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 2010
The electronic ether is crackling with rumors of suspected collateral damage from the BP Gulf Oil catastrophe. A Youtube video purports to show rain falling in Louisiana, streaking the earth with a Deepwater Horizon sheen of oil. In Tennessee, n...
For years, there has been much discussion about the best strategy to rid Afghanistan of its poppies. Eradication, says Bush. Interdiction and alternative livelihoods, retorts Obama. Licensing and production for medicinal purposes, suggested the Senlis...
Peter and Susan Kendall of Orinda, Northern California, are not your typical political activists. This couple really wants some peace and quiet, so they can be comfortable within their suburban home and with their backyard chickens, berries and tomato...
What an extraordinary civics lesson for the students, faculty, administration, town officials and parents connected with the Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School on Cape Cod. Two teachers, Marybeth Verani and Carrie Koscher, stood up at an assembly re...
Supreme Court nominations are a rare opportunity for millions of Americans to watch, learn and converse about what the Court, the Constitution and the Justices mean for their way of life, their freedoms and their livelihoods.
M...
Even though I’ve been involved in at least four union organizing efforts at jobs I have had since I began working in 1971, I have never worked at a union job. In addition, many of the various antiwar and antiracist endeavors I have been in...
At one point during the military coup in Honduras last year, a US representative to the Organization of American States (OAS) joked that Hondurans were living in a state of "magical realism", a folkloric literary genre blurring reality and t...
If one political concept dominated the proceedings of the US Social Forum, it was horizontalism. Organizers mentioned it in relation to media access, workshops panelists offered it as an alternative to top-down NGOs and political parties and participa...
The financial reform bill agreed to on June 25 may have carved out some protections for consumers, but for Goldman Sachs and the derivatives lobby, the bill was a clear win, leaving the Wall Street gambling business intact. In a June 25 Newsweek...
"I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."
–Frederick Douglass
On the evening of March 4, participants at the Fourth World Congress Aga...
Liberals are on a mission to convince a skeptical public the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (known by the last three letters, ACA) should not only be supported, it’s actually a good piece of legislation, a step in the right direction...
After locking itself up for hours on end, Israel’s security cabinet finally emerged to announce an easing of its blockade on Gaza, a move immediately welcomed by the United States. Israel and the U.S. hope to defuse world outrage over the collec...
Oakland.
As the trial of former transit cop Johannes Mehserle for the murder of Oscar Grant rushes at breakneck speed toward its conclusion, spurred by the insistence of Judge Robert Perry and political imperative, ominous cloud...
So Gen. Stanley McChrystal is out and Gen. David Petraeus is back at the helm in Afghanistan. I don’t like hackneyed phrases, but if this isn’t rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, what is it?
America’s occupation of A...
If it looks like a pig, walks like a pig, and smells like a pig, chances are it is a pig. I don’t aim to disparage the real four legged critter, which happens to be a pretty cool animal, but I cannot say the same for the political versions. ...
The World Cup has produced some mercurial moments, with defending champions Italy getting the early boot, all African teams but Ghana vanquished in the first round, and longshots like Japan and Slovakia advancing to the knockout round. We’ve hea...
That is the question that people around the world should be asking as the International Monetary Fund dishes out its prescription for austerity. The IMF program calls for cutbacks in government support for health care, pensions and a wide range of oth...
Wouldn’t it be great if federal regulations were like household and auto repairs? When you have a leaky faucet, you call a plumber; when your brakes squeal, you take your car to a mechanic. If only legislation and federal regulations...
A high ranking official in government was quoted some time ago on the political marriage of public relations and governmental control regarding the ‘rule of law.’ Simply put, this official flatly stated that…
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The US Army is holding Specialist Bradley Manning incommunicado in Kuwait, under charges of leaking to WikiLeaks video of Apache helicopter pilots gunning down two Reuters cameramen and a number of Iraqis in a Baghdad neighborhood. The video is devast...
Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s far-right foreign minister, set out last week what he called a “blueprint for a resolution to the conflict” with the Palestinians that demands most of the country’s large Palestinian minority be stri...
One year ago, on June 28, 2009, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was awakened by gunfire. A coup was carried out by US-trained military officers, including graduates of the infamous US Army School of the Americas (WHINSEC) in Georgia. Pres...
When Elena Kagan was dean of Harvard Law School, her mishandling of a plagiarism case cost an innocent person his job while allowing the plagiarist, Professor Alan Dershowitz, to escape punishment. Dershowitz has said that when Kagan was dean &l...
Synopsis: Not all of us who are fighting in the streets here in Toronto are despondent, but a great many of us are. I am. We are experiencing in our neighborhoods what brown people have experienced for centuries around the world at o...
"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she is committed to passing an emergency war supplemental [funding bill for Pentagon expenses in Afghanistan] before the July Fourth recess, Roll Call reports."
Why is this an "eme...