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 March 2012
For several days the NATO war lords in Afghanistan have been heavily bombing the village of Mirbandao in the Helmand province of the south of Afghanistan. The Italian medical aid and anti war group called Emergency has a hospital for war casualties located in the Helmand ...
I have enormous respect for Simon Johnson. I first recall seeing him one late evening on a Bill Moyers segment in the middle of the financial crisis. I couldn’t quite believe that the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund was complaining about th...
From the very outset I was an enthusiastic supporter of Occupy Wall Street. To me it represented the reawakening of the political left after four decades of uninterrupted slumber. Maybe the radicalization of America had finally begun. Americans might soon opt for jobs...
In November 1940 an American drove from Washington DC to Mexico City. His road trip would turn out to be of great historical importance for the development of agriculture worldwide. In the course of this grand tour, he established the foundations and fundamentals of the g...
Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet.
- African proverb
Columbo, Sri Lanka.
The entire country, not just its diplomatic missions, is in a dilemma today. This has...
The War is Trauma Portfolio
...
The high priestess of corporate deregulation and free markets, Ayn Rand, wrote a novella in the 1930s. It was published in the U.S. in 1946 under the title, ...
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
-William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1
Rock Creek, West Virginia.
Highway 3 follows the route of th...
The year-long effort to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad and his government has failed. Two or three months ago, it seemed to come close to succeeding, as insurgents took over enclaves in cities such as Homs and Deir el-Zour. There was talk of no-fly zones and foreign ...
In 1876, at the so-called Battle of the Little Bighorn when U.S. Cavalry regiments attacked an Indian village along the Little Bighorn River in Wyoming, the first casualty was a ten-year old Lakota Sioux boy named Deeds. Unaware that U.S. troops were nearby planning an at...
The US Supreme Court has a chance to do the people of America a big favor, perhaps atoning at last for its shameful betrayal of the electoral system in 2000 when a conservative majority stole the Florida, and national election, for George W. Bush, and for the liberal-led ...
The final battle of Shays’ Rebellion took place on a plain tucked between the ridges of the rolling hills of the Berkshires in extreme western Massachusetts. The battle that marked the end of the rebellion is now used for corn fields probably much like this land was far...
Fast forward. The Chinese labor model has come to the United States. Workers toil in dire conditions. Each must sign a pledge that he or she will not commit suicide. Still, suicide nets adorn factory facades.
Is this a possibility? Think about it.
...
Collaring readers for ‘visiting’ internet sets? Jailing them for perusing matter accessible through the all pervasive world wide web, where curiosity abounds and internet sites are stumbled across and sampled like novelty gift items? This is the latest desperate l...
Florida’s so-called “stand your ground” law is a legal abomination and needs to be chucked.
However, Florida’s ridiculous invitation to murder, aka the “Stand your ground” law, had very little to do with the blatant injustice sur...
The decline in housing prices as the bubble popped and the air went out of the housing market has devastated families forced out of foreclosed homes and communities with boarded up and deteriorating properties. An obvious solution, with support from ...
Medical doctors and other single payer activists will rally at the Supreme Court Tuesday March 27 at 8:30 am to urge the justices to strike down the individual mandate.
In...
Whoops! More Drilling Doesn’t Drop Gas Prices
...
“In the 21st century, the best anti-poverty program around is a first-class education,” President Obama famously declared in his 2010 State of the Union Address, just as millions of high schoolers across the nation were embarking on the annual ritual of...
RACIST HATE crimes are particularly ugly.
If the victims are children, they are even more so.
If they are committed by an Arab against Jewish children, they are also incredibly stupid.
This was demonstrated this week again.
IF INDEED an Arab al...
Speakers at a recent rally and march to protest the murder of the unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin by a white, self-appointed, guardian of the racist social order in Florida rightly pointed to the broader institutional racism that permeates race relations in America....
Last week, the experts were sure that, “The recovery is finally here”. This week, not so much.
The optimists pointed to manufacturing, retail sales and employment as signs of a strengthening economy, but what they were really jazzed about were the moves...
I have seen a number of articles written recently about the problem of Child Soldiers in various conflicts abroad – most notably in Africa and Colombia. What has struck me about these pieces, and the discourse about this phenomenon in general, is that they treat the...
By way of preface, a few years ago, when I wrote Conservatives Without Conscience...