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 2011
In 1968, Julius Nyerere, the first President of the emerging Tanzanian state, wrote a series of essays entitled Uhuru na Ujamaa or Freedom and Socialism that articulated a distinct vision of African socialism. He believed that even though Tanzania an...
It didn’t take long for Russian Geneticist Dmitry Belyaev to start producing tame, domesticated silver foxes. He simply allowed the less aggressive to breed, and over a very short period of time, the formerly wild creatures started to retain juvenile, dependant traits....
The problem with getting a job, I’ve always admonished myself sternly, is you have to work. Plus in order to count for cultural capital—not to mention real capital—jobs have to come in integers. What’s with that? Who wants a whole job? I noticed a politica...
The worst part of it, of course, is that they can’t go out on recess. They have to stay in the room until they have finished their assigned tasks. Children in grade school know that that is a fairly severe penalty for failing to complete the assigned task on time. ...
As a teen growing up in a white working class suburban neighborhood during the 1970s, I distinctly recall that most of my high-school friends with older siblings who had departed town for college left behind worn copies of Sly and the Family Stone’s most popular album...
Shortly after news of (the former Nawab of) Pataudi’s death, a friend of mine sent me the following one-line email:
“Who was the other cricketer with one eye?……..Ranjitsinhji.”
I thought this didn’t make any sense. I had r...
In the movie The Social Network, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg must choose between building a steady revenue stream via ad sales or going for a potentially much larger payoff by using venture capital to boost his startup’s reach and thereby its valuation...
It’s easy to conclude that Michael Ondaatje’s new novel, The Cat’s Table, is autobi...
The results of one of the most important recent discoveries in Bach research are currently hanging on the walls of the renovated Bach Archive and Museum in Leipzig, Germany, the city where J. S. Bach lived with his family from 1723-1750. Unearthed musical manuscripts of p...
Anniversary
by JOAN ANNSFIRE
On the tenth anniversary
some firms from the upper floors
of the World Trade Center advertised their losses
with a list of the dead.
Names catalogued alphabetically:...
The Reign of the One-Percenters
...
German parliamentarians reaffirmed their commitment to the Euro-project on Thursday by approving an expansion of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). The balloting provided the landslide victory (523 to 85) that German Chancellor Angela Merkel needed to reest...
Dublin.
Last Monday, the Irish state paid €1.465 billion (about $2 billion) to senior unsecured boldholders in Bank of Ireland, as part of its obligation under the blanket guarantee of Irish banks issued by the government three years ago this week. This ...
The Iraqi government is seeking to silence critics who accuse it of rampant corruption by removing officials who try to prosecute racketeers and intimidating politicians and journalists who support them.
This month alone it has forced the head of its anti-corruptio...
Congressional Republicans have won a string of victories in their fight to preserve the Bush Administration’s harmful “war on terror” policies.
They blocked the transfer of prisoners from Guantanamo to the United States, keeping the military prison at Guantan...
Islamabad.
When the US suffers a defeat in Afghanistan, it will need another scapegoat. I stated this nine years ago; I give you one guess which country is a made-to-order scapegoat here? Neither history, nor truth, nor realities are of any significance. A...
Honorable people like to debate whether the United States of America is a “police state,” but when it comes to shutting down the expression of ideas on the political left, there’s little room for argument.
We are inundated in this country wi...
Parents demanded it be banned.
School superintendents placed it in restricted sections of their libraries.
It is the most challenged book four of the past five years, according to the American Library Association (ALA).
“It” is a 32-page illustrat...
1) I had brunch on Sunday in Chinatown with a friend who works in local television news. He complained that the Occupy Wall Street people had sent over video that they said showed demonstrators getting maced. It didn’t show any such thing, my friend insisted. After brun...
The United States’ strategic position in the greater Middle East is disintegrating. The repercussions of the Arab Spring have undercut the tacit alliance among Washington, Cairo, Riyadh, Amman and Jerusalem with auxi...
Congressman Denny Rehberg’s legislation “The Montana Land Sovereignty Act”, as well as similar legislation with identical goals introduced by Utah and Idaho representatives, is a cynical attempt to shackle the President’s prerogative to create national monuments. ...
Observations of a Jailed Journalist
...
There could be no better proof of the revolution – care of the internet – occurring in the accessibility of information and informed commentary than the reaction of our mainstream, corporate media.
For the first time, Western publics – or at least those who c...
Ten years after the US invaded Afghanistan, the anti-war movement in America looks remarkably similar to what it was in 1972 – ten years after the US invaded South Vietnam. In each case, more than two-thirds of the American public oppose the war, but th...
The controversial execution of Troy Davis last week in Georgia ignited outrage around the world while injecting renewed attention across America into the propriety of the death penalty, particularly in Davis-like cases where there is evidence of innocence or serious reaso...