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 2011
Kabul
Arab Spring, European Summer, American Autumn, and now the challenge of winter. Here in Kabul, Afghanistan, the travelers of our small Voices for Creative Nonviolence delegation share an apartment with several of the creative and determined “...
Although most Americans have not heard about it, a historic step towa...
On November 30, United States District Judge Marco A. Hernandez of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, Portland Division, ...
Recent reports suggest that almost 50% of Americans are in poverty or at a “low income” level. The claim is based on a new supplemental measure by the Census Bureau that includes health care, transportation, and other essential living expenses in the poverty c...
Nine months into the “Arab Spring”, we surveyed public opinion in seven Arab countries and Iran, asking over 6,000 respondents about their primary political concerns and their degree of satisfaction with the pace of change taking place in their countries. What...
Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza celebrated the return of their loved ones last Sunday as the final wave of prisoners were released in an exchange between Hamas and Israel. However, one prisoner was notably absent. Marwan Barghouti, the jailed Fatah leader known...
Dalarna, Sweden
The film’s US opening was December 20th, with a Reuters review of David Fincher’s too-real thriller titled, “Dragon Tattoo” film paints Sweden in darkest shades. But, the sad fact is that t...
In the United States, the most significant event of 2011 hands down should have been the withdrawal of the last U.S. troops from Iraq. But for most Americans, the end of this illegal and immoral war and occupation hardly registers a ripple.
The reason: the continue...
The Book of Jobs
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Moscow
After an interminably long delay, the grey Moscow heavens were at long last generous with snow, dispensing heaps and heaps of the white stuff, turning cars into snow mountains and making sidewalks impassable. This is a nice time of year: bare tree...
When he announced that the last U.S. troops would leave Iraq by year’s end, President Barack Obama declared the nine-year war a “success” and “an extraordinary achievement.” He failed to mention why he opposed the Iraq war from the beginning. He didn’t say tha...
On December 15, U.S. District Judge Roger W. Titus, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, ...
Profiteers in the medical CT scan business took a big hit last week from a major new government report on the causes of breast cancer.
Published by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, the exhaustive analysis found th...
“Donors and aid organizations prefer to be the boss of their own money. And they want to be in charge of how to spend it, where to spend it, and if to spend it at all,” Linda Polman, author of ...
So, how is that violent liberation working out for ‘ya?
How much did the US spend trying to topple dictators Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt? Oh, that’s right, like Filipino strongman Ferdinand Marcos, those brutal, corrupt, murdering lea...
ExxonMobil Chairman/CEO Rex Tillerson sounded very confident when he told a congressional hearing last year that extracting natural gas by the “hydraulically fractured” process has not led to even one “reported case of a freshwater aquifer having ever been...
South Africa, the birthplace of the policy of racial oppression and exploitation called apartheid, was a perfect destination for a conference designed to consolidate a new regime of climate-based inequality. ...
Politicians are attacking Medicare and Medicaid on all sides–Democrats and Republicans alike. Obama’s national health care bill will slash hundreds of billions from Medicare over the next decade, an act supported by so-called “progressive” Democra...
This holiday season, as you walk through a public area (any mall, grocery, or restaurant will do), start counting the people you see there. Look in their faces, listen to their conversations, and try to appreciate each of them not just as strangers, but as fellow human be...
Four Days of Death in December
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Too bad Kim Jong-il kicked the bucket last weekend. If the divine hand that laid low the North Korean leader had held off for a week or so, Kim would have been sustained by the news that President Obama is signing into law a bill that puts the United States not immeasurab...
A wave of bomb explosions sent plumes of smoke into the air across Baghdad yesterday, killing 63 and injuring 194 people in the worst violence for months. There is a growing sense of crisis in Iraq as the Shia prime minister Nouri al-Maliki tries to arrest his own Sunni v...