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 November 2012
Gaza City.
Dr. T., a medical doctor, is a Palestinian living in Gaza City. He is still reeling from days of aerial bombardment. When I asked about the children in his community he told me his church would soon be making Christmas preparations to lift the...
Gaza City.
The past few days have been harrowing, yet still deeply inspiring in Gaza as people in the strip must carry on with their lives after the Israeli army’s deadly 8 day offensive operation “Pillar of Cloud” which ...
The modern dilemma is to understand just how unreasonable the reasoning classes are in both thought and action. Political ‘progressives’ were behind efforts to obliterate Native American cultures through forced assimilation and acculturation for the purported ‘benef...
Ever since the fall of former dictator Hosni Mubarak on that fateful day in February 2011, Egyptian society and its political factions have been sharply divided. On one side is the Islamic parties led by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) but also includes the more conservative ...
This interview with Dr. Cornel West was conducted following the Oxford Union Debate on November 22nd 2012.
SR: Why are you here speaking in favour of the Occupy Wall Street movement?
CW: The Occupy movement being the ma...
West Bank.
The news is dominated by celebrations for a UN observer state. But it has only been a week since Gaza’s nightmare. The tiny densely populated city that really did experience ‘Pillar of Clouds’ as the Bible ...
It was a day of joy.
Joy for the Palestinian people.
Joy for all those who hope for peace between Israel and the Arab world.
And, in a modest way, for me personally.
The General Assembly of the United Nations, the highest world forum, has voted...
One week Australia’s Labor Party Prime Minister Julia Gillard cheers on Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza, the next the parliamentary Labor Party caucus rolls her over recognition of Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly.
In the United Nations, Labo...
“If possible, I’d like to see the Bank of Japan purchase all of the construction bonds that we need to issue to cover the cost.” Shinzo Abe, President of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)
Japan’s next prime minister has a plan for en...
Barack Obama, former president of the Harvard Law Review and a constitutional law lecturer, should go back and review his coursework. He seems to have declined to comport his presidency to the rule of law.
Let’s focus here on his major expansion of drone warfare ...
The most catastrophic human rights disaster since World War II has been unfolding in the Democratic Republic of The Congo (“DRC” or “Congo”) since the mid-1990’s. While the numbers of the victims are hard to know for certain, there are credible reports of a...
London.
In Charles Dickens ‘Hard Times’, there is a scene where one of the main...
It is amazing to watch politicians trying to weasel their way around their promises. President Obama is providing us with a good illustration of the art.
During the latest presidential campaign and in the final televised debates, both Obama and ...
Beirut
The United Nations General Assembly vote of 11/29/12, which some in Lebanon’s 12 Palestinian refugee camps are calling a “birth certificate for our country” is the latest of more than 400 UN resolutions on the Question of Pale...
The retail giant’s low wages and poor working conditions drive down standards throughout a sector that is increasingly important to the entire US economy.
On Black Friday, workers and their community allies protested for “consistent hours, better pay, and simpl...
In the wake of this fall’s election, the disintegration of America’s decrepit atomic reactor fleet is fast approaching critical mass. Unless our No Nukes movement can get the worst of them shut soon, Barack Obama may be very lucky to get through his second ter...
Which film about the abolition of slavery was intended to burnish the reputation of a contemporary President? If you answered that it was Spielberg’s lavishly praised “Lincoln”, you were right. When asked in a November 15th NPR interview whether he saw pa...
Austin, Texas is the latest U.S. city to pass a groundbreaking measure that, if upheld, would require companies looking for tax incentives in Travis County to pay its employees $11/hour. This is particularly big news for the area’s large construction sector that has...
Egypt will begin to acquire democratic institutions, first a Shura (or Senate), then a Parliament (after new elections), after a Constitution will inevitably be passed with article 2 stating that the source of all law will be ‘the principles of Islamic Sharī‘a’. Th...
“People’s movements of resistance against deprivation, against unemployment, against the loss of natural resources, all of that is termed ‘terrorism.’”
– Edward Said
Following a decade on the run, suspected eco-sa...
I lived in South Africa from 1991 until 2002, during the difficult transition from apartheid to democracy. An interesting part of this history was that by 1994, apartheid had become so discredited that it was difficult to find a single white person who admitted to ever su...
Whether we are left with the Fiscal Cliff or a Grand Bargain, workers in the U.S. face massive cuts to programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, unemployment insurance, Food Stamp assistance and other needed social safety nets. This is an example of “aus...
In life, some phenomena cannot be explained by ordinary logic or technical language, let alone official discourses. How did Gaza manage to fight back with such ferocity and undying vigor in quelling the latest Israeli war despite years of a bloody siege and one-sided war ...
One very important reason why more than 100 workers (mainly women) died November 25 in the fire that engulfed Tarzeen Fashions, a textile plant outside Dhaka, Bangladesh, is because management chose not to spend the necessary money to prevent such a tragedy from occurring...
Many of us have heard the current period referred to as a second gilded age. Or we’ve seen the current inequality in wealth in the United States compared to that of 1929. But we have not all given sufficient thought to what ended the first gilded age, what creat...