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 September 2010
The neocon plan to transform the Middle East and Central Asia into a pliant client of the US empire and its only-democracy-in-the-Middle-East is now facing a very different playing field. Not only are the wars against the Palestinians, Afghans and Iraqis floundering, but ...
During the Bush Administration – it continues under Obama – the Department of the Navy (DON) divided the coasts and oceans into a series of “testing range complexes” (TRC) driven by five-year plans to conduct warfare exercises. They already conduct...
This week’s election for 165 representatives in the National Assembly is significant but unlikely to bring about major change in Venezuela, despite the opposition having done better than expected. As this article goes to press, the pro-government United Socialist Pa...
The glorious event has finally happened: the ascension of still another brilliant constellation into the firmament–Kim Jong Un’s elevation to super-stardom, to savior of his people, blessed redeemer, colossus of the universe, the man of the hour, the man whose...
Last December, I wrote an essay about my alma mater, Saint Vincent College, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. In it, I describe some troubling events. Ever since the ascendancy of the current archabbot, Douglas Nowicki, in 1991, the college ...
The Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot reports that President Obama begged Prime Minister Netanyahu to extend his settlement freeze in order to save the so-called peace talks.
As a quid pro quo, Obama is reporte...
The IBT (International Brotherhood of Teamsters) recently announced that in early September it had organized approximately 40 employees of Marjyn Investments LLC, an Oakland, California, company that grows and processes medical marijuana.
By ratifyi...
My mom, Angele Mokhiber, grew up in Zahle, Lebanon.
She was the eighth of eight sisters.
It was a time before cell phones, laptops, and I Pads.
Mom spent her time with family, fig trees, vineyards, and book...
"It’s such a precise weapon, the Predator, that if they were aiming at your producers over there,” Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administrations special representative to Afganistan and Pakistan intoned to a skeptical Rachel Maddow on Monday, “you an...
It is traditional for politicians to blame foreigners for problems that their own policies have caused. And in today’s zero-sum economies, it seems that if America is losing leadership position, other nations must be the beneficiaries. Inasmuch as China has avoided ...
Virtually everyone has had the experience of being forced to pay a late fee or a bank penalty because of some fine print provision that we overlooked. Sometimes begging by good customers can win forbearance, but usually we are held to the written terms of the contract no ...
"Pop-pop?”
I tunneled up from sleep, realizing that my six-year-old great grandson was at the foot of my bed, all dressed for his school day and wanting to touch base with me before he left.
“Hi, Yasin,” I...
Last week’s meeting of national leaders at the United Nations was predictable: more posturing about unmet global needs in relation to the eight Millennium Development Goals set exactly a decade ago. South African President Jacob Zuma was too busy to attend, staying ...
Rockville, MD
The FDA says it has not decided about approving AquAdvantage Salmon yet, even though it held hearings about how to label the genetically engineered fish the day after hearings about if it should be approved.
But a ...
DUBLIN
The last time I was here in Ireland, eight years ago, the Celtic Tiger was still roaring. The country had zoomed from poverty to wealth, enjoying an unprecedented economic boom, with unemployment down to 4.5 percent and consumer...
I’m not a member of the Tea Party. For one thing, no coherent philosophy has emerged from its activities, which explains its grab-bag of positions, some good, some not so good. As a result, it’s not entirely clear what this collection of individuals fundamenta...
America’s largest and fastest-growing ethnic group recorded another political milestone last week when voters in Maryland – a major receiving state for Central American immigrants, many of them illegal aliens – elected Salvadoran-born Victor Ramirez as t...
On September 20, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that two Oregon statutes that had criminalized giving sexually-explicit material to minors violated the First Amendment.
In theory, these statutes were inten...
With the resumption of settlement construction in the West Bank yesterday, Israel’s powerful settler movement hopes that it has scuttled peace talks with the Palestinians.
It would be misleading, however, to assume that the only major obstacle to the success...
Who’s your daddy?
If you live in West Virginia, it’s Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy.
And he never lets you forget it.
Every couple months or so, we get a call from a survey firm.
...
Warning us about the Obama administration’s submission to Israeli pressure, in an interview with Lebanon’s OTV, Michael Scheuer, a former senior CIA officer, said: “Three hundred million Americans could wake up tomorrow to discover that a foreign leader,...
Suzanne Rust was drowning in the ivy. After years as a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Rust abandoned the Ph.D. quest (which in anthropology takes 9 years on average) for a more urgent path. That decision bore fruit. In 2003 she became a s...
Soothed, fortified and frankly vindicated by the cheerful effluvium that the recession is indeed over, I set out for a walk on this Saturday morning. No doomsayer, I’ll refute, if not taser outright, all unpatriotic spoilsports who would point to crumbling factories...
The veteran American actress Helen Hayes once observed that one of the advantages of being a celebrity is that, when you’re boring, the audience thinks it’s their fault. Could this same criterion also apply to Home Box Office (HBO)?
...
The unrelenting diplomatic and geopolitical standoff between Iran and the United States is often blamed on the Iranian government for its “confrontational” foreign policies, or its “unwillingness” to enter into a dialogue with the United States. Li...