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 May 2009
When I told Grace Slick that Paul Kantner, her former band mate and father of her daughter, China, is getting ready to go out on tour with a group billed as The Jefferson Starship, and that tickets are currently on sale at venues across the country, who knew? Well, appare...
"We may be ugly, but we’ve got the music."
–Leonard Cohen, "Chelsea Hotel"
What is most astonishing about the Susan Boyle phenomenon is not that a frumpy middle-aged woman stands poised to win I...
In 2004, a pall of gloom fell over American liberalism. George W. Bush was re-elected the United States’ President against all odds: a quagmire in Iraq and a faltering economy were not sufficient to bury the Republican Party. In fact, the opposite, as conservat...
So far the principle result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan following the events of 9-11 has been the destabilization of Pakistan. That breakdown is peaking with the events in what AP calls the “Swat town” of Mingora—actually a city of 375,000 f...
The question of how many environmentalists it takes to change a light bulb gained a brief piquancy as we shared a subway platform with David Suzuki yesterday here in Toronto.
“We’re the students of Alpha 2,” we announced gnomically to a bemu...
Iraq plans to arrest 1,000 officials for corruption after a scandal which has forced the resignation of the Trade Minister and is threatening the food supply of millions of Iraqis.
Corruption at the Trade Ministry is an important issue in Iraq because the mini...
Watching retired Gen. Colin Powell refer to the parable of the Good Samaritan during Sunday’s Memorial Day ceremonies on the Mall in Washington, it struck me that Powell was giving hypocrisy a bad name.Those familiar with the Good Samaritan story and also...
Part Two.
The file has some of your high school records in it. The F.B.I. states that that to allow the band to continue to perform, could be quote, “Detrimental to the defense interests of the nation.”
Yeah.
After going through all o...
Peter and Irene, both 30, are engineering graduates of Lusaka university and have been working since 2006 in Chingola, a small Copperbelt town in Zambia in southern Africa . The couple are employed by Konkola Copper Mines (KCM), the biggest mining company in a countr...
OI don’t know at this point whether Judge Sonia Sotomayor is a good choice for Supreme Court Justice or a bad one.
She certainly is a lousy judge for writers and other creative people, having ruled (and been overruled by an appellate court and then, whe...
It is set years in the future, but the new Star Trek movie is a sixties nostalgia film. I sat riveted to the screen and to the present moment with my husband and our daughter between us. At the same time, I was transported back to the original run of the series betwe...
In the late 1990s, an entrepreneurial mechanic with a wife and one child bought a house for $65,000 with a down payment of $1,500?and took a fixed-rate FHA mortgage. His wife, a beautician, got a job as a clerk at a discount store. In the midst of the speculative rea...
Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.
–Gore Vidal
Some kind of answer to Vidal’s proposition; extrapolated by way of ‘syllog...
The Philadelphia Inquirer calls the film “[t]ough and beautiful,” the USA Today “a powerful and wrenching thriller,” giving it fours stars out of four. The Denver Post characterizes it as “vivid and haunting,” while The Washington ...
“The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal.”
—Anatole France
Given the dramatic changes in the political landscap...
At least 20 US soldiers have died in Iraq during the the month of May. By June 1, this number may be higher.
According to Iraq Body Count:
On May 1, seven Iraqi civilians were killed.
On May 3, eight Iraqi civilians were killed.
On May 4...
The controversy over Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination illustrates a fundamental problem with how mass media supposedly “inform” the American public about salient events. To stir up interest (in themselves, mostly), media invite predi...
Of all the threats posed by oil and gas companies seeking to drill in the Marcellus Shale—a geologic formation that stretches from Ohio to New York and may contain the largest supply of natural gas in the United States—hydraulic fracturing has been cited ...
It’s amazing how much attention we can pay to ourselves nowadays. Between Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube the opportunities for self-indulgence are endless. This is why I was surprised to find a concise, intelligent documentary about the compromises and pitfalls...
This is the 200th year celebration of Charles Darwin’s birth. There are new books by the dozens, there is a tremendous amount of new research into evolution and its mechanisms, and in many ways, the specifics of Darwin’s ideas have been surpassed, s...
In a devastating pair of financial reports that might be called "The Emperor Has No Pressure Vessel," the New York Times has blazed new light on the catastrophic economics of atomic power.
The two Business Section specials cover the fiasco of new Fr...
Part two.
SM: I got started in the anti-technology movement in the 1970s because I longed for a congenial world. I thought that others — maybe even a majority — might hold similar ideas of what a congenial world would be; and that the ...
Flying low, beneath an invisible sun the Great Egrets return. Not white on white but gray on gray and their long legs laid behind them There is no wind. They make no sound. An adornment of plumage trailing is bride price and dowry in which the beating heart of migrat...
If Judge Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed, the US Supreme Court will consist of six Catholics, two Jews and precisely one white Anglo-Saxon Protestant in the form of Justice John Paul Stevens, who is 88 years old and boasts of two important WASP insignia: inherited wealt...
“There are agents, like Mahmoud Rafea, who confessed to have delivered bags with explosives. Other collaborators have confessed to have carried out field reconnaissance missions. Others have facilitated the entrance and exit of Israelis after accomp...