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 December 2010
What a glorious, glorious old time blizzard!
It is sooooo beautiful, this Brooklyn, and the plows can’t keep up with the drifts.
In returning from Manhattan, where I went to see the film "Social Network" wit...
There have been some suggestions in the press that Wikileaks founder could and should be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. While this law has been on the books for almost 100 years and no court has ever declared any part of it unconstitutional, either facially or a...
The year 2011 will bring Americans a larger and more intrusive police state, more unemployment and home foreclosures, no economic recovery, more disregard by the US government of US law, international law, the Constitution, and truth, more suspicion and distrust from...
At least 17,368 Indian farmers killed themselves in 2009, the worst figure for farm suicides in six years, according to data of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). This is an increase of 1,172 over the 2008 count of 16,196. It brings the total fa...
The corporate defrauding of taxpayers (eg. Medicaid and Medicare) and prescription drugs with skyrocketing prices was the subject of a report by Public Citizen’s Dr. Sidney Wolfe and his associates (see ...
For decades Japanese leaders denied the existence of U.S.-Japanese agreements to shift the financial burden of U.S. military facilities in Japan from United States taxpayers to Japanese taxpayers. Yet Japan’s Foreign Ministry, pursuant to regulations it impleme...
It is easy to despair before the filthy wave of racism that is engulfing us.
The remedy for this despair: the growing number of young people, sons and daughters of the new Israeli generation, who are joining the fight against racism and occupati...
So, class, what have we learned from the past week or two of the lame duck Congress and our just plain-old lame president?
A few things, actually. Not ? since lameness trumps all else ? that they’ll necessarily matter, though.
...
(Overheard at an Air Force radar systems acquisition office, mid-1970s.) ?
Hey, Sarge. You left the safe open again.
Oh, get off my case. Nothing in there’s important.
But op-sec. Don...
Merced, California
I have noticed in recent months that people inside the Beltway, regardless of the positions they hold there, have extracted by common agreement the first "r" in the word, "forward," creating a new word, "fo’war...
Benjamin Disraeli once labeled Britain’s government "an organized hypocrisy." That was in circa 1845. Things have not changed much and by now hypocrisy might well be seen as a common sin of democratic government. This is because in democracies straigh...
The polarization of the debate around Wikileaks is pretty simple, really. Of all the governments in the world, the United States government is the greatest threat to world peace and security today. This is obvious to anyone who looks at the facts with a modicum of ob...
The Medical Board of California is trying to revoke the license of a pro-cannabis doctor ?for using cannabis. A hearing held in Los Angeles this week is supposed to determine whether or not Allan Frankel, MD, is fit to practice medicine.
...
The victorious army wins first, and then goes to war, while the defeated army goes to war first, and then seeks to win.
? Sun Tzu
Successful coaches tell their teams to worry about themselves and not their oppon...
Two writers with close ties to U.S. intelligence agencies published a shocking article Dec. 23rd in The Miami Herald asserting that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is "a narcissistic nut" with "blood on his hands" and President Obama should do &q...
The prospect of broadcast agitator Glen Beck recommending that his audience read a book with ‘Black Power’ in the title might seem less likely than President Obama standing up to the right-wing onslaught he faces daily.
Yet, just as ...
During the holiday season it is always good to be reminded of one’s many blessings. In the case of UBS employees they can be thankful that they work for UBS and not Sanofi-Aventis. The news they received shortly before Christmas is far less upsetting than the n...
"Tell me, say ? what kind of man this Jesus is, my lord?"
? Buffy Ste.-Marie, "Ananais"
The media distorted parts of Jesus’ message right from the start. The Gospels, and the first gener...
As we police the world and become more of a police state each day, basic police functions are being neglected here at home. In Detroit, seven out of ten murders are unsolved. In Oakland, the police will no longer respond to a host of crimes, including burglary, theft...
After 16 years of non-stop biotech bullying and force-feeding Genetically Engineered or Modified (GE or GM) crops to farm animals and “Frankenfoods” to unwitting consumers, Monsanto has a big problem, or rather several big problems. A growing number of pu...
Damon Galgut’s In a Strange Room was short listed for the 2010 Man Booker Awa...
"Jes Grew which began in New Orleans….They are calling it a plague when in fact it is an anti-plague."
–Mumbo Jumbo-Ishamel Reed
“ Jes Grew (comes) from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Topsy and Jam...
The 2010 Middle East People of the Year are:
The Palestinians in Gaza, desperate to let the world know that nearly two years after the end of the 2008-2009 war, the cruel embargo on the territory persists; the siege by air, land and sea continue...
California’s North Coast wine industry is a sprawling, multi-billion dollar enterprise. It encompasses hundreds of thousands of acres of prime agricultural land in Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino, Marin, Lake, and Solano counties; commands millions of...
The atomic energy industry has suffered another astonishing defeat. Because of it, 2010 again left the "nuclear renaissance" in the Dark Age that defines the technology.
But an Armageddon-style battle looms when Congress returns next ...