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 2011
Spite. Look it up.
I was on the cusp of 15. About to begin high school. I’d be older than everybody else, but then, I always was.
The currents of fate and bureaucracy had decided not only would I be fo...
"We arouse and arrange our memories to suit our psychic needs."
–
Michael Kammen, Columbus in History
If George W. Bush could attest to his mission from God Almighty to invade Iraq– ‘I’m driven...
Glad you asked. It turns out that the alternative energy market is the new gold rush of the 21st century. That’s the good news.
In the wake of Italy’s overwhelming rejection of high-risk atomic power, Reuters tells ...
Many commentators today are basing the success of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the June 12 elections largely on its ability to guide the country through a decade of remarkable growth.
Economic indicators are often seen...
Whether celebrated or condemned, the American Dream endures, though always ambiguously. We are forever describing and defining, analyzing and assessing the concept, and with each attempt to clarify, the idea of an American Dream grows more incoherent y...
Clarence Clemons, said both my daughter and Bruce Springsteen this week, passed through his life doing exactly what he wanted to do. Bruce said the rest, which amounted to admitting that you can’t really do that, and the result of trying to is co...
U.S.A.
United States of Addiction.
To the war on drugs.
40th Anniversary this year.
NixonFordCarterReaganBushClintonBushObama.
Happy 40th anni...
President Barack Obama’s speech announcing that the 33,000 "surge" troops in Afghanistan will be withdrawn by "summer" 2012 indicates that he has given priority to the interests of the military and the Pentagon over concerns b...
A gullible portion of the electorate here in the Homeland and a gullible slice of the entire world expected a great deal from Barack Obama. But anyone who paid close attention to his run for the White House, and who managed not to succumb t...
It’s cloud illusions I recall.
?Joni Mitchell
I’ve been hanging out a lot with a friend my age these days. Like me, she was a transcontinental hitch-hiker in the seventies.
For you young&rsqu...
Look at the headlines that came out of Vermont last month.
CBS News: Vermont Governor Signs Single Payer Health Law.
Democracy Now: Vermont Governor Signs Single Payer Health Law.
Kaiser...
One vote in the State Senate separates gay and lesbian New Yorkers from the right to wed. While there have been some surprises among the opposing forces?Roy McDonald’s change of heart?those arrayed on either side of the issue are mostly familiar ...
Human rights organizations have cast doubt on claims of mass rape and other abuses perpetrated by forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, which have been widely used to justify Nato’s war in Libya.
Nato leaders, opposition ...
How many nails does it require to whack down forever the coffin lid on European social democracy? Lenin, outraged in 1914 at the sight of Social Democratic parties across Europe rallying behind their national flags and voting war credits to unleash th...
The images of Palestinians massed at Israel’s borders on 15 May represented a dream for some, and a nightmare for others. On the 63rd anniversary of the declaration of the Jewish state and of the nakba (catastrophe) for the many thousands of Pale...
The location and miraculous preservation of the theatre at Drottningholm which I described last week make it a must for devotees of 18th-century opera as well as those in search of a whiff of Sweden’s illustrious past as a European super po...
Annie Sprinkle, PhD has been in the sex advocacy business for years. She was colorfully present on Friday, along with her partner in crime Elizabeth M. Stephens, at the Femina Potens Gallery on Mission Street in San Francisco. A good crowd ...
The fight for Europe’s future is being waged in Athens and other Greek cities to resist financial demands that are the 21st century’s version of an outright military attack. The threat of bank overlordship is not the kind of economy-killing...
"America’s public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive." These were the words of President Richard Nixon on June 17th, 1971.
...
420 Caf?, Amsterdam.
When I got back to Amsterdam last week and checked into my headquarters at the 420 Caf?, I received an urgent message from the proprietor, Michael Veling, in response to my last column, which talked about atte...
Yesterday, I said to my sister Laura, "I don’t believe in hell, but if I’m wrong, I’ll be removing wallpaper there."
I’ve spent the last four days working on her condo, stripping the walls of dark green and br...
Last night I heard something. We were all celebrating–kind of a going-away party for Bob and Gretchen. They’ve had a great year?Bob’s a big oil company honcho, you know, and we were toasting (and roasting?) him about his six-figure ...
Palestinian intellectual and ex-Knesset member Azmi Bishara followed Egypt’s 25 January Revolution minute by minute from the Qatari capital Doha where his think tank — the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Study — is based.
...
One of the places I lived at in Berkeley, California in the 1970s was owned by the biggest landlord in the part of California known as the Eastbay. He owned buildings in the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, El Cerrito and Albany. In addition, h...
Anger was my first reaction after listening to US president Barack Obama’s two recent speeches, one to the world and another to AIPAC, the powerful Israeli lobby in the US. I went around to my friends with questions like "who does he think h...