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 2011
Reading the headlines about U.S.-China relations might lead one to conclude that current tensions between the two have less to do with political differences than chemical imbalances: "The Chinese Tiger Shows Its Claws" vs. "China Helps D...
This month a new film was released in the US entitled Iranium, which is a combination of name of the country Iran with uranium. In the past Hollywood had made a number of movies such as Not Without My Daughter, filmed in 1991 in Neve Ilan, Israel and m...
In America, a teenager is more likely to use a condom during sex than an adult. This was one of the most revealing findings from the 2010 National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior (NSSHB) study, a comprehensive snapshot of current American sexual p...
A small and curious bulletin begins this note from the front lines: as of several hours ago, the head of the Wisconsin professional police association announced that its members would not eject demonstrators from the Capitol building, and suggested som...
When police use their power to carry out personal vendettas, innocent people suffer.
Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies conducted a massive nationwide roundup of drug trafficking suspects this week, arresting more t...
More and More Gore
The fall of 1993 saw Gore broker a bizarre deal to trade missiles for dead whales. On September 23 of that year he entertained Norway’s prime minister, Gro Brundtland, at the White House. Brundtland, a fe...
While Egypt’s revolution was very much about domestic matters — bread and butter, corruption, repression — its most immediate effects have been international. Not for a long time has Egypt loomed so large in the region, to both friend...
When the chairman of the world’s largest food company says that using food crops to make biofuels is “absolute madness,” sensible people should take heed.
Alas, President Obama, along with a Congress that i...
The image of a little boy sometimes appears unbeckoned in my mind, disturbing otherwise innocuous musings. A few years ago, his father–a man of grave composure, perhaps beyond grief–accompanied his child when he appeared on the "Democr...
President Obama uses his bully pulpit to tout profit-seeking corporations, but he rarely uses it to promote nonprofits that deliver social justice at home and abroad.
When Mr. Obama went to India in November, for example, he was a...
Federal cuts. State cuts. City cuts. But cut with what?
President Obama said, “I think it’s important that we don’t try to make a series of symbolic cuts this year that endanger the recovery. We’ve got to ...
Years ago, I was on my gynecologist’s examining table, feet in stirrups, in need of the morning-after pill. He handed me a brochure—info about the med—and said, "Read this, if you can think in this position."
"If I coul...
There are a lot of ironies in the Wisconsin fight between the Republican-dominated legislature and the working class.
On Tuesday, Feb. 22, the State Senate unanimously passed a resolution to honor the Green Bay Packers for winning...
"Today we reign in our valley and restore the glory of our past, and build glory with our hands. A country we sacrifice for and which sacrifices for us. A country with justice we support, and with God’s support we build."
– Ahmed...
Republican responses to budget challenges nationally and in Wisconsin come together as part of a long-standing strategy to destroy institutions that allegedly sustain the American left. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Republicans in the state legis...
Spin has always been a major problem when it comes to interpreting public opinion. Manipulation of opinion surveys is easy enough for those seeking to muddy the waters of political debate regarding the current war on unions. A recent survey...
Driving her kids to school, a South Carolina woman, Amy Lynn Stewart, encountered a group of teens walking in the middle of the road. She honked but they would not get out of the way, so she plowed into them, hitting four. They were 12, 13, 13 and 14-y...
The latest chapter in the quest for open government finds our embattled knight holed up within the grey brick Georgian walls of Ellingham Hall while the dark forces outside attempt a disorderly checkmate. The British courts have long debated whether to...
Nobel Laureate and aspiring Egyptian Presidential Candidate, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, objected to the BBC reporter attributing recent events in Egypt to the "Youth Movement." ElBaradei complained that calling the "revolt" a "yout...
Andrés Dimitriu is taking mate as I meet him in a dark room that is not in any of the fancy university settings to which we might legitimately have laid claim.
Mate consumption is halfway between smoking a pipe and drinking tea, ...
In upmarket restaurants one wouldn’t know the world is suffering from a food crisis. As I observed young executives and professionals slurping oysters and chasing them with martinis at a downtown San Francisco watering house last month without gl...
More and more consumers and corporations are touting the benefits of “local” foods, often described as “sustainable,” “healthy,” or “natural.” According to the trade publication, Sustainable Food News, lo...
Whe policy of plundering imposed by the United States and their NATO allies in the Middle East has gone into a crisis. It has inevitably unravelled with the high cost of grains, the effects of which can be felt more forcefully in the Arab countries whe...
“When at last the land, worn out, would refuse to yield, they would invest their money in something else; by then they would have all made fortunes.”
– Frank Norris, The Octopus, 1901
...
Remember the neoconservatives’ plan of “domino effect” following the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq? It was supposed to be followed by the toppling of other “unfriendly” heads of “...