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 June 2012
George Soros probably understands the nature of the immediate problem facing the Eurozone (namely, the accelerating bank run which, amongst other things, potentially exposes Germany to trillions of contingent euro liabilities). But even Soros reflects the prevailing –...
Looking on the bright side, the Supreme Court has ruled that something that President Obama has done is definitively not unconstitutional.
That’s probably the best that can be said of the 5-4 decision by the High Court today in upholding the ironically named Affo...
Middle class families in the US saw a sharp drop in their real income (down 7.7 percent) and a nearly 40 percent decline in their net worth between the years 2007 to 2010. These are the findings of the Fed’s tri-annual ...
Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision that substantially upholds the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was widely praised by the national labor movement. “Working people won a resounding victory,” ...
I’ve been getting a variety of letters from President Barack Obama. The salutation is often: “Dear Ralph.” One of them asks me for $25, adding “Ralph, this is that moment. This is the time to be in with me.” He writes that “I need your voice,” that America n...
Anthony Shadid was an astounding journalist.
By 43 he was legendary for his courage and lyrical, powerful reporting. He had received the Pulitzer Prize twice for his moving reports from the middle of the Iraq war and had built, as the Washington Post noted...
The New York Times recently published an in-depth article on “...
All my life I would have sympathized with the Black man being hounded by a vicious Caucasian (who happens to be the richest man in the United States Congress). But watching Attorney General Eric Holder taking verbal abuse from Rep. Darrell Issa last week, all that came to...
When wading into the ever muddied waters of the West’s never ending war against the people and states of the Middle East, it is useful to have some kind of mechanism if one is trying to find a bit of clarity. The mechanism I prefer is that of history. While not in...
Tel Aviv.
Don’t tell anyone, but in many a demonstration, when we were standing and proclaiming our message of peace and justice, knowing that not a word about it would appear in the media, I secretly wished for the police to come and beat us up....
What did Cuba do to the United States to merit 53 years of castigation?
In 1960, those dirty Caribbean Commies joined the “evil” side in the Cold War – the Soviets, one recalls, offered substantial aid, not threats. But in 1991 the USSR disappeared.
So...
Three years ago, Mirko and Regina Ceska of Crawfordville, FLA told former Gov. Charlie Crist their two adopted 12-year-olds had been prescribed 11 pills a day, including the powerful antipsychotic Seroquel, reported the ...
When President Reagan nominated me as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, he told me that we had to restore the US economy, to rescue it from stagflation, in order to bring the full weight of a powerful economy to bear on the Soviet leadership in orde...
In an eagerly anticipated opinion on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as “Obamacare’, an unusual alignment of justices upheld the Act nearly entirely. The crucial part of the decision found the ‘odd bedfellows’ c...
The message of John Grant’s article, “The Vietnam War and the Struggle for Truth”, should be heard as an alarm bell by all who were blind-sided and unsettled upon learn...
Conservative partisans and activists should have learned a blunt lesson about political power and how it’s exercised in the United States in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling on “Obamacare” this last week. Many conservatives hoped the court would take an activ...
The recent SCOTUS ruling on the ACA (Affordable Care Act) resulted in a quid pro quo between the nation’s public and private sectors: the private health insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are to receive billions of dollars in a federal handout in exchange ...
This week is “Hands off Syria” week, with the United National Antiwar Coalition, with a call out for groups across the nation to take a stand against western antagonism of Syria and Iran. I volunteered a week or so ago to create a ‘fact sheet’ ...
“The problem goes beyond parties and politicians. It’s the system . . . . All our politicians are in the pocket of elites who own, lobby, litigate, bully and bribe their way into every element of our lives. Even single cell organisms unite and fight for su...
Like so many others, I now feel that the window is opening once again. And I would like to squeeze myself through it. But we must be careful; the gap is still narrow, and if we look closely, we can see that the window ...
Beirut
Presidential candidate Barack Obama is being targeted by the US Israel lobby from A to Z, (Ackerman, Gary & Aipac to Zuckerman, Mort & the Zionist Organization of America) as no American President seeking re-election has been in the country...
These graphic photos of the Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado show clearly why it’s essential to have community wide standards for reducing home flammability in the WIldlands Urban Interface (if they are permitted to be built in the first place). Metal roofs, in particu...
On top of its brusque and decidedly unromantic sexual fondling, TSA agents have also been caught stealing electronics, jewelry and cash. A TSA manager ran a prostitution ring from a motel room, and a supervisor is a defrocked priest, kicked from the pulpit for molesting t...
US agricultural exports are usually the last thing the casual observer of the US-Cuba conundrum thinks about. It’s not a sexy topic like the Cuban 5. It’s not politically charged like Alan Gross’ situation. It doesn’t engender the emotional respons...
In May 2012, Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) made an outstanding discovery, which had escaped scores of politicians, diplomats and experts for six decades. He discovered that the number of Palestinian refugees is not five million as United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)...