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 2012
The latest round of climate negotiations in Doha once again demonstrated the sheer lack of cooperation, goodwill and willingness – or ability – of the world’s governments to share responsibility for tackling climate change. Since the epochal failure to r...
A palpable enthusiasm has emerged over the 2012 Presidential election and how its outcome signals a major demographic shift in the United States. The excitement pairs with heightened anticipation that “Latina/o issues”—principally comprehensive immigration r...
It was just an unfortunate coincidence that the reports were almost juxtaposed-the reports of the punishment given Stephanie George and that given HSBC and UBS. Stephanie, of course, was not the first.
...
The horrible massacre in Newtown, Connecticut of 20 first-grade children and six teachers and other staff– and a mother and her son—has deeply moved the hearts of people across America. Many have come together, especially in interfaith services, to express their...
When I came back from Vietnam in early 1970, after spending a year in the jungle as an infantryman, the culture shock, the transition from carrying an automatic weapon for twelve months that became in essence an extension of yourself, in a foreign country that regarded us...
The horrific slaughter of innocent children in Connecticut has led many of us to moments of deep introspection. Many of us are re-considering our views on gun control. Does it make sense to have weapons accessible to so many of us? Others are asking questions about ...
Children are dying.
They are caught in the crossfire between profits and an unassailable national identity, and their numbers only seem to increase with each passing news cycle.
This carnage continues because a well-entrenched interest group refuses to relen...
Well, you probably don’t want to look at more than 60 different documented school shooters and stabbers who we...
I want to briefly follow up on a recently published article of mine about atheism and economic justice. Doing so makes good sense, I think, because the piece is long, research-based, and addresses an unduly neglected topic. I’ll get to the article presently, but first l...
One evening in the spring of 1993 I took a bus across San Francisco, leaving the troubled, largely impoverished neighborhood of the Western Addition, populated mostly by the descendents of African slaves, in which I lived (representing, I suppose, the artistic hippie begi...
Yarmouk Camp, Damascus
Some Palestinian here in Damascus, from the Palestinian writers union with whom this observer has been meeting, including independent researcher Hamad Said Al-Mawed are saying so.
Admittedly there are some similarities b...
Back in 1971, when I had my first job out of university as a CBC radio public affairs producer, one of the “items” we featured on the early morning show was called Shop Talk. It was a nationally syndicated three minute exploration of labour issue...
I saw Zero Dark Thirty last night.
Most of it, anyway. In a bizarre incident, the theater fire alarm went off just as the Seal Team Six helicopter was about to touch down in Abbottabad. The Arclight made the interesting decision to keep the movie running (or ...
By the time you read this, I could be dead.
By the time I submit this, you could be dead.
Because I could decide to go to a mall. Or you could.
And you—you might be targeted at, well, Target. Or in a Walmart parking lot.
Your child and/...
If you go shopping this Christmas season, you really need to watch out because you will likely be tracked, profiled and, if you’re really not careful, digitally ripped off.
In most stores, nearly all products, whether a toy or a piece of jewelry, comes with a hid...
Holiday flyers take note: The federal Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been quietly removing its admittedly cancer-causing full-body X-ray scanners known as “backscatter” machines from seven large US airports. About 280 are still in use at about 40 air...
The United Nations recently announced that its Fifth Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee session, scheduled for January 2013, would propose a binding treaty to ban ethylmercury (commonly known as thimerosal) from all medications and vaccines worldwide. That is welcom...
Miranda Gibson is a 31 year old teacher, who has spent the past year engaged in a remarkably courageous act. Miranda has been living on a platform which sits 60 meters above the floor of an ancient Tasmanian forest. The tree that she has called home since December 14, 201...
In Early November a colleague requested that I compose a few thoughts for our church’s Advent 2012 booklet. I selected the Luke 2: 1-7 text for reasons personal, professional, and textual. What follows (with additional poi...
“What’s to be scared of, if it’s unavoidable?”
Vladimir Putin, Dec 20, 2012
It did not end, and while there is much evidence to suggest our day...
‘Tis the season for rolling out the plastic Christmas trees, snowflakes, Santa faces, and life-size biblical figurines. Everywhere from Los Angeles to Buenos Aires to Taipei to Kinshasa and even in Antarctica, people spend hours and excess energy worrying about the best...
When I lived in Berkeley, California during the 1970s and 1980s, I probably spent more money at Comics & Comix on Berkeley’s Telegraph Ave. than at any other store except for those that sold beer and food. At the time, underground comix were still published fr...
Sean Wilentz’s dazzling history of Columbia Records’ 125 years of music-producing is a nostalgic trip through much of our common history, for what American during all those years cannot be familiar with the artists the company released even if an actual awareness of t...
An armchair psychologist might say it could only be a December baby born in the Great Depression who could have devised a song so devastatingly critical of the contradictions between consumerist Christmas and Christian charity as Bob Dorough’s Blue Xmas (To Whom It ...
Black Friday: December 14, 2012
by KEMMER ANDERSON
Darkness shrouds the dead.
Gun-sight eyes shoot around the world:
A magazine of bullets reads through our minds.
An assassin...