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
Nazareth.
When Israel’s 18th parliament opened today, there was only one Arab woman among its intake of legislators.
Haneen Zoubi has made history: although she is not the first Arab woman to enter the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, she is the ...
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 ...
The Obama Administration is on track to nationalize the nation’s largest banks, unless it alters policy and creates a Bad Bank to absorb commercial banks’ mortgage-backed securities.
The housing market and banks are caught in a vicious cycle. ...
All across this country, from small counties to large cities, judges are being exposed as every bit as corruptible as the public they preside over. They are frail. They are weak. They are foolish. They are human. There are 800,000 stories in the Naked City. These are...
The winds of change have been blowing ever stronger in North America since that exceptional day in November of 2008 when Barack Obama became president of the US. The appearance of this man on the world scene has empowered millions of informed and progressive people a...
"ACTA ALEA EST” – the die is cast – said Julius Caesar and crossed the River Rubicon on his way to conquer Rome. That was the end of Roman democracy.
We don’t have a Julius Caesar. But we do have an Avigdor Liberman. When he announ...
No mass sentiment, no matter how widespread and strongly felt, can find concrete and effective expression unless it is organized, focused and led. People who blame the American people for their apathy and conclude that the public is principally (or wholly) at fault f...
The American economy has gone away. It is not coming back until free trade myths are buried six feet under.
America’s 20th century economic success was based on two things. Free trade was not one of them. America’s economic success was based on pro...
The winds of change have been blowing ever stronger in North America since that exceptional day in November of 2008 when Barack Obama became president of the US. The appearance of this man on the world scene has empowered millions of informed and progressive people a...
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 ...
In 1980 I got a job as a writer on an oral history unit of CETA (Comprehensive Education Training Act). The Federal government during the really bad recession in the 1970s established CETA, which was a revival of the WPA of the 1930s. Both the WPA and CETA gave jobs ...
Iran has zero nuclear weapons capability! Worse still, for the Chicken Littles in the media and government, they don’t intend to have nuclear weapons!
Federal officials are frothing over the disclosure by the International Atomic Energy Agenc...
A new war is threatening Iraq just as the world believes the country is returning to peace. While violence is dropping in Baghdad and in the south of the country, Arabs and Kurds in the north are beginning to battle over territories in an arc of land stretching from ...
Marmaris, Turkey.
Perhaps the greatest weakness in any foreign policy is the temptation to shape it according to the dictates of domestic politics. This seduction corrupts the synthesis of a sensible grand strategy as well as the formulation of sound military...
You who live with an island in your heart and the vastness of space a sidewalk beneath your soles.
Hand me the Northern Lights! I shall dance with the youngster who is holding the stars.
We peel the skin from t...
So now we know where Senator Edward Kennedy has been in between treatments for his cancerous brain tumor and recuperating at his compound in Hyannisport, or at his other home in Florida. He’s been in secret, invitation only meetings with lobbyists from: Aetna, ...
In neighborhoods around New Orleans, there’s a buzz of excitement gathering among this city’s Arab population. A new wave of organizing has brought energy and inspiration to a community that is usually content to stay in the background. The movement is yo...
The first time I was on Cherry Pond it was ramp season, and I joined Judy, Bo, Larry and Ed for the much anticipated spring ritual, in which the tasty wild onions are harvested and cooked in butter with potatoes. It was a steep hike through rugged country, and from t...
The first time I was on Cherry Pond it was ramp season, and I joined Judy, Bo, Larry and Ed for the much anticipated spring ritual, in which the tasty wild onions are harvested and cooked in butter with potatoes. It was a steep hike through rugged country, and from t...
Part one of a three part series
“The water line is rising and all we do is stand there. The water line is rising and all we do is stand there. The water line is rising and all we do is stand there.”
— Sage Fran...
While the reckless giant banks are shattering like an over-heated glacier day by day, the nation?s credit unions are a relative island of calm largely apart from the vortex of casino capitalism.
Eighty five million Americans belong to credit unions which are ...
"Banking shares began to plunge Friday morning after Senator Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who is chairman of the banking committee, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television that he was concerned the government might end up nationalizing some ...
The ever-vigilant Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued milestone regulations requiring the builders of new nuke reactors to explain how their plants might withstand the crash of large commercial jetliners.
But the NRC has exempted the reactors that matter...
The recession/depression is less than a year old, but it’s already driving South Carolina’s governing elite over the abyss. Senators Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham rant theatrically on the Senate floor about the dangers of the Obama administration’s ...
Norm Coleman’s lawyers are hinting that the only way to settle the still undecided 2008 Minnesota senate race is to hold the election again.
That would be an extremely costly admission that Minnesota’s electoral system is broken. And isn&rsq...