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
Marine Scott Olsen made it through two tours in Iraq without an injury, but back home in the United States he was critically wounded by a police riot. Heavily-armed police injured Olsen and other unarmed citizens on Oct. 25 when they attacked the non-violent Occupy Oaklan...
What if rising sea levels are yet another measure of inequality? What if the degradation of our planet’s life-support systems — its atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere — goes hand in hand with the accumulation of wealth, power, and control by that corrupt and ...
American voters now have a clear view of who they can vote for next year, with Barack Obama as the Democrats’ certain candidate and Mitt Romney as the Republicans’. Both candidates offer much the same prescriptions for the multiple crises facing their country ...
The on-going labor dispute between NBA (National Basketball Association) owners and the players union is continuing to draw national attention, as each passing day without an agreement puts the league closer to not having a season at all. Indeed, David Stern, the NBA Co...
This seven-minute video gives a pretty good brief impression of what happened in Oakland yesterday, following the police ...
With the various Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, talk of economic and social fairness is in the air. Demonstrators are complaining about the vast inequalities in wealth and political influence between the rich 1 percent or so and the remaining 99 percent.
Are th...
The Oakland Police Department (OPD) flagrantly violated its own Crowd Management and Crowd Control Policy and foundational principles of international human rights law during its dispersal on Tuesday morning of peacefully assembled citizens at Occupy Oakland.
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Global Rich List
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Oakland.
In a pre-dawn raid Tuesday involving hundreds of officers drafted from seventeen departments across northern California, the notoriously aggressive Oakland Police violently raided
and wiped out that city’s Occupy encampment. By sunrise...
The sign at the Occupy Wall Street demonstration revealed the struggles of America’s young: “A B.A., $30,000 in student debt and no job.” Young people are graduating from college into the worst jobs market since the 1930s while carrying record levels of student debt...
The ongoing radiation catastrophe stemming from three out-of-control nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan has taken a back seat to far graver news events of late: Michael Jackson’s doctor, fund-raising by presidential hopefuls, the World Series, and Netflix stock.
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Washington DC/ Kabul
A July United Nations report asserting that only 30 civilians died in targeted raids in Afghanistan during the first six months of 2011 reflected only a very small fraction of night raids in which civilians were killed, according t...
Oakland.
The first tweet from the Occupy Oakland had gone out just a few minutes before three and we managed to make it to the plaza in about half an hour. When my wife Marcy and I arrived at Frank Ogawa Plaza, now redubbed, “Oscar Grant Plaza, the flims...
NATO’s brutal military alliance has become the most perfidious instrument of repression known in the history of humankind.
NATO took on that global repressive role as soon as the USSR, which had served the United States as an excuse for its creation, ceased to ex...
Oakland.
In the early morning on Tuesday, starting before 5 am, the police temporarily destroyed Occupy Oakland, sending in a riot squad of over 500 that outnumbered protesters almost 3 to 1. Oscar Grant Plaza (officially Frank Ogawa Plaza) was too geogr...
Early September 2011, a former intelligence official commented to the Washington Post that, “The CIA has become one hell of a killing machine”. He then attempted to retract, but his words were on record. But is that really what it should be: a hell of a killing machin...
“Wow!” exclaimed secretary of state Hillary Clinton when an aide showed her a Blackberry with Gaddafi’s capture as she was visiting Pakistan to twist a few arms. Her ‘wow’ may be ambiguous – an expression of real surprise, but I fear not. I...
This Halloween the neo-Malthusians, many dressed up as environmentalists, will have a big scare for us – the birth of the 7 billionth person on “space ship” earth. We will hear again of the demographic disaster sure to befall us with yet another mouth to feed. B...
Tripoli University
The people I had hoped most to be able to find on returning to Libya were eight students from Fatah University (now renamed Tripoli University) who became my friends during three months in Libya this summer. They had all been strongly ...
Understanding economic theory, in law and in principle, requires a certain perception of the world. One perception requires an understanding of the world as one would like it to be. The other, which is perhaps more in touch with reality, demands an acceptance of the worl...
31 Days of Foreclosures
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It’s not too cool to be ridiculed
But you brought this upon yourself
The world is tired of pacifiers
We want the truth and nothing else
And we are sick and tired of hearing your song
Telling how you are gonna change right f...
The thoughts in this essay are those touched on in a public conversation with Tariq Ali in The Gower Street Lecture Series, arranged by Waterstones Bookshops and held in University College London. Tariq’s knowledge of the societies of the Arab Spring is won...
I. That Strange Brown Man, Gandhi.
Gandhi is standing in the bustle of Occupy Boston. The wry smile, the flapping ears, and the walking stick in hand. A sign flags near his knees, “The world holds enough for everyone’s NEED, bu...
The call to “occupy Wall Street” is a call to occupy corporations. But how do we actually do that? Here are three ways.
1. Occupying the Boardroom
The first thing to recognize about our big corporations is that they have thousands an...