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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 'India'
How the Times of India Colluded with Monsanto in Fake Reports of Bt Cotton Successes
P. SAINATH
The same full page appeared twice in three years, the first time as news, the second time as an advertisement. “Not a single person from the two villages has committed suicide.” Three and a half years ago, at a t...
High Noon in Koodankulam
NIRANJAN RAMAKRISHNAN
Many countries are rethinking their nuclear plans post-Fukushima.  Some are proceeding to draw down their nuclear power operations.  According to an ...
A New Great Game in the Asia-Pacific
DEEPAK TRIPATHI
On April 19, India tested its first inter-continental ballistic missile, named Agni-V, and joined the select group of nations possessing both nuclear weapons and a delivery system capable of hitting targets across continents. Only a few days before, nuclear capable North ...
The Folly of Beef Festivals
FARZANA VERSEY
If a group of Christians decided to hold a pork festival as part of their cultural assertion in Hyderabad, a city in South India that is now in the news for the ...
The Real Nuclear Outlaws
CARL BOGGS
While United States and Israeli leaders, duly assisted by a warmongering media, ramp up war talk against Iran, two troublesome pieces of information are ritually ignored.  First, even American intelligence reports conclude that Iran is not close to building a nuclear-wea...
Million Dollar Men
FARZANA VERSEY
The Ajmer Sharif Dargah in north India has become for politics what the Wagah border is for peace activists.  It is just so much melting wax and withering flowers. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is to pay a visit to the shrine on what has been touted as a ...
How to Beat Poverty in India
P. SAINATH
One Tendulkar makes the big scores. The other wrecks the averages. The Planning Commission clearly prefers Suresh to Sachin. Using Professor Tendulkar’s methodology, it declares that there’s been another massive fall in poverty. Yes, another (‘more dramatic in the r...
What Separates New Delhi From the Everglades?
ALAN FARAGO
At two in the morning, the sleek, modern airport at New Delhi hummed with activity. Most travelers pointed westbound to European capitals and from there, mid morning connections to the Americas. What piqued my curiosity at that ungodly hour: airport security worked...
Netanyahu Crosses the Line
DEEPAK TRIPATHI
The bombing of an Israeli embassy car in Delhi threatens India’s diplomatic maneuvers between Israel and Iran, and has put India’s discreetly nurtured ties with Israel since 1992 through a severe test. Those who are attracted to Israel’s depiction of Iran as a terro...
That Bomb in Delhi
JAWED NAQVI
“Tarry a little, old Jew,” remonstrates Portia with Shylock before having his macabre petition for a pound of human flesh thrown out of the window at the magistrate’s court in Venice. Portia, if Shakespeare allowed, would be compelled to rein...
Israeli Embassies Attacked
FARZANA VERSEY
Monday. February 13. 3.54 pm. A bomb explodes in the car of an Israeli diplomat. Three people, including the defence attaché’s wife Tal Yehoshua, are grievously injured. 30 minutes later, embassy officials are examining the remains of the vehicle in an area that...
Poverty as Photo-Op
FARZANA VERSEY
Oprah Winfrey walking the seedy bylanes of Mumbai on a work assignment in India, Jeremy Clarkson dropping his pants for a reality show, and tourists paying to watch naked Jarawa tribals dance are part of the same deal: Branding Blahdcasting Corporation. Should outs...
Billionaires Control Cricket in India
P. SAINATH
A little under five years ago, the cricket establishment in India privatized a national passion. They started an ‘Indian Premier League’ modelled on the NFL and The English Premier League (only this was happening with cricket), complete with privately-owned te...
Remembering Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-1955)
TARIQ ALI
Saadat Hasan Manto’s centenary is being observed quietly by friends and admirers in Lahore. No official recognition or mention. He’s almost become a non-person. Manto died in Lahore in 1955. He was forty-three years old. The life of  one of our greatest short-story w...
Encircling China
ALICE SLATER
On UN Day, at a panel on Nuclear Disarmament, Secretary General Ban-ki Moon spoke about his 2008 five point proposal for nuclear disarmament, including the requirement for negotiations to ban the bomb.  It was dismaying  when the next speaker, a retired US Air Force Gen...
Indian Lolly Cow
FARZANA VERSEY
“The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank brooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen. Every night its Titanic form seemed to await something; but it had waited thus, un...
Walmart’s (and Hillary’s) Indian Invasion
P. SAINATH
Mumbai Foreign direct investment in retail may be on hold, but Hillary Clinton can stop worrying about Anand Sharma and Pranab Mukherjee. “How does (Commerce Minister) Sharma view India’s current Foreign Direct Investment guidelines? Which s...
Pack Up the Moon and Dismantle the Sun
VIJAY PRASHAD
They left me clutching islands of farewells. – Agha Shahid Ali, The Country Without a Post Office, 1997. My friend was like an imp – mischief drew his smile, as did Beauty. Poetry was his mét...
I -Witnesses of the Mumbai Attacks
FARZANA VERSEY
“The spectators laughed. And my lawyer, rolling up one of his sleeves, said with finality, ‘Here we have a perfect reflection of this entire trial: everything is true and nothing is true!’” ...
Street Messiahs
FARZANA VERSEY
“America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing…I can’t stand my own mind.” – Allen Ginsberg Space is being occupied. What does that space stand for? What does its occupation convey? There are q...
India’s Autoworkers Behaving Like the Old UAW
DAVID MACARAY
The union stories coming out of the huge Maruti Suzuki auto plant in Manesar, Haryana (approximately 30 miles south of New Delhi) fall into the classic “good news-bad news” categories. First, the bad news:  Approximately 3,500 workers have been on strike for a...
Class War on the Sub-Continent
CHARLES R. LARSON
Shortly after Rahan Tabassum returns home to Delhi for a vacation from his university studies in the United States, he finds himself in an increasingly tense situation involving his mother’s servants.  When she is away, her house is burgled—two computers and her safe...
Migration of the Destitute
P. SAINATH
Mumbai The re-classification of India’s villages and towns, and the changes this brings to the nation’s rural-urban profile, happens every decade. Yet only Census 2011 shows us a huge turnaround, with urban India adding more people (91 million) tha...
Gandhi’s Lesson for Today
KATHY KELLY
In a soon-to-be published book entitled Gandhi and the Unspe...