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 June 2009
Nazareth.
Israel’s watchdog body on medical ethics has failed to investigate evidence that doctors working in detention facilities are turning a blind eye to cases of torture, so Israeli human rights groups charge.
The Israeli Medical Association...
Only weeks after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post columnist and mouthpiece of the neoconservatives, revealed the target list of the Bush administration as it set out on its post-9/11 war footing. The list included six nations:...
Dahiyeh.
While on the surface the pro-US team here did preserve its ‘majority’ the Hezbollah led opposition actually won the election by nearly ten percent of the popular vote. Of approximately 1,495,000 votes cast on June 7, 815,000 vote...
During middle school, I used to stand at the bus stop in New Orleans with my brother, Mark, and inevitably another schoolmate would amble along with a boom box, all of us waiting together. In went Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall cassette to which we danced. It became...
Beetle hysteria raised its head again, and I am not talking about the Fab four. A prominent article in the New York Times titled “Tiny Beetle Adds New Dynamic to Forest Fire Control Efforts” quotes many foresters and others who suggest that beetle-k...
Happy-face media reporting of economic news is providing the usual upbeat spin on Friday’s debt-deflation statistics. The Commerce Department’s National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) for May show that U.S. “savings” are now absorbing 6.9 ...
The American DREAM Act is the most current piece of education/immigration reform being considered in Washington. Introduced to both the House and Senate on March 26th, 2009, the bill would allow “aliens” to gain conditional residency status for six years ...
Worldwide condemnation has followed the coup that unseated President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras on Sunday, June 28. Nation-wide mobilizations and a general strike demanding that Zelaya be returned to power are growing in spite of increased military repression. One pro...
Thanks to the peccadilloes of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, the question of sex and politics has once again been cheaply splashed across US newspapers, television and the internet once again. Although those of us who have nothing nice to say about this ...
June has been a difficult month for progressive activists around the world. Mass protests in Iran and indigenous blockades in Peru were met with heavy repression, while a left-of-centre President in Honduras was ousted in a military coup. What these tragic events do ...
"I paid $800 to get my job,” says Ahmed Abdul, a technician working for Karada municipality in Baghdad. “People know this is wrong, but there is no way round it.” In Iraq corruption is pervasive at every level.
“Corruption ex...
Call me old fashioned, but a true conservative is someone who conserves, dislikes wasting money and is offended by endless corporate bailouts by hard-working taxpayers. A fiscal conservative like me. As a public health professional, I want to see health dollars used ...
Wherever I heard that hackneyed phrase, "If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging," it applies more today than anytime I can remember. What I don’t understand is, when our government has spent billions on bank bailouts (not a good idea) on b...
From a distance the Chinese mainland appears to be snorting through the global depression like a fire-breathing dragon. But a closer look at internet discourse reveals a giant in the throes of aftershock. When we hear tones of irritation from Chinese offi...
Even in the best of times a coup in Honduras wouldn’t get much coverage in the U.S. since most North Americans couldn’t find the country on a map and, moreover, would have no reason to do so. Nevertheless, those in the U.S. who have been alert to the chan...
Last Thursday, while working on some writing deadlines, I was switching channels on cable. On CNN they were promoting “Black In America," an exercise meant to boost ratings by making whites feel good by making blacks look bad, the marketi...
Most Americans think of North Korea as a nation of belligerent crazy people with a political succession system more akin to the 15th century than the 21st. Indeed, it is a repressive place, with a bizarre personality cult, but the U.S., Japan, and South Korea share m...
Hundreds of thousands of Iranian citizens pour into the streets in order to protest against their government! What a wonderful sight! Gideon Levy wrote in Haaretz that he envies the Iranians.
And indeed, anyone who tries these days to get Israelis in any numbe...
It’s good that Barack Obama is an agile basketball player because on financial regulatory reform he?s having to straddle an ever-widening chasm between his words and his deeds.
Obama said: “Millions of Americans who have worked hard and behaved res...
Could the diplomatic thaw between Venezuela and the United States be coming to an abrupt end? At the recent Summit of the Americas held in Port of Spain, Barack Obama shook Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s hand and declared that he would pursue a...
Jonathan Alter writes for Newsweek and is a frequent guest of Keith Olbermann’s. He’s one of those liberals we appreciate when the rightwingers are in control but who lose their critical edge when their crowd is in.
It’s easy to imagin...
In reaction to the widespread discontent with the election results in Iran, reflected in large scale demonstrations and disturbances in the streets, the Supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei had asked the Guardian Council to conduct a partial recount of the presidential ...
I always assumed monosodium glutamate was like a snowstorm in Los Angeles: easy to avoid. I simply needed to sidestep Chinese restaurants and eyeball product labels for those conspicuous three letters: MSG.
At the same time I asked myself, why even go to the ...
President Obama said he is not yet ready to draw any lines in the sand in the developing showdown over his health care reform initiative. Unfortunately for this consummate, consensus seeking politician, the lines in the sand have already been drawn for him by the res...
Some columns are easier to write than others.
This is one of them.
Providing all of my research were the "family values" Republicans.
This week, second term Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina disappeared for six days, leaving the st...