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 September 2012
Answering a direct question on “60 Minutes” last Sunday, Mitt Romney said it was fair for him to pay a lower tax on $20 million in capital gains than a worker pays on $50,000 in wages “because capital has already been taxed once at the corporate level, as hi...
The endless question in America is whom to blame when bad things happen and the question is asked beginning at an early age. Any present or past proprietor of a small child knows that when any thing bad happens the child’s first response is that someone else is respon...
Roughly speaking we can distinguish five degrees of “government”:
(1) Unrestricted freedom
(2) Direct democracy
(3) Delegate democracy
(4) Representative democracy
(5) Overt minority dictatorship
The prese...
Among the many myths and outright lies being circulated about labor unions (e.g., union members can’t be fired, they are inferior workers, it was union wages that forced companies to relocate overseas, etc.), one of the most annoying and downright offensive is the Myth ...
Havana.
On May 25, 2001, when the trial of Gerardo Hernandez in Miami was nearing its end, the prosecution filed an Emergency Petition for Writ of Prohibition with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. The first surprise was the speed – no more t...
For years, I’ve been working either in the journalism realm or as an antiwar veteran activist expressing the core idea that the United States of America is an “empire,” that its militarist foreign policy is “imperialistic” and that many of our perennial and curr...
The demise of secular autocratic regimes in the Middle East and North Africa has heralded a renaissance for Islamist parties in the region, igniting a rivalry for the hearts and minds of the Sunni world between the Gulf powers of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. These neighboring ...
Among the issues raised by the Chicago teachers’ strike is the one involving the villainization of labor. Yet, while teachers have been shamelessly conflated in the corporate media with the very gluttons who are in fact fleecing the teachers of their pensions and ot...
Quito.
Down at the neighborhood tavern, I was listening for the umpteenth time to my friend Barney lament how food stamps are not accepted for alcohol. Like me, Barney’s been out of work almost two years now. He’s been through the five stages of grief ...
The Black Panthers were arguably the most important revolutionary organization in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Their presence was an inspiration to millions of men and women around the globe, especially those living in colonial and neocolonial si...
I have a neighbor, F, here in the Kingdom of Cross Words (and puzzling entanglements), who’s been depressed and medicated off and on for months. The genesis of his anguish is twisted adoration for a female who clutches him closely and then hurls him away with language...
If you’ve read anything about Paul Thomas Anderson’s newest film The Master, you’ve probably read a lot about how the movie is a thinly veiled biography of L. Ron Hubbard and the history the Church of Scientology and Dianetics. Then there are those who have...
SETI is certainly an admirable attempt to grasp out to the heavens; it scours for sounds with an extraterrestrial origin. Once, during the 70′s, a cruel, quick nerdgasm was achieved in the form of the “WOW” signal. Sadly, never to be replicated, that 72 ...
This is what most of us know and many of us remember: On Valentine’s day in 1989, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini proclaimed the fatwa, sentenced Salman Rushie to death by accusing the author of ...
I’m gonna take a day off from hating America — I’ll be back on the job tomorrow — and, instead, rhapsodize about Laura Nyro. I was inspired by a performance I saw this past week at the Sellersville Theater of “One Child Born,” a one-woman play/performa...
I might be the only person on the planet who today commemorates Johann Mattheson’s 331st birthday. Born on September 28th, 1681 in Hamburg—then the biggest, most propserpous, and most diverse of German cities—Mattheson never moved from his ...
untitled
by ROBIN CLARKE
Blessed with no memory
class today is devoted
to pushing your pens back &
across the wreckage. What would
happen if one woman told
t...
Noam Chomsky’s latest books are Occupy (Zuccotti Park Press) and ...
Didn’t Ben Bernanke promise that another round of bond purchases would lower unemployment and boost economic growth?
We think he did, which is why we’re wondering why all the benefits from QE3 appear to be going to the banks. According to Bloomberg News...
They’ve drawn far less attention in the U.S. media than the wave of anti-U.S. protests throughout the Islamic world responding to the infamous online anti-Muslim movie trailer. But the anti-Japanese protests in China migh...
When Ohio National Guardsmen fired sixty-seven gun shots in thirteen seconds at Kent State University (KSU) on May 4, 1970, they murdered four unarmed, protesting college students and wounded nine others. For forty-two years, the United States government has held the posi...
At a ceremony in New York today the Appeal of Conscience Foundation will present Stephen Harper with its World Statesman of the Year award. Former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger will deliver the prize.
Canada’s Prime Minister is really racking up the...
Here is an open letter that Barack Obama should write to Mitt Romney – pronto!
Dear Mr. Romney:
Not a day goes by without you blaming me for every slumping or stagnant economic indicator. Unemployment, increases in the number of food stamp recipients, gove...
Triggered by gas-price increases, tens of thousands of Palestinian taxi, truck and bus drivers in the West Bank observed a one-day strike, effectively shutting down cities. This, as Al Jazeera ...