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
All working people should pay attention to the egregious assault on union democracy happening in the Carpenters Union’s Pacific North West Regional Council, which covers all the Carpenter’s Locals in Oregon, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming, and Montana. The Unit...
A new book by former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell is another display of this man’s savvy proclivity for self-promotion.
However, irrespective of the monstrous ego of this man known in Philadelphia as “Fast Eddy,” Rendell is on target with the alar...
Dinesh Thalpawila said that Shusha camp was a legend, but it was hard to understand what he meant at first. The camp is in south Tunisia seven kilometres from the Libyan border, between the Mediterranean-edge highway and the desert. As the Libyan uprising turned into arme...
The defense budget politicians are going ga-ga over a monster they helped to create: the “sequester” of $492 billion out of the defense budget over the next nine years—the broadly undesired effect of the Budget Control Act and the failed Super Committee of 201...
In Cuba change is in the air. But such change should not be read as an end to the revolution.
“The United States and the exile community are dead wrong if they think that regime change will take place at any time in the near future,” said Julio Diaz Vazquez, a ...
Barack Obama received a blast last week from one of his former Harvard law professors who made the case that he “must be defeated.” Roberto Unger’s argument boils down to a damning indictment spelling out charges that the President has betrayed the progressive...
Even if the Greek and other European publics are seen capitulating to the whims of elites for the moment, that deference will probably not last. The Greek people appear to have been spooked into falling into line, by the barest margin, with a bailout package. But througho...
In a New York Times (NYT) opinion piece, Jimmy Carter opens with: “The United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights.”
I read these words and focus on the present tense of “is”. And I think: When was this country e...
We reject Romneycare.
We reject Romney.
We reject Obamacare.
We reject Obama.
Where does that leave us?
With the American people.
And for single payer.
Medicare for all.
On Thursday, Single Payer Action will again be...
Fukushima Forum
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In a traditional cowboy movie, we know what to do: we look for the guy wearing the white hat to be sure who to cheer, and for the one wearing the black hat to know who deserves to die, preferably gruesomely, before the credits roll. If Hollywood learnt early to play on th...
China is preparing to launch a program that will create the same complex debt-instruments that triggered the global financial crisis in 2008. The pilot program will allow banks to convert pools of loans into securities via off-balance shee...
The American plutocratic revolution is now complete. The proof is: There are no criminal charges for the housing bust and financial meltdown of 2008. Starting with Reagan in the 1980s, as of today the Right has won their decades-long overthrow for complete control of Amer...
There has been much talk recently about the impact of money on politics, especially in the wake of the Citizens United ruling that has ratcheted up the role of corporate money in political campaigns. Organized labor was quick to blame this ruling for its defeat in Wiscons...
If you think your computer might be vulnerable to hackers…. you’re probably right.
Almost every week these days, I get an email from someone’s infected computer, asking me to open an attachment. It was a local reporter’s system la...
Remember the euphoria early last year when long-established police states across the Arab world were tumbling down. Facile comparisons were made with the fall of communist states in Eastern Europe in 1989. Commentators spoke glibly of irrepressible political change in the...
John DeGrove was the father of land use planning in Florida and the principal architect of the state land use agency, the Florida Department of Community Affairs. The agency was established in 1985 to oversee compliance with the Growth Management Act. Most Floridians are ...
Dave Lindorff (‘Red-Baiting Hollande’, CounterPunch, 13 June) bemoans the difficulty of getting decent coverage of France in the US media. The problem is pervasive in the English-language media, for which Continental Europe is a foreign planet. France has long been a ...
Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo has just been removed from office by Congress through political impeachment, an express trial that lasted only 24 hours. This manoeuvre must be seen as a coup to the democr...
Julian Assange has a few tricks left up his sleeve after his 16-month battle to avoid extradition to Sweden, and seeking asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London has been one of them. He has managed to throw an assortment of spanners into the works of state since beco...
The Vampires of Daylight
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A Cuban official recently brought up a point that is seldom remarked in the foreign media, to wit, that the economic blockade — the centerpiece of US Cuba policy — is bad for the Cuban economy. Who could have known?
During a session in Geneva of the W...
Austerity’s advocates are declaring victory with Latvia’s battle against the European economic crisis and advocating it as the model for Greece & Spain to emulate. Curiously, Latvians have been declaring this “win” by exiting their country.
The “aus...
In those great days of January and February, Egyptians taught the world what courage is. Before then, it was thought obvious that if you were up against live fire, you ran like hell. No one so much as conceived the possibility that you should stand and fight, let alone wi...
The Bush administration detained and tortured suspected militants; the Obama administration assassinates them. Both practices not only visit more hatred upon the United States; they are also illegal. Our laws and treaties prohibit torture. The Constitution forbids the g...