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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 by Tag 'China'
The real action in Sino-US relations this week was not the predictable China-bashing in the third election debate between US President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney in Florida on October 22: it was the little-noticed concurrent visit to Asia of a high...
What did we learn from the Presidential foreign policy debate? Not much specific or of substance. China did not make an appearance in the first hour. This is not surprising – for three reasons. These debates are more about self- presentation than candid statements of ...
With the presidential election in South Korea just two months away, efforts are underway to lock into place a policy of confrontation with that nation’s neighbor to the north. When current South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office five years ago, he wasted little...
Behind the current impasse among China, Japan and Taiwan over five tiny specks of land in the East China Sea is an influential rightwing movement in Japan that initiated the crisis in the first place, a crisis it is using it to undermine Japan’s post-World War II peace ...
During the second half of the 20th century the United States was an opportunity society. The ladders of upward mobility were plentiful, and the middle class expanded. Incomes rose, and ordinary people were able to achieve old-age security.
In the 21st century the o...
Mumbai.
If Mo Yan had chosen to live in a swanky hideout in the nowhere space offered as asylum, there would be much jubilation over his being awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature. Instead, he lives in China, was educated in the People’s Libe...
Mrs. Dot Turner has worked at what is now Sensata Technologies in Downstate Freeport for 43 years. The company does sophisticated work creating sensors for automobiles. It enjoyed record profits last year. But not enough for its owner — Bain Capital — which is m...
An interesting side product of globalization is how China bashing has become a staple of domestic politics in nations around the world, from America to Zambia, from Sydney to Tokyo. Best practices also propagate with remarkable speed and efficiency.
It may not be a...
Editors representing many Asian newspapers stood in a perfect line. They were nervous and giddy at the prospect of meeting Li Changchun, China’s powerful member of the Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee. Personally, the Great Hall of the People and the for...
One of the themes that Governor Romney has been hitting at aggressively in his campaign ads is that he will get tough on China. The ads complain that China is a cheater, most importantly by “manipulating” the value of its currency. This means that China has been delib...
A writer’s greatest disappointments are readers who have knee-jerk responses. Not all readers, of course. Some readers are thoughtful and supportive. Others express thanks for opening their eyes. But the majority are happy when a writer tells them what they want...
There’s got to be some symbolism—if not irony–in the fact that just as the last of the 33,000 troops surged by Obama two years ago supposedly to pacify Afghanistan pulled out, the highest ...
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...
Could Japan and China—the number two and three largest economies in the world—really get into a punch-out over five tiny islands covering less than four square miles? According to the ...
To call this feature-length film xenophobic, fear-mongering and hysterical almost understates the case. The whole thing is so over-the-top that, like a bad horror movie where you can see the strings moving the monster, it leaves us numbed and bored or perhaps laughing. Ye...
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently paid what is expected to be her final official visit to Beijing. She received a stern reception from Chinese officialdom, including the official media, and also suffered what appears to have been a personal rebuke....
Egypt’s new President Mohammed Morsi was in China last week, putting in an appearance at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Iran on the way home – all before ever having stepped foot in the US. Several commentators have speculated that his movements herald a strategic...
Over the last two decades, many national governments and a variety of non-governmental organizations have sounded a loud drumbeat against “human trafficking”—the transporting and harboring of people through coercive means in order to exploit their labor. But as a ...
Awkwardness seems to be a defining characteristic of the Mitt Romney campaign to be the next United States president and of his China policy, as well as of the candidate himself.
Certainly, Romney does not have an easy row to hoe. A moderate Mormon plutocrat who se...
The morons who rule the American sheeple are not only dumb and blind, they are deaf as well. The ears of the american “superpower” only work when the Israeli prime minister, the crazed Netanyahu, speaks. Then Washington hears everything and rushes to comply.
Is...
The overweening arrogance of the United States in conduct of its foreign relations is evident throughout the world. A morning glance at international headlines will usually light on some intriguing gobbet of Washington conceit, generally a lecture, a scolding or a spite...
World Nuclear News, the information arm of the World Nuclear Association which seeks to boost the use of atomic energy, last week heralded a NASA Mars rover slated to land on Mars on Monday, the first Mars rover fueled with plutonium.
“A new era of space...
The Russian government has finally caught on that its political opposition is being financed by the US taxpayer-funded National Endowment for Democracy and other CIA/State Department fronts in an attempt to subvert the Russian government and install an American puppet s...
Washington has been at war since October, 2001. This war took a back seat when Bush concocted another excuse to order the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a war that went on without significant success for 8 years and has left Iraq in chaos with dozens more killed and wounded ev...
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...