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 February 2010
I ventured down to the Colorado Capitol last Thursday to listen to the debate on Senate Bill 10-089. Like always, I couldn’t hear anything because the senate committee room, where agriculture bills such as this one are argued, isn’t adequately miked. Mayb...
Beijing is monitoring the evolving United States-led Iran sanctions campaign with alarm and – as conflicting responses to an Israeli initiative indicate – some uncertainty. It suspects the Barack Obama administration may be as interested in leveraging the...
Forgive an outsider and staunch atheist like myself who, on reading the recent French press comments relating to Ilhem Moussaid the hijab-wearing NPA candidate in Avignon, gets the impression that something is rotten in French political culture. Let’s tak...
A recent assignment of mine covering Israel’s presumed links to the assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh provoked some more thoughts about the New York Times reporter Ethan Bronner. He is the Jerusalem bureau chief who has been at the centre of a co...
Former Congressman Charlie Wilson, who died on February10, was America’s answer to James Bond, the fast-moving, globe-trotting character in Ian Fleming’s novels, who foiled enemies and conquered beautiful women with ease. Wilson’s achievements in Co...
Editors’ Note: Counterpunches can be landed in a variety of ways. In November 2006, Kasatka, the Sea World Orca, attempted to drown her trainer. Yesterday, it was Tilikum’s turn—killing his aquarium trai...
"Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred."
President Roosevelt, Madison Square Garden, October 31, 1936...
Playwright Lillian Hellman said: “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.”
The statement was in a letter to the House Un-American Activities Committee. The year was 1952. We tell ourselves that the...
In 2008, Charlotte Dennett ran for Attorney General in Vermont.
Dennett’s key campaign pledge – if elected, she would appoint Vincent Bugliosi as a special prosecutor to seek a murder indictment against George W. Bush for the deaths ...
Does anyone really believe that Toyota is being pilloried in the media for a few highway fatalities?
Nonsense. If Congress is so worried about innocent people getting killed, then why haven’t they indicted US commander Stanley McChrystal for blowing up ...
Sarah Palin delivered the keynote address at the Tea Party’s national convention two weeks ago provoking wild applause and chants of "Run, Sarah Run." But whether the former Alaska Governor is likely to emerge as a major national political figur...
The “reinvention” of the “New GM” has begun with the opening of a lithium-ion battery plant in Brownstown, Michigan, near Detroit. The event was remarkable not only because the Brownstown plant signals GM’s return to the production of an...
Senior military officials decided to launch the current U.S.-British military campaign to seize Marja in large part to influence domestic U.S. opinion on the war in Afghanistan, the Washington Post reported Monday.
The Post report, by Greg Jaffe...
Since the first commercial cultivation of Genetically Modified (GM) crops in 1996, Monsanto and the rest of the big six Biotech seed companies, (Pioneer/DuPont, Syngenta, Dow, BASF and Bayer) have become masters at the art of story telling.
Farm...
The Czech government’s purchase of Pandur military vehicles is hitting rough terrain amid political sniping, allegations of corruption and a police probe as it has emerged that the Czechs paid three times as much for the armored personnel carriers (APCs) than t...
The mystery has been solved.
Where is this "new reactor renaissance" coming from?
There has been no deep, thoughtful re-making or re-evaluation of atomic technology. No solution to the nuke waste problem. No mak...
Ajijic, Mexico.
Near midnight and I am making tortillas on an iron skillet over a gas flame. Some three thousand miles to the north, my wife and dog nestle in sleep in the wake of a 34-inch snowstorm, while the dogs of Ajijic are barking at the ...
Would it be wrong to take out a $1,000,000 policy on your wife and then put strychnine in her double-tall nonfat mocha?
Not if you are Goldman Sachs it wouldn’t. In fact–according to an article on today’s Bloomberg News–t...
Point Omega is Don Delillo’s latest novel. It is nominally about an inexperienced filmmaker who journeys to the US Southwest in the hopes of making a film about a former official who helped run the US war in Iraq. The novel opens and closes with a d...
It’s now more than a month since the earthquake that laid waste to Port-au-Prince, killing more than 200,000 people and thrusting millions of people into the most desperate conditions.
But according to the U.S. government, Haitians have a ...
In Washington each new day brings a fresh call to “reform entitlement programs” — Social Security, Medicare, etc., (in Congress, the word “reform” now means to eliminate, or drastically reduce). Tackling Social Security has been on the t...
When Congress members voted to go to war in 2002, they didn’t think about Pvt. Joseph Hargrove. Instead, they thought about their re-election, their party, and themselves.
Hargrove lives in an antiseptic-six- by-10 room at Gainesville ...
City leaders and the downtown business community in Philadelphia are wringing their hands and calling for “tough action” against a horde of some 150 high school kids from eight of the city’s decrepit and failing high schools who rampaged late Tuesda...
Reading into President Barack Obama’s health care summit on Thursday, the massive rate increases recently announced by Anthem/Blue Cross of California shine like a neon marquee over this episode of political theatre.
The magnitude of these...
Reading into President Barack Obama’s health care summit on Thursday, the massive rate increases recently announced by Anthem/Blue Cross of California shine like a neon marquee over this episode of political theatre.
The magnitude of these...