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 by Tag 'environment'
I recently attended the July 28 “Mountain Mobilization” in southern West Virginia, which included a confrontational rally and a direct action to halt operations at Patriot Coal’s Hobet strip mine, claimed by organizers to be the largest mountaintop removal site in t...
The bumper sticker on the beat-up pickup truck read: “Friends don’t let friends vote Democrat.”
The driver was obviously not affluent. Yet, despite all the news about mega-trillion dollar bankster bailouts, mega-million dollar bonuses for financial crooks, ...
I read with interest Travis Crum’s article in Tuesday’s Charleston Gazette. He reported that before a mountaintop removal protest turned into a deadlock of loud opposition, the mining supporters and those who want an end to mountaintop removal h...
“Are you ready for a new economy? Are you ready for a new politics?” The challenge at the podium came from Gus Speth, the courtly co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, now a professor at Vermont Law School, who is on the board of the newly created New E...
Grassroots environmental organizations including the Friends of the River, the American River Conservancy and California Native Plant Society, have reported dwindling income in recent years, the result of declining foundation funds and membership donations available due t...
In Miami-Dade County — Florida’s most populous and politically influential county– a billion dollars is needed immediately to replace just the most deteriorated and vulnerable sections of the wastewater system, according to a five month internal study....
The U.S. heat wave is slowly shaking the foundations of American politics. It may take years for the deep rumble to evolve into an above ground, institution-shattering earthquake, but U.S. society has changed for good.
The heat wave has helped convince tens of mill...
Durban, South Africa.
The recent surge of unconnected community protests across South Africa confirms the country’s profound social, economic and environmental contradictions. But if activists fall before a new hail of police bullets, or if they lack an ...
At the Clinton Global Initiative in 2008, former Vice President Al Gore called the possibility of fossil fuel corporations extracting oil shale “utter insanity.”
Insanity, though, doesn’t serve as a hinderance for deeply entrenched and powerful fo...
“Belief In Man-Made Global Warming Is A Lot Like Believing In Santa Claus”
– Rush Limbaugh
“Any potential benefits of proposed emissions reduction policies are far outweighed by their economic costs.”
– ...
The conclusion of a report of a Japanese parliamentary panel issued last week that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster was rooted in government-industry “collusion” and thus was “man-made” is mirrored throughout the world. The “regulatory capture...
“History,” the old adage goes, “repeats itself.” And this is precisely the reason why we learn it.
Exhibit A: Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), a landmark First Amendment Court battle royale. The case’s facts, as summarized by Oyez, are as fo...
The other night I went to a killing. It was all very matter of fact. Five judges sat at the front of the room listening to people testify for or against the killing of public recreation and wildlife at Chatfield Reservoir. An urban recreation and wildlife center, Ch...
In 2005, I preached on the ecological crisis in a sermon I titled “Hope is for the Weak: The Chal...
Politics continues to threaten the health and welfare of Pennsylvanians.
The latest is how the Republican-dominated legislature and Gov. Tom Corbett separated one of the wealthiest and more high-tech/industrial areas of the state from the rural areas.
Less t...
A recent late-night walk with my border collie Zoe has transported me back to one of the darkest, dreariest days of my 30-year journalistic career. Following her gaze down a utility easement east of Bryan Park a half mile south of downtown Bloomington, I saw a young white...
It was said that if the dance was done with extreme precision and adherence to ritual, the oppression would stop. Wild game would return, and a new age would ensue. Sometimes a swirling trance was conjured, but this only increased the oppression- strange manifestations, e...
“The problem goes beyond parties and politicians. It’s the system . . . . All our politicians are in the pocket of elites who own, lobby, litigate, bully and bribe their way into every element of our lives. Even single cell organisms unite and fight for su...
In his penultimate novella, “Worstward Ho” (1983), Samuel Beckett writes
“...
Days before the wide release of “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” the filmmakers returned to Montegut to sho...
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 ...
The predictable word is in from Rio: failure. The conference twenty years on from the huge Earth Summit, Rio 92, has been unable to produce even the pretense of an energetic verbal commitment of the world’s community to “sustainable principles.”
The reason? T...
This week the Obama administration was caught hiding behind secrecy agreements to mask its role in the latest ‘free-trade’ deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA). The pact is designed to further shift legal and regulatory authority from governments to mu...
“It’s impossible!” I said.
“No Johnny, we’re impossible. It’s like it always was ten million years ago. It hasn’t changed. It’s us and the land that’ve changed, become impossible, Us!...
With her 1962 book, Silent Spring, Rachel Carson got DDT and other synthetic pesticides b...