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 July 2009
Native American activist Leonard Peltier has been in prison for more than 12,226 days, more than 33 years. His is one of the longest ordeals of any political prisoner in human history.
With him, our souls have suffered. Our bodies ache for his freedom.
...
President Barrack Obama’s initial comments in the press conference last week about the arrest of academic Henry Louis Gates, Jr. by the Cambridge police were, from I could see, consistent with the reality in America. I agreed with him when he said it was a &ldq...
Winston Churchill supposedly once said: “you can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else.” This may prove to be an accurate description of the response to the foreclosure crisis that has followed the coll...
I parked a few blocks away and was on the lookout for hotel workers to lead my way to UNITE-HERE Local 2’s contract convention being held in San Francisco’s huge George Moscone Center complex on July 23. Since 1986, the union has successfully used t...
After producing only one column during his recent visit to Iraq, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has already churned out two in Afghanistan, the next stop on his tour of areas affected by US diplomacy. The tour is occurring in the company of chairman Admiral...
Most of the experts see the cancellation of the F-22 as "small potatoes" or ill-advised. Many see Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ efforts to focus so heavily on the wars at hand (which they also support) as a threat to US security. The focus on Ira...
On July 23, a debate concerning the Responsibility to Protect took place in front of the General Asssembly of the United Nations. The responsibility to protect (R2P) is a notion agreed to by world leaders in 2005, that holds States responsible for shielding their own...
For many months the right wing populist chatter box has been drumming up the spectre of a socialist radical president with no respect for civil liberties, due process, or property rights. Then as soon as the president says it is stupid to arrest a man on his ow...
The situation in Honduras and Central America is growing increasingly tumultuous with each passing day as deposed President Manuel Zelaya confronts the de facto regime of Roberto Micheletti with thousands of partisans mobilizing in the border areas. While Honduran ar...
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
- Desmond Tutu
We live in an era defined by its brutality. Our challenge is whether to accept this – or to take the r...
The long-standing struggle within the American Psychological Association over involvement of psychologists in potentially abusive national security interrogations is heating up again, this time with a dispute over its ethics code. In 2002, the APA added the infamous ...
Sulaimaniyah
The surprisingly strong showing by a reformist party in Kurdistan elections is shaking the power structure in what has long been the most stable part of Iraq.
The "Goran" party – which translates as "change" &ndash...
Vice President Joe Biden’s latest public remarks regarding US-Russian relations leave one wondering whether his tutor in matters diplomatic is none other than Dick Cheney.
What is going on here? Just two weeks after a successful summit between Oba...
Thousands of demonstrators marched through Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince on July 15 to mark the 56th birthday of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The demonstration, which was called by and adhered to by two rival factions of the Lavalas Family ...
The Bishops of the Episcopal Church have finally granted permission for blessings of homosexual relationships, and also of homosexual marriages in those states where such marriage is permitted legally. So now any homosexual couple may request and potentially receive ...
Now that Henry Louis Gates’ Jr. has gotten a tiny taste of what “the underclass” undergo each day, do you think that he will go easier on them? Lighten up on the tough love lectures? Even during his encounter with the police, he was given some slack...
"We should give the pigs a rest, and get on with living."
– Frank Füredi, ‘Swine Flu and the Dramatisation of Disease,’ Spiked, April 28, 2009
The well are panicking in droves, with the potentia...
“Start off on high ground but end up somehow crawling…”
–Bruce Springsteen, The Big Muddy
The farce in Washington DC called health care reform makes the blood of single-payer supporters boil. That the ...
The Hurt Locker, the widely praised movie about American soldiers on a bomb squad in Iraq, has arrived in theaters with enough rave reviews to fill two dozen quote ads. While the film is excellent in some respects, its politics are worrisome – not because they&...
July 26, Cuba’s most important holiday, is the commemorative date in 1953 when Castro and his forces unsuccessfully stormed the government stockade at Moncada and ignited the Cuban revolution. On a day like today, it should be noted that Americans made a succes...
In the forty-eight years since the severance of official diplomatic ties and the institution of the U.S. trade embargo, Washington has seen to it that Cuban-American relations have remained virtually frozen, only altered by a few incremental shifts. The advent of the...
On Wednesday night (July 22), unionized employees of the Boston Globe—members of the Boston Newspaper Guild—voted 366 to 179 to accept massive wage and benefit cuts in order keep the venerable, 137-year old newspaper afloat.
This outcome fol...
Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest invention is a grotesque Austrian gay celebrity who comes to America to try to boost the ratings of his fashion television program. Bruno is one of the most repugnant characters ever to appear on the big screen, something...
I saw this sign as I was entering Nablus last week, again on my way to Ramallah, and again near Bethlehem. The phrase is printed in Hebrew, presumably by Israeli settlers, on huge signs throughout the West Bank. Israeli racism rarely shocks me anymore, bu...
On July 14, 2009, CounterPunch published on this site an article by me titled “Protest U.S. Aggression" that concerned international protests scheduled for July 25, called to express solidarity with the Iranian people who are protesting the election ...