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 March 2009
The new documentary Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas proves that democracy can and should be more ...
Greed, economic exploitation, and dehumanizing stereotypes of inferiority are the root of racism in the Western world. Brutal, racist exploitation in the United States and throughout the Americas has been the means through which Western European economies have been b...
We are witnessing one of the fastest betrayals of the Democratic Party base in modern memory, as President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party leadership in the Senate slither away from a crucial constituency, the labor movement, and from support of labor’s k...
Is this the government of Biberman (Bibi Netanyahu and Avigdor Liberman) or perhaps of Bibarak (Bibi and Ehud Barak)?
Neither. It is the government of Bibiyahu.
Binyamin Netanyahu has proven that he is a consummate politician. He has realized the dream ...
Even ardent proponents of the free market find it hard to argue today that globalisation is improving the lives of the majority of the world. A system of inherent crises, which has fuelled historically unprecedented levels of inequality, has collapsed, leaving in its...
I’m the last to arrive. A drizzle falls, enveloping the morning in drab grays as I don the orange jumpsuit. The magnolia tree over head is in full bloom, its soft pink/white peddles heralding a new spring, a new beginning. I place a black hood over my head. Eve...
I’m kinda pissed off at the lousy treatment America is giving to Republicans these days.
First of all, in a general sense, it just seems ungrateful and ungracious. I mean, Republicans worked hard this last decade to make America what it is today.&n...
I turned on the television Friday, March 27, 2009. It was tuned to C-SPAN. Barack Obama’s speech on Afghanistan was being televised. Listening only to the words of his introductory comments and ignoring the person who was speaking them, I coul...
The Information Warfare Monitor (a joint venture of Toronto University’s Citizen Lab at the Munke Centre for International Studies and a Canadian think-tank called SecDev) teamed up with the Tibetan Government in Exile for a nine-month multi-continent investiga...
My last column began to sketch out the global human rights impact of the U.S. "war on terror." It described how U.S. abuses such as torture, enforced disappearance, and arbitrary detention, were, in many instances, carried...
With the usual fanfare, the Obama administration has proclaimed a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan. On the surface, it does not amount to much. But if a story by Bill Gertz in the March 26 Washington Times is correct, there is more to it than meets the eye. Ge...
With last week’s announced escalation of the war in Afghanistan, including an Iraq-like "surge" replete with 4,000 more U.S. troops and a sizable increase in private contractors, President Barack Obama blew the lid off of any lingering perceptions tha...
For years, ethanol boosters have promised Americans that “cellulosic” ethanol lurks just ahead, right past the nearest service station. Once it becomes viable, this magic elixir — made from grass, wood chips, sawdust, or some other plant material &#...
Where is the revenue coming from to help reduce the tidal waves of red ink during the massive deficit spending by Washington to bolster Wall Street greed, stimulate the economy and rescue homeowners?
The scale of federal deficit is witnessed by the new freque...
In spite of the almost unprecedented financial and credit crises gripping the United States, the legacy of jaded excess lives on as both a haunting memory and an ideological register that continues to shape contemporary politics. After all, it was only a few ye...
After seven long years in which it seemed a sideshow to the bigger conflict in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan has reached a critical point. The US must now choose how far it will become further embroiled in a messy conflict which affects its relations with Pakistan, In...
I am travelling in Europe for three weeks to discuss the global financial crisis with government officials, politicians and labor leaders. What is most remarkable is how differently the financial problem is perceived over here. It’s like being in another econom...
I was wrong. I had been saying that it would be naïve to take too seriously presidential candidate Barack Obama’s rhetoric regarding the need to escalate the war in Afghanistan. I kept thinking to myself that when he got briefed on the history of Afghanist...
Arrabeh.
Palestinians across the Middle East were due to commemorate Land Day today, marking the anniversary of clashes in 1976 in which six unarmed Palestinians were shot dead by the Israeli army as it tried to break up a general strike.
Although Lan...
The former governor of New York might have some rocky moments in his confirmation hearings, but if Obama really wanted to police Wall St – which of course he doesn’t – he’d replace current SEC chief Mary Schapiro with Eliot Spitzer. Schapiro i...
Obama and his public relations team have made it appear that his trillion dollars in higher taxes will fall only on “the rich.” Obama stresses that his tax increase is only for the richest 5 per cent of Americans while the other 95 per cent receive ...
Newspaper reports seem surprised at how high banks are bidding for the junk mortgages that Treasury Secretary Geithner is now bidding for, having mobilized the FDIC and Fed to transfer yet more public funds to the banks. Bank stocks are soaring – thereby ...
Even as the credits unroll, this stunning, satirical movie by Luis Buñuel shows a spot in the vast sandy desert of 6th century Syria. A procession of the halt, the lame and the blind, along with assorted churchmen, makes its way past goats and cactus. They&rsq...
This time the banks are zeroing in on Geithner’s cash giveaway bonanza, the "Public Private Investment Partnership" (PPIP). As expected, Bank of America and Citigroup have angled their way to the front of the herd, thrusting their snouts into th...
Blaming the U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown for the global financial and economic blowout of 2008 is like blaming the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand for World War I. In each case, a discrete event sparked a wider conflagration—but the tinder was alre...