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
Thanks to Binyamin Netanyahu’s overweening ambition, Israel is to be saddled with a foreign minister who is a national disgrace.
Imagine a country that appoints someone who has been found guilty of striking a 12-year-old boy to be its foreign minister. T...
On January 8, 2009, 13 days into the war on Gaza, 45 people, Jews and Arabs, came together in Haifa to discuss how to proceed with our anti-war activities. Each one of those present in the room had already participated in more than one action against this war i...
Despite President Barack Obama’s statement at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina Feb. 27 that he had "chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months," a number of Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), which have been the basic U.S. Ar...
Police misconduct has always been a serious problem in the United States, and the police typically receive the benefit of the doubt in the justice system. The claims that officers make are taken seriously, even if they don’t add up.
But in the era of ca...
As the country contemplates a major reform and restructuring of the way we run our national health care system (if it can even be called that), it needs to be pointed out that the mammoth health insurance industry is nothing but a parasite on that system.
Heal...
On March 14, 2009 Newsweek magazine published an article ["The Plot Against the Castros"] written by Jorge Castañeda. The article claimed to provide an interpretation of the reasons for the March 3rd government changes in Cuba.
The author cla...
Van Jones , one of the Bay Area’s most important activist leaders and a well-known progressive voice nationally, has been appointed to serve in the Obama administration as "green jobs czar," charged with developing policies for federal investment in e...
This week the Obama administration released the details of its plan to stimulate the flow of credit and reduce the cost of borrowing by subsidizing the purchase of mortgage and other debt-backed securities, the market for which has completely dried up since the onset...
“Below the thunder of the upper deep; Far far beneath in the abysmal sea…The Kraken Sleepeth”
–Alfred Tennyson
In Nordic mythology, the Kraken was a huge beast that lay in wait for ships th...
It’s been reported that a coalition of “labor friendly” retailing giants—Costco Wholesale Corporation, Starbucks Corp., and Whole Foods Markets Inc.—has met with congressional sponsors of the EFCA (Employee Free Choice Act) in the hope o...
Fifty teachers along with parent supporters disrupted a Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) School Board meeting March 10 and occupied the boardroom in an attempt to stop a vote on sending out "reduction in force" notices to almost 9,000 district em...
I’m an Arab American.
If I listen to the leadership of the Arab American organizations, I’m supposed to be proud of my fellow Arab Americans who make it in American society.
So, for example, the Arab American Institute promotes all Arab Amer...
Perhaps you have to be a visitor, as I am from the UK, to register the astonishing media revolution currently underway in the United States – and the threat it constitutes to the country’s progressive press.
Once upon a time the New York Time...
Wait a minute! Did I hear correctly? Did Treasury Secretary and former New York Federal Reserve Bank screw-up Tim Geithner really tell a House Financial Services Committee today that he needed “new powers” to allow the federal government to take control o...
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s latest bank bailout plan is another Rube Goldberg contraption intended to funnel taxpayer dollars to bankrupt banks, without being overly visible about the process. The main mechanism is a government guarantee that would al...
A legal battle being waged by Palestinian families to stop the takeover of their neighbourhood in East Jerusalem by Jewish settlers has received a major fillip from the recent souring of relations between Israel and Turkey.
After the Israeli army’s assa...
Two teens in Mason, OH, were recently charged with first-degree misdemeanors after police found nude photos of classmates on their cellphones. Last fall, two teenage female cheerleaders from a suburban Seattle high school were suspended from the team after nude photo...
In November 1963, the US-sponsored president of southern Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, was murdered by members of that country’s military. The murder was (at the least) tacitly supported by Washington and was partially due to Diem’s attempts to operate in...
When the media reported that singer Rihanna was reconciling with R&B star Chris Brown after reports that he beat her in February, the horrible incident became the hot topic of every tabloid and entertainment show.
The 19-year-old Brown appeared in court on...
People died–and are still dying–at Three Mile Island.
As the thirtieth anniversary of America’s most infamous industrial accident approaches, we mourn the deaths that accompanied the biggest string of lies ever told in US industrial history....
Is it too early to consider President Barrack Obama the eleventh president to not get it? Is it too early to pronounce his Cuba policy a failure? Some think so because of the timid reforms he signed into law March 11. Others are expecting major policy changes a...
On March 24, 1999, NATO began an aerial bombing campaign against what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. For 78 days, bombs rained down on military targets and civilian infrastructure under the guise of ‘humanitarian intervention.’ Operation All...
Back in December, I wrote that “Change we can believe in” was looking suspiciously like Clinton III. I promised I would revisit the issue once there were more points on the data line. Now that we’re 28 years and t...
Is your representative speaking out against escalation of the Afghanistan war?
Last week, some members of Congress sent President Obama a letter that urged him to “reconsider” his order deploying 17,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
...
Several weeks ago, a U.S. Navy survey ship, the Impeccable, was harassed by the Chinese in waters off Hainan Island. The Chinese have built a major submarine base on Hainan Island, and the newest classes of Chinese nuclear submarines are based there. The Impeccable&r...