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
Three weeks back, the Musical Patriot took aim at the modern phenomenon of the Arts Center, discharging several rounds in the direction of Dallas. Those sent over the heads of Los Angeles and New York were taken in good part. Not s...
It’s hard to believe that Dr. Sidney Holt is attending his 50th meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) here in Madeira. From that very first meeting he attended in Cambridge in 1959 until this very strange and weird and wacky whaling commission m...
It’s black on the river. And still. The autumn sky is a mesh of stars. In the darkness of the river valley, there have always been only three tiny sparks visible from here: the orange campfires of the Alipkonck, the Sintsinck, and the Kichtawanck bands....
Should you visit the Yellowstone River country with 13,000 years of human history in your head, the first thing you might notice is how little the landscape has changed. True, a few towns and ranches are now strewn about the topography. Yet, this thin cloak of ...
Of all of Barack Obama’s airy platitudes about change none were more vaporous than his platitudes about the environment and within that category Obama has had little at all to say about matters concerning public lands and endangered species. He is, it seems, le...
On May 1, 2009, Michigan’s Board of Education, like boards in most of the other states across the U.S., issued a resolution "recognizing that teachers are vital to the very fabric of our society" and declaring the week of May 4-8 Teacher Appreciation ...
“Though my tale be naught, yet will I tell it.” –the bearer of bad news in Antigone
I don’t mean to boast, but I think I can claim about my life that I’ve amounted to almost nothing.
When it comes ...
Nothing captures people’s attention more then watching an elected official cry before the national media. The spectacle of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, shedding tears, admitting to an adulterous affair and pleading for forgiveness, “I’ve been u...
We’ve got the Hate Crimes Bill, aka the Matthew Shepard Act, aka the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, before Congress and far advanced on its repellent journey towards the statute book. On Thursday the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing ...
The Guardian Council’s conclusion that there were "discrepancies" but no major fraud in the June 12 Iranian presidential elections reaffirms Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the winner but does little to heal the bitter rift over the election conduct and result...
Some years or decades ago I researched and reported on the Sullivan Act, one of America’s first gun control laws.
New York state senator Timothy Sullivan, a corrupt Tammany Hall politician, represented New York’s Red Hook district. Commercial trave...
One might be tempted to dismiss the recent findings of the US State Department on human trafficking as largely political. But do not be too hasty.
Criticism of the State Department’s report on trafficked persons, issued on 16 June, should be rife. The l...
The village is small and run-down. A couple of hundred residents. Green Hamas flags hang above the dirt street and wave in the breeze.
It is brutally hot. The buildings are plastered with images. One is a photo of a small Palestinian boy from the village. His ...
Mexico City.
A stolen election by an entrenched regime? Opposition charges that more votes were cast than ballots distributed to the polling places? That independent electoral observers were barred from witnessing the vote count? Demands for a recount to whic...
As Ohio education reformers aim ahead toward the new century and prosperity through remaking of the public school system, the Obama administration reform plan takes us back to the “choice,” “free market,” and “small government” min...
The version of the official military investigation into the disastrous May 4 airstrike in Farah province made public last week by the Central Command was carefully edited to save the U.S. command in Afghanistan the embarrassment of having to admit that earlier claims...
We all know the pleasure on Father’s Day of taking your kids out. What works for my little son is an amusement park, maybe a movie, lots of fries and a shake. (Take me out to the ballgame, alas, is no longer an option as most games run in ...
Reading about Olivier Assayas’ Summer Hours and watching the trailer, I could not bring myself to get inspired to see this movie. While I’m a huge fan of Assayas’ other film, this new installment just seemed so horribly middle-brow, the kind of fore...
Last night I got home from a mini-tour of the southern Midwest. We managed to cover three thousand miles in five days, cramped up in a little red SUV sprinkled with a cross section of the insect population of the United States. In the fifty hour round trip we worked ...
Rafah.
Today I went to the tunnels in Rafah. I climbed into a loop of rope attached to a wire on a pulley and was lowered 7 meters to the tunnel floor. When I stood up the man next to me signaled me to follow him into a narrow passage, maybe three times as th...
The trouble started 24 months ago, but the origins of the financial crisis are still disputed. The problems did not begin with subprime loans, lax lending standards or shoddy ratings agencies. The meltdown can be traced back to the activities of the big banks and the...
Many readers learned of my arrest for nonviolent civil disobedience last month when they read about it in an article titled, "Doctor jailed after health care protest."
I have seen approximately 500 patients since that time and have spoken to friends ...
If Charles Dickens had visited Morocco, he might have written Secret Son, the tortured story o...
There may never be a Graceland for Michael Jackson. He was the wrong kind of Bad. He could not be the rake you would love to hate. He did not have the charisma that made women go weak in their knees. If he ever took out his shirt to throw at the audience, they would ...
In Isfahan, Iran, an 80 year old woman stood defiantly in her doorway. Twenty baton-wielding Basij men arrived on motorcycles and threatened to enter her house in pursuit of a group of young demonstrators. Instead of running with fear or turning her back on the...