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
THE NAME of Munib al-Masri has recently come up as a possible candidate for Prime Minister of a Palestinian national unity government. Not being a member of either Fatah or Hamas, he is acceptable to both.
Al-Masri himself denies any such ambition. He says that he ...
Imagine if your banker offered to lend you a $150,000 to make up for the money that you’d lost on your home since the housing bubble burst in 2006. And, let’s say, he agreed to lend you this money for 3 years at rock-bottom rates of 1 percent provided that you...
A man woke before dawn, dressed quietly so as not to disturb his wife, and rode into town to watch a man be put to death. It was neither fascination nor bloodlust that pushed him to attend the public execution but a sense of outraged justice: the condemned man had, in a m...
Not a single person’s eyes were dry when Melchor Torres of Madera , California recounted the story of his son’s murder while in police custody on the night of October 22, 2002. Melchor was an invited guest to the Merced-based October 7, 2011 meeting of the ...
It’s been a triumphant month for Big Oil. First, the Obama administration teamed with the Chinese delegation to scuttle the timid climate agenda at the Durban summit. Then recidivist offender British Petroleum won the rights to drill once again in the perilous depths of...
As long as our elections pass for “free and fair,” there is always a chance that one or another of Donald Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns” will make them interesting. Who, after all, would have predicted Bush v Gore?
But barring what we cannot foresee, it ...
Many sex-related stories captured popular attention in 2011. Most upsetting, many of the incidents involved sexual violence. Taken together, they indicate something bigger, deeper, taking place in America, a social crisis. It’s as if the body politic is moaning, d...
Kabul
Beneath our flat, here in Kabul, wedding guests crowded into a restaurant and celebrated throughout the night. Guests sounded joyful and the music, mostly disco, thumped loudly. When the regular call to prayer sounded out at 5:20 a.m., the sounds see...
Menodcino County denizens have organized several different projects as part of the Occupy Movement, the most innovative being Occupy Hendy Woods and the Occupy Mendocino County Food Initiative, each of which dovetails nicely with a prominent aspect of regional culture (re...
Someone ought to let mainstream news producers know that the nearly 4,500 US soldiers killed in the Iraq war were not the only victims. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have also been killed as a result of the unwarranted US invasion, and many more have been wounded and/or...
1. America Beyond Capitalism by Gar Alperovitz (Democracy Collaborative Press and Dollars and Sense...
2:30 PM, departure time the most excruciating part of visiting Gerardo Hernandez. A prison guard announced: “Visiting hours are over.” Gerardo lined up against the wall with the other inmates. We stood with wives, children and mothers. Finally, the electronically cont...
In the spirit of the season, I’d like to file a complaint – about complaints. Corporate America just doesn’t handle them the way they used to. As in, at all.
I grew up in retail. My father owned a drugstore in upstate New York and was as old fashioned as the ...
Two suited guys at a candle-light dinner nibbling on each other’s flesh for a television show does not denote cannibalism. If placed in a larger landscape, it could be seen as a microcosmic interpretation of contemporary socio-political mores. The ‘noble savage’ tra...
This Christmas, times continue to be hard for many. And that — amid all the presents, parties and holiday gaiety — is the real story of this mass we celebrate on the birth of Christ.
As I’ve reminded throughout the years, the real story isn’t about a holida...
Occupy!...
On December 21, the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) approved rule changes that will help streamline the union election process. Historically, one of the biggest hurdles facing membership drives has been management’s use of stalling tactics. Management knows th...
You’re a mean one, Mr. Gingrich.
You really are a heel.
You’re as cuddly as a nervous twitch,
And as charming as an eel,
Mr. Gingrich!
You...
Hurricane Katrina lands full force in Jesmyn Ward’s probing novel,Salvage the Bones, win...
Berlin
Opened in 1997, Dussmann’s Kulturkaufhaus occupies a stone and glass building of four stories—plus a crucial basement dedicated to classical music—in Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse halfway between the Strasse unter den Linden and the Friedrichstr...
Shelley in Oxford
Blasphemy, Bedlam, and Bookburning
by HEATHCOTE WILLIAMS
In Oxford High Street, in 1810,
Slatter & Munday’s Bookshop
Had a large, bow-fronted window
...
Even some of the critical commentary on Hitchens’s passing pays tribute to his atheism, which no doubt shocked readers of Vanity Fair.
But the ultimate irony seems to have gone over everyone’s head.
When I first learned that Hitchens was diagnos...
Passed by the House and Senate last week, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) now awaits the president’s signature. Because of its controversial provisions on indefinite detention, President Obama had threatened to veto the bill back in May, when the House p...
So said 64 year old Chieko Shiina, a member of the group Fukushima Network for Saving Children from Radiation and a traditional farmer from Miyagi Prefecture, as I sat inside the tent on the floor across from her on Da...