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 December 2011
January 5
Torture is now solidly installed in America’s repressive arsenal, not in the shadows where it has always lurked, but up front and central, vigorously applauded by prominent politicians. Rituals of coercion and humiliation seep through...
In three of the Arab countries east of Egypt – Syria, Bahrain and Yemen – protesters have challenged their governments over the past year but failed to overthrow them. The reasons for those failures are very different though they have important points in common. In ea...
If Islamist movements come to power all over the region, they should express their debt of gratitude to their bete noire, Israel.
Without the active or passive help of successive Israeli governments, they may not have been able to realize their dreams....
2011 was not a good year for the public image of ruling classes around the world; even Time Magazine named their nemesis, “the protester,” person of the year. But the pillars of the ancien régime still feel secure. Why shouldn’t they? They o...
In Guatemala, former military officers and their supporters have filed legal charges against human rights activists, journalists, and surviving victims of State repression, even as a former general, Otto Perez Molina – himself implicated in Guatemala’s genocid...
Consider the scene in Firdos Square, Baghdad, April 9, 2003: A statue of Saddam Hussein is toppled by US Marines, among a throng of rejoicing Iraqis. The event is immediately construed by Western media as a symbol of the fall of his regime and a happy ending to the war. P...
Population of Bahrain: 1.2 million
Number of citizens: 535,000
Percent of citizens who are Shia Muslim: 70
Percent of those in government: 13
Number of senior positions they fill in the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Cab...
“Pakistan Rejects US Findings on Deadly Air Strike” was a typical headline on December 23, following the Pentagon’s “Department of Defense Statement Regarding Investigation Results into Pakistan Cross-Border Incident.”
The “incident” involved hours ...
Ron Paul is the only antiwar candidate who has a (microscopic) chance of winning in 2012. He’s also the only candidate who will make an effort to restore the Bill of Rights and reverse Congress’s decision to allow the president to “indefinitely” im...
“You are part of an unbroken line of heroes spanning two centuries — from the colonists who overthrew an empire, to your grandparents and parents who faced down fascism and communism, to you — men and women who fought for the same principles in Fallujah ...
In my favorite photograph of my Grandma Wilma, taken during her early teens, she stands outside her Kitzmiller, Maryland, house. The house’s exterior, cracking and worn, hints at the working poor life she and her family are living in Appalachia. Evidence, too, is her at...
It was central to old occidental fantasies of the east that Cathay stood tall and strong as a majestic force, an intangible entity that mystified and terrified with its technological prowess and despotic enchantments. In a sense, the language of mystery and terror has n...
Tripoli
The weather in Tripoli this New Year’s weekend is unseasonably bone chilling with heavy rains flooding the streets reminding this observer more of dreary London this time of year than the southern Maghreb coast of the Mediterranean. My modest fam...
For the last two days, Yahoo! has featured an article, “N. Korea alters photo of Kim Jong Il funeral.” Juxtaposing two images, it shows that half a dozen inconsequential figures have been photoshopped out. It is fitting that Yahoo!, a leader in frivolity, is burdening...
The officer rested his arm holding the stock of the assault rifle on the top of a log pile, and aimed directly between the target’s eyes. She was looking directly at him, unblinking, from 30 feet away, and exhibited no fear. “I hate doing this,” he muttered, before ...
Mural art tends toward bluntness. Its images are large, its imagery thick with meaning. The nature of the medium—walls!—lends itself best to simplicity, directness. The audience for walls is, after all, everyone passing by. Walls with murals ask us to stop and look an...
One wrong move, forgetting to take your hat off, the interruption of a phone ringing notwithstanding — after a spell, a trip to the bank to pay the light bill — alongside men carrying machine guns — does get to feel normal.
Such a transit...
The Portia Simpson-Miller led People’s National Party (PNP) is back in office in Jamaica, having won the December29 parliamentary election by the impressive margin of 41 seats to 22. Early reports are that nearly one-half of the eligible electors did not vote; and that ...
“The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank brooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen. Every night its Titanic form seemed to await something; but it had waited thus, un...
I resolve to run. I will not be forming an exploratory committee, because when I say, “run,” I mean speeding along, catch me if you can, as I leap a crack that might break my mother’s back, in my New Balancers that skim pavement and dirt.
My son suggested w...
Along with eating healthier and getting more exercise, here are some of my New Year’s resolutions:
1) Stop being apocalyptic. Stop expecting America to experience a crisis that “wakes” people up and changes everything. The American capitalist...
It is with a morbid curiosity that we face the upcoming New Year. Not because of a cartoonish version of prophecy. No, it’s a visceral knowing that many wrong and untenable creations are still alive and they...
Like yours truly, Leslie Noyes Mass was a Peace Corps Volunteer fifty years ago, recently returned to the country of her assignment: Pakistan. But unlike what I observed during my recent ...
Miles Davis Quintet, Live in Europe ’67 (Columbia)
Long-awaite...
War
by JARED CARTER
In Goya’s Disasters of War, print
after print of huddled women, already
raped, beaten, defeated, struggling
to bring a cup of water to another –
hillsides draped with bodie...