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 October 2011
“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at,” wrote Oscar Wilde, “for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing. And when humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is t...
Protesters at Zuccotti Park spent a very long weekend in an October snow, tarps and tents providing scant protection against some early flurries. Zuccotti sits on the south edge of Tribeca, a tony, toasty neighborhood of the 1 percent, where loft and condo prices still...
Goldman Sachs is about to take over Europe, but you wouldn’t know it by reading the papers.
On Tuesday, G-Sax alum, Mario Draghi, will take the helm at the European Central Bank replacing retiring ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet. The appointment has slipped...
In the early morning hours of Tuesday, Oct. 25, the heavily armed Oakland Police Department in conjunction, with 16 other police departments from all over Northern and Central California, stormed the Occupy Oakland Encampment, fully dressed in helmets, and riot gear, and ...
The slow but inexorable dissolution of feudal society that began centuries ago in England and Western Europe made two historical transformations possible: the rise of capitalism, an economic system based on market relations and private ownership; and the entrance into the...
The state of uncertainty…is a joint product of ignorance and impotence—the two dragons which the Enlightenment heirs of St. George promised , resolved and tried hard to kill, or at least to chase away from the...
A remarkable shift in mass public opinion is occurring right before our eyes. It does not happen often. Normally, only when there is a severe breakdown in public confidence about the future.
Now is such a time.
Millions are demanding clear explanations for t...
I went with friends to the Occupy Portland event at Pioneer Courthouse Square Portland at Noon last Friday. It was headlined by the band Pink Martini who played a bunch of songs in between a series of speakers. The GLBT folks were out in force and somewhat dominant in ...
Mexico City
The Mexican presidential election won’t take place until next July, but with the Institutional Party of the Revolution (PRI) riding high in the polls, Washington is already making it clear who gets their – and the US corporate-industrial/NA...
The experiment in Democracy seems to be failing badly in Arizona. Here, government, the state legislature, law enforcement, the educational system, the courts and the media are a testament to this colossal failure. Here, rampant hate and bigotry starts at the top and here...
Philadelphia
It was 10:30 pm on Dilworth Plaza, the concrete apron around Philadelphia City Hall that’s home for over 100 tents in the Occupy Philadelphia movement. The air was clear and the temperature was pleasant.
Occupiers collected in cluster...
The Obama Administration announced two weeks ago that a bumbling Iranian-American used car salesman had conspired...
Yoo Loses a Debate
...
Remember Tillikum? Back in 2010 I likened this proud mammal, at 6 tons and 22 feet long the largest orca whale in captivity, to Spartacus. Tillikum was kidnapped by whale-slavers off...
In early 1994 a small Islamic think tank affiliated with the University of South Florida (USF) planned an academic forum to host Rachid Ghannouchi, the leader of the main opposition party in Tunisia, Ennahdha. The objective of this annual event was to give Western academi...
The question confronting the Occupy Wall Street encampments and their offshoots in scores of cities and towns around the country is quo vadis? Where is it going?
This decentralized, leaderless civic initiative has attracted the persistent attention of the ...
Imagine if the local fire chief, in the spirit of conservation, decided he’d use no more than 1,000 gallons of water to put out any given house fire. Do you think the citizens would support that policy if their town was burned to the ground? And, yet, this is the sa...
I have come to the conclusion that Big Brother’s subjects in George Orwell’s 1984 are better informed than Americans.
Americans have no idea why they have been at war in the Middle East, Asia and Africa for a decade. They don’t realize that their...
Qaddafi’s much-abused body has finally been laid to rest, in an unmarked grave in the desert. His fate has fallen off the front pages of the U.S. news, eclipsed by the European debt crisis, the elections in Tunisia, and the bid by “Joe the Plumber” for a seat in C...
The United Mine Workers of America held a press conference in Charleston, West Virginia to release ...
A specter is haunting America, the specter of obesity. According to the U.S. Centers of Disease Control’s 2007–2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), nearly three-quarters (73.7%) of all Americans 20 years and older are either overweigh, o...
Scott Borchert: Your primary focus as a scholar is on media and communications — so why a book on the Tea Party?
Anthony DiMaggio: I’ve also researched and participated in social movements and interest group politics consistently for the last ten y...
A protest sign in NYC, “FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE I FEEL AT HOME...
One of the things I remember most about becoming a student at Columbia University in 1957 was the arrogance of the Columbia College football fight song. “Oh, who owns New York? Why, we own New York. C-O-L-U-M-B-I-A.” A not so subtle reminder of the fact that C...
When she screened a film (or “movie,” as she unfailingly called them), Pauline Kael usually sat in the back row, directly under the projector. Dramatically breaching cinema decorum, she talked during the showings, especially during porn flicks, loudly narrating the ...