank of America hosted a conference call of corporate executives and conservatives to strategize about how to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).
C...
Two lethal words went thankfully unspoken in President Obama’s address to the nation this week—atomic energy.
Unfortunately, two others—"clean coal"—were included.
An increasingly desperate reactor industry just tried...
Who believes that a 55-year old job applicant has the same chance of being hired as a 25-year old? Even though it’s a violation of federal age discrimination statutes to deny a job solely on the basis of age, who honestly believes it never happens?
...
It was all too predictable that Attorney General Eric Holder would be attacked for his recent remarks about race in America. To suggest that the nation is still haunted by the specter of racism is unacceptable it seems, especially since, with the election of Presiden...
Part 3 of a three-part series.
Obama has ridden a great wave of hope and expectation into office fueled by a desire by millions to see a radical departure from what Bush and Cheney have been, done and represent. What Bush and Cheney did and personify has been ...
It would be superfluous in us to point out that a plan to "end" a war which includes the continued garrisoning of up to 50,000 troops in a hostile land is, in reality, a continuation of that war, not its cessation. To produce such a plan and claim that it &...
Watching Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir inevitably reminded me of Eran Riklis’ Cup Final, also an Israeli film about its 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
When Cup Final came out in 1992, it made me think that a common future for Israelis and Palestinians ...
As Barack Obama’s troop escalation begins in Afghanistan and talking heads debate how many more troops the US should send, the leadership of what was once the largest antiwar organization (UFPJ) in the United States rejected a call for a unified antiwar protest...
Ever since its opening to the double edged sword known as “development,” debates over the Amazon rainforest repeatedly have degraded into an international tragi-comedy of hypocrisy and shirked responsibilities. Development’s fate, in reality, has be...
As the summer of 2005 began its slow fade into autumn, a piece of newspaper wrapped around a kebab said Osama bin Laden had moved to Iraq. It seemed everyone had forgotten there was a war on here. American soldiers used those remaining days of sunshine to buy carpets...
In the old days there was a certain protocol to rural correspondence in India, owed almost certainly to the fact that many villagers, illiterate themselves, would have a professional letter-writer write their letters for them. Every communication, whether conveying t...
“The Achilles’ heel of the Arab coalition is Lebanon. Muslim supremacy in this country is artificial and can easily be overthrown. A Christian State ought to be set up there, with its southern frontier on the river Litani. We sho...
Free market aficionados, particularly in the media, have long been wont to tell us that the "market knows best." That was always the line when progressives (remember when there used to be progressives in government?) would come up with some do-good scheme l...
Hours after President Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress, the New York Times printed the news that he plans to gradually withdraw “American combat forces” from Iraq during the next 18 months. The newspaper reported that the advantages of ...
In the coming weeks, the Obama administration is expected to release its plans to address the dual problems of global climate disruption and excessive dependence on foreign oil. Meanwhile, in the background, the debate among environmentalists over biofuels and their ...
Kate Winslet’s Academy Award for Best Actress in The Reader surely disappointed and outraged Ron Rosenbaum. Amid the torrent of nonsense glutting U.S. media since the movie award nominations were announced, Rosenbaum’s objections to The Reader were ...
It was hoped that t he election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States would bring a change of course to the beleaguered US effort in Afghanistan. But word that representatives of the Taliban and the infamous Afghan drug trafficker and extremist Gulbu...
As British resident Binyam Mohamed stepped off a plane at RAF Northolt on Monday February 23, six years and ten months since he was first abducted by the Pakistani authorities at Karachi airport, it was impossible not to sympathize with the words written in ...