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 November 2011
Sainath on the World Economic Forum
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Albuquerque.
On November 13 of this year the Albuquerque police oversight commission cleared one of its own for the fatal shooting in September of 2010 of 19-year old Chandler Barr. The officer, a bicycle cop on her first day on the job, shot the mentally ...
“Eurozone banks’ demand for European Central Bank funding surged to a two-year high on Tuesday, as fast spreading sovereign debt worries left lending markets virtually frozen and the ECB the only available funding option for many institutions....
While I truly empathize with the victims of the use of force by police against Occupy protesters these past few weeks, the fact that these acts of abuse occurred has served a very useful purpose. For the first time in a long time, the role of police in a society that ca...
Someday soon, you’ll be checking your new Clear Skies app as a routine part of your preparations to go out for the evening. First, you’ll look at your smart gizmo to read your latest email to make sure there hasn’t been any change in plans. A quick glanc...
The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation has just concluded its annual summit in Honolulu, once President Obama’s home turf. It will probably be most remembered for the traffic jams it created in the Waikiki Beach area, to the consternation of residents and tourists alike....
Fifty years ago, Freedom Riders braved beatings and arson by supremacists intent on maintaining apartheid in the Jim Crow South. By challenging segregated transportation through nonviolent action, these African American and white activists set in motion a process that u...
The other day, I was listening to the voice of “liberal” radio, NPR, and was surprised to hear its bizarre, and yet quite candid, report on what it apparently views to be one of the more hideous aspects of the Gadhafi years – a modern welfare state which looked afte...
Los Angeles
All across Los Angeles you’ll find small, quiet occupations, clusters of tents sheltered by overpasses or erected in communities that emerge in the twilight and disappear at dawn. Most have been there for years, in places like Watts and S...
For years, the standard drill after a police beating or shooting, when it was a citizen’s word against a cop’s and the cop’s testimony was backed up by his Brothers in Blue, was “administrative leave” with pay for the cop — until a review board found “no evi...
While walking through the West Virginian highlands, John Davis was struck by the character of the forest: all the trees were middle-aged and the ground was covered with ferns. There were almost no saplings or wildflowers.
“You could almost call them fern glades,...
Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber made a decision on Tuesday to impose a moratorium on the death penalty for the duration of his term in office. The state under his previous stewardship has used it twice in the 1990s (Douglas Wright in 1996 and Harry Moore in 1997), and Ki...
Occupy Lulz
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Before the assassin’s bullet cut him down, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been preparing his sermon for Atlanta’s Ebeneezer Baptist Church. The sermon was called “Why America May Go to Hell.” The theme of the sermon was simple, that the failure to address the a...
Sometimes when a debate seems all but settled, a prestigious voice can reopen it. So it is with Richard Goldstone, who states the following in a New York Times op-ed entitled “Israel and the Apartheid Slander”:
“In Israel, there is...
The Kingdom of Qatar in the Persian Gulf, ever vigilant in support of democracy, sent hundreds of soldiers to help Libyan insurgents against the dictator Gaddafi. It based a squadron of attack aircraft in Crete to bomb Gaddafi’s forces, and its military chief stated...
Peter Seybold might have been born and educated in the Northeast, but the Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI) sociology professor found the Hoosier state’s labor movement intriguing from the dawn of his political awakening back in New Jersey...
It’s been twelve long years since a criminal investigation was first opened against Stephan Schmidheiny.
Schmidheiny is one of the wealthiest men in Europe....
Editor’s Note: Occupy Oakland is part of a global movement that is questioning the basic structures of the political and economic system to an extent not seen since 1968. Whether it will succeed in changing these structures is unclear. But it has already...
Three years after being taken private by an affiliate of private equity firm Sun Capital Partners, Friendly’s – the family restaurant and ice cream chain known for its Happy Ending sundaes – filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. According to the filing,...
Last Tuesday, I awoke in lower Manhattan to the whirring of helicopters overhead, a war-zone sound that persisted all day and then started up again that Thursday morning, the two-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street and a big day of demonstrations in New York City. It ...
CounterPunch Exclusive
Benghazi, Libya
An affable gentleman, “Mahmoud” ushered this observer into the Benghazi People’s Court (Mahkamat al-Sha’b) and showed me the freshly painted courtroom where ...
There they fell during 2011, one after the other in past-their-prime domino descent: Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from Tunis, Hosni Mubarak from Cairo, Dominique Strauss-Kahn from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Muammar Gaddafi from Tripoli, Georgios Papandreou...
The growing number of video clips and photos showing police in Darth Vader-like riot gear assaulting peaceful demonstrators with everything from tear gas and mace to truncheons, point-blank shots with beanbags and rubber bullets, and of course the ubiquitous fist and club...
Whistleblowing in our federal government may soon be a thing of the past, not because whistleblowers face more vicious retribution than ever before — although that is true; and not because important acts of whistleblowing now result in fewer reforms and less account...